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News media sensationalism and dishonesty Bias and Censorship in Social Media Tracking the whereabouts of cell phone users Releasing prison inmates because they might catch the virus News media bias against President Trump Airline inconvenience and health hazards Immigration-related health hazards Other environmental false alarms Voter fraud, mail-in ballots, and postponed elections Any good news about the virus is suppressed Timely news and commentary: Turning nursing homes into extermination sites: the Gretchen factor. We're finally getting a clear picture of exactly how the beating of a 75-year-old nursing home patient by a man nearly one-quarter his age came about. And boy, it is a shocker. It turns out that victim and perp were sent to the Westwood Nursing Center in Detroit due to the fact that both were suffering from COVID. The older man, an Army vet, was snatched from his apartment and dumped in the nursing home without any notification of his relatives, who then spent a considerable amount of time looking for him, to no avail. As for the younger man, who is evidently named Jaydon Hayden, though the police haven't yet confirmed it, he was suffering from some sort of breakdown and had been sent to a group home to await treatment when he was diagnosed with the coronavirus and also dumped in the Westview facility. I Am Criminal. Fear is a tool of the tyrant. Law is another tool of the tyrant. When you put them together, you do not arrive at freedom, you arrive at more than even tyranny. You arrive at terrorism, by means of law. [...] It is all about control, not safety. The health department should serve (and probably really does serve) merely an advisory capacity. It should not rank higher than the U.S. Constitution and certainly not when itself admits that not enough is known, even yet, about the coronavirus to use data to enforce such sweeping and absolute rule over a "free" people. All things being equal and Americans actually being "free" rather than captive to a Soviet-style, bureaucratic omnipotent tyranny, there would be significant push back, even more so than what is taking place in Michigan with one of the worst, most explicit tyrants in power. Except, perhaps, the Tennessee (Knox county) health guru who felt completely comfortable in stating that "communion is not a part of core worship." Of course, I could go on and on about how communism has taken over American government all I wish, but these people put the color and sound to it that I never could. 5 Things I've Learned From COVID-19. [#1] People Overreact. In the absence of knowing what to do, people need to do something. The masses feel better when they are preparing to defend themselves against an invisible threat, even if this makes no sense whatsoever. Like pregnant mums writing a birthing plan, only for it to go out the window the minute you realize pushing something the size of a watermelon out of something the size of a doughnut is going to sting a bit. When the threat of coronavirus came, ordinarily sane people were caught doing the strangest things: freezing onions, fighting over toilet paper, putting beans in their loft space. It is comforting to know that the most fearful in our society will never need to buy toilet paper again. Self-inflicted destruction of America, all for nought. Stats now show that the mortality rate for the coronavirus is hardly more than the seasonal flu. And when this is all over, it may even be less. Trump was right all along. But the left mocked him as they elevated Dr. Anthony Fauci to sainthood. It turns out, this "expert" deceived us all. The mortality rate for the coronavirus dropped from WHO's estimate of 3.4% to 2% to Fauci claiming it was 1%, and therefore ten times deadlier than the seasonal flu. (He plucked the 1% figure out of thin air, since there was insufficient data to make such a claim). Now we learn that the overall mortality rate for this virus is not 3.4% or 2% or even 1%[.] Instead, the mortality rate is around .26%. Yes, you read that right. .26%. They Killed Everything Beautiful. Massachusetts was the next-to-last state to begin re-opening, and the timetable set by the state is tortuous and vague, making planning for opening up again by businesses and organizations close to impossible. The restaurant and hotel industries are still waiting for their rules from the commonwealth, but when they do open up — if they survived the financial hit from the shutdown — they should be able to do so fairly quickly, after replenishing supply lines, rehiring staff, and reconfiguring their operations for the "new normal" which incorporates the "social distancing" nonsense. But for cultural organizations, the timeline for getting going is much longer. Death, Politics and the Nursing Homes. There still is a lot we don't know about the transmission and treatment of the virus, though you'd be well advised to skip the hysterical accounts in the fake news and rely on more substantive accounts elsewhere. One thing has been consistently true, though: The elderly have been the most vulnerable to this disease. Reason would suggest, in that case, that instead of focusing enforcement attention on closing parks and beaches and arrests of lone surfers or churchgoers sitting in their closed window cars, attention should be paid to those institutions which house in close quarters the aged and infirm. Apparently, however, Democratic governors live in a post-rational world. It's Time to Be Americans Again. There is more to life than not dying from COVID-19. And, this just in, you can die from causes other than the coronavirus. As Americans, we need to remember this, or else risk an extended period of economic distress that will cost lives as well as economic hardship. The choice is not between people and profits. We can indeed both walk and chew gum at the same time. Let's get started. As things currently stand, a majority of Americans understandably want to ensure their health and safety are taken care of before they even think about reintegrating into society. After all, who could blame them for prioritizing the health and wellbeing of themselves and their loved ones. But much of the fear and reluctance to return to normal society as we knew it is based on the current information being widely disseminated to the public by the media. Control Measures Should Be Based on Emerging Evidence About the Danger Posed by the Virus. As we move from lockdowns to something more closely resembling normal life, the emerging evidence about the threat posed by COVID-19 should inform our judgment about which precautions make sense. The initial, ham-handed approach — which confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes except for government-approved purposes — should be replaced by more carefully targeted measures focused on protecting the people who face the highest risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the current "best estimate" of the death rate among Americans who develop COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4%. By that measure — the symptomatic case fatality rate — COVID-19 is roughly four times as deadly as the seasonal flu but far less deadly than the Spanish flu. Unlike the Spanish flu, which commonly struck down healthy people in the prime of life, COVID-19 primarily kills elderly people. The CDC estimates that the symptomatic case fatality rate for people younger than 50 is just 0.05%, compared with 1.3% for people 65 or older and 0.2% for 50-to-64-year-olds. Major changes ahead for American civil liberties are going to 'redefine us'. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to play out and Americans see many of their leaders adopting draconian lockdowns, mandating business closures, and implementing additional policies that seem to run afoul of the Constitution, scores are concerned about what a 'new normal' may look like. And not everyone is going to like it. [...] The technology to track people already exists and the concept already has a name: Contract tracing. However, the question isn't whether it can be done but whether it's legal to do so. Throttle Up. The phrase "Throttle Up" jumped into my consciousness in the last week when Trump and his coronavirus task force of government hacks and bureaucrat lackeys announced the guidelines for re-opening America, as if a formerly $22 trillion economy, tied to a $90 trillion global economy, could be turned off and on like a light switch. Clap off, clap on. It just doesn't work that way. The arrogance and hubris of people who think they can declare a global shut down for a virus and think they can easily deal with the intended and unintended consequences of doing so, is breathtaking in its outrageous recklessness and egotistical belief in their own infallibility. This contemptible belief in their own superiority has permeated every fiber of those who rule over us, particularly among captured central bankers, corrupt politicians, bought off scientists, and billionaire oligarchs. Cooking the Books on COVID-19 Deaths. Fox News, and other cable networks, run a COVID death count ticker on the side or bottom of the television screen just as they show the major stock indices during the business day. Why are they so obsessed with deaths from the Chinese virus? Most peoples' moods are already melancholic over the unending economic shutdown, along with social distancing, masks, and restrictions on movement and assembly not normally seen in free societies. Why don't news networks show a tally of recovered patients rather than deaths? Aside from the morbid, "If it bleeds, it leads" mantra that guides much news reporting, the media wants to pin each death on the tail of President Trump. [...] If more deaths are better for the Democrat and media narrative, expect to see inflated death counts, erroneously blaming non-virus deaths on the virus. Where Is Cuomo's Apology for Killing 10,000 People? [Scroll down] But I still cannot fathom the mental disconnect from reality that induced Cuomo — not Fredo, who despises the CNN employer who pays him millions to attack the president daily, but the more dignified one who told our nation that America never was all that great anyway — to order New York nursing homes, which were medically and structurally unprepared for the challenge, to admit coronavirus sufferers into their facilities. Under the governor's orders, they were coerced to comply, and somewhere along the lines of 10,000 seniors died as a result. Cuomo's own government admits to nearly 6,000 of the killings attributable to his order. The data are so shocking and indefensible that he understandably now plays three-card monte and does not count among his nursing-home killings any senior who contracted COVID-19 in a skilled nursing facility and thereafter was removed to die in a hospital. No question that the honest tally is closer to 10,000 Cuomo killings. In a viral video, a supermarket mob rampages against a woman. On Monday morning [5/25/2020], people woke up to a video on Twitter showing masked customers in a Staten Island grocery store screaming obscenities at a woman without a mask and shouting at her to "get out." It's an alarming video because it shows how quickly people can be turned into human weapons when fear powers them. Of Course COVID-19 Deaths Aren't a 'Trump Death Toll'. Does anyone seriously think that if Donald Trump were not president, the coronavirus pandemic would have never hit America? The super PAC Democratic Coalition — which supports presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden — apparently does, because it has launched a series of ads describing deaths from the coronavirus as the "Trump Death Toll." Hundreds protest in Sacramento against stay-at-home order. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the state Capitol on Saturday [5/23/2020] to protest against California's stay-at-home orders even as residents entered the Memorial Day weekend with newly expanded options for beachgoing, barbecuing and shopping. The rally to demand that Gov. Gavin Newsom lift his restrictions on business, religious gatherings and other activities took on the atmosphere of a political rally and festival on a closed-off street. Reopen America Now! Sunday, Memorial Day weekend, was a beautiful sunny day. Mary and I left our West Virginia home to make the 40-mile trek to Walmart and Home Depot in Virginia. We drove past a Virginia megachurch which usually has state cops directing traffic for the congregation. The parking lot was empty with a large "closed" sign. Meanwhile, Walmart and Home Depot parking lots were packed. Around 50% of shoppers wore masks. Absurdly, I saw toddlers wearing masks, which were particularly annoying. Professor Dolores J. Cahill, PhD is a highly credentialed and respected Immunologist and Molecular Biologist. Prof. Cahill, world-renowned Dr. Russel Blaylock, Dr. Judy Mikovits, and countless other scientists around the world say wearing masks is dangerous. Prof. Cahill explains that coronavirus is not transmitted through the air. It is transmitted through droplets on surfaces. Therefore, there is absolutely no need to wear a mask and no need for social distancing. Prof. Cahill says when you are covered with a mask, you have less oxygen which puts your immune system under stress. Because you are under immune stress, latent viruses in your body will reappear. You will have more coronavirus and other latent viruses will reemerge. Bottom line, fake news media insidiously hyping fear is harming children. Which is not new. Everything leftists cram down the throats of the public always harms people. Why the Left is Weaponizing Science. According to some "experts," science can sometimes be settled, meaning that in certain areas of study, the evidence has been deemed so overwhelming and indisputable that further debate is not only unnecessary, it is forbidden. Only one interpretation of this evidence is possible. [...] Science was never intended to be used as a weapon to bludgeon or intimidate dissenting opinions into silence. However, politicians and other authority figures have figured out that the only sure way to decisively win an argument is not to have one. They have begun to experience success by weaponizing science in an effort to silence any intellectual opposition. The basic strategy is simple and straightforward: anyone who dares to challenge the conventional wisdom (typically presented as the consensus opinion of scientists) will be mocked and ridiculed as "science deniers." Mayor de Blasio Claims NY Businesses Are Doing Fine and Can Stay Closed For Months. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told a New York radio audience businesses in the city are "hanging on" and they'll be able to stay closed for several months. "I've talked to lots and lots of business leaders, especially the smallest businesses. They're very worried about their futures understandably, but they also are hanging on and they know it can be a matter of months until they'll be back in action," de Blasio said on WNYC Friday [5/22/2020]. Meanwhile, back on planet earth, The National Restaurant Association predicted that 11 percent of New York's 25,000 restaurants will permanently close by the end of May and the entire travel and leisure industry will lose up to 68 percent of its jobs. Brainwashing & the New Vocabulary: 12 Words & Phrases I Never Want to Hear Again. If you've been watching any type of media coverage or reading articles, you've probably seen or heard a plethora of words and phrases which are currently being perverted due to the coronavirus pandemic. I don't know about you, but if I never heard "safe" or "new normal" again, I'd be a much happier person. If you feel like people are being brainwashed through repetition, that's because they are. Quite simply, these buzzwords and several others we'll discuss are being used to indoctrinate the public. [...] The "new normal" is most often used to get people to accept whatever unconstitutional or undignified rule that people in charge want us to find tolerable, like taped squares on the floor that we're supposed to stand in while waiting in properly spaced lines. New CDC Figures Show Fauci's Dishonest COVID-19 Projections Were Garbage. This madness has to end now. Every single lockdown order inflicted on the American people these past few months needs to be rescinded immediately. Once that's done, Fauci has to be investigated to find out why on earth he pushed these catastrophic measures on us using projections he knew to be false. He also needs to be indicted for peddling his lies before Congress and held criminally accountable for all the death and devastation he's caused as well. In case you hadn't heard, Matt Margolis over at PJ Media is reporting that the CDC now estimates the case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19 to be only .4 percent. As Margolis points out, that's much lower than the numbers used to frighten us into these lockdowns. But there are a few factors he doesn't mention that demonstratively show we were unspeakably deceived rather than merely the victims of some disastrous but ultimately honest mistake. Insane News Tidbits. The funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control suggests that they think diversity is an important input in making headway in the fight against the coronavirus. On April 20, NIH and CDC announced the availability of grants to increase the "diversity" of biomedical research labs. For example, academic virology researchers studying respiratory failure could receive hundreds of thousands more taxpayer dollars if they could find a woman or a minority to add to their project. High school students and college students are eligible for the program even though they cannot contribute anything of value. No scientific justification for the new diversity hire is needed. The scientists must promise to mentor the new hire, which will take time away from their research with no offsetting gain. Open Letter From LA County Public Health Professionals: Ferrer "Not Qualified," Ignored Early Coronavirus Outbreak Warnings. [Scroll down] As Ms. Ferrer stepped into the role of Director, she replaced a career employee in the Department, Cynthia Harding, who has a very strong epidemiology background, and who had ably done the job as "acting" director for over two years with Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauzer as Acting Health Officer for the same time period, following the retirement of Dr. Jonathan Fielding. [...] Once Ms. Ferrer was appointed as Director, one of her first moves was to notify all department program directors that she was to be the ONLY voice and contact with the Board offices. This broke down a chain of communication in place for many years that allowed local public health managers to assist constituents that contacted their local Board offices about a variety of health issues and act quickly on public health threats. Ms. Ferrer is the ONLY control point for Board questions and communication in the department. Even now, many managers complain that they don't know what's going on and are not being well utilized for the pandemic. If you're stuck in your house, you're probably watching television. Therefore... Gov. Gretchen 'Karen' Whitmer in Hot Water Over Husband's Vacation Hypocrisy. Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has epitomized the political, draconian response to coronavirus imposed by some states. Just recently, she extended the stay at home for Michigan until June 12th, forcing businesses to remain closed and people to not travel. This wasn't in response to any scientific data, but appeared to just be retaliatory against recent protests of her actions. But now, she's in a bit of hot water after it was revealed that not only was her husband looking to get their boat in the water for Memorial Day, but that he asked for special treatment in the process. While contemplating mandatory mask order, Virginia governor caught without one on beach. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam drew criticism Saturday after he was captured on social media photos without a mask while mingling with constituents on a beach. The episode at Virginia Beach came one day after Northam reportedly began contemplating a mandatory mask rule for Commonwealth citizens when it reopens from the pandemic. The order would require masks in indoor settings. "Virginia Gov Northam on the Virginia Beach boardwalk; no mask, no social distancing," one citizen tweeted. Another complained: "Liberals consistently send a message of 'Do as I say, not as I do.'" Harvard Prof. Blames Christianity's 'Malignant' Belief in Afterlife for Lockdown Protests. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said Thursday that the push for reopening society from lockdowns comes from Christianity's "malignant delusion" of belief in an afterlife. Atheists who believe in this life alone are more concerned with health and safety, Professor Pinker suggested in a Tweet, while Christians tend to devalue "actual lives" and live a riskier existence. NYT Issues Correction After Coronavirus Death List Includes Suspected Homicide Victim. The New York Times' list of 1,000 coronavirus victims displayed at the top of its Sunday edition included the name of at least one individual whose death reportedly had nothing to do with the pandemic. "U.S. deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss," the headline reads, just above the list of 1,000 names, meant to be 1% of the overall toll. The outlet, however, removed the name and reposted the list via Twitter along with a correction notice: [...] Don't Buy the Misleading Figures. Here's the Real Story About How the U.S. Matches Up on Coronavirus Deaths. The sheer ease with which the American left has politicized the deaths of thousands of Americans has shocked even me. The United States is approaching 100,000 deaths and the left seems determined to make sure the public blames President Donald Trump for those deaths. As PJM's Tyler O'Neil noted, the Democratic Coalition is trying to make "Trump Death Toll" a thing. While Tyler effectively demonstrated the absurdity of blaming these deaths on Trump, I'm going to show that despite the headlines that suggest things in the United States are the worst in the world, that is emphatically not the case. Democrats Face Criticism for Not Wearing Face Masks, Violating [Their] Own Rules. Several Democrats who have insisted on strict stay-at-home orders — including the wearing of face masks when out of doors — have been caught violating the rules that they wish to impose on others for fear of spreading the coronavirus. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who has suggested he might make wearing face masks mandatory, was spotted on the boardwalk in Virginia Beach on Saturday — without a mask. The Doctrine of Media Untruth. Take the strange case of the respective records of liberal New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Florida counterpart Ron DeSantis. Both states have roughly equal populations, with Florida slightly larger by about 2 million. Both have populations that travel daily back and forth between their respective major cities. Both are major international tourist and travel hubs. Both have widely diverse populations. Both have large numbers of retirees and long-term-care homes. Yet, New York has suffered 14 times the number of coronavirus deaths as has Florida. Florida is now increasingly open, and on May 19 saw 54 deaths attributed to the virus. That same day, New York was completely locked down and yet saw nearly twice that number at 105 deaths. One would never know from the media of the contrasting fates of the two states during the epidemic. Cuomo admits 'we all failed' at making coronavirus projections. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted Monday [5/25/2020] that coronavirus projections from experts were all wrong — and he's getting out of the business of speculating because of it. Cuomo said he can't predict when the hospitalization and death rate numbers will drop to the necessary threshold required for reopening certain regions because as he put it, "we all failed" at predicting. Hillary Clinton just thanked Andrew Cuomo for 'responsible decisions to keep people safe' in crisis. In what could be the most tone-deaf and incorrect statement of the year so far, two-time failed Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton has just praised New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his 'responsible' leadership during the coronavirus pandemic to "keep people safe." "I'm missing our Chappaqua Memorial Day parade today while also feeling grateful to leaders like @NYGovCuomo for making responsible decisions to keep people safe. Wishing everyone a safe and healthy holiday. @BillClinton and I will be waving our flags at home," Clinton wrote in a tweet featuring a picture of herself, her ex-president husband, and Cuomo, laughing it up presumably during an earlier parade. Has Trump been proven right yet again about the Wuhan virus? President Trump is an extremely smart man who calibrates his speech to about the seventh-grade level in order to make sure all Americans, not just excessively verbal college graduates, understand him. His uncomplicated speech patterns lead leftists to the erroneous conclusion that Trump is stupid. That mistake, plus Trump Derangement Syndrome, explains why leftists instantly denigrated the predictions Trump made when the virus first broke in America. Before Sunday [5/24/2020], of Trump's three most significant predictions, two proved correct. Now there's news out of England that the virus's low infection rate is making it hard to put together a vaccine trial. This news proves that Trump's third prediction, that the disease would die out as summer neared, was right, too. $21 Million Brooklyn Field Hospital Shutters After Seeing No Coronavirus Patients. A $21 million field hospital in Brooklyn, New York, authorized by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without seeing any patients. The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several makeshift hospital sites throughout the city intended to relieve the city's overcrowded hospitals brimming with coronavirus patients, the New York Post reported. $21M Brooklyn field hospital never saw a patient amid coronavirus pandemic. A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials. The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city's overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.8 million Red Hook field hospital with an estimated capacity for 750 beds. The field hospital was built by Texas-based construction company SLSCO. Hospitals flush with cash got billions in coronavirus bailouts. Hospitals hoarding massive piles of cash got billions of dollars in federal coronavirus bailouts while vulnerable health centers were forced to scrape by, a new report says. The feds have given more than $5 billion in grants to 20 big hospital chains that already had more than $108 billion in cash, the New York Times reported Monday [5/25/2020]. The money was among $72 billion in grants the Department of Health and Human Services has distributed to hospitals and other providers since April under the CARES Act — the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that Congress passed in March to shore up struggling businesses amid the pandemic, according to the paper. The CDC's New 'Best Estimate' Implies a COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3%. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current "best estimate" for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it — far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders. The CDC offers the new estimates in its "COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios," which are meant to guide hospital administrators in "assessing resource needs" and help policy makers "evaluate the potential effects of different community mitigation strategies." It says "the planning scenarios are being used by mathematical modelers throughout the Federal government." Cooking the Books on COVID-19 Deaths. Fox News, and other cable networks, run a COVID death count ticker on the side or bottom of the television screen just as they show the major stock indices during the business day. Why are they so obsessed with deaths from the Chinese virus? [...] Aside from the morbid, "If it bleeds, it leads" mantra that guides much news reporting, the media wants to pin each death on the tail of President Trump. Twitter has a #TrumpDeathCount hashtag to blame every single death on the president, the more the merrier. This is ahead of the fall presidential campaign where Democrats will attempt to blame the entire Wuhan virus mess on Trump, from the economic devastation to the total number of deaths. If more deaths are better for the Democrat and media narrative, expect to see inflated death counts, erroneously blaming non-virus deaths on the virus. The left is practiced at this since every type of extreme weather, from rain to snow, heat to cold, hurricanes to tornadoes, is blamed on global warming or climate change, depending on which term fits the weather in question. COVID-19 becomes a political disease. Just as the coronavirus begins to wane, another dangerous pathogen is infecting America — COVID-19 politics. In the early days of the pandemic, state governors walked in lockstep, ordering lockdowns to mitigate coronavirus infections and safeguard hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients. Now that the number of new cases is flattening, politics are taking over, with states veering in different directions. Science no longer appears to be in the driver's seat. Blue states are extending stay-at-home orders, while red states are opening for business. Two playbooks are in motion. Red states are scrambling to revive the economy as quickly as possible, to get people back to work so they can feed their families. [...] Blue states say they are continuing quarantines to save lives, putting the nation's economic recovery on the back burner. Are we allowed to ask if the lockdowns killed more people than COVID-19? Tucker Carlson opened his show on Thursday night with a 15-minute commentary that centred around setting the record straight on the response to the COVID-19 crisis. He started off showing how 'our leaders' set the groundwork for the deprivation of our essential human rights with fear. They used dire predictions of doom to soften opposition to the shredding of the Constitution. We now know that the dire predictions to sell us on '15 Days to Slow the Spread' were wrong. We also know that it didn't work as advertised, with antibody studies showing that most infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus were asymptomatic. We know of the original source of the 'social distancing' and shutdowns that are a part of pandemic safety theater. This draconian assault on basic human rights was also the strategy employed by the Chinese Communist Party. Birds of a collectivist feather tend to flock together. We were also told we could trust the Chinese, even though they have never shown themselves to be trustworthy. Thousands Of Churches Are About To Defy Lockdown Orders. It's About Time. On Friday [5/22/2020], President Trump said churches and houses of worship are "essential" and called on governors nationwide to allow them to open this weekend. If they don't, Trump said he would "override" governors, citing forthcoming guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In remarks Thursday, the president criticized some governors who have "deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential" but not churches. "It's not right. So I'm correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential." Trump is right, but churches are already taking action on their own. YouTube Censors Former CBS Journalist Sharyl Attkisson For Reporting On Hdroxychloroquine. YouTube is not a group of doctors, nurses, or have any sense of medical education, but their Nazi CEO claims that they will not tolerate and they will remove any videos that present a different, lawful narrative against the current one they are presenting. Former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson has come under their attack just as The Sons of Liberty have in attempting to investigate certain claims about COVID-19, 5G, coronavirus and drugs used as treatment, including hydroxychloroquine and chlorine dioxide. Oklahoma: After State Killed 275,000 Jobs Over COVID-19, Sheriff Now Evicting Residents Who Can't Pay. Since March, unemployment across the country has reached record and potentially catastrophic numbers. In the entire country, a record 38.6 million Americans have filed for unemployment during the pandemic. That corresponds to nearly 25% of the entire United States labor force. While many of these folks are receiving unemployment from state and federal government, many others are not. Millions of Americans — who watched states close non-essential businesses, subsequently crushing their careers — cannot even access unemployment benefits, according to the Economic Policy Institute. While some of these problems have been remedied, for others, collecting unemployment insurance was never an option. The grossest interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci I have ever seen. Watching an actress worth $200 million go into an orgiastic state because Dr. Anthony Fauci, the "coolest guy on the planet" has agreed to chat with her and pontificate about his lucrative, 40-year-old pet theory on vaccines, is beyond depraved. That's what happened when fading Hollywood A-lister Julia Roberts put on a serious-looking pair of specs and "interviewed" Fauci in the fawning Hollywood style. Roberts, an actress, outdid any fawner in the entertainment industry press. And it was disgusting. Police Shut Down Bernardsville Shop On Facebook Live Video. A live video captures Bernardsville Police shutting down a borough business for repeatedly violating Gov. Phil Murphy's executive order for having a non-essential business open during the coronavirus pandemic. Katherine Hermes of Peapack and owner of Country Home Store at 21 Olcott Square can be heard on the video making an emotional plea to the officer. "I am just trying to save my business," Hermes says. "I am widow with three children who need to eat." Congress must protect good faith businesses from COVID-19 liability. Throughout most of the nation, the curve of the coronavirus has been decisively flattened. The healthcare system has not only survived but also excelled, keeping more than 94% of confirmed infected patients alive, a number that will only increase as testing ramps up. That's better than Britain's National Health Service or the healthcare systems of France, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, Ireland, or Sweden, among others. But there are limits to how quickly commercial and economic life can resume because no government snap of the fingers can restore life to the way it was. Nolte: Retracting My Claim that Andrew Cuomo Is Not Responsible for Coronavirus Deaths. Based on new facts, I have no choice but to officially retract my earlier statement that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) should not be held responsible for any coronavirus deaths. Unfortunately, Cuomo is directly responsible for a number of coronavirus deaths. Possibly thousands. [...] The government's responsibility is to save as many lives as possible, and our government — at the local, state, and federal levels — met this responsibility admirably. Incredibly, no one in this country died due to a lack of medical care or lack of a ventilator. Everyone who could be saved was saved. What more can any reasonable person ask? Well, in the case of Andrew Cuomo, we could have asked that he not pour plague into New York's nursing homes and assisted living centers, that he not mandate these facilities accept discharged hospital patients recovering from, and, therefore, still infectious with the coronavirus. Still More Evidence That Lockdowns Were A Massive Waste Of Time, Money, And Lives. The nation's economy is on track to drop by more than 30% in the second quarter. Unemployment is well into the double digits. Half of small businesses might close in the next six months. All for naught, it would appear, giving the growing pile of evidence that the economic lockdowns didn't work. The latest evidence comes from a report out of JP Morgan Chase & Co. this week. It finds that there's been no increase in cases or deaths as other nations and U.S. states start reopening. This flies directly in the face of all the public health expert predictions of a major spike once people started moving about. [...] Don't expect anyone to admit they were wrong. The public health community — which has been peddling wildly exaggerated predictions of deaths — will never do so. Nor will Democrats and the press — which are committed to the narrative that every death in the U.S. is President Donald Trump's fault. Can We Sue Our Way Out of Quarantine? State governors from coast to coast issued coronavirus-related lockdown orders about two months ago, closing businesses and restricting people's movements. Government officials have taken unprecedented steps, seemingly without much calculation or forethought. In New York, for instance, Governor Andrew Cuomo insisted on March 18 that he would not approve a shelter-in-place order; by March 20, he praised California's lockdown and announced Gotham's own stay-at-home regime. New York and many other states have extended these orders indefinitely. The reasons for the lockdowns have shifted. Initially aimed at "flattening the curve" — slowing the rate of infection to avoid overwhelming hospitals — shutdowns keep getting extended, even as medical workers are furloughed and temporary field hospitals (set up to handle a surge in cases) are dismantled. Officials have leaned haphazardly on broadly worded and mostly untested "emergency powers" statutes to justify whatever policies they deem necessary. The command-and-control mode of leadership has struck many Americans as contrary to limited-government principles. The CDC Just Gave Us the Biggest Reason to End the Coronavirus Lockdowns. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nows estimates that 35 percent of coronavirus infections are asymptomatic. But that's not even the most important part of their latest estimates. It's the CDC's new "best estimate" for the case fatality rate amongst symptomatic patients. But, before I got to that, I should note that back in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent. [...] According to the CDC's current best estimate, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is .4 percent. And that's just amongst symptomatic cases, which, the CDC estimates, is 65 percent of all cases. This means the CDC estimates that the fatality rate for all infections across all age groups, symptomatic as well as asymptomatic, is approximately .26 percent. DOJ warns Los Angeles, Illinois of possible illegality of stay-at-home orders. The Justice Department warned state and local officials Friday of the possible illegality of their stay-at-home orders, as the agency continues to monitor restrictions meant to contain the spread of COVID-19. In a letter to Los Angeles officials, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said their recent comments suggesting that stay-at-home orders may stay in place longer "may be both arbitrary and unlawful." The Justice Department also said that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's "sweeping limitations" on Illinois residents raise constitutional concerns. The end is always three weeks away, yet you never quite get there. Coronavirus Basics Too Many People Never Learned. [Scroll down] COVID-19 often produces only moderate flu-like symptoms, but sometimes it generates a catastrophic collapse, sometimes unexpectedly. It is believed that a cascading overreaction of the immune system can causes mass death of cells, including in the sensitive tissues of the lungs, leading to death by oxygen starvation. Researchers are hoping to directly target the genesis of a cytokine storm, which should blunt the worst symptoms of the disease. Trump announces that houses of worship are 'essential,' calls on governors to open them up. President Trump on Friday [5/22/2020] announced that new Centers for Disease Control guidance will classify houses of worship as "essential," as he called on governors to allow them to open "right now" after being closed during the coronavirus lockdowns. Trump announced the policy for churches, synagogues and mosques, during a short briefing at the White House. Open the States. The citizen-led movement against overreaching COVID-19 lockdowns has been met with derision in the media, scorn from governors, and censorship from big tech. OpentheStates.com was founded to address this dismissive response by giving the American grassroots a place to organize their communities and connect with existing re-open groups. At OpentheStates.com, concerned citizens can sign the petition urging our national, state, and local leaders to re-open the states and connect with like-minded patriots. We encourage all Americans to follow the CDC guidelines on social distancing, but we do not support government dictates that limit the constitutional rights that have made this country great. There's no evidence coronavirus lockdowns saved lives. Mass quarantines may have killed people. It has now been 63 days — we're keeping track — since California became the first American state to issue a so-called shelter-in-place order for all citizens. Governor Gavin Newsom's order was the beginning of an unprecedented coronavirus mass quarantine that has changed this country forever. In many ways, the United States is hard to recognize compared to just two months ago. Two months from now, it will be more different still. In fact, it may be years before we fully understand the effects of what our leaders have done in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. There are certain to be battles over how to interpret this moment many years from now. It's possible your children will hear only one version of the story. Uncomfortable facts by that point may have been scrubbed from social media platforms as disinformation. Apple Sneaks COVID-19 Contact Tracing into Latest Phone Update. If you install updates on your phone without reading the details then you might get an unwanted surprise. The latest involves contact tracking technology. Contact tracing technology, in theory, will notify users when they have entered the presence of a person with the coronavirus. This project was begun in an effort "to protect people and get society back up and running," according to an April 10 announcement via Apple's newsroom. Even if this technology supposedly works, surveys have shown that three in five Americans are either unable or entirely unwilling to use the technology. Veteran and MMA champion Paul Lazenby condemned this update on Twitter: "Contact tracing slipped discreetly into your latest IOS update. No notice given, no attention drawn to it. I wonder how many people really understand what a terrifying sign this is." Fauci's Failures. One of the greatest economic booms in our country's history has been brought to its knees by a virus. [...] Dr. Anthony Fauci is tasked with leading us through this as the resident "expert" that has all of America shut down. It was his advice to President Trump that has locked down our country. It is Dr. Fauci that has set the limits of what our country should do. The damage is done when the experts are spreading fear and panic throughout the country and are allowed to set policy for the nation. Dr. Fauci persuaded President Trump to "lockdown" the entire U.S. economy based on a false Imperial College model-based on the work of Dr. Neil Ferguson. The Imperial College model has since been deemed to be a model "completely unusable for scientific purposes." If the model was so flawed, why did Dr. Fauci not look closer into the results and question the facts as they were presented? Plandemic: The COVID-19 Video YouTube and Facebook Don't Want You to See. Over the last couple of days, I've had several friends send me a link to a video about COVID-19 called "Plandemic." They said they can't post it on Facebook; Facebook either removes it or threatens them with suspension before they try to post it. When I went to the URL on YouTube, it had been pulled for allegedly violating YouTube's terms of service. A YouTube spokesperson told Buzzfeed News that they remove "content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice for COVID-19." Mysterious Deaths Of Covid-19 Researchers & Arrests Of Journalists Covering The Pandemic Are More Ominous Warnings Something Incredibly Sinister Is Going On. Dating all the way back to 1994, Steve Quayle has kept a fascinating two-part list of mysteriously dead scientists, microbiologists, infectious disease experts and other 'medical experts in their particular fields' and we have to report that Covid-19 has brought us at least two more such mysterious deaths after two 'trailblazing' Covid-19 researchers were found dead in less than a month. As Zero Hedge reports in this new story, "outside of academic circles, Dr. James Taylor and Dr. Bing Liu were relative unknowns. Inside of the scientific community, however, the two had achieved something like rock-star status. And now, within a period of 30 days, both young men are dead at a time when their talents are needed most." Eisenhower warned us about people like Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was one of the most intelligent men to sit in the Oval Office. He wasn't just a good leader. He was also quite prescient, known for his discussion of the Military Industrial Complex during his farewell speech in 1961. This was essentially a prediction of what we saw with the Vietnam War and both Gulf Wars, particularly the second that was driven by this so-called Military Industrial Complex. But in the same speech, he told of another challenge America would face, a challenge that we're seeing rearing its ugly head today during the coronavirus crisis. His fear was that scientific-technological elite would drive policy. When you read this quote, keep Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and other scientific-technological elites in mind. ["]In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.["] The incredibly stupefying origins of the COVID-19 lockdown, the world's greatest mistake. One would expect that a blue-ribbon team of experts would have carefully developed a policy with life or death implications for billions of people around the world. A team of experts with the top women and men of the fields' microbiology and epidemiology interspersed with a few Nobel peace recipients for good measure. It would be incumbent upon this bevy of boffins to methodically research what has worked in the past with other outbreaks and pandemics, especially paying attention to the subject of just quarantining the sick and protecting the vulnerable as well as looking at effective mitigation techniques, perhaps with an eye towards assessing ideas that are patently unworkable through practical considerations. Well, one would be wrong in assuming that took place in developing the disastrous pandemic policies currently in place. Instead, we have the absurd tale of a high school science project of a 15-year-old sophomore that ended up being the key part of almost every politician's plan for this kind of crisis. Judge rules against Michigan trying to shut down barber defying lockdown — for the second time. A judge ruled against the state of Michigan in their attempt to shut down the barber shop of a man who has become the symbol of resistance to social distancing edicts. Shiawassee County Circuit Judge Matthew Stewart refused to grant a request from the state for a preliminary injunction against 77-year-old Karl Manke, who owns a barber shop in Owosso. Stewart said it was a "close call" but ultimately he said the state did not prove their allegation that Manke's shop was an imminent public health and safety threat, according to the Detroit News. Nationwide protest planned for Friday. An organization called Open the States is planning nationwide protests on Friday [5/22/2020]. [...] Predictably, the left is claiming this is an "astroturf" operation as they try to discredit Americans across the country who are suffering economically and sickened by the tyrannical rule that has taken hold in blue states. It remains to be seen how large the turn-out will be tomorrow. I haven't seen any information about this circulating on conservative sites until I saw it at Legal Insurrection this week. CDC Changes Its Mind About Wuhan Virus Transmission and That Tells You All You Need to Know About Our Current Mess. [Scroll down] Sadly, this kind of stupidity is par for the course for CDC. CDC has and does some great things but it is a failed organization that is currently living on its old press releases. What it would rather do is be a Karen-esque nanny brigade that tells you how to live and deal with political issues like health disparities, and obesity, and guns than deal with disease. When it does get put on the spot in an infectious disease crisis, it fails. If you go back to the response to the anthrax attacks that happened around 9/11, particularly the attack on the Brentwood (DC) USPS facility, you find blinding incompetence is the order of the day. Coronavirus: wearing a cloth face mask is less about science and more about solidarity. [C]loth masks will affect both what you breathe in and where your breath goes when you breathe out. But even so, the most optimistic estimates suggest that cloth coverings only have a minor effect on your chances of breathing in (or expelling) droplets containing a virus. A small study of 21 healthy people concluded that a "homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection". Getting Our States Back To Work Quickly And Safely. As President Donald Trump acknowledged in April, there is no net benefit in making the cure worse than the disease. By adhering to the set of reasonable principles outlined in this document, states can get their citizens back to work safely. With safeguards in place, the nation can manage the invisible threat of coronavirus and restore the public's confidence. Work and free enterprise will fill store shelves and supply much-needed services. There is pent-up demand. Work is the backbone of wealth, and without prosperity, the nation jeopardizes its chances of fighting off the next threat. Without prosperity, there will be pain and hardship, and the damage to economic stability and well-being will only increase the already-rising public unrest and lead to a powerful undermining of the legitimacy of governments. What Medicine Is Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic. We believe we have learned several things from this particular iteration of viral illness and the treatment options we have provided: [#1] Initial survival after intubation for respiratory failure from COVID-19 in many reputable hospitals was 20 [to] 30%. Only weeks later, it is 70 [to] 80%. This is due to a multiplicity of reasons, but one is the use of prone ventilation, essentially breathing for them through a tube while flat on their stomachs rather than lying on their backs. [#2] Use of oxygen-assisted CPAP and BiPAP machines for patients with very low oxygen levels in their bloodstream has proven desirable when intervention is done in time. [...] [#3] COVID-19 can cause advanced clotting disorders in the blood vessels and the heart. [...] [#4] Many of the stricken are pre-diabetic, diabetic, or morbidly obese. Aggressive management of blood sugar levels is proving to be important in acute care. [#5] Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, is common with COVID-19. Tucker Carlson Exposing Governor Cuomo's Nursing Home Disaster that killed Seniors In Large Numbers. [Video clip] CDC: Coronavirus 'does not spread easily' except for close contact with infected patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued updated coronavirus guidelines that now downplay the chances of contracting the virus from surfaces, potentially offering relief to millions of Americans who have been concerned they might catch the disease from purchased groceries or delivered packages. On its website, the CDC says that coronavirus is "thought to spread mainly from person-to-person." Yet "the virus does not spread easily in other ways." "It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes," the CDC also states on its site. "This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus." Who Believes the Lockdowns Were About Science? Every state and local politician who imposed lockdowns pursuant to the COVID-19 pandemic claimed their decisions were based on "the science." In reality, they ignored the advice of leading epidemiologists, relying instead on statistical models produced by "experts" with histories of wildly inaccurate projections. The most notorious of these oracles was, of course, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, who claimed that coronavirus could kill 2.2 million Americans. Based on such apocalyptic predictions, combined with overcautious warnings from Beltway bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci, all but a few governors implemented economically destructive stay-at-home orders — despite the reservations of respected epidemiologists who questioned the logic of lockdowns from the beginning. Australian researchers see virus design manipulation. A forthcoming Australian scientific study concludes that the coronavirus causing the global pandemic contains unique properties suggesting it was manipulated in a Chinese laboratory and was not the result of a natural occurrence. Five scientists who conducted the study discovered an unusual ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the pathogen behind COVID-19 is called, to easily infect humans. The scientists said there is no sign so far that the virus can be found in other animals, including bats or the exotic wildlife sold for fresh meat at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified and where China maintains a major laboratory studying such viruses. Keeping America Skeered. When President Trump announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to protect himself against contracting COVID-19, the Democrats and their mainstream media propaganda machine reacted with disbelief, horror, panic, and outrage. [...] Why are these people so upset? [...] Can it be that, by taking HCQ, President Trump is demonstrating in the most dramatic and effective way possible that the drug can be a "game changer" in the fight against COVID-19? Are the Democrats and media concerned that, by his example, Trump might raise doubts regarding their relentless drumbeat of warnings about the drug's alleged danger? Baltimore Pastor Rips Up Cease-And-Desist Letter Mid-Sermon: 'We're Gonna Do It God's Way!'. "Pharaoh doesn't get to dictate to God's people how they worship their God. God is the one who defines the parameters. God is the one that communicates his will and his plan for his church, not Egypt. And I'm telling you right now, with this cease-and-desist letter in my hand, the Bible says to the New Testament church 'not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, but so much the more as you see the day approaching,' and the closer we get to Jesus coming back, the more church we ought to be having, not less church. Now that's God's parameters. So I'm tearing up this cease-and-desist order right here, and I'm telling you right now, we're gonna do it God's way! We're gonna do it God's way! God tells us how to worship Him, nobody else gets to do that." [Video clip] Liberals Would Rather People Die Than Have Hydroxychloroquine Work. The battle over hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for coronavirus is a testament to just how far gone the left is now. That someone like Joy Behar is paid millions of dollars to spew ignorance on television is a testament to just how far gone merit is. That Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president is a testament to society's tolerance of senior abuse. These three individual fecal storms of stupidity came together this week when President Donald Trump announced he was taking the drug as preventative measure after being exposed to White House staffers who tested positive, and the result was Olympic-level stupid. It's time for media to say 'We're sorry' to Ron DeSantis. When the coronavirus first appeared in Florida, the media's predictions were dire. Many expected the state to experience a crisis similar to New York's since thousands of New Yorkers fled their home state for Florida in the early days of the pandemic. Others claimed Florida's outbreak would be just as bad, if not worse, than Italy's, given that Florida is a huge tourist destination with a major international city and that it has a sizable elderly population. Health officials echoed these warnings, arguing that Florida's hospitals would be overwhelmed and that the state's open beaches would become breeding grounds for the virus. Not one of these predictions proved true. DeSantis and Florida emerge as Trump showcase for reopening. Once widely considered to be courting disaster with its coronavirus response, Florida may soon be touted as a success story and President Trump's model for reopening. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Trump ally, and as his state's coronavirus numbers improve, he is telling the national media, "I told you so." In a press availability, he said, "I was the No. 1 landing spot from tens of thousands of people leaving the No. 1 hot zone in the world to come to my state. So we've succeeded, and I think that people just don't want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption, so they've got to try to find a boogeyman." Masks Aren't Meant For Presidents. No, the president of the United States should not be wearing a mask. Period. Not ever. If it brings you comfort to wear one, I have no beef with you. To each their own. Some feel safer with masks, while others feel safer with a legally concealed firearm. God bless America. You do your thing, and I'll do mine. Nevertheless, the leader of the free world is an important symbol bigger than our individual comfort zones. The media knows this, and it's why they're so desperate to get President Trump behind a mask. CNN's Kaitlan Collins knows it's a game. She's been one of the loudest voices during White House briefings chirping over why some officials wear masks and some don't. President Trump has repeatedly explained that everyone in the White House is tested daily and given the option of wearing a mask if they wish. As for him, he chooses to not. How 'Flatten The Curve' Became 'Slow The Spread' And Proved 'Prolong The Pain' Is The Goal. As part of the bait-and-switch committed by those who derive power from our fear, the phrase "flatten the curve" quietly became "slow the spread" thus proving that "prolong the pain" is all many of those people are interested in. One of the main problems is that the experts coronated by the media represent only one side of the medical community's thinking, but are treated by the media as carrying 100% of the medical community's authority. And that's because they're the ones who traffic in the most fear, and whose insistences assure the most collateral damage for our nation. And the language shift we just saw happen is really no different than what they did with global cooling. I mean global warming. I mean climate change. They reeled would-be victims in with very specific language that lost its value and capacity to incite submission, and then transformed the language into something they could push indefinitely. Judge refuses state request to shut Owosso barbershop. A Michigan judge denied the state of Michigan's request to shut down an Owosso barbershop whose owner has openly defied the governor's stay-home orders and continued to cut hair. During a hearing Thursday [5/21/2020], Shiawassee County Circuit Judge Matthew Stewart refused to issue a preliminary injunction against Karl Manke. Stewart said while his decision was a "close call," he could not grant the state's request because officials failed to demonstrate that Manke was posing an imminent public health and safety threat by serving customers during the COVID-19 outbreak. California hospitals saw sharp drop in heart attacks during COVID-19 shutdown. For years it's been one of the leading causes of death, a critical condition plaguing nearly every corner of the country. Every hour, seven people die from heart disease in the state but since the new coronavirus pandemic, some Northern California hospitals are admitting fewer heart attack patients than before. The Editor says... Michigan AG tells Trump to wear mask while visiting Ford plant: It's 'the law'. Michigan's attorney general urged President Trump to wear a face mask when he visits the state Thursday to tour a Ford Motor Co. plant and to adhere to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus executive order, telling the commander in chief that he has a "legal responsibility" to follow the law. Dana Nessel, a Democrat, penned an open letter to Trump Wednesday [5/20/2020] asking him to follow the face-covering policy of Ford Motor Co. and of the state of Michigan. Trump has not been pictured wearing a face mask in public and said he's taking hydroxychloroquine, an unproven COVID-19 drug, as a preventative measure to ward off the contagious virus. Why is There so Little Coverage of Nursing Home Fiascos? The promises and predictions in the media have been plentiful. The failing of those pandemic predictions has nearly been as widespread. As consistently wrong as these seers of doom in the press have been there is one other failing they have been adept at delivering; holding local officials accountable. [...] For a time New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) had been something of a media darling. For a time he was hailed for his leadership and his ability to either work with President Trump, or call out the administration for supposed problematic responses. For a time he was hinted at as a possible presidential ticket name. That time has ended. In recent weeks, Gov. Cuomo's swelling presence has ebbed as problems with the response in his state have been revealed, with one in particular being a jarring reality. From Frontline to Breadline: How Governor Andrew Cuomo's Policies Have Created Financial Havoc for Nursing Home Workers. Governor Andrew Cuomo's nursing home mandate, which helped to cause the deaths of thousands of patients, is just the tip of the iceberg. The residual effects from the governor's onetime decision to force nursing homes to accept virus-positive patients will soon form an avalanche of problems too insurmountable to overcome. As usual though, it's the mainstream media — both left and right — that gets to pick winners and losers when it comes to any unfolding story. This is a shame. Not only do the media often push misinformation about crucial issues, they are obsessed with theoretical outcomes and not actual causes. This is why they are prone to jumping to illogical conclusions about critical situations. The pandemic led them to create false dilemmas for ventilators, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and now many of them, especially on the right, are doing this with what is happening in NYC nursing homes. Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus. They have high hopes for a coronavirus breakthrough. A team of Canadian scientists believes it has found strong strains of cannabis that could help prevent or treat coronavirus infections, according to interviews and a study. Researchers from the University of Lethbridge said a study in April showed at least 13 cannabis plants were high in CBD that appeared to affect the ACE2 pathways that the bug uses to access the body. Mandatory vaccination for coronavirus gains support from 'civil libertarian' Alan Dershowitz. The media, computer modelers, epidemiologists, and the censors keeping dissenting views off of social media have succeeded in terrifying much of the political class and the American public into accepting far-reaching suspensions of civil liberties in the name of suppressing the spread of a Covid-19, a highly communicable flu strain whose lethality principally affects the elderly and those with comorbidities. At the moment it is an open question whether the lockdown "cure" will end up being more lethal than the disease. Last week, American Thinker took some flak, including from some conservatives for publishing Peter Barry Chowka's warning, "Mandatory coronavirus vaccination looming on the horizon." But retired Harvard Law School Professor and prominent civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz has unburdened himself in favor of exactly that. The Editor says... No Pandemic Exception to Constitution. Does the Wuhan virus, which arguably escaped from a Chinese virology lab, supersede the rights guaranteed to American citizens under the U.S. Constitution? The owners of a New Jersey gym think not. They want to earn a living and pursue their American dream, and like most business owners and their customers are not stupid, suicidal, or children. They are American citizens watching their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being ripped away by dime-store Napoleons who see this pandemic as a chance to pursue the liberal progressive dream of controlling every aspect of our lives. [...] As some states, mostly red states, open up and people begin to regain their lives and their liberty, it is clear this toothpaste is out of its tube. Doctors raise alarm about health effects of continued coronavirus shutdown: 'Mass casualty incident'. More than 600 doctors signed onto a letter sent to President Trump Tuesday pushing him to end the "national shutdown" aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, calling the widespread state orders keeping businesses closed and kids home from school a "mass casualty incident" with "exponentially growing health consequences." The letter outlines a variety of consequences that the doctors have observed resulting from the coronavirus shutdowns, including patients missing routine checkups that could detect things like heart problems or cancer, increases in substance and alcohol abuse, and increases in financial instability that could lead to "[p]overty and financial uncertainty," which "is closely linked to poor health." "We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors say in their letter. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error." Hundreds Of Doctors Warn Trump Of 'Exponentially Growing Negative Health Consequences Of' Shutdown. More than 600 medical doctors wrote a letter to President Donald Trump this week that warned the president that continued shutdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic are going to cause a serious "mass casualty event." "Thousands of physicians in all specialties and from all States would like to express our gratitude for your leadership," the letter, obtained by Fox News, began. "We write to you today to express our alarm over the exponentially growing negative health consequences of the national shutdown." "In medical terms, the shutdown was a mass casualty incident," the letter continued. [...] "Tens of millions are at triage level yellow," the letter continued. "Liquor sales have increased 300-600%, cigarettes sales have increased, rent has gone unpaid, family relationships have become frayed, and millions of well-child check-ups have been missed. Hundreds of millions are at triage level green. These are people who currently are solvent, but at risk should economic conditions worsen. Poverty and financial uncertainty is closely linked to poor health." 'How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?'. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. We've learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government's disease-fighting agency is overstating the country's ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday [5/20/2020] that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons. CDC now says coronavirus 'does not spread easily' on surfaces. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says the coronavirus "does not spread easily" through touching surfaces or objects. In early March, the federal health agency was warning that it "may be possible" to pass on the virus from contaminated surfaces, according to Fox News. Its guidelines now include a section on ways the virus doesn't easily spread — including from touching surfaces or objects. "It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes," the CDC webpage states. Democrats are using the global pandemic to alter elections. While the world's attention remains on the coronavirus global pandemic, Democrats are exploiting the crisis to change America's election system in a fundamental way. It should concern everyone. My home state of Nevada, where I served as attorney general from 2015 until 2019, began voting in its first all-mail primary election after the secretary of state's unilateral decision to make the switch. This move exposes Nevada's June 9 primary election to voter fraud. Here, a coalition of Democratic Party-aligned groups seeks to implement further changes to the all-mail primary in an effort to alter our primary elections permanently to include mailing ballots to inactive voters and ballot harvesting. The Democratic Party: A Robbery in Progress. [Scroll down] The Democratic Party is attempting to cash in on the nation's current pandemic fears so that they may finally dig themselves out from the mountains of debt they've created through vote-buying schemes and interest group bribes that have kept them in continuous power of their state and city governments while creating the most financially insolvent treasuries in the nation. The truth is that our present pandemic nightmare has set in motion an event that has been fermenting for over fifty years. Corrupt Democrat politicos have been fraudulently using the tax-and-spend powers of their offices to keep their natural constituencies financially beholden to their electoral success for generations and generations with no immediate plan for solving their growing financial albatross except the ephemeral hope that one day, somehow, they'd be able to offload the cost of all that graft and corruption onto the federal government's tab for the national taxpayers from faraway states to pay. Oregon Gov. Decrees Residents in Closed Counties Cannot Shop in Open Counties. Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D-Portland) said that residents of counties that have yet to reopen may not travel to open counties to get haircuts or dine in restaurants. [...] Of course, Brown's lockdown orders have confused Oregonians since they began. It turns out that many retail outlets shut down when they didn't have to do so. As we approach the tail end of the pandemic, and as Oregon has consistently ranked in the bottom five states in terms of infections and deaths, Brown's scattershot approach to the virus has raised more questions than answers. The Editor says... Minnesota Gov: Eateries can have 50 people. Churches? Ten. Minnesota is moving into the third phase of its reopening under Governor Tim Walz's plan on June 1st. After plenty of comments from the public, however, he's been making last-minute changes to the plan. The most recent update offered more opportunities for people to out for dinner and put some food in their bellies. Food for the soul, on the other hand, still won't be quite as available. Restaurants will be allowed to host up to fifty customers on outdoor patio seating, but churches will remain limited to 10 congregants whether they are indoors or outdoors. The Editor says... The Catholic Church Of Minnesota Will Defy Walz's Restrictions On Mass. Minnesota's Catholic bishops say that they will be reopening churches for mass at 33% capacity, boldly defying Governor Tim Walz's decree that limits the size of religious services to 10 people. Governor Tim Walz gave a press conference, Wednesday [5/20/2020], where he layed out a "phased plan" to allow his state's businesses to reopen. While his new agenda permits bars and resturants to host up to 50 patrons at a time, churches are only allowed to admit 20% that number of worshipers. The public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minneota, the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC), says that their churches simply will not abide by this order come Sunday. Study: Washington ranks among states with most restrictions still in place due to coronavirus. Washington is taking a gradual approach to its reopening, using data and a series of metrics to determine when to move forward and continue easing restrictions. But the approach differs from that of many other states across the country. According to a new study from WalletHub, Washington ranks among the top 10 states with the most restrictions still in place due to the novel coronavirus. Data Leak Suggests China Had Hundreds of Thousands of Coronavirus Cases in 230 Cities. There are many reasons to doubt China's official numbers. The official count of cases hit 84,000 at the beginning of March and has barely risen at all since then. Since March 1, the official data indicates the country — with almost 1.4 billion people — has had only one day with more than 300 new cases. China's official figures show just two deaths since April 17. In mid-April, the city of Wuhan revised its number of coronavirus deaths from 2,579 to 3,869 — a statistically improbable increase of exactly 50 percent. Ron DeSantis Has Had Enough. Florida has been a shining star in the current coronavirus epidemic. Its fatality rate is unusually low, in part because its governor, Ron DeSantis, has followed the opposite approach from that of the inept Andy Cuomo: he has gotten infected people out of nursing homes rather than stashing them there. Of course DeSantis has been given no credit for his excellent performance. When Florida reopened for business ahead of most other states, DeSantis was hit with a barrage of criticism from left-wing journalists, who among other things alleged that Florida was conducting an experiment in "human sacrifice." As usual, the journalists were wrong. The Coronavirus Timeline Liberals Don't Want You To See. Monday, the infamous left-wing group MoveOn began running a digital ad slamming President Trump for his administration's "insufficient response to the Coronavirus pandemic" and encouraging voters to vote against him in November. The ad features a timeline that gives viewers the impression that the government failed to adequately respond to the coronavirus. [...] The timeline featured by MoveOn does what most anti-Trump coronavirus timelines do: it ignores all the things that actually happened. Unfortunately for them, I've compiled a comprehensive timeline from various sources that lays out the Trump administration's response in far more detail than they want you to see. As this timeline shows, the Trump administration responded quickly and decisively in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, even as impeachment was underway. This timeline covers the moment China revealed the virus to the world up to the day Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency. The truth about US coronavirus deaths: American fatalities per capita are lower than EIGHT European countries. US deaths are lower per million than eight European countries despite having the highest total number of deaths in the world. As of Wednesday morning [5/20/2020], there had been 92,000 deaths across America — the highest reported number of any country in the world by far, and more than 1.5 million cases. Modelers are now predicting that another 4 million will become infected by July 24 and that as many as 290,000 could die in total if social distancing isn't adhered to. But when weighing the death toll up against America's enormous population of around 328 million, then comparing the per capita rate to other European countries, the US slips to number eight on the list of the worst affected countries. CNN's Harwood Complains, Doctors Who Want to Reopen [are] Like Scientists Who Don't Believe in Global Warming! This morning [5/20/2020] on CNN Newsroom, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood attacked Trump allies in the GOP for looking for doctors who support reopening the economy to appear on television and advocate this position. CNN obtained this information from a leaked conference call between members of Trump's reelection campaign, discussing finding pro-Trump doctors who will go on television and advocate the need to reopen. CNN Newsroom co-host Jim Sciutto posed skeptically to Harwood, "Trump's reelection campaign is now recruiting doctors? Friendly doctors who serve as supporters to help Trump in that message? What are you learning?" Harwood complained how doctors who would advocate for reopening the economy are the same kind of crackpots who don't believe in global warming or think mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud. He ended his smug rant by saying this is why "educated" voters aren't supporting Trump. Also posted under Liberals think you're stupid. Killing Off a Pandemic is Engineering, Not 'Science'. There are people in our society who lust for power and luxuriate in it once they have it. Some are elected, many are not. Call them governors, call them mayors, call them health administrators, call them bureaucrats, call them "journalists," the power mad have become a potentially lethal plague on America. They have suspended our civil liberties "for the duration." So what is the duration? These power-mad people have moved the goal posts to the undeterminable far future when a vaccine cure will be available. There has never been a successful vaccine for an upper respiratory corona virus. So don't count on it this time. If we do get one an instant Nobel prize awaits. Waiting for a vaccine is just an excuse for continued suppression of our liberties. Moving the goal posts is profoundly dishonest and un-American. In the name of "science" some governors forbade experimentation with various pharmaceutical treatments. Florida's Governor DeSantis brings out his inner Trump. Florida chose a different lockdown path from the rest of America, protecting old people and letting other Floridians mostly roam free. The media gleefully predicted disaster and have been disappointed that Florida has avoided the disaster and emerged from the pandemic scare with flying colors. On Wednesday [5/20/2020], Governor DeSantis let the media know how disgraceful their reporting about Florida has been. With an approving Vice President Pence standing beside him, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida gave conservatives a thrill when he let the media know how awful their behavior has been regarding Florida's approach to the coronavirus. It was a performance that would have made President Trump proud, because DeSantis, instead of accepting and defending against the media's pro-Democrat narrative, attacked the media for having a narrative in the first place. Gretchen Whitmer Allows Gay Swinger's Club to Operate While Barber Loses License. There is perhaps nothing more confusing than Democrat governors' orders during the Chinese WuFlu pandemic. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is by far the worst. That was made clear with the news that a gay swinger's club [...] is being allowed to operate under her nose in Lansing while she aims her business-killing death ray on 77-year-old barber Karl Manke for giving haircuts. Italians petition G20 nations to join Trump in defunding W.H.O.. President Donald Trump is not alone in his stand against funding the World Health Organization. While critics of the president repeatedly demonize him for withholding U.S. funds to the organization, recently threatening to make the cuts permanent, it seems other countries are making similar moves. A petition addressed to the leaders of nations that make up the G20 group, and signed by more than 200,000 Italians, is asking for defunding the specialized agency of the United Nations which has come under heavy criticism for its mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic at its outbreak. Sweden: Coronavirus and the Concept of 'Trade-Offs'. Sweden, unlike its Scandinavian neighbors, made different decisions to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. It issued no mandatory orders. It did not require its citizens to shelter at home. True, as of May 4, more Swedes had contracted and died from the coronavirus (2,679 total deaths, a rate of 263.08 per 1 million people) than people in Norway (211, rate of 39.7) and Denmark (484, rate of 83.49), but fewer when adjusted for its population size compared with the U.K. (28,446 deaths, a rate of 427.83), Spain (25,264, rate of 540.71), France (24,864, rate of 371.18) and Italy (28,884, rate of 477.96). The Same Fools Who Called Us Racist For Wanting Early Border Closures Now Admit They Should Have Closed The Borders Earlier. We all remember what happened when the CCP Coronavirus started spreading and posing a risk to Canada. People like you and me were calling for border closures early on, realizing that the way to protect Canada was to shut our borders. Yet, when people like us were calling for that, the foolish people in charge like Justin Trudeau, Theresa Tam, and Patty Hajdu insinuated that border closures were 'racist.' They claimed that 'stigma' was a 'greater threat than the virus,' a statement that will live in infamy as one of the dumbest things every uttered. N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's careless cruelty shows in coronavirus nursing home policy. The core of cruelty defining New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo marches on. As many contend, his policies are responsible for the shocking number of deaths at nursing homes in the state. In a response to a reporter inquiring about the situation, Mr. Cuomo declared, "He [President Trump] worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way. And still people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do. Because with all our progress as a society, we can't keep everyone alive." Janice Dean, Fox News' senior meteorologist, was not impressed with Mr. Cuomo's remark. Both of her in-laws died of coronavirus complications in a New York nursing home. The American Media Has Betrayed America. [Scroll down] The media's capital crime, however, is their coverage of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. And if the national media establishment had not already demonstrated repeatedly that they are nothing more than a political action committee attached to the Democratic Party, more people would be fooled. But as it is, the timing of the virus, the response to the virus, and the reporting on the virus: all of it is suspect. The repercussions of media malpractice are more deaths, destruction of the constitution, and quite possibly an economic depression. This is not overstating the case. Imagine if the media covered this crisis with honesty. Sure, in the early stages, nobody knew what to make of it. But why were the only voices accorded credibility by the media those who called for a lockdown? [...] Worse, why has the media ignored every report or study or journal article or clinical abstract that finds treatment with hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulfate, and azithromycin to be effective? Why have they persistently spread the lie that a seven-day course of hydroxychloroquine is dangerous, when millions of people have used it safely for years on end to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis? Why don't we ever hear about doctors around the world who are successfully using this treatment to prevent COVID-19 in exposed patients and to cure it in patients who've tested positive? Why? Who is pulling the strings of mainstream media in the United States? We Were Never Asked. In the early days of the coronavirus, everyone went from being carefree and complacent to scared in the blink of an eye. We did not know what we were facing, other nations were taking extreme measures, and apocalyptic predictions from scientists and public health officials created an overnight panic. Quite voluntarily, most people avoided crowds, unnecessary trips to the store, going to the office, and anything that might increase their risk of catching the coronavirus. Handshakes went out of style, as did restaurants, gyms, and travel. Soon there was a run on surgical masks, which became so bad that authorities engaged in a "noble lie" to discourage their use by regular folks. Now these same experts have reversed course, as if we will forget what they said only a month ago. In addition to these voluntary measures, mandatory lockdown measures were imposed to "flatten the curve." They were supposed to save our hospitals and preserve limited ventilator resources. While severe, this mostly made sense, as the risk seemed enormous, and the lockdowns were sold as a temporary measure. As soon as the "15 days to slow the spread" began to expire, however, the goalposts were moved. Phase Two in the Battle to Reopen America. Weeks ago, a large chunk of the country believed fake news media and health experts' lie that COVID-19 is the worst thing that ever hit the planet. They said 2 million would die if we did not close down the country. It would have been foolish for Trump to push against the tsunami of fear sweeping the country. Trump wisely waited for evidence to begin surfacing that the predicted doomsday numbers of deaths were proven false. In April, Trump announced his plan to reopen America. As expected, Democrats and fake news media responded in outrage, hysterically claiming that over 100 thousand will die. Trump realizes THAT a large percentage of Americans are over the fear and ready to begin living again. Dr. Fauci wants the lockdowns to continue. After expressing his respect for Dr. Fauci, Trump said he will proceed. Now is the time for more Americans to step up and rebel big-time against power-drunk, evil Democrats. Remember, scientists and computer models got us into this mess. Don't Be Fooled: LA Public Health Director is an Activist Using "The Data" to Advance an Agenda. Those of us on the conservative side of the spectrum already know that many scientific fields have been highly politicized. What most of us are learning in 2020 is just how politicized the public health field is and that some who are considered experts in the field, such as Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer, Ph.D., are not even medical doctors (even though some official websites claim she is). Ferrer's numerous degrees include a Masters of Education, a Masters of Public Health, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Welfare. An examination of Ferrer's career shows that, like many "public health" professionals, her focus isn't on public health as it has traditionally been known; her focus is that of an activist using "data" to advance an agenda of "racial equity," and personal and institutional success is measured in nebulous, politically-correct terms. Understanding the paradigm in which these "experts" operate is foundational to understanding and pushing back against their attempts to manipulate public policy. A Pandemic Does Not Suspend the Rule of Law. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state officials have imposed unprecedented restrictions on our liberties and livelihoods, acting on the assumption that they can do whatever they think is necessary to protect the public from a potentially deadly disease. The courts, which were initially reluctant to second-guess state responses to COVID-19, are beginning to recognize that public health powers, while broad, are not a blank check. The Wisconsin case involved a dispute between two branches of the state government. The Republican leaders of the state legislature argued that Andrea Palm, a Democrat who runs the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, was exercising powers she had never been granted when she ordered the closure of "nonessential" businesses and confined residents to their homes except for purposes she approved, threatening violators with fines and jail. This case was not simply a partisan spat. It raised the question of whether a single executive branch official can unilaterally criminalize heretofore legal behavior, based on nothing more than her own judgment of what is required to protect public health. Crenshaw nails what's fueling deep partisan divide, and why the Left's in 'no rush' to re-open America. [Scroll down] "The debate over reopening the economy has a peculiar characteristic: It breaks down almost entirely along political lines," Crenshaw began the piece titled, "Why Does Reopening Polarize Us?" "Liberals emphasize the dangers of an open society, shaming those who want to go back to work. Conservatives argue the opposite. Red states are steadily reopening, while most blue states lag," he wrote. "House Democrats believe it isn't safe for lawmakers to go back to work, while the Republican-controlled Senate is back in session." The former United States Navy SEAL gave a few reasons why the division exists, noting that, generally, liberals will oppose anything that President Donald Trump is in favor of. A tidy takedown of Media Matters and its propaganda about hydroxycholoroquine. For most thinking Americans, it is unnecessary to bother to fact check the propaganda group Media Matters. If they have heard of Media Matters at all, they typically understand it's a smear group funded by donors with political and corporate interests whose names are kept secret. (The last big Media Matters donor whose name was publicly revealed years ago was that of liberal billionaire activist George Soros.) The problem is, too many news organizations and even journalism groups such as Poynter use Media Matters and their affiliates as if they are legitimate news sources. They are either unforgviably ignorant of Media Matters' slants, or choose to keep readers in the dark because they agree with the slant. One major interest Media Matters and its affiliates have served over the years is that of the pharmaceutical industry. The Shutdown May Soon Collapse in Pennsylvania Thanks to Local Resistance. As in the rest of the country, life in Pennsylvania has been greatly disturbed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the chaos that has resulted from the state government's attempts to handle the situation. On March 16, Governor Wolf ordered that all "nonessential" businesses be closed for at least two weeks. They are still closed today, and as a result, 1.8 million Pennsylvanians have filed for unemployment. At the end of December of last year, the state estimated that there were roughly 6 million employed persons in Pennsylvania. If we set aside all the workers whose incomes have been reduced through pay cuts or reduced hours, or who for various reasons have not filed for unemployment, still nearly a third of people who were working in December are now out of work. Northam ditches coronavirus restrictions for Virginia Beach after weekend sees crowds defy his orders. Under Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's eased coronavirus restrictions in effect Friday [5/15/2020], the state's oceanfront was relegated to fishing and exercise only, and social distancing was required. But that didn't keep crowds away from Virginia Beach over the weekend as temperatures reached the high 70s. Sunbathers took to the sand, bikers peddled along the bustling boardwalk and newly reopened gift shops were crowded with customers buying hermit crabs and snow cones, The Virginian-Pilot reported. On Friday, Northam, a Democrat, gave the green light for houses of worship and some businesses to operate at 50 percent capacity. Outdoor dining — with different parties spaced 6 feet apart — resumed with some staff required to wear masks. Dolores Cahill and Del Bigtree on the Covid19 fraud. Professor Dolores Cahill discusses the Covid 19 hoax with Del Bigtree. Prof. Cahill calls for an end to the lockdown, discusses vaccine safety and demands accountability from those in power. [Video clip] Wisconsin Governor Gives Up Efforts to Continue Statewide Lockdown. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D-Wisc.) announced that he will no longer be pursuing any attempts to initiate another statewide lockdown due to the coronavirus, as reported by The Hill. Evers' decision comes after the State Supreme Court struck down his attempted extension of the stay-at-home order last week, due to his failure to cooperate with the state legislature in doing so. Any further extension, the court ruled, would have to be agreed upon by both the governor and the legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. Michigan Gretchen Whitmer seeds the nursing homes with COVID-19. In light of the nursing home disaster in New York, what kind of a ghoul would take that as an example to emulate instead of a baleful death warning to avoid, and then order contagious COVID-19 patients into her state's nursing homes? Only Michigan's hard-faced Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the ambitious Democrat who banned sales of garden seeds to Michiganders, saying she's doing it in the name of keeping everyone 'safe.' 'Safe' to Whitmer is seeding the nursing homes with COVID-19 patients, supposedly as a means of lightening the loads of hospitals. Too bad if granny gets it. Under Whitmer's executive order, which she just extended yesterday for a week, any nursing home with less than 80% capacity will be forced to create special COVID units, regardless of their ability to protect their other patients, with the special ventilation systems, trained staff, and personal protective gear something like that would require even if it were advisable, and none of which are included in her order. I Don't Want To See One More Coronavirus Commercial. No more "We're all in this together" ...we are decidedly not. From celebrities doing Tik Toks from their palatial estates to Nancy Pelosi's subzero freezer filled to the brim with expensive ice cream it has become increasingly clear that we are indeed not all in this together. Some of us are crammed into stale apartments. Some of us are isolated with our abusers or family addicts. Some of us are losing the businesses we worked our whole lives to build. [...] No more Zoom late night shows, no more Zoom daytime shows, no more Zoom "reunions" from your favorite casts and no more Zoom "specials" where the wealthiest among us try to soothe our pain from their poolsides. Zoom's usability and popularity was possibly the most helpful thing to come out of this thing. Now it is the most annoying thing and I would like to go back to having never to think about it. Judge rules that Oregon virus restrictions are invalid. A judge in rural Oregon on Monday [5/18/2020] tossed out statewide coronavirus restrictions imposed by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, saying she didn't seek the Legislature's approval to extend the stay-at-home orders beyond a 28-day limit. Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff issued his opinion in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by 10 churches around Oregon that argued the state's social-distancing directives were unconstitutional. Let's wait til the first lockdown is over before asking... Sheriff Revolts Against Lockdown: 'We Are Not Stormtroopers. We Are Peacekeepers'. In a passionate Facebook post, Sheriff James Mendrick of DuPage County, IL, broke his silence in the wake of the Chinese virus pandemic-induced lockdown rules that have businesses gasping to survive. "As Sheriff, I feel that my own 1st amendment constitutional right to free speech has been completely trampled on by a governor who has threatened my Offices' reimbursement and grant funds as a tool to force me not to speak," he wrote. "I just can't do this anymore. I stand with our citizens and businesses of DuPage County who have offered no trouble or no resistance to any rule we put upon them, no matter how strange." The Virus Modeling Scandal and "the Years of Living Hysterically". "If it bleeds it leads" is an old rule of local news. You can add to that the need to create suspense and to hype each event as big, bigger, the biggest ever (just think of weather reports during hurricane season). The bigger the threat the better. The larger the number the better. When the Imperial College of London reported in mid-March that its model predicted the COVID-19 virus could kill as many as 2.2 million Americans and more than 500,000 Britons if governments did nothing to control the spread of the virus, it became the benchmark for radical policies that were unbelievably destructive to society. What might have been a more dangerous but manageable pandemic (which would be the fourth since 1975) suddenly became the species threatening, Spanish Flu-Black Death-end-of-times threat that required the most radical, draconian public health restrictions and economically suicidal behavior in modern history. Was the decision to impose lockdown based on crude mathematical guesswork? Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College "stepped back" from the Sage group advising ministers when his lockdown-busting romantic trysts were exposed. Perhaps he should have been dropped for a more consequential misstep. Details of the model his team built to predict the epidemic are emerging and they are not pretty. In the respective words of four experienced modellers, the code is "deeply riddled" with bugs, "a fairly arbitrary Heath Robinson machine", has "huge blocks of code — bad practice" and is "quite possibly the worst production code I have ever seen". When ministers make statements about coronavirus policy they invariably say that they are "following the science". But cutting-edge science is messy and unclear, a contest of ideas arbitrated by facts, a process of conjecture and refutation. This is not new. Almost two centuries ago Thomas Huxley described the "great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Redfield and Birx: Can they be trusted with COVID? U.S. military documents show that, in 1992, the CDC's current Director Robert Redfield and his then-assistant, Deborah Birx — both Army medical officers — knowingly falsified scientific data published in the New England Journal of Medicine fraudulently claiming that an HIV vaccine they helped develop was effective. They knew the vaccine was worthless. Redfield now runs the agency charged with mandating COVID vaccines. Birx, a life-long protégé to both Redfield and Anthony Fauci, served on the board of Bill Gates' Global Fund. Redfield, Birx and Fauci lead the White House coronavirus task force. The Coronavirus Death Rate Is MUCH Lower Than the Estimates Justifying the Lockdowns. Appearing on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday night [5/2/2020], Dr. Debora Birx admitted something that anyone paying attention to the coronavirus pandemic has known for some time now. "I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases," Dr. Birx said. "And I think we're really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don't even know that they're infected." Code Review of Ferguson's Model. [Scroll down] The code: It isn't the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What's been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was "a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade" (this is considered extremely poor practice). A request for the original code was made 8 days ago but ignored, and it will probably take some kind of legal compulsion to make them release it. Clearly, Imperial are too embarrassed by the state of it ever to release it of their own free will, which is unacceptable given that it was paid for by the taxpayer and belongs to them. Did a 14 Year-Old Schoolgirl Invent the Lockdown Policy? [Scroll down] Her name is Laura Glass and in 2006 her dad, Robert Glass, was working as a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories. He and his daughter, then 14, co-authored a 2006 paper entitled 'Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza' and this paper, apparently, was referenced in a proposal about how America should respond to a pandemic drafted by by two doctors working for the US federal government in 2006, along with a team at the Defense Department. How Many Excess Deaths Are Due to COVID-19? One of the stats most commonly latched on to by lockdown sceptics is the number of people who would normally be dying at this time of year in the absence of coronavirus because it seems to show there's been no increase (or, rather, it did before the death toll began to peak). [...] Every year, about 600,000 people die in the UK and it remains to be seen whether more people will die this year than in a normal year and what effect, if any, the lockdown will have had. For instance, about 10% of people aged 80 and over die every year and while it's true there's a risk they'll die if infected with coronavirus, they won't be significantly less likely to die if they don't catch it because they're likely to die of something else. Oregon salon owner who defied lockdown says CPS questioned her son: 'I'm almost broken'. An Oregon salon owner and mother who reopened her doors in defiance of a coronavirus-related state lockdown alleged that her son was paid a visit this month by Child Protective Services. Lindsey Graham, owner of the Glamour Salon in Salem, reopened her business on May 5 despite being deemed "nonessential" under Gov. Kate Brown's executive orders in March. Two days after reopening, and after receiving a letter from the city of Salem informing her she was violating her lease agreement by breaking state orders, Ms. Graham said Child Protective Services showed up at her house. You're Nonessential — Keep Your Mouth Shut. COVID-19 America has realigned itself into a two-part caste system, one made up of the essential hero, and the other comprised of the selfish, nonessential coward. Essential heroes, like those who work in grocery stores, hospitals, Walmarts, and deliver for Amazon, are deserving of our admiration and praise. [...] My wife is one of these essential workers. She's a clinician at a small hospital in Philadelphia, where dozens of people have tested positive for COVID-19. In the middle of April she too tested positive, and subsequently gave the virus to me. Luckily, our symptoms were minor, and we quickly recovered. When my wife returned to work after her 14-day quarantine, there was a big sign on the front lawn that read, Heroes Work Here. Although she was completely recovered and COVID-free, she still had to take a deep breath to keep from vomiting. My wife was given special papers from her job to show she's an essential worker, just in case she was out driving around and a cop pulled her over and demanded to know why she was on the road. I kid you not. County Judge Rules That Oregon Governor Kate Brown's Covid Restrictions are Unconstitutional. She had no legislative authority for these diktats. More and more, the left is straight-up endorsing tyranny. For the public safety and health, you understand! Wisconsin Supreme Court Invalidates State's 'Safer at Home' Order. On May 13, 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued its decision in Wisconsin Legislature v. Secretary-Designee Andrea Palm, et al. and declared the state's Safer at Home Order unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable, creating a rush by local jurisdictions to issue orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19, resulting in uncertainty for businesses as to how to operate. Judge tosses out Gov. Kate Brown's coronavirus restrictions in Oregon. A judge in rural Oregon on Monday [5/18/2020] tossed out statewide coronavirus restrictions imposed by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, saying she didn't seek the Legislature's approval to extend the stay-at-home orders beyond a 28-day limit. Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff issued his opinion in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by 10 churches around Oregon that argued the state's social-distancing directives were unconstitutional. Georgia Supreme Court Says Yes, Economic Liberty is a Constitutional Right. The Georgia Supreme Court this morning reversed a trial court decision that had declared that the right to earn a living is not a right protected under that state's Constitution. In a unanimous ruling, the justices held that "we have long recognized that the Georgia Constitution's Due Process Clause entitles Georgians to pursue a lawful occupation of their choosing free from unreasonable government interference." The case involves the state's laws regulating "lactation consultants" — that is, people who help new mothers learn to properly breastfeed newborn babies. In the Peachtree State, you need a government license to do that, believe it or not. That licensing requirement was challenged by a group of lactation counselors represented by our allies at the Institute for Justice, who argued that requiring government permission to help mothers breastfeed is so irrational that it violates the state's Due Process of Law Clause — a provision of the Constitution that for centuries has been understood as a prohibition on irrational laws. But the trial court threw the case out on the grounds that there's no such right as economic freedom to begin with. Fox News at NJ gym's defiant opening: Crowd cheers as cop says they're in violation, then walks away. A New Jersey gym kicked opened its doors early this morning as supporters celebrated the move in defiance of the state's coronavirus shutdown order. Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey reopened Monday morning [5/18/2020] amid cheers from anti-lockdown protesters who were on hand to rally behind the business and send a message to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. NJ Governor Goes Full Dictator After Video of Gym in 'Defiance' of Stay at Home Order Goes Viral. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is levying new threats against citizens who dare to defy his "orders" after a video of a gym re-opening went viral yesterday [5/18/2020]. For background, here's the video, which includes clapping and cheering after police decided not to enforce the order with arrests. [Video clip] America Is Reopening Itself: Will Politicians Be Able To Stop It? As has been widely noted, we were initially told that we needed to shut down and shelter in place so that we would "flatten the curve" of infection growth to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed by people sick with COVID-19. That benchmark was met a little more than a month into the lockdowns. [...] Yet many Americans are still under shelter-in-place orders, some of which have been extended. We hate to use a cliche, but politicians have been moving the goalposts. Flattening the curve isn't good enough. They want to keep people home until there's a vaccine; or science, which has sadly become a loose term that means whatever the user wants it to, has established an effective treatment; or maybe until there are zero coronavirus cases. This has rankled more than a few. Andrew Cuomo's Reckless Choices. ill de Blasio made terrible decisions as mayor of New York City. But as more reporting emerges about the catastrophic decisions made by New York's governor, it's possible Andrew Cuomo deserves even more blame than de Blasio for what the coronavirus has done to the tri-state area and consequently the nation. New York and New Jersey combined have suffered more COVID-19 deaths than any other country being tracked by researchers who run the Johns Hopkins crisis dashboard. Cuomo made three breathtakingly bad moves in March that in retrospect amounted to catastrophe. COVID-19 is killing Vermont's restaurants. In the restaurant world, if the chefs run out of ingredients for a menu item, they inform the wait staff to "86 it" — remove it from the menu. The shutdown in Vermont of essentially its entire restaurant industry will likely result in the "86ing" of 30% or more of its restaurants, never to reopen. COVID-19 has killed 53 people in Vermont...and also thousands of jobs. Restaurants nationwide are shut down, but Vermont's restaurant industry is particularly vulnerable. In 2018, Vermont boasted some 1,413 eating and drinking establishments, and restaurants generated $1.1 billion in estimated sales. In 2019, some 29,600 people were employed in restaurant and food service jobs (9% of all Vermont state employment). Report: Chicago Mayor sent Police to Tow Cars, Block Church Parking Lot. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot dispatched police officers to shut down parking lots and tow the cars of Christians attending Sunday services at a Romanian church, a religious liberty law firm alleges. Liberty Counsel tells The Todd Starnes Radio Show that the mayor posted "no parking" notices around the neighborhood and around the church and "sent the police out to tow cars of residents." "The church has leased the parking lot of a bank across the street for 18 years," Liberty Counsel said. "Mayor Lightfoot had the police block the lot so churchgoers couldn't park there." Chicago Thuggery Directed at Romanian Churches. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has engaged in mob-like thuggery against the Romanian churches that have begun to meet in-person. Even though these churches have their own private parking, and their members don't park on the street, the mayor ordered "No Parking" signs along the streets for nine blocks around the churches. On Sunday [5/17/2020], Mayor Lightfoot blocked off nine blocks around the churches posting "No Parking" signs, hoping she would get the neighbors mad at the church. However, the churches are not using street parking with their limited services. The aldermen sent letters to the neighbors of the churches instructing them not to park on the street from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The letters stated the reason for the "No Parking" signs was due to the Romanian churches holding limited services. Restaurant owners in disbelief as Massachusetts avoids providing details for industry to reopen amid coronavirus pandemic. The words from Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday were meant to offer some hope for small business owners as he spoke of reopening industries within the state. For restaurant owners, it was what he failed to mention that evaporated any reason to hope. As restaurants continue to withstand revenue losses of more than 75% over the last two months amid the coronavirus pandemic, Monday's plan revealed little new information to guide the industry forward. Texas Reopening: Bars, child care, sports among businesses opening in May. Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday outlined the next businesses that will be allowed to reopen in phases this month. Gov. Greg Abbott said bars across the state can reopen beginning on Friday [5/22/2020]. [...] Also on Friday, restaurants can operate at 50 percent instead of 25 percent capacity. "Texas is prepared to move into Phase 2 for the further opening of businesses," Abbott said. Rural America Rebels Against the Madness. New York City is the center of the Wuhan epidemic in the United States, and in response to the virus, governors across the country have imposed shutdowns that might possibly be appropriate in New York, but are bonkers as applied to local conditions. Initially, most of us tried to be good sports. But as shutdowns lingered from weeks into months, and small businesses were destroyed by the hundreds of thousands for no apparent reason, the spirit of rebellion began to grow. No doubt there were a number of places where rebellion flared today, but the one I know about is Albany, Minnesota, population 2,734, where a bar and restaurant owner stood up for his constitutional rights against the arbitrary power of the state's government. "Mask Police Reporter," Kaitlin Collins Rips Off Mask Immediately After She Thinks Cameras Are Off, Rushes to Speak Maskless to Other Reporters. Another black eye for the Karenwaffe. This wouldn't be a story except Karen Collins here is one of the Firefighters bravely mask-shaming her targets. Governor/Murderer Andrew Cuomo gets no mask-shaming for not wearing a mask at press conferences, but of course Trump does. Karen Collins wears a mask at press conferences. Until the moment the camera is off her. Then it comes off faster than a t-shirt at Mardi Gras. EU calls for independent probe of WHO's pandemic response. The European Union and other countries on Monday [5/18/2020] called for an independent evaluation of the World Health Organization's response to the coronavirus pandemic "to review experience gained and lessons learned." The resolution has the support of more than half of the WHO's member countries and will be discussed this week at the decision-making body of the U.N. health agency, being held virtually this year. The proposal is intended to initiate "a stepwise process of impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of the WHO's efforts to coordinate the international response to COVID-19, including the functioning of international health law and its actions within the greater U.N. health system. Google slaps down conservative sites reporting the truth on coronavirus. Google, the top search engine in the United States, appears to be hitting conservative sites who are publishing articles that run contrary to the accepted narrative surrounding the coronavirus. Multiple reports have come into NOQ Report concerned with major drops in traffic from the search giant. So, we checked our own stats and realized it had started happening to us as well. We will not be "outing" other conservative sites who may require Google traffic to function properly (our biggest search traffic source is DuckDuckGo, which I highly recommend from a privacy perspective). I will not be disclosing the names or websites associated with the people I talked to on this matter. Google's various teams, for their part, have not responded to requests for information. Nets Have a Meltdown After Trump Says He Takes Hydroxychloroquine. Even though the FDA says the use of Hydroxychloroquine was up to a patient and their doctor, Monday's evening newscasts saw ABC, CBS, and NBC clutch their pearls after President Trump admitted he's been taking the anti-Malaria drug for several days to prevent catching coronavirus. Acting as though he was self-medicating and not telling viewers that the drug needed a prescription to obtain it, which meant his doctor approved it, these liberal networks decried the medial precaution. ABC's World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News kicked off their newscasts with the headline stealing development. "But, of course, the headline that immediately took over all the others, when late today, the President said he's been taking hydroxychloroquine for more than a week," announced ABC anchor David Muir. He added: "But, of course, it led to immediate questions about why he's taking it, with the FDA warning that no one should be taking the drug for coronavirus outside a hospital or clinical trial." Reporting on how the President said he had spoken with the White House physician before he started taking the drug, ABC chief White House correspondent Jon Karl didn't mention that it needed a prescription [...] New York City Police Won't Enforce Face Mask Rule Following Outrage Over Woman's Rough Arrest. The outrage that followed the publishing of a video of a woman's rough arrest for not properly wearing a face mask on Wednesday morning led to a change in police policy. At a press briefing on Friday New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said: ["]NYPD will continue to enforce the ban on non-essential gatherings, prioritizing dispersing groups of 6+ adults. Absent a serious danger to the public, NYPD will not take enforcement action for failing to wear face covering[s].["] This was not an apology. Nor was his comment on Wednesday night when he tweeted: "Face coverings are important to protect everybody — they're not optional. But no one wants to see an interaction turn into this. We've made progress with de-escalation. This isn't it." Un-furloughing the Economy. The shocking rate of U.S. unemployment — officially 14.7 percent but perhaps as high as 20 percent — suggests an economic depression, possibly as deep and severe as the Great Depression itself. The numbers represent millions of families living with grave economic uncertainty. But the current unemployment rate does not have the same meaning that it normally would. In previous recessions, almost every newly unemployed person represented a job that no longer existed. That's not the case today. A significant share of today's unemployed are furloughed workers, or contract workers seeing less demand, or laid-off workers whose employers will rehire them once they can reopen. By some estimates, 80 percent of the unemployed expect to be back at their old jobs one day soon. That may be too optimistic: economists at the University of Chicago estimate that 42 percent of the unemployment is permanent, meaning that almost half of the lost jobs aren't coming back. A better name for the COVID-19 masks. A motorcycle, especially one with an upright sitting position, gives you an unmatched view of the world around. You actually look down into cars. It would have been beautiful, except that everywhere I looked, I saw the absurdity of the face masks that seem to be growing larger by the hour. Was that a beautiful woman alone in a BMW convertible, top down, with a mask on? Everywhere along open paths and sidewalks, people were walking, jogging, running, and pedaling furiously, all with masks on. Some of the masks had grown so large that they covered from the chin to just under the eyes. And then it dawned on me: "FACE DIAPER!" And I couldn't stop laughing. Seriously, I nearly dumped my motorcycle. Now, I know some people are saying, "What's it to you if some people choose to wear face masks?" Because something this absurd cannot continue into the summer heat unless it becomes a mandate. What will I do if the governor mandates that to work or go out in public, I must wear a mask? And our governor, Ralph Northam, has been among the most aggressive of the blue-state governors in absurd restrictions. Add to that that we know he is a fan of masks, as in college he often wore a blackface mask and sometime a white mask with matching robe, if you know what I mean. So when people are doing a patently foolish thing, I feel it is my duty to point it out. Mitigating Tyranny: Lockdowns and Flynn. [Scroll down] For reasons not based on science, but on fearmongering by the press and autocratic leanings of some governors (for the most part, Democratic Governors Cuomo, Newsom, Whitmer, Evers, Northam, and Inslee) draconian lockdown measures were instituted by executive order. These orders were often backed up by health commissioners, themselves ill-equipped by education or experience to offer sound advice. The consequences of these actions have been to jeopardize the health of the poorest and most vulnerable and destroy the livelihoods of those not able to work from home or on academic and government payrolls. At the same time, they released from prison some really hardcore prisoners, ostensibly to protect them from the virus. In sum, they have most harmed the members of the very lowest tranches of the economy, which they have always claimed to represent. The rebellion against the orders by affected citizens and courts continues. Counties, municipalities, and sheriffs are refusing to enforce these orders. My favorite is the sheriff of Fresno, California, who said she was too busy rounding up the criminals Governor Newsom had released to bother enforcing his lockdown edicts. Covid-19 Is Becoming a Theory of Everything. The desire to retrofit societies' infinite complexity to conform to a formulaic preconception may explain how a virus has overnight become a key to interpreting and restructuring the entire world. COVD-19 immediately morphed from a disease to a philosophy that includes a multidisciplinary effort that defines other disciplines, including economics. The wholesale applicability of COVID-19 first began with the expansion of the disease's symptoms into a DOE, or Disease of Everything that in turn has become the formula for interpreting the entirety of the field of medicine. The long list of symptoms attributed to viral infection have expanded to the status of a universal affliction. Symptoms include COVID toes, blood clots, organ failure and heart attacks, dizziness, difficulty breathing, coughing, sniffles, and much more. Even children, initially thought almost immune to infection, are now coming down with "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome." There's Something Happening Here. Thousands of flag-waving Californians descended upon the State Capitol Friday [5/15/2020] for a protest of Gov. Gavin Newsom's statewide stay-at-home lockdown order, which has caused millions of residents to lose their jobs and businesses," wrote Katy Grimes in the California Globe. Down in Huntington Beach in Orange County, as Fox News explained, protesters were backing up traffic for a mile on Pacific Coast Highway, while others staged rallies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. What could have prompted these Californians to get out in the streets? Governor Gavin Newsom had declared them "nonessential" and they showed up with signs reading "All jobs are essential." So, basically they want their lives back. This is not what their governor wants, however. On Wednesday, Newsom told reporters, "we believe we are weeks, not months, away from making meaningful modifications to that indicator," a reference to his shelter-in-place order. The San Francisco Democrat didn't say what the modifications would be or when he would make them, and he didn't want people expressing their opposition in public. Veni Vidi Fauci. "We have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open, we have to open our country. Now we want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible, we can't keep going on like this." That was President Trump in an interview on Thursday [5/14/2020]. By contrast, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House coronavirus task force wants to keep most everything shut down. As the president told Maria Bartiromo, "I've disagreed," with Fauci on that question. So has Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a medical doctor and a survivor of COVID-19. On Tuesday, in a hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Paul told Fauci, "I don't think you are the one person who gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice but there are people on the other side saying there's not going to be a surge and we can safely open the economy." Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), did not appreciate the challenge. Is it time for Fauci to go? 'Yes," he's been wrong at EVERY TURN! [Video clip] Operation Warp Speed eliminates Fauci's power to delay vaccines. On Friday [5/15/2020], President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year if possible. He put two "can-do" people in charge of the process — Glaxo Smith Kline's vaccine expert Mancef Slaoui to oversee vaccine development and Army General Gus Perna to oversee logistics. Not only will they facilitate testing of the available vaccines, but they will also arrange production of promising vaccines even before they have been approved. In contrast, during President Obama's Swine Flu (H1N1) epidemic, the CDC got vaccines approved quickly (just 7 weeks after Phase 1 clinical trials began), but then a shortage ensued while the vaccines were being produced. How Many COVID-19 Deaths Are There? Deborah Birx, the physician advising the White House's coronavirus task force, gave voice to a real concern earlier this month. She told officials from the Centers for Disease Control that some of its numbers on mortality and case count could be inflated by up to 25 percent. "There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust," the Washington Post reported Birx saying. Lawsuit Against Cuomo Alleges 'Bloodless Coup' Has Stripped New Yorkers of Their Constitutional Rights. The lawfare part of the lockdowns has begun in earnest with lawsuits being filed across the country against governors who ordered private businesses closed indefinitely with no due process and stripped them of their constitutional rights because of the Chinese coronavirus panic. The latest lawsuit was filed by New York protesters in Rochester whose businesses have been shuttered by executive fiat. The filing of the lawsuit was announced at a rally organized by RestartROC on Saturday [5/16/2020]. 'We could open up again and forget the whole thing'. Governments around the world say they are following 'The Science' with their draconian measures to stem the spread of the virus. But the science around Covid-19 is bitterly contested. Many experts have serious doubts about the effectiveness of the measures, and argue that our outsized fears of Covid-19 are not justified. Knut Wittkowski is one such expert who has long argued for a change of course. For 20 years, Wittkowski was the head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University's Center for Clinical and Translational Science. YouTube censors epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown. Big Tech companies are aggressively tamping down on COVID-19 "misinformation" — opinions and ideas contrary to official pronouncements. Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, says YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus which had racked up more than 1.3 million views. Wittkowski, 65, is a ferocious critic of the nation's current steps to fight the coronavirus. He has derided social distancing, saying it only prolongs the virus' existence and has attacked the current lockdown as mostly unnecessary. Wittkowski, who holds two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, believes the coronavirus should be allowed to achieve "herd immunity," and that short of a vaccine the pandemic will only end after it has sufficiently spread through the population. Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns. Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the COVID-19 modeling team at Imperial College in London, resigned May 5 from his government advisory role after breaking the very same British lockdown rules that he had a role in influencing. Ferguson led the Imperial College team that designed the computer model that, among others, had been used to justify the recent stay-at-home orders in England as well as in the United States. We now know the model was so highly flawed it never should have been relied upon for policy decisions to begin with. YouTube Censors Noted Anti-Lockdown Epidemiologist. Welcome to the 2020 New World Order, when a social media platform like YouTube thinks it knows more about the coronavirus pandemic than an epidemiologist. Brooklyn Park Paints Circles on Grass to Force Public Into Social Distancing. I don't know if this is worse than the pool noodle hats that a restaurant in Germany is asking people to wear, but it's close. A park in Brooklyn has painted what looks like parking spots for humans on the grass six feet apart from one another to force the public to behave. And they're doing it. [...] If this is the "new normal" I want nothing to do with it. I've adopted Ron Swanson's attitude. I'll do what I want. And if the government tries to stop me, I'm calling my lawyer. This is out of control. Are you going to sit in a little circle on the grass like a good social distancing sheep? Adding to Dr. Fauci's diagnosis: The critical case for ending our shutdown. Basic science underlying a viral pandemic is absolutely critical. But now is the time for the design of sound public policy — and that involves a far broader formulation than a single-minded focus on stopping COVID-19 at all costs. Policymakers and the public have not received several key messages that are critical to alleviate fear and guide a safe reopening of society. That has led to a gross failure in policy at the state level: There has been a failure to remind everyone that the stated goal of the policy — total lockdown and whole-population isolation — has been accomplished in most of the United States, including the epicenter of New York. Why we need a clinical trial of hydroxycholoroquine, azithromycin, and zinc ASAP. A preliminary study done by New York's Grossman School of Medicine reports on the use of HCQ+AZT+Zinc versus HCQ+AZT alone in four New York Hospitals has issued its report. [...] The "main finding of this study is that after adjusting for the timing of zinc therapy, we found that the addition of zinc sulfate to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was found to associate with a decrease in mortality or transition to hospice among patients who did not require ICU level of care, but this association was not significant in patients who were treated in the ICU." The Obama-Biden Pandemic 'Playbook' Is Less than Advertised. Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign has frequently pointed to a 69-page "playbook" that the Obama-Biden administration created for dealing with pandemics, arguing that President Donald Trump had ignored it. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany recently called the playbook "insufficient," according to the Washington Examiner. In fact, the playbook is less than advertised. Of the 69 pages, only 27 are the actual "playbook." The first 13 pages are the table of contents, executive summary, and various title pages. The last 29 pages are appendices. Dr. Fauci and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims. Although Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID (one of the institutes of the NIH) has lost its power to slow-walk a vaccine solution to COVID-19, he still retains his power to disparage HCQ (hydroxychloroquine), the most effective treatment against COVID-19. During the last couple weeks, he has publicized two studies in which HCQ without zinc hasn't worked with hospitalized patients. He has been so successful at disparaging HCQ that hospital use of HCQ has been declining. HCQ is a zinc-ionophore (meaning that it helps transport available zinc from the bloodstream through cell walls into cells where it slows virus replication). [...] COVID-19 patients are largely drawn from groups that are known to have zinc deficiencies (i.e., the elderly, black Americans, diabetics, those with cancer, and those with low hemoglobin levels). When Fauci tests HCQ on them without giving them zinc at the same time, many will die. You can't criticize CCP influence of WHO. That would be un-YouTube. 108 Million People in China Put Into Lockdown After 34 New Coronavirus Cases Detected. The Chinese province of Jilin has placed about 108 million people into lockdown on Monday [5/18/2020] after roughly 34 new cases of coronavirus and one death were identified in the region over the past few weeks, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. The new lockdown demonstrates widespread fear in China of witnessing another uncontrollable outbreak like the one in Wuhan that set off the global covid-19 pandemic in December 2019. A tale of two governors. Alas, the early "science," the early facts and analysis of COVID-19 suggests that those states controlled by the urban left are flunking by any fair mark up. A New York (D) versus Florida (R) comparison, blue versus red, provides an early template for judging who gets high marks for crisis management. By any measure New York is not just the national Covid hot spot, it is an international disaster area. Andrew Cuomo's (D) state leads the nation in all statistical categories from infection to morbidity rates. New York City (D) is now the toxic nexus for the nation. The Big Apple is hands down the necrotic 2020 spoiler in the larger American barrel. Badgering Washington for more of everything from the start, it turns out that team Mario miscalculated the need for damn near everything, including beds, hospitals, rescue ships, and respirators. Mario Cuomo pushed city mayor de Blasio (D) aside and seized control of metro policy with hype and bombast, if not hysteria. Incredibly, Cuomo was lionized by the media as "the only adult" in the room as he presided over the worst state or city medical crisis in America, if not the world. Lock Up the Lockdown Governors. It's week 7,298 of the #Coronapocalypse lockdown and a lot of Americans have reached the "I'm not staying here any longer, you idiots," phase. I've actually been there for weeks but decided to play along with the New Rules because I was saving lives or something. We are allowed to be opening up here a bit in Arizona, but some businesses are remaining closed and virtue-signaling all over the place, posting long social media messages about how it's just "not safe" yet. I'm making a list of these places to make sure they don't get any of my money in the next year or two. Some of them are favorites of mine, so it won't be easy. [...] There is a very real possibility that 20/20 hindsight will show us that little, if anything, was achieved by shutting down people's lives and livelihoods. It will have been a self-inflicted and wholly unnecessary tragedy. Good news: COVID-19's grip is fading. It is true that the pandemic's toll on our health and economic well-being has been devastating. But a review of public reports, statistics, and studies shows that the future is not as dire as we are being told by the national media. In fact, there is ample evidence that we are turning the corner on the virus and that the overwhelming majority of people are not at serious risk if they take commonsense precautions and follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Here are eight reasons why things are starting to look a little better. [...] Why is THEIR health so important? One State Amends Coronavirus Death Count and the Numbers Are Significantly Lower. From the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, one of the concerns was how the death count was being tallied. White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said last month that the United States is taking a "liberal approach" to counting coronavirus deaths. Instead of only counting those who died as a result of the virus, they are counting everyone who died who had tested positive, even if their death was unrelated to the virus. "The intent is right now if someone dies with COVID-19, we're counting that as a COVID-19 death," Birx said at the time. "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem. Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death." Blame governors for the coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. If they are honest, historians judging the American experience during the coronavirus pandemic will excoriate our barbaric failure to protect the elderly. We think of ourselves as civilized, but mindless policies and bureaucratic indifference turned many nursing homes and rehabilitation centers into killing fields. At least 28,000 residents and workers in long-term care facilities already have died from the virus, according to a New York Times analysis done more than a week ago. That represented one out of every three COVID-19 deaths recorded in the United States at the time and was likely an undercount because of reporting lags and varying state methods. Cuomo Defends Nursing Home Policy: 'Older People, Vulnerable People Are Going to Die'. New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for his disastrous policy of sending elderly Wuhan coronavirus patients to nursing homes. President Trump even approved a temporary hospital at New York City's Javitz Center to house and treat coronavirus patients. The president also sent a floating hospital packed with emergency supplies to New York to make additional space. But with a fawning press behind him, Gov. Cuomo decided in all his wisdom that elderly people, sick and contagious with the Wuhan coronavirus, should be sent instead to nursing homes full of other elderly, vulnerable people. The policy went on for weeks. The press was probably too busy looking for bad news about hydroxychloroquine to question the governor's deadly directive. Federal Judge Blocks North Carolina Governor's Restrictions on Church Services. On Saturday [5/16/2020], a federal judge temporarily blocked North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's restrictions on indoor religious services during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. In a recent statewide stay-at-home order aimed at reopening the state, religious services were instructed to be held "outdoors unless impossible." Judge James C. Dever III sided with two Baptist churches who argued Gov. Cooper's restrictions on indoor church services violate their rights to worship and treat churches differently than secular entities like retailers. While Dever believes the governor has acted in good faith, the judge also finds restrictions applied to one group and not another burden religious freedom and do little to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the judge wrote in a 22-page order. Why the Lockdown Lost. The nationwide lockdown during the 2020 global COVID-19 crisis will be the debate of historians for decades to come. [...] But it wasn't just Fauci's fault. Inept governors running huge budget deficits tried to scapegoat their failures in financially upside-down states on the virus and simultaneously skate their way out of jams. California, Illinois, and New York were in ruinous shape prior to COVID-19. By going along with the ivory tower lab coat, by pinning blame on the orange man, and by believing their own press, these disasters in office could improve their personal standing. But it all blew up. Now... Where's the accountability? Garbage In, Garbage Out. How many people have died from COVID-19? You can cite the official numbers, which vary depending on your source. They're horrific, of course, but are they anywhere close to accurate? Dr. Anthony Fauci testified this week that the number is probably higher, Dr. Deborah Birx, it was reported last week, thinks the number may be inflated by as much as 25 percent. Who is right? We don't know. Fauci didn't cite much beyond his belief, which doesn't hold that much water considering he's held opposite positions on everything from the wearing of masks to whether or not coronavirus was a serious threat to Americans during the early stages of the pandemic. Birx didn't cite much either, sharing an equally bad track record of prognostication. The truth is we have no idea. Leaked Videos From Wuhan Show The Apocalyptic Nightmare It's Become. Wuhan, where cases of coronavirus were first reported before the outbreak spread across the world, has been dubbed "zombieland" by desperate locals. Overcrowded hospitals, people dropping in the middle of the street, dying citizens treated in gardens because there is no room in the hospital, police bullying people into ambulances, 2-day old corpses under blankets it's like a bad nightmare these poor people can't wake up from. The Coronavirus Lies Just Keep on Coming. Check out this little video clip from Chicago. Corrupt Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has just finished up holding her latest briefing, during which she and all of the reporters in the room dutifully wore their masks while they knew the TV cameras were rolling. As the presser ends, everyone immediately takes off their masks, as several reporters approach Lightfoot to ask a few more questions. [Video clip] They just didn't know the camera was still running. Watch how closely they crowd around the Mayor with their masks off. Does that look like social distancing to you? Timeline Of Blame: Cuomo & De Blasio Are Soaked In Blood. It's easy to overcomplicate the question of who is at fault for COVID-19. The reason we have global organizations full of experts is for moments like the one we currently inhabit, and more to the point, for the moment a member state recognizes that it has a potentially serious problem: to prevent further harm. In the case of infectious disease, the world looks to the health-related arm of the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO). Until April 15, when President Trump defunded the WHO, the U.S. was footing the lion's share of the global watchdog's budget, nearly a quarter of annual operating expenses, most of which was spent on lavish travel, not curing diseases. COVIDictators Beware: The American Rebel Spirit Is Still Alive. In the current environment of uncertainty and government overreach into all of our lives, there seems to be some light at the end of the government built tunnel. This is not because we have actually reached the end, but because as with most things built by the government, it's crumbling. In the past few months, dollar store dictators from across the nation have been implementing strict draconian regulations, in what appears to almost be an attempt to break the back of the largest economy to have existed on this planet. Those who have tried to fight back have been punished like Shelley Luther, a salon owner in Dallas, Texas who saw the inside of a jail cell for daring to put food on her own table. Even more recently, Governor Whitmer of Michigan decided due process was not to be afforded to a 77-year-old barber who had his state licenses stripped after ignoring local health officials orders to close his shop. UN Human Rights Chief Tries to Scare Countries Into Continuing Lockdowns. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is suggesting that the draconian lockdowns most countries have enforced on their citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic might need to be extended to avoid a disastrous "second wave" of the virus. Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet, a socialist and the former president of Chile, issued the warning on Thursday. Bachelet claimed that the disastrous economic effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns are a small price to pay when you consider the possible alternative. [...] Bachelet must not watch much television or go on the Internet. In America at least, re-openings are clearly being driven by unhappy citizens who want to go back to work and start their lives again — not by any "elites." In fact, it seems like many elites — globalist health organizations, Democrat-controlled states and the mainstream media, for example — are the ones pressing to continue these authoritarian lockdowns. The Human Rights High Commissioner is clearly of the belief that only government has the answers to the economic and health concerns brought on by the Chinese coronavirus. COVID-19 Proves America Needs Economic Nationalism. In World War II, America produced the gauze, iodine, and syringes that allowed allied troops to soldier on in the face of bloodshed and broken bones. Times have changed. Today, America cannot produce the basic medical supplies it needs to fight COVID-19. Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, told the House Appropriations Committee that America needs 25 times more masks than it currently has stockpiled. Worse still, it turns out that America cannot even manufacture the masks it needs because most of the factories are in China. Evidently, it will take years for domestic mask-makers to fulfill the order placed by America's Strategic National Stockpile. Until then we are at China's mercy. Two Months Ago Today [...] the W.H.O.'s Coronavirus Mortality Rate of 3.4% Was Completely Inaccurate! — And We Were 100% Correct! Exactly Two months ago, on March 17, 2020, we reported on the controversial Ethiopian politician and Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who claimed in a press conference in early March that the fatality rate for the coronavirus was 3.4% — many multiples that of the fatality rate of the common flu which is estimated to be around 0.1%. This egregiously false premise led to the greatest global panic in world history. COVID-19 Compliance Circles Begin in New York City. Comrades, the New York Ministry of COVID Compliance is taking every precaution to ensure your safety. The scientists at the New York parks and recreation compliance bureau have designed a new social safety system to permit continued enjoyment. The compliant metropolitan citizens are leading by example, and all good citizens are now enjoying the benefits of correct behavior. Continued compliance with the New York scientific standard for safe social engineering is greatly appreciated. To further ensure your safety; while you explore the modified systems of freedom and liberty; the Ministry is providing uniformed Compliance Coaches, educators for our new society, at each of the designated parks and state approved recreation areas. Alderman: Mayor's Office Bans Parking On Ravenswood Streets Near Church That Plans To Hold Sunday Services. People heading to Philadelphia Romanian Church in Ravenswood on Sunday might have a hard time finding a parking spot. Ald. Matt Martin (47th) said no-parking signs have been put up for several surrounding blocks near the church at 1713 W. Sunnyside Ave. The signs have been mounted on Sunnyside Avenue between Greenview and Ravenswood avenues, and Paulina Street between Lawrence and Berteau avenues, Martin's office said. The parking ban is in effect from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, according to Martin's office. Martin said the signs were put up at the direction of the Mayor's office, in response to plans by the church to hold one or more religious services — in violation of the stay-at-home order for the coronavirus pandemic. No Cure for Impatience. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, I have observed a syndrome emerging in scientific research, namely publication of hopeful findings before there is any real evidence that the hope is well- or properly founded. One or other of the hopes may be justified in the end, but the syndrome is not in itself harmless if it raises false hopes, puts additional pressure on politicians, and leads to a misdirection of financial and other resources. Starting the trend was Professor Didier Raoult, of Marseille, for whom in other respects I have admiration, with his insistence that hydroxychloroquine, especially in combination with azithromycin, was virtually curative of Covid-19 disease. He has provided nothing like proper evidence that this is so, which is not quite the same as saying that it is not so. [...] Then there was remdesivir. A paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that must rank as one of the most lamentable and irresponsible in recent years, and the competition is stiff. It suggested that the drug was useful in the disease: Patients were ill, patients were given it, and quite a lot of them got better. There was no control group of similar patients who were not given remdesivir, so the effect of the drug, whether good or bad, was unknowable from this paper, which smacked more of advertising or stock manipulation than science. Ruling Pandamerica. As of May 13, 2020, 70 percent of Pennsylvania's 3,806 COVID-19 "related" deaths have occurred in assisted living facilities. We have known since the onset of the pandemic that persons age 65 or older and/or with comorbidities such as diabetes and heart disease are overwhelmingly at risk of death should they be exposed to the virus. [...] To reduce the risk of infection, state officials prohibited visits to nursing homes by friends and families. At the same time, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine issued a witless and ill-conceived directive requiring those facilities to readmit residents who have been hospitalized for COVID-19. This was done regardless of the clear increased risk of harm that this posed to the health and safety of the facilities' aged and infirm patients. The nursing home deaths were entirely predictable. So why did Dr. Levine issue her mandate? Was she simply unaware of the risk involved? Apparently not. You see, after requiring the assisted living facilities to admit COVID-19 patients, Levine moved her 95-year-old mother out of her nursing home to a hotel. California City To Allow Reopenings, Declares Itself A 'Sanctuary City' For Business. The central California city of Atwater has declared itself a "sanctuary city" for businesses. The Friday [5/15/2020] resolution passed by the Atwater City Council allows business owners to open, openly defying Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom's coronavirus-related stay-at-home order. The resolution affirms "the city's commitment" to "fundamental" human rights. Churches and other nonprofits are included in the resolution, according to ABC30's Vanessa Vasconcelos. CNN Reporter Who Chastised Trump for Non-Mask Usage Rips off Mask the Moment She Thinks the Cameras Are Off. It's almost like all these reporters wearing masks while not being within 10 feet of anyone are just virtue signaling to push a partisan narratives. Crazy thought, right? CNN's Kaitlin Collins, who has tried to make a name for herself by getting into confrontations throughout the Wuhan virus pandemic (see Dr. Birx Takes CNN Reporter Apart After Attempted Gotcha Question), was caught red-handed yesterday. As the press briefing ended and the cameras were assumed off, the "journalist" jumped out of her seat and ripped her mask off, even as she immediately walked closer to her colleagues. Evidence emerges indicating COVID-19 was artificially adapted to infect humans. Coronaviruses mutate naturally within their animal or human hosts, many of which produce no functional change in the virus. Significant changes in the structure of a coronavirus can result in a "gain of function," that is, enhanced pathogenicity and/or an increase in transmissibility among animals or between animals and humans. Such a "gain of function" has also been generated artificially through bioengineering, which has been demonstrated using a wide variety of viruses. Limbaugh asks VP Pence about blue states with 'political desire to inflict pain' by not opening. In an interview with Vice President Mike Pence on Friday [5/15/2020], conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh opined that it appears as though some governors of "blue states" are pushing back on reopening their economies to harm President Donald Trump. Pence, who told the host that both he and the president had kept Limbaugh in their thoughts as he battles cancer, was there to discuss the administration's progress on battling the coronavirus as well as plans to reopen the economy. [...] Early on, Limbaugh observed that Democrats would try to use the coronavirus pandemic to harm President Trump politically. In February, the host blasted the Leftist establishment media, noting that "the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump." Requests for N.J. public records rejected during coronavirus crisis as Murphy administration uses little-known law. In 2005, New Jersey enacted a sweeping law called the Emergency Health Powers Act, giving the governor greater authority to take actions to protect Garden State residents during a health crisis. Gov. Phil Murphy has cited the statute frequently the last two months as he's issued a series of orders to place the state in near-lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But in an unexpected development, some government agencies in Murphy's administration have also cited the law to reject requests from media outlets seeking public records related to how the state has responded to an outbreak that has killed more than 10,000 residents and caused widespread unemployment. The ability to obtain records is one of the key tools journalists, advocates, and everyday citizens wield to examine the inner workings of government and discover how your taxpayer dollars are being spent (or misspent). The Coronavirus Lockdown Has Not Made the Air Cleaner. Just about every day, someone claims that the air is cleaner. That, we are told, is a small benefit of the coronavirus-induced economic lockdowns. By reducing traffic on our roads, we are polluting the air less, providing a visible example of the supposed benefits of imposing more environmental regulation. In my hometown of Seattle, one environmental activist told the local paper that people can "physically see that difference in the cleaner air." The air-quality data tell a different story. According to the EPA's air-quality monitors, levels of particulate matter — known as PM 2.5 — are not lower now and have, in fact, been higher recently than the median level of the last five years. Consisting of particles smaller than 2.5 microns, PM 2.5 includes natural sources such as smoke or sea salt, as well as human-caused pollution from combustion. In Philadelphia, a city health commissioner said, "I would expect our air pollution levels will probably go down because the number of vehicles in the streets are less." Recent particulate-matter levels, however, have been close to the five-year average. In Dallas, the levels of PM 2.5 are higher than average. Eric Trump predicts Dems 'will milk' pandemic until Nov 3rd, then it will 'magically... disappear'. Eric Trump appeared Saturday night [5/16/2020] on Fox News' "Justice with Judge Jeanine," to say what so many Americans are already thinking, that the Democratic Party is using the coronavirus pandemic as an election ploy to boost their chances of defeating his father, President Donald Trump. The younger Trump pointed out that in a world Democrats have created, people can buy a bottle of liquor but can't go to church, and they can go to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion but can't go to a public library to vote — this being in response to the left's push for national mail-in voting. "The Democrats are trying to milk this for everything they can and it's sad," he said.
The Editor says... Detroit priest sprays holy water from squirt gun to maintain social distancing. A Roman Catholic priest in the Detroit area has taken aim at his parishioners in a bid to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, using a squirt gun to shoot holy water. Photos posted on social media by the St Ambrose Church show the Reverend Timothy Pelc shooting water into a car window as it stopped by the steps of the church. He wore a mask, face shield and rubber gloves as further precautions against spreading the coronavirus. The Editor says... US Rep wipes House floor with Dem governor for decision to 'extort the counties and kill our elderly'. A Pennsylvania congressman slammed the state's Democrat governor for what he called out as an attempt to "extort counties and kill our elderly." U.S. Rep. Scott Perry called out Governor Tom Wolf on Friday [5/15/2020] for the alarming number of coronavirus deaths in Pennsylvania's nursing homes, apparently a result of a policy that allows infected patients to return to the facilities they reside in. Perry attacked Wolf for his withholding of funding to counties in the state while demanding more federal assistance as the elderly population in nursing homes have been decimated by the coronavirus outbreak. You're less likely to object to the perpetual lockdown if you're intoxicated. Medical Misinformation, Part 2: Cure is Deadlier Than the Disease. Is it possible that Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Coronavirus Task Force are suffering from temporal myopia? According to the Encyclopedia of Psychopharmacology, "Temporal myopia is the inability to consider the long-term outcomes of an action when making a choice." I am a certified behavioral analyst, not a psychologist, so I'm not in a position to diagnose. But from what I can observe, Fauci and the Task Force have made some horrifically short-sighted choices. Either that, or we're dealing with an agenda much more nefarious than most Americans would care to consider. The Imperative to Think in the COVID-19 Era. The world can be a lonely place for those of us who suspect that the coronavirus pandemic or "crisis" is little more than a pretext by which, practically overnight, those who have long been aching for it executed nothing less than "the fundamental transformation" of America. It's been that much lonelier given that, up until very recently, upon realizing that Democratic officeholders, their apologists in the media, and their constituents are exploiting the mass fear that they engendered for the purposes of furthering their own agenda, Republican politicians and conservative media personalities have been equally guilty of promoting the narrative of the second coming of the Black Plague. Much more work needs to be done on the part of those in the Republican Party and conservative media. Mandatory coronavirus vaccination looming on the horizon. President Trump's promise of a vaccine yesterday implies words like mandate, monitoring, and immunity passports. Contact tracing and tens of thousands of new government workers to spy on and enforce compliance with that unproven strategy which came out of nowhere last month were bad enough. Now we have the next and possibly the final chapter: A new medical mandate enforced by the military that will make Obamacare's onerous individual health insurance mandate seem like child's play. There are those of us — millions of us, actually — who have refused to take the annual flu vaccine and any of the other fashionable immunizations that are hyped and sold to us by the medical industrial complex and the mainstream media. When one looks closely, including into the scientific literature itself, there is just too little or no proof at all that most vaccines, including the annual vaunted flu shot, actually do any good — and/or are worth the potential dangers and the costs to personal health that lurk within all of them. The few exceptions for an adult might include something like a tetanus shot after a skin-breaking accident. It Wasn't The "Virus" That Crashed The Economy, It Was The People Who Obeyed. Most atrocities in human history have all been committed by individuals and agents of government who were "just following orders" or "just obeying the law." The virus didn't give any orders. It was the people who obeyed the commands of tyrants that crashed the economy and ruined the livelihoods of others. Most human beings still think like slaves. Instead of asking questions or using critical thinking skills to ask if something is right before doing it, they simply obey perceived "authority". The truth is, this lockdown is the fault of everyone who complied and everyone who used forced to exact revenge on those who disobeyed. It was the same in all tyrannical takeovers in history. The mainstream media keeps blaming the economic devastation on the coronavirus, but it wasn't the fault of a virus. It was the fault of the government and the slave mentality of the police and the public willingly obeying their commands. Mainstream media outlets are still trying desperately to spin the narrative and fault the "invisible enemy" for the very real toll on human life the government's overreaction has already caused. This is nothing more than propaganda, and once you pick it up, you'll be able to see it. The media doesn't want you to put the blame where it belongs and figure things out for yourself, so they hide behind deception headlines that will keep you in fear of COVID-19 as long as possible. This is all a part of the larger plan to keep the public panicked about a virus and looking the other way when the tyrannical boots of the state come down on them. The Moral Busybodies Strike Again. There's a weird cognitive dissonance happening right now that is as revealing as it is alarming. Just as we learn more details about all the ways Barack Obama and his henchmen weaponized powerful federal agencies to punish Donald Trump, Americans, oddly, are surrendering their own power to the same type of god-like government authorities under the guise of the common good. [...] The effort to stop coronavirus, much like the attempt to stop Donald Trump, has been presented by ardent defenders as their call to duty, a selfless act undertaken not to gratify their lust for power but to protect the public's best interest. There is no discernible difference between the high-minded hectoring of former FBI Director James Comey and that of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer — their decisions are above scrutiny because, as they often scold their lesser subjects, these decisions are made for your own good. NYTs and L.A. Times Reject NSC Advisor O'Brien's Column on Ventilators Because it 'Didn't Fit Their Narrative'. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien on Friday revealed in an interview Friday that the New York Times and Los Angeles Times declined to publish his recent column on American ventilator diplomacy because it "didn't fit their narrative." Back in early March, many experts feared that a shortage of ventilators in America could be a public health catastrophe because there would not be enough of the life-saving machines in hospitals to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients. The column describes in detail how the Trump administration became a world leader in the fight against the coronavirus by ramping-up production of ventilators. The piece, which had high praise for Trump's handling of the crisis, was published at Fox News. Dr. Scott Jensen — Truth on Covid-19 and Minnesota. Dr. Scott Jensen is both a practicing physician and a Minnesota State Senator. He brings a unique perspective to the affects of Covid-19 and the mandated social isolation on his patients. [Video clip] Stanford University doctor: 'You are mistaken' if you think coronavirus lockdowns provide safety. Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, said people are "mistaken" if they think coronavirus lockdown policies are a solution that proves safety from COVID-19, PJ Media reported. Bhattacharya recently led the largest COVID-19 antibody study in the United States, testing thousands of staff members of 27 Major League Baseball teams to get a better idea about how widespread the novel coronavirus already is. Based on this and other research, Bhattacharya is opposed to continuing the lockdowns, and said they may even cause unnecessary harm. The uncertainties of mask use demand that no one be forced to wear them. Regular readers of Behind the Black will know that I have made it very clear I consider the requirement to wear a mask by government officials to be an incredible and inappropriate overreach of their authority, partly because they don't have that legal right, and partly because the science is very uncertain, with some studies strongly suggesting that the mask could have serious negative health effects. Still, the science remains uncertain. Because of this uncertainty, it seems to me in a free society, where everyone respects the idea of freedom, wearing a mask must be left up to each individual. Sadly, the social justice warriors of our society no longer believe in freedom, and will try to shame and discredit you if you say publicly you will not wear a mask. Masks
Don't Work: A review of science relevant to COVID-19 social policy. Masks and respirators do not
work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies,
which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory
illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles. Furthermore, the relevant known physics and
biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and
respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is
long-residence-time aerosol particles Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time. In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code. But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa's budget and pride. Imperial College's modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost. The entire panic, lockdown, and social distancing hysteria is based on this incomprehensible "bowl of spaghetti" computer program. Andrew Cuomo in All His Ugliness. Much of the nation these past few months has focused on New York state since it became the hotspot for the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Many have also complimented Governor Andrew Cuomo's response in fighting the pandemic, even to the point of suggesting he should substitute for presidential hopeful Joe Biden as the Democratic Party nominee to face Donald Trump in the November election. On Tuesday [5/12/2020], Cuomo proposed a new law that aims to prevent corporations from receiving stimulus funds as a result of COVID-19. While he presents himself as a governor who will tackle all forms of injustice, especially in light of his continual hands-on approach during this crisis, Cuomo is anything but the knight in shining armor he is being portrayed as. 'Fake news is not essential!' Tense scene as reporter walks through NY lockdown protest and feels the disdain. There's a lot of frustration in the country today. Frustration over a two-month-long lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, and frustration with the media for being more obsessed with destroying President Trump than providing reliable information during an unprecedented national emergency. These frustrations came together Thursday during a Long Island reopening rally, as the protesters let a local reporter know how they feel as he made his way through the crowd, chanting "fake news is not essential." News 12 Long Island reporter Kevin Vesey was covering the protest, with an emphasis on social distancing, and was ripped by person after person for being "fake news." Gretchen Whitmer hit with nasty lawsuit by Michigan medical groups over 'drastic' and 'unconstitutional' COVID-19 lockdown. Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer just got hit with some bad news when four medical groups and a patient seeking knee surgery in her state filed a lawsuit against her claiming that her strict coronavirus stay-at-home order is "drastic" and "unconstitutional." The lawsuit was reportedly filed on May 12 by Grand Health Partners in Grand Rapids, Wellston Medical Center in Wellston, Primary Health Services in Ludington, and Jeffery Gulick, a Michigan man who wants to get knee replacement surgery, according to MLive. The lawsuit names Whitmer along with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon, and it calls for the immediate reopening of healthcare facilities for medical procedures that have been dubbed "nonessential." They Blinded Us With Science. [Scroll down] Only occasionally, under the press of extraordinary calamities, do we attain the lucidity needed to pose fundamental questions anew. The recent coronavirus pandemic is one such event. An event of this kind forcefully and frontally challenges the reigning scientific outlook. It does this in three ways. First, by revealing science's internal limitations when it comes to mastering nature, let alone yielding ultimate truth. Second, by underscoring the primacy of life itself over the scientific enterprise. Third, by reminding us that there persists a vast range of human problems that no scientific discovery or technique can solve. The deaths and disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus are tragic. But we would be betraying reason itself if we fail to reexamine our most cherished civilizational assumptions through the rare window of lucidity lately opened for us. Colorado changes data amid complaints that it inflated COVID-19 deaths. Nearly a quarter of the people reported as coronavirus deaths in state statistics don't have the virus listed on their death certificates — at least not yet — the state Health Department said Friday [5/15/2020], adding more uncertainty to how many people the virus has killed in Colorado. The number of coronavirus deaths in state figures topped 1,000 earlier this week, and the number stood at 1,150 deaths as of Friday afternoon. But officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment revealed during a call with reporters that that number does not represent the number of people who have died due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The US is Dramatically Overcounting Coronavirus Deaths. Over 86,500 people have reportedly died in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the fear generated by those deaths is driving the public policy debate. But that number is a dramatic overcount. Our metrics include deaths that have nothing to do with the virus. The problem is even worse as the Centers for Disease Control over counts even some of these cases and the government has created financial incentives for this misreporting. Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives. "The case definition is very simplistic," Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains. "It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death." Why I See Good Days Ahead. Most of the coverage of our present circumstance has been noise; meaningless nonsense. Our left-wing press has labored to make Donald Trump seem short-sighted in not seeing the Chinese Flu coming from afar. No one ever sees anything coming from afar except by chance or by constant negativity that finally hits the jackpot. Trump did fine. On the Right, there are those who say the lockdown was an error and a few who say it was an evil plot to destroy the economy. They may be right about the error — we won't know for a while and we may never know. But the fact that most countries shut down proves that it looked like the best idea at the time. Like the 20-20 hindsight media, the angry Right could express more wisdom by being silent. The Editor says... Democrats Drunk With Pandemic Power Could be Undercutting Themselves Come November. Flexing unearned influence has exposed the thirst for control of their citizens. In Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf caught a whiff of his constituents working up the desire to step out and start living their lives once again. The idea of citizens exerting their freedoms and basking in the normalcy of liberty was too much for him to stand. On Monday he sent out a tweet storm, delivering a series of firm commands of how he intends to clamp down on those who might dare get the idea of doing things. [...] This governor, as we know, is hardly alone, as the petulant Pennsylvania tyrant is part of a widespread mob of Democratic governors who have been intoxicated by the sudden discovery of power they can impose on the citizenry. Wolf does this with the comfort of no reprisals, as he is in the final stretch of a term limit regime — he is operating comfortably with a lame-duck Napoleanic complex. Others, however, may have a reckoning ahead, and the wider Democratic party repercussions could be felt later this year. New York's Terrible Decisions on Wuhan Coronavirus Screwed the Rest of America. The curve of Wuhan coronavirus cases across the country has flattened and cities are slowly coming out of stay-at-home orders. Businesses are opening back up and people are doing what they can to return to normalcy. But the bad decisions made by politicians in the hardest-hit areas, specifically New York, should not go unnoticed as we start to pull away from the pandemic. On March 2, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was encouraging residents to continue their regular behavior. He even gave them ideas about what to do in crowded areas. The virus had been in the country since the end of January and rapidly spreading. Italy, a preview of what could come to the U.S. without proper preparation, was completely overrun, devastated and chaotic. Our Nevermind Media. Media observers are today noticing how strange it is for reporters to juxtapose panic about Florida, where the virus has done relatively little damage, with robust defense of New York, the coronavirus death capital of the Western world. This week, after Politico Florida correspondent Marc Caputo noted that the long-predicted mass outbreak of coronavirus in his state still hasn't happened, with three full months having passed since the first dire warnings about spring breakers partying on the beaches, Daily Beast Washington correspondent and CNN analyst Jackie Kucinich threw the yellow flag. [...] The media loves to run with "blood on his hands" stories about nefarious Republicans, but you'll have a hard time finding even a quiet, pro-forma apology (much less an admission of bloody hands) from the media for their massive bungling of the early stages of the coronavirus story. No, We Can't Wait Anymore. Most of us are incredibly fed up. While everyone is suffering, we are the ones risking our whole futures for this. People tell us to stay positive and to find the beauty in little things. We have tried our best to make the best out of this but, in truth, every day we watch our futures get further and further away from us. [...] If schools do not open in the fall, it would be one of the biggest sacrifices asked of America's youth in the history of this country. Education is vital to America's future and we have the same rights to it as older adults across America once did. Why would we just throw all of this away for the sake of an uncertain, and probably false, sense of safety? As lockdown eases, other uncertainties lie ahead. After months of the pandemic lockdown, we have arrived at a decisive time. Communities around the country and around the globe are starting to take dramatic next steps as they try to move toward economic and social recovery. You cannot help but wonder how this time of isolation has changed us and how those changes will reshape the world that awaits us. As an example, last week, I looked at the airline industry and recent announcements of what passengers can expect as the industry tries to lure travelers back into the fold. Not unexpectedly, they are banking on plane cleanliness as the draw. The Editor says...
The Bait-and-Switch Blues. [Scroll down] In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won by a handy 53-44 margin in 2018 to become that state's governor. Whitmer is, as Robert Stacy McCain aptly noted, America's worst governor. She has proven that by doggedly repressing her state's economy despite its people loudly telling her they will not continue to allow it. Whitmer's shutdown was, like all of the state and local examples of economic seppuku, which, for some strange reason, are continuing in Democrat-run states but not so much in Republican ones, predicated on the idea that if everyone stayed at home it would "flatten the curve" of the virus's spread and thus keep the health-care system from being overwhelmed. Well, it wasn't. And yet the shutdowns continue. They continue in New York, where that state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, has won election with 63, 54, and 60 percent margins in 2010, 2014, and 2018. Cuomo's orders actually killed nursing home patients in that state by insisting that nursing homes take in patients with COVID-19, spreading the virus to the most vulnerable people in society and ratcheting up the nation's worst fatality count. Cuomo, who answers outrage over his blatant malfeasance by repeating the mantra of "We did everything we could," now is demanding much of his state stay closed until June 13. 'There is a cure': California biotech company claims it has discovered an antibody that can block '100%' of coronavirus infections. Scientists at a California biotech company have found an antibody that completely blocks coronavirus in a discovery they called a 'cure,' Fox News reported. Sorrento Therapeutics, based in San Diego, claims its STI-1499 antibody stopped coronavirus from entering 100 percent of healthy human cells in petri dish experiments. It's one of several antibodies planned to be combined for a drug 'cocktail' Sorrento is developing in collaboration with Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Free State Tourism for an over-the-border haircut. [Scroll down] These are people who are glad to be back to work. Are they essential? Absolutely. So is every other worker in the country. Open it up, American governors, or the willing workers and their eager customers will open it up in spite of you. We are adults. We don't need nannies. We will once again make personal decisions using common sense. We will start making our own plans without waiting for you to "allow" us to have weddings, birthday parties, family events, meetings, and everything else we have postponed. We will choose our own risks. We've suffered your madness for nearly two months. Now it's our turn. We will take back our own lives. Skateboarders defy city, clearing mulch off closed course placed there as deterrent. Possum Creek Park in Gainesville just reopened this week, but it's opening in phases, as the skate park area is still closed. Apparently, some skating enthusiasts didn't get the memo. "We've been here this whole time with the park closed. People have not stopped coming," said Michelle Dean, a concerned parent. "There was 15 to 20 people here, mainly teenagers, playing and skateboarding." Gov. JB Pritzker Urges Republican Critics To Stop 'Pushing Stories' About His Family's Whereabouts. In the wake of questions about where his family has been staying during the statewide stay-at-home order, Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday [5/15/2020] said he's been protective of his wife and children's privacy, out of fear for their safety. [...] Last month, published reports revealed Pritzker's wife and daughter had been staying at an estate they own in Florida, prompting critics to accuse the governor's own family of flaunting the executive order he'd issued mandating people stay at home as much as possible, and avoid non-essential travel. Pritzker had refused to answer questions on the issue until Friday, when he said his wife and daughter had been in Florida before he issued the stay-at-home order. The governor said they sheltered in place there until recently, when they returned home. Cuomo can't conceal his glee at news of defiant barber spreading COVID-19. New York's embattled governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced that an upstate barber who violated quarantine, caught COVID-19, and then spread it to others, is reason enough for More Lockdown. He said it with an impressive combination of coldness and glee, looking like some kind of hard-faced Caligula-like character. Let them hate me so long as they fear me. Antibody tests from 2 Snohomish County residents raise questions about when coronavirus first hit Washington. She came down with a bug two days after Christmas, and for the next week or so, Jean, a 64-year-old retired nurse, suffered through a series of worsening symptoms: a dry, hacking cough, a fever and body aches, and finally, a wheeze that rattled her lungs. But after two trips to the doctor, chest X-rays and prescriptions for several medications, including a "DuoNeb" solution inhaled through a nebulizer device commonly used to treat asthma, her condition slowly improved. NY Tourist Arrested In Hawaii After Posting Beach Photos. A tourist from New York has been arrested in Hawaii after he allegedly violated state regulations that require travelers to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. Tarique Peters, 23, of the Bronx, arrived in Honolulu on Monday. He then posted photographs on Instagram photos showing himself sunbathing at the beach and carrying a surfboard, state officials said. "He allegedly left his hotel room the day he arrived and traveled many places using public transportation. Authorities became aware of his social media posts from citizens who saw posts of him — on the beach with a surfboard, sunbathing, and walking around Waikiki at night," said a news release from the Hawaii COVID-19 Joint Information Center. Enzyme that will make Bill Gates' vaccine microchip implant work known as LUCIFERASE. Part of the plan for vaccination against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is to inject people with syringes that contain implantable "quantum dot" tattoos, which we reported are a type of microchip that would seem to constitute the Mark of the Beast. And further proof of this comes in the form of the enzyme that Bill Gates has chosen to make it all possible, which has been ominously dubbed "luciferase." According to reports, luciferase will activate these quantum dot "microneedles," as they are also called, effectively delivering the so-called vaccines into people's bodies. Police State Dry Run [was] a Huge Success. We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn't all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork. [...] You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China. We've been told who can work and who can't, with language that separates us according to who is and who isn't "essential" as the almighty State supersedes individual rights and the family unit. We've been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, fined, detained, arrested, jailed, and/or placed in forced quarantine. Business licenses have been revoked. Going to work without the permission of the government is now a crime. So is going to the park or a beach. Children playing together is also in defiance of the government. So is placing flags on the graves of veterans. The list of infractions goes on and on and on and on. Examples read like the manifesto of a demented madman. [Numerous additional links.] Stay home. Do not go out. Do not earn money. Do not pay your bills, feed your family, maintain your credit rating, live your life. Do not make a single move without permission from the State or you will be punished. The Lie That Launched a Thousand Lockdowns. [Scroll down] The Imperial College of London projected that more than 500,000 people in Great Britain would die if no protective measures were put in place. The picture in the United States was even bleaker: 2.2 million people could die if the country didn't close. Even with ambitious measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, the Imperial College model predicted that 1.1 million people in the United States and 260,000 people in Great Britain would die. The governmental response was immediate. Both the United Kingdom and United States ordered people to begin sheltering in place. [...] And almost overnight, states across America began implementing total shutdowns of restaurants, bars, retail stores, and every business they deemed "non-essential." Unfortunately, the Imperial College model on which they all relied was staggeringly, disastrously wrong. Almost immediately after it was released, [Neil] Ferguson's model came under fire from Oxford University epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, whose own modeling suggested that Coronavirus had been spreading in the U.K. far earlier than anyone suspected and that in most cases, it was either asymptomatic or so mild that it was confused with the common cold. If they get away with this, they can arrest you for having any disease. A Scientific Explanation Of Why Shutdowns Are Useless. [Scroll down] On the other hand, Dr. Bhattacharya has good news, too. The fatality rate from COVID-19 is low — worldwide, somewhere between 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent, probably closer to the low end of that range. The typical seasonal flu is said to have a fatality rate of around 0.1 percent. So COVID-19 is probably somewhat worse than the average flu virus. Further, another of Dr. Bhattacharya's studies found that 70 percent of those who contract COVID-19 are asymptomatic. That is, they wouldn't know they had had the virus if they weren't tested. That percentage may be low. Studies of prisoners in several states have found that more than 90 percent of those who tested positive were asymptomatic. So the good news is, when you get COVID-19 — and it is highly probable that you will get it, regardless of what governments do — it is unlikely to do you any harm, and you probably won't know you had it. She has a Ph.D. in Social Welfare, whatever that is. Flattening the Curve or Flattening Trump? Flattening the curve is a new term for most of us not steeped in the world of public health or epidemiology. Prior to the Chinese Coronavirus making a mess of lives and economies, this term might have featured in a Saturday morning infomercial on the latest weight loss fad. Now it has become the holy grail of fighting this viral pandemic. The New York Times, in a rare moment not bashing President Trump, explains flattening the curve. There are two curves, a steep one and a flat one, as we have seen endlessly on the news. Neurosurgeon Says Face Masks Pose Serious Risk to Healthy People. Every Karen on Facebook is shaming her neighbors for not wearing a face mask. We are being told by governors that if we don't wear them we are selfish, horrible human beings with no souls who want Grandma to die a horrible death. Police are tackling people who don't wear them properly in the subway. Grocery stores are throwing maskless people out and denying them service. But now, there's another doctor weighing in — besides Dr. Fauci, bonafide sex god and ruler of us all, who also said face masks are largely security theater and of no use to the healthy. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, has written an editorial addressing healthy people wearing masks to protect themselves from COVID-19 and his advice is: don't. Overview of coronavirus insanity. Well worth your time. Leaked data suggests China may have 640,000 coronavirus cases, not 80,000. A leaked database from a Chinese military-run university suggests the country may have at least 640,000 COVID-19 cases — a figure substantially higher than Beijing's dubious claim that it has seen just 80,000 coronavirus infections. The virus tracker, compiled by China's National University of Defense Technology and leaked to Foreign Policy magazine, appears to confirm fears that the nation's Communist government is hiding the true nature of the outbreak that originated in Wuhan late last year. GoFundMe picks up the slack: It's not over, and uncertainty abounds, but Israel's COVID-19 stats are stunning. Lockdown and reopening policies have been inconsistent and illogical. IKEA is doing a roaring trade, but bereaved families were barred from military cemeteries on Memorial Day. We were allowed to run 500 meters from our home, but not to walk 500 meters from our home... unless we were on the way to the shops. Restaurants were allowed to make deliveries, but not to have customers come and pick up takeout food, although some cafes were permitted to sell food and drink to passersby. Supermarkets never closed, even though social distancing rules were not always upheld; open-air food markets have not yet been allowed to re-open, even though they promised to impose social distancing. Tokyo mortality data shows no surge in deaths during pandemic. As of Tuesday [5/12/2020], there were 633 deaths in Japan attributed to the virus, far fewer than the some 80,000 in the U.S, and 32,000 in the U.K., with Japan having the fewest confirmed cases and deaths of any Group of Seven leading democracy. Japanese authorities have placed a high emphasis on identifying infection clusters and limiting their spread. Infectious disease expert says he caught coronavirus through his eyes. An infectious disease expert says he caught the coronavirus through his eyes on a flight to New Orleans that was "packed in like sardines," according to a report Thursday [5/14/2020]. Dr. Joseph Fair — a virologist and epidemiologist who has spent decades studying deadly viruses such as Ebola — was wearing a mask and gloves on the April 24 plane trip to New Orleans but fell critically ill soon after. "I had a mask on. I had gloves on. I did my normal wipes routine, everything like that. But, you know, obviously you can still get it through your eyes," Fair, 42, told NBC's "Today" show in an interview from his hospital bed. He said the airline did not abide by social distancing measures — which he believes led to him catching the virus after droplets touched his eyes. He didn't reveal the name of the airline he flew on or where he was coming from. The number of new coronavirus cases is going down in 28 states as reopening efforts continue. The number of new coronavirus cases reported each day is going down in more than half of US states, according to an analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. In all, 28 states have seen a downward trend, including several that took steps toward reopening relatively early, like Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado. A notable exception is Texas, where case numbers are up between 20% and 30% since the state began lifting stay-home restrictions on May 1. Thursday [5/14/2020] was particularly grim as the Lone Star State recorded 58 new deaths — the state's highest one-day increase in coronavirus fatalities since the pandemic began. The Editor says... How Much Are We Spending To Prevent One COVID-19 Death — Millions, Billions, Trillions? Nobody Knows. "I'd say the cost of a human life, a human life is priceless. Period." That was Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, arguing for stretching the economically catastrophic lockdowns into the foreseeable future. Never mind that more than 105,000 abortions were performed in New York in 2017 alone, at an average cost of about $600. Clearly, human life is not priceless. In a world where resources are limited and everything involves a tradeoff, we are constantly making decisions that put a value on human lives. Federal regulators have even set an amount for what's called the "value of a statistical life." During the Obama administration, the EPA put that value at close to $10 million. Regulations that cost more than that to save one "statistical life" are seen as costing more than they're worth. The governor's unscientific and misleading COVID-19 dials. On April 29, Governor Inslee released a series of dials called the "COVID-19 Risk assessment dashboard," reflecting the data he claims to be using to make decisions about reopening the state economy. He told the reporters that he was doing this "so we can be completely transparent with Washingtonians about how we are making these decisions," which he promised he is doing "based on data and science." Analysis of that dashboard and the dials, however, shows this is simply not true and there are several problems. The dial settings do not match the underlying data trends. There is no data for some of the dials. The dials are extremely imprecise, and some of the metrics the governor uses are meaningless. These flaws are even more obvious when compared to New York's detailed and specific dashboard, which includes clear targets and transparent data. A Farrago of Democrat Delusions Will Bury Them in 2020. To judge from campaign oratory, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that the Democrats and Republicans are contesting for the honor of governing the same country this election year. The Democrats describe a country where, if the administration had acted more quickly and subjected the entire population to constant testing for the coronavirus even before any of its characteristics were known, Americans would have been spared scores of thousands of avoidable deaths. It is a country where there is now no alternative to a near-complete national shutdown while the whole population submits to constant testing and anyone with whom an identified COVID-sufferer has met in the previous 14 days must be hunted down and forcibly quarantined. [...] It is hard to credit that the Democratic Party has adopted this fairy tale until its interpretation of recent legal events is taken on board. Coronavirus pandemic takes huge toll on restaurants and bars. Restaurants and bars have suffered a tremendous financial setback as people stay at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Even under a gradual reopening beginning in June, the industry is projected to lose $240 billion by the end of 2020, according to the National Restaurant Association. An OpenTable report shows that reservations and foot traffic into watering holes and restaurants plummeted 95% through May 13, compared with a year ago. Pelosi Coronavirus Plan Orders Felons, Illegal Aliens to Be Freed from Prison. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) latest Chinese coronavirus relief package includes a mandate that federal inmates, as well as local convicts and illegal aliens, be released from jail so long as a court considers them "non-violent" offenders. Pelosi's plan would order the release of federal prisoners, illegal aliens in federal immigration detention facilities, and local convicts if they are considered by the courts and judicial officers to not be a threat to the community. The Editor says... Why Trump Doesn't Get Rid of Fauci. Why is Anthony Fauci the only medical and health official anybody ever consults? Why wasn't there a panel of doctors the Senate committee talked to yesterday? There's all kinds of different doctors out there. There's all kinds of different health experts. And they've all got their own theories of what's going on here and how to deal with it, what's the best course of action. There's all kinds of thinking about this out there. Why is Anthony Fauci the only health official and doctor that's consulted? Seattle Cop Fired for Protesting Lock Down Just As Jay Inslee Declares He Will Confine People Without Food Who Don't Cooperate With Contact Tracers. Sometimes two stories appear that that fit so nicely together that if you imagine this is all being done by a novelist with a gift for foreshadowing. [On] Monday [5/11/2020], Port of Seattle Police Officer and Special Forces veteran Greg Anderson was terminated. His offense, a viral Instagram post which he refused to take down. You really need to read it. [Video clip] ["]I've seen officers nationwide enforcing tyrannical orders against the people and I'm hoping it's the minority of officers, but I'm not sure anymore. We don't get to violate someone's constitutional rights because somebody in our chain of command tells us otherwise.["] Bingo. Across the nation we have seen police departments willingly accept orders to not apprehend many classes of criminals and divert officers to such important duties as arresting parents at playgrounds, rousting people off the beach, threatening ministers and church congregations with fines and involuntary isolation orders. It is just a matter of time before a SWAT team shows up to shut down a restaurant. Okay, we've already done that [...] Outrageous: Now Leftist L.A. Mayor Proclaims that City 'Will Never Completely Open'. The left-wing mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, has issued the shocking proclamation that the city will "never" fully re-open because of the coronavirus. The liberal mayor insisted this week that the city will never fully reopen until there is a "cure" for the feared coronavirus. This, though, is an utterly unscientific proclamation because science has yet to cure many viruses like the coronavirus. So, if Garcetti is going to wait for a "cure," he may never be ready to allow his city to reopen. An Orgy of Plague Death, Deferred. Judging from the volume of gloomy revelations and dire predictions in the press, it seems there isn't much market for encouraging news these days. We have journalistic integrity alone to thank for the series of reports that, taken together, paint a promising portrait of how the country is now navigating the pandemic. The rate at which the country is conducting and processing COVID-19 tests — one of a few chief metrics that gauge a region's readiness to begin reopening public facilities — is at or approaching comprehensiveness. What's more, the rate at which those tests return positive is on the decline and was, as of last week, below 10 percent. Even some relatively hard-hit parts of the country are now in a position to have more available tests than test-takers. More heartening, the states that have begun to experiment with a phased reopening of public and commercial spaces have benefited doing so. Florida and Georgia, which relied on their publics to abide by guidelines that recommend frequent hand-washing, mask-wearing, and social distancing, have been rewarded for their faith. More than two weeks have passed since these states began cautiously easing their lockdowns, and their respective caseloads continue to decline. Perpetual Lockdown in the City of Angels. The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro joins the podcast today to talk about lockdown from the perspective of the West Coast. With his hometown of Los Angeles now planning to extend shelter-at-home guidelines well into the summer and early fall, what are the prospects that the public will abide by those recommendations? And what are the chances that those who do will preserve their sanity? [Podcast] San Diego Supervisor Says Only 6 Of 194 Coronavirus-Recorded Deaths 'Pure' Coronavirus Deaths. On Tuesday [5/12/2020], San Diego county Supervisor Jim Desmond said after digging into the data that he believes only six of the county's 194 coronavirus-identified deaths are "pure" coronavirus deaths, meaning they died from the virus, not merely with the virus. Desmond was seemingly ruling out deaths from individuals with preexisting conditions. "We've unfortunately had six pure, solely coronavirus deaths — six out of 3.3 million people," Desmond said on a podcast, Armstrong & Getty Extra Large Interviews, according to San Diego Tribune. "I mean, what number are we trying to get to with those odds. I mean, it's incredible. We want to be safe, and we can do it, but unfortunately, it's more about control than getting the economy going again and keeping people safe." Colorado man dies from astounding 0.55 blood alcohol level, coronavirus listed as cause of death. The Colorado Department of Health and Environment is listing coronavirus as cause of death of a Colorado man despite the county coroner ruling that he died of ethanol toxicity with an astounding 0.55 blood-alcohol level. A blood-alcohol level of 0.3 is generally considered fatal. Although the unidentified man tested positive for coronavirus, County Coroner George Deavers said he disagreed with the state's assessment after his investigation with a pathologist revealed that the man's blood-alcohol content was nearly seven times the legal driving limit of 0.08. Florida Gov DeSantis calls out other governors for 'draconian' lockdowns and says 'people have rights'. Florida Gov Ron DeSantis tore into other governors who have ordered 'draconian' lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday as he took further steps to reopen his own state. 'You're not a dictator, you don't have unlimited authority, and people do have rights,' DeSantis said in an interview with Fox & Friends. He made the comments after being asked if he thinks 'some of these governors that are just doing a one-size-fits-all for the entire state' are 'being too strict and going too far.' 'I don't think any governor has the authority to restrict anyone unless there's a direct relationship to combating this virus,' DeSantis replied. Big police presence expected at Michigan protest of stay-at-home order. A demonstration protesting Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order is set to take place on Thursday in the state capital of Lansing, with fears some might carry weapons inside the Capitol building. [...] The protest is organized by Michigan United for Liberty, which says it is a nonprofit with nearly 8,000 members, organized and formed in response to Whitmer's first stay-at-home order in April, which it views as unconstitutional. Dallas doc is treating her patients with hydroxychloroquine with a 100% success rate, but has to lie to pharmacists to prescribe it. Ivette Lozano is a Dallas doctor who is treating her COVID patients with hydroxychloroquine. The recovery success rate of her treatment is 100%! Dr. Lozano is blowing the whistle on the corruption, the misinformation being broadcast by the mainstream media, and the medical establishment's obstruction in recommending against the use of the one known cure for COVID patients — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. The "so-called experts," like Tony Fauci, are recommending against the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID patients, declaring that it has not been sufficiently tested. Dr. Fauci is either a liar or a moron (neither of which is good), as hydroxychloroquine was thoroughly tested in 1955 and approved by the FDA that same year. I'm pretty sure the residents of the graveyard are already immune. Virginia restaurant's creepy plan to use mannequins to enforce social distancing gets mixed response. A Virginia restaurant got some serious social media pushback after it announced how it planned to enforce social distancing when it reopens this Friday. The Inn at Little Washington unveiled a plan that almost instantly conjured up "creepy" feelings online as reactions poured in to the idea of dressed-up mannequins being used to fill space at empty tables. Music store owner weeps as he loses his dream due to COVID lockdown. A Michigan man with a passion for music and teaching children has seen his life's work wiped away with the stroke of a pen by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Steve Walker, the owner of Walker Music & Textiles Co. in Hastings, Michigan, wept as he spoke with WXMI-TV during a recent interview in which he said Michigan's lockdown order had forced him and his wife out of business. 13 May LA County Supervisors: Flashpoint for the Second American Revolution? The LA County Board of Supervisors announced on May 12th a three-month extension of lock down or stay-at-home orders. The LA Times concurrently reported that LA County's death toll stood at 1,613, which is said to be over half of the total for the entire state of California. California has an estimated population of around 40 million people. Which means coronavirus deaths in California represent around 0.000075 [percent] of the population, or about one thousandth of one percent. And for this, all of Los Angeles will be subject to three more months of lockdown. This is absurd and outrageous on its face. Lethality rates for Covid-19 based on actual data do not justify this action in any way, shape, manner or form. There isn't a shred of any 'science' backing up this decision; just political blather about insufficient testing making it too dangerous to conclude the worst is over. No Blue State Bailouts: Hold Democrats Accountable for Democrats' Policies. As red states like Georgia and Texas methodically are ending their lockdowns and opening their economies without the spikes in hospitalizations and deaths that were promised by the progressive doomsday prophets, blue state governors continue applying economic pain to their constituents without any convincing reason to do so. If "flattening the curve" was indeed the objective in states like California, the objective was inarguably met long ago. We could debate whether or not the lockdown was the reason for that outcome, but what is not up for legitimate debate is the fact that hospitals in California being overwhelmed never even came close to becoming a reality. The Peculiar World of Dr. Fauci. A federal bureaucrat for 36 years, Fauci came wrapped in the white coat of medical science but with no claim to infallibility. Back in the 1990s, Fauci was wrong that AIDS would ravage the heterosexual community. In January of 2020, Fauci said it was unclear whether the coronavirus could spread person to person and cited a low risk to the United States. In March, Fauci said the coronavirus might become a "seasonal cyclic thing," with "inevitable" new outbreaks. In press conferences, Dr. Fauci did not underline the most important fact about COVID-19, the true mortality rate. Instead Fauci showed a preference for computer models and their meaningless numbers. Prophecy is not science, but on Tuesday Fauci warned about new outbreaks should the economy be opened up too soon. Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor, called him on it. Paul cited varying mortality figures and decried a singular approach for the entire United States. "I don't think you're the end-all," Paul told Fauci. Fauci's Song and Dance. Dr. Anthony Fauci has never been muzzled by President Trump, as the lamestream media often charged, but maybe he should have been and should be still. Before his tour de farce before the Senate Health Committee, the shy, modest, and unassuming Dr. Fauci emailed a New York Times reporter with a preview of his testimony, an apocalypse now prediction if we don't hang on to and follow his sage and expert advice. [...] Many would argue, and I count myself among them, that Fauci's consistently wrong advice using consistently wrong computer models has led to needless suffering and death. Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show recently asked Dr. Marty Makary, professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. what he thought of Fauci's performance thus far and his assessment was not good: ["]He's a good laboratory virologist. But you know, in terms of preparing this country, he missed it...["] Illinois coroner blames overdose spike in part on virus. There has been a spike in opioid overdose deaths in a northern Illinois county in recent weeks and it could be because of increased isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic, a coroner said Wednesday [5/13/2020]. DuPage County Coroner Richard Jorgensen said 20 people in the county have died from overdoses in the past three weeks, in comparison to 96 in all of 2019. Washington state directs restaurants to log all eat-in customers in order to reopen. Restaurants in Washington state will be required to keep a log of each dine-in customer to facilitate contact tracing during phase two of the state's coronavirus reopening plans. As part of the requirements, the log must be maintained for 30 days and must include each customer's telephone number and email address, and what time they came in to eat, according to officials. "If you have somebody who has become sick and they were sitting right next to a person at a restaurant, to be able to identify that person could be very valuable for their health to try to save their life, and so we put that in place," Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday [5/12/2020]. The Editor says... Update: The Editor says... The Danger of Letting Lab Coats Run the World. It should be clear by now that most of the world's leaders were stampeded over the lockdown cliff like so many lemmings. What caused the stampede is even more remarkable: a tiny coterie of obscure, soft-spoken epidemiologists in white lab coats playing with numbers. Americans trying to keep up with the torrid pace of new developments over the past few months have been hearing about that work — the data-modeling these people do by feeding selected data and a variety of assumptions into a computer. The computer then disgorges diagrams and charts that attempt to describe the future progress of diseases like COVID-19. The most frequently cited COVID-19 modelers are those at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and similar organizations at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Imperial College in London. Does Greta Thunberg have the answer to COVID-19? COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory. World leaders are baffled by how to respond. The science keeps contradicting itself. The world's greatest mathematicians can't keep up with the ever-changing data sets. Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help? Never fear, Greta's here. That's right. Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most. On Thursday evening [5/14/2020], CNN will host a live town hall called 'Coronavirus: Facts and Fears', featuring former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Miss Thunberg. Lockdown Logic. When politicians begin slinging around words like "expert" and "science," any sensible citizen becomes a skeptic. Being elected to public office does not qualify anyone to lecture the public on scientific matters, but this is never pointed out to cable TV viewers tuning in for the daily lectures from Governor Science (D-N.Y.). Andrew Cuomo has a bachelor's degree from Fordham and a law degree from the University of Albany, and if he has any specialized knowledge about infectious diseases, it's only because he has presided over the worst COVID-19 pandemic in the world. On a per-capita basis, nowhere has this virus been more deadly than in New York, yet no one in the media blames this public-health catastrophe on the governor — quite the contrary. What Spread Coronavirus in New York City? The Subways. One hundred eighty-four thousand cases and counting. New York City now has one out of every eight confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in the United States. Far more cases than Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Seattle and Houston combined. More cases than the Lombardy region of Italy, the Community of Madrid and the Province of Tehran combined. [Paywall] Nearly 420,000 of NYC's richest residents have fled the city amid the pandemic [according to] smartphone data. Five percent of New York City's population has fled since the coronavirus pandemic gripped the city, new smartphone data reveals. From March 1 to May 1, about 420,000 residents of the Big Apple left, particularly from the wealthiest neighborhoods, reported The New York Times. While there was relatively little change in some zip codes, others such as SoHo, the West Village, Morningside Heights, the Upper East Side, the Financial District, Midtown, Gramercy and Brooklyn Heights emptied by at least 40 percent. Meanwhile, Manhattan's overall population fell by almost 20 percent. Connecticut
Gov. Ned Lamont fires health commissioner in middle of coronavirus crisis. Connecticut Gov. Ned
Lamont has fired his health commissioner while the Nutmeg State grapples with reopening plans amid the coronavirus
pandemic. Lamont bounced Department of Public Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell late Monday [5/11/2020] and
replaced her with the state's Department of Social Services commissioner, Deidre Gifford. Lamont refused Tuesday to say
why he removed Coleman-Mitchell. "I thought this was a good time to make a change," Lamont told Connecticut
reporters. "I think the job has changed, and I want closer coordination with our different departments."
SGUgZmlyZWQgYSBibGFjayBmZW1hbGUhIFRoYXQncyB0aGUgYmlnIG5ld3MgaW4gdGhpcyBzdG9yeS4= Why airplanes are still packed in the coronavirus pandemic — and is flying still safe? Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and social distancing guidelines advising people stay six feet apart, reports of terrified airline passengers on packed flights continue to emerge. Just this week, passengers on an Iberian Airlines flight became incensed over their crowded flight, which had jammed the plane to 70 percent capacity despite airline guidelines to have the cabin no more than half full. And photos from a United Airlines flight last week showed passengers sitting shoulder-to-shoulder — while a doctor returning from helping fight the virus in New York had a similar experience with the carrier. The Scientism Virus. The perception that science is an "objective and verifiable" approach to knowledge, free of bias and beholden to no philosophy is flawed. That scientists have a firm grip on the physical world is not in dispute. But just what it is they are grasping remains unknown, given the necessity of reducing everything to quantifiable data that must fit the given frame of reference. Tailoring data to suit a given aim has a nasty way of endowing nonscientific agendas with false "authenticity." This is how evolution theory becomes evolution fact, how environmentalism turns into "climate change mandate," how theology becomes an asset of politicians... the list of abuses of science to gain advantage and control is long. It is not that science needs to be put down, but that science not be deified or endowed with an authority it cannot possess, a too common belief among the technocrats and academics of our day. One chart exposes the lie behind universal lockdowns. What is the true infection fatality rate of COVID-19, broken down by age and health status? This is a simple question for which the CDC should have a clear answer by now, accompanied by a readable chart — a chart showing everyone's demographic risk assessment so that we can better target our infection mitigation efforts. Yet it's the one thing our government hasn't done. Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order; Dane County institutes local order. In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state's stay-at-home order, handing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a defeat in his administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans and some business owners cheered the ruling as a win for liberty, while local officials in Dane County and Milwaukee immediately announced they would be enforcing the state's rules at the local level, creating a de facto regional approach to combating the spread of the disease. In its order, the Supreme Court said Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm exceeded her authority with her sweeping order, declaring the mandate "invalid, and therefore, unenforceable," meaning some businesses and restaurants could open immediately. But some counties, such as Dane, have already issued replacement orders enforcing the elements of Palm's order, and therefore must remain closed. The wild west wasn't always safe, but at least those who lived there were free people who didn't live on government handouts. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Orders All Residents Must Wear Face Coverings When They Leave Home. Los Angeles Democrat Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Wednesday that all residents will be forced to wear face coverings when they leave their homes[.] "We're requiring all Angelenos to wear face coverings when they leave the house," Garcetti said in a statement. "There are exceptions in place for small children or those with disabilities." "Our Safer at Home order will remain in place beyond May 15. Depending on public health conditions, we will continue to adjust the order to safely allow more businesses to operate and more people to get back to work," Garcetti added. Family: Woman died during childbirth from treatable condition due to hospital lockdown. An expectant mother in New York City apparently fell victim to the health care industry's prioritizing the coronavirus above all else when she died after giving birth to her son last month. WABC-TV reported that Amber Isaac, 26, was excited to give birth to a baby boy, but experienced treatable pregnancy complications that were unable to be resolved, as she was denied an in-person doctor appointment and was instead offered telehealth services.
The Editor says... Gym owner says he'll reopen Monday, whether or not Murphy allows it. A business owner in Bellmawr has decided to "take matters into our own hands" by opening his gym in defiance of a state-ordered closing of nonessential businesses. Ian Smith, co-owner of Atilis Gym, said he plans to open at 8 a.m. Monday [5/18/2020] for members. Smith said they've decided to limit capacity to 20% or about 44 people at a time, but he expects "thousands" of people to show up after a primetime national television interview Wednesday. The Wuhan Virus Lockdown is a Colossal Blunder. The Wuhan Virus pandemic is not the most significant crisis in our nation's history. It isn't even the greatest public health crisis in our history. But with the imposition of a near total national lockdown it is undoubtedly the greatest marginalization of personal liberty in American history. Over the centuries, in virtually all societies, people known to be infected by various deadly diseases were confined and isolated in order to mitigate the spread and protect the rest of society. Never have we confined the entire population ostensibly for the same objective. [...] But one question that the powers-to-be never asked themselves at the time was: How do we get out of this? Now they find themselves trapped by their own decisions. [...] What are the limits to the things that the State can legitimately do to a people living in a constitutional republic originally established on the basis of guaranteeing individual freedom? Lock down failure. First we were told that it was necessary to impose "social distancing rules" and shut down the economy for a few weeks in order to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by a sudden influx of COVID-19 cases, predicted to possibly be in the millions. [...] Fortunately, the prediction that millions would become sick was so wrong it is now considered a joke. Moreover, it was quickly obvious that the healthcare system was not going to be overwhelmed. So of course, we can now end these stringent social distancing rules and the lock downs, right? Hah. Now we are being told that the new social rules and the government-imposed economic shut downs are necessary to stop the spread of the disease, to protect us from further infection, to make us all safe from coronavirus, forever. And if we do have to ease the lock downs at all, we have to do it as slowly as possible, and to change our behaviors forever. Masks must be worn, businesses can no longer serve as many at a time, and we must change and limit our freedoms, just because we might possibly save one life! Cuomo's COVID-19 Panic Killed Thousands In Nursing Homes. In New York, 5% of the seniors living in nursing homes have died from COVID-19. In Florida, the disease has claimed less than 0.6% of those in nursing homes. What explains the vast difference in death rates among this vulnerable population? New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo panicked about COVID-19, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not. Over the weekend, Democrat Cuomo announced that nursing homes would no longer have to accept patients discharged from hospitals who were COVID-19 positive. Which leads to a question: Why in the world were they required to do so before? The reason was that Cuomo was panicked about hospitals being overrun. So to clear beds, he told nursing homes that they had to take the elderly, whether or not they had COVID-19. St. Louis County Sues to Put Fitness Center Out of Business in Legal Show of Force. The House of Pain gyms are in danger of going out of business and declaring bankruptcy because St. Louis County Executive Director Sam Page wants to show everybody who's boss. St. Louis County filed suit in St. Louis County Court asking for an injunction to close two House of Pain fitness centers in Chesterfield and Maryland Heights, Missouri. The suit alleges House of Pain is open for business despite an executive order by County Executive Director Sam Page that all persons must stay in their own homes and all businesses he deems "non-essential" must close. Los Angeles Will Keep Stay-Home Order For Another Three Months. This is nuts. According to the Los Angeles Times city officials plan to keep the stay-at-home order in place for an additional three months. However, this decision does provide further evidence the deep blue regions plan on maximizing economic damage. The odd dynamic is, without a massive local bailout, and funding for the citizens who are on lockdown, how could they possibly even attempt to pull this off? Is this LA plan of action dependent on Pelosi's brand new scheme for a $3 trillion spending package? We now know that the majority who contract COVID-19 are asymptomatic. That changes everything. Initially, the "experts" used the fear of asymptomatic transmission as a means of pushing for universal lockdown. But that only makes sense if the number of asymptomatic are a minority and we are at the beginning of the transmission phase, in which such lockdown could work. Now we see the opposite is true. The overwhelming majority of those infected are asymptomatic, which grows to an absolute super-majority when you factor in the mildly symptomatic. The fatality rate is therefore very small and very confined to a known population. Thus, it makes no sense to lock down younger and healthier people who overwhelmingly don't get seriously ill, much less deathly ill, even if they contract the virus. Moreover, the fact that this has spread so far and wide and most are asymptomatic demonstrates that there is no longer any "spread" to stop and we were months too late in trying to stop it even if we wanted to. [...] By going back to normal with basic precautions for most of the population, we will be able to achieve herd immunity much less painfully than previously thought while shielding the more vulnerable population. How 'Flatten The Curve' Became 'Slow The Spread' And Proved 'Prolong The Pain' Is The Goal. As part of the bait-and-switch committed by those who derive power from our fear, the phrase "flatten the curve" quietly became "slow the spread" thus proving that "prolong the pain" is really all they're interested in. One of the many problems is that the experts coronated by the media represent only one side of the medical community's thinking, but are treated by the media as carrying 100% of the medical community's authority. And that's because the media's preferred experts are the ones who traffic in the most fear, and whose insistences assure the most collateral damage for our nation. It's really no different than what they did with global cooling. I mean global warming. I mean climate change. Dr. Fauci has not been elected to anything. He should not be dictator during this coronavirus crisis. Dr. Tony Fauci appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday [5/12/2020] to testify before members of Congress. The topic, of course, was the ongoing debate over when and how to reopen the country at schools and workplaces amid the coronavirus pandemic, when to do it, and how quickly. Dr. Fauci left no doubts about how he feels on that question. Opening up now, he said, after just two months of lockdowns, is a very risky, indeed a dangerous, prospect. Letting Americans work and learn once again could be a catastrophe, he said. And he wasn't just referring to a handful of hotspots that have been hit especially hard. Entire states, Fauci said, likely need to remain closed. Protect Your Family From Fearmonger Fauci. There is nothing public health fossil Dr. Anthony Fauci can do or say to stop me from making the best choices for my children's health, sanity and resilience. He appeared before the Senate on Tuesday to heckle states like Colorado not to get back to business — back to life — too soon and too quickly. "Needless suffering and death" will occur, he told The New York Times. "I think we better be careful (that) we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune from the deleterious effects," he testified. Irked by Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul's very necessary reminder that no federal infectious disease bureaucrat is the "end-all" decider of our fate, Fauci warned against reopening schools because children in New York are "presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome." How dare you accuse us parents of being "cavalier" with our children's health, Fauci, when you are scaring them with dubious, unverified claims connecting a few cases of an alleged mystery pediatric disease to the coronavirus? No more anonymous dining in Washington: 'More Off Base Than Your Average Epidemiologist': Tucker Cites Dr. Fauci's 'Buffoon Level' Mistakes, Questions 'Powerful' Role. Fox News host Tucker Carlson went through a laundry list of Dr. Anthony Fauci's "buffoon level" mistakes during a lengthy Tuesday night "Tucker Carlson Tonight" monologue. Carlson cited mistake after mistake to make his case that Fauci has been "more off base than your average epidemiologist," yet has become one of the most "powerful people in the world." Pritzker says he'll consider withholding federal funds from local governments that don't follow his reopening plan. Some communities around the state have made it known they plan to open for business soon, despite a stay-at-home order and the governor's reopening plan. Restaurants and bars have opened in Quincy. Police there say they will only issue warnings and let the state handle any further enforcement. During his daily news conference on Tuesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he would consider withholding federal funding to communities that won't follow his plan. Sweden Cared More About Islamophobia Than Saving Elderly in Nursing Homes From Coronavirus. The debate over the Swedish model has been concentrated around whether countries should battle the coronavirus pandemic by locking down everything or adopting the more liberal approach. This debate is as irrelevant to the actual causes of coronavirus deaths as the inhabitants of Constantinople debating whether angels have genders while the Islamic invaders were preparing to breach the city walls. Preventing teenagers from going to the beach, as many American states and European countries have chosen to do, is going to have a very limited impact on a disease that is killing people in nursing homes. While Sweden does have a higher rate of virus deaths than Norway or Finland, it's not because the bars are open. 90% of the dead in Sweden were over 70 and half of them lived in special housing. Sweden has a higher rate of deaths in care homes than Norway or Finland, and lockdown enthusiasts have struggled to explain why keeping bars open would be killing people in housing for the elderly. Los Angeles County 'with all certainty' will keep lockdown orders in place through July. Los Angeles County's stay-at-home orders will "with all certainty" be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday [5/13/2020]. Ferrer, though she didn't issue an official order, said that timeline would only change if there was a "dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand." L.A. County could keep stay-at-home orders in place well into summer, depending on conditions. Los Angeles County's stay-at-home orders will "with all certainty" be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday [5/12/2020]. Ferrer later added that even if the orders remain in place through the summer, restrictions will be "gradually relaxed" under a five-step plan. LA County's stay-at-home order will likely remain in place for next three months, officials say. Los Angeles County officials are recommending that the stay-at-home order be extended for the next three months as the region continues efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. At a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, county Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said the order will "with all certainty" be extended unless there is a "dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand." Ferrer's comments came during a debate over how long the county's moratorium on evictions should remain in place. Franklin Graham, faith leaders ask Congress to grant legal immunity to religious organizations reopening amid pandemic. A long list of religious leaders signed onto a letter sent Tuesday requesting that Congress' next coronavirus relief package include legal immunity for religious organizations reopening amid an onslaught of new regulations surrounding the pandemic. "[I]n the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a proliferation of complex and often contradictory orders and guidelines at the state, county, and local levels, each purporting to govern when and how to reopen," read the letter, signed by pastor Franklin Graham, actor Kirk Cameron, and dozens of pastors. In total, the letter has 300 signatories. Pa. officials revoked coronavirus shutdown business waivers the night before publishing list of recipients. Late last Thursday evening, Tiffany Kuhn was at her home outside Harrisburg reading an e-book on her cell phone when a notification popped up that she had an email from Gov. Tom Wolf's administration. When she opened her inbox, Kuhn said, her blood pressure "went through the roof." The letter from the administration, sent at 9:30 p.m., informed her that the waiver she had received six weeks earlier to operate her mobile notary business during the pandemic had suddenly, and without explanation, been rescinded. The fresh air rebellion. [Scroll down] In Huntington Beach, California, "surfers walked right by law-enforcement officials telling them the beach was closed this weekend. Cyclists zipped across bike paths that were supposed to be off limits," the Wall Street Journal reported May 3. Golf course owners in Massachusetts vowed to defy the lockdown and reopen. New Yorkers flocked to city parks, which remained open, but so did police officers bent on enforcing social distancing rules. With salons and barbershops still closed, hairdressers have been making unauthorized house calls. Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther chose jail rather than apologize to a judge for resuming her business. As a market economy, suppressing such interactions can be, in many cases, plainly unsustainable for an extended lockdown. Dallas salon owner jailed for keeping her business open got $18K PPP loan from feds. The Texas salon owner jailed for opening up shop in violation of the state's coronavirus rules said that she received $18,000 in stimulus funds from the federal government prior to her court date. But Shelley Luther, the owner of Salon la Mode in Dallas, blasted the feds for the "confusion" over the Paycheck Protection Program, saying the cash was dropped into her account without warning or instructions, weeks after she applied for it. "All of a sudden, two days before my court trial, money drops in my account and I had no idea what it was," Luther said in an interview on Fox News Tuesday morning. Rush Limbaugh: Blue State Governors Want To 'Wreck The Economy' To Hurt Trump, And Make Red States Pay. Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh speculated that blue state governors are keeping their states locked down for "purely political" reasons. Discussing the issue of so-called red states being the majority of those opening up their economies on Tuesday's "The Rush Limbaugh Show," Limbaugh noted that, while that will serve to "get the economy kickstarted," the capital they create will go to those who refuse to get things moving. "The red states are gonna create capital and money to transfer to pay these people their stupid welfare costs and whatever else they're using to bleed this country dry, while their population sits home, doesn't work, waits for the federal check to show up — and they sit around and they trash the supposedly reckless red states. I cannot tell you how this irritates me," he said. While red-state governors "are doing the right thing," Limbaugh observed, "it's the exact opposite" in Democratic Party-run states. Republicans blast Pelosi coronavirus relief package laden with 'wish list' projects. Republicans are criticizing House Democrats for their newly unveiled coronavirus relief bill, which is packed with funding for projects such as $50 million in "environmental justice grants." The $3 trillion package revealed Tuesday immediately drew the ire of Republicans, including a tweet from the official Twitter account of the Senate GOP, which accused Democrats of "trying to take advantage of a crisis." "1,815 pages, 347,144 words, 44,803 paragraphs. It took us over 6 MINUTES just to scroll to the end. Even the media calls it a 'wish list' that will 'never become law.' THIS is what trying to take advantage of a crisis looks like," the tweet read. Brushfires: Little guys revolt all over in blue states with heavy lockdown orders. It's not just Elon Musk. Small fry and little people who pay taxes are defying blue-state lockdown orders and reopening for business, with or without the state's blessing. And quite often, their local governments and more important, cops, are behind them. [...] Even the cops want nothing to do with this, and when that happens in a tinpot-dictatorship, a regime usually falls. For a City Already in a 'Death Spiral,' What's After Lockdown? In Farmington, N.M., the economy was already struggling. Now everyone knows someone who is out of work because of the coronavirus. Very few say they know anyone who got sick. Of Pandemics and the Partisan Divide. [T]he pandemic has provided a particularly stark view of the growing chasm between their governing philosophies. This ideological rift is nowhere more apparent than in the reopening debate. If you reside in a Democrat-dominated state, for example, you probably still labor under the yoke of a stay-at-home order. If you live in a Republican-run state, your freedom of movement is likely to be far less restricted. This policy difference is not about science or public health. It is a manifestation of widely divergent perspectives on the roles of government and the individual in shaping society. [...] A number of Republican Governors have been carpet bombed by the Democrats and the "news" media for permitting most of their residents to return to something resembling their normal lives. This is particularly true of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Never mind that new cases peaked in all three states by the middle of April, and their deaths per million are far below most of their Democratic counterparts. Gov. Tom Wolf denounces Pa. counties reopening without his approval as 'cowardly,' 'selfish'. Gov. Tom Wolf sternly rebuked Pennsylvania counties and businesses that plan to reopen without state approval, calling it a "cowardly act" that could cost those areas not only lives but federal stimulus money, too. Over the past week, a host of lawmakers, district attorneys, and law enforcement agencies in counties still under strict COVID-19 closure orders said they planned to defy Mr. Wolf and unilaterally move themselves to the next phase of the governor's reopening plan. State officials have given 37 counties the go-ahead to ease restrictions, lifting the stay-at-home order and allowing some businesses to reopen if they follow certain safety precautions. Gov. Tom Wolf warns of consequences for Pennsylvania counties planning to reopen early. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf issued a warning Monday [5/11/2020] about the consequences for counties and businesses that plan to reopen in defiance of his shutdown order. State lawmakers and county leaders in several Susquehanna Valley counties have sent Wolf letters informing him of their intention to move to the yellow phase of his reopening plan, with or without his permission. During a news conference, Wolf urged Pennsylvanians to stay the course in the fight against the coronavirus. He said reopening early is a cowardly act. The Editor says... Attorney: Shiawassee judge denies shutdown of Owosso barbershop. The most defiant challenge of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's pandemic-prompted restrictions on businesses has not come from a titan of industry but from a 77-year-old barber and occasional novelist in a small town between Lansing and Flint. Still dressed in his hair-cutting smock and with clients waiting inside, Karl Manke choked up Monday [5/11/2020] when he was cheered by the more than 50 people, mostly unmasked, carrying American Gadsden flags and chanting his name. Pennsylvania District Attorneys: 'We Will Not Prosecute' Businesses Defying Governor's Orders. An increasing number of Pennsylvania district attorneys are stating that their offices will not prosecute businesses for violating Gov. Tom Wolf's (D) orders restricting them from reopening. "People are being smart, wearing masks, and maintaining social distance. Using criminal sanctions would not be helpful," Dauphin County district attorney Fran Chardo said in a Saturday press release, which indicated that prosecution would only occur in an "extraordinary circumstances." Dr. Anthony Fauci TestiLies to Senate. Anticipating the first step in the phase-three effort to remove President Trump from office, today at 10am ET Dr. Anthony Fauci will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. CTH anticipates Fauci will position the reopening of the economy as a likely public health catastrophe; thus paving the way for Trump removal 3.0. In addition to sketchy Fauci, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Health Adm. Brett Giroir and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to appear. However, the pre-planned media narrative will be led by Fauci. People [are[ flouting lockdown as patience wanes. We can keep debating the merits of keeping society locked down versus reopening the economy amid the coronavirus. There are no easy answers, as we must weigh economic ruin, increased deaths of despair, and a coming mental health crisis against the potential death toll from a raging pandemic. But at a certain point, the debate becomes null and void when people simply get fed up and stop doing it regardless of what the talking heads on television and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have to say about it. A new poll suggests we're inching closer to that point. The Wuhan Virus, Globalism and the November Election. [Scroll down] Calling the Covid-19 the Wuhan Flu was not a racial slur. It is now a medical fact. Personal and national culpability and accountability are necessary to redress any global fail. The World Health Organization, a UN appendage, actually misled the world and thus enabled the viral spread of the new bug by pandering to China's political sensitivities. The open borders policy in Europe also, in retrospect, now has all the earmarks of a death wish. Five of the eight worst Covid national victims are in the Schengen Zone. If Turkey and Russia were included in the EU totals, seven of eight European countries would top the global infection rate and fatalities list. Ironically, the United States, the biggest monetary contributor to WHO, now leads the world on the Covid infection and death charts. Elon Musk Threatens To Flee Virus Infecting California — And, No, It Isn't COVID-19. California has gone through waves of corporate out-migration as local regulatory burdens, high tax rates and a generally unfriendly business environment spur disgusted owners and CEOs to head for more-business-friendly states, including Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Texas. [Tesla founder Elon] Musk is a good example of this thinking. He's angered, as are many business owners, by the high-handed local mandarins who have decreed his factory must remain shut indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has become a serious problem as states struggle to reopen and get their economies moving again. With 33 million people now jobless nationwide, it's an open question whether the economic damage done by the outbreak will exceed the human toll of the virus. 'Western Pact' states seek $1 trillion more in federal aid. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday [5/11/2020] that he and his counterparts in Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Nevada were calling for the federal government to provide an extra $1 trillion in aid to their coronavirus-ravaged states. "These budget shortfalls are so much bigger than any state," the governor said at his daily coronavirus briefing, Deadline reported, referring to the Western pact, an alliance to increase the states' buying power for medical supplies. Much of the aid will go to help public safety officials like policemen, firefighters and EMT's, as well as to schools. The Editor says... Wisconsin GOP lawmakers urge Washington to reject any 'bailout' money for Illinois: 'Our neighbors to the south have spent decades spending and borrowing recklessly'. Members of Wisconsin's Republican legislative majority are asking the state's congressional delegation to oppose using any federal coronavirus relief package money to help bail out Illinois and other states with a history of "reckless budgeting." The letter, sent Friday [5/8/2020] by 43 GOP lawmakers to Wisconsin's two U.S. senators and seven House members, acknowledged states and the nation are facing "unprecedented challenges" dealing with COVID-19. "These responses to the disease have led to drastic changes in budget projections for states around the country: sales tax collections are down, income tax deadlines have been extended, unemployment rates are at historic levels and more businesses are permanently closing every day," the letter said. More evidence that the virus is perceived as no big deal: California inmates tried to infect themselves with coronavirus for freedom. A group of California inmates are accused of trying to intentionally infect themselves with the coronavirus — thinking they would be set free if they contracted the contagion, authorities said Monday [5/11/2020]. Prisoners at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic were filmed sharing a disposable cup and sniffing a used face mask in order to accomplish their alleged plot, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. "Somehow, there was some mistaken belief among the inmate population that if they tested positive, that there was a way to force our hand and somehow release more inmates out of our jail environment — and that's not going to happen," Villanueva said at a press briefing. COVID-19 and the Normalization of Mass Surveillance. Governments, scientists, and product designers are racing to find technological fixes for the spread of COVID-19. Some of these solutions — such as more efficient mass-production of masks, more accurate and prevalent testing, and efforts to create a vaccine — are valid and vital, and defend the health of citizens and strength of society without violating civil liberties. Masks can arguably even help promote freedom by disguising protestors and flustering increasingly prevalent public facial recognition cameras. And there are other key antiviral tactics that don't rely on cutting-edge technology: handwashing, social distancing, and contact tracing. Contact tracing is the important practice of interviewing the sick to find out who they've met in recent days, so that health authorities can warn them, so they can take proper precautions, isolate themselves, and seek medical help if necessary. It is a resource-intensive practice, requiring tens of thousands of human "contact tracers" for large populations. Silicon Valley has clamored that there must be ways to automate this process. At least two dozen governments are already experimenting with or rolling out contact tracing phone apps. White House advisor Navarro threatens coronavirus retaliation. White House advisor Peter Navarro on Monday [5/11/2020] threatened retaliation against China for its role in the spread of the coronavirus pandemic as tensions between the world's two largest economies continue to rise. "A bill has to come due for China," Navarro said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "It's not a question of punishing them, it's a question of holding China accountable, the Chinese Communist Party accountable." Navarro is one of the chief China hawks in President Donald Trump's administration and serves as the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Michigan Judge Sides with Barber, Rejects Gretchen Whitmer Demand to Close Shop. A Michigan judge has denied a motion made by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration that an Owosso barber close up shop during the coronavirus outbreak. Great Lakes News was outside Karl Manke's Barber & Beauty Shop on Monday [5/11/2020] when the ruling came down. [Video clip] Reporter Katie Heid said the judge denied the state's claim that the 77-year-old Manke to close his shop because he was allegedly in violation of Whitmer's stay-at-home order. Eighteen Republican attorneys general press Congress to hold hearings on China's coronavirus 'deceit'. More than a dozen Republican attorneys general called on Congress to conduct hearings about China's "deceit" during the coronavirus outbreak. Eighteen state chief legal officers sent a letter to congressional leaders over the weekend asking them to look into the disinformation tactics put out by the Chinese government when the virus first broke out in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The letter, led by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, accused China of working with the World Health Organization to mislead the world intentionally about the origins of the outbreak. The letter was directed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the heads of the House and Senate Foreign Relations committees, and other leaders. Coronavirus: Ohio to test 1,200 residents at random. Around 1,200 Ohioans might soon find out that they have been selected to be tested for the coronavirus as part of a statewide study. The Ohio Department of Health plans to screen 1,200 residents in their homes for the virus through a nasal swab test and through an antibody blood test. Screening could start as soon as next week, department spokeswoman Melanie Amato said via email. The Editor says... Coexistence with China or Cold War II? Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. "There is a significant amount of evidence" that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week. Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge: "This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this... It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source." There is talk on Capitol Hill of suspending sovereign immunity so China may be sued for the damages done by the virus that produced a U.S. shutdown and a second Great Depression where unemployment is projected to reach near the 25% of 1933. The Trump campaign has begun to target the Democratic nominee as "Beijing Biden" for his past collusion with China and his attack on Trump for "hysterical xenophobia" when Trump ended flights from China. What is the historical truth? Coronavirus reopening — Democrats resist, Americans persist. Here's why. Can you feel it? Can you feel the pace quickening? More cars on the road, more people in the stores, more ads crowding your inbox? Activity is picking up, even in my state of New York, where we're still under lockdown. It's palpable; Americans everywhere are going back to work. Democrats don't like that one little bit. The worse things are, the better their chances in November. Restaurant Renewal. The Covid-19 lockdown gravely threatens New York City's vast and indispensable restaurant industry. But while some of our 26,000 eateries won't return, and some owners face economic ruin, it by no means follows that we'll be left with nowhere to eat — or that new places will be inferior to old ones. Georgia kicks off chilling door-to-door COVID-19 blood collections. Let the government-pressed coronavirus-tied blood collections of citizens begin. And begin they have. They have in Georgia at least, where the state's Department of Public Health recently announced, in cooperation with both Fulton County and Dekalb counties' Boards of Health, that "to learn more about the spread of COVID-19," an "investigation" has commenced — and it's an "investigation" that's leading government officials to make random stops at randomly selected residences and ask random citizens for, get this, their blood. Citizens' DNA in the hands of unelected government officials. Hmm, what could go wrong there? The Editor says... 'Mask Shaming' is Just Another Form of Virtue Signaling. It's become entertainment in America to express one's moral superiority by calling out fellow citizens for being unmasked. "Mask shaming" as a political sport is one thing. The "tsk-tsking" from the media when Mike Pence went maskless at the Mayo Clinic just gave the press another opportunity to bash Trump. But what about private, ordinary citizens calling out others who aren't wearing a mask? What [...] business is it of theirs? Especially since wearing a mask is far less than a guarantee you won't get the coronavirus. January 5, 2017: A Day that Should Live in Infamy. [Scroll down] Rebellions against the stringent gubernatorial flu orders are growing and spreading from state to state. This week's heroine was Shelley Luther, a Dallas, Texas hairdresser who reopened her shop following the CDC guidelines. After her arrest, Judge Eric Moyé accused her of selfishness and demanded she apologize and shutter the salon. She explained that she was not being selfish, that she had to reopen so she could feed her kids and her staff could feed theirs. The judge, who seems to have studied at the feet of Anatole France ("In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.") gave her a stiff fine and jail sentence. Texas's attorney general and governor said she should be released, and the Texas Supreme Court so ordered. In a telling mark of how sick we all are of this nonsense, the last time I saw it, a Go Fund Me site set up for her raised within days $500,000 for her defense. Over half of all U.S. coronavirus deaths have occurred in just 5 states. Well over half of all documented coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred in just five states, a statistic which mirrors the heavily concentrated and localized nature of COVID-19 outbreaks in several other countries. Of the nearly 80,000 deaths from the virus in this country as of Saturday afternoon [5/9/2020], nearly 48,700, or about 60 percent, had occurred in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania. New York remains the hardest-hit state of any in the country by far, having logged nearly 27,000 deaths as of Saturday afternoon. The next-hardest-hit state, New Jersey, had recorded over 9,100. Tennessee Police Arrest Citizen Who Escaped Forced COVID-19 Detention Camp. Comrades, some readers might not be aware the Ministry of COVID compliance has set up quarantine camps, detention facilities in various areas. Formerly free citizens who test positive for COVID-19 are forcibly taken to the quarantine camps and held under guard. Last week one of the non-compliant captives demanded his freedom; he climbed the fence and escaped detention. After a manhunt in Tennessee the subversive citizen was recaptured, arrested and brought back to the detention facility. Alarmed yet? We're Winning. Sure, we have the tattered remnants of the bat biter flu pandemic to deal with, but no one not pre-programed to hate Trump is buying that he and not the ChiCom's inexplicable desire to munch on pangolins is to blame. The Free States are mostly coming out of this nonsense, having realized that a bug that targets the elderly, subway riders, and the George Conway carb-curious demographic is best handled by having those people chill at home while the rest of us go back to earning a living. We were told that our selfish desire not to go bankrupt was going to kill grandmas across the fruited plain, but like so many expert opinions parroted by the Democrats' gimp media lately, that was malarkey, and not Grandpa Badfinger's ironic kind. Remember how happy spring breakers were gonna kill us all? How requiring Wisconsinites to show up to vote was pretty much genocide? [...] None of that was a thing. None of that was even remotely a thing. What was a thing was the New York subways being a festering petri dish of pestilence. And what was another thing was the genius move of requiring that nursing homes take back in sick people. Remember when Gov. Kemp was excoriated for re-opening Georgia? Are you wondering how that has worked out? It was just over 2 weeks ago that Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp was a monster with blood about to be on his hands for greatly loosening the restrictions on residents of the Peach State? Even President Trump joined in, criticizing this move as risky. Since then, we haven't seen much about the disaster that was supposed to automatically result from ignoring the gospel of Dr. Fauci. Which tells you what has happened in this era of corrupt and dishonest propaganda media. Amanda Prestigiacomo of the Daily Wire fills in the details that any reasonable person would infer from the media blackout: [...] Pritzker defends extended order, faces salon owner lawsuit. Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended his stay-at-home order and incremental plans to reopen, saying Sunday that Illinois residents have to change the way things are done until COVID-19 is "eradicated." The Democrat's comments on CNN's "State of the Union" came as he faced a southern Illinois salon owner's lawsuit, criticism from some Republicans who deem his plans an overreach and a Chicago Tribune editorial accusing him of being "cautious to the extreme." The Editor says... 5 SoCal counties have 71% of all California COVID-19 cases — and 80% of hospitalizations. New California data released Saturday [5/9/2020] show how the majority of cases and deaths, as well as current hospitalizations, are concentrated in Southern California. California on Saturday said it has 2,678 fatalities from coronavirus, up 93 from a day prior, a rise of 3.6%. There are now 64,561 confirmed cases statewide, up 2,049 cases from a day earlier, a rise of 3.3% A Pandemic of Illogic. When dealing with politicians, the less logical the statement or action, the more political the statement or action. This truism is notably evident as we contend with the pandemic of COVID-19 and its attendant pandemic of illogic. For example, Governors Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.), and Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), have instituted continuing lockdowns — some of questionable state and federal constitutional validity — to defeat the novel coronavirus. In Whitmer's case, she has been notoriously lax about providing the sources of and the actual data driving her decision — now a unilateral one — to extend her emergency powers over the citizenry, not for the purpose of "flattening the curve" (which already has been done), but to prevent a hypothetical "second wave." One need not be a constitutional scholar to be concerned by the threat of a governor unilaterally imposing constitutionally dubious emergency powers to stop a hypothetical event; however, to be the victim of the pandemic of illogic, it seems one's governor is required not to give a whit. Nearly 50 Percent of California Coronavirus Deaths in Nursing Homes. Data released from the California Departments of Health and Social Services on Friday [5/8/2020] show that nursing home deaths represent almost half of the coronavirus fatalities in the state. Ben Carson: This economic crisis was intentional. HUD secretary and member of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Ben Carson, weighs in on unemployment rate hitting record high on 'Fox and Friends.' [Video clip] Ted
Cruz, at Shelley Luther's Dallas salon, shows solidarity and gets first haircut in months. Sen. Ted Cruz
flew to Dallas for his first haircut in three months on Friday — at the hair salon whose owner just spent two days
in jail for defying emergency restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. The Editor says... Hours after Pittsburgh dumped sand on skate park, a pile of sand was left at city hall. Skateboarders may have drawn a line in the sand after the city of Pittsburgh shut down their neighborhood skateboard park. Only hours after Pittsburgh dumped sand on a skate park to prevent people from skating, a pile of sand was deposited at Pittsburgh's city hall in what very well could be a dirty form of revenge. The Polish Hill skate park was transformed into a sandbox after Pittsburghers continued to use the park despite the stay-at-home lockdown. Pittsburgh Department of Public Works Director Mike Gable said they locked up the park, but people cut the locks to gather at the park. Narrative Fail: 15 Days After Lockdown Ease, Georgia Sees Lowest Day Of COVID Hospitalizations. Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia celebrated the state's lowest number of hospitalized novel coronavirus patients and the fewest number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators on Saturday, 15 days since the Republican loosened lockdown restrictions in the face of persistent attacks from the mainstream media and the public disapproval of President Donald Trump. Respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 "typically appear an average of 5-6vdays after exposure, but may appear in as few as 2 days or as long as 14 days after exposure," per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UC San Diego Health notes. Tucker Carlson evaluates Fauci's job performance: 'A ruthless political operator'. Tucker Carlson continued to question infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and his impact on the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus crisis. The Fox News host suggested Fauci, a member of President Trump's coronavirus task force, "seems to be a very political man" during commentary on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Friday [5/8/2020] as he spoke with a professor at Johns Hopkins University about Fauci's performance. Media Find In Coronavirus A Crisis They Can't Waste. Are we alone in feeling as if the media are enthusiastic cheerleaders of the coronavirus pandemic? We can't be the only ones who sense the glee with which the news about the body count, the Democrats' wailing over the president's handling of the crisis, and the "new normal" are delivered across our screens. Nor is it possible that no one else is noticing that the states that believe reopening is necessary to survival are being portrayed as communities of rubes who deserve to suffer the sting of mass death. The coronavirus coverage goes beyond the "if it bleeds it leads" tenet of sensationalized media coverage. It's a handy means for them to extend the cultural and political divides that have made the 50 states less united than they have been in any of our lifetimes. Gov. Cuomo admits he was wrong to order nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has finally admitted — tacitly and partially, anyway — the mistake that was state health chief Howard Zucker's order that nursing homes must admit coronavirus-positive patients. On Sunday [5/10/2020], Cuomo announced a new regulation: Such patients must now test negative for the virus before hospitals can return them to nursing homes. Yet the gov also admitted that COVID-19 cases might still go to the facilities via other routes, and didn't explicitly overrule Zucker's March 25 mandate that homes must accept people despite their testing status — indeed, couldn't even require a test pre-admission. Cuomo's nursing home reversal is too little, too late for those now dead. Unfortunately, [Governor] Cuomo's pride and political calculations don't allow him to admit error even as he finally reverses one of the mostly deadly policy mistakes in New York history. Nursing homes and rehabilitation centers have tallied more than 5,000 coronavirus deaths, yet the governor accepts zero responsibility despite his March 25th order forcing them to take infected patients from hospitals. Now he says they no longer have to do that, announcing Sunday that "a hospital cannot discharge a person who is COVID positive to a nursing home." Indeed, the initial order denied nursing homes the right even to ask if patients being sent by hospitals had tested positive for the coronavirus. Now hospitals must do discharge tests and only those who are negative can be referred to nursing homes. Americans are too afraid of risk. What we need in this pandemic is balance. All this economic ruin is due to the governors shutting down commerce to fight the coronavirus, to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But maybe extreme social isolation of the young and healthy wasn't the wisest course. [...] The economy is in a tailspin. And you don't start the economy up again by saying a few magic words and snapping your fingers. The economy isn't a light switch. You don't turn it back on once it's been shut down. And we don't have years to wait for a vaccine. Already people are pushing against the shutdown, defying government orders, and the more idiotic politicians will push back with law enforcement, which will just increase the chaos. Thousands in Germany protest against coronavirus restrictions. Thousands of people took to the streets of Stuttgart and Berlin on Saturday (May 9) to protest against the measures taken by the German government in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus. [Video clip] The Editor says... A New Day in a Fearful America. Much like America in the days and months following the attacks of September 11th, our friends, family, and neighbors are beginning to ask how far we need to go in order to win the war against the "Invisible enemy" as President Trump has described it. The cost of this war has already cut deep as nearly one in four American adults have found themselves forced out of work. Trillions of dollars in stimulus have been printed, certainly making the stock market appear healthier than ever while the working class has certainly felt anything but "stimulated." [...] Sadly, the only "normal" behavior we can witness is currently coming from the halls of local courthouses, the chambers of state legislatures and governor's mansions, as well as the quintessential smoke filled "representatives only" marked rooms in Congress. If Americans who witnessed the rise of the police state post-9/11 know one thing, it's that power-hungry individuals scarcely ever let a good crisis go to waste. Throughout the country, many Americans have already learned this the hard way. 'Social Distancing' is Snake Oil, Not Science. Very likely, you already instinctively know that the guidelines suggesting that it's somehow helpful to keep a six-foot space between healthy people, even outdoors, is not based on science, but just an arbitrary suggestion we've been conditioned to accept without evidence. And your gut feeling would be right. There's a reason that "social distancing" wasn't a buzzword common to the American lexicon prior to 2020. There's very little science behind "social distancing" at all. "It turns out," Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness, "as I wrote last month, "social distancing" is untested pseudoscience particularly as it relates to halting the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. On its website, the CDC provides no links to any peer-reviewed social distancing studies that bolster its official guidance." Castle Rock eatery defies lockdown, enjoys packed Mother's Day brunch; punishment cries follow. Odd as it may be, defiance in America today is defined as a restaurant opening its doors for Mother's Day. And on that note, C&C Coffee and Kitchen, located in Castle Rock, Col., is a rebel with a cause, as the establishment began trending Sunday after the owner shared a video of a packed house — even though the state remains under a Safer at Home order that closes restaurants, food courts, cafes, coffeehouses, and other similar places of public accommodation offering food or beverage for on-premises consumption, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis. With few wearing face masks and social distancing pretty much out the window, the lesson here may be that consenting adults in America still reserve the right to decide for themselves what is or is not appropriate behavior. Andrew Cuomo admits forcing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, refuses to take blame. New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his political allies were quick to declare that President Trump had 'blood on his hands' based on the state's failure to prepare supplies for the coronavirus pandemic. It now comes to light that the bloody hands were Cuomo's. It's not just that the subways were continuously running packed, or New York City's schools took a long time to shut, or city officials were busy going to the gym, if not encouraging people to attend those Chinatown parades, the better to Get Trump. The worst of it was from the death toll coming out of New York City's nursing homes, where a disproportionate percent of New York's humongous death toll occurred. Not only were the nursing homes with the city's most vulnerable residents not so much as basically protected, they were positively seeded with COVID-19 patients, rolling in from the hospitals, forced into the homes no matter how much the homes objected, because 'discrimination.' Nursing homes weren't even allowed to ask incoming patients if they were coming back 'stabilized' from the coronavirus units. The crisis is over whenever we say it is: CDC director on hot seat over his predictions, agency performance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is increasingly on the hot seat for its performance during the pandemic, from its testing and counting of COVID-19 cases to its chief's predictions for a second wave of the disease. For CDC Director Robert Redfeld, whose predictions about the AIDS virus decades ago drew unflattering scrutiny, it is familiar territory. The latest controversy reportedly centers around concerns over the CDC's tally of coronavirus cases and deaths, which Dr. Deborah Birx reportedly challenged last week during a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force she leads. New York has mismanaged COVID-19 from top to bottom. Andrew Cuomo is having the time of his life. His approval ratings are through the roof and he's being talked about as a replacement for Joe Biden should Joe wander off somewhere without his Visiting Angel, never to be found again. Hipster merchandise featuring his face is exploding on Etsy and he's getting a nightly hour with his own brother on CNN to chat about oh, this and that, and whatever is happening in his day at the given moment. It's quite the arrangement! Andrew doesn't ask his brother why he broke quarantine, literally endangering lives and the younger Fredo doesn't ask him about 1,700 previously uncounted COVID related deaths in New York nursing homes, or why he didn't authorize disinfecting subway cars until early May, a full 90 days after the first cases were reported on March 1. Governors in Florida, Texas and Georgia bear the brunt of media criticism for their handling of testing, shutdowns and hospitalizations. In each instance, no outbreak or death count in those states has come close to matching New York. Time to Stop the Madness. The mantra among the governors who continue to preside over the destruction of their states' economies is that they are following "the science" which purportedly requires that the lockdowns remain in place to prevent another wave of COVID-19 cases. They contend that the lockdowns must continue until the number of COVID-19 cases decreases to an acceptable level and their states have adequate testing facilities and "armies" of investigators to track and trace any future infections. As they say, they don't want to give up the progress already achieved against COVID-19 by reopening too soon. Well, if that's their true goal, then the governors are on a fool's errand. Why? Because no matter how long we shelter in place, there will be future major outbreaks of COVID-19. We know this because COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus designated as SARS-coV2. Reasonably assuming that SARS-coV2 propagates like the coronaviruses that have caused seasonal influenzas, it will be with us for many years and will continue to infect and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. Trump is Not Weakening. I characterize President Trump's behavior as strategic rather than weak. Many Trump supporters are furious that Trump appears to allow Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx to dictate when we reopen America. At the same time, Democrats and fake news media absurdly claim Trump is responsible for thousands of deaths because he ignores science and health experts. Fake news media is flooding the airwaves with their claim that over 100,000 people will die if crazy Trump irresponsibly reopens America. Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. I am confident that Trump will courageously press forward, doing what is best for We the People. Out-of-control Democrats are using coronavirus to overrule our Second Amendment right to bear arms, release dangerous felons, and fund extreme leftist causes. They have selectively implemented unconstitutional restrictions intended to punish Christians and Trump voters. Insane with their newfound power, Democrats are actually considering going door to door to drag people out of their homes. In a nutshell, coronavirus has liberated Democrats from the restraints of the U.S. Constitution. Folks, we are at war with an evil enemy within, the Democratic Party. Medicine Will Not Look Back Kindly on COVID-19 Response. [Scroll down] The CDC was not using known, modern methods to establish available and accurate testing for COVID-19 in anticipation of the spread of this disease. It relied more on quarantining and fear-mongering, admitting that the available testing was inadequate and frequently inaccurate. Additionally, the CDC was not prepared with enough of a supply of masks and ventilators. Viral pandemics are respiratory illnesses, and these should be baseline items. Politicization of the possible COVID-19 treatment options will not withstand the "retrospectoscope," either. Doctors on the front lines of the most heavily impacted areas of our country are having inconsistent results with the anti-malarial medication hydroxychloroquine, the macrolide antibiotic azithromycin, and the anti-viral medication Remdesivir. Many of the hard-hit communities are in areas that are politically vehemently anti-Trump. Trump has been trying to let the nation know that efforts are being made to medically treat COVID-19. Because of poor results in their own patients with these medications, many doctors have chosen not to use them, looking down their noses at politicians they hate promoting treatments they feel don't work. Birx said 'there is nothing from the CDC that I can trust' in a White House coronavirus task force meeting. Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus task force response coordinator, blasted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during a discussion on COVID-19 data in a recent meeting, The Washington Post reported on Saturday [5/9/2020]. "There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust," she told CDC Director Robert Redfield, two people familiar with the meeting told the newspaper. The Post reported that Birx and others feared that the CDC's data-tracking system was inflating coronavirus statistics like mortality rates and case numbers by up to 25%. Why 'temporary' layoffs may be permanent after coronavirus crisis. In late March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of steakhouse restaurants, confidently proclaimed that once the viral outbreak had subsided, her company planned to recall all its laid-off workers. Now? Miller would be thrilled to eventually restore three-quarters of the roughly 600 workers her company had to let go. The 'New Normal'? Ridiculous. Crises, even if they are manufactured ones, are great producers of linguistic mutation. [...] It's not only civil war that produces such linguistic deformations. Any crisis will do. [...] I remember one meeting in particular when it was explained to us that storms like Hurricane Sandy were "the new normal." "The new normal." Is there a more nauseating flake of smug linguistic presumption? I think that the imperative "stay safe," born of our coronavirus panic, comes close. But "the new normal" is worse because it pretends to knowledge not just solicitude. That wretched town official who was telling us serfs what we could and could not do with our homes did so on the hollow authority of knowing, or pretending to know, what the future would bring. So it is now. It Turns Out Biden's Public Health Advisory Committee Has Consistently Downplayed the Virus. Former Vice President Joe Biden has had plenty of criticism for President Trump and his coronavirus task force, but if the country was left in his health advisors' hands, we may not have had a handle on this crisis at all. As it turns out, the members of his Public Health Advisory Committee have downplayed the threat of the virus for months. Bad State Decisions about Nursing Homes Are Heavily Driving the Coronavirus Outbreak. Coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes have been particularly deadly in California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. You could make a strong argument that the country's deadly coronavirus problem is largely a nursing home problem, dangerous everywhere but far more prevalent in a half-dozen or so of the country's more heavily and densely populated states. What's more, many of these states enacted coronavirus response policies that likely put nursing and assisted-living home residents at higher risk for infection. How America Arrived at the Cruel New Normal. Very soon, you and I will have to figure out how to navigate a semi-open America where coronavirus is a terrible fact of life. The lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that state and city governments announced in March are breaking down. This is not red-versus-blue. This is reality. Two weeks ago, Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp faced widespread criticism for his easing of restrictions on business and outdoor activities, even as Colorado's Democratic governor Jared Polis did the same thing. Now most states are joining in. Power-Hungry Governors Must Understand an Economy Is Like Dominoes. There are governors who fancy themselves kings and queens who want to continue the shutdown and enforce ridiculous executive orders, that for all practical purposes, treat the citizens of their states as if they were in prison, forbidding them to even venture outside for a breath of air, using drones and other spy tools to keep tabs. What are they going to tell their prisoners when the store shelves are totally empty, there is no gasoline, the drug stores are out of medicine and can't fill prescriptions, because a few more weeks of an idle workforce and the supply lines, including the essentials of life, will begin to dry up? The system that sustains our economy and very lives is interconnected, codependent, and a few segments cannot long exist without the others. FDA desperately needs an overhaul. The Food and Drug Administration, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, failed America with its coronavirus response. The CDC bears enormous fault for violating its own manufacturing standards and then distributing a faulty test (one that had been contaminated with the coronavirus) to labs throughout the country. In addition, FDA decisions in February and March hampered and delayed the development of tests for the virus and the production of protective equipment. History-defining question: Will 18 million 'temporary' jobless get their jobs back? The Trump administration and the country face a major risk that if the pandemic is not controlled relatively quickly, another economic depression is in store. The country already is clearly in a form of recession, as confirmed by Friday's April jobs report that showed unemployment rising to 14.7%. But in theory, many of those workers, such as the 5.5 million newly jobless restaurant employees, could return to work very quickly if the pandemic ended and lockdowns were lifted. Italy to restart Catholic Masses this month ahead of schedule. Italians will be able to attend Mass starting May 18 after a meeting between top bishops and Italy's prime minister resulted in a plan to reopen religious services after they were shut down during the coronavirus pandemic. When the churches do reopen, there will be stringent guidelines in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Restrictions will include priests wearing gloves while giving communion and churchgoers wearing face masks. Additionally, collection plates will be set aside in favor of bins at church entrances, where adherents can place money safely. 'No reason why we can't open up now': Diner owner tells Andrew Cuomo to reopen upstate New York. A restaurant owner in upstate New York is calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reopen the economy and lift lockdown restrictions meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus. "It's been devastating economically to businesses that have closed [and] are never going to reopen," Crazy Otto's Empire Diner owner Scott Tranter told Fox News on Saturday. "We had 22 employees that we had to lay off. We just got the Paycheck Protection Program brought ... 15 of them back last week." "If you look at the statistics, if you look at the data, there's no reason why we can't open up now, and that's my message to the governor," he said. Unbearable Truths About Our Current Political Moment. Sometimes the truth is like mythical kryptonite. It radiates power and yet promises great destruction. And so reality is to be left alone, encased in lead, and kept at bay. Take the Chinese genesis of the COVID-19 epidemic. We started in February with the usual Chinese deceptions about their role in the birth, transmission, and worldwide spread of the virus. No one, apparently except Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates, was surprised by the accustomed politically correct prevarications of the Chinese-purchased World Health Organization, whose transparent lies were passed off as truth — and led to tens of thousands of deaths. On cue, our own obsequious media accepted Chinese and globalist myths — their shared antipathy for President Trump meant whatever he is for or says, they are against and deny. But by late March the bits and pieces of the truth had emerged. All that gobbledygook talk of a Chinese wet market, of patient-zero bats, snakes, pangolins and such, were likely ruses to deflect attention from a conveniently nearby level-4 Chinese virology lab. McKinley County healthcare workers say [their] hospital [is] in disarray. A New Mexico hospital is under siege Friday in one of the state's biggest coronavirus hot spots. Healthcare workers in McKinley County said they are struggling in an environment that is unsafe for workers and patients. State Senator George Muñoz said the hospital recently lost its only pulmonologist, who monitors people on ventilators. Everyone requiring that care was flown out. More workers said they are on their way out too as they are overworked and understaffed. The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History. The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have been an enormous mistake strikes many — including world leaders; most scientists, especially health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their faith in these people — as so preposterous as to be immoral. Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to open up as "the party of death." That's the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature. But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. It's Time for Trump to Come Home to His Voters. Nearly two months into the nationwide experiment in full-fledged coronavirus lockdowns, the president evinces a Janus-faced intellectual inconsistency. In rhetoric, including tweets that signal to his base, the president communicates a profound skepticism that the lockdown "cure" might be worse than the disease. But in policy, Trump has all but completely delegated federal policymaking and guidance to the melodramatic white-coated cartel of Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. The intellectual disconnect is astonishing. On Twitter and in press conferences, Trump sympathizes with the plight of average Americans — so many of whom have lost their jobs, businesses and retirement savings and are struggling to put bread on the table. But in policy, he oversees a White House that oftentimes seems direly pessimistic about beginning to reopen America. As with so many other issues since his election, the president's correct instincts are trampled upon by the advisors to whom he all-too-willingly delegates authority. Did the Lockdown Model Cause Half the Coronavirus Deaths in New Jersey? On March 31st, New Jersey Commissioner of Health Judith Persichilli issued an order to nursing homes and rehab facilities ordering them to take coronavirus patients. Relying on Governor Murphy's Public Health Emergency executive order, she issued a Health Department order that set out to achieve "the expedited receipt of patients/residents discharging from hospitals" by warning that, "no patient/resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the post-acute care setting solely based on a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19." The New Jersey Health boss further warned that "post-acute care facilities are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized patient/resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission." Dem governors will pay a huge price in November for unnecessarily long lockdowns. In the nearly half year between now and the time the country goes to the polls, blue state voters are going to wonder why they should be imprisoned at home, their children out of schools, and their finances impoverished while elsewhere in the country it is still the land of the free. Already, there have been protests in Michigan and elsewhere, demanding loosening of restrictions, and more are planned in Blue states like New Jersey. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of purple state Pennsylvania agrees with me that American political leaders are "overstating the danger[."] I think the Democrat governors are making a very bad bet. Maybe South Dakota and Wyoming will become hot spots of infections, but in the meantime, the carnage of suicide, delayed medical treatments, domestic violence, and diseases of poverty will multiply in blue states.
Risk of COVID-19 transmission from wastewater [is] higher than [previously] believed, study claims. The novel coronavirus — which has infected over 3.9 million people worldwide — has been detected in wastewater, but researchers have been unclear about the transmission risks. Two water experts affiliated with Northwestern University have said the risks of waterborne transmission are higher than previously believed. They emphasize that the risks are only significant, however, in areas without adequate wastewater infrastructure. WHO: Let's not be too hasty closing those wet markets over a few hundred thousand deaths. Well, this certainly isn't going to help WHO's image as an organization that does whatever China tells them to do. Today the World Health Oranization said that despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died from a pandemic that apparently arose in a Wuhan wet market, we shouldn't push to shut down such markets. Stay-at-home Serial Killer Andrew Cuomo. After yelling at President Trump for not locking down the nation soon enough and the people of New York for not obeying his lockdown edicts, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admits that most Chinese Wuhan virus infections occur in the very place he, assorted health experts, and the anti-Trump lamestream media insist we should be — in our homes. And nearly all of those occur to people with pre-existing conditions. Blinded by Doomsday Predictions Masquerading as Science. [Scroll down] Thanks to today's "scientists" and their "scientific" COVID-19 models, daily life in 2020 has turned into a dystopian nightmare of home confinement, latex gloves, hand sanitizer — hoarding, and toilet paper shortages. The once routine trip to the supermarket is now an empty-shelved, grotesque costume party in which our former neighbors have all donned face masks and morphed into Hannibal Lecter and Lord Humungus, Warrior of the Wasteland. Are the face masks really keeping us safe, or will we one day look back and laugh, the way we laugh at that "duck and cover" atom bomb movie from the 1950s? Time will tell. But what is happening to the US economy is surely no laughing matter. In just weeks, massive business closures have left tens of millions of Americans jobless and terrified they may not be able to afford food and shelter for themselves and their families. Pamela Geller Sues NYC Over Freedom of Assembly. It's striking how many of the Bill of Rights have been casually tossed aside with little in the way of legal action or protest. But there's a growing pushback. Even in New York City. Conservative blogger Pamela Geller sues de Blasio for pandemic protest ban. Controversial conservative blogger Pamela Geller says in a new lawsuit that Mayor Bill de Blasio's ban on public demonstrations violates her First Amendment right to protest the shut-down. "There is no justification, pandemic or otherwise, for a government official to revoke this fundamental right of the people," wrote lawyer David Yerushalmi in the civil rights filing that asks a judge to rescind the directive. The suit, which also names Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, says that if not for the "draconian restrictions on liberty" banning demonstrations, Geller would have organized and participated in a rally against the shut-down. These demonstrations, she argued, can be held while "maintaining proper social distancing." Brooklyn Police Arrest 40 People For Violations of "Social Distancing", The Media Worry What Color They Are. NBC has an article today [5/8/2020] discussing forty people arrested in Brooklyn, New York, for violations of the "social distance" rules. [...] That alone should be the jaw-dropping headline that shoots flares and warning signals into the stratosphere alerting America that something is seriously screwed up in New York City. Alas, it is not the simple fact that police are ridiculously arresting people; no, what concerns NBC media is the color of the people being ridiculously arrested. I Just Flew. It Was Worse Than I Thought It Would Be. It was a weekday afternoon in late April, and I was among dozens of people boarding an airplane that most of us had assumed would be empty. Flight attendants were scrambling to accommodate seat-change requests. Travelers — stuffed shoulder to shoulder into two-seat rows — grumbled at one another from behind masks. An ominous announcement came over the in-flight PA system: "We apologize for the alarming amount of passengers on this flight." Each of us was a potential vector of deadly disease. Argentina Teeters on Default, Again, as Pandemic Guts Economy. Argentina is hurtling toward default on international loans in two weeks, a prospect that threatens to revive its reputation as a serial deadbeat and global financial pariah that could haunt the Latin American country long after the coronavirus pandemic is over. If Argentina defaults, which as of Friday appeared likely, it would be the third time in two decades that the country has failed to meet loan payments after having amassed billions of dollars in foreign debt in a deepening spiral of economic dysfunction. Argentina would join Lebanon as the first defaulters in the financial tumult caused by the coronavirus. Ted Cruz flexes on whining libs, gets his haircut at now-infamous Texas salon. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz gave liberals something more to gripe about as he added another chapter to the story of the Dallas salon owner who was jailed after opening up her business. The Texas Republican decided to get his first haircut in three months in Dallas on Friday at the Salon a la Mode, owned by Shelley Luther who made headlines by defying a state order to close her shop and was jailed on a contempt of court charge this week. Michigan's largest restaurant trade group urges Whitmer to reopen restaurants May 29. Michigan's largest restaurant trade group is urging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to allow the state's restaurants to reopen for on-premise dining May 29. The Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association (MRLA), a subsidiary of the National Restaurant Association, issued a document Friday titled Roadmap to Reopening, which lays out steps the state's hospitality industry should take in preparation to do business again. According to an MRLA news release, the Roadmap plan was sent to Whitmer's office. "Knowing that half of all states have already reopened restaurant dining in some capacity, we felt the time was right to share our expertise with Governor Whitmer so that she has every tool she needs to safely reopen restaurants on May 29," MRLA CEO and President Justin Winslow said in the release. Liberals always lie. As covered in this blog earlier this week the Mayor of Chicago thinks the coronavirus is so incredibly dangerous that people in her city should be locked in their homes against their will and businesses ordered closed. In announcing her restrictions she actually cited haircuts as something she would not allow Chicagoans to do because they might get the virus and die. Of course, we all know the mayor herself went out and got her hair cut and then lashed out at her citizens for pointing out her hypocrisy. The main point here is she knew she wouldn't actually get coronavirus if she got her haircut. That's just a BS story she told the people. Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker has also taken heat for his own family heading off to Florida while he has ordinary citizens in his state locked in their homes. He knew it wasn't dangerous for his family to leave the house or he wouldn't have let them, presuming he loves his wife and children. That's just a lie to control everyone else. Social media networks scrambling to remove viral 'Plandemic' conspiracy video. Social media networks are scrambling to get rid of a viral conspiracy video spreading false claims about the coronavirus, according to a report. The roughly 26-minute "Plandemic Movie" has been viewed and shared widely on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and clips of it also circulated on Twitter this week, CNBC reported. The clip, apparently an excerpt of a larger documentary to be released this summer, makes a number of bogus, unproven or misleading claims, like that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines. And in defiance of the advice of medical experts, it suggests that masks can make people sicker and that sheltering in place harms the immune system. One video, shared on Facebook by someone claiming to be one of the filmmakers, had been viewed more than 1.7 million times and shared more than 140,000 times as of Thursday [5/7/2020]. Quiet Whispers from Medical Professionals are Getting Louder. At the beginning of the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020 some medical professionals quietly doubted the unlikely predictions of mass death and overwhelmed healthcare infrastructure. These doubts were mostly based on the impact of previous viral outbreaks like SARS, MERS and H1N1 which, while significant, never overwhelmed America's medical capacity. The problem was these sober assessments were swamped by the intense public panic and hyperventilation about "flattening the curve" by government experts with shocking models of the destruction about to overwhelm the U.S. population. There was an unspoken atmosphere that doubting the hyperbole was insensitive considering the impending death and destruction. As the infections, hospitalizations, ventilator use and death rate all turned out to be dramatically lower than predicted, it's obvious the early doubters were right. Everyday Heroes are Rising Up. While more leaders are stepping up every day to put an end to this madness of rule by incompetent, unelected bureaucrats, there is emerging a pushback among the American people at the local level. Some of whom are setting an example and becoming unintentional leaders among the citizens. In Dallas, salon owner Shelly Luther reopened her business in defiance of the stay-at-home order. She was cited by the county and specifically ordered to remain closed. When the citation was served on her, authorities sent several police officers and firefighters (for reasons nobody seems to understand) to her salon in a show of force. Over the weekend Luther publicly ripped her citation to pieces at a demonstration at City Hall. Other business owners showed up at the protest and caused local media to clutch their pearls by not practicing social distancing as they showed solidarity with Ms. Luther and spoke to reporters. Elsewhere in Texas, pastors and others filed lawsuits over the orders, claiming violation of their constitutional rights. Michigan legislature's lawsuit is necessary, reasonable. The lawsuit filed by the Legislature is being broadly miscast as an attempt to strip Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of her powers to manage Michigan through the COVID-19 crisis. That's not at all what legislative Republicans are attempting to do in suing the governor. What they're asking for is a restoration of their Constitutional authority to provide oversight of an executive who has unilaterally declared herself the sole and absolute power in Michigan. Dem Governors Face Dozens of Lockdown Lawsuits. [D]uring the past two months, the nation's Democratic governors have clearly demonstrated that the temporary possession of emergency powers can unmask the hidden tyrant in even the most unremarkable politician. Virtually all have overreached their legitimate mandates, and few show any inclination to relinquish their newfound authority. This has not only produced widespread protests but has also led to dozens of constitutional lawsuits. These governors behave as if they recognize no legal boundaries. Consequently, the voters have sought to correct them. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), for example, is the defendant in at least two federal lawsuits, including a challenge to his prohibition of religious services in the Garden State. Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler of Lakewood has joined Rev. Kevin Robinson in a four-count lawsuit that points out the obvious fact that "churches and synagogues can easily accommodate the kind of social distancing that keeps some commercial businesses open." Moreover, Murphy refuses to provide the voters with a target date for lifting his "indefinite" lockdown. Elites don't want you to question their coronavirus policies. They want you to shut up, obey and do what you're told. [Video clip] The Newest Entry into Our American English Lexicon - Doomer. Many are asking how people can be so obsessed with quarantine, and how they can get so psychotic about closing everything down, and there's a reason why it's impossible to figure out their rationale. [...] The Corona Virus media coverage, and the rationale used to justify lock downs is based entirely on fear and emotion. Doomers grab hold of this fear and feel like they are being superheroes for calling the cops on business owners, neighbors, and posting shrilling takes on social media about how evil people are for wanting to go back to work. We indeed should take careful measures to protect the elderly and infirm and those most susceptible, but there is clearly little logic to keeping literally everyone locked down. Throwback Thursday. We Will Not Comply Edition. Remember life before the Wuhan Cootie Flu? Of course you do, it's just no longer available. [...] [I]t's almost as if the people who've seized power and control in order to exercise power and control don't want us to think. We are simply to comply. What is China covering up about the coronavirus? Days before the Wuhan wet market was bleached, whistleblowers were punished and virus samples were destroyed, someone at the high-security Wuhan Institute of Virology censored its virus database in an apparent attempt to disassociate the laboratory from a novel-coronavirus outbreak that would become a global pandemic. This is what open-source intelligence uncovered in the United Kingdom reveals. Substantial alterations to the WIV database on the evening of Dec. 30, the day before the World Health Organization was alerted to the outbreak of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, are just another indication that the Chinese Communist Party is hiding something when it comes to the origins of COVID-19. Is the CDC Meddling with the 2020 Election? The coronavirus crisis is reaping big political benefits for Democrats. President Trump's signature achievement — a booming economy with record low unemployment, rising middle-class wages, and a sky-high stock market — lies in tatters. At least 33 million Americans abruptly and without warning are out of work. Second-quarter gross domestic product estimates are horrifying, a double-digit dive that the country has never experienced even in the direst economic times. Gov Pritzker gives seemingly never-ending five-phase plan to reopen Illinois, churches among hardest hit. To some Illinois residents, particularly those who practice religion, it may feel as if their state will remain under some state of lockdown until the end of time, in part because Gov. J.B. Pritzker's five-phase reopening plan does indeed seem like it extends until infinity and beyond. Unveiled by the governor on Tuesday, the plan contains no definitive reopening dates but does offer to keep the religiously minded waiting an exceptionally long time. The plan specifically calls for not allowing churches to reopen until phase three, which won't begin until May 29th at the earliest. And even then, churches will be restricted to a maximum of 10 parishioners, which is practically nothing. With appropriate distancing measures, Virginia churches should be allowed to conduct services. The Justice Department's recent decision to weigh in on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's (D) stay-at-home order poses a fundamentally important question: If governments rightly consider physical nourishment an "essential" service, should not the spiritual sustenance that churches can provide receive at least equal consideration? The Justice Department intervened after the pastor of the Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Chincoteague, Va., received a criminal charge for holding a service that 16 people attended, more than the limit of 10 set out in Northam's order. Its brief noted that the congregation abided by social distancing guidelines and that other establishments — including liquor stores and big-box retailers — do not have to abide by a 10-person limit on gatherings. The Editor says... Lurking Behind the Statistics. Six months ago none of us could have imagined that America — and half the civilized world — would just be sitting around twiddling our thumbs and watching our worlds being mummified, and yet, here we are and few of us are satisfied with the reasons we've been given. The governor of Oregon, Kate Brown (Dem.), just extended the COVID-19 lockdown until July 6, nine weeks away. This has us all stumped because Oregon is barely on the virus map. In my county — Jackson County (population about 200,000) — we've only had 49 cases, no deaths, and no new cases for the last couple of weeks. It's been worse up in the more populated Portland area, but still nothing compared to our neighboring state, Washington. So one wonders why. What's up? Some states considering house arrest tech to keep coronavirus patients home. How do you ensure that someone sick with COVID-19 stays home? As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology — including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps — could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers. But while the tech has been used sporadically for US quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order? Case in point is Hawaii, which considered the sweeping use of GPS-enabled ankle bracelets or smartphone tracking apps to enforce stay-at-home orders given to arriving air passengers, according to Ronald Kouchi, the president of the Hawaii state senate. COVID-19: Government's Bad Choices and the Impact on Doctors. Private physicians' offices across the country have had to furlough core staff, often with decades of service to their businesses, because of the coronavirus-induced, government-mandated shutdown. Doctors who own these small business ventures, many of whom were on the front lines in the battle against AIDS back when it was 100% lethal, have been forced to sit on their hands at home for this pandemic. Surgery centers, frequently the lifeline between economic solvency and bankruptcy for both private surgeons and hospitals, are lying dormant, their fixed costs still accruing. Promised federal bailout money is not going to come close to repairing the long-term damage done by this medieval "fix" recommended by "the scientific experts." Those advising our leaders have provided a great excuse for the forces seeking to justify government-run health care and expand the power of an unchecked, totalitarian federal bureaucracy. Medical practices, like many small businesses across the country, are being killed off for the cause of "saving just one more life." What they have done is unconscionable, poorly justified, and quite frankly, un-American. New study spotlights devastating toll coronavirus shutdown will have on America's small business. A survey by the 72-year-old Society for Human Resource Management has found that 52 percent of American small businesses expect to permanently shut down within six months thanks to the economic repercussions of the government's coronavirus response. A smaller but still notable 12 percent believe their businesses won't even last another month. If You Want To Stay Home, Stay Home. Let The Rest Of Us Get Back To Our Lives. There is no good reason for the lockdowns to continue. There wasn't a good reason for them to begin in the first place, but almost everything we have learned in the last two months has made the truth inescapably clear. Over 33 million people have been put out of work. Many businesses have been driven to the brink, or over the edge, of bankruptcy. Our economy teeters near collapse. And all of this, not to prevent deaths or stop the virus, but to merely delay the inevitable moment when we have to figure out how to live in spite of it. For most of us, the risk of returning to our jobs and our lives is very low. The virus primarily victimizes the old and the infirm, which is why it has had a hugely disproportionate impact on nursing homes. As I wrote yesterday, in many states and countries, nursing homes account for more than half of all COVID-19 fatalities. When you add the elderly who are not in nursing homes, and people with pre-existing conditions, it becomes evident that young and healthy people are very unlikely to die from the disease or be hospitalized because of it. This doesn't mean we should cavalierly throw aside all precautions and safety measures, but it does mean that there is no good reason, and was never any good reason, for most of us to stay locked in our homes. The threat level for us is quite low, and we should be allowed to take that risk if we wish. Trump Administration Short Circuits a Power Grab by CDC Bureaucrats. Yesterday [5/7/2020], the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration was blocking the release of CDC prepared guidelines for states to use in re-opening. [...] The AP, being a loyal member of the #Resistance, is playing this up as some kind of major scandal. In fact, it is just the opposite. The guidelines are typical CDC bumf that are long on bureaucratic [...]-covering and short on practicality. As the CDC does in everything, it adopts a one-size-fits-all policy that is focused on incompetently run places like Michigan and New Jersey and New York and seeks to apply those same policies to places where they are wildly inappropriate. It uses wholly made up 'gates' or 'phases' it demands states pass through. This is not the role of the CDC. Is California Thinking About Coronavirus Internment Camps? Gavin Newsom, governor of the "nation-state" of California, is raising what he calls an "army" of 20,000 government employees who will trace the spread of coronavirus across the state. Those found guilty, or rather, infected, are likely to run into an uncomfortable change in their lives. In Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, a pilot program was launched this week to trace infections and exposure, according to County Health Director Dr. Robert Levin. When infected persons are found, he said, they are "immediately isolated." As more people are tested, Levin continued, "we will find more and more people who have COVID-19." "We will isolate every one of them, and we will find every one of their contacts, and we will make sure that they stayed quarantined, and we'll check in with them every day." Seems innocuous, even helpful. But: [...] This nursing home disaster is on you, Gov. Cuomo. Cuomo is legendary for micromanaging and has been praised for his detailed daily briefings during the pandemic. He has closed schools, religious services and businesses because each human life is "priceless." So with known nursing home deaths representing 25 percent of all deaths in the state, it beggars belief that the governor didn't know anything about his office's fatal policy two weeks ago or the new death totals now. The only way either could be true is through an extreme case of plausible deniability. Thus, if there's no proof he knew, he can't be held responsible, right? Which was the whole point of the Sgt. Schultz defense. The burden of proof lies with economic lockdown proponents. Who has the burden of proof regarding the economic lockdowns: Those who argue for continuing them or those who want to lift them? The public health establishment, the mainstream media and most Democratic politicians assume that the burden of proof lies with the lockdown opponents. Advocates of reopening must show that any change to the current status quo will be "safe." If the reopeners fail to make that showing, the lockdowns remain in place. With the burden of proof thus configured, proponents of continued economic stasis need not justify the "new normal"; moribund businesses and unemployed workers have become the default mode of social existence. California Is Ready to Get Rid of Gavin Newsom. Across California on May 1, tens of thousands protested in defiance of statewide lockdown orders. In Sacramento, the west lawn of the state capitol building was filled with protesters, with thousands more marching along the sidewalk surrounding the capitol grounds. Additional thousands driving their cars and honking their horns created three hours of total gridlock on the streets that loop around the capitol. Noteworthy protests have taken place in San Diego, Encinitas, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Paso Robles, Santa Rosa, and even tiny Lakeport on the shores of Clear Lake. There is no end in sight. While the media has typecast these growing protests as populated by right-wing extremists, Trump supporters, and remnants of a geriatric Tea Party movement, the reality in California is different. In Laguna Beach, the protest was organized by surfers. Overall, these protests included people who claimed never to have been involved in politics, people who identified themselves as former Democrats, and young people. Thousands and thousands of youth: children, teenagers, college students, twentysomethings. A generation is waking up. The most extreme lockdowns plainly don't pass constitutional sniff test. When he rejected a legal challenge to Michigan's COVID-19 lockdown last week, Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray quoted at length from Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 decision in which the US Supreme Court upheld mandatory smallpox vaccination. But he left out the part where the justices said state public-health powers, while broad, have limits. We should be discovering those limits at a time when hundreds of millions of Americans have been confined to their homes except for government-approved purposes. But with a few notable exceptions, the courts haven't been inclined to scrutinize sweeping COVID-19 control measures that entail unprecedented restrictions on our liberties and livelihoods. If any state lockdowns were legally vulnerable, the one imposed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would be at the top of the list, since it has featured not just broad business closure and stay-at-home orders but seemingly arbitrary distinctions between permitted and prohibited activities. TYRANNY: Kansas City is Now Requiring Churches to Keep Lists of People Entering Churches. New reopening guidelines in Kansas City that require churches to keeps "lists" of attendees have worried advocates of religious freedoms in the area, according to a report from Metro Voice. Mayor Quinton Lucas enacted the policy where houses of worship receive the same treatment as "non-essential" businesses when it comes to keeping information of those who attend a service or anyone who enters the building. "Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined Nazi-like measures designed to surveil, track and spy upon what was once a free American people," declared Liberty Council, founder and Chairman Matt Staver. "That is exactly what Kansas City's misguided government officials are now demanding." The Editor says... Gov. Whitmer extends stay-at-home order to May 28. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer further eased her stay-at-home order today, while extending it through May 28 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Whitmer says auto and other manufacturing workers can return to the job next week. She says while the state is "not out of the woods yet," re-opening factories is an important step forward to gradually re-engaging the economy. The Editor says... Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on reopening. The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation's top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled "Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework," was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen. New study spotlights devastating toll coronavirus shutdown will have on America's small business. A survey by the 72-year-old Society for Human Resource Management has found that 52 percent of American small businesses expect to permanently shut down within six months thanks to the economic repercussions of the government's coronavirus response. A smaller but still notable 12 percent believe their businesses won't even last another month. "SHRM has tracked Covid-19's impact on work, workers, and the workplace for months, but these might be the most alarming findings to date," the association's CEO, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., said in a statement. Whitmer unveils 6-phase reopen plan, extends stay-home order through May 28. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has extended the state's stay-home order through May 28 in a Thursday [5/7/2020] executive order that also lifted some restrictions on manufacturing facilities. The announcement came as the governor unveiled the MI Safe Start Plan, a guide for the gradual reopening of the state. Under the extended stay-home order, residents must continue to stay home unless they're running "critical errands" or going to specified jobs. As economy lags, Inslee hits coronavirus critics with sleazy attack. As we grow desperate over the lagging coronavirus economy, rather than respond with compassion, Governor Jay Inslee deflects with a sleazy strategy of shaming people into submission. This is not the move of a competent leader. It's the move of a shaky one. At a press briefing Monday afternoon [5/4/2020], Inslee was asked about a lawsuit leveled against him by a group of Republican lawmakers. They contend the stay-at-home order is too restrictive and that we can safely and responsibly reopen parts of the economy faster. Rather than tell us why he thinks public health data makes a stronger case to keep the economy shut down, Inslee attacks his critics as heartless. He argues they want to see people die. This tactic isn't just offensively dismissive of the people whose livelihoods are on the line. It's sleazy. Nearly 500 CA pastors say they are reopening on May 31, regardless of lockdowns: "Not asking for permission". "The churches are not asking for permission," said Bob Tyler, a religious freedom attorney advising the pastors. "The governor is sitting here as a dictator, trumping the Constitution and is kind of hanging on to this state of emergency for as long as he can hold it." The pastors have signed a petition and said they will let Gov. Gavin Newsom know of their plans, which include social distancing. "We'll give the governor an opportunity to amend his order," said Tyler. "If he doesn't, these pastors have told me that they're committed to opening regardless of what the governor decides." Michigan House, Senate sue Gov. Whitmer, call emergency powers 'invalid'. The Michigan Legislature filed suit against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday [5/6/2020], challenging as "improper and invalid" her emergency orders to combat COVID-19 and seeking a "speedy hearing." House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, announced the suit in the Michigan Court of Claims during a press conference inside the Michigan Capitol, reflecting a major escalation of the fight between Republican lawmakers and the Democratic governor. Illinois Governor Announces that Churches Will Be Limited to Low Capacity Until Vaccine is Developed. The Washington Examiner reported that it could take more than a year before churches are allowed to fully re-open according to Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker rolled out a five-phase plan to reopen Illinois that provides guidelines to schools, businesses, churches, and other places of worship about when they can re-open their doors. In phase three of this plan, the Illinois state government will allow gatherings of up to 10 people. In phase four, the government will allow gatherings of up to 50 people to takes place. Phase five of this plan will allow gatherings of more than five people. San Antonio City Council Passes Resolution Declaring the Use of the Term "Chinese Virus" as "Hate Speech". On May 7, 2020, the San Antonio City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring that terms "Chinese Virus" and "Kung Flu Virus" are now hate speech. Paul Joseph Watson noted that "President Trump and many of his supporters have used variations of both terms as a reminder that COVID-19 did indeed originate in China." Indeed, the Left has gone through its usual hysterics by declaring Trump to be "racist" despite the inconvenient truth that viruses are usually named after their place of origin. Pennsylvania reports: average coronavirus death age 79; 67% happened in nursing homes. Pennsylvania health officials says 79 is the average age for coronvirus-related deaths in the state and that nearly 68% of those deaths occurred in assisted-living facilities — in one of the first state-based reports to breaking down virus statistics by age demographics. The speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, announced the finding in a letter Wednesday to chamber members, after state Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine informed chamber leaders about the data. Texas Salon Owner Luther Goes Free, but Forgotten Is That Gov. Abbott Went Wrong. Texas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was jailed for opening her business and has been called a "modern-day Rosa Parks," has now been freed thanks to action by the Texas Supreme Court and the state's governor, Greg Abbott. Yet while the imperious judge who'd sentenced her has been scorned in conservative circles, forgotten is that Luther's troubles only began because of a lockdown order Abbott issued — in defiance of science and reason. Shelley Luther is America's New Rosa Parks. Dallas, Texas salon owner Shelley Luther has become the face of the movement to free the nation from the oppressive lockdowns imposed by despotic governors and mayors. [...] An inspiration in these dark times to patriotic Americans who yearn to have their most basic constitutional rights respected, Luther was sentenced to seven days in jail on May 5 for daring to open her salon despite emergency decrees mandating the continued forced closure of businesses like hers that have arbitrarily been deemed non-essential. But Luther was liberated May 7 after the Supreme Court of Texas ordered her released "pending final disposition of this case." On May 8, Texas will allow hair salons to reopen with conditions. The judicial process against Luther moved with the alarming speed of a drumhead court-martial. GoFundMe For Dallas Salon Owner Raises Massive Money. A GoFundMe account for Shelley Luther, who made national headlines after she was sentenced to 7 days in jail after refusing to tell a court she was "selfish" for reopening her salon despite an ongoing stay-at-home order, has now been officially closed to new donations after racking up a stunning $500,110 in just a few days. "Shelley Luther is an American Hero that has decided to resist tyranny by opening her business against an unlawful State Executive Order," reads the GoFundMe page set up on behalf of Luther by Rick Hire of Richmond, Texas. "Her business, SALON A LA MODE offers services for hair and nails, microblading, permanent makeup, professional event makeup, braiding and more! Shelley and her team will likely face legal action, fines, and more during her journey back to freedom. She is doing what everyone else is only talking about, in a patriotic move to take back her liberty! Please support Shelley, and her employees by contributing to this worthy cause. You will not just be supporting Shelley, but you will be supporting the idea that our founders put in writing in the Constitution. 100% of all donations will go directly to Shelley Luther." Obama-Loving Judge Who Sentenced Dallas Salon Owner to Jail Once Pulled a Gun During a Road Rage Incident. Dallas county Judge Eric Moyé, who sentenced Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther to a week in jail earlier this week, once pulled out his gun on a driver during a road rage incident in 2016. Moyé flashed the gun allegedly due to paranoia, claiming that it was because of a supposed connection between a murder investigation and a case he was overseeing at the time. The individual who Moyé flashed the gun toward had allegedly been tailgating him. A woman posted a picture of Moyé's Mercedes-Benz on Facebook as she was attempting to figure out who pulled the gun on her car. She claimed that the individual "pulled a gun on her on the Tollway" and that Dallas police told her they "can't do anything about it." Moyé said that the woman's description of events were "not accurate" and "taken out of context." Gov. Abbott: No One Should Forfeit Their Liberty, Be Sent To Jail For Not Wearing A Mask. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined "Hannity" Wednesday [5/6/2020] to discuss the case of Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, who was sentenced to seven days in jail Tuesday for operating her business in defiance of a local coronavirus lockdown order. "There is [a balance that needs to be struck], Sean, and that is why we are now in Texas opening up things like hair salons and barbershops," Abbott told host Sean Hannity. "But Sean, you need to know this: The problem that we're dealing with is far worse than what you've articulated in Dallas County." Texas Hair Salon Owner Released from Jail. The Dallas County Sheriff's Office released the Texas hair salon owner who spent two days in jail for re-opening her business and ignoring Coronavirus lockdown orders. Subsequent to an order from the Supreme Court of Texas, the Dallas sheriff released Shelley Luther on Thursday afternoon [5/7/2020]. Texas
Woman Is Sentenced To 8 Days In Prison For The Crime Of Opening Her Salon. Shelley Luther is the owner of the
The Editor says... Armed SWAT Team Raids Bar Who Dared To Open During Lockdown! Texas police have arrested a bar owner and six armed men who were protesting lockdown orders issued amid the coronavirus pandemic. Cops were called to Big Daddy Zane's Bar in West Odessa Monday evening after owner Gabrielle Ellison, 47, re-opened the establishment, violating laws put into place by Gov. Greg Abbott. Upon arrival, cops were met by a group of men who said they were there to support and defend Ellison as she opened the premises back up. Six of the men were wearing armor and were armed with guns. [Video clip] CBS Slammed For Segment Harassing Ice Cream Truck Driver During Stay-At-Home Order, Encouraging Folks To Call 9-1-1. On Thursday night, CBS Chicago ran a full segment on a local ice cream truck driver for, first and foremost, violating "COVID-19 protocol," as well as apparently "breaking the law" for being in a part of town that bars ice cream trucks — a fact they "learned" after one of their reporters harassed the worker on a bike. The segment included a video of CBS Chicago assignment editor and journalist Greg Kelly scolding "Mr. Freeze" for selling ice cream despite the stay-at-home order, and closed with encouragement for viewers to called 9-1-1 if they see "that ice cream man." "No gloves? No Mask? No problem," CBS Chicago anchor Brad Edwards captioned the segment via Twitter. "This ice cream man is not only ignoring COVID-19 protocol, but he's breaking the law. Such trucks are forbidden [in] Hoffman Estates." Gov Cuomo in hotseat when study finds flights from COVID epi-center NYC seeded US outbreaks. In late January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning travel from China to the United States after it became clear to him and his national security team that the COVID-19 outbreak was likely to worsen and become a major health threat. Shortly thereafter, the president also restricted travel from Europe after several countries there became coronavirus hotspots. But as turns out, according to a new study, it's New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who should have acted to restrict travel from his state. The New York Times, surprisingly, reported Thursday that researchers believe people who traveled from the state to other parts of the country were responsible for "seeding" various regions with more COVID-19 cases. Why the Wuhan Virus Threatens the Chinese Communist Party's Imperial Dreams. The Chinese Communist Party knows the COVID-19/Wuhan virus pandemic has exposed its imperial war to conquer the world, so it is frantically engaged in psychological and political damage control. Why? The strategic exposure (a cruel pun) of Beijing's goal occurs at least 10 years too early. If the CCP and Emperor/President/Dictator Xi Jinping just had another decade of gross domestic product growth; of military modernization; of intellectual property theft; of trade rigging; of bribing crooked EU and American politicians and Ivy League academics; of stroking elite U.S. media; of narrative warfare crafted to undermine democracy and erode free speech — with another 10 to 15 years of unrestricted "all lines of operation" warfare, China could hogtie America and have the military power to dominate Asia and the western Pacific. U.S. Constitution is so Meaningless, Leaders Don't Even Think About It. Wednesday night [4/15/2020] New Jersey's Democrat Governor Phil Murphy appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss his state's 'stay-at-home order. Carlson asked him about his legal authority to issue such an order in obvious violation of specific constitutional rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Stunningly, Murphy admitted what most of us already knew: "I wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this. We went to all, first of all, the data and the science. And it says people have to stay away from each other." Trump's Critics Can't Have It Both Ways. The left's position on the nation's proper response to the pandemic, though shrouded in the language of compassion, is incoherent and morally repugnant virtue signaling. Since this calamity began, many national Democratic leaders, the left-wing media and various never-Trumpers have been more interested in smearing President Donald Trump — no change there — than helping to solve the myriad problems caused by the coronavirus. They wanted it both ways. President Trump was doing too much, and he wasn't doing enough. Before the outbreak, numerous Democrats were downplaying the virus and condemning Trump as a racist for his China and Europe travel bans. Later they blamed Trump for not taking the virus seriously, when in fact, they were taking it less seriously than he was. But being a progressive means never having to say you're sorry — and that yesterday's inconsistent positions are deemed wiped from our collective memory. Woman Getting Arrested For Not Wearing A Mask Gets Slammed Face First To The Ground. An altercation between a Birmingham police officer and a woman over the woman's apparent failure to wear a mask at a store was captured on video and now has prompted an investigation. The incident took place Tuesday night [5/5/2020] at Walmart in Roebuck. Video of the incident has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and shows the officer handcuffing a woman who is not complying. He then picks her up and takes her to the ground. [Video clip] Too many states cannot be trusted. Too many states are now looking at the federal government as their "honey pot" savior after years of fiscally disastrous decisions and too much spending. This is another unwelcome offshoot of the Chinavirus, with the states demanding bailouts by the feds for what the states say is a reimbursement for expenses connected to the virus. Some local governments have joined the "blue state bailout" crowd as well. The states have already received $150 billion from Congress, which served only to whet their appetite for more — the states consider this money to be merely an appetizer before the main course. They want the federal handouts to rectify their own past mistakes, and to pay for deficits or shortfalls in their own budgets that have no relation to the Chinavirus pandemic. Uproar when Bill de Blasio, NYPD commissioner declare protests won't be tolerated amid shutdown. New York City's mayor and police commissioner think social distancing and coronavirus guidelines during the pandemic trump the constitutional rights of Americans. Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea claimed this week that the First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly have to take a back seat to the executive orders issued in the efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19. Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks. New York City's coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. Lockdown is over. Someone tell the government. The coronavirus shutdown is over by public demand. There are crowds of sunbathers in the parks of New York City and mobs on the steps of the statehouses. Pedestrian and road traffic are rising and businesses are defying orders by informally reopening. The people are speaking — the people who used to work on a hand-to-mouth economy, the people who cannot afford to stay indoors indefinitely, the people who cannot be bothered to stay in when the sun comes out. These people are not all the people. They are not the doctors, who counsel caution. They are not the state governors, who are terrified of votes being washed away by a post-reopening second wave of casualties. They are not state employees, who can trust that their jobs will be waiting for them. They are not the service corps the digital economy, who were work-from-home losers until coronavirus made them winners. But they are numerous enough, and desperate or casual enough, to constitute a critical mass. California Sheriff: 'I Refuse to Make Criminals Out of Business Owners'. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco reaffirmed his stance on not enforcing stringent stay-at-home orders, telling the Riverside County Board of Supervisors this week that he refuses to "make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights." Eight weeks ago, officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) "participated in something never done before in our nation's history," Bianco began. Government "ordered residents into their homes, closed their businesses, made them wear masks, forbid them from going to church, and eliminated constitutional freedoms put in place over 200 years ago," he explained. The Sheeple Are Worshiping at the Altar of Elitist Propaganda — Kiss Your Freedom Goodbye America. A healthy economy requires freedom. Locking up healthy people is insanity. Covid-19 is a trial, a drill, a simulation of what the elitists want to do to America. [...] This is part of the plan for global governance, and few people recognize the massive deception. Too many Americans have given up their freedoms, and their logic to untrustworthy and deceptive authorities. [...] The government has shown us just how quickly they can take over every aspect of our lives. Authorities decree only "essential businesses" can be open. We have allowed our civil liberties (the unalienable Bill of Rights) to be terminated. You had better comply. [...] The states run by the Democrat Party, and even some run by neo-con Trotskyite Republicans, will not allow full reopening because they want this to last long enough to destroy Trump's economy during election year and they relish their control over the masses. And what does the Gates Foundation have planned for us with mandatory vaccines? Nothing good. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx Used Imperial College Model — Now Confirmed As A Complete Fraud — To Persuade President Trump to Lock Down Entire US Economy!. President [Trump] admitted that during a press conference in April that "two very smart people" came into his office and urged him to lock down the economy or 2.2 million Americans would die from the China virus. But President Trump did not say who those "two very smart people" were. [...] Dr. Fauci later admitted he persuaded the president to shut down and kill off the US economy. This guy has been wrong every step of the way. [...] After Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci sat with the president the US went into lockdown and since that time over 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and thousands of companies have gone bankrupt. Are You A "Grandma Killer" If You Want To Reopen Now? I'm fine with ending lockdowns sooner rather than later because I've been persuaded by the data I've seen in reading over the last few weeks that lockdowns don't matter much to people's behavior. Americans were self-isolating in March before most stay-at-home orders were issued. As long as people are being given honest, accurate daily information about the state of the epidemic I'm okay with experimenting by opening businesses back up and having the public act in accordance with its own level of collective risk tolerance. Fling open the doors, then invite national and local public health experts on for TV interviews to give their takes on whether it's safe yet. South Korean scientists conclude people cannot be infected with coronavirus more than once. Researchers in South Korea say it is impossible for the novel coronavirus to reinfect humans. Multiple tests that ostensibly showed 260 patients becoming reinfected were the result of false-positive testing, according to the Korea Herald. "The process in which COVID-19 produces a new virus takes place only in host cells and does not infiltrate the nucleus. This means it does not cause chronic infection or recurrence," said Dr. Oh Myoung-don, a Seoul National University hospital doctor, during a Thursday press conference. Testing kits could reportedly not distinguish between live traces of the virus and the RNA of the dead virus, according to Oh. Over Half of US Counties Have Had No COVID-19 Deaths. With many state and local governments starting to relax stay-at-home orders, it's instructive to examine just how concentrated the spread of COVID-19 has been in the U.S. Although all U.S. states have reported cases of COVID-19, the distribution of the cases and deaths has remained heavily concentrated in a small number of states, and among a small number of counties within all states. For instance, as of May 4, just 10 states account for 70% of all U.S. cases and 77% of all deaths. Together, New York and New Jersey alone account for 38% of all cases and 48% of total COVID-19 deaths. Republican-led House OKs limits on Ohio health director. Republican lawmakers frustrated with Ohio's aggressive stay-at-home orders voted Wednesday in the GOP-controlled House to limit the authority of the state's health director. The move seeks to restrict mandatory closure and stay-at-home orders issued by the health department to 14 days. After that, the orders would need approval from a legislative rule-making body. California's Newsom vows no 'normal' for state until the coronavirus vaccine is ready. It's almost as if he likes it like this. California's Gov. Gavin Newsom vows to make the coronavirus emergency measures in California its "new normal" unless — and it's a big if — a vaccine for the virus is ready. [...] President Trump has stated that a vaccine may be in place by the end of the year and the press has screamed that the president's projection is overly optimistic. If it happens, it will indeed be in a short period of time for a vaccine. But it will be a lethal eternity for an economy. That means Newsom isn't going to allow any normal life to go on until the economy is all but dead. Nearly $500,000 raised for jailed salon owner Shelley Luther. Shelley Luther defied Texas Governor Greg Abbott's executive order about closing her business. She opened her salon and was charged for it. She has now been sentenced to jail for being "selfish" and defying government. On top of that, she was fined $7,000. That's the bad news, which we covered in the latest episode of the NOQ Report Podcast. The good news came the next day. First, she found out that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is going to pay her fine. Then, she learned her GoFundMe is nearing $500,000 in donations. Texas Salon Owner Shelley Luther Ordered Released From Prison. A Dallas salon owner who broke a lockdown order to open her business was ordered released from prison on Thursday [5/7/2020]. "Texas Supreme Court orders Shelley Luther, imprisoned for contempt for violating order to close her Dallas salon, RELEASED from prison," posted Austin American-Statesman reporter Chuck Lindell. "Release from JAIL ordered under request for emergency relief while Supreme Court considers Luther's petition," he reported. "Response due by 4 p.m." Texas Gov. Abbott drops jail time for violating stay-at-home orders after furor over salon owner. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a new order Thursday eliminating jail time as punishment for violating stay-at-home orders, effectively allowing jailed salon owner Shelley Luther to be released. "Throwing Texans in jail whose biz's shut down through no fault of their own is wrong," Mr. Abbott tweeted. "I am eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders." He added, "Criminals shouldn't be released to prevent COVID-19 just to put business owners in their place." Dan Crenshaw reacts to jailing of salon owner, says some leaders 'drunk with power'. Tuesday's jailing of a hair salon owner in Texas for defying a coronavirus shutdown order just doesn't cut it, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw wrote Tuesday [5/5/2020]. In fact, the punishment dished out to Dallas business owner Shelley Luther was another example of public officials overstepping their authority during the crisis, the congressman wrote on Twitter. "These punishments are NOT just," Crenshaw wrote. "They are not reasonable. Small-minded 'leaders' across the country have become drunk with power. This must end." Texas Governor and Attorney General Call For Immediate Release of Jailed Salon Owner Shelly Luther. Mrs. Shelly Luther probably did not expect to take this role, but the rebellious Texas salon owner has become the face of resistance to overbearing totalitarian dictates. Mrs. Luther opened her salon in defiance of the economic shutdown that was causing financial ruin for her and her employees. As a result Texas Judge Eric Moye sentenced her to a week in jail. Facing massive public outcry and support for Luther the Texas Attorney General and Governor are now asking Dallas County authorities to let her out of jail. GoFundMe amount soars for new American hero, salon owner Shelley Luther after 7k in fines and jail. A Texas salon owner who was fined and sentenced to seven days in jail for defying a state order to close her business has found a lot of support for her brave decision. A GoFundMe page set up for Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther has raised over $273,000 in funds from supporters who want to help her with the $7,000 fine and other costs she has incurred after she "decided to resist tyranny" by defying county orders and opening her salon for business in order to feed her family. The fundraising page reported Wednesday [5/6/2020] that the salon owner "is in JAIL as of yesterday" and that, in the first week of the "battle" Luther already accrued nearly $10,000 in legal fees. Texas Attorney General tells 'out of touch' judge he 'abused his authority' by jailing salon owner who opened her business despite stay-at-home orders 'so she could feed her kids'. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has called for a salon owner to be released from jail as he slams the judge who locked her up for violating the state's stay-at-home order. Shelley Luther, the owner of Salon a la Mode in Dallas, appeared in court on Tuesday where she was sentenced to seven days behind bars and $7,000 — $500 for each day she opened her business' doors. Gov Greg Abbott's started phase one of Texas reopenings last week, but did not allow salons to resume business - but that didn't stop Luther from opening up. Dallas County Judge Eric Moyé found Luther in criminal and civil contempt of court and told her she owed local leaders an apology. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick defends jailed salon owner: 'She should be home for Mother's Day'. A judge in Texas was "vindictive" and showed "no mercy and no compassion" when he gave a Dallas salon owner a choice between closing her business or spending seven days in jail for violating a coronavirus shutdown order, the state's lieutenant governor said Wednesday night [5/6/2020]. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick shared his views during an appearance on "Fox News @ Night" with Shannon Bream. Earlier Wednesday, Patrick tweeted he was willing to pay salon owner Shelley Luther's $7,000 [fine] and be placed under house arrest to serve her sentence "so she can go to work and feed her kids," after Luther decided to serve time behind bars rather than comply with a shutdown order. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Says He Will Cover Jailed Dallas Salon Owner Shelley Luther's Fine. After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called for her "immediate release," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he will be covering a fine owed by Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who is currently serving a seven-day jail sentence. A spokesperson later confirmed Patrick did just that. Luther, owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced Tuesday after judge Eric Moye said she violated statewide stay-at-home orders when she reopened her business nearly two weeks ago. She also publicly tore up a cease-and-desist letter from Dallas County that ordered her to close. Luther was also ordered to pay a fine of $3,500 along with $500 per day that her salon is open until Friday, May 8. California Begins Forcibly Quarantining People — Separating Families — Over COVID-19. As I reported at PJMedia, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he was raising up an "army" of contact tracers — as many as 20,000 people — to track down everyone with COVID-19 and quarantine them. [...] On Wednesday [5/6/2020], the soft voice of Ventura County Health Director Robert Levin confirmed that the forcible quarantines are underway. He announced a "pilot program that will grow into a larger program" and "we will find everyone with COVID-19 and we will isolate every one of them and we will make sure that they stay quarantined and we will check in with them every day. In other words, what this program means is we're going to do a more complete job, we're going to do a more meticulous job of making it less and less possible for others in the county to run into someone with COVID-19 infection." Laura Ingraham warns the left is using coronavirus pandemic to 'remake America into a progressive society'. Laura Ingraham accused Democrats and left-wingers Wednesday of trying to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to remake America into a "progressive society." "It's hard to imagine that there are actually people out there who seem happier when most of America is miserable and conversely, they're miserable when most of you are happy," "The Ingraham Angle" host began. "But that sums up things on the left and the age of Trump, and especially during this unprecedented COVID crisis." "Now, with the pandemic as a kind of cover, they're excited about ramming through this new vision for a new America," Ingraham added. The host accused "the left" of wanting to remake America because they are unhappy with Trump. NY hiring 1,000 contact tracers to track COVID-19 spread. They're the new wave of front-line workers, vital to New York's re-opening. One thousand contact tracer jobs are available right now to help the city and state combat COVID-19. After a person tests positive for coronavirus, tracers conduct phone interviews to identify who they've been in significant contact with over the last 14 days. Bloomberg Philanthropies is helping with the hiring and training of contact tracers. Illinois governor says churches may not reopen for a year or more because of coronavirus. It could be more than a year before churches are allowed to resume their in-person gatherings, according to Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker announced a five-phase plan to reopen Illinois that gives guidance to schools, businesses, churches, and other religious centers about when they will be allowed to reopen. In phase three, gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed. In phase four, gatherings of up to 50 people will be allowed. Gatherings of more than 50 people will not be allowed until phase five. Panic Kills, Especially in Nursing Homes. As my faithful readers know, I've been pretty tough on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. I asked in my columns and on The Eric Metaxas Show if he should be charged with negligent homicide. That wasn't because he's a Democrat, or a leftist, even because he's pro-infanticide. It's because of the outrageous, death-dealing policy he imposes on nursing homes, along with the governors of New Jersey and California. That is — forcing nursing homes to take in coronavirus patients. As I told Eric, I'm angrier at Andrew Cuomo than I ever was at Osama bin Laden, who attacked my hometown when I lived in it. Why? Because bin Laden never claimed to be an American, much less a public servant. I will NOT wear a mask. A new fad has sprung up among our power-hungry and very ignorant politicians and leftist press who are panicking over the Wuhan flu. It apparently has not been enough that they have successfully destroyed a thriving economy, put millions out of work, destroyed the airline, entertainment, sports, and restaurant industries, over a disease that, at best is nothing more than a slight blip in the overall death rate, and at worst will be comparable to similar past epidemics that we lived through without government-imposed panic or economic disaster. No, destroying millions of lives has not been enough. They need to do more. They need to find more ways to squelch our freedom, nullify the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and, to paraphrase Orwell, stamp a boot down on our faces, forever. And in this case, they mean to do this, almost literally. They are now beginning to demand that we wear masks at all times in public, in the mindless and stupid belief that this will somehow stop COVID-19 from spreading. It's time to reopen the schools. Two months ago, I called for states to close their schools, to reduce the spread of COVID-19. My goal was to "slow down the spread of coronavirus and keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed" by large numbers of coronavirus patients at any one time, by spacing out infections over a longer period of time. That way, hospitals would have enough ventilators and other equipment to treat all the people who fall ill, even at the peak of the epidemic. [...] But even in the regions hardest hit by the coronavirus, American hospitals never ran out of ventilators — not even at the peak period of infections. Cities never ran out of hospital beds. Some hospitals did face difficulty obtaining enough personal protective equipment (PPE), but in most of the country, hospitals had enough PPE. So it is now clear that most schools do not need to remain closed to keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Doing so will not save lives in the long run. So states should reopen their schools, starting with elementary schools. Science and the Constitution say: End the lockdowns. Across the nation, protesters are taking to the streets and business owners are filing lawsuits objecting to the shutdown rules. As the shutdown drags on, it's causing job losses, bankruptcies and a sense that people are being robbed of their rights. The liberal media label the protesters virus deniers. But the protesters have science and the US Constitution on their side. Not to mention common sense. As Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday, "This is not a sustainable situation. Close down everything, close down the economy, lock yourself in the house." Start with the science. Data show almost all coronavirus fatalities are among the elderly and those with serious health problems. A staggering 68 percent of deaths in Pennsylvania have been nursing-home residents; in Rhode Island, it's 70 percent. Shutting stores and restaurants didn't save them. Lockdown Advocates Are More Determined Than You Know. [Scroll down] My point is that this clown is not a scientist. He's a left-wing activist who has phony computer model data that he doesn't even believe in himself. He puts it out and American health experts bought into it hook, line, and sinker. They used it to set original data and behavioral practices and restrictions on the American people. This guy is out advocating social distancing while not practicing it himself. He's nothing but what everybody else in this story is, an uber-left-wing activist disguised as a scientist or disguised as a journalist or disguised as a governor or disguised at whatever other attempt they are using to hide from you who they really are. And they are unified in their objective, and that objective is the destruction of capitalism and free markets. Report: Loss of sports revenue due to coronavirus could exceed $12 billion. The loss of television and ad revenue from the suspension of sports due to the coronavirus, will end up costing at least $12 billion, according to a recent analysis conducted for ESPN. Those numbers, however, could become even dramatically worse if the college football and NFL seasons are seriously impacted by the virus. Gov. Abbott Intervenes in Shelley Luther Case. Most are aware that a Dallas-area salon owner named Shelley Luther was sentenced to a week in prison yesterday by an abusive Dallas judge, after she defied Abbott's order that her business was "non-essential" and opened it up briefly last week. Police intervened, cited her and ordered her to appear in court. During her hearing on Tuesday, the judge in the case, State District Court Judge Eric Moye, agreed with her that the Governor's order was technically unsupported by existing law. However, in a fit of pique after Luther emotionally told the judge she would not shut her salon down because she was trying to feed her children, the liberal circus clown — who was initially appointed to the bench by Texas's last Democrat Governor, Ann Richards, in 1993 — sentenced her to serve in a Dallas jail in which there have already been more than 200 cases of Wuhan Virus diagnosed. South Dakota Throws Parade For Governor Kristi Noem Who Declined To Shut State Amid Pandemic. As they should. Governor Kristi Noem is a star. Noem was attacked relentlessly by the Left, because she wisely chose to not shutdown her state. That is why South Dakota is in much better economic shape today than most other states. You will be hearing a-lot from Governor Noem in the years to come. Neil 'Lockdown' Ferguson Gets Caught With His Pants, And His Credibility, Down. It sounds like great tabloid fare: A leading disease expert in the United Kingdom is discovered to have violated the country's stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic so he could canoodle with a married woman. And, yes, the British tabloids ate it up. But the scientist in this case was the highly respected Neil Ferguson, the person who more than anyone on the planet is responsible for the lockdown that has cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars. It was Ferguson's modeling that predicted massive deaths from the coronavirus unless drastic actions were taken. In the U.S. alone, he predicted 2.2 million deaths — and more than a million if the country went into lockdown. Democrats Gamble Everything on Dislike of Trump and Promotion of Lockdown. The Democrats are staking everything on their ability to turn the presidential election into the question: "Do you like Trump?" [...] In pursuit of this strategy, they have an excellent excuse for keeping their unfeasible candidate in his basement for medical reasons, and are espousing in unison the imbecilic mantra: "Test and trace." This holds that the way to fight the coronavirus is to mass-test the population and wherever an infection is discovered, to ascertain the identity of everyone the infected person has met in the last two weeks and chase them up and test them, and so forth, to the farthest corners of America. This is nonsense and anyone who thinks about it for five seconds will realize it's nonsense, but it is the almost uniform position of the national Democratic leadership. James O'Keefe: CBS Faked a Line of Cars to Make Corona Tests Seem Harder to Get. Did CBS fake a line of cars in Michigan in order to make it seem like COVID-19 testing was even more difficult? That's what Project Veritas creator James O'Keefe asserts in a new video. Footage of the May 1 CBS This Morning shows a long line of vehicles waiting for drive-by testing in Michigan. According to O'Keefe, "A CBS News crew pulled medical professionals off the floor at the Cherry Medical Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to line up in their vehicles so a CBS film crew would have a long line for their COVID-19 coverage." O'Keefe talked to an anonymous witness in Grand Rapids who alleged that CBS "told us that medical personnel were taken away from treating patients and making the line longer for actual patients wait for the COVID-19 test." City of Lakefield resolves to stand against Gov. Walz' shutdown orders. The Lakefield MN City Council voted on Monday [5/4/2020] in a 3-2 vote to take a stand against what they say are unconstitutional Executive Orders by Gov. Tim Walz that continue to restrict businesses and the ability of the people to move freely. The resolution starts out by referencing the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and highlights the rights of citizens to due process of law before being deprived of life, liberty or property. The resolution states that the City Council opposes any Executive Order that restricts those constitutional rights of the citizens of Lakefield. House Republicans put top Trump defenders on new coronavirus investigative panel. House Republicans appointed top defenders of President Trump to a newly formed coronavirus committee they believe will be weaponized against the president. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Minority Whip Steve Scalise would lead the GOP side of the panel, alongside Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who has led the effort to defend the president against impeachment and other investigations into the president. McCarthy also appointed Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, Jackie Walorski of Indiana, and Mark Green of Tennessee to serve on the panel. Democrats Will Sacrifice Americans to Win the Presidency. We were first told we must "flatten the curve." Then, as the curve flattened, they explained we needed to "test everyone." That gave away the game. America is a nation of 330 million citizens victimized by the Chinese plague. To acquiesce to the new rules, each person would need to be tested not once, but probably at least twice or even three times. To accomplish this monumental task, we would need at least a billion tests. The amount of time necessary to produce, execute, and evaluate each test is not only incalculable, but unfathomable. If that is to be the criteria, we will never reopen. [...] You see, the Democrat goal is to reopen not one day before November 3, 2020. You know, Election Day. Who'll dare to face the facts on obesity and Covid-19? With each day that passes, with each new grim death toll, we learn a little bit more about the nature of this ghastly virus. This week in particular, statistics have come to light showing that obesity is emerging as one of the biggest risk factors for Covid-19. According to data released by the NHS, being overweight raises the chances of dying in hospital from the illness by 40 percent. Texas created a Wuhan virus martyr by imprisoning Shelley Luther. On Tuesday [5/5/2020], Texas may have created the anti-lockdown movement's first martyr when a Dallas judge sentenced hairstylist Shelley Luther to a week in prison for the crime of trying to provide for her own and her employee's families. [...] Both the state of Texas and the county of Dallas declared hair stylists non-essential. The government — which is dependent on people's taxes — ignored that for most people bringing a paycheck home is essential. Meanwhile, by April 15, Dallas had released 1,000 prisoners from the county jail. Because there were Wuhan virus cases among the prison population, some of the released prisoners probably brought the virus to the general population. After more than a month of being closed down, Shelley Luther, a Dallas hairstylist, reopened her salon. Dallas county sent her a cease and desist letter, which she publicly destroyed. Luther was then hauled into court to answer for her crimes. The judge, after demanding an apology from Luther, which she refused to give, sentenced her to a week in jail, plus a large fine. Dallas salon owner who reopened despite coronavirus restrictions gets 7 days in jail. A Texas salon owner was given seven days in jail on Tuesday after she refused to apologize for defying coronavirus related restrictions by remaining open for business. Dallas business owner Shelley Luther was given a choice: She could offer an apology for selfishness, pay a fine and shutdown until Friday, or serve jail time. "I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I'm selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish," she told the judge. "I have hairstylists that are going hungry because they would rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision. But I am not going to shut the salon." After her refusal to show contrition, bailiffs led her away to be booked. Her sentence reportedly symbolizes the seven-days she stayed open, despite county regulations. Dallas
salon owner jailed for reopening in violation of court order. A Dallas salon owner will spend a week in jail
after she was found in contempt of court Tuesday [5/5/2020] for violating an order to close her salon during the coronavirus
pandemic. In addition, Shelley Luther was fined $7,000 for continuing to operate her business, The Imagined New Normal Is Not Normal At All. VitalVio, an antimicrobial light company, commissioned a study asking Americans how they envisioned everyday life in the wake of COVID-19. Reading the results it seems as if the fear mongering the corporate media has engaged in solely to oppose the president at every turn has worked wonders. [...] Now, being more concerned about cleanliness is not a terrible thing. However the idea the nearly 20% of respondents said they may never again feel comfortable in public spaces is concerning. Especially since some public spaces, especially if they are outdoors, are the safest places to be according to research. Even more shocking is the number who say they may not return to work. Rural Oregon Sheriff Announces County Businesses Will Reopen. His Statement is Glorious. On Monday [5/4/2020], the Sheriff of Crook County, Oregon, John Gautney, issued a statement that went viral for all the right reasons. In announcing that the county was ready to get back to work, he said that the sheriff's office would not cite businesses that chose to reopen. Sheriff Gautney said that it didn't make sense for small businesses to remain closed when large retailers could continue to operate with proper safety measures in place. He noted that Crook County has had a grand total of one case of CCP coronavirus, and that it was time to get back to work. The War between Experience and Credentials. It seems a simple matter that the small number of those testing positive for the virus simply could not represent all those who are infected with the contagion. Yet such obviousness did not stop modelers, experts, and political advisers from authoritatively lecturing America on the lethality and spread of COVID-19. Internet coronavirus-meters feign scientific accuracy with their hourly streams of precise data. But those without degrees wondered why such metrics even listed China, whose data is fanciful, or why the number of "cases" is listed when it hinges entirely on the hit-and-miss and idiosyncratic testing of various states and nations. Throughout this crisis, there has been a litany of arrogance and ignorance. The FDA early on made a hubristic and disastrous decision to monopolize testing. Neither the WHO nor the CDC could get their stories straight on the wisdom or folly of wearing masks. [...] So the public found little initial expertise from experts. Under This Doctor's Care, Most COVID-19 Patients Are Recovering. Here's His Unusual Approach. Physicians who were treating COVID-19 patients took note and communicated to others by phone call, conference, or social media, but there was no central repository for their experiences, which ensured that the virus spread much faster than information. Now, approximately four months since the first reported case in America, we are beginning to understand why. Dr. Thomas Yadegar, a critical care physician for 20 years and now director of the intensive care unit at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California, has been on the front lines of the pandemic response. The first time one of his patients deteriorated, he was completely stumped for the first time in his two decades in the ICU. Stress from virus response will destroy 7 times more years of life than lockdowns save: Study. A recent study shows that anxiety and social disruption because of the coronavirus could destroy 7 times more years of human lives than can be saved by strict lockdowns. The study, conducted by Just Facts, computed based on a broad array of scientific data that stress is one of the deadliest health hazards in the world, and stay-at-home orders, business shutdowns, media frenzy, as well as legitimate concerns about the virus can ultimately cost more lives than lockdowns can save. "This research is engaging and thoroughly answers the question about the cure being worse than the disease," said Joseph P. Damore, Jr., M.D., who reviewed the study. Four Republican lawmakers sue Inslee over coronavirus stay-home order, contending 'the emergency has been contained'. In the latest in an escalating series of legal challenges by Republicans, four Washington state legislators sued Gov. Jay Inslee in federal court on Tuesday, seeking to strike down his stay-home order aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. A 28-page complaint, filed by the lawmakers and others in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, contends "the emergency has been contained" and that continuing restrictions for workers, businesses and residents are not legally justified. The lawmakers joining the lawsuit are Reps. Drew MacEwen, R-Union; Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia; Chris Corry, R-Yakima; and Brandon Vick, R-Vancouver. Four other Washington residents also are plaintiffs, saying their rights to work, operate businesses, obtain medical care and worship have been harmed. The plaintiffs are represented by Joel Ard, a Seattle lawyer and member of the conservative Federalist Society, and David DeWolf, a professor emeritus of law at Gonzaga University. Why does returning to normal after coronavirus lockdown have to be a fight? In 2020 America, we should probably have expected that the eagerly-awaited prospect of a return to economic activity after the nationwide coronavirus lockdown would be greeted not with cheers but with widespread strife. Understandably, some want their jobs and livelihoods back ASAP, not to mention everyone who simply hopes to retrieve newly-cherished freedoms such as strolls in the park. And they see local politicians citing public health to exert questionable powers to enforce social distancing and prohibit even small gatherings, once a sacred liberty in this country. Others, including majorities in some national polls, are not sure our society should move so quickly to restore an ill-defined normalcy, whatever that constitutes in the minds of 328 million people. Understandably, they've been infected by the virus of fear, another affliction that's swept the land as history's 59th presidential general election cycle moves toward summer. Fears have fueled some of history's most disastrous election results. 1,300 test positive in Tennessee prison: 98% asymptomatic. After the publication of this article, it was reported that one inmate at the Trousdale prison in Tennessee has died of COVID-19. Six others have been hospitalized, and one of them is in serious condition. 1 out of 1,300 is a remarkably low fatality rate. The inmate who died was reportedly 67 years old. Your governor can't force you to stay in your state. Period. Truth be told, even when states were super-sovereigns, during time of the Articles of Confederation, they did not ban Americans from traveling from state to state, because that was recognized as a fundamental liberty interest that even King George didn't try to stop. Even as states were free to regulate interstate commerce from 1776 to 1789, Art. IV of the Articles of Confederation unambiguously recognized the right of Americans to travel freely from state to state: "The free inhabitants of each of these states ... shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state." Virginia admits to padding coronavirus testing numbers in a way that can easily fool the public. At a time when Americans are clamoring for accurate information about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, some officials in certain states are doing their best to make the task more difficult. Like Virginia. Last week, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam's 'coronavirus response team' essentially admitted to padding the state's testing numbers after announcing a sudden 15 percent spike. "You need to know the exact number of tests not the number of people who had tests," Dr. Daniel Carey, Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources, told reporters. As such, the Virginia Department of Health announced that it will begin counting the number of positive tests, not the number of people who test positive. So, if the same person is tested more than once and all of those tests come back positive, they will be added to the overall 'positive' test count, which makes for a major inaccuracy. Wisconsin Sup. Ct. Justice: Isn't state's lockdown order "the very definition of tyranny?". The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral argument via video in the case brought by the Wisconsin legislature contesting the authority of state officials to impose a lockdown order. [...] I didn't have time today to watch the whole argument, so I can't express a view on who did better and who did worse, so draw your own conclusions. From the reactions I'm seeing on social media, supporters of continuing the lockdown are expecting a loss. [Video clip] Continuing The Shutdown Is Downright Immoral. This lockdown is fundamentally immoral and has been from almost the very beginning. It took me a while to get to that place, but here I am and here is why. First of all, let's address how the left views this. They have framed this as a choice between certain death or making money for greedy CEO's. They promote the argument that the jobs we have taken from 30 million (and still counting!) Americans should be dismissed as "amoral dollars and cents." Amoral? Please! How is a young couple working entry level jobs to get their start in the work force and to put together a few coins to start a family, amoral? How is a man working [...] to start and run a family business, who gives people their first opportunity in the labor force, amoral? They aren't. Period. What is amoral, nay outright immoral, is arbitrarily deciding to deprive a certain class of American citizens of their fundamental right to feed their families. What could be more immoral than restricting the movements of American citizens who have committed no crime. Compounding said immorality, we did this based on little to no evidence that they posed any real danger to anyone but an extremely small segment of society. That segment could have been easily protected without trampling on civil rights of the rest of our citizenry. New York Reports Over 1,700 Previously Undisclosed Deaths at Nursing Homes. New York state is reporting more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as the state faces scrutiny over how it's protected vulnerable residents during the coronavirus pandemic. Is Big Pharma behind the great war on hydroxychloroquine? When President Trump brought up hydroxychloroquine as a promising potential treatment for COVID-19, a huge upsurge of negative political publicity followed from it. It was strange stuff, because up until then, the treatment, which had been safely used to treat malaria, lupus, and arthritis, had been seeing promising results for COVID-19, too. Yet the condemnations from all sides poured for weeks. It wasn't just the political establishment blasting it; it seemed to be the medical establishment, too. That raises questions as to whether financial interests might be involved here. It started with the press engaging in its customary contrarianism against Trump when he called the treatment "promising." The logic was simple: If Trump liked it, then it had to be bad. Despite Polling, Cell Phone Data Shows Americans Are Going Out Again. Over the past two weeks, a slew of polling has come out showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the coronavirus lockdown measures throughout much of the country. A recent poll in Massachusetts had 85 percent supporting the extension of restrictions through May 18. Nationally, according to a Forbes poll in late April, 87 percent of Americans favor continuing the lockdown. But cell phone tracking data is telling a different story. Apple looked at changes in routing requests on its phones and found that beginning in mid-March their users' mobility began dropping, hitting a nadir of -60 percent of the baseline in April. By May 4, that number had jumped up to -20 percent of the baseline. That's a 40 percent increase in travel. The Editor says... Social distancing mastermind resigns after breaking his own rules. The leading epidemiologist who helped craft the United Kingdom's social distancing rules resigned after he was caught breaking those rules in order to cheat with a married woman. Dr. Neil Ferguson led a team of researchers at the Imperial College in London but he relinquished his post on Tuesday after the Telegraph newspaper reported on his extramarital acts. The report said that a married woman who lived in another house with her family visited Ferguson twice at his home in violation of the social distancing rules he helped implement. Ferguson lives with his child but is believed to have separated from his wife. Ferguson told CNN in a statement that he had committed "an error of judgement and took the wrong course of action." How a rogue Iran airline spread coronavirus through Middle East. An Iranian airline under US sanctions flew passengers infected with the coronavirus to Iraq and Lebanon and between Iran and China, fueling the spread of the virus across the Middle East. Mahan Air, a private company linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), continued flying to China and elsewhere for weeks after Tehran officially barred flights to and from the country on Jan. 31. The airline lied about these flights taking place, according to an investigation by the BBC. Arrival and departure data from Tehran's Imam Khomeini and Chinese airports shows flights continued into March. Mystery as Chinese coronavirus researcher, 37, at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is killed in murder-suicide while on verge of 'significant findings'. A well-respected University of Pittsburgh Medical Center researcher was said to have been on the verge of 'very significant findings' related to the coronavirus when police say he was killed in an apparent murder-suicide. Dr Bing Liu, 37, was alone at his home in the 200 block of Elm Court in Ross Township on Saturday afternoon when another man - identified as 46-year-old Hao Gu - allegedly entered the residence through an unlocked door and opened fire. Liu was struck by bullets in the head, neck and torso, and died of his injuries. Researcher On Cusp Of COVID-19 Breakthrough Killed In Bizarre Murder-Suicide. A University of Pittsburgh researcher working on a coronavirus project was fatally shot on Saturday at his home in Ross Township, while associate Hao Gu, 46, was found dead in a car approximately 100 yards away of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot. The researcher, 37-year-oild Bing Liu, was found shot multiple times in the head, neck and torso around Noon on Saturday. Nothing was stolen from the townhouse and there was no forced entry, according to the Post Gazette. -->House Democrat calls for halt to lawmakers sleeping in their offices. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is urging Capitol officials to review the safety of the long-running practice of lawmakers sleeping in their offices, arguing that it poses a public health risk during the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter made public on Monday [5/4/2020], Speier wrote to Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton and attending physician Brian Monahan that lawmakers sleeping in offices should be permanently banned. Speier pointed to reports that 17 construction workers in the Cannon House Office Building have tested positive for COVID-19 as evidence that lawmakers could have been exposed to the virus if they were sleeping in their offices in recent weeks. Masks become a flash point for protests and fights as businesses, beaches and parks reopen. As Florida lifted some of its coronavirus restrictions over the weekend, sunny weather beckoned crowds to gather at newly opened parks and beaches, where public officials approved the springtime outings as long as people wore masks and kept their distance. Over three days, more than 7,300 people showed up at Miami Beach parks without covering their mouths and noses, Miami Beach police said in a statement on Facebook. Hundreds more didn't maintain the mandated six feet of social distancing. The Editor says... N.J. facing 'fiscal disaster' that's just weeks away from coronavirus pandemic, Murphy says. New Jersey is facing a financial disaster due to loss in revenue and spike in expenses related to the coronavirus outbreak that could be just weeks away, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday [5/4/2020]. "Right now, it's pouring," Murphy said, shortly after announcing he was ordering all public and private schools closed for the rest of the academic year. "We are on the brink of having to make very tough and, quite frankly, very unpalatable decisions." The Editor says... The Munchausen State's Experiment with Mass OCD. [Scroll down] [T]he arrival of the coronavirus has given the political elite of the nanny state an opportunity to attempt to make the entire nation a safe place. Germs and viruses will be totally eliminated, no matter what the cost. [...] Until that happy day arrives, the entirety of our society is ordered to observe OCD rituals designed to keep America healthy. Don't come out of your house, and if you absolutely must, stay the ritualistic six feet apart. Wear a mask, and be sure to have washed your hands until they are raw. Close down exceptionally infectious places like synagogues and churches while leaving the temples of materialism like Walmart open to all comers. Don't go to the beach, don't skateboard, and don't touch anyone. [...] The difficulties lie in the Munchausen mom and Howard Hughes statists whose psychotic, arbitrary, and erratic warfare tactics against an invisible virus are forced on the entire populace. Requiring OCD behavior is as destructive to society at large as it was individually to Howard Hughes. The present rules of social engagement with our fellow human beings are making neurotics of us all. Worse, those who are proponents of the new regulations want to keep them around forever, establishing abnormality as the "new normal." The third wave of the left's attempted destruction of America. We are currently in the third wave of the left's attempts to totally deconstruct America into the image of the leftist utopia. There is no love of this country or its traditions or its Constitution among the left. Remaking it into a radical ideological hellhole is leftists' only objective. [...] The third wave is not the coronavirus, but the reaction of the left. Leftists desperately need to destroy the American economy and American lives and livelihoods in order to enact their agenda by any means necessary. It is obvious that the governors and mayors of red (conservative) states want to save small businesses and local economies by opening them up. But blue (leftist-run) states want to kill their economies and the middle class in their states to create economic chaos, which they believe will facilitate the election of more leftists, including a socialist-friendly president. Coronagate: the scandal to end all scandals. Here's the bottom line: Dr Fauci and his institutional sponsors have known since at least 2005 that chloroquine — and its milder derivative hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) — inhibit coronaviruses like SARS from replicating in the body. They have withheld this important information from the public and failed to act on it when forming policy. Instead these besuited criminals have pushed experimental and expensive drugs, whilst having huge financial conflicts of interest. This means that the present lockdown and the immense disruption and harm it is causing is for no real benefit. We could be offering cheap and effective prophylactic and therapeutic treatments for COVID-19, targeted at the vulnerable (like healthcare workers, elderly, those with comorbidities). Indeed, several countries are taking this course now with proven success. Major Western nations are committing economic and social suicide to sustain an enormous lie about the integrity of those we trusted to protect us. This is a crime against humanity, and encompasses many in the pharma business, the corporate media, and in government. The size of the scandal cannot be overstated. Those responsible deserve the most severe punishment for ruining civil society. Governors We'd Like To See Recalled For Their Pandemic Responses. Few living Americans have ever seen the troubles we're going through now. We're not at war, nor are we enduring the moral equivalent of war. But we're in a struggle. And for many, it's been made worse by governors who have gone too far. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat who thinks she runs, rather than serves, Michigan, might be the worse of the lot. "She has," say Andrew Fillat and Henry Miller, both regular I&I contributors, "exhibited a stunning dumbness that, even among politicians, is extraordinary." Her "decrees in the name of mitigating the spread of COVID-19 have been both bizarre and counterproductive, lacking common sense or any sort of scientific basis and eliciting widespread mistrust of her judgment," they wrote last week in American Greatness. Whitmer has treated the people of Michigan as if they are subjects rather than a free people. The Media Racket And The Coronavirus Numbers Game. The coronavirus is real, and tens of thousands of people around the world have died from it. But it is not the pandemic we were told it was going to be. That's not a complaint. If anything it's gratitude. Thank God it hasn't been worse. Unfortunately, in the build-up to our current reality, the media noticed something — their ratings were up. Obviously, people were tuning in to find out if they were going to die or not. Telling them it was highly unlikely that they would only drive them back to their old viewing habits and away from cable news. Print media found the same thing with their traffic. This terrified Democrats too, with CNN and MSNBC, along with most newspapers, firmly in their camp and eager to spread fear and blame, something had to be done. They broke out the boxes — a running total, always on screen, of cases and deaths which, without context, can only scare. The context is never, ever given. Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic. In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide. Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. [...] Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 — planned in January during the worse period of death — actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. Project Veritas Uncovered an Important Coronavirus Story and Twitter Is Actively Suppressing It. Project Veritas recently released a video detailing how the number of Wuhan coronavirus deaths in the New York City area are being padded. Patients are being labeled as "coronavirus deaths" even though the person may have never even tested positive for the virus. The watchdog group shared their investigative video on Twitter. Interestingly enough, the social media platform was caught removing retweets. One of the Project Veritas members caught the number of retweets decreasing from 6,324 immediately to 5,981 in a video. "He caught Twitter reducing the number of retweets of our COVID-19 video," founder James O'Keefe said in a video uncovering the social media giant's move. "Jack Dorsey, what are you doing?" Former FDA Chief: Social Distancing 'Didn't Work as Well as We Expected'. On CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said social distancing and other mitigation measures put in place to stop the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus don't appear to be working as much as public health experts had hoped. "When you look across the country, it's really a mixed bag," Dr. Gottlieb explained. The former FDA chief said while New York is really driving the national statistics, other areas of the country are continuing to see a rise in the number of coronavirus cases. Could the Stay-at-Home Order Go Past May? Sometime between Saturday and Sunday, it's expected that Chicago's total number of coronavirus-related deaths will cross the 1,000-person mark. "Think about that: 1,000 people dead simply because of COVID-19," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Saturday [5/2/2020]. Chicago and the rest of Illinois have been under a coronavirus-inspired semi-lockdown for six weeks, and residents are instructed to stay at home as much as possible for another four weeks. Gov. J.B. Pritzker's latest stay-at-home order will expire at the end of May. But the mayor did not take the possibility of an extension off the table. How Treatable Is Covid-19? The Wuhan epidemic has exposed a rift between the academic medicine types who dominate the Centers for Disease Control and similar agencies in the states and practicing physicians who are actually treating COVID patients. The former have generally been unhelpful; CDC in particular has performed poorly. Meanwhile, doctors on the front line have developed effective treatment regimens for the virus — regimens which apparently would save many lives if they were broadly publicized and implemented. A group of critical care physicians representing the University of Tennessee, the University of Wisconsin, Eastern Virginia Medical School, the University of Texas and a number of other institutions have formed the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium and released a bulletin setting out a recommended treatment protocol. The protocol is based largely on the fact that it is not the virus, but the body's reaction to the virus, that kills patients. Schiff: If Trump [had been] Removed by Impeachment, Coronavirus Deaths Would Not Be at Daily 9/11 Levels. Monday [5/4/2020] on MSNBC's "The Last Word," House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said had the Senate removed President Donald Trump as a result of his impeachment trial, coronavirus casualties in America would not be on some days the "equivalent of the number of people we lost on 9/11." Anchor Lawrence O'Donnell said, "We can't act even slightly surprised by this because you told us this was going to happen in your argument in the Senate impeachment trial." The Editor says... Parallels Between Failed Climate Models And Failed Coronavirus Models. Climate models and coronavirus models have both been used to predict the future, and both have been used to form public policy. In this podcast between Anthony Watts and UAH climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, we examine the common denominator of failure they both share. We also look at why Carbon Dioxide hasn't been visibly reduced due to the economic shutdowns. [Video clip] Pseudo-Science behind the Assault on Hydroxychloroquine. This is a research article published as information for health care professionals and public officials, and for an open peer review. It is not medical advice. Coronavirus Deaths: The Most Predictive Factor. [Scroll down] A far more predictive metric is "death rate per million." Why? Testing is far more consistent for fatal cases. By this measurement, you are probably more likely to die from coronavirus if you live in a blue state rather than one of its scarlet counterparts. If you live in New Jersey, you are 13 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than if you live in Florida. The Garden State's death rate per million is 895.2, according to the RealClearPolitics coronavirus tracker, compared to only 65.1 deaths per million for Florida. This disparity can't be written off to demography or testing. Florida has a huge elderly population, and it has conducted twice as many tests as New Jersey. Finally, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis resisted the draconian stay-at-home orders imposed by his Democratic counterpart in New Jersey and hasn't been afraid to point out that he was right. China's Pandemic Escape Clause. Yet another indication that China knew it was about to release a deadly and destructive pandemic on the world is seen in its last minute insertion into the Phase 1 trade deal of a clause releasing it from its obligations under the deal in the event of a natural disaster. It is another reason why China pushes the wet markets story about the origin of the Wuhan virus and dismisses a leak from or accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. If the lab origin for the Wuhan virus is officially confirmed, China's economy is fatally screwed. New Corona Study Bolsters Case to Reopen Schools. Several countries are reopening schools after temporarily closing them due to coronavirus. For example, Denmark and Norway have reopened their elementary schools. States in America should start reopening their schools, too. New research says that doing so won't spread coronavirus to many adults, and it will have little effect on child mortality. Yet schools remain closed in 44 states. Two months ago, I called for states to close their schools, to reduce the spread of COVID-19. My goal was to "slow down the spread of coronavirus, and keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed" by large numbers of coronavirus patients at any one time, by spacing out infections over a longer period of time. That way, hospitals would have enough ventilators and other equipment to treat all the people who fall ill, even at the peak of the epidemic. The goal of my advice, which was cited or shared by a number of web sites like Real Clear Policy, was not to prevent all transmissions of coronavirus. That would be an impossible, unrealistic, and silly goal. Instead, the goal was more practical: To "flatten the curve" of infections and hospitalizations, so that no more people would be hospitalized at any one time than hospitals can handle. NYPD officers say coronavirus social distancing policing needs to end. Officers from the New York Police Department have decried city officials "get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether," following backlash stemming from a violent confrontation with police over the weekend as officers tried to enforce the rules. Patrick Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, lambasted city leadership, saying officers have received "nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves." Republican congressman Paul Mitchell sues Gov. Whitmer over handling of coronavirus. A Republican congressman sued Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in federal court Monday, alleging she has violated the constitution in her management of the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. Rep. Paul Mitchell, R-Dryden Township, said he wants a judge to "define the limits of a state's police power." He sued Whitmer in federal court in Grand Rapids. "Michiganders can and do take reasonable, private action to protect themselves from infection without the need to shut down civil society," Mitchell said in the lawsuit. "Given that the projected surge has not occurred, there is no basis, either legally or factually, to continue any further mandatory lockdown orders." The UK and USA: An Ocean Apart in Mortality Rates. At the time of writing, the deaths per million in the UK from the virus is 405, while in the USA it is half of this and in Germany it is a quarter. This ratio is unlikely to change considerably. There are four possible reasons for this difference. Firstly, the UK is under-reporting the infection rates (the denominator) and so the mortality percentage may be lower in the context of dilution by a more prevalent disease. Secondly, the UK is over-reporting mortality figures (the numerator), not intentionally by fabricating the data, but by redefining the disease. Thirdly, the health care the UK is providing its citizens in this pandemic is not on par with the USA or Germany. Finally, the population of the UK is not the same as the USA and may be more susceptible to the more serious aspects of the disease. This Is The Level Of Idiocy We Are Dealing With: Masks With Holes Cut In Them. "'Well since we have to wear them and it makes it hard to breathe, this [cutting it] makes it a lot easier to breathe." [...] She's genuinely clueless. This apparently took place at an SJ Food Mart outside of Lexington, Kentucky. [Video clip] Kentucky Covidiot explains she has cut a hole in her face mask because it 'makes it easier to breathe'. A store clerk was left amazed by a customer who had cut a hole in her Covid-19 face mask because it 'makes it easier to breathe'. Joe Samaan was working his shift at an S J Food Mart outside Lexington, Kentucky, when a woman came in asking to pay for gas. But unlike the hundreds of other customers Joe sees on a daily basis, the hole in this woman's protective facewear, which left her mouth and nose exposed, caught his eye. Demonstrators in Boston Flock to State House in Protest of Governor's Orders. Protesters on Monday [5/4/2020] flocked to the Massachusetts State House in Boston, calling on Gov. Charlie Baker (R) to reopen the state's economy. Photos and videos show protesters taking to the streets in Boston for the "Liberty Rally," holding signs reading "End shutdown" and "Tyranny is not leadership," according to WCVB. Your Mask Is Making You Meaner, Dumber, More Afraid & Less Safe. I'll try to keep this respectful but it's not easy because the masks that so many of you are so proudly wearing are the pinnacle of stupidity and I just don't know how to be nice about communicating that. I know we're all desperate to stay positive. And I know most Americans don't have the time or energy to really look past the top-line news they see and hear. And I know the media, academia and Hollywood are very effective at shaping our impressions of social and political goings-on. And I know politicians on both sides of the aisle are congratulating you for "doing your part" to help beat the COVID-19 virus. And I know that makes you feel good at a time we could all really use some lifting up. It's a powerful cocktail of forces especially when virtually everyone you know is 100% bought in, too. But as every good parent will at some point tell their children: just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't make it right. Tyranny: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown Extends Lockdown to July 6 Despite Ranking 40th on State Coronavirus List with 104 Deaths in State of 4 Million! Several states reopened at least partially on Friday May 1st after the six-week-long Fauci lockdown. But Democrat-led Oregon is not one of them. Oregon, a state with 4.14 million residents did not reopen on Friday. The Editor says... Restrictions have often gone far beyond what is justifiable under the Bill of Rights. We now have demonstrated means to limit mortality from the virus. This means that the fear of millions of deaths seems no longer likely. When this began, we were uncertain if the disease was treatable or how. Now we do know. Mortality figures are far lower than predicted and will further diminish as known treatments are more widely employed. [...] When this began, we had some models of the rate of transmissibility, but little idea of the number of persons who would suffer life-threatening symptoms and require hospitalization. For that reason, non-emergency surgeries were cancelled for the anticipated flood of COVID-19 patients. Those patients never materialized. In NYC, the military hospital ship went virtually empty, tent hospitals set up elsewhere have folded for lack of patients. Here and there, COVID-19 has swamped some hospitals, but almost everywhere else the restriction has meant the postponement of cancer treatments and other operations necessary to prolong and improve life of thousands more people who do not have the virus. A Wizard of Oz Virus: The COVID-19 Hoax. [T]his current situation is very different from past pandemics in one significant and deadly way: It's not being treated as only a medical/health issue. It's being treated as a political issue. And as the Soviet Union's Lysenkoism demonstrated, politics kills science. I recently dubbed the Wuhan Flu the "Wizard of Oz Virus" because its reputation greatly exceeds its power. This was evident long ago, too. [...] The Wuhan flu mortality rate may end up being similar to the flu's; the doom-and-gloom computer-model projections were way off; lockdowns are deadlier than what they supposedly combat; perhaps 80-plus percent of the afflicted are asymptomatic or only mildly affected; the infection rate is far higher than most "experts" suspected; and as with the flu, going outside, living relatively normally and establishing herd immunity (while protecting the vulnerable) is the best way to eliminate the disease. Hawaii Travel Paradise Is Deserted, With Recovery Further Off. In Hawaii, the number of new cases has dwindled to five on April 30, compared with a peak of 31 on March 17, according to the state's Department of Health. The state had 618 cases in total, and 16 deaths. Even as Hawaii's cases fall, Governor David Ige extended the state-at-home order through the end of May and said visitors need to quarantine for 14 days. Goodbye tourist industry, hello police state. Is It Time for a Revolution? I am impressed with how smart COVID-19 is. It appears to be the smartest virus of all time. Apparently, it doesn't infect us at Costco, Walmart, supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, hardware stores or any big business deemed "essential" by government. But it will infect us at hair salons, nail salons, restaurants, bars, clothing stores and any other small business deemed "nonessential" by government. Is the virus that smart? How does it know the difference? [...] This can't be just about a virus. If it were, we'd all play by the same rules, right? It sure seems someone is using a real deadly pandemic as an excuse to inflict terrible damage and financial death upon 30 million small-business owners, entrepreneurs and independent contractors in America (not to mention their employees). [...] And if you try to open your business, you'll be arrested. Because business owners making decisions about their own property are now criminals. Really? FDA approves coronavirus antibody test that boasts near-perfect accuracy. The Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval to a COVID-19 antibody test that boasts near-perfect accuracy, the company said Sunday [5/3/2020]. Swiss drugmaker Roche said the new test, which determines whether someone had a past infection, has proven 100% accurate at detecting antibodies in the blood and 99.8% accurate at ruling out the presence of them. The company said the test requires intravenous blood draws, with higher accuracy than finger-prick tests. Coronavirus hype [is the] biggest political hoax in history. The new coronavirus is real. The response to the coronavirus is hyped. And in time, this hype will be revealed as politically hoaxed. In fact, COVID-19 will go down as one of the political world's biggest, most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly and irrationally inflated and outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in American history, one that was carried largely on the lips of medical professionals who have no business running a national economy or government. Nobel Prize Winner Says We Have COV All Wrong. Professor Michael Levitt is a Professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems." He's a numbers guy. With a purely statistical perspective, he has been playing close attention to the Covid-19 pandemic since January. [...] The models assumed exponential growth but that hasn't happened anywhere, even in countries that were relatively lax in their responses [except maybe New York with the two incompetent hack leaders]. South Korea, Iran, and Italy flattened the curve but the professor couldn't believe they could do social distancing as well as China. He also observes that the total number of deaths we are seeing, in places as diverse as New York City, parts of England, parts of France, and Northern Italy, all seem to level out at a very similar fraction of the total population. He doesn't think they are all practicing good social distancing. Firm tests UV light treatment that Trump was mocked for mentioning. President Trump has been mocked relentlessly for suggesting that ultraviolet light could be brought "inside the body" to kill the coronavirus, but there is ongoing research to do just that. For example, the pharmaceutical firm Aytu BioScience announced on April 20, four days before the Trump remarks, that it has signed an exclusive licensing deal with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The center has developed and is testing a UV-A "Healight" designed to be inserted via a catheter inside the trachea to kill pathogens, including the coronavirus. Here's How NYC's Coronavirus Death Toll Is Being Inflated. Project Veritas recently released a new video that included phone calls with multiple funeral directors in the New York City metro area who say patients are being labeled as "coronavirus deaths" even though the person may have never even tested positive for the virus. "To be honest with you, all of the death certificates, they're writing COVID on all the death certificate, whether they had a positive test, whether they didn't," Michael Lanza, the funeral director at Colonial Funeral Home in Staten Island, told Project Veritas. "So, I think, you know, again, this is my personal opinion, I think that like the mayor in our city, they're looking for federal funding and, the more they put COVID on the death certificate, the more they can ask for federal funds. So I think it's political." People with low vitamin D levels more likely to die from coronavirus, study finds. People with low levels of vitamin D may be more likely to die from the coronavirus, according to a preliminary study. Researchers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia in England compared the average vitamin D levels of 20 European countries with COVID-19 mortality rates — and found "significant relationships" between vitamin D levels and the number of deaths caused by this infection. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, notes sun-starved "Nordic" countries are among the most at risk. "We believe that we can advise vitamin D supplementation to protect against SARS-CoV2 infection," the researchers wrote. Bill de Blasio warns New Yorkers that 'the nice weather is very much a threat to us'. The weather in New York City is going to be quite nice this weekend, which gave Mayor Bill de Blasio another reason to remind citizens about what could get them arrested. Maine Yanks Licenses From Restaurateur Who Defied Lockdown, Went On Tucker To Castigate Governor. The outrageous tyranny of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and her heavy-handed, illogical, and irresponsible Wuhan coronavirus edicts have finally been outdone by another Democrat governor, this time on the east coast. Maine governor Janet Mills jumped on the one-size-fits all Wuhan coronavirus bandwagon, and forced a state-wide shutdown order, including in counties that have tiny numbers of infections and zero deaths. This diktat made no sense to restaurateur Rick Savage, whose business is in Oxford County, Maine. Oxford is one of many U.S. counties to register zero deaths due to Wuhan coronavirus. Restaurateur Defied Maine Gov To Open His Business, State Agents Are Moving To Shut Him Down. State officials pulled a Maine restaurant's health and liquor licenses after the owner opened up in defiance of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills' emergency shutdown order. Rick Savage, owner of Sunday River Brewing Co. in Bethel, opened his restaurant and bar on May 1 after openly challenging Mills on an appearance on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" the evening before. After Savage reopened, officials from the state health department revoked the health and liquor licenses he needs to operate. "We've tried to call the governor; you can't even get ahold of them. The lawmakers are left in the dark, both Republicans and Democrats. She's doing this all rogue on her own," Savage said on Fox News on April 30. "We've had enough of it. We are encouraging all businesses in Maine to open up. We never should have been shut down in the first place. We need to open back up." Blue State Governors Lied, Thousands of Nursing Home Residents Died. Over 7,000 of the country's coronavirus deaths emerged out of nursing homes. Of the 4,377 coronavirus deaths in New Jersey, over 1,700 died due to infections in nursing homes. That nearly 40% of coronavirus deaths in one of the hardest hit states took place in nursing homes casts a stark light on the misplaced priorities of blue states battling the pandemic by locking down houses of worship and small businesses, while putting few to no resources into protecting nursing home residents. New Jersey's coronavirus deaths were part of the coronavirus outbreak in 425 nursing homes. At one nursing home, after an anonymous tip, police found 17 bodies being stored in a shed. Nearly 7,000 nursing home residents in the state have tested positive for coronavirus. In neighboring New York, nearly 1 in 4 coronavirus deaths emerged from nursing homes. Those 3,060 deaths are only part of the story and represent an extremely incomplete picture. We Wrecked Our Economy for Nothing. Imagine, if you will, an edict from your Mayor, Governor, the President, or all three. This edict targets you and 30 million other citizens simply because you are a member of a specific economic class or category of worker. Your vocation has been determined to be "non-essential." The directive is clear. You will forgo your wages for an indeterminate period of time. You have no choice. If you fail to comply, you face fines and/or imprisonment. The stated objectives of all of this, are to preclude the medical system from being overwhelmed and to increase the lifespan of one million people, many of whom would perish within 6 months anyhow from already existing conditions. This is exactly what has happened. The federal government has encouraged mayors and governors to enact certain "social distancing" guidelines and forbade workers in "non essential' occupations from earning a paycheck. This has, over the past few months, caused over 30 million people to become newly unemployed and unable to feed their families. This number will continue to rise. Project Veritas Talks With Funeral Directors Who Blow the Whistle On Falsely Attributing Deaths to Wuhan Coronavirus. Project Veritas has a new video out, focusing on funeral directors who are blowing the whistle on the alleged padding of Wuhan coronavirus deaths. The Project Veritas folks spoke with funeral directors out of New York who believed that the deaths were being attributed to the virus whether they were due to the virus or not. The tape reveals a completely haphazard approach, as James O'Keefe observes, marking down people as having the virus whether they had it or not. If people died at home people would rather put "COVID" rather than have to go into the home if the person had a fever, if they died with a respiratory issue, having it automatically attributed to COVID without testing, etc. Cuomo Plays On Fears And Ignorance About Reopening The Economy. [Scroll down] Remember, the impetus for the lockdowns was based on dire forecasts that COVID-19 would kill more than a million people — even with draconian measures in place — and that its death rate was on the order of 30 times greater than the flu. Now that we're getting antibody test results — which are showing magnitudes more had been infected than showed symptoms — the death rate is more like 0.3%. Yes, that's worse than the flu and enough to cause temporary, local shortages of health care, but not anywhere near enough to cause a nationwide breakdown of the system. Controversial Photo of 'Crowds' on CA Beach Was Shot with a Telephoto Lens. A photo showing crowds packing a beach in California during the state's COVID-19 lockdown sparked controversy this past week and led to the area's beaches getting shut down. Now that photo itself is at the center of a heated debate: many are saying that it's misleading because it was shot with a telephoto lens. Salons And Barbershops Across America Are About To Show How Unnecessary This Lockdown Was. In the eyes of many, Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther has become the latest face of justified resistance against governmental tyranny for her steadfast refusal to back down on keeping her business open despite the prospect of going to jail. Luther's Salon a la Mode opened for business last Friday [5/1/2020], then promptly got slapped with a court order to close because of coronavirus restrictions. Instead of meekly complying, as most others doubtless would have, Luther stood outside her salon and literally ripped the thing to shreds. Indeed, it was a moment that would have made Patrick Henry proud. (I'm also pretty sure it would have made another person with the surname "Luther" proud too.) The salon owner told media she has "had enough" of stupid, nonsensical restrictions on her livelihood and that of her employees, and is more than willing to go to jail to make her point. Sweden's gamble on coronavirus herd immunity couldn't work in the US — and it may not work in Sweden. In Sweden, bars and restaurants are open to the public, you can go get a haircut, and primary school is in session. The coronavirus has arrived, but life goes on. The country has taken a lighter-than-most approach to social distancing for COVID-19, relying on people to monitor themselves for symptoms, stay home when ill, practice good handwashing, and avoid crowds. You see very few masks on people's faces in current photos from Stockholm and other Swedish cities. Don't Expect Losers of Shutdown to Sit Idly by Forever. The quarantines may have been necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19, but they have created a large and diverse group of losers. Imagine that you are somebody whose livelihood has been obliterated by the draconian and often nonsensical rules of some state governments. What would you do? What if you make your living selling lawn and garden equipment in Michigan? It is a highly seasonal business, and the governor has effectively killed it off for this year. What if you own a restaurant in rural Pennsylvania, where the number of COVID-19 cases can be counted on a single hand, but the governor has declared that you cannot possibly reopen until June — because the virus is running out of control in metropolitan Philadelphia? Two CDC Websites Give Vastly Different Coronavirus Death Tolls. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday [5/1/2020] updated their coronavirus tracking numbers, leading to confusion on social media about two websites within the organization that show vastly different death tolls. The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website for the coronavirus lists the total deaths from COVID-19 — the disease caused by the virus — as 37,308 in the United States. That's a much lower number than what has been reported in the media or by other coronavirus trackers. For example, the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, lists the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. at 65,645. Even more confusing, a separate CDC website — dedicated exclusively to the novel coronavirus — lists the total COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as 64,283. COVID-19 [is] turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated by media. A recent Stanford University antibody study estimated the fatality rate from the virus is likely 0.1% to 0.2%. The World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated that the death rate was 20 to 30 times higher and called for isolation policies. On which version do you think the media focused? In New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. People aged 75 and older, though, have a death rate 80 times that. For children under 18, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. That's zero. [...] An antibody study was conducted last week in New York City and found that 1 in 5 (21.2%) of residents have already been infected with the coronavirus. There are 8.5 million people in New York City, so that would mean 1.8 million New Yorkers have had the virus. At the time of the study, there were 16,249 deaths in the city attributed to COVID-19, which means the death rate in the city was 0.89% at the time — far lower than reports in the U.S. media. Oklahoma city ends face mask rule for customers after threats of violence. An Oklahoma city walked back an emergency declaration requiring customers to wear face masks inside businesses after threats of violence were hurled at store employees. Officials in Stillwater announced the change Friday [5/1/2020], less than 24 hours after the rule went into effect at stores and restaurants. "In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse," City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. "In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm." No further details were provided about the alleged threats of violence. Our Glorious, Orwellian Reopening. [Scroll down] Several states have already come up with a predictably authoritarian (and unconstitutional) series of checklists and protocols for businesses to meet, before they can be reopened. As always, our illustrious leaders will trumpet their concern for our "safety" as the rationale behind the draconian rules. As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the primary mad scientist in this Pavlovian laboratory, has stated- we may never be able to go back to shaking hands. It's just too risky. And will undoubtedly impact people of color disproportionately. Don't you care about the children? We have overwhelming evidence now that this entire thing is a plandemic, the greatest psyop of all time. On top of the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and Dr. Birx of the White House, all freely acknowledging they are padding the numbers to get them as high as possible, we have a group of Pennsylvania coroners taking 200 deaths off of the COVID total, because the victims died from other causes. We also know that hospitals are being paid $13,000 for every new COVID patient. And $39,000 if they put them on a ventilator. This seems like an even more irrational allocation of taxpayer funds than usual. Mysterious coronavirus condition 'happy hypoxia' baffles doctors. A strange phenomenon dubbed "happy hypoxia" has baffled doctors treating coronavirus patients who describe themselves as comfortable despite dangerously low oxygen levels that would typically leave them unconscious, or even dead, according to reports. The mysterious condition that appears to defy basic biology is raising questions about how COVID-19 attacks the lungs, The Guardian reported. While a healthy person's blood-oxygen saturation is at least 95 percent, doctors have reported some coronavirus-stricken patients with levels in the 80s or 70s — with some extreme cases below 50 percent, according to the outlet. Two homeless men found dead on NYC subways in 'out of control' 12-hour period. Two dead homeless men were found on Big Apple subway trains in less than 12 hours over the weekend — alarming workers as the MTA continues to struggle with vagrants in the system amid the coronavirus outbreak. "The homeless situation is out of control," said a train operator who only identified himself as Eddie, who came upon the body on the C Train Friday. "You don't even know if the man died of coronavirus." The Editor says... The Internal Battle for America. Folks, I am sick of seeing Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx promise that if we are good, they will feed us teaspoons of our constitutional freedoms at their discretion. I am sick of TV commercials designed to frighten and shame us into obeying tyrannical governors. I am sick of TV images of exhausted health workers to sell the lie that hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. I am sick of well-meaning people ending conversations with "Stay safe" as if a unique monster is lurking outside. I am sick of pundits saying we need to reopen America safely and responsibly as if going back to normal life is unthinkable and dangerous. Dr. Ben Carson announced that 98% of people who get coronavirus recover. Despite all our social distancing, research shows far more people were infected than officially confirmed. This means coronavirus is no way near as lethal as we were told. Health experts say herd immunity is the best way to fight the virus. And yet, stating this scientific truth will get you branded a dangerous nutcase by the media. China 'intentionally concealed the severity' of coronavirus outbreak to hoard supplies: DHS report. China downplayed its coronavirus outbreak in order to buy time to hoard medical supplies needed to respond to the pandemic, according to intelligence documents. A four-page Department of Homeland Security report dated May 1 and obtained by the Associated Press on Sunday showed that U.S. officials believe Chinese leaders "intentionally concealed the severity" of the virus, including how contagious it is and how large the country's outbreak was, from the rest of the world in January. The report strongly suggested that China did this while knowing how contagious and deadly the coronavirus was during the crucial weeks before it became a global pandemic. Joe Biden Claims '600,000 Dead' from Coronavirus. Joe Biden's mental blunders during a Friday MSNBC appearance were overshadowed by his denial of Tara Reade's sexual assault claims, but they continue to underscore his apparent cognitive decline. Biden twice told Morning Joe that 600,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus. Pompeo says 'enormous evidence' shows coronavirus began in Wuhan lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said "enormous evidence" exists indicating the coronavirus pandemic began in a lab in Wuhan, China and that the ruling Communist Party did everything it could to keep the outbreak under wraps. "There's enormous evidence that that's where this began. We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now," he said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday [5/3/2020]. Pritzker and Lightfoot — Illinois's Hypocritical Tyrants. As the bailout-seeking billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker resists lawsuits saying his lockdown order extension exceeds his authority and is unconstitutional, his wife jets to their estate in opened-up Florida to enjoy life without being arrested for leaving the house. Meanwhile Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot keeps barbershops and hair salons closed under penalty of imprisonment as she visits her own hair stylist on the grounds she is "the public face of Illinois" and must look her best. Both deem themselves more important than the people they represent. Laws are for the little people. It's good to be king and queen[.] The last time they politicized the treatment for an epidemic. It was 1793. George Washington was President. Philadelphia was the U.S. capital. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician and former surgeon-general of Washington's army, was the de facto head of the Department of Health of the new country. When a yellow-fever epidemic hit Philadelphia, President George Washington fled to Virginia. Dr. Rush stayed behind and worked hard to quarantine and treat the sick. But his treatment, according to Ron Chernow in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, probably did more harm than good: [...] Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton stayed in the Philadelphia area, where both he and his wife caught yellow fever. But instead of submitting to Dr. Rush's standard treatment, they found an old friend from the Caribbean, Dr. Edward Stevens, who quickly cured both of them using quinine, a treatment that he had learned about in Scotland and St. Croix. Mockingbird Propagandist Chris Wallace Lies During Birx Interview. There are 67 counties in the state of Florida. Sixty-five of those counties may have already passed through the phase-one gateway; meaning they show declining infection rates for 14-days, and/or had little impact. Two counties like Dade, and Broward may not have yet passed the gateway guideline. It would be ridiculous for 65 (mostly rural) counties to sit and wait for one or two (mostly urban) counties to achieve the same level of virus containment before re-opening their local economy. It would be ridiculous for a State Governor like Ron DeSantis to hold back sixty-five counties while waiting on the other one or two to catch up. Marie Harf suggests small businesses aren't 'really meaningful' to the economy right now, anyway. As governors of mostly red states begin to gradually reopen their economies due to the 'flattening' of the coronavirus 'curve,' cable news pundits continue to debate over whether the country ought to remain shut down 'for our own good.' This, as more than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks after state-imposed shutdown orders required "non-essential businesses" to close. That debate continued on "Fox News Sunday," with liberal pundit Marie Harf, a former adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, suggesting that allowing some small businesses to open was essentially meaningless. If 'Congress Shall Make No Law...' Why Can Governors? The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That's unambiguous. [...] Yet governors across the country are ignoring or suspending almost every one of those rights enumerated at the top of the Bill of Rights, with little to no pushback from the press, which just happens to be the only part of the first two amendments not under assault. It's actually not under assault — it's gone — suspended indefinitely in the name of "the common good." Governors have declared coronavirus emergencies and wiped clean the rights our nation was founded for the purpose of putting those rights beyond the reach of government. These suspensions were not done by vote; they were done with the stroke of a pen. Constitutionally, they can't be done by either. There is no provision of the Constitution allowing for the waiving of rights under any condition, but most legislatures are content to sit back and watch this all proceed without their fingerprints anywhere near it. Insurers reject coronavirus claims as business losses mount. Billions of dollars are at stake as insurance companies clash with business owners across the country over covering losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, including lost income from the economic shutdown. Insurers have been rejecting a flood of the business interruption claims from restaurants, bars, casinos, child care centers and others shuttered by government orders, and the businesses are retaliating with a wave of lawsuits. The fight is expected to be one of the largest areas of litigation stemming from the COVID-19 crisis. Funeral Directors Blow Whistle on Fake Coronavirus Death Reports. Funeral directors in New York are busting the fake coronavirus death certificates that state authorities are fraudulently assigning to people who have died this month. New York authorities are desperate to make the pandemic seem far worse than it is to keep getting more federal financial assistance, and now they have been caught lying on death certificates to keep the cash rolling. For instance, funeral director in Williston Park, N.Y., told Project Veritas that "Basically, every death certificate that comes across our desk now has COVID on it." We Must Stop Performing The Coronavirus. An excellent example of how performative this has all become is CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo and presidential candidate Joe Biden broadcasting from their basements. In both cases, appearing in the basement began as a fast solution to the problem of isolation, in Cuomo's case because he caught the Chinese virus, and in Biden's out of fear that he might. But over the past month, both CNN and the Biden campaign have had time to create alternatives. So why are they still in the basement? The basements have become sets, everything visible in them props, and sets and props absolutely help to tell the story. The message being sent is that things are not normal; we know they aren't normal because look, Cuomo and Biden are still stuck in their basements. Just as so many Americans are stuck in their houses, unable to reclaim their normal lives. Even if they really don't have to be. When the lockdown started we knew why we were doing it. The major fear was that hospitals would be overrun by a deluge of coronavirus cases. That didn't happen, not even close. But instead of calling the emergency measures a success and moving quickly and aggressively to reopen the economy and restart basic American life, we moved the goalposts to an unreachable endzone of impossible testing levels or a vaccine over a year away. Ruling Class Wants Your Face In The Dirt Begging For Handouts. The Ruling Class is doing everything possible to drag our country into a total state of bloody anarchy and destruction by exploiting the Chinese Virus. The Ruling Class is trying to destroy our Republic and replace it with a Communist government like China. If allowed to continue, we will have a revolt that will kill a large multiple of the 500,000 lives lost in our Civil War. Signs of discontent by the people are everywhere, and increasing. Facts are clear, the Ruling Class will kill those who do not bow down in poverty, slavery, and total submission to brutal Communism. Thousands protest at Huntington Beach against California Gov. Newsome's coronavirus lockdown. [Video clip] COVID-1984. The expert models about COVID-19 have been wrong again and again. Initially estimating two million American deaths with social distancing measures in place, the IHME models have since been drastically revised twice to now estimate 60,000 American deaths. While COVID-19 is a serious virus that has already killed tens of thousands of Americans, data show that the overwhelming majority of people do not have a significant risk of dying from COVID-19. The recent Stanford antibody study estimates the fatality rate between 0.1 and 0.2 percent, 20 to 30 times lower than estimates that motivated lockdowns. The vast majority of these fatalities (99.2%) have an underlying illness. And based on a data analysis of the N.Y. area, young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19. Meanwhile, due to the COVID-19 response, many important preventative health care measures have been canceled, unemployment is soaring to Great Depression levels, and the Third World is at risk of massive famines — famines that, according to the U.N., could kill hundreds of millions of people. Playing the Coronavirus Lottery in 2020. How did our experience with the Wuhan Flu — officially known as COVID-19 — develop in 2020? Well, at first, we were told it's this terrible, virulent, extremely lethal virus. There are no cures for it, and it kills fast, indiscriminately, and painfully. It spreads incredibly quickly. But it won't be hard for us to avoid it — just stay six feet away from each other, wash your hands until they dry out, and don't touch your face. Well, that seemed manageable enough, at first, so we accepted it. These minor inconveniences would save countless lives. How could we not sign on? But before we knew what happened — in just a matter of mere weeks, in fact — the changes to our society grew like a snowball that turned into an avalanche halfway down the mountain. Soon, states were banning church services and restaurant dining, haircuts, and theaters. Governors started closing factories and malls. Not to be outdone, mayors started ordering the police to ticket married couples for going on walks. Not only did it become impossible to find legal authority in our states' constitutions for such overreach, nobody could even identify a consistent theory behind the draconian decrees — what is the line between essential and non-essential now? The logic in declaring this store of 100 people "safe," while closing down (and likely bankrupting) its neighboring store of a different 100 as "unsafe," is simply incomprehensible to the objective observer. Now that the numbers are in, with more statistics pouring in from all around the world, we are finding that we went too far. Barr: 'Time to Start Rolling Back' Some Coronavirus Restrictions. During a Twitter Q&A on Friday [5/1/2020], Attorney General William Barr stated that "it's time to start rolling back" some of the restrictions enacted to combat the coronavirus and that "in the appropriate case, we would consider taking action." The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation. The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown. Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. [...] Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. [...] Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. Gov. Ron DeSantis Shames Media, Outbreak Models' Doomsday Predictions: Off by Nearly 500k in Florida. As Florida prepares to ease a month-long shutdown, Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered a scathing rebuttal of apocalyptic predictions for his state that were breathlessly hyped by the news media and proven wrong during the coronavirus crisis. The governor showed slides of media stories warning that Florida would quickly run out of hospital beds while predicting the state would be the "next New York" or even a disastrous "uber Italy. Instead, the state with one of the most vulnerable populations due to age is faring well among the big states that were hit and is nowhere close to New York's unfortunate predicament. The Peasants Are Revolting — California Rebels Defy Comrade Gavin Newsom. The Rebel Alliance is pushing back against the insufferable and silly rules of the little blue dictators hiding amid their governor mansions. Yes comrades, the pesky red subversives have taken to the street and realized 'hey wait, there are more of us, than them.' [...] If the COVID Compliance Ministry tries to stop the uprisings, there could be trouble. Laboratories of democracy are charting our path out of lockdowns. Now that the number of new coronavirus cases is leveling off, debate within the United States has shifted to how quickly, and in what manner, the country should begin to reopen and revive its heavily damaged economy. The good news is that thanks to our federalist system, there doesn't have to be a single national plan. Instead, individual states have been able to experiment with different approaches to reopening and, in the coming weeks, will be able to learn from each other based on their results. These Are the States Opening Back Up for Business. [For example,] Texas's stay-at-home order expireed [sic] Thursday [4/30/2020], and the state is allowing many businesses to open back up. That includes nonessential retail, malls, movie theaters, and restaurants, which must all operate at 25 percent capacity. Abbott said that personal-care services will have to wait at least until mid-May to reopen. And though he declined to mandate Texans to wear face coverings while in public, he did "strongly recommend" it. Cruz: How Did the Washington Post Reach its Conclusion on Wuhan Despite Having All the Facts? China is guilty. Most admit this. Unless you're the World Health Organization or, it turns out, The Washington Post. We know that the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, and we know that the CCP covered it up for days, letting the virus travel far and wide and infect millions of people. Thanks to their incompetence and their deadly cover up, thousands of people have now succumbed to the virus, including 63,000 Americans. More recent evidence suggests that the virus actually escaped from a Wuhan lab that failed to follow safety protocols. Washington Post's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler knows all this and shared a video from his colleague admitting as much. Yet, he concluded that it was "doubtful" that the new coronavirus was accidentally released from a Wuhan lab. Dear politicians, life must go on. It takes real courage to open up an economy when people are dying, and courage seems in short supply. Governors across the country, even if their coronavirus numbers are in decline or never really spiked at all, don't seem to want to end stay-at-home orders or open their economy for fear that they will be blamed for what happens. They refuse to adapt to what is a new reality and so almost none of us can prosper. In fact, one headline suggests our nation's capital might be closed for another three months — something that has never been done, even though we have faced far greater threats. The reason why is obvious: any smart politician knows their re-election chances will be crushed if they are perceived to have opened up their state too soon; if they are accused of triggering another wave of infections. Leaked Western intel dossier reveals how China deceived the world about coronavirus. A research dossier compiled by the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world[.] The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia's Saturday Telegraph newspaper and states that China's secrecy amounted to an "assault on international transparency." Ohio's stay-at-home order [has been] extended through Memorial Day. Ohio's stay-at-home order is being extended through the end of May, impacting Memorial Day weekend throughout the state. The state's stay-at-home order — first issued by Gov. Mike DeWine and health officials on March 22 — was set to expire late Thursday, but DeWine said during his daily coronavirus briefing it would be extended with exceptions for certain businesses. "When retail opens up, that certainly will be a major exception for that," DeWine told reporters, WCMH reports. "Certainly it's an exception in just few days when manufacturing and other companies are allowed to start back so, it will be extended." Big Tech's Big Brother Moves. There is an urgent-care doctor in Bakersfield, California, by the name of Dan Erickson, and he and his business partner Artin Massahi posted a video on YouTube a few days ago making the case for herd immunity and an end to the economic shutdowns. The video was widely shared across the internet, but only for a short time. Why? Because YouTube took the video down after it had racked up five million views. Erickson and Massahi received a lot of pushback from their conclusions. Essentially, they extrapolated data they'd collected from running their area's only walk-in COVID-19 testing site to project that some five million Californians had contracted the virus, and from that number they concluded the infection fatality rate, the real death rate from the virus rather than the case fatality rate that is being reported in the media, was only 0.3 percent. That number would make the Wuhan coronavirus only slightly different in lethality from the seasonal flu, and thus the response would be a complete and disastrous overreach. Coronavirus Illinois stay-at-home order for May: Mask requirement, religious service changes and more. A modified stay-at-home order for Illinois is now in effect until May 30 amid to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the biggest changes in Gov. JB Prtizker's May order, compared to last month, is the mask requirement. Beginning Friday [5/1/2020], everyone over the age of 2 should wear a mask or face covering when they leave their home and cannot practice social distancing. Some local grocery stores were even passing out free face masks to customers who showed up to shop Friday without one. 9 Simulations, Drills and Laws that Planned and Prepared for the Coronavirus. [Scroll down] Crimson Contagion (August 2019): In 2019, there were 2 exercises conducted in the second half of the year that both happened to simulate a situation where a viral pandemic broke out and made its way to the US! The first one, that finished in August 2019, was called Crimson Contagion and was run by the USG. The full name was Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise. In it, the USG prophetically simulated a viral outbreak that began in China and landed in Chicago, infecting 110 million Americans. The conclusion of the 'simulation' was that the Federal Government lacked the funds, coordination and resources to effectively combat the virus, a finding which justifies even greater spending on pandemic preparedness. Texas Vigilantes Show Up Outside of Dallas Storefront to Demand End to Shutdown. As protests against quarantines sweep the nation, two armed vigilantes showed up outside of a store front in Texas to make a stand against shutdown tyranny. The two open carry activists would not give their names, identifying themselves instead as Duncan Lemp, a man who was murdered in Maryland by uniformed thugs enforcing unconstitutional red flag laws last year. They stood in front of the Spring Creek Village in Dallas on Wednesday to make their stand. This follows a weekend rally where patriots showed up with guns at the State Capitol in Austin to show their displeasure with the quarantine-related shutdown. More protesters are feeling the need to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights as the economic stranglehold continues. Governor Grundy puts Orange County, but not San Diego County, on restriction. Just a few hours ago, I got back from La Jolla, a rich and deep-blue enclave of the city of San Diego that's the home of Mitt Romney. The just-after-sunset beach traipse was to see the bioluminescence event. Beach waves turn glow-in-the-dark at night as a result of the red tide, and it's a rare and completely yowza thing to see. Of course it drew a crowd. Street parking was competitive. The cars just kept coming and coming on Coast Boulevard near Wipeout Beach, and visitors bunched up at stoplights to use crosswalks — no slipping across the streets real quick to get to the shore view from the cliffs. Here's a bit of the pre-weekend flavor, and this was far from the most crowded scene I saw. You can see that the groups have masks, look more like friends than families, and aren't socially distancing. FDA allows emergency use of remdesivir to treat coronavirus patients after promising study. President Trump announced Friday [5/1/2020] that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the emergency use of Gilead Science's experimental antiviral drug remdesivir to treat coronavirus patients after early results of a clinical study indicated the drug helps speed recovery. Trump announced the news at the White House alongside Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. "FDA's emergency authorization of remdesivir, two days after the National Institutes of Health's clinical trial showed promising results, is a significant step forward in battling COVID-19 and another example of the Trump Administration moving as quickly as possible to use science to save lives," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. Facebook Bans Popular Alt Media Website, Likely to Censor Post about Coronavirus as a Bioweapon. A popular alternative media website that regularly publishes controversial information, Unz Review, has been censored by Facebook shortly after publishing an article that considers the possibility coronavirus could be a bioweapon. Academic Ron Unz, the publisher of the website, made the announcement on Friday morning that his website was being censored by the monolithic social media giant. Waffle House shows the emergency over. The first business to re-open after a hurricane is Waffle House. FEMA officials call it the Waffle House Index, and swear by it. You see, safety is not enough. You have to convince people it is safe. Waffle House is re-opening its dine-in service. The COVID-19 crisis is over. About 1,300 of its 2,000 or so restaurants remained open for drive-through service. Waffle House CEO at White House: Restaurants Will Lead the Way to Reopen America. Waffle House CEO Walt Ehmer on Wednesday [4/29/2020] met with President Donald Trump and industry leaders at the White House to talk about the process of reopening restaurants after the height of the coronavirus pandemic. "Restaurants have a unique opportunity to help lead us out of this and the reason for that is that we've been practicing safe food handling for years," he said. "The safety of our guests has always been paramount." California Cities Vote To Sue Governor For Closing Their Beaches. The cities of Huntington Beach and Dana Point have voted to take legal action against the state of California after Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said he would close all beaches and state parks inside of their cities and the rest of Orange County. According to The Los Angeles Times, Huntington Beach voted 5-2 in a last-minute meeting in favor of seeking an injunction against the governor, who announced in Thursday's coronavirus press conference that the state would close all beaches in Orange County in response to "alarm bells," including packed crowds and a lack of reportedly improper physical distancing. Mark Cuban: Texas business reopening 'more show than go'. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban doesn't see Texas' reopening this week as a true reopening but rather a play by state leadership to give the impression that the economy is restarting. "I think this is more for perception than reality, trying to create the perception that you're opening up when you're not really," the billionaire Dallas investor told CNBC Friday. "I think it's more show than go, but we'll see what happens." Cuban said he supports the state's decision to expand curbside pickup to all retail businesses but asserts that the costs of reopening under Gov. Greg Abbott's new restrictions will be a nonstarter for a large number of smaller companies because it will be too costly to operate at reduced capacity. Fauci knew about HCQ in 2005. Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose "expert" advice to President Trump has resulted in the complete shutdown of the greatest economic engine in world history, has known since 2005 that chloroquine is an effective inhibitor of coronaviruses. How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak - caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS-CoV - the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim. Poop could help stop the pandemic. Really.. The federal government is eyeing a new strategy for monitoring the spread of the deadly coronavirus. It involves poop. The U.S. has struggled to keep pace with other advanced countries on coronavirus testing, and now is considering tracking the spread of the virus through sewage systems as a way to predict where the next hot spot may be. Michigan Governor Extending Virus Restrictions Until May 28. Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced this week her decision to extend the state's disaster declaration until May 28th despite widespread protests against the Coronavirus restrictions. "COVID-19 is an enemy that has taken the lives of more Michiganders than we lost during the Vietnam War," Whitmer said in a statement. "While some members of the legislature might believe this crisis is over, common sense and all of the scientific data tells us we're not out of the woods yet," she added. The Editor says... Thousands of protesters flock to Huntington Beach following state-ordered OC beach closures. Large crowds opposing the state's coronavirus stay-at-home mandate took to the streets of downtown Huntington Beach on Friday [5/1/2020], a day after the governor closed Orange County beaches and drew frustration and criticism from some residents and city leaders. Protesters gathered near the Huntington Beach pier shortly before noon, with the crowd eventually swelling to some 2,500-3,000 people, according to Huntington Beach police Chief Robert Handy. The tightly packed crowd, with most people not wearing protective masks, repeatedly chanted "U.S.A." as they waited for the demonstration to begin. Ted Cruz Urges Bill Barr To Investigate Crack Downs On Religious Freedom. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr Thursday [4/30/2020], asking Barr to investigate public officials cracking down on religious freedom in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. "I urge you to pay specific attention to the growing tendency of local leaders to target communities of faith," Cruz wrote. The senator's letter comes days after Democratic New York Mayor Bill de Blasio singled out the Jewish community in a tweet, where he threatened to arrest people who were not abiding by social distancing regulations. NIH gives detailed explanation for $3.7 million bat research at center of China mystery. Why did U.S. taxpayers spend $3.7 million to investigate bat coronaviruses in Asia? It's one of the media's mysteries that has endured during the COVID-19 pandemic, spurring plenty of speculation and intrigue. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's chief infectious disease specialist, was the latest to fan the debate when he mentioned the grant during a White House briefing without offering many details. Officials at the National Institutes of Health and Fauci's own division there, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), say there is far less to the story than meets the eye. New York City, epicenter of coronavirus in US, is just now getting around to disinfecting the subway trains daily. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo instructed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City this week to figure out a way to disinfect the subways trains every 24 hours. The news here is not so much the governor's request but the fact that New York City was not already doing daily cleanings of the trains that shuttle millions of riders back and forth every day. It is additionally newsworthy that it took a request from the governor in late April for transportation officials even to consider coming up with a 24-hour strategy for disinfecting the city's sprawling germ tubes. Alito orders Pennsylvania to respond in case asking Supreme Court to halt enforcement of stay-at-home order. Justice Samuel Alito this week ordered the Pennsylvania government to respond to arguments from a variety of Pennsylvanians asking the Supreme Court to halt enforcement of Gov. Tom Wolf's strict stay-at-home order, aimed at fighting the coronavirus, because they say it is unconstitutional. The Pennsylvanians behind the suit — called petitioners in Supreme Court parlance — are arguing that their rights under the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments have been violated through Wolf's order. The petition lays out a variety of grounds on which it says the order is unconstitutional. To be honest with you, all of the death certificates, they're writing COVID on all the death certificates.. Whether they had a positive test, whether they didn't. [Video clip] Project Veritas Finds NY Funeral Directors Skeptical About Coronavirus Numbers. Introducing his new video detailing Project Veritas' investigation into fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in COVID, starting with interviewing funeral directors in New York skeptical about the number of cases attributed to COVID-19, James O'Keefe states, "We know there are many unanswered questions during the pandemic. We've been out in the street, talking to some folks who are on the frontlines, talking to the unsung heroes of the people of New York City ... And we've talked to these unsung heroes and we've learned some troubling things. Some things that should disturb us." Here are some of the comments O'Keefe and his team elicited from various funeral directors: [...] Was Killing the American Economy Absolutely Necessary? Like it or not, this is a question that will continue to be asked, and the terrible answer has already begun to take a convincing shape. Recently, Fox News analyst Brit Hume told Shannon Bream that "it's time to consider the possibility" that "this lockdown — as opposed to more moderate mitigation efforts — is a colossal public policy calamity." He goes on to reference the millions of jobs, businesses, and incomes lost, and further mentions the negative "effect on children who don't have a normal life," concluding that "we may never recover from many of these losses for a very long time if ever." [...] America could have achieved a similar health outcome without destroying millions of businesses, incomes, and lives, without weakening our nation's fiscal solvency by trillions of dollars, and most importantly, without compromising our most fundamental American rights. Blue States Become Laboratories of Despotism. A number of Democratic governors have used the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to "experiment" with constitutionally protected civil liberties. Their states have, in effect, become laboratories of despotism. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), for example, has refused to say when his stay-at-home order will expire, even in a purported reopen plan that that he announced last Tuesday. When asked when Golden State residents would again be able to exercise their First Amendment right to attend church, he vaguely replied, "months, not weeks." In addition, Newsom was evidently so incensed by the number of people who went to the beach last weekend he decided to order all Orange County beaches and state parks closed to the public, effective May 1. Such decrees have provoked increased impatience with Newsom, including a rant from Elon Musk, whose Fremont Tesla factory is shut down. Judge rules against Illinois Dem governor's stay-at-home order: 'Shredded the Constitution'. An Illinois judge has ruled against Gov. J.B. Pritzker's extended stay-at-home order, citing a violation of civil liberties. Republican state Rep. Darren Bailey filed a lawsuit last week challenging Pritzker's lockdown extension. The suit asked that a judge determine whether Pritzker abused his power by extending the order, [...] [Paywall] Medical Misinformation, Part 1: Hydroxychloroquine. Since the media-whipped-frenzy surrounding Covid-19 took over the news, an increasing number of doctors are openly stating their disagreements with the recommendations of the government's experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. The problem? Many of these on-the-front-line medical professionals are being ignored or mocked. Some medical professionals are even seeing their videos removed from social media platforms. The reason? Their views don't align with the prevailing narrative of the media and what I'll call the globalist medical establishment. Among the topics that need to be addressed when pushing back on the globalist medical establishment and their willing accomplices in the legacy media are the use of hydroxychloroquine, the negative impact of stay-home orders, and the change of focus from 'flatten the curve' to 'don't spread the disease.' In this first installment on medical misinformation we'll focus on the use of hydroxychloroquine. Armed Protesters Flood Michigan Capitol as Whitmer Attempts to Override State Legislature. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing as the legislature considered a measure to extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's state of emergency declaration. The House of Representatives voted down an extension of the order, but Whitmer claimed she has broad authority to continue the lockdown regardless. This response only adds to the evidence she is abusing her authority amid the coronavirus crisis. Protesters waved American flags and open-carried firearms as some changed, "Let us in!" and "This is the people's house, you cannot lock us out." Video of the protest spilling over into the capitol building went viral on social media. Protesters crowded into the hallway and up the staircase as state police and the sergeant-at-arms blocked the entrance to the House floor. Michigan House Won't Extend State of Emergency, Votes to Sue Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Instead. The Michigan House of Representatives declined to extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's state of emergency another 28 days, and instead voted on Thursday [4/30/2020] to sue her. Whitmer's initial state of emergency order, which is separate from the stay-at-home order, expires on Thursday and requires legislative action to be lengthened. Negotiations on that front fell apart on Wednesday when Whitmer refused to make any concessions on the matter, asserting she has the ultimate control of emergencies. So the House voted to authorize Speaker Lee Chatfield to sue the governor, saying Whitmer's "unchecked and undemocratic approach" is not the best way, ABC 12 reported. No California-wide beach shutdown: Gavin Newsom went for narrow closure. State officials pushed to close all beaches and state parks in California to try to prevent overcrowding they feared could spread the coronavirus, but Gov. Gavin Newsom decided Thursday only to temporarily close beaches in Orange County, an administration official said. Newsom said at a news conference he was ordering a "hard close" in Orange County after beaches in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach drew tens of thousands of visitors during a heat wave last weekend. He said he was particularly concerned about the beach activity because Orange County has more coronavirus cases and hospitalizations than many other areas. The Editor says... A Report From the Front. Despite its use by health-care providers across the country and around the world to successfully treat COVID-19, you will be mocked as either a fool or a snake oil salesman if you approvingly utter the word "hydroxychloroquine" or even express hope that it can be used to save lives. The word is simply not to be tolerated in polite, progressive society. Well, it appears that the list of forbidden words is about to get longer. The new additions include "corticosteroids" and "Methylprednisolone." What do these widely available and relatively inexpensive drugs with known safety profiles have in common with hydroxychloroquine? Leading physicians are using them in addition to hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat COVID-19. And they are doing so without waiting two or three years for the results of randomized clinical trials. Wisconsin: 52 of 400,000 In-Person Primary Voters Diagnosed with Coronavirus, No Fatalities. Fifty-two out of 400,000 in-person voters and poll workers who participated in Wisconsin's controversial primary have since tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and Wisconsin officials are not certain that those individuals — none of whom have died — contracted the virus at polling stations on Election Day. Wisconsin proceeded in holding its in-person election in early April, despite attempts from Gov. Tony Evers (D) to postpone the vote. Rite Aid drive-thru coronavirus testing isn't hitting full capacity: CEO. Rite Aid has set up 25 drive-thru coronavirus testing sites at its stores in eight states, but CEO Donigan Heyward said Thursday that the sites are not hitting their "full volume." "We wish that we had more people coming," Heyward told "Mornings with Maria." "We're still not seeing the full volume of people making appointments to get these tests." Elon Musk says orders to stay home are 'fascist' in expletive-laced rant during Tesla earnings call. Tesla CEO Elon Musk lashed out at government stay at home orders as "fascist" in an expletive-laced rant on Tesla's Q1 2020 earnings call. While answering analysts' questions about liquidity amid the coronavirus pandemic, Musk called shelter-in-place orders "forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights." Musk said he was concerned about not being able to resume operations at the company's factory in Fremont, California, saying that possibility should be considered "a serious risk" given Tesla produces most of its cars there in addition to its Shanghai-based plant. Tesla had initially said the factory would remain open despite shelter-in-place orders until the county where it's located said it could not be considered an essential business. Six counties, including Alameda, where Tesla's factory is located, recently extended their shelter-in-place orders through the end of May. North Carolina Hair Salon Owner Reopens Her Shop For Business, Only to Have Police Show Up. Yesterday, I wrote about a disturbing incident involving a tattoo parlor owner here in North Carolina who was handcuffed and escorted out of his shop Wednesday ]4/29/2020] by police officers after he tried to reopen his business. Matthew "Jax" Myers, 38, told the Raleigh News and Observer that he had no options left but to open back up because he needed the income, so it was a risk he was willing to take. City of Dallas Goons Sue Heroic Salon Owner Who Refused to Shut Down. CBS Local reported that Dallas city officials are filing a lawsuit against Salon À la Mode owner Shelley Luther. In addition, the city of Dallas has filed a restraining order against Luther for violating the city and county's shelter-in-place orders that were implemented to allegedly fight the Wuhan virus. BLP reported on Luther's bold action when she opened her salon in violation of the arbitrary order. Good News: After 13,000 Deaths, NYC Finally Ready To Disinfect Subway Cars Daily. So soon? I was thinking we could wait until there are 20,000 dead to begin minimally responsible sanitation efforts on a turbo-charged viral incubator like subway cars. Millions of people packed in cheek by jowl in a cramped space, day after day at the start of the epidemic, with only sporadic disinfectant procedures until now. At this point it'd probably be more cost-effective to skip the cleaning and just inject passengers with the virus as they come through the turnstiles. No, Trump is Not Crazy for Suggesting UV Light and Disinfectants to Treat Covid. Big media is attempting to do what impeachment, Mueller, Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, and others have tried but failed miserably. Now it's on to the Chinese Coronavirus and an ongoing critique of the Trump's response, ranging from how he overreacted to underreacted, and everything in between. The latest is the hysterical reaction to Trump suggesting that sunlight, high humidity or possibly an "injection" of "the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute" could be COVID-19 treatments during a White House briefing last week. [...] Trump suggested two ideas, not recommendations, simply possibilities that he would leave up to the medical experts to further analyze. He most certainly did not recommend injecting a disinfectant into one's body. North Carolina Police Arrest Man for Attempting to Reopen His Business, Others May Follow Suit. As RedState managing editor Streiff wrote earlier today [4/29/2020], the "Reopen" rebellion against North Carolina's stay at home order is in full effect. The arrests of protesters are continuing as well, with four arrested during Tuesday's ReopenNC protest, which was the third one held to date. But in a disturbing incident that happened around lunchtime today, an Apex, NC man was seen on video being being led away by police from his business in handcuffs after attempting to reopen his tattoo parlor. CA Gov Newsom [is] Only Closing Beaches in (Conservative) Orange County. In a move that makes him look even more petty and dictatorial than before, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he's announcing state parks and beach closures only in Orange County this weekend instead of closing state parks and state beaches throughout the entire state as he'd planned, and which my colleague Kira Davis reported. The reasoning outlined by Newsom in the press conference was nonsensical and inconsistent. More likely is that Newsom wants to punish Orange County officials, whom he sees as uncooperative (despite his public claims), particularly Supervisor and former Assemblymember Don Wagner. Orange County was one of the Republican Party's last strongholds in the state until the 2018 election, in which Democrats swept all seven House seats in the county. Reopening the Economy Is Not Partisan, It's Necessary. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently stated that "a crisis tends to strip away façades and reveal who we are and what we believe. "At best, we become stronger as communities and a nation; at worst, we slip into fear and oppression. The new information concerning coronavirus is revealing more and more about what we already know to be characteristic of those who love freedom and those who love power. As the number of cases of COVID-19 in the United States begins to flatten and decline, several states are preparing to reopen their economies. It is no longer a partisan issue, as states with Democratic governors — including Montana, Colorado, and Minnesota — also begin to ease restrictions related to COVID-19. We're In A New Cold War, This Time With China. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, the Western world thought, with considerable justification, that the generational struggle with communism had ended. But in our exultation, we forgot to finish the job. Communism lived on in mainland China and is once again challenging the free world for dominance. This time, they're doing it with our money. As we have begun to realize these past few years, and as the coronavirus outbreak has made even clearer, China has used our free markets and open-mindedness against us, running an economy based on the bizarre fusion of communism and mercantilism while cracking down ever more on its people's natural rights and freedoms. It is time for the free world to rejoin the fight. Why Can't We Go To the Hairdresser? The cynic in me thinks the press will urge a nationwide lockdown unless and until a Democrat sits in the White House at which time they will take a harder look at the diminishing Covid-19 fatalities and the increasing cost of the lockdowns. In the meantime frustrated, increasingly broke Americans are asking what happened to such rights as free speech, assembly, worship, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, right to bear arms, right to due process in criminal cases and privacy. Fundamentally, why can't we go to the hairdresser or the gym, make routine visits to the doctor, the dentist, get elective surgeries, visit our families and friends, shop without looking like masked bandits? The answer is not that complicated. Unless the state governments, which have imposed these often-draconian measures, can justify them in court, you can. But you have to get them judicially enforced by civil suit or in defending a criminal action against you. Your rights are not self-enforcing. The Most Tragic Case of Governmental, Medical, and Media Malpractice In the History of the World. As of this writing, worldwide, there have been approximately 210,000 deaths. And does anyone else find it troubling and highly suspicious that the United States alone is responsible for slightly more than one-quarter of all deaths worldwide? How could we possibly account for one-quarter of all the COVID-19 deaths in the entire world? Easy, if say, you start counting pianos falling out windows and dropping on people as COVID-19 related deaths. As we are also learning with each passing day, in order to justify their highly controversial, extremely punishing, draconian lockdowns, the handful of politicians, officials, and experts who upended our lives and ordered those lockdowns, are being very creative and very liberal as to what constitutes a COVID-19 fatality, all of which begs the question: Are there any ethical and honest reporters left within the mainstream media who could investigate this clearly duplicitous — but officially condoned — counting method? Scientists are perplexed by the low rate of coronavirus hospitalizations among smokers. Nicotine may hold the answer. No experts are remotely advocating for people to take up smoking to prevent COVID-19, but some researchers have theorized nicotine may be playing some role in keeping the virus at bay, Vice reports. That's because there's a surprisingly low rate of smokers among coronavirus hospitalizations. In France, for example, 25 percent of the population smokes, but only 5.3 percent of coronavirus patients have been recorded as smokers, and studies have found low rates in China and New York City, as well. Greek cardiologist and tobacco harm-reduction specialist Konstantinos Farsalinos thinks nicotine (crucially, not tobacco) might be lessening the intensity of cytokine storms, an overreaction of the body's immune system which seems to be the cause of the most severe coronavirus symptoms. How many patients have used the $11 million pop-up hospital built at NRG's parking lot? The original question: How many patients have used the new 11 million dollar county hospital built at the NRG parking lot? The answer: None. No patients have been admitted to the facility which was built as a medical shelter in case the city's hospitals reached full capacity. California Doctors Go on Ingraham Angle, Challenge Official COVID Policy — YouTube then takes down their videos! On Saturday [4/25/2020] two California doctors of Immunology went on with KERO News 23 in California and made a video disputing the official state coronavirus policy in California. Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi said their facilities have tested over 5,200 patients for the coronavirus throughout the county, making up for over half of all testing in Kern County. According to their data, the death rate of the coronavirus is similar in prevalence to the flu. And they believe only the sick and elderly should be quarantined and that businesses should open. They also revealed that the state of California is pressuring doctors to pad the COVID-19 numbers. [...] On Monday night the two California doctors went on The Ingraham Angle with Laura Ingraham to discuss their expertise and challenge the official state narrative on the coronavirus. Following their appearance on the show their videos were removed from Google-YouTube! They did not pass official WHO policy. Why Did YouTube Remove The Doctors' Briefing? [Scroll down] I absolutely believe that it's wrong to censor what qualified medical professionals (read: not quacks) are saying about the crisis, which is so unique in our experience as a nation. A strong lockdown was necessary at first. If there is good medical evidence that the lockdown, and related public health strategies, might be doing more harm that good at this date, then let's hear that argument. Lockdown Vs. Non-Lockdown 'Did Not Produce A Statistically Different Number Of Deaths,' CA Docs Say. Two California doctors say locking down all of America "did not produce a statistically different number of deaths" versus not locking down all of America. Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, who own seven Accelerated Urgent Care facilities in Kern County, Calif., have been scouring data of the COVID-19 virus, both nationally and globally, along with data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). "Their data extrapolations, using a method similar to the one the CDC uses for influenza, suggest that death rates for COVID-19 are similar to those for the flu," PJ Media reported. Why No COVID-19 Models Have Been Accurate, And How To Fix That. There's been a lot of armchair analysis about various models being used to predict outcomes of COVID-19. [...] The problem with data-driven models, especially when data is lacking, can be easily explained. First of all, in terms of helping decision makers make quality decisions, statistical hypothesis testing and data analysis is just one tool in a large tool box. It's based on what we generally call reductionist theory. In short, the tool examines parts of a system (usually by estimating an average or mean) and then makes inferences to the whole system. DeSantis Blasts Media For 'Predictions' That Didn't Come True in Florida's Fight Against Wuhan Coronavirus. During a meeting with President Trump at the White House Tuesday morning [4/28/2020], Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted the media for reporting and speculating his state would turn out just like New York in the battle against Wuhan coronavirus. "Governor DeSantis you did face quite a bit of criticism for not closing your state as soon as some did..." a reporter said in the Oval Office. "What have the results been? You look at some of the most draconian orders that have been issued in some of these states and compare Florida," DeSantis responded. "Florida has done better. I'm not criticizing those states. But everyone in the media was saying that Florida is going to be like New York or Italy and that has not happened because we understood we have a big, diverse state. We understood the outbreak was not uniform throughout the state. We had a tailored and measured approach that not only helped our numbers be way below what anyone predicted but also did less damage to our state going forward." Cooking the books: The paranoid style in COVID-19 America. To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City's Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park's inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them. These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. De Blasio the Denier. In the middle of March, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was among those not entirely sold on social distancing as a prophylactic measure against the coronavirus epidemic. "If you love your neighborhood bar, go there now," he famously said. A few days later, he was threatening to padlock the city's synagogues — permanently — if social-distancing protocols went unheeded. We sympathize with those New Yorkers driven to drink or inspired to prayer by Mayor de Blasio's incompetence, vanity, and stupidity, which have been highlighted by but are by no means limited to his response to COVID-19. For the time being, they must suffer in their households rather than in congregation. China Committed an Act of War. Did China deliberately unleash COVID-19? I doubt it. Hanlon's Razor dictates that one should never put off to malice what can be explained more easily by incompetence. No, COVID-19 is not a deliberately created biological weapon. While the infectious nature is perfect, its kill rate is minimal, rendering it marginal as a weapon of war. The actual weapons being worked on in China's labs are likely much more deadly. The WuFlu was a viral study gone awry — an accident that escaped the lab because although China is a first-world manufacturer, it is a third-world country with a per capita income not much greater than Botswana's. China is a nation where tens of millions of people still live in caves and half the population still does not have indoor plumbing or toilets. Did I Already Have COVID-19? Is it a good idea to proclaim indefinite tyranny, such as Illinois's Governor Pritzker has, when the narrative upon which that tyranny is based is taking on water? [...] These doubts have a strong foundation. Data from sailing vessels showed COVID-19 infecting 13.8% to 19% of the population. Terrestrial randomized serological testing shows that COVID-19 has already infected between 14% and 30% of the population, with an infection fatality rate (IFR) lower than influenza and in some studies, approaching that of common colds, 0.04%. Moreover, the numbers mesh together, suggesting that somewhere around 80% of people are completely immune to COVID-19. Not antibody immune, but zoonotic virus immune. Wrong species. COVID-19 is 96% genetically identical to a known SARS-like coronavirus collected from bats. Sealing borders saves lives during coronavirus pandemic. It's the mantra of the World Health Organization and globalists everywhere: The corona virus does not respect borders. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu keeps telling us so: "This virus does not respect borders." G-20 leaders last month pledged to act as a "united front" against the virus that "respects no borders." Chinese officials agreed the virus "does not respect borders or discriminate between races." "Coronavirus offers an excuse to close borders," declared the left-wing Guardian newspaper this week. "That would be a mistake." But this makes no sense. It is ideology, not science. Feds tap Schneider in review of COVID-19 orders amid fight with Whitmer. Federal prosecutors on Monday started reviewing whether restrictions enacted by state and local officials to curtail the spread of COVID-19 are violating citizens' civil rights and liberties. U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced the sweeping measures that followed criticism from President Donald Trump who has sparred in recent weeks with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over the government's response to the coronavirus outbreak. If Coronavirus Threat's So Great, Why's U.S. Overall Death Rate Down? With more than 55,000 deaths attributed to it, COVID-19 would seem to remain a major U.S. health threat, justifying the closure of the U.S. economy. But if so, why is the overall U.S. death rate declining in the midst of a deadly pandemic? It's a curious thing. In recent weeks, despite a growing COVID-19 infection rate (due mostly to a jump in testing) and rising fatalities, the overall U.S. crude death rate (total deaths per 100,000 population from all causes) is falling. That's right, falling. Gilead's coronavirus treatment remdesivir just succeeded in a crucial study, raising hopes for a first COVID-19 drug. A leading coronavirus treatment candidate succeeded in a critical trial, helping COVID-19 patients who took it recover faster than those who got a placebo. The US National Institutes of Health on Wednesday released preliminary data from a study of just over 1,000 hospitalized patients who were randomly assigned to take either Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug remdesivir or a placebo. The patients taking remdesivir recovered 31% faster than those taking the placebo, the NIH found. The typical patient who took remdesivir recovered in 11 days, while the typical patient in the placebo group recovered in 15 days. Hydroxychloroquine Has about 90 Percent Chance of Helping COVID-19 Patients, States Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). In a letter to Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) presents a frequently updated table of studies that report results of treating COVID-19 with the anti-malaria drugs chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ, Plaquenil®). To date, the total number of reported patients treated with HCQ, with or without zinc and the widely used antibiotic azithromycin, is 2,333, writes AAPS, in observational data from China, France, South Korea, Algeria, and the U.S. Of these, 2,137 or 91.6 percent improved clinically. There were 63 deaths, all but 11 in a single retrospective report from the Veterans Administration where the patients were severely ill. Coronavirus and the Horrors of Democrat Control. Mary and I live in a tiny town in West Virginia. Our grocery shopping options are 26 miles away in Maryland and 45 miles away in Virginia. Maryland stores refused to allow us to enter because we did not have masks. We drove to Virginia. It was refreshing seeing Virginians free to wear masks or not. I noticed that the majority of shoppers wearing masks were young people. Do they believe fake news media more that we older Americans? Stopping for gas, the gas-pump TV monitor showed the propaganda commercial we see plastered all over TV. "Stay home. Stay Alive." With fake news media promoting their lie 24/7 that going outside means death, it is not surprising that many Americans remain willing to surrender their constitutional freedoms to Democrat/RINO, anti-Trump, and anti-American scammers. Coronavirus Response - What Happened to 'First Do No Harm'? "First do no harm" is a phrase attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, taken by new physicians upon medical school graduation, but those words do not actually appear in the oath. This is much like "separation of church and state" or the "right to privacy" that are constitutional concepts yet not actually appearing in the US Constitution. It is a wise guiding concept for much in life, especially large government mandates or programs. Proposed solutions may actually be worse than the underlying problem such solutions are supposedly solving. What harms will result from stay-at-home orders, banning elective surgery, shutting down businesses, and other restrictions? DOJ Instructs U.S. Attorneys To Lookout For State And Local Governments Violating Civil Liberties. U.S. Attorney General William Barr instructed U.S. attorneys to monitor cases of state and local governments infringing on citizens' civil liberties Monday as municipalities remain on lockdown nationwide amid the pandemic over the novel Wuhan coronavirus. "Millions of Americans across the nation have been ordered to stay in their homes, leaving only for essential and necessary reasons, while countless businesses and other gathering places have been ordered to close their doors indefinitely," Barr wrote in a department memo. "These kinds of restrictions have been necessary in order to stop the spread of a deadly disease — but there is no denying that they have imposed tremendous burdens on the daily lives of all Americans." CA Gov Newsom Warns Sun-Loving Newport Beachgoers "Aggressive" Measures Coming. In a livestreamed update on the Golden State's response to COVID-19 this afternoon [4/27/2020], California Governor Gavin Newsom threw down the gauntlet to sun-worshippers in his state, who he was disappointed appeared to be enjoying life over the weekend. That's something that just can't stand, man! Newsom began his speech with a smile, by thanking "the 40 million" Californians who "over the course of the last number of weeks have not only bent the curve... but stabilized it." But the governor's smile only lasted about 24 seconds, when he said this: [...] California to close all beaches after crowds ignore social distancing rules. California will reportedly close all beaches and state parks beginning Friday [5/1/2020] after swells of beachgoers fled to the shore last weekend in defiance of social distancing rules. The state's governor, Gavin Newsom, will formally announce the decision Thursday, according to a memo outlining the move obtained by FOX 11. "After well-publicized media coverage of overcrowded beaches this past weekend, in violation of Governor Newson's shelter in place order, the governor will be announcing tomorrow that beaches and all state parks in California will be closed, effective Friday, May 1," said the notification, which was sent out to all California police chiefs on Wednesday. These New Yorkers fleeing coronavirus vow they'll never return. Many Gothamites have fled the five boroughs for safer havens — from vacation homes in the Hamptons to parents' basements in the Midwest — until the coronavirus risks pass. But now diehard New Yorkers, some of whom had never even considered leaving the city before, are thinking about staying away for the long haul. Questions Reporters Might Ask Liberals. [#1] What is the number of Americans who would have died from the Wuhan Flu under President Biden? That seems like a pretty basic question that no one ever asks these bozos. You have to have a scale to measure these things by. Where is the cut-off between a good outcome and a bad one in terms of mortality? Is it 10,000? 20,000? What's the number? All we know is that one death is acceptable. If it weren't, the Dems would have cast off Floatin' Ted Kennedy the minute he showed up with a neck brace and a martini. [#2] If Trump is the cause of all the deaths in America, what is the cause of all the deaths in Europe and Asia? It seems fair for the accusers to explain what different factors caused the carnage overseas, where Trump was not president. That is, unless all the Chinese coronavirus deaths are Trump's fault. And don't be surprised if some of our ChiCom chump media goes there. Newsom to close all California beaches, state parks over coronavirus: memo. California Gov. Gavin Newsom will be closing all beaches and state parks across the state starting Friday to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to a memo sent to California police chiefs on Wednesday [4/29/2020]. The decision comes after Newsom called out the massive crowds that flocked to Newport Beach in Orange County last weekend during a heat wave. Newsom called the beach crowds an example of "what not to do" to make progress toward easing restrictions in the statewide stay-at-home order. China could have 50 times more coronavirus cases than claimed, Trump administration official says. As the international community, including Chinese citizens, raises questions about the Chinese government's tally of coronavirus cases and the communist nation's mortality rate, new details are emerging about just how far off official government calculations have likely been, Fox News has learned. Last week, the People's Republic of China increased their official count of fatalities inside Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus outbreak, by 50 percent in just one day, increasing the overall tally by 1,290 people. Disinfecting the Left-Wing Media. As well as President Trump has done in those daily press briefings discussing the federal government's fight against the Wuhan ChiCom virus, it might be time to put those to bed. The reason? He's beaten the Democrat activists in the White House press corps to a pulp, he's destroyed their credibility, and he's captured as much of the confidence of the American people as he can in those press conferences. And at this point the Dem activists are simply going to report what they want to report, the facts and reality [notwithstanding]. Trump has noticed that, skipping the briefing on Saturday and expressing frustration with the media's refusal to offer anything like responsible journalism on the virus. Brit Hume Cites Two Reasons Why The Case For National Lockdown Is Getting 'Weaker And Weaker'. Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained on Tuesday [4/28/2020] why he believes the case for the ongoing national lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic is getting "weaker and weaker." De Blasio Makes His Wife Head of Coronavirus Racial Equity Task Force. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has named his wife, Chirlane McCray, to head the newly created Task Force on Racial Inclusion and Equity regarding the coronavirus, despite past controversy over how McCray, who is black, led the ThriveNYC initiative to address mental illness. The task force comes in response to the high number of black Americans dying from the coronavirus, many of whom had underlying health issues. NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and his wife are heckled as they stroll through a Brooklyn park, 11 miles from their home in Manhattan. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife were heckled by locals as they walked through Prospect Park in Brooklyn over the weekend, despite living 11 miles away in Manhattan. De Blasio was filmed strolling with his wife Chirlane McCray, both of whom were wearing masks, through the historic park on Saturday afternoon [4/25/2020]. New Yorker Darren Goldner took video of the moment he scolded the Mayor for forcing an entourage of four SUV security vehicles to drive his family to the park for a nonessential recreational walk in a completely different borough. Why Joe Biden's America loves a lockdown. COVID-19, the Wuhan virus, is an epidemiological scourge — but it's also a clarifying catalyst for American politics. The virus's relevance for globalization has been widely noted: this disease of Chinese origin has exposed how incapable the de-industrialized West has become of providing its own masks, drugs, and ventilators. It has highlighted the class divide that globalization produces within countries such as America as well. The highly educated professional classes can work from home, and their jobs are relatively secure; the service class, on the other hand — the waiters and cooks and hotel maids and retail clerks and others — are out of their jobs and [simply] out of luck. Not to worry: the professional class will write all of them checks for $1,200. Let them eat cake, you know? Beware of coronavirus mission creep. As national debate over easing restrictions has gained momentum, some people are trying dangerously to shift the goals of social distancing. Suddenly, instead of focusing on hospital capacity as the metric, advocates of continued lockdowns are speaking in vague terms about not being able to reopen the economy substantially until we reach some vague metric of feeling safe, or even until there's a vaccine. Virginia's top health official has said the commonwealth could be stuck in phase one, in which only some businesses open within significant limits, for two years, while we await a vaccine. [...] That is ludicrous and dangerous. It would beggar the state of Virginia. Two years of a society in lockdown is not sustainable. More than 26 million people have lost their jobs nationally because of the pandemic, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more businesses will fail. Anthony Fauci should explain '$3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory'. President Donald Trump's legal counsel, Rudy Giuliani, in a recent chat on "The Cats Roundtable" on New York AM 970 radio, suggested a good U.S. attorney general move about now would be to investigate key members of the past Barack Obama administration on the Wuhan, China, laboratory, to see what they knew and when they knew it. And then he mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci specifically. And then he accused the prior Team Obama of sending $3.7 million to the lab in 2014 — at a time when that same Team Obama had banned the funding of any lab that was involved in virus experimentation. And then he namedFauci as the guy who gave the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This — after Fox News reported more than a week ago that federal authorities have "high confidence" in the fact that COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, originated at Wuhan. Mayor reopens town in defiance of state lockdown order, braces for confrontation. The mayor of a small New Mexico city warned there would be a "confrontation" between his police and the state if his order to reopen businesses was blocked. Grants Mayor Martin Hicks allowed his town to reopen for limited business on Monday, in direct defiance of the statewide order in place by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in response to the coronavirus pandemic. He joined a few dozen supporters on Monday to rally in support of businesses in the city of about 9,000 people. 'MAGA May Day' Freedom Rallies Planned Across America to Protest Lockdowns. "MAGA May Day" freedom rallies are slated to pop up across America Friday, May 1, aimed to send a message to "local and state government tyrants" that it is time to safely and responsibly reopen the country. The "drive-in" rallies for freedom encourage participants to head to their state capitol or local government building to protest the nationwide lockdowns and demand independence from China, not allowing the country to "control trade, supply chains, or anything else that affects the daily life, health, happiness of American citizens." When to admit you've made a grievous blunder. [Scroll down] The nationwide CCP COVID-19 lockdown may have been plausible at the start, but within weeks, maybe days, it was obvious we'd been misled by the tyranny of experts, no better than smooth 90-day wonder new car showroom salesmen. How soon will president Trump and his inner circle, including the so-called public health experts, admit we've been led on a snipe hunt with grievous consequences? Or will he and the gaggle of totalitarian governors, ignoring independently sourced data contravening all of their advisories and directives, continue to justify their faulty prescriptions, denying their culpability? There is no shame in admitting you've been deceived. But there is no excuse for paralysis from your own shame in having been duped into buying the bill of goods, and accepting the phony bill of lading, with nothing delivered but lamentations. NYC Hospital System 'Quietly' Testing Over-the-Counter Heartburn Drug Pepcid Against Coronavirus. Famotidine, the active compound in the over-the-counter heartburn drug Pepcid, has shown promise in treating the novel coronavirus, prompting New York to "quietly" examine the benefits of the medicine in combatting the highly contagious disease, Science Magazine reported over the weekend. Cable News Anchor's Wife Recommends Bleach Baths, Media Ignores It. Cristina Cuomo is the founder of the health and wellness blog The Purist. She is also the wife of CNN's Chris Cuomo. She is recovering from the coronavirus and has been blogging about her experience with COVID-19. She, her husband, and their 14-year-old son have all been battling the virus recently. I don't wish that on anyone. Fortunately, Chris Cuomo has recovered and Cristina is doing well in her recovery. Her blog features her suggestions for fighting the coronavirus, though she does recommend that everyone consult a doctor before trying anything. She's not being irresponsible in her recommendations, as a non-medical professional, but let's just say her approach is not a traditional one. Indian Migrant Tests Positive for Coronavirus After Illegally Crossing Border into California. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials report that an illegal alien from India tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19) after he illegally crossed the border with a group of Mexican nationals. CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan reported that Border Patrol agents patrolling near Calexico, California, apprehended a group of three Mexican nationals and an Indian national after they illegally crossed the border from Mexico. Border Patrol agents quickly returned the Mexican nationals to their home country under anti-coronavirus policies. Large house parties violating Chicago's stay-at-home order. Police over the weekend broke up rowdy house parties in Chicago and said they were aware of video of one party that went viral, CBS Chicago reports. The violations of the stay-at-home order to fight the coronavirus outbreak came as Illinois reported 2,126 new COVID-19 cases and 59 additional deaths Sunday [4/26/2020]. Chicago is at the center of one of the worst outbreaks in the U.S. One video posted online shows a packed house at an undisclosed location, apparently in Chicago. The party appeared so crowded that the person recording the footage chose not to wade into the crowd on the first floor. Migration, Poverty, Crowded Housing Spread Coronavirus Pandemic in U.S.. Progressives and employers encouraged many low-skilled foreigners to migrate illegally into U.S. cities, and now those migrants are being hit hard by China's coronavirus because their low wages force them to live in dense, close-packed communities. "We have have been officially declared as having the worst outbreak of Covid-19 case in the entire state," Chelsea City Councilor Judith Garcia told Rebel Radio April 10. "A lot of the folks are undocumented," she said. The Big Data grab: 'Contact tracing' being used as smokescreen for private data collection. If you think you're being tracked through your smartphones, you are partially right. If you think you're very likely being tracked by your smartphones in mid-May when Big Tech and the U.S. government partner to allow "contact tracing" in an effort to stop the coronavirus, you'd be absolutely correct. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. In an article that was clearly intended to ease concerns over private information being collected by Big Tech and given to the federal government, Reuters rolled out three of the most outspoken privacy advocates on Capitol Hill to give their blessing to the contact tracing program. SoCal lunacy: More Encinitas surfers arrested, while Angelenos told to sit out the sun with air-con instead. It's not just Michigan where the bad calls from elected officials are being made. Over in Southern California, more stupidities from local officials supposedly protecting us from the coronavirus are bringing us some absolutely ridiculous acts. First, the surfers aren't backing down in Encinitas. The beaches are closed and the locals are still protesting, and now the cops are making arrests. [...] It's out of control. The whole beach restriction thing in any case is stupid, given that surfing is a naturally socially distanced activity, and by quite a bit more than six feet, given that nobody can actually surf without it. In surfing, only one person can be riding a wave at a time. Are You Enjoying Your First Test Drive of Socialist America? Life in America today is a sneak preview of life in Cuba or Venezuela. Democrats love it. This is the future they plan for you. The current economic catastrophe is exactly what America will look like if we institute the Green New Deal. [...] And isn't it great? You don't need to go to work. Money magically appears in your bank account. Hopefully, you can live on $1,200 every six weeks for the rest of your life. Leftists fight back against end the shutdown by crying "racism". Since we've learned more about the virus, it's becoming clear that, because the virus isn't as deadly as the models claim, a complete economic shutdown is not going to save lives. Armed with that information, the logical thing to do is to re-open the economy as quickly as possible. The rising number of people protesting, committing civil disobedience, and taking advantage of any exceptions to lockdown (just look at these surfers), shows that Americans are ready and, indeed, desperate to get back to normal. Democrats, however, are loath to do so. I posited on Tuesday that, with their draconian lockdown orders, all of which are predicated on successfully wiping erasing the virus with a vaccination (reminder: there's still no AIDS vaccination), the Democrats' real goal is to tank the economy so that Trump cannot get reelected. I'm even more concerned about a political motive behind the shutdowns now that hardcore Democrat activists are alleging that lifting lockdowns is racist. Americans Persevere amid Coronavirus Crisis Despite Left's Efforts to Remake America. [Scroll down] Perhaps one of the most unpredictable sidebars to the coronavirus crisis has been how radical environmentalists have seen a silver lining in a global economic shutdown because, although people may be suffering and dying, animals are now freely roaming city streets and the air in the skies over the biggest polluter in the world — China — are clearer, even if the virus killed more Chinese people than will probably ever be known. Dr. Fauci backed funding for controversial Wuhan lab studying origin of coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force, had previously backed funding for a controversial lab in Wuhan, China that has been studying the coronavirus in bats, reports said. Fauci's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases had shelled out a total of $7.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab — which has become the center of theories about the origin of Covid-19, according to Newsweek. The National Institute of Health, which oversees the NIAH, shut down all funding to the lab last week. Governor Lockdown. As I've noted before, the politicians and experts telling us to shut up, sit down and stay in our homes under virtual house arrest themselves all have jobs to go to and paychecks to collect. They are essential, we are told, as opposed to you and me and most of America, who are not. Leading the pack is Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, of which it is now being said — if you can fake it there, you can fake it anywhere. Cuomo has been faking it as a truthful and competent leader of his state. At a recent press conference, Cuomo showed the elitism and arrogance of so many politicians and their media mouthpieces as they are unmasked by a crisis they have no intention if wasting. Liberals have always dreamed of controlling every aspect of our lives and the Wuhan virus crisis has given them a dream opportunity to do just that. Is Texas unveiling a Goldilocks model we've been waiting to see? Monday afternoon as promised, Governor Greg Abbott announced the end of the stay at home order when it expires on April 30. He presented a plan recommended by the Strike Force to Open Texas charged with coming up with a science-based, data-driven way forward for the re-opening of the state. Abbott said that Dr. Birx agrees the Texas plan is a good one. Iranians [are] poisoning themselves faster than the virus can kill them. As if Iran wasn't having enough problems during the pandemic already. They were among the slowest to respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak and they continued to allow regular flights to and from China until only recently. The percapita death toll in their nation was among the highest in the world and most average citizens couldn't expect much help or relief from their corrupt government. And now, to top it all off, a rumor has been going around that drinking methanol (commonly known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol) can stave off the virus or even cure COVID-19. The result? More than 700 people have died from methyl alcohol poisoning, and those are only the numbers that the government is willing to admit to. What happens when a mayor violates her own stay at home order? The answer is that she finds herself under investigation by the county district attorney. Mayor Becky Ames of Beaumont, Texas (population a little more than 118,000) is finding that out the hard way. The mayor of this small city in the southeastern part of Texas visited a nail salon while Beaumont is under a shelter at home order. She got caught. Nearly 70 veterans killed in 'horrific' outbreak at Massachusetts elder care facility. The coronavirus has killed nearly 70 veterans at an elder care facility in Massachusetts, in what's being described as the deadliest known outbreak at a long-term care facility in the U.S. An additional 82 veterans and 81 employees have tested positive for the virus at Holyoke Soldiers' Home, and federal officials are trying to determine whether residents were denied proper medical care as deaths continue to climb. "It's horrific," said Edward Lapointe, whose father-in-law lives at the home and had a mild case of the virus. "These guys never had a chance." The outbreak has now claimed the lives of nearly one-third of all residents at the veterans' home, with a new fatality being reported almost every day. The left's 'listen to the science' mantra is growing old. Trump listened and that's the problem. The President surely realizes by now that he should have operated on his gut instincts which rarely fail him. Dr. Fauci, for example, sees no patients. He looks at computer models, all of which were wrong. Dr. Birx probably has more hands-on experience, but she too recommended closing up the nation. They were wrong. Governor Cuomo was wrong when he whined that he needed 40,000 ventilators and thousands more hospital beds. Trump provided everything he demanded, but they were not needed. Cuomo has no common sense and sent Covid-positive patients into nursing homes rather than the Navy hospital ship or either of the two other Army-engineered field hospitals. This one order caused the deaths of fragile elderly people. Cuomo's handling of the crisis in his city has been disastrous on every front. His state was the least prepared for such an event after bragging that New York was ready. It was not. WHO Deletes Misleading Tweet That Spread Paranoia About COVID-19 Reinfection. This weekend the World Health Organization (WHO) had to delete a misleading tweet about the coronavirus. Unfortunately, several media outlets had already cited it, spreading unwarranted fear about the likelihood of secondary COVID-19 infections. On Friday [4/24/2020], the WHO published a scientific brief on "immunity passports" — the idea that governments should grant special documents to citizens who test positive for COVID-19 antibodies, allowing them to move about freely. The WHO warned that this is premature, since "no study has evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this virus in humans." Crime against humanity. Dr. Deborah Birx was discussing global mortality rates at one of the near-daily White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefings alongside a curious chart. China's numbers had a big asterisk next to them. President Trump interjected, pointing to China's position at the bottom of the chart. "Excuse me, does anybody really believe this number?" Trump asked. Birx said Trump was right to distrust China's figures. [...] Birx emphasized that "when you are the first country to have an outbreak, you really have a moral obligation to the world to not only talk about it, but provide that information that's critical to the rest of the world to really respond to this credibly." San Francisco Bay Area Extends Lock-Down Order Throughout May. It is being reported the San Francisco Bay area will remain in a state of forced lock-down with an extension of the stay-at-home orders throughout May. Considering this is the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this decision highlights an expectation that the federal government will bail out local and state governments. We anticipated this type of approach where Blue states & Blue regions will keep their economies closed as long as possible to inflict maximum political damage. Simply, if San Francisco were not confident they will gain a federal bailout they would not be keeping their economic system closed for another entire month. Andrew Cuomo's Star Falling: Questions arise about NY forcing nursing homes to admit infected patients. As of today, nearly 55,000 Americans are reported to have died because of COVID-19. It is well known that the elderly and frail are more susceptible to the Wuhan Coronavirus. As a result, almost one of five COVID-19 deaths have occurred among those who live in nursing homes or other long-term care institutions. New York state is the epicenter of the American outbreak, accounting for 40% of the deaths. The grim statistic stems from the fact New York City has recorded over 155,000 cases (16% of the national total) and over 11,000 deaths (22% of American deaths). One factor for the NYC numbers is that the NYC subway system is a moving petri dish. Giuliani rips Fauci over grants to Wuhan laboratory. Rudy Giuliani questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci's involvement in grants from the United States to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, that has been tied to the coronavirus pandemic. According to a report, the U.S. intelligence community has growing confidence that the current coronavirus strain may have accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than having originated at a wildlife market, as the Chinese Communist Party first claimed. During a Sunday [4/26/2020] interview on The Cats Roundtable, Giuliani questioned why the U.S. gave money to the lab. Muted and vacant, Las Vegas struggles to survive shutdown. Nevada's tourism, leisure, hospitality and gambling industry accounts for one in three jobs in the state - making the state more dependent on tourism than Alaska on oil. Workers are expected to lose $7.7 billion in wages and salaries over the next 18 months if the tourism industry is shuttered between 30 and 90 days, according to a study from the Nevada Resort Association. Courage? It's In Short Supply. [Scroll down] If you read carefully, you can figure out that all the epidemiologists — as far as I know — say that CIVOD-19 will continue to spread, over time, until enough of us have had it to confer herd immunity. The percentages I have seen range from a low of around 25% of the population to a high of 80%. This is true regardless of how long the shutdowns last. The curve no longer needs to be flattened, so the shutdowns no longer have a coherent purpose, but have taken on a life of their own. Will the "experts" and elected officials ever have the courage to tell people the truth about the situation? No. Franklin County rejects Governor Jay Inslee's stay-at-home orders. Washington Governor Jay Inslee's draconian executive orders mandating business closures and stay-at-home status for all residents has been rejected by county commissioners in Franklin County. The motion passed unanimously. Now, the legal battles may or may not begin but in the immediate future, the county is official reopened for business. Operation Stolen Promise: What to know about the ICE-Homeland Security initiative to stop coronavirus fraud. As criminals increasingly seek ways to take advantage of the United States' dwindling health resources and falling economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, multiple law enforcement agencies have pooled their resources to curtail this trend. Operation Stolen Promise, spearheaded by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), is a program launched earlier this month to protect the nation and global supply chain from fraudulent and criminal activity related to the pandemic. An Alarming Message About Healthcare and COVID-19 in New York City. Anticipating a rather controversial response to this message [...] the alert has been copied to retain distribution. The EAM is provided by a nurse practitioner to notify a larger audience. Prayerfully and hopefully, the outlined issues are isolated. Message relay presented without commentary: [Video clip] The Editor says... Will Americans Let Coronavirus Panic Destroy Their Liberty? There is a rumbling right now below our feet, though, and these tremors may well split the earth around us if our elected leadership do not yield to common sense and shared American purpose. This moment in history is opening up before us two paths — one in which we reclaim for ourselves the truth that all legitimate power begins with individual consent and another that deviates sharply from our shared past by giving to the State the ultimate authority for determining what rights each one of us may freely call our own. Down the path of freedom we must take solid steps, for the other path promises to swallow us whole. I have no illusion that American liberty is destined to prevail over this new breed of socialism and government-by-fiat. Life gives us no certainties — only choices and opportunities. It's the other side that denies the existence of God while insisting that our historical fate is predetermined. Our side has always cherished human freedom precisely because we know how rare it is. The Standard for Reopening States is Rigged. The new White House standard for reopening the economy in various states is rigged to severely prolong the economic strangulation under the current lockdowns. The criterion has been defined as a 14-day period of declining volume in new cases or a 14-day period of declining rates of positivity of those tested. Testing is ramping up in every state, which if the epidemiologists are right, will produce a lower percentage rate of positivity on the tests since the curve has been bent. But there is a new factor which throws all of these calculations off so far off that the 14-day standard should be abandoned. That factor is the likelihood that there are an enormous number of asymptomatic cases out there that have never been counted (nor tested so far). If GOP Governors Won't Re-Open, What's the Point of GOP Governors? Georgia is set to "re-open" its economy, and [Chris] Escobar's comment vividly explains why the state should re-open, why it's more than safe to, and also why the shutdowns should never have happened in the first place. His response is a reminder that people and businesses don't need a law. They don't because it's generally not their style to do that which might kill them. That the coronavirus unknowns are many means that with or without lockdowns, Americans would have been quite a bit more than cautious. And they still will be. In a free society, there's no such thing as a "do nothing" response to anything that has the potential to kill. Dan Bongino pleads with 'brothers & sisters in blue' to fight back against 'outrageous' orders. With the image of a mother being arrested and placed in handcuffs for taking her children to the park as a backdrop, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino called on his "brothers & sisters in blue" to speak out against "outrageous orders." "To My Brothers & Sisters in Blue, PLEASE, speak w/your fraternal organizations & speak out collectively against these outrageous orders to arrest Americans for exercising their Rights," Bongino tweeted early Sunday. "We're losing the support of people who've defended us in crises for years. This can't continue." The Next Battle: Who Will Catch the Blame for Unnecessary and Abusive Lockdowns and Quarantines? A few epidemiologists outside the hysteria bubble warned from the beginning that the United States was overreacting with its various compulsory shutdowns and quarantines in response to the Wuhan virus. Even the most circumspect of these contrarians cautioned our country against reflexive, drastic, and authoritarian measures before the data had come together. Well, now the data are coming together; and the evidence is mounting that the contrarians were right. [...] In a nutshell, the United States probably threw itself into an economic death spiral and civil liberties killing spree for nothing. For reasons yet to be determined, the virus follows a fixed pattern and burns itself out. The Wuhan virus was never going to cascade exponentially through the population and kill millions unless we incarcerated ourselves in our homes, as so many catastrophized. Wait, how long are we supposed to stay in lockdown? What are we waiting for? The question can be posed in either a wild, irresponsible way — or a sane, measured way. In New York, our "pause" will continue until at least May 15, and New Yorkers are asking, in a measured, sane way: What exactly are we waiting for? [...] We did our part; we flattened the curve. So why is there no move to loosen regulations? In February and March, expert and elite opinion seemed to understand that patience with lockdowns would at some point wear thin. But not anymore. Last week, Cuomo used a graphic in his daily presentation that listed the lengths of various wars and previous pandemics. The 1910 cholera outbreak lasted a year. World War II lasted six years. And so on. The message: We haven't been living through this that long, and our ancestors had it far worse. But if we are looking at years of lockdown, we need to be informed of it, we need a debate — and we need a plan.
Are Continued Shutdown Orders Constitutional? Whether government action is constitutional is sometimes relatively straightforward: Can the government impose prior restraints on speech? Almost never. Can it discriminate on the basis of race? Same answer. But for most questions that involve a restriction on liberty, courts tend to ask two less direct questions in deciding whether it violates the constitution: What is the reason for the restriction? And how is the government going about it? Put another way: is the purpose legitimate and are the means chosen properly to achieving that goal? They are good questions for all of us to ask now. The Wuhan virus reveals the rot in America's Democrat-run cities. Last Friday, Bret Stephens, of the New York Times, had an epiphany: Locking down America just because New York City is having problems is a bad idea. He thinks the problem is that New York is so densely populated. What he misses is that Mayor de Blasio's and Gov. Cuomo's policies exacerbated the virus. They are the poster boys for why Democrats should never have power. To his credit, Stephens finally realized that the Wuhan virus is not an American problem. It's primarily a New York problem, followed by a handful of other Democrat-run cities. Governors, Facing Pressures on All Sides, Weigh Reopening Their States. Facing the same competing pressures between keeping people safe in a pandemic and reviving some elements of a more functioning society, governors around the country Sunday made their case for steps they were taking — or not taking — to begin reopening. Their efforts reflected the halting patchwork of attempts by several states to begin moving past severe restrictions in the face of the coronavirus, as a cascade of stay-at-home orders began to expire. As Colorado's order ended, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, defended his moves to relax some social distancing restrictions, allowing curbside retail deliveries and soon allowing the reopening of workplaces at half capacity and the resumption of elective surgeries. 'Food supply chain is breaking,' Tyson Foods chairman says as processing plants continue to close. The chairman of Tyson Foods has issued a stark warning to Americans following the shuttering of multiple meat processing plants across the country: "The food supply chain is breaking." In an open letter published as a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times, Washington Post and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, John H. Tyson outlined Tyson Foods' response to the ongoing coronavirus health crisis, but hinted that further closures — not only of Tyson Foods facilities, but competitors' facilities as well — would put stress on the nation's food supply. Hawaii Considering GPS Trackers to Enforce COVID-19 Quarantine Order. The pandemic is prompting Hawaii's authorities to consider some extreme measures to contain the spread of contagion. The Aloha State was among the earliest to adopt some aggressive policies to curb COVID-19 transmission on the islands and already requires all arrivals, be they visitors or returning residents, to self-quarantine for two weeks. Police cracking down as surfers make waves amid beach closures. It's hard for an avid surfer like Larry Rocha to pass up a good wave, but he knows that's what he's supposed to do while Seacoast beaches are closed to keep hordes of visitors away during the coronavirus pandemic. "We've got to do what we can to get through this time. There will be waves another day," said Rocha, who lives near Jenness State Beach in Rye and serves on the Rye Beach Committee. Others, who have chosen to ignore the closure, soon could be caught in a wave of trouble. The Coronavirus Is China's Fault. The world has not seen this dangerous of a virus since the Spanish flu of 1917. But in today's world, the press and the Democrats use it as a political football. They blame President Trump instead of the ones who are really culpable: the Chinese Communist government. American Thinker interviewed experts on China to get their opinions on who is really to blame. In looking at the Chinese government over the years, should Americans think of them as friendly, adversaries, enemies, or "frenemies"? Gordan Chang (@GordonGChang), an expert on Chinese affairs, is also a columnist, lawyer, and author of The Coming Collapse of China. He explained to American Thinker, "Last May China defined their role, declaring a people's war on the US. If China viewed America as an enemy then they should be viewed as an enemy." But the Democrats and mass media do not look on China as the enemy. Rather, they consider President Donald Trump the enemy. Bill Gates defends China's coronavirus response: Billionaire says Beijing 'did a lot of things right' at the start of the pandemic. It's too soon to be talking about whether China deserves blame for the coronavirus outbreak and efforts to shift the focus onto Beijing are a 'distraction,' according to Bill Gates, who criticized 'incorrect and unfair things' said about the Communist-run country. 'China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up,' the Microsoft co-founder told CNN on Sunday [4/26/2020]. Bill Gates thinks the global shift towards nationalism made the coronavirus response worse. Microsoft billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates believes an upswing in nationalism left the world ill-positioned to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking to The Times in an interview published Friday, Gates was asked whether current politicians were up to the task of responding to the crisis. The billionaire worded his answer carefully. "You go to war with the leaders you have [...] In retrospect you get to judge how well that went," he said. There Are Some Mistakes Science Can't Save Us From. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced popular consciousness to face mortality after decades of anticipating life extension and even the Singularity as a birthright. Yet it did not appreciably diminish the popular belief that technology would save the day and allow us to renew the march to progress before too long. But to await salvation would be to expect more from technology than is reasonable. First, there are suspicions the pandemic itself may be the product of technology, of rogue experiments or bad lab containment. Technology does not 'save' anything of itself; it works in both directions. It can construct an electric toaster as well as an electric chair, nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons, gene-based cures or biological weapons. Government Bears the Burden of Proof on Coronavirus Restrictions. The politicization of science has ingrained in our political life something about which we ought to be highly skeptical: The argument from authority. It is doing extraordinary damage to the republic, through governmental responses — federal, state and municipal — to the coronavirus. And it will keep doing damage unless and until we restore the burden of proof. There is no doubt that governments have a compelling interest in public safety, which includes preventing the spread of a potentially deadly infectious disease. It is nevertheless the foundational conceit of the American republic that governments are created to secure the fundamental rights of a nation's citizens — our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, the legitimacy of government is dependent on the consent of the governed. In the United States, authority is subordinate to liberty. Government is the servant, not the master. In our society, the argument from authority should never be the final word, notwithstanding the progressive vision of government by bureaucracies of purportedly agenda-free experts. Social Distancing Isn't a Religion. The largest city in Florida partly reopened its beaches, and it became something of a national scandal. CNN ran a disapproving segment, and the hashtag #FloridaMorons trended on Twitter. As the CNN report put it: "The scene at Jacksonville Beach wasn't one of caution in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Crowds cheered and flooded the beach when police took the barriers down. People were seen swimming, biking, surfing, running and fishing." None of these activities has been shown to be a vector for the spread of COVID-19; in fact, no outdoor activities have been shown to be dangerous at all. A recent study examined hundreds of outbreaks and traced only one to an outdoor environment. Surfers and bikers are the least of our worries. Yet, there is a segment of American opinion that takes it as its responsibility to scold and shame anyone who dares go out and get a little fresh air. New York refused to send nursing home's COVID-19 patients to nearly empty USNS Comfort. New York health officials were warned in writing that a Brooklyn nursing home where 55 patients have died of coronavirus was overwhelmed — weeks before it began topping the state's official list of resident COVID-19 deaths, damning emails show. Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman sent a desperate email to state Health Department officials on April 9, asking if there was "a way for us to send our suspected covid patients" to the hospital built inside the Javits Convention Center or the US Naval hospital ship Comfort — the under-utilized federal medical facilities on Manhattan's West Side. "We don't have the ability to cohort right now based on staffing and we really want to protect our other patients," Tuchman wrote in a chain of the emails reviewed by The [New York] Post. Post Hoc vs. Propter Hoc. After several weeks of rising numbers of cases and deaths, the bell curves have crested and are beginning to decline almost everywhere. Hurrah! Let's pat the American people on their collective back. It takes a lot of hard work to destroy the entire economy of a complex first-world nation like the United States in just a few weeks. But we may have done just that. We forced most businesses to close. We forced people to stay at home. We imperiled countless hospitals by making them treat only one thing: patients sick from the coronavirus. We put more than 26 million people out of work. We shaved trillions of dollars of wealth off the market. An ER Physician/Entrepreneur Perspective on the Wuhan Virus. In California recently, two emergency room doctors gave a powerful briefing on what's going on when it comes to the Wuhan virus in their state, our nation, and the world over. The two doctors in the video are Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. Dr. Erickson is a former emergency room (ER) physician who now co-owns Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, CA. Dr. Massihi is his business partner. Bakersfield is the largest city and the county seat of Kern County, CA. Kern County has a population just over 900,000. [...] The briefing is just over 50 minutes and is well worth your time. COVID-19: Doctors state the word 'safe' means controlling you and something else is at work.
Dr. Dan Erickson of Accelerated Health Care talks about the impact of the coronavirus on Kern County. Now that some
actual data is available, better conclusions can be made. These doctors discuss:
Protesters Descend On Wisconsin Capitol To Send A Message: We're Done Staying Home. Wisconsin stay-at-home orders were supposed to expire Friday [4/24/2020]. Instead, thousands of disgruntled Wisconsinites descended upon the capitol in protest after the Evers administration extended the Dairy State's so-called Safer at Home order another month. This Pandemic Is Over. Let's Stop the Economic Suicide, and Get Back to Work. With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs ands and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics. The crisis now will hit the politicians and political Doctor Faucis who gullibly accepted and trumpeted what statistician William Briggs calls "the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time." An egregious statistical horror story of millions of projected deaths, suffused with incense and lugubrious accents from Imperial College of London to Harvard School of Public Health, prompted the pols to impose a vandalistic lockdown on the economy. It would have been an outrage even if the assumptions were not wildly astronomically wrong. Flattening the curve was always a fool's errand that widened the damage. Democrats' Fascism Shines Through. Someone once said that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the guise of fighting fascism. Updated version: Fascism has come to America, in the guise of fighting a virus. Nowhere has Democrats' totalitarian instincts come out more clearly than in their response to the coronavirus. David Horowitz says: "Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." In the case of Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the totalitarian is not only out but goose-stepping toward the New Reich. Instead of "Sieg Heil," it's "Obey or Else." On April 17, 3,000 to 4,000 came to the state capital to protest the shutdown and some of the governor's more outrageous edicts, to wit: You can't travel between two residences you own. You can fish in a kayak, but not a motorboat. You can buy lottery tickets but not garden seeds. The First Amendment Amidst the Coronavirus Crisis. "The Bill of Rights, as you well know, protects Americans' rights — enshrines their right to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together to assemble peacefully," Tucker Carlson said to Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey in mid-April. "By what authority did you nullify the Bill of Rights in issuing this [quarantine] order? How do you have the power to do that?" Murphy replied, "That's above my pay grade, Tucker. I wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this." Murphy's remark will define the complacent secularism that predominated during the coronavirus crisis. He wasn't just speaking for himself but for many other political figures for whom the Constitution's emphasis on religious freedom is just an antiquated quibble. It would have come as a surprise to the Founding Fathers that a crisis absolves a governor of any duty to uphold the Constitution. Murphy's comment perfectly sums up the casual secularist tyranny under which we live. It has fallen to Attorney General Bill Barr to remind these figures that respecting constitutional rights is not above their pay grade. Is the cure worse than the disease? Gov. Tony Evers' decision to have Department of Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm extend his safer-at-home order to May 26 is shocking and most likely illegal. The governor only has power to extend his emergency order to May 10. Then he must work with the Legislature. One might wonder why he has failed to seek opinions or even brief members of the Legislature to this point. DHS Secretary Andrea Palm does not have the authority to extend the order, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will likely strike down the extension beyond May 10. The governor's actions are lawless and open him to criticisms of acting like a despot. What is most distressing is the governor's seemingly unawareness of the plight of Wisconsin small business. He has ignored pleas from business organizations across our state for weeks now. China filed a patent for US drug that has helped some coronavirus patients recover the day after it confirmed bug could infect humans. China filed a patent for a drug seen as one of the best potential weapons against coronavirus the day after it confirmed human transmission of the disease. The revelation that it moved so fast fuels concerns about a cover-up of the pandemic when it erupted in Wuhan last year, and suggests that China's understanding of the virus was far advanced from the impression given by its public stance. Last night [4/24/2020], Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, joined the growing global clamour for a full, independent inquiry into China's role. Protest Caravan Takes Over Las Vegas Strip Demanding Governor Sisolak Reopen Nevada. A protest caravan took over the Las Vegas strip on Friday calling on Democrat Governor Sisolak to reopen Nevada. The protest dubbed 'America's First Interactive Drive-thru Caravan' was organized by conservative radio host and friend of The Gateway Pundit, Wayne Allyn Root. Wayne Root said police told him they estimated 8,000 people attended the protest. The demonstrators drove down the strip demanding businesses reopen after only 200 Coronavirus deaths in the entire state of more than 3 million people. Former Stanford Chief Of Neuroradiology Discusses Viral Column. Dr. Scott Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, made a Friday night Fox News appearance to defend his viral column about why the ongoing coronavirus panic, and the ensuing government-enforced shutdowns, should end. Atlas' column, titled "The Data Is In — Stop The Panic And End The Total Isolation" and published Wednesday at The Hill, lists "five key facts" that are "being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown," along with evidence to bolster each one. Former Neuroradiology Chief at Stanford Medical Center Gives Us the Facts; And the News is Good. Dr. Scott Atlas, the former neuroradiology chief at Stanford University Medical Center, wrote an op-ed at The Hill on Friday [4/24/2020] that every American should read. He lays out five key facts that no one is paying attention to. He calls on policymakers "to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function." The bottom line is that the mortality rate for COVID is equivalent to the annual flu. Atlas makes the case that total isolation no longer makes sense and that it's time for Americans to go back to work. Pennsylvania Admits Their COVID-19 Death Toll Is Inaccurate and Inflated As They've Been Counting 'Probable Deaths'. Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine had to do some hasty backpedaling after coroners pointed out that the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 did not add up, at which point she admitted that yes, they'd been including "probable deaths" in their count. Surely for no political gain at all, since inflating that sort of data is for the good of... oh, no one? In four U.S. state prisons, nearly 3,300 inmates test positive for coronavirus — 96% without symptoms. When the first cases of the new coronavirus surfaced in Ohio's prisons, the director in charge felt like she was fighting a ghost. "We weren't always able to pinpoint where all the cases were coming from," said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. As the virus spread, they began mass testing. They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. "It was very surprising," said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state's 28 correctional facilities. The Plan to Completely Destroy Nevada's Economy. Nevada, like no other state, is totally dependent on tourism. If tourism dies, the state will die. The Democrat governor, Steve Sisolak, is doing his best to kill Nevada. Sisolak seems to be driven more by a lack of clear thinking rather than malicious intent. Sisolak's plan is to place most state residents under what amounts to house arrest. In order to discourage anyone from leaving their house he is attempting to make leaving home as unpleasant as possible. Parks are closed, or if that is impossible, at least the bathrooms are closed. He is even attempting to close the vast desert that surrounds Las Vegas, blocking off roads and trails. All businesses are required to close except for "essential" businesses like grocery stores. The schools are closed, making it difficult for parents to work because they have to care for their children. The entire tourist industry has been shut down. The Las Vegas strip, usually crowded with tourists staying in some of the 150,000 hotel rooms, is completely deserted. Coronavirus closers, a Jonestown redux. [Scroll down] Now facing failure, the utopians want to do what failed utopians always want to do: Drink the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. And as in Jonestown, force everyone else to drink it too. Coincidentally, there's an ample supply. Sort of. It's the Coronavirus. At first, it looked like the virus itself could be the cyanide. Media projections of a few million deaths looked promising. But America proved too strong. The projected deaths were slashed to a quarter million, then trimmed to a hundred thousand and then trimmed yet again. Now, it looks to be about the same as a bad flu season, except that the typical patient is an obese 83-year-old man with underlying medical problems. Feverish utopians prayed for pestilence, hail, locusts and darkness on America. What America got instead was a bad case of the hiccups. There's one last hope. Call it suicide by shutdown. Close the country, they say. Not the border, which of course they'll leave open, but the economy. Drive unemployment to 30%. Imprison people in their houses and take their jobs away. Pennsylvania removes 200 from coronavirus death toll amid questions over reporting process. Officials in Pennsylvania are amending the number of coronavirus deaths in the state by hundreds in the face of questions about how the total number was calculated. Pennsylvania began including "probable" coronavirus deaths into its overall fatality count earlier this week and, as a result, the number grew by 276 in one day and 360 the next, which was double the number of deaths in the state in two days, according to Fox News. The Pennsylvania Department of Health then removed 200 deaths from the total after questions arose about the overall accuracy[.] Pennsylvania Forced To Remove Hundreds Of Deaths From Coronavirus Death Count After Coroners Raise Red Flags. Pennsylvania has had to remove hundreds of coronavirus deaths from its official death count this week, following questions of accuracy and highlighted discrepancies by area coroners. The PA health department decided to include "probable" coronavirus deaths, or an assumed COVID-19-related death without testing for the virus, to their death tolls, dating back days and even weeks ago. But the death toll spike raised questions from coroners who came forward to highlight a discrepancy in death totals, which were not adding up to the number of all-cause deaths. The scrutiny triggered multiple revisions and statements from the department, including the removal of 200 "probable" COVID-19 deaths and a claim of computer "glitching." The Editor says... Misleading NYT graph juices Colorado virus death trend. Defying apocalyptic predictions, Colorado was not particularly hard-hit by the Coronavirus. The number of cases and deaths per capita were in the middling part of the U.S. range. Moreover, in Colorado the virus is nearly dead now. [...] It can be seen that the daily death toll follows the classic bell-shaped curve that epidemiologists learn in med school. If anything, it's better than one might hope for, in that the decline in right-hand part of the curve is steeper than the increase in the left-hand part. Yesterday, the death toll was zero. One might think that the state's largest newspaper would see this as news. They don't. Video Illustrates UV Catheter Treatment. How many people in the Drive-By Media do you think have an ultraviolet light sanitizer? How many of you do? They're selling like hotcakes out there. "Disinfect your iPhone! Put it in this little container here." What do you think is zapping it? Ultraviolet light is being used to sanitize this stuff: Baby supplies, keys, furniture, masks. Ultraviolet light is widely known. So this is what Trump was talking about when asking if there is a way that ultraviolet light can be used to zap the virus or bacteria — and there is. Democrats threaten to expel Democratic lawmaker for surviving COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine and thanking Trump. What kind of a creature "censures" a black woman who just barely survived the coronavirus and then went on to thank President Trump for suggesting hydroxychloroquine, the drug that turned the tide for her? Only a Democrat. And in Gretchen Whitmer's Michigan, these beasts have proliferated. Rather than offer thanks to heaven for their fellow Detroit legislator's survival, along with lots of proverbial pats on the back and expressions of support for her recovery, which is what decent people do, these Democrats had different ideas. They decided to punish her, whipping out their censorship apparat and threatening party expulsion all for the 'crime' of surviving COVID-19 by taking hydroxychloroquine and remembering and thanking President Trump. Michigan's already grossly unpopular governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who banned garden seed sales, mowing the lawn, and visiting one's own getaway cabin, has actually been making time in her busy schedule to send crank texts to the lawmaker, Karen Whitsett. The Constitution was Made for Covid-19. It is a great tribute to our Constitution that these checks and balances are working to create the friction necessary for Americans to take notice of the deeper issues at stake here. But we must take note and demand much better from our public officials. Federal and state executives would be wise to take a step back and consider the long-term implications of the actions they are taking. They must preserve and respect the constitutional structure that guards our liberty. Why Washington gave us the finger. George Washington [...] really did fight a revolution in the midst of a smallpox epidemic that was 33 times as deadly as COVID-19. America is not being quarantined. It is being shut down by traitorous governors who ignore decency, the law, and the Constitution to suppress a free people. Beaches across the nation are packed as people ignore social distancing. From New York to California, people ignored social distancing to hit the beach Saturday as temperatures heated up. Los Angeles braced for a heatwave this weekend which had people keen to get back to the beach as photos show beachgoers sunbathing and relaxing. Meanwhile in New York, a spring day after a week of rain saw people out and about on Coney Island and Long Beach, despite the city being the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Masks, Gloves, Temperature Check: Texas Restaurant Opens Despite Order. On Friday evening, the 8731 Katy Freeway location of Federal American Grill in Houston, Texas, opened up its doors for in-dining room customers despite an ongoing order from state and local lawmakers to remain closed except for take-out. Owner Matt Brice told the Houston Chronicle that the restaurant has "complied 100 percent until now." "What I don't like is that the government is picking and choosing which businesses win or lose. They are sinking the economy," Brice said. "We have to stand our ground and get people back to work." Texas Town Reopens Ahead Of State; Neighboring Mayor: Stores Are 'Panicking'. While Texas is one of the more aggressive states in its reopening schedule, one town has made the decision to outpace even Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's ambitious timeline. Colleyville, Texas has become the first city in the state to reopen several "non-essential" businesses and organizations, including churches, gyms and salons. "Colleyville Mayor Richard Newton became the first in Texas to issue a proclamation allowing churches, retail stores, gyms, salons, massage parlors and restaurants to reopen Friday — with social distancing — ahead of an order by the Texas governor expected next week," The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday [4/23/2020]. America Held Hostage. What are we doing, America? We've destroyed a booming economy, turned a record number of jobs into record unemployment numbers, and given up our basic tenets of liberty — all so we won't get sick? We're allowing governors to restrict people's movement; prevent citizens from assembling; and order mandatory masks, testing, and vaccines. These governors now claim the right to track our every move, to surveil every American in order to ensure compliance. This shutdown is not just a slippery slope to socialism and communism; it's a downhill slalom. How did we get here? Americans aren't cowards who would eagerly surrender liberty for immunity. But therein lies the genius of the left. It's not just about you and me, now, is it? The left has hostages: our aging parents, grandparents, sick relatives. Either we put down the Constitution and slowly back away or the hostages will die. 'The Pretense of Knowledge' has Cost America Dearly. Epidemiological "models" have provided the scientific basis for this large-scale abrogation of personal and economic liberty. Now that the models have been shown to be grossly inaccurate, some are demanding accountability. [...] In retrospect, and despite their air of authority, the experts never had enough knowledge about this virus to make reliable calculations about the future. But the real problem with the models weren't that they proved to be false, but rather that they were promoted with false certitude. Shouldn't COVID-19's Lethality Inform the Response to It? The way Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer framed the study's results raises a question that policy makers across the country will confront as they consider when and how to loosen sweeping restrictions aimed at curtailing the COVID-19 epidemic. Will they be guided by emerging evidence, or will they use it to support the policies they already favored? The Los Angeles County study, conducted by University of Southern California researchers in collaboration with Ferrer's department, tested a representative sample of 863 adults for antibodies to the virus in early April. About 4 percent of them tested positive, indicating that the number of adults in the county who had been infected by the virus was roughly 40 times the number of confirmed cases at the time. Confirmed cases are limited to people who have tested positive for the virus, and testing so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms. Since people infected by the virus typically experience mild to no symptoms, it is not surprising that the official tally understates the number of infections, although the apparent size of the gap is striking. All Fifty States Are Either At Their COVID Peak, or Past It. One would like to see the 15 states currently at their peak of infection to be past their peak of infection, but that should happen soon. The other 35 states are now on the declining part of the much-blathered-about curve. Maryland
Governor Decrees That Only Essential Workers Who Show Their Papers Can Get Haircuts. It seems these bizarre
stories roll in faster than I can cover them. They are stories of power-mad elected officials reveling like pigs in mud
in their newfound power to direct every movement of their citizens. The latest decree comes from Governor Larry Hogan
of Maryland and decrees who is allowed to get haircuts. Hogan's new Defective data, risky results; Here's how the Harvard COVID-19 model got it wrong. The CCDC study that Harvard based their model on was flawed. The CCDC authors clearly said as much; Harvard knew or should have known this. Yet, Harvard's model had based its number of "projected infected individuals" on a sample of patients of whom 100 percent displayed symptoms and of whom 100 percent tested positive for COVID-19. This is not representative of a spectrum of COVID-19 cases. Based on available studies and research, a likely majority of people with coronavirus are asymptomatic. Logic dictates that because the CCDC failed to account for asymptomatic individuals and based their statistics only on confirmed symptomatic cases who sought treatment, the model also fails to account for those who experienced symptoms and never sought medical treatment. Failing to account for, or address, what likely comprises a majority of all infected individuals is completely indefensible. Michigan to strip governor of reopening powers. In a very personal form of lobbying state officials, protesters held a demonstration outside the home of Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday. This was the same day news broke that Whitmer plans to extend the state's virus stay-at-home order until May 15th. Meanwhile, the state legislature will meet to likely strip Whitmer of certain powers to close and/or reopen the state. Protestors were not happy about the two week extension until mid-month, "We wanted to send Gretchen Whitmer a message, we didn't want to surrender our liberties just for a little temporary safety," Brian Pannebecker, a protest leader, told the local Fox television affiliate in Lansing, Michigan. "Younger people, healthy people, without putting anybody else in danger, including ourselves, and others in danger, should be able to go back to work," said Pannebecker. Michigan legislature calls special session — to strip Whitmer of emergency powers. Couldn't happen to a nicer petty martinet, nor at a better time. Winston Churchill once wrote that bad kings make for good law, and Michigan's legislature might put that into action in a special session starting today. After Whitmer's arbitrary and capricious COVID-19 shutdown order put the state's unemployment at the highest in the nation, the legislature wants immediate oversight over Whitmer's handling of the crisis. And they want to start reviewing bills to restrict the powers that she may have abused. Sorry, Facebook: Announcing a protest isn't 'harmful misinformation'. A scattering of protests aimed at coronavirus lockdowns erupted across the country, sparked not by social-distancing guidelines but by politicians' unilaterally dictating what products citizens are permitted to purchase in box stores, attempting to shut down drive-in Masses at churches and closing parks and beaches, among other ill-conceived and gratuitous intrusions. So naturally, Facebook decided to censor organizers' posts. Like any protest movement, this one is a mixed bag: Some of the protesters are acting in bad faith, some are idealists and some are merely terrified of losing their livelihoods, their homes and their careers while waiting around for a government check that might never come. New UW Medicine clinical trial to treat COVID-19 outpatients with hydroxychlorquine. A new clinical treatment trial launched Friday and UW Medicine researchers are looking for COVID-19 patients to test the effectiveness of anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. UW researchers want to enroll 630 people who currently have the COVID-19 virus. Researchers say this particular study looks at COVID-19 patients who do not need to go to the hospital yet. Researchers are testing two combinations. One is hydroxychloroquine. The other is hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin. Researchers are also using a placebo. Cristina Cuomo says she treated her coronavirus with Clorox baths, vitamin drips: Experts react. Experts are warning the public about alternative remedies Cristina Cuomo says she and her family used during their fight against the novel coronavirus. The Cuomo family has been hit hard by COVID-19, which first struck CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, then Cristina and recently their 14-year-old son, Mario. The couple share two other children. Cristina Cuomo's recommendations, including baths using disinfecting Clorox bleach, which the cleaning product company has specifically warned against, have received criticism from medical experts. Media Demonstrates Double Standard on Gov. Kemp's and Gov. Polis's Similar Reopening Plans. Democrats and members of the mainstream media spent much of the week unloading on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) after he announced that certain businesses in Georgia would be allowed to resume operations starting on Friday [4/24/2020]. Gov. Kemp's decision triggered a wave of backlash as many claimed that his decision was irresponsible. Media outlets also took advantage of President Trump's amicable disagreement with Gov. Kemp's move, in an attempt to undermine Kemp's jurisdiction to reopen his state under the 10th amendment. Though the president publicly expressed his disagreement with Gov. Kemp's decision to reopen parts of his state, the president has remained nuanced and respectful of governors doing the jobs to which they were elected throughout this crisis. President Trump and Gov. Kemp made it clear that they talked at length about Kemp's decision, and the president repeatedly said that he respected Kemp's choice despite disagreement. The Economy Will Reopen Sooner Than You Think. Problematic coronavirus testing issues may fast disappear as critical preconditions to reopening the economy. Testing issues won't go away; they are simply likely to be left largely unresolved. In addition, new reports suggest that infections may be much, much more widespread than most had thought, which, in turn, means that there is a strong likelihood that we have much, much lower death rates from the coronavirus in all age groups. While most working people (not sheltered in place) may get the virus, the death rates for the entire population may turn out to be not much higher than the seasonal flu. For younger workers under the age of 60, mortality rates, which are already very low, will drop even lower. The fix is obviously in on Cuomo's 'investigation' of nursing-home horrors. News that Team Cuomo ignored warnings about the nursing-home disaster only confirms that the gov's call for an investigation is pure deflection. He's trying to make care facility owners the fall guys for the state's choices. The [New York] Post reports that a Brooklyn nursing home that's seen New York's greatest number of COVID-related deaths (55, on the latest list) wrote the state Health Department on April 8 to plead for help. Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman e-mailed four officials to report that his facility had "over 50 symptomatic patients scattered through the building and almost no gowns" and warned, "There is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions." Nearly all NYC coronavirus patients had underlying health conditions, study finds. Nearly all the patients hospitalized for the coronavirus in New York City had underlying health conditions, according to a new study. Health records showed that 94% of the 5,700 patients in the Northwell Health system — which has had the most patients in the country during the pandemic — had at least one disease other than COVID-19, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. 88% had more than one ailment on top of coronavirus. Gov DeSantis explains how 'high risk' Florida is successfully 'flattening the curve' without draconian measures. Governor Ron DeSantis believes flattening the curve of coronavirus cases is possible without resorting to "draconian" measures and his state of Florida is proof it can be done. The Republican governor spoke on "Hannity" about the efforts and results of combating the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida where, despite being hit hard with the virus outbreak, the state has seen fewer hospitalizations than predicted with just over 900 deaths. Looks Like Trump Was Right About The Coronavirus Fatality Rate. In early March, President Donald Trump was lambasted for saying on Sean Hannity's Fox News show that he had a hunch the coronavirus fatality rate, which the World Health Organization pegged then at 3 to 4 percent, was in fact much lower, under 1 percent. Many commentators, myself included pointed out that the beginning of a pandemic medical crisis was not the time to be floating hunches. But, as we always knew was possible, it looks now like the president might well have been right. New data from random antibody tests conducted in New York State suggest that as many as 2.7 million people statewide have had the coronavirus. That along with the just over 15,000 deaths that have occurred leads to a fatality rate for the virus of .5 percent according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. New Jersey driver crashes car after passing out from wearing N95 mask. A New Jersey driver crashed head-on into a pole — after passing out from wearing an N95 mask for hours, police said Friday [4/24/2020]. Lincoln Park police believe that the driver, who was not named, lost consciousness while behind the wheel Thursday from lack of oxygen and breathing in excessive carbon dioxide thanks to the mask, the department wrote on Facebook. "The LPPD responded to a lone occupant single car motor vehicle crash yesterday. The crash is believed to have resulted from the driver wearing an N95 mask for several hours and subsequently passing out behind the wheel due to insufficient oxygen intake/excessive carbon dioxide intake," the cops wrote. Frozen French Fries [are] a Casualty of the Coronavirus. If you've tried to buy frozen french fries at the supermarket — any brand, any flavor — you were probably confronted with empty shelves in the store freezer. Why that's so is a tale of supply and demand, and how the U.S. food supply chain is so vulnerable to disruptions. It's especially perplexing because potato farmers are plowing under thousands of tons of potatoes because they can't sell them and buyers have no place to put them. The problem is that schools, restaurants, and large companies who make up the bulk of frozen french fry orders in the country are closed or not making nearly as much as they did pre-pandemic. And that's trouble for a stable supply. Bitter Dems plan to censure Mich Rep who credited Trump with saving her life. Democrats reached a new low in their hatred of President Donald Trump and the mission to destroy anyone who doesn't agree with them. Instead of Michigan State Rep. Karen Whitsett getting celebratory messages after recovering from COVID-19, the Democrat is facing censure by her own party members in Detroit. Whitsett is guilty of crediting Trump with saving her life after taking hydroxychloroquine to treat her severe coronavirus symptoms. Andrew Cuomo's coronavirus nursing home policy proves tragic. [Scroll down] The state concedes that 3,448 residents of nursing homes or adult-care facilities are known to have died from the coronavirus, or nearly 25 percent of all deaths in New York. More than 2,000 of the total are in the five boroughs, and officials acknowledge that the real numbers are almost certainly higher. The New York policy is especially odd given that the first large outbreak of the virus in the United States took place in a nursing home. The Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., attributed 13 deaths to the virus before March 11, and at the time, the number represented 60 percent of all the fatalities in the nation. Since then, at least 24 others have died there. That same week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged that special attention be given to seniors. Lysol Issues PSA In Response To False Social Media Claims About Trump's Comments. In response to "speculation and social media activity" surrounding President Trump's questions about new findings during the coronavirus briefing Thursday, RB, the maker of Lysol and Dettol, felt compelled to issue a public service announcement warning against "improper use of disinfectants." "Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)," reads RB's PSA issued in response to false claims about Trump's comments on potential treatment methods. "As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)." Leftists' outcry over Trump's 'Lysol' talk makes them look like fools. Over on Twitter, the left is having a field day. Tide Pods? What could be more exciting than to claim that President Trump endorses eating Tide Pods as a solution to the coronavirus pandemic? Never mind that he didn't. Trump Did NOT Say We Should Inject Ourselves With Disinfectant, He Said The Opposite. Talk about Trump derangement syndrome. During Thursday's CoronaVirus task force press conference, Bill Bryan, who leads the Science and Technology group at the Department of Homeland Security, talked about the findings of a scientific study they conducted indicating that the virus is killed by solar light and disinfectants. The President asked if there were ways for that information to be used to help humans, and many in the media went crazy, saying Trump suggested we inject ourselves with disinfectant. Actually, the President did not say we should inject ourselves with disinfectant, he said the exact opposite. Fake News: Trump Didn't Tell People to Inject Bleach or Lysol Into Their Veins to Fight Coronavirus. On Thursday, liberals thought they finally had the smoking gun, the excuse to oust President Donald Trump as mentally unfit for office. Some called him "President bleach," claiming he had suggested people should inject bleach or Lysol into their veins to fight the coronavirus. [...] Then the commentary. "Trump unquestionably is unfit to serve as president. He endangers every American. Most directly, he endangers his supporters, many of whom either believe the virus is a hoax (prompting them to engage in dangerous behavior) or now that injecting/ingesting disinfectants is in order," tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner. [...] Trump wasn't telling people to drink or inject bleach — he was asking whether or not it would be possible to clean inside the body with a similar disinfectant. He also insisted, "you're going to have to use medical doctors with" any such practice. In other words, "don't try this at home, kids." Trump Didn't Tell People to Drink Drano or Inject Lysol! Now, another controversy that sprung up out there that happens — I don't know — at least once a week. The Drive-By Media is attempting to persuade and convince people that Donald Trump told people to drink Drano at the White House press briefing yesterday [4/23/2020]. That Donald Trump told people to go out and get a syringe and inject Clorox in their arms, and that this could be dangerous, that Donald Trump is killing people now in the White House press briefing. There was a reporter from the Washington Post in the briefing. He brought a guy out who explained what temperature and humidity do to the coronavirus when it is exposed to them. And the conclusion was that high humidity and high temperature — exactly what Trump told us back in February, by the way, and exactly what the medical people told us: That the virus has a tough time surviving in high temperatures — this is outside — and high humidity. And they call Trump 'dangerous'? Turns out, Chris Cuomo's wife was bathing with bleach to fight coronavirus. CNN political commentator Chris Cuomo's wife, Cristina, is facing criticism from practically everybody — except anybody at CNN, of course — for promoting a "crackpot coronavirus treatment" that's been dubbed "dangerous." In a post to her blog published this week, the left-wing host's wife listed the pseudoscientific holistic methods she's been employing to treat her coronavirus infection. One of those methods involves bathing in Clorox bleach. "At the direction of my doctor, Dr. Linda Lancaster, who reminded me that this is an oxygen-depleting virus, she suggested I take a bath and add a nominal amount of bleach. Yes, bleach," the post reads. Lancaster is not a doctor. She's a self-described "naturopathic physician and homeopath" who boasts an ND and PhD, but not an MD. Media erupt over Trump comments on disinfectant and sunlight to cure coronavirus: Here's what he said. President Trump, in his White House coronavirus task force briefing Thursday, appeared to suggest that light and disinfectants might have the potential to treat the coronavirus — prompting a number of stories condemning the comments, others seeking to defend the president and a scathing tweet from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The comments even prompted a statement from Reckitt Benckiser Group, the makers of Lysol, warning against improper use of disinfectant products. Antibody Testing: Proves We've Been Had! There is simply no other way to state this. Nearly everything we've been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate. [...] We've been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season — even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths. We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this would rage beyond any previous pandemic. We were told that this virus with 846,000 current confirmed cases was worse than the H1N1 that broke out on Obama's watch that infected 60,000,000 people. (We were conveniently not told that Obama had authorized $3.7 million U.S. tax dollars to be used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to utilize corona viruses in bats in 2015 — but that's yet another deception of omission.) But none of these "truths" turned out to be so. The death rate in New York State isn't 7.4%, it is actually .75%. Brit Hume: Time To Consider Lockdown Possibly 'A Colossal Public Policy Calamity'. Speaking to Shannon Bream on Fox airwaves Tuesday night [4/21/2020], [Brit] Hume discussed the disastrous side effects of stay-at-home orders adopted by nearly every state in the union, highlighting the irreparable harm done to the folks' livelihood and savings, and the social toll the isolation has caused, particularly for children, who are at extremely low risk for novel coronavirus. To boot, emphasized Hume, it's unclear how effective lockdown policies have actually been, especially when compared to other, more sustainable mitigation strategies. "I think it's time to consider the possibility, Shannon, that this lockdown — as opposed to the more moderate mitigation efforts — is a colossal public policy calamity," Hume said, according to Fox News. "That the damage to the economy, businesses that I see, businesses are closing. Many may not reopen. Those jobs will be lost. Those businesses will be lost. Those incomes will be lost." The Left's Coronavirus Hysteria Defies Economic Reason. While most Americans remain under a stay-at-home order, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Many states around the country are planning to reopen their economies, led by Republican governors who understand the benefits of a healthy business climate — from job creation to economic growth. In Utah, state legislators are considering legislation that would open certain businesses by the end of April. As Texas Governor Greg Abbott puts it, "The businesses that will have minimal or zero impact on the spread of Covid-19 will be the first ones to open up." The stakes are simply too high to be hysterical. Since mid-March, more than 22 million Americans have filed unemployment claims, and America's unemployment rate is expected to reach 20 percent this month. That's double the peak unemployment of the Great Recession. Time to join the rebellion. Democrats and fake news media hate Donald Trump and believe that no price is too high to remove him from the White House. They plan to keep filling Americans with bogus fear about the coronavirus to keep the country shut down all the way to the November election. They do not give a rat's derrière about the shutdown causing 22 million people and climbing to lose their jobs. Suicides are skyrocketing, lives are destroyed, and fortunes are being lost. While much of Hollywood and corporate America share Democrats' hatred for Trump, how long will they continue to allow Trump Derangement Syndrome to destroy their livelihoods? Hollywood will lose $20 billion this year due to the shutdown. The shutdown is causing each casino on the Vegas strip to lose $700,000 a day. Broadcasters of the NBA, NHL, and MLB face losing $1 billion due to the shutdown. Closed Disney parks are losing $30 million per day. According to a Stanford University, USC, and other studies, the coronavirus is nowhere near as deadly as we were told. And yet, when Trump announced "Opening Up America Again," Democrat governors immediately doubled down on their draconian edicts such as fining shoppers $500 for not wearing a mask. Demanding that everyone wear a mask is intended to instill fear that deaths are on the rise. Remember the government shutdowns? Funny how we don't see those same sob stories about lost paychecks now. If most of the media had an honest bone in their bodies, instead of an agenda, they would report that states that did not have a complete shutdown, or stay-at-home orders, had as good results or better results, than states that put in the tyrannical, dictatorial orders. They would say there is no proof that the stay-at-home orders and harsh measures caused the flattening of the COVID-19 curve. It appears that most of the flattening has occurred naturally, same as with the normal flu. They would also report that the original junk projections of hundreds of millions of cases and millions of deaths, that scared the heck out of everyone, appeared to be pulled out of thin air and were not based on any credible scientific facts. You wouldn't go to the moon on projections of this quality. FDA says there is no evidence groceries can transmit coronavirus. Your groceries apparently can't transmit the coronavirus. There's no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 can spread through food, or what it's wrapped in, Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said Thursday [4/23/2020]. "We have no evidence that the virus, the Covid-19 virus, is transmitted by food or by food packaging," Hahn said during a CNN town hall. There's still a risk of catching the bug when restocking your pantry. But you're more likely to be infected by someone coughing inside the store than by touching your groceries, aid Dr. Leana Wen, the former Baltimore health commissioner. Experts suggest reducing the frequency of grocery runs, keeping a safe distance, rigorous hand washing and other measures to stay safe. The Wuhan Virus Pandemic has Exposed the American Ruling Class. [O]n March 16, an even higher echelon of experts, the Imperial College in London, came out with a study projecting 2.2 million Americans would die if no mitigation took place or 1.1 million if an unprecedented societal shutdown were imposed. This immediately became the new mantra and the media arm of the ruling class was dispatched to spread this apocalyptic message far and wide and to now vilify President Trump for not doing enough soon enough. Within 10 days, however, the Imperial College walked back their doomsday scenario reducing the fatality estimates by over 90%. Nonetheless, thanks to our media class, mass hysteria was consuming the nation, so more experts were needed to keep up the drumbeat of fear and trepidation. Enter the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation on March 25, predicting a meltdown of the nation's health care system due to an enormous shortage of hospital and ICU beds throughout the nation, as well as up to 162,000 deaths. The immediate necessity of a societal lockdown, regardless of the economic or human cost, was thus cast in stone. Since that original study, the IHME has revised their study three times reducing their projected death toll by 60% and downgrading the need for hospital and ICU beds by more than 80%. Having
shifted the shutdown goalposts, Democrats are gutting our rights. Flattening the curve seems to have worked. In the six weeks
of advanced panic, not only have the numbers of sick and dead been minuscule compared to the projections, but we've learned
Coronavirus Immunity Cards? Kill the Idea Right Now. Imagine if in September of 2019, a government official had told you that America was going to launch a new database, into which you would be required to enter your vaccine status and other personal health history, and that this would be used to determine whether you have freedom to leave your home, go to work, open your business, travel, or be in public places. The American patriots' response would have been "Are you out of your mind? That will never happen. Maybe in China, but not in America." Yet this is exactly where we are headed today. Why should we be inviting immigrants into a country with a dangerous virus? Wouldn't it be cruel and un-American to invite people from other countries in when they wouldn't be able to go to work, eat, go to the dentist, get their hair cut, or most other things until we get a vaccine that ensures that no one will ever get sick and die again? After all, that is what we are doing to the people who live here. We would tell them they can't get "elective" surgery unless they need an abortion. Why would we want people to come in when COVID-19 is so dangerous? Isn't it un-American to shut down the entire country when thirty percent of the deaths are around New York and twenty percent are in nursing homes? Isn't it time to summarize a few of the Democrats main policies? We should have open borders for illegals, but we should prevent citizens from having the freedom to go where they want. We should enforce dictatorial rules to stay six feet apart, to wear masks, and not to have gatherings of more than ten people, but sanctuary cities and states should not enforce immigration laws that Congress passed. It is oppressive and racist to require photo IDs to vote, but it may be necessary to test everyone's blood to see if he has had the virus so he would qualify for an ID to allow him to go out, mingle, and work. I wonder why there are protests. It must be zealots who like freedom and seek to allow America to survive as it always has, as a capitalist, free society, instead of being controlled by dictatorial politicians. Spreading coronavirus? Why wearing gloves to supermarket isn't helping. The gloves are coming off in the fight against dangerous myths surrounding the coronavirus. Despite no recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do so, shoppers continue to wear gloves in public places, such as grocery stores. The gesture has left doctors and health experts shaking their heads — not only are the gloves ineffective, they may be worsening the spread of COVID-19. Journalists are a gullible bunch on COVID-19. We are told that a large number of people have the virus of whom we don't know, including people without symptoms, and that a large number of people who never were diagnosed with the disease and never had symptoms now might be immune to the disease. We are told that in order to reopen the economy safely, we need to test everyone to see if he has it, even people without symptoms, and also to test people to see if they are immune so the government can release those to work. Then we are told that if we find someone who currently has the disease, we need to find everyone he has been within six feet of for fifteen minutes in the past two weeks and then put all of those people under house arrest for two weeks. Then we are told that until we get a vaccine, which may be a year or never, we must practice social distancing, wear masks, and never gather in groups of more than ten, or else huge numbers of people will die. Now, this sounds to me as though they would rather see the economy destroyed and the U.S. collapse than allow people the freedom to work, save their businesses, and feed their families. U.S. threatens WHO with permanent cash cutoff. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. may "never return" to funding the World Health Organization because of the way it operates, including the COVID-19 crisis. And, in a second demand, Mr. Pompeo told Fox News' Laura Ingraham Wednesday night that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom may have to step down before Washington restarts suspended contributions of nearly $1 billion of WHO's 2.4 billion annual budget. Asked about such a demand, Mr. Pompeo said, "I think that's right, Laura. Even more than that, it may be the case that the United States can never return to underwriting, having U.S. taxpayer dollars go to the WHO. We may need to have even bolder change than that." A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients. [Scroll down] One doctor replied that one of his patients had a strange blood problem. Despite being put on anticoagulants, the patient was still developing clots. A second said she'd seen something similar. And a third. Soon, every person on the text chat had reported the same thing. "That's when we knew we had a huge problem," said [Craig] Coopersmith, a critical-care surgeon. As he checked with his counterparts at other medical centers, he became increasingly alarmed: "It was in as many as 20, 30 or 40 percent of their patients." The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation. The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown. Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. [...] Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. [...] Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. Pritzker announces modified Illinois stay-at-home order to begin May 1; state COVID-19 deaths surpass 1,600. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced the state will extend its stay-at-home order through May 31 on Thursday [4/23/2020], although the modified order will slightly ease some restrictions while implementing new ones as well. The new order will take effect May 1. One of the biggest changes requires anyone who's more than two years old to wear a face-covering or mask in public situations where they're unable to maintain a distance of six feet from other others. Should You Be Putting a Tiny Face Mask on Your Baby? Masks are the new normal for adults going out in public during the coronavirus pandemic, after the CDC issued its guidelines on face coverings earlier this month. But many parents have been wondering whether they're supposed to be wrestling tiny masks and bandannas onto their children, when they venture out for exercise or necessary errands. Should the same rules apply to our littlest potential virus hosts? Here's the short answer from the CDC: "Cloth face coverings should not be placed on young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance," reads a sentence tucked halfway down on a page about how to wear a face mask to prevent COVID-19 spread, so it's easy to understand why most of us missed it. The Land of the 'Free' and the Home of Shelter-in-Place Orders. In mid-March, governors across the country began issuing broad shelter-in-place orders in response to the coronavirus outbreak. [...] The orders are based on the belief that the coronavirus poses a dire threat to the health and safety of the populace. Drawing on the expertise of epidemiologists and other public health officials, as well as the statistical projections of various models on which those officials have relied, governors issued their orders under the belief that "social distancing" will slow the spread of the disease and spare the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Most people initially accepted the premise for the orders and complied with them. But as more and more data have become available, it is clear that the models the public health experts relied on for their projections were wrong. Moreover, as the shelter-in-place orders continue with no end in sight, public-health officials seem to have moved the goalposts to suggest the orders should remain in effect until there are "no new cases, no deaths." Meanwhile, the economy is crumbling. As a result, Americans have begun questioning the scope and duration of the shelter-in-place orders, resulting in various protests and rallies. 'Flattening the Curve,' And Other Lies. To our betters in the American ruling class: Just a note to say thanks for giving us a much-needed lesson in the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who were not shy at all in admonishing us to be wary of surrendering the kind of government power you people have wielded, supposedly for our benefit, since the Chinese Communist virus hit our shores at some indeterminate point in the recent, or maybe not-so-recent, past. You told us that Patient Zero in America for the Wuhan ChiCom virus came to Seattle and first landed in a hospital on January 19. You built an entire response to the virus based on that, and three months later more than 26 million Americans are out of work, and the projections are that some 24 percent of our economy will have evaporated in the second quarter of this year thanks to that response. In the meantime we've watched, on our TVs and computer screens, as moms and dads have been arrested for taking their kids to the park, as some of you have issued edicts preventing us from traveling from one property we own to another, as some of you are attempting to mandate that we wear masks in public, and as some of you are shutting down events and gatherings even eight months from now, as though you have crystal balls to see what the future so far out will hold. Democrat governor: Extending stay-home order would have 'negligible impact'. Amid fierce debate over the various approaches of governors to reopening their economies, the Democratic governor of Colorado is arguing that extending his stay-at-home order would have a "negligible impact" on the severity of the coronavirus' peak. Jared Polis annouced this week a new phased plan beginning Monday that would include the partial reopening of offices and retail businesses, the Washington Examiner reported. "Maintaining the stay-at-home order for an additional two weeks or even four weeks delays the peak, but it doesn't really have anything more than a negligible impact in severity of the peak," Polis said, citing a state model. Wuhan laboratory scientists 'did absolutely crazy things' to alter coronavirus and enabled it to infect humans, Russian microbiologist claims. A leading Russian microbiologist has claimed the coronavirus is the result of Wuhan scientists doing 'absolutely crazy things' in their laboratory. World renowned expert Professor Petr Chumakov claimed their aim was to study the pathogenicity of the virus and not 'with malicious intent' to deliberately create a manmade killer. Professor Chumakov, chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, said: 'In China, scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory have been actively involved in the development of various coronavirus variants for over ten years. 'Moreover, they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating pathogenic variants, but to study their pathogenicity. Follow the money: Keep following the money: The COVID-19 scandal: Billionaire Bill Gates and WHO. The coronavirus scandal, with billionaire oligarch "pandemic expert" Bill Gates pushing horror scenarios into the media, has contributed to politicians' reaction of fear. This, combined with mass media hysteria, has, in turn, caused a once-in-a-century financial depression. The economic depression may not be due to the virus itself, but rather the panic reaction that was created with the corresponding government shutdowns, as advised by Gates. [...] The close relationship between Dr. Tedros and Bill Gates is illustrated by Tedros calling Gates "my brother" when opening speeches. Everyone else, such as the WHO-favored Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, are addressed as dignitaries. Through its CEPI work, the current Norwegian government is allied with Gates, Norway funding billions into vaccine programs. Media spin blames coronavirus 'spike' on anti-lockdown protests. With protests against the heavy-handed handling of the coronavirus crisis by state governments spreading across the country, media liberals decided to weigh in this week with the news that Kentucky's governor had reported a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in the Bluegrass State. And added a reminder that the rise followed a demonstration in the state capital by residents unhappy with lockdown orders. Adam Schiff Wears Mask Under His Chin During House Speech. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) brought a face mask to a Congressional hearing Thursday [4/23/2020], but he strapped it under his chin while speaking. Schiff spoke at a House Small Business Committee hearing, where several members of Congress were wearing various forms of masks as a precaution during the coronavirus crisis. Understanding How Testing Works. Expanded and frequent Covid-19 testing has emerged as a necessary precondition for reopening America and resuming something like normal life. But political leaders and citizens need a better understanding of how testing works, how testing can go wrong, and why tests don't necessarily indicate immunity to disease. As we move into the next phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, we also need a better understanding of viral antibodies and how serological tests differ from tests for the novel coronavirus itself. Tests can trick us into thinking we were never infected when we were, and vice-versa, which in some cases can present a real danger. Remote But Not Removed, Alaska Freezes Out COVID-19. Alaska has mirrored many of the actions taken by states in the Lower 48. There are stay-at-home orders and schools are out for the rest of the year, and everything from bars to bingo halls are closed. The governor also went farther with an emergency order: Anyone entering the state must declare a designated quarantine location and self-isolate for 14 days. Ignoring that edict is a Class-A misdemeanor that could come with a $25,000 penalty or a year in jail. And, so far, it has worked. This week Alaska has only 329 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nine deaths, according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services. Publicly traded companies have 2 weeks to give back loans intended for small businesses or face 'severe consequences,' Treasury Department says. The Treasury Department is asking publicly traded companies who received loans from a fund intended to help small business recover from the pandemic to return the money by May 7 or face consequences, according to new guidance issued on Thursday. The department said it was "unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets" could prove that a federal loan was necessary for it to stay afloat. The request from the Treasury Department came after large companies who took loans from the program were criticized heavily as the fund ran out of money — and many small businesses, which the money was intended to help, were unable to get a loan. Reopening Georgia and Colorado: A Study in Double Standards. When President Trump first unveiled his three-phase strategy for lifting the job-killing stay-at-home orders imposed by most states in an effort to "flatten the coronavirus curve," among the first to embrace the guidelines were Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Jared Polis of Colorado. Moreover, their reopening plans were quite similar. Both, for example, will permit hair salons, tattoo parlors, and other personal services to resume operation. Yet the reception by the legacy media and various "experts" has been dramatically different. While the Polis plan has excited little comment, Kemp's program has been denounced by the press and President Trump's public health advisors have quite literally disowned it. Moving Out and Not Coming Back. At some point the coronavirus crisis will end, but one of the extraordinarily difficult lessons of this ordeal is that the catastrophic scenarios that sound like something out of science fiction can happen in real life, and that the vast majority of us are at the mercy of fate in these scenarios. As mentioned last week, whichever way SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans — a lab accident, wet markets, exotic-animal trader, a farmer using bat guano for fertilizer — it can happen again with another virus. Right now, as you are reading this, all around the world, scientists are working on dangerous viruses and pathogens in biosafety-level four, three, and two labs. Early peek at data on Gilead coronavirus drug suggests patients are responding to treatment. The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with Covid-19 into Gilead's two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir. "The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We've only had two patients perish," said Kathleen Mullane, the University of Chicago infectious disease specialist overseeing the remdesivir studies for the hospital. Stupidity Kills. Northwell Health analyzed outcomes for 5,700 coronavirus patients admitted to its New York area hospitals between March 1 and April 4. The resultant study, published online Wednesday [4/22/2020] at the Journal of the American Medical Association, found chronic conditions in about 19 out of every 20 coronavirus deaths. The most common comorbidities all related, to one degree or another, to obesity. "The most common comorbidities were hypertension (3,026, 56.6%), obesity (1,737, 41.7%), and diabetes (1,808, 33.8%)," the study reports. "The median score on the Charlson Comorbidity Index was 4 points (IQR, 2-6), which corresponds to a 53% estimated 10-year survival and reflects a significant comorbidity burden for these patients." In other words, a large percentage of victims displayed unwellness to such a degree that they likely would have died of something soon in the absence of coronavirus. Yes, one of the fattest countries on the planet registers the most coronavirus deaths. Bring Taiwan in from the cold. China's behavior during the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has been disgraceful — marked by deceit and an unwillingness to cooperate with the rest of the world until it was too late. In addition, there's reason to believe that the virus originated in a Chinese lab that did not meet safety standards. By contrast, Taiwan's behavior has been exemplary. According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S., Taiwan has donated more than two million Taiwan-made masks to the U.S. and more than five million to the EU. It plans to donate another five million globally. Pence: U.S. 'Could Largely Have' COVID-19 'Epidemic Behind Us' By June 'If Current Trend Lines Hold'. On Thursday [4/23/2020], Vice President Mike Pence spoke with radio host Rush Limbaugh about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. After speaking about the recent protests over lockdown restrictions, as well as timing as it pertains to the reopening of the economy, Limbaugh asked Pence about new antibody tests out of California and New York suggesting promising potential immunity development. Pence replied, noting that there may be "good news" in that "there is the highest likelihood that, if you've had this coronavirus in the past that you will enjoy some immunity from it in the future." Americans rise up on the anniversary of the first battle in the American Revolution. The First Amendment makes clear that Americans have an inherent right (that is, not a privilege that government bestows, but a right born in them) to assemble and protest their government. While Americans have always acknowledged the government's power to place some constraints on those rights, the government must have an extremely good reason for doing so. When the Wuhan virus seemed poised to escalate into a new Black Death, Americans were willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Now, as governments seem less interested in "flattening the curve" and more interested in imprisoning Americans until the day the Wuhan virus vanishes from the Earth, Americans are becoming as fed up as they were in April 1775, when the British were imposing arbitrary and capricious laws on them and stifling their economic opportunities. Rand Paul Says It's Time To Open The Economy. The Virus is Not As Deadly As Previously Reported. [Video clip] There was No Post-Election Surge of Coronavirus Cases in Wisconsin. It's been two weeks since Wisconsin voted in a Spring Election that Democrats spent days claiming would spark a massive surge in Coronavirus cases across the state. "People should not have to decide whether they can vote or be sick," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [...] Former Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who dropped out of the race the day after Wisconsin's vote (but before any results came in) was even more direct, saying "it is dangerous, disregards the guidance of public health experts, and may very well prove deadly." [...] Two weeks to the day after the vote, it is clear that none of these doomsday predictions has come true. The data is in, and it shows definitively that there has been no surge in Coronavirus cases after the Spring Election. Tucker Carlson Questions The Wisdom of The Lock-down Approach. During his opening monologue today Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlines how the Wuhan Virus has led to an authoritarian police state without any real basis in science. [...] [Video clip] What Carlson alludes to, though he didn't specifically connect-the-dot, is the reality of how some sectors of the U.S. economy (the supermarket industry) have continued without issue. That factual reality doesn't reconcile with the doomsday claims. No other business segment within the economy is as exposed to the population as the retail food business; and yet supermarkets operated without issue. There are few high-traffic businesses more densely populated than grocery stores. In fact, within the U.S. economy retail supermarkets have the highest foot traffic of any business sector in the entire economy; that's just an empirical fact. And the coronavirus impact increased that foot traffic by an average of 40 percent. In a National Emergency, Does the Constitution Still Apply? An essential principle of the United States is that it is a free country, with individual liberties guaranteed, and government power limited. That concept is now being tested. [...] President Trump proclaimed a national state of emergency under the National Emergencies Act on March 13, 2020. However, nothing in that proclamation closed any businesses, confined anyone in their homes or infringed on any other constitutional rights or liberties. That, and other actions by the federal government merely cleared away certain regulatory roadblocks that could interfere with the government's response to the pandemic. By contrast, the orders issued at the state and local level have dramatically restricted the civil liberties of ordinary law-abiding Americans, shutting down all "non-essential" businesses, causing, at last count, 22 million Americans to lose their jobs, and confining the vast majority of the nation to their homes. Redundancy in original. All mandates are mandatory. The Editor says... Progressive Governors Indulge Their Inner Despot. We've all seen the catalogue of overweening unilateral diktats enforced by police power coming down from Democrat governors. Under the guise of enforcing social distancing in order to slow the spread of the disease, governors have quickly violated the Bill of Rights: closing gun stores at the same time they release felons from prison; shutting down church services while leaving liquor stores open; criminalizing the right to peaceful assembly; arbitrarily deeming some economic activities as "essential," like abortion clinics and pot dispensaries, while proscribing others like buying paint or vegetable seeds. Even our freedom of movement that doesn't endanger others, such as surfing alone or playing with our children in a deserted park, has been interdicted by overzealous police. The Government Can't Shut Down, But the Economy Can? Whenever there is even a possibility of a government shutdown, what happens? Republicans don't care about people. Republicans are gonna starve children. Republicans are gonna taint the food supply. Republicans are gonna make sure that there's no health services. And then when the government is shut down, we get stories of all the suffering of government employees. [...] Then when the private sector gets shut down, when 22 million people are forced out of work and their businesses are boarded up and shuttered, people demand even more and longer shutdowns of the private sector. Cuomo, de Blasio, and New York City Owe Trump an Apology. Three weeks ago [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo was demanding ventilators, masks, gowns, and hospital beds. He made no demands of himself, rather of the President. [...] It turns out that Mr. Cuomo's dramatic and made-for-television hyperboles, wrapped in self-righteous entitlement, were simply hyperbole. In the end, Mr. Trump directed more ventilators to New York than were needed. People outside of New York sweated like crazy to find and send those ventilators. There are tons of ventilators now in New York, yet state and local officials have mismanaged the distribution and many hospitals are still waiting for them. Mr. Cuomo and de Blasio should apologize to the President and all the way down to America's truckers who, in patriotic fashion, rushed to get supplies to New York City. Houston Police Officer's Union to Harris County Judge Hidalgo: Take Your 'Idiotic' Mask Order and Shove It. The Houston Police Officers' Union is not shy in expressing how they really feel about Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo's order that all residents of Harris County must wear a mask under the threat of fines and prison. Governor Abbot began to lift restrictions across Texas earlier this week. Hildalgo seems to be full of authoritarian glee and is giving Gretchen Whitmer competition for her status as the most hated woman in America. [...] The title "county judge" in Texas counties refers to the county executive and not a judge on a bench who presides over cases. Hidalgo has been doing her best to unleash chaos in her county by trying to release 4,000 convicted criminals from the county jails. That hair-brained idea was blocked by a federal judge earlier this month. Hidalgo announced her newest edict on Wednesday. It includes $1000 fines and up to 180 days in jail for anyone who will not wear a mask in public even though the infection numbers are flattening out according to Governor Abbot and his medical experts enough to relax some lockdown restrictions. We Need a New Base Realignment and Closure Commission — Not a New Bureaucracy. In times of crisis like the one we are now going through, calls to grow an already bloated bureaucracy abound. Whether it's through more centralization, more powers to the federal government, or the creation of new bureaucracy to address the pandemic, the hope is that next time around, a new arrangement will allow for a better and faster response. Not likely. Yet, it happens each time there's a crisis. Las Vegas mayor wants to reopen the city, offered to be 'a control group'. In a contentious CNN interview Wednesday [4/22/2020], Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she wants to get Sin City back to work — and that she offered it as a "control group" in lifting lockdown restrictions for the country. "I want us open in the city of Las Vegas so our people can go back to work and that's it because we're putting children and families back out on the street," Goodman told host Anderson Cooper. Goodman said it's imperative to open up casinos and bring conventions back to the Vegas Strip to help the "close to 900,000" unemployed Nevadans make a living and provide for their families. She said the almost 150 who've died in Vegas from the virus is a "tragic loss," but compared with the state's more than 2-million residents "you have to say, we have to open up." A combative Cooper argued that that toll was so low because of social distancing. "How do you know until we have a control group?" she shot back. "We offered to be a control group ... it was turned down." The Editor says... Renowned French Dr. Didier Raoult Destroys Liberal Trump-Hating Media on VA Junk Report on Hydroxychloroquine. Ever since President Trump mentioned the highly successful studies of hydroxychloroquine treatments on coronavirus patients the media has downplayed and miracle drug. The far left Washington Post led the charge early. Dr. Fauci cheered the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating the MERS virus in 2013 — but played down the drug's effectiveness this month. No Police Raids? Syracuse Mosque Continues Holding Daily Prayers Amid COVID-19 Lockdown As Christians Are Threatened and Fined For Attending Drive-In Services. A Syracuse mosque is still open for daily prayers amid the Coronavirus shutdown as Christians are threatened and fined for attending drive-in services. New York is the country's Coronavirus epicenter with more than 18,000 deaths, however this mosque is still open for prayers. This mosque located on the north side was once the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, but it closed down due to lack of parishioners — now it is considered a victory mosque. New York Mosque Continues Operating During Coronavirus, No Word From Authorities. While virtually every church in the United States is shut down due to coronavirus, and those few willing to defy lockdown orders are threatened with arrest or hauled to jail, a New York mosque is operating with impunity during the pandemic. The mosque, in Syracuse, New York, had its operating procedures detailed by gushing local media, which described how the facility has modified its practices to adhere with social distancing during the China virus pandemic. Newsom won't share details on $1B mask deal with China. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing pushback as state lawmakers have begun demanding details of his nearly $1 billion deal to receive 200 million masks per month from a Chinese manufacturer. Just two weeks after announcing the deal, Newsom has remained largely mum on the specifics. Advisers to the California Democrat have declined requests for comment from the Los Angeles Times about the agreement, which was inked with Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD — which stands for Build Your Dreams — earlier this month. BYD was formed in 1995 as a battery manufacturer. In 2008, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 24.8% stake in the company. Oklahoma, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas all prepare to lift coronavirus lockdown restrictions. Oklahoma is the latest state to start easing lockdown restrictions in a bid to kick start the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Kevin Stitt said Wednesday the state will begin to reopen Friday with barbershops, hair and nail salons, pet groomers and spas back in business. Others, including restaurants and movie theaters, can reopen within 10 days, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Wednesday [4/22/2020]. Oklahoma joins Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas in restarting their economies. The Editor says... Minnesota's COVID-19 Graph Distorts the Truth. Minnesotans need accurate data. Data on COVID-19 infections and deaths — and the modeling of that data — is key to decision-making during this public health emergency. If this data is poorly presented, it creates a false narrative about the facts on the ground, contributing to incorrect perceptions of danger, overly burdensome executive orders, and a longer-than-necessary economic shutdown. COVID-19 lockdowns are killing thousands of Americans. The hysteria drummed up by the mainstream media over COVID-19, in conjunction with the draconian lockdown measures being employed by many governors, is costing thousands of American lives. In light of horrific job losses and a crashing economy, calls to suicide hotlines are up over 40 percent nationwide. Although an increase in suicide calls does not necessarily translate to an increase in deaths, the fact that 132 Americans die by suicide daily is concerning. A 40 percent uptick would mean an increase of 53 deaths per day, if the calls indeed correlate to suicides. This translates to 1,590 deaths per month. Heart attacks are a major problem as well. [...] Between March 4 and April 4 of this year, there were 9,780 deaths in New York City, double the usual total. But only 3,350 were from coronavirus. This means that overall death in that city is way up as a whole.
'It's a Free Country, Brother'. In this current crisis, the longest if not the first complete shutdown in U.S. history, the freedoms of American democracy are being tested in ways we scarcely ever imagined. Out of nowhere little Napoleonic governors arise to enact decrees prohibiting gardening or strolling on an empty beach — decrees that seem to have little purpose other than to reflect that they can do so. Snitches volunteer to out felonious social deviants who are seen cooking in the backyard with a neighbor. [...] Experts with all sorts of Ph.D.s, M.D.s, and J.D.s after their names lecture from authority about what we must right now do — or else! — on the principle that they have a scientific or technocratic prerogative to impress critics of their modeling or their demand that we shut down a $22 trillion economy for "18 months," if need be. A supposedly disinterested media — found by media watchdogs to be 93 percent negative in its presidential reportage before the virus crisis — envision their coverage of the Trump demon as an endless zero-sum game in which any morsel of good news for him is instantly bad for them. In short, if American democracy were to fail to sustain itself under myriad pressures, then this would be the moment. Beaumont mayor defends nail salon visit after stay-at-home order. Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames left Tuesday's [4/21/2020] City Council meeting to find her phone flooded with text messages and angry social media criticism after a picture surfaced of her getting service at a local nail salon. A cropped version of the photo first appeared on a local blog, saying Ames went to have her nails done on Monday. Slowly but surely, the constitutional rebellion against coronavirus fascism grows. Self-government is alive again — at least in Colleyville, Texas, and several other places where local officials are beginning to rediscover both the Constitution and the science behind defeating a virus. [...] This is a republic at work: County commissioners and city officials getting together and recognizing that this gratuitously harsh shutdown is unnecessary and cannot continue. The entire state of Texas has only experienced 517 COVID-19 deaths, representing just 0.0018% of the population. A similarly small percentage died from the virus in Tarrant County. Moreover, 25 percent of all deaths in Texas were in nursing homes, and nearly half of statewide decedents were over 80 years old. Not only does the damage from the virus not justify shutting down democracy, the economy, and religious services, there is no evidence that severe lockdowns (as distinct from commonsense distancing and hygiene) achieve better results and would have saved more people. Tom Cotton accuses China of intentionally seeding coronavirus cases in other countries to maintain power. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said that he believes China purposely seeded the coronavirus in other countries in order to maintain its relative global power. Cotton made the stunning accusations in an interview with Pat Robertson at CBN News. "I think it's pretty clear that China is culpable for unleashing this pandemic on the world," said Cotton. Police Have Started Revolting Against Draconian Coronavirus Edicts From Local Tyrants. Police chiefs from Texas to Washington are standing up against draconian orders from local leaders demanding strict adherence to extreme social distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus. The Houston Police Officers' Union declared Wednesday [4/22/2020] that its members would refrain from enforcing local County Judge Lina Hidalgo's ruling deeming it mandatory for any individual over the age of 10 to wear a mask in public. [...] The police union said it had contacted the state attorney general's office to determine whether Hidalgo's ruling was even constitutional, noting that until then, members were encouraged to use discretion in enforcement of the measure as resources are already stretched thin from the pandemic. Michigan Health Care System Furloughs Nearly 2,500 Employees As Coronavirus Dominates Services. Nearly 2,500 employees at one of Michigan's largest health care systems learned on Tuesday they would be furloughed, due to particularly dire financial circumstances related to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Beaumont Health, which has 38,000 employees serving eight hospitals in southeast Michigan, announced that most of the 2,475 members who were temporarily laid off filled administrative roles unrelated to the care of patients afflicted with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus strain, according to a Stamford Advocate report. The company also permanently eliminated 450 positions and initiated salary cuts to top executives. Heavy-handed bureaucrats are killing Pa. businesses. Decisions that have been made over the past month will have consequences for years to come. The haphazard manner in which these decisions are being made should concern every single citizen of Pennsylvania. The arbitrary nature in which businesses have been prohibited/allowed to operate is an exercise in miscommunication, dysfunction and ambiguity. Since March 17, 2020, businesses such as auto dealerships, real estate agencies and residential construction projects have been stalled. Given just three hours warning before the closure went into place, business owners and employees had the proverbial "rug pulled out from beneath them." No consultation, no discussion, no initial waiver process. Probably because it works... Governors, not gods: State executives cannot simply do whatever they want indefinitely. As soon as the president began talking about opening up the country last week, the media pounced on him and suggested that he is not a king and cannot control the states. Even House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., tweaked Trump and implied that the 10th Amendment gives states the power to shut down the people and our businesses. They are right. A president is not a king. But most certainly, a governor, county commissioner, or sheriff is not king either. We have natural rights given by God, and under no circumstances can any of those officials violate those rights indefinitely without due process, oversight, limitations, and checks and balances. For decades we've been told that everything the Left has ever wanted to do is in the 14th Amendment and anything a state does contrary to those ideals is unconstitutional. Whether it's early voting, voting without photo ID, affirmative action, abortion, redefinition of marriage, men in women's bathrooms, etc., it's all in the 14th Amendment, and federal courts can use it to strip state officials of their powers to govern. Except, of course when the 14th Amendment actually applies. [...] The Mask As a Symbol of Fear. [Scroll down] A note from Mr. Snerdley: "Can you explain to me why TV people doing outdoor shots with nobody nearby are wearing masks? The cameraman's the only person nearby, and they can be over six feet away." I think it's precisely to create the image of fear. They're wearing a mask because either they legitimately are afraid that that virus is lurking out there and it's racing through the air and targeting them or because, I tell you, how they've been ordered to behave by their boss. I mean, if the people that employ you tell you to wear a mask out there, that's what you're gonna do. I know CNN's not wearing a mask. Their people are not wearing masks. If Wuhan Virus Is So Bad, Why Are Deaths So Low? Day after day, we are hit with a death toll for the Wuhan virus (see Mike Ford's epic series on the day-to-day body count). The implication in the numbers is clearly: the Wuhan virus is deadly and that people are dying in droves. Well, that's not even an impression, it is a regular news feature. [...] There are people who allegedly write from conservative point of view and who, hopefully, should know better who have peddled one or more of these stories. Behind the facade of a public health crisis there is a real question. What has Wuhan virus done to the US mortality rate? Are people actually dying in droves? Is there actually a need for 24-hour crematory service that did not previously exist? Thankfully, we have a handy resource to turn to in order to answer those questions. That would be the CDC. Mayor Lightfoot Says Stay-At-Home Order Could Go Into June; Gov. Pritzker Has Not Given Specifics About Reopening. Tuesday [4/21/2020] marked one month since the stay-at-home order to fight the novel coronavirus went into effect in Illinois. Now, there are indications from both Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot that the order might be extended. Can We Please 'McKinsey-Proof' America? Remember how last month, a model by an expert predicted 2.2 million Americans would die from COVID-19? Or how about the professionals (and nonprofessionals!) who just a few weeks ago were telling us that masks don't work and that ordinary people lack the proper training and competence to wear one right anyway? Now, they're mandatory. So who are these consultants who will advise America's loudest governor? The answer, of course, is McKinsey & Company. Some people — not me, you understand — have been known to describe McKinsey's business model thus: "You give them your watch so they can tell you what time it is." No, I wouldn't say that. It's too generous. Protests show 'two Americas' — those who lost their jobs and those still getting paid. [T]he country has been shut down for about a month, and we're seeing cracks start to form. While some epidemiologists are talking about keeping things closed down for months longer, we're also seeing growing public protests around the nation, as people call for restarting things. Others shame them as "virus deniers" and accuse the protesters of wanting people to die. But it's hard not to notice a class divide here. As with so many of America's conflicts, the divide is between the people in the political/managerial class on the one hand and the people in the working class on the other. And as usual, the smugness and authoritarianism are pretty much all on one side. Is the Coronavirus Foreign Interference in Our Elections — or Worse? This is not the time to debate whether President Trump and his team could have done better in fighting the pandemic. That will undoubtedly be an issue in the upcoming presidential election, perhaps the issue. The more interesting question at present is whether or not the Chinese government intentionally allowed the virus to spread in order to derail the booming Trump economy and defeat him in the fall. Killing Liberty, Coronavirus-Style. It should now be self-evident for anyone with common sense that the Democrats, liberals, and their convenient Republican allies like "Republicans for the Rule of Law" are using the coronavirus as a cover to advance their deconstruction of America without opposition behind the veil of "saving lives" and "saving democracy." This has been the dream of liberals for over a century. Now they will not relent until they deliver the coup de grâce to their enemies: Christianity, small businesses, and civil society as a whole. [...] Beneath our noses, the "guidelines" and "recommendations" — alongside the actual mandated orders by our political officials — serve as the first stage of widespread social engineering. The intent is to break the spirit of independent Americans and shape them into a herd of conformity, which permits bureaucratic control over every facet of our lives. Emergency Authority: The Katrina Conundrum. [Scroll down] Thus the Katrina Conundrum: Though preeminent statutory authority rests with the States, the public holds the president primarily accountable. Decoupling power from responsibility poses two alternative dangers: where power exceeds responsibility, reckless behavior is encouraged; and where responsibility exceeds power, timorous behavior is encouraged. The upshot is that decisive power is decoupled from ultimate accountability. This decoupling is a recipe for disaster when leaders do not trust each other. While that conflict rarely comes to the fore with the vehemence it did with Katrina, when it does the likely result will be governance paralysis. How Dare They Defy My Diktats. Jobs are being destroyed, mortgages are in arrears, businesses have closed and many will never re-open. If there's one thing that's becoming increasingly obvious about the coronavirus lockdown, it's that some people are getting really, really sick of it. The last few days have been rife with protests, as people across the country let their governors know how they feel. Onerous shutdowns are going to have to end soon or we're going to be facing genuine social disorder and economic collapse. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Michigan. Over the weekend, protests erupted in Lansing, and the Governor, Frau Whitmer, is none too pleased that her Michiganders have dared defy her quarantine diktats and her Bizarro-World definitions of "essential" and "non-essential." [...] What is clear is that her state is getting sick of her. The recall petition has picked up steam. Fair or not, she's become an avatar for the worst sort of capricious, nanny-state tyrant. Whatever goodwill she enjoyed outside of Detroit and Lansing is quickly evaporating, and the anti-Whitmer voices are only getting louder. Dallas Commissioners Defy Abbott and Grassroots, Extend Shelter in Place. Tuesday, Dallas County voters protested the county's shelter-in-place order as commissioners voted 3-2 to extend it to May 15. However, a question from one of the commissioners revealed this extension conflicts with Gov. Greg Abbott's order and "would not be allowed," while a controversial hiring decision worth over $228,000 has been postponed. Since mid-March, Dallas County has been under a shelter-in-place order, shuttering most businesses and restricting people's activities. [...] [Commissioner John Wiley] Price then questioned the legality of the court's decision. "Tell me how you extend the stay-at-home order beyond the governor's order," he said. "The last time we did that ... [Jenkins] had to come back and backtrack." "I'm trying to figure out how to respond to that," Jenkins stuttered. Price then turned to the county's legal department. "Is the court on sound footing going against the governor's order?" Price asked. "The governor specifically provided in the order that his executive order shall supersede any conflicting order issued by local officials," Russ Roden, chief of civil division, replied. "This order of the judge would be placing restrictions on essential businesses beyond the time period which the governor's order authorizes." "[Abbott's order] has limited those activities or is allowing those activities through April 30," Roden added. After April 30, the amended Dallas County order would be unenforceable unless Abbott updates his order extending statewide shelter in place. Citizens Rally to "Shut Down the Shutdown" in Dallas. About 150 demonstrators braved the edict against mass gatherings in Dallas, many of them carrying home-made signs saying things such as "Free the People," "Constitutional Rights Matter," "The Shutdown Is Not legal," to "Work Not Welfare" as they marched around the south end of Dealey Plaza with the Reverend Stephen Broden leading them and carrying a megaphone chanting, "Shut down the shutdown — elected officials work for us." There was even a small contingent of nurses standing by showing their support. They were keeping their distance and wearing masks. The demonstration was organized just a few days earlier when Lisa Luby Ryan sent an e-mail to some friends. The message then spread by word of mouth from friend to friend. Protesters Gather In Dallas To Call For Return To Work During Coronavirus Pandemic. A group of protesters gathered in Downtown Dallas Tuesday morning [4/21/2020] to call for businesses to reopen and a return to work as stay-at-home orders remain in place during the coronavirus pandemic. Residents with a group called Park Cities Republican Women got together at Dealey Plaza with signs in hand to protest orders in place. Although, this type of gathering is in violation of not only Dallas social distancing guidelines but statewide, as well. [Video clip] The Editor says... Britain's coronavirus crisis peaked BEFORE lockdown. Further proof lockdowns were not necessary. Safety measures? Yes. Lockdowns, no. What If The Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake? From California to New Jersey, Americans are protesting in the streets. They are demanding an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018. [...] Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed. Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile, hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty. What if the "cure" is worse than the disease? Pennsylvania: Massive Protests Against Tyrannical Lockdowns. Once again, the people have had it with the tyranny and are protesting. This time it's happening in Pennsylvania! Today's [4/20/2020] rally drew horn blowers, music and signs being held by protesters at the state Capitol. De Blasio's Snitch Hotline Shuts Down Because America Is Awesome. Oftentimes we use George Orwell's seminal novel 1984 as a metaphor for something we don't like, a metaphor for government overreach and the like. In this case, a metaphor is not necessary. Thanks to Comrade de Blasio, we are now allowed to use the word "literally" while referencing 1984, as in de Blasio is literally embracing 1984's villainous Big Brother by literally asking Americans to snitch on their fellow Americans — to call the police should a friend or neighbor go for a walk, or something. On Saturday [4/18/2020], de Blasio unveiled his NYC311 system to encourage New Yorkers to snitch on outlaw New Yorkers for violating the state's stay-at-home and social distancing rules. The response was glorious. It's not your imagination, every COVID-19 commercial IS THE SAME and this thread and video proves it. If you've watched as much TV as this editor has (sorry!) then you are more than familiar with the 'COVID branding' that's happening in commercials from companies across the board. Cars, insurance, pizza, food in general, grocery stores ... you name it there's a sappy COVID commercial out there. And hey, we get it, if they weren't going this route it might seem tone-deaf but enough is enough. Especially when we've figured out their 'recipe' and are starting to mock [...] it. Someone Must Be Held Accountable. Who could have ever imagined that, in a shockingly brief period, our economic growth and prosperity would come to a grinding halt? Historically low rates of unemployment have reversed as 22 million Americans have filed jobless claims, meaning that roughly 13.5% of our nation's entire labor force is out of work. Businesses that were hiring and expanding are now in danger of closing their doors forever. Stock markets that were skyrocketing are now volatile and uncertain. America's optimism has seemingly evaporated, and our prosperity is imperiled. The obvious culprit of this economic calamity is the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). However, the real culprit is a more complicated mix of fear, misinformation, and inaccurate models. Based on the word of our experts, we shut down the United States on a previously unimaginable scale. Public health experts, scientists, and government officials all warned that millions would die unless strict measures were put in place. [...] The experts said it was necessary, that the coronavirus was especially deadly, and our medical systems were in danger of being overwhelmed. Now, weeks into the pandemic, the dire outcomes foretold by experts have failed to come to pass. The models used to justify the closure of society have been shown to be wildly inaccurate. Fear can be costly. Autopsies find first U.S. coronavirus death occurred in early February, weeks earlier than previously thought. At least two people who died in early and mid-February had contracted the novel coronavirus, health officials in California said Tuesday, signaling that the virus may have spread — and been fatal — in the United States weeks earlier than previously thought. Tissue samples taken during autopsies of two people who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., tested positive for the virus, local health officials said in a statement. The victims died on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, respectively. Van Jones says states reopening businesses amid coronavirus is 'a death sentence for communities of color'. CNN political commentator Van Jones said Tuesday [4/21/2020] that the decision by some states to ease stay-at-home restrictions and open businesses is effectively "a death sentence for communities of color," which have been disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus. His comments follow Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's announcement that some businesses in the state would be able to reopen as early as Friday, as other state leaders signaled similar plans. If You Protest Against Leftist Tyranny, You're Racist. Over the last week, thousands of frustrated Americans gathered at state capitols in Michigan, Ohio, California, Minnesota, and other states to protest stay-at-home orders from totalitarian progressive leaders such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who argue that the lockdowns are crucial to containing the coronavirus. But with literally tens of millions of Americans losing their jobs and their businesses, and the economy collapsing with the worst possibly to come, Americans are legitimately complaining that the draconian cure is shaping up to be worse than the disease. It's time for a reckoning for China and its compradors. The Wuhan virus has ended the game China has been playing for the past three decades to rise from Marxist-rooted poverty to the world's biggest manufacturer. Virtually all of the world's advanced economies and many of the less developed countries now realize that China is not a trustworthy partner. Donald Trump may have been the first world leader to call the Chinese out, but he now has plenty of company. Easter wouldn't do it but... Trump has wide power to overrule governors during coronavirus emergency, legal experts say. Legal experts across the political spectrum argue that the coronavirus emergency gives President Trump wide power to overrule governors over conflicts about how and when to re-open the country after the coronavirus shutdown. "When you get to national emergencies, viruses that obviously don't recognize borders and highly communicable diseases, the president's power becomes great," Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News. "The president has ultimate authority when it comes to reopening. That's more likely to happen on a case-by-case basis and region-by-region basis, and institution-by-institution basis." President Trump on Thursday [4/16/2020] outlined what he called a "phased and deliberative approach" to reopening the economy after the coronavirus shutdown, giving wide leeway to governors to reopen on their own timelines. Connecticut police to test 'pandemic drone' that monitors health of residents. Police in Westport, Conn., said they will be testing a "pandemic drone" that can scan the body temperatures of residents to determine if they have fevers or other health symptoms in an effort to combat the coronavirus. Aerospace company Draganfly announced in a news release the drones will be equipped with a specialized sensor and computer vision systems that can display heart and respiratory rates. They can also detect people coughing in crowds, police said. Missouri sues China, alleges county's mishandling of coronavirus caused 'enormous' loss. Missouri is suing the China government over the coronavirus, arguing Chinese officials misleading information and slow response to the now-global infection resulted in "enormous death, suffering, and economic losses." The suit was filed Tuesday [4/21/2020] in federal court by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. "The Chinese government lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of COVID-19, silenced whistleblowers, and did little to stop the spread of the disease," he said, according to the Associated Press. "They must be held accountable for their actions." Move to take Winter Olympics away from China gathers momentum in conservative circles. A call to take the upcoming Winter Olympic games from China as a penalty for purportedly failing to sufficiently notify the world about a coronavirus outbreak is gaining steam in conservative circles. Among the first to propose the idea was Hugh Hewitt, a conservative thought leader and syndicated radio talk show host. Hewitt addressed the issue Friday on his radio show with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Idaho Police Arrest Subversive Mom For Taking Children to Playground. Comrades, after the Meridian cornavirus enforcement police received several calls from compliant citizens, a dangerous group of subversive moms were identified engaging in non-approved playground activity against the interests of the state. Local authorities activated an emergency response task force & arrested the lead scofflaw mom at the park. According to video smuggled from the park by an underground network of rebellious female breeders, Mrs. Sarah Brady was instructed by the COVID-19 compliance officers to vacate the playground. Ms. Brady refused to comply with the order and was subsequently handcuffed and arrested for violations of the state lock-down, ie. misdemeanor trespassing. Idaho Police Arrest Subversive Mom For Taking Children to Playground. Comrades, after the Meridian cornavirus enforcement police received several calls from compliant citizens, a dangerous group of subversive moms were identified engaging in non-approved playground activity against the interests of the state. Local authorities activated an emergency response task force & arrested the lead scofflaw mom at the park. According to video smuggled from the park by an underground network of rebellious female breeders, Mrs. Sarah Brady was instructed by the COVID-19 compliance officers to vacate the playground. Ms. Brady refused to comply with the order and was subsequently handcuffed and arrested for violations of the state lock-down, ie. misdemeanor trespassing. Also posted under No offense is too petty to overlook. The real devastation from COVID-19: A destroyed economy imposed by government panic. While many state governors across the United States dawdle and hesitate about lifting their panic-induced lock downs on their states out of fear it might cause a few more Wuhan virus deaths, the real devastation from their panic is propagating uncontrolled across the landscape, and will in the end kill far far more people. Their actions have caused the entire economy to collapse, destroyed entire industrial sectors, prevented untold numbers from getting the proper healthcare when needed, and put millions of people out of work. In the end, this government-imposed depression will do far more harm that the Wuhan flu ever could, and do it for a much longer time spell. State, Local Leaders Should Restart Economies 'as Soon as Possible,' J.C. Watts Says. Rep. J.C. Watts, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma and a member of The Heritage Foundation's National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss how the nation can begin to reopen safely amid the coronavirus, why COVID-19 may be affecting the African-American community more than other demographic groups, and the news channel he founded, BNC. Kentucky Church Sues Governor Over Coronavirus Order Enforcement. A Kentucky church is suing Governor Andy Beshear for enforcing his anti-gathering orders against its congregation on Easter Sunday. [...] According to the lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, Maryville Baptist held an in-person Easter service in its 700-seat sanctuary, which only a few people, who practiced social distancing, attended. Most congregants remained in their cars, listening to the service on outdoor loudspeakers. Nevertheless, police posted notices on every car in the parking lot, regardless of whether it was occupied, including vehicles belonging to members of the media, who are supposedly exempt from Beshear's orders. Democrats Underestimate Trump at Their Own Peril. It is almost unbelievable that the Democrats have allowed themselves to be so completely out-maneuvered by President Trump in the coronavirus and economic crises. They are all calling for an indefinite protraction of the economic hemorrhage, with unemployment increasing by hundreds of thousands every day, even as the incidence of the virus declines. The Democrats started out with every advantage: the crisis came out of the blue and burst over the administration. [...] As drastic forecasts of immense numbers of fatalities started tumbling out of ostensibly credible centers of epidemiology, the new refrain was that Trump was a moronic enemy of science. For a brief shining moment, his supposed complacency about the coronavirus was linked to his skepticism about the dire threat of climate change. With the one as with the other, the advocates, as they build hysteria, reflexively referred to a solid phalanx of "97 percent of experts agree ... " etc. And with the one as with the other, this is bunk. As new data comes in, forecasts become less dire — or, to put it in computerese, garbage in, garbage out. The left's slogans give it away. As we go through yet another week of Wuhan virus restriction in the United States, do you find yourself becoming annoyed at the daily sloganeering? We see these messages on television, hear them on radio and flashed before us while driving. I, for one, am beginning to tire of this "we're all in this together" claptrap, along with "flattening (or bending) the curve"; social distancing; and "stay safe, stay strong." However, the one slogan that is most irritating is "stay at home...save lives." Let's not forget that original reason for sheltering at home was to prevent hospital emergency rooms from becoming overrun by slowing the spread of the virus. The mandate was never to save lives, but to slow the spread and by default prolong the extent of the virus. Again, staying at home was for the purpose of lessening the burden on hospitals, not saving lives. The message has evolved, or rather devolved into an excuse for virtue-signaling. Examine the message more closely, and what you pick up is the underlying message that by staying home, you can make a difference. What does making a difference by curtailing your behavior remind you of? That's right: the whole climate change trope. The economic shutdown of America: 'When the system fails, righteous men will rise up'. The lefties are melting down over the decision by some governors to begin re-opening their states to the business that is their lifeblood. They are enraged by the people around the country who are protesting this ongoing shutdown of the economy. As usual, they are calling them racists, Nazis, etc., the same-old, same-old epithets they hurl at everyone who supports the president and the Constitution. They have no sympathy for the horrific damage this lockdown is doing to millions of Americans: small businesses, the restaurants we love, the shops we patronize in our neighborhoods, or the countless other industries it has hobbled. They feel nothing for the millions of families who work hard and live paycheck to paycheck. Our media scolds and the Democrats in Congress who are all living large despite the shutdown are so quick to condemn those people who want their lives back that it boggles the mind. St. Louis County Releases 'Snitch Files" — Local Citizens Who Called County Government to Snitch on Business Owners. Responsible parents teach their children "don't be a snitch." We do this so that our children aren't hated, because everyone knows that everyone hates a snitch. But the Coronavirus fear mongers are turning otherwise responsible and likable people into sniveling snitches that nobody likes. And we can prove it. Talk radio great Jamie Allman filed a Sunshine law request for the actual emails of St. Louis County residents who've snitched on local entrepreneurs trying to make a living. Most of the complaints were unfounded, involving people "turning in" companies that were deemed essential by the county. But reading the actual complaints reveals just how terrified the media and corrupt academics have made good people. The complainants are truly scared. They believe that Coronavirus kills almost everyone who gets infected. Protest starts after Idaho woman arrested at closed playground. An Idaho woman was arrested Tuesday [4/21/2020] after police say she was violating city orders by trespassing on a city playground that was closed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. CBS affiliate KBOI-TV reports that 40-year-old Sara Brady, of Meridian, was arrested and charged with one count of misdemeanor trespassing. Following Brady's arrest, which was captured on social media, there were protests held at Meridian City Hall, KBOI reported. Station KTVB reported that roughly 100 people protested. COVID-19 snitches in St. Louis were in for a surprise. Every COVID-19 snitch in St. Louis has just been outed. This undoubtedly would be embarrassing for the people who made those seemingly secret complaints, playing snitch in the same way as the ordinary snitches and their blotting-paper secret police controllers depicted in The Lives of Others, a brilliant film that won an Academy Award. [...] Leftist governments enjoy this sort of thing, and rat-out-your-neighbor programs have been put up all over. Los Angeles's mayor called its snitch-on-business program "snitches get rewards." Snitching to the government is a staple of socialist regimes everywhere, and Comrade Bill de Blasio, who has significant experience learning and admiring the ways of communist Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua (that place where everyone lied to the pollsters in 1990), certainly has been upfront about the importance of snitching in New York City. A culture of neighbor snitching on neighbor, as the Nicaraguan Sandinista example demonstrated, may be great for enforcing conformity on fealty to socialism, or social distancing, but it's a disaster for social capital. If Half the Country's Deaths Were in Montana, Would New York Shut Down? According to The New York Times coronavirus report, as of Sunday, April 19, 2:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 35,676 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Of those deaths, 18,690 were in the New York metropolitan area. [...] That means that more than half (52%) of all deaths in America have occurred in the New York metropolitan area. What makes this statistic particularly noteworthy is that the entire death toll for 41 of the other 47 states is 7,661. In other words, while New York has 52% of all COVID-19 deaths in America, 41 states put together have only 21% of the COVID-19 deaths. And all the 47 states other than New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have less than half (48%). Now let us imagine that the reverse were true. Imagine that Georgia and North Carolina — two contiguous states that, like the New York metro area, have a combined total of 21 million people — had 18,690 COVID-19 deaths, while metro New York had 858 deaths (the number of deaths in North Carolina and Georgia combined). Do you think the New York metro area would close its schools, stores, restaurants and small businesses? South Dakota pork plant with one of biggest COVID-19 clusters in US blames immigrant workers and 'living circumstances of certain cultures'. A meat-processing company which shut down a South Dakota plant after more than 700 employees became infected with COVID-19 said the outbreak was due to the factory's 'large immigrant population'. Smithfield Foods blamed the migrant workers' 'living circumstances' that are 'different than they are with your traditional American family.' [...] While the plant posted safety notices and flyers on bulletin boards and doors telling people that they should stay home if they feel sick, those notices were in English, according to employees. Many of the 3,700 workers at the plant have limited understanding of English, and the plant has in the past taken measures to translate notices into as many as five languages when it wanted to communicate a message to them. What a Prolonged Shutdown Will Cost in Human Life. Ezekiel Emanuel, adviser to presidential candidate Joe Biden and Obamacare architect, just called for a 12-to-18-month lockdown to battle COVID-19, asking us to abandon our livelihoods, religious services, and "contact with friends and extended family." [...] His plan is politically motivated — and deadly. When President Trump expressed concerns about the shutdown, his critics presented a false choice between mitigating deaths and the economy. In reality, a great number of the most vulnerable American lives will be lost from economic shutdown, and Emanuel makes it clear that we have reached the moment where we must plead their case. The great US-China divorce has arrived. Washington isn't going to cede any part of the world to Beijing. Conversely, China's reach is worldwide. No one is going to stop doing business with China, least of all the United States. China doesn't have a hammerlock on any part of the world other than North Korea and a handful of Southeast Asian countries. And Beijing may find it can't keep those countries under its thumb forever. Because everything is about race... Our Goal Must Be A Total Return To Normal. The most dangerous people in America today are not the protesters defying social distancing to get their lives back to normal. The most dangerous people are those who say we will never return to normal, and that they have the new rules all picked out for us. No thanks. For many progressives the virus is like climate change on crystal meth, a fast moving emergency that requires the government to seize power from citizens. There are certainly lessons and opportunities to be gleaned from this bizarre experiment we have all been thrust into. Working from home, new forms of education, tele-medical services, fine, good. But two months ago we were packing bars and ballgames, we were attending baby showers and funerals, spreading germs willy-nilly at EDM shows. All of those things must come back and they will. If understandable fear is what drove Americans into their homes and succeeded in flattening the curve of the virus in our country, then it is courage that is needed to see our way back to the lives we left behind. De Blasio's social distancing tip line flooded with [nasty] photos, Hitler memes. Mayor Bill de Blasio's critics let him know how they really felt about him ordering New Yorkers to snitch on each other for violating social-distancing rules — by flooding his new tip line with crank complaints [...] The [New York] Post has learned. Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter. Michigan Governor Whitmer Asks Why State Protests Didn't Happen During World War II. During a briefing earlier today Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer compared the COVID-19 battle to World War II and asked the citizens of her state why they were not protesting state orders during the war? Yes, she actually said this: "In World War II, there weren't people lining up at the capitol to protest the fact that they had to drop everything they were doing and build planes or tanks, or to ration food." Does anyone want to tell Whitmer the difference is during the war effort people were working and getting paid; but under her unilateral decrees people are forbidden from working and no-one is earning a living. Which is the entire reason for the protests, DUH. Cruises that orginally departed in January finally dock; passengers haven't touched dry land in weeks. There's nothing worse than coming home after vacation, especially when a worldwide pandemic broke out while you were gone. One cruise ship that originally departed in early January is finally ending its voyage in a world that has drastically changed. For the passengers onboard the boat, not one has set foot on dry land in six weeks. Deborah Birx Shuts Down Criticism of Decision to Reopen Jacksonville Beaches. Dr. Deborah Birx on Monday [4/20/2020] again defended the city of Jacksonville, Florida, for reopening their beaches, despite heavy criticism from national establishment media. Birx said that Florida had excellent coronavirus infection data accessible on their website, which showed that the decision to reopen the beaches made sense. "They had less than 20 cases per day and less than 800 in four weeks," she said. Trump says he will sign executive order to 'temporarily suspend immigration' to US over coronavirus. President Trump announced that he will be signing an executive order to suspend immigration into the United States. Trump made the surprise announcement in a late-night tweet on Monday [4/20/2020]. While the details of his forthcoming order were unclear, the move would follow travel restrictions already imposed on China, most of Europe, and other countries during the coronavirus pandemic. "In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!" he said. Pennsylvania Business Owner Says They Are Being 'Unconstitutionally Closed Down'. A business owner attending the protest at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Monday [4/20/2020] told Breitbart News that businesses are "unjustifiably" and "unconstitutionally" closed down as a result of the drastic measures taken by local officials to combat the Chinese coronavirus. Pennsylvania resident Chris Miller, owner of the Scranton Golf Center, told Breitbart News on Monday that his business has been closed for four weeks as a result of the shutdown. [Video clip] Jacksonville Beach Mayor Says Decision to Reopen Beaches Has 'Paid Off Really Well'. The move to reopen beaches has so far been a good one, Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Mayor Charlie Latham said Monday [4/20/2020]. "There is [sic] a lot of people that are upset that we've opened, but we're not requiring anybody to go to the beach," the mayor said during an interview on Fox & Friends. Navarro: China Might Have Withheld Data So They Can Sell Coronavirus Vaccine. On Monday's [4/20/2020] broadcast of the Fox Business Network's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro suggested that China might have hidden coronavirus data from the U.S. so they can create a vaccine first and they view it as "a business proposition so that they can sell the vaccines to the world." Iranian 'Prophetic Medicine' Leader: Camel Urine Cures Coronavirus. An Iranian man who describes himself as an Islamic prophetic medicine healer has prescribed drinking camel urine as a treatment for the Chinese coronavirus, Radio Farda reported Monday [4/20/2020]. In a video that has reportedly gone viral across social media, the Chairman of the Prophetic Medicine Society Medhi Sabili urged people to consume the urine when it is both "fresh and warm." It was quickly ridiculed by Iranians, many of whom warned about the dangers of such treatment. COVID-19 Recovery Panel Suggests Path for 'Expeditious' Return to Work. States should "expeditiously" allow Americans to go back to work in certain areas during the COVID-19 pandemic while proceeding cautiously with targeted mitigation, caring for the vulnerable, and making realistic boosts in testing and contact tracing, The Heritage Foundation's National Coronavirus Recovery Commission recommends. The 17-member commission released a host of recommendations Monday designed to guide the private sector and governments at every level in reopening the coronavirus-battered economy. The panel chaired by Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James also calls for the federal government to relax regulations to speed up innovation in health care. The Economy Doesn't Need Government 'Help' To Reopen. Governments don't create economies. It's not only beyond their legitimate functions, it's beyond their abilities. They need to stay out of the way and let the wisdom of markets steer us back to normal. But some officials see an opening through which they can drive their big government dreams. For instance elected officials in California, which is likely to be the last state to fully open though it hasn't seen the most suffering from the COVID-19 outbreak, view the crisis as a means to push the state harder and faster down the Blue State path. When asked by a reporter earlier this month if he saw "the potential, as many others in the party do, for a new progressive era and opportunity for additional progressive steps," Gov. Gavin Newsom said yes, of course "there is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism." When Will Democrats Cry Uncle? The Republican governors in Texas and Florida are already restarting their economies and that makes the Democrat governors out as brutal dictators that don't care about people like you and me. Imagine: in Massachusetts the politicians and the bureaucrats apparently have time in between interagency coordination meetings to decree one-way sidewalks. Of course, the Republican governors are in charge of states with automatic social-distancing devices called "suburbs" and "automobiles." It is only in yeasty urban environments where people are thrown together into disease-multiplying "apartments" and "mass transit." China Backs Democratic Resistance to President Trump. Democratic governors are forming regional blocs to resist President Donald Trump's efforts to get the American economy moving and put people back to work. They have picked up a powerful ally, one that should give the public cause for alarm. [...] Many Democrats still think of FDR as a model president. A man who combined liberalism and patriotism, who fought against the Great Depression and won World War II. But party leaders have moved on. A major ideological component today is the Green movement, which has welcomed the epidemic as a way to teach Americans to do without and accept a lower standard of living. A shuttered economy doesn't emit gases or use resources. While responsible national leadership wants America to weather the storm, the Greens see the storm as nature's warning to slow down and retreat from affluence. Why Does an Epidemic Bring Out the Worst In Liberals? Over the last month or two, as the coronavirus has burst into public consciousness, we have witnessed a long-running show called Liberals Behaving Badly. Liberals like Nancy Pelosi initially pooh-poohed the virus and criticized President Trump for taking meaningful action against it by blocking travel from China. But once it became apparent that the virus would be a significant problem, they did a 180 and began to accuse Trump of not doing enough. We have all seen this ad nauseam, and there is no need to catalog thousands of instances. [...] We have also seen an outpouring of hope from liberals that conservatives will die from the virus. I can't readily think of a parallel in our history. Four Democrat governors who get an 'F' for coronavirus response. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and most of all, Ralph Northam of Virginia have plumbed the depths of incompetence and evasion of responsibility while at the same time trampling on constitutional rights. Even leftist Democrat stalwarts like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California have performed relatively well during this national public health crisis. But the four above have failed. Hobby Lobby Gets Last Laugh Over Dallas Judge Who Forcibly Shut Them Down and Insulted Them On Social Media. Democrat Dallas County Commissioner Court Judge Clay Jenkins has stepped in it multiple times during this pandemic lockdown. Not only has he taken the opportunity to exert his will over the people to the point where the rest of the court voted to strip him of his unilateral power during this crisis, he also used it as an opportunity to bash people and businesses he just doesn't like. One of those businesses is the craft store Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby stayed open after the lockdown of "nonessential" businesses began, making the case that the store sold all the necessary items allowing you to make masks for yourself and others. Jenkins sent law enforcement to shut down Hobby Lobby locations, and forced patrons out of the store without allowing them to finish shopping. As Jenkins is wont to do, he made a show of being a tough guy on Twitter and encouraging Dallas country residents to snitch on any business like Hobby Lobby trying to stay open at this time. Bonkers Michigan Governor Claims Abortions Are Essential Because They Are 'Life-Sustaining'. Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has claimed that abortions are considered essential and must continue during the pandemic lockdown because they are "life-sustaining." The state has some of the harshest lock down orders in the nation and all elective surgeries, like knee and hip replacements, have been halted. Abortions, however, have not. The governor, who has faced massive protests for her authoritarian orders, went on to claim that abortions are "fundamental" to a woman's life and not something the government should get involved in. NARAL Pro-Choice President Takes Issue With Coronavirus Protestors Using 'My Body, My Choice'. Americans across the nation have taken to the streets to protest stay-at-home orders and, in some places, are being required to wear a face mask. In parts of California and Texas, residents are required to wear a face mask whenever they're outside of their private residence or their vehicles. Some stores have even implemented their own rules, saying patrons must cover their faces with a mask, bandana or other covering. People have taken issue with being forced into these rules, arguing that they should have the power to make their own decisions. Defiant Residents Grab Shovels, Dirt Bikes After Cali Authorities Dump Tons Of Sand In Skateparks For 'Social Distancing'. California authorities tried to stop skateboarders by dumping literally tons of sand into at least two area skateparks in an effort to enforce so-called "social distancing." However, the effort was for naught, it seems. Young residents in California responded to the government's extreme social distancing enforcement action by grabbing a few shovels, buckets, and booms and turning at least one sand-filled skatepark into a park for both skating and dirt biking. COVID-19 puts rural hospitals in Eastern Washington on brink of financial collapse. It sounds like an oxymoron: hospital loses money in the midst of a pandemic. But that is happening across Eastern Washington: Rural hospital systems have bolstered COVID-19 responses and protections while losing major revenue streams from other kinds of care. The moves have left many in a financially precarious position. Scott Graham, chief executive officer of Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster, called the Washington State Hospital Association a few weeks ago with a question he had never imagined posing: How do you close a hospital? Montana County Demands Citizens Wear Government-Issued Arm Bands to Shop at Grocery Stores. A Montana county is mandating citizens to wear a pink wrist band to go shopping at grocery stores. The band represents the person has quarantined for 14 days. You know who else had armbands? 'Experts' Float Trial Balloon: Hey, What if We Closed Grocery Stores While We're at It? What if families with infants couldn't make a run to get diapers, formula or whatever else they need to keep the kids fed? What if "experts" from someplace get to tell grocery stores nationwide that it's time to shut the doors and force everyone to use online ordering and curbside or delivery to get what we need to survive? It's a scary thought. And it begs the question: Why even consider it at this point? Have we bent the curve or not? If you look at the chart the White House released last week, downstate New York has the most coronavirus cases by far and the rest of the U.S. is doing ok as things are. [...] So why float the idea of closing off grocery stores to foot traffic? That's what CNN and its "experts" are doing. The Superstition of 'Science'. A virus is not magic, epidemiology is not voodoo, and the credentialed experts are not a priesthood. Yet the reporters, anchors, and commentators on cable TV news — most of whom have no more claim to expertise in such matters than you or I — exhibit a cult-like faith in the ability of the Pandemic Priesthood to predict the future. Previous failures by these experts to predict the course of the COVID-19 outbreak are ignored, as the television preachers of "science" encourage their viewers to regard the priesthood with religious reverence. Most amazing of all is how the media has conferred expert status on certain politicians, as if New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were qualified to deliver scientific lectures on preventing the spread of contagious disease. All of this, of course, has little or nothing to do with actual science, and very much to do with political bias. Tennessee Governor Announces Stay-At-Home Order Will Expire April 30. Today [4/20/2020], Governor Bill Lee announced the order for Tennesseans to remain at home will expire April 30, with the vast majority of businesses in 89 counties allowed to re-open on May 1. "Our Economic Recovery Group is working with industry leaders around the clock so that some businesses can open as soon as Monday, April 27," said Gov. Lee. "These businesses will open according to specific guidance that we will provide in accordance with state and national experts in both medicine and business." Celebrities and the Media Shouldn't Sneer at Coronavirus Lockdown Protesters. In their desperation to get back to work, some Americans are taking to the streets to demand that the government end the quarantine. [...] But there are legitimate grievances for protesters to air. Whitmer's stay-at-home orders were, as Reason's Billy Binion put it, a "hot mess," prohibiting travel between residences (even to relatively uninhabited areas), buying gardening supplies, and motorboats (but not boats without motors). Authorities in New York City have called on people to report each other for failing to abide by the most stringent social distancing measures. People have been stopped, shamed, and arrested for merely going outdoors. Voluntary compliance with social distancing has been remarkable, but forcibly constraining every last person has diminishing returns, and is not a good use of government resources. That does not mean the quarantine protesters are, as conservative pundit Stephen Moore put it, "modern-day Rosa Parks." But some of them are justifiably upset, and their frustration should be neither mocked nor ignored. A Tiny Virus Further Sickens the Fevered Media Mob. Within the sphere of politics, we have already seen short-term impacts to elections and how legislative bodies do their work, but the question of how the psychology of crisis will translate into permanent changes in the relationship between the governed and the government can only be answered with informed guesses. Is the rebellion in Michigan against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stringent stay-at-home orders the first shot in a war against the nanny state or the last gasp of "consent of the governed"? Will the electorate become enamored of receiving "paychecks" from the government for not working, or will it chafe at adding untold trillions to the national debt and demand new austerity measures? Cuomo didn't know coronavirus patients are being sent back to nursing homes. New York's health commissioner on Monday defended a directive that requires nursing homes to readmit residents who've tested positive for the coronavirus — as Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed he didn't know the policy was in place. Cuomo was asked about the state's policy on admitting or re-admitting to nursing homes people who'd tested positive for COVID-19. "That's a good question, I don't know," the governor said. Cuomo's startling admission came days after the state revealed last week that at least 3,316 people in nursing homes and adult care facilities had died of coronavirus at their residences or in hospitals across the state. Blue State Governors Demand Facebook Remove Information Organizing Protests Against Their "Orders" — Facebook Complies. There's some misinformation quickly spreading about Facebook taking down all content where people are organizing protests against state "orders." In reality what Facebook is doing is responding to requests from state officials to remove content the state dictators claim is defiance of their orders. Facebook is complying with those removal requests. Facebook Working With State Governments to Take Down Coronavirus Lockdown Protest Announcements. Facebook says it is working with state governments to take down organizing announcements for protests of the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus lockdowns. The protests have been spreading around the nation by Americans concerned the cure is worse than the disease and is killing the country and that the orders by governments go far beyond what is necessary to control the spread of the virus and are more about controlling citizens. Proof Democrats Are Crazy, Insane And A Danger To Us All. If you weren't convinced until now that Democrats are crazy, insane and a danger to us all, I now have clear and irrefutable proof. It's spelled Hydroxychloroquine. That's the anti-malaria drug that has become a miracle weapon in our arsenal to defeat Coronavirus. The stories of its remarkable success in the battle versus this terrible deadly pandemic are everywhere. They are no longer "anecdotal." This Trump-touted drug appears very likely to be a miracle drug. [...] My own Nevada Democrat Governor Steve Sisolak banned any doctor from prescribing it, unless in the Emergency Room or ICU. Even though the doctors that use it regularly, consider it proven safe and report the drug works best when used in the early stages of coronavirus, before a patient lands in an ER or ICU. And don't forget -- that's the whole point of this hysterical, reckless shutdown of the US economy. Don't we want to "flatten the curve?" Isn't our goal to stop this illness beforeit sends victims to the ER or ICU? The Covid-19 SCAM Collapses. 42 people without one of the defined underlying conditions died. 5,891 with one or more did. (Review of the rest hasn't been completed yet.) That's 0.71% of those with confirmed cases, which means you're symptomatic enough to get tested. Now add at least half that for the asymptomatics and maybe more — in fact the evidence is that we're already at or near herd immunity levels based on multiple seropositive surveys — not just the one run by Stanford but in many other locations as well! In addition we know only 12%, approximately, of those symptomatic enough to get tested require hospitalization in the first place. The Pentagon Doesn't Want To Admit It, But This Is War. Fact #1 — The Chinese coronavirus was created in a bioweapons lab in China. That is now mainstream consensus. It did not come from some food market near the lab. Fact #2 — The Chinese coronavirus does not occur naturally in nature. Read here comments from the virologist who discovered the AIDS virus. Fact #3 — China allowed 5 million people to leave Wuhan for the Chinese New Year celebrations around the world in Italy, New York, California, and elsewhere in the West. This was weeks or months after China knew the population was infected, and right before they shut down the entire city through a massive quarantine. Fact #4 — China, at the same time as they allowed the above departures, prevented anyone from the Wuhan region from traveling to other regions of China. Fact #5 — Chinese-friendly media in the West, in conjunction with other American elites, pushed the 'lockdown' solution on the United States, knowing it would severely damage the American economy and the Trump presidency. Will the Covid-19 PsyOp succeed? [Scroll down] Five weeks into the country's shutdown due to the coronavirus crisis, however, it looks unmistakably like a big PsyOp — a psychological operation designed to entrance people for the purpose of hidden agendas. The whole thing, in fact, has morphed into what it was intended to usher in — a bare knuckles political-ideological battle for what our future will be like. [...] There's been what I've called a flu d'état — a takeover of our supposedly democratic political process by unelected and unaccountable administrative state medical bureaucrats who are deeply and permanently embedded in the system of modern medicine — a collection of businesses that now consumes about twenty percent of the Gross National Product. Here are several issues that are hardly ever addressed. First, we hear every day that more and more Americans have now died from Covid-19. As of this writing, the number of fatalities is reportedly approaching 40,000. But have they all really died of or from coronavirus, or with corona virus? New evidence proves Coronavirus isn't as deadly as thought. A new study shows that coronavirus isn't as deadly as originally thought, The Wall Street Journal reports. We made a lot of decisions based on lies and misinformation out of China and the World Health Organization, the WHO. As we know, the models were not only way off, they caused great harm in policy decisionmaking. Draconian Lockdown Powers: It's a Slippery Slope from Handwashing to House Arrest. We still have choices. Just because we're fighting an unseen enemy in the form of a virus doesn't mean we have to relinquish every shred of our humanity, our common sense, or our freedoms to a nanny state that thinks it can do a better job of keeping us safe. Whatever we give up willingly now — whether it's basic human decency, the ability to manage our private affairs, the right to have a say in how the government navigates this crisis, or the few rights still left to us that haven't been disemboweled in recent years by a power-hungry police state — we won't get back so easily once this crisis is past. The government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we. 'Let us work' protests spread all across the US this weekend; demonstrators labeled as 'far-right'. As protests against coronavirus-based lockdowns continue spreading across the country (and globe), authorities are growing increasingly despotic and arguably fascist in their enforcement of "stay-at-home" orders, with police in one community arresting a woman for simply planning a protest. That woman, Kim Pagan of New Jersey, reportedly faces charges for "organizing a prohibited event" that involved protesters gathering in order "to demonstrate against" Gov. Phil Murphy's potentially unconstitutional coronavirus restrictions. "Pagan has to answer to the charge in Muncipal Court. Violations of emergency orders constitute a disorderly persons offense carrying a potential sentence of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine," Fox News reported. What happened to the brave souls who dared to speak up about the coronavirus outbreak after Beijing lied to the world? The fearsome knock on the door came after nightfall. Outside were two men in hazmat suits who told businessman Fang Bin they had come to take him into medical quarantine. But the textile trader, a gangly man in his early 40s, wasn't ill and the men outside his Wuhan apartment weren't doctors. They were police officers confronting a menace the Chinese Communist Party had been grappling with as ferociously as the coronavirus itself — ordinary people who bravely expose the truth about the outbreak and refuse to keep quiet. Mr Fang's 'crime' was to post a video he had filmed of people dying of the virus and the body bags piled up outside a hospital clearly overwhelmed by casualties at a time when China insisted that the virus was under control. It was seen 200,000 times before censors took it down. As Californians Reach the Tipping Point, Rebellion Against Stay at Home Orders Begins. In mid-March state and local officials painted a doomsday scenario for Californians, telling them that if they did not "shelter in place" 25 million (yes, million) Californians would be infected with coronavirus within two months, 5 million of which would require hospitalization. With the state having only 90,000 hospital beds total, clearly any scenario involving the need for 5 million hospital beds would be catastrophic. Having heard that, Californians willingly (for the most part) went along with orders to shelter in place and to practice social distancing. As of 3 p.m. April 18 there were 30,439 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state and 1,139 deaths, making those projections absurdly inaccurate. At the same time, 1.6 million Californians had filed for unemployment as of March 31. Pushback against the orders has started up and down the state, and it's not surprising that Surf City, USA, Huntington Beach, was the site of the first large protest on Friday [4/17/2020]. Well, That Unraveled Quickly. Now, what precisely happened between February 28 and two weeks later? This will be studied for many years to find out precisely how governors and mayors, through a series of unscientific, panicked, unjustified, and morally egregious actions, crushed under foot the world's strongest economy while the media cheered. We'll be discussing the whys and whats for a generation. The point is that it is all unraveling as fast as it came. Donald Trump's press conference on April 16, 2020, was clearly a turning point. In my ideal world, we would have officials up there telling the truth that the course we took as a nation was catastrophic in countless ways (except for all the panicked deregulation undertaken just so that the food and medicine could continue). But I'm realistic: we can hardly expect politicians to bow down and beg forgiveness. [...] Even now, there is so much we do not know about this "invisible enemy" but we have learned vast amounts about the visible enemy. The left's new hysterical narrative? Testing! Testing! Testing!. Having essentially lost the narrative on their "blame Trump" for every death, the Democrats and their media droids have this week settled upon the lack of sufficient testing with which to castigate the president. They would never call out the bureaucrats of the CDC, which dropped the ball throughout the Obama years, or the NIH, or the NIAID for Fauci's failures to be prepared for a pandemic. No, they have all leapt on the bandwagon to blame Trump for every death, every perceived failure of the federal government to stop a virus unleashed on the world by the actual biggest threat to the world, China. The Worst Public Policy in a Century. Closing down the U.S. economy in response to COVID-19 was probably the worst public policy in at least one-hundred years. The costs of the lockdowns are sunk, i.e., unrecoverable. Water under the bridge. What happens next is what matters, and it is of crucial importance lest the headline some day soon become an indisputable fact. America has implemented a lot of really bad policies since the New Deal and fought needless wars and endured long, senseless occupations of places like the Philippines and Afghanistan. But at least all those policies were vaguely constitutional. The economic lockdowns, by contrast, have turned the Constitution into a frail and worthless fabric, to steal a phrase from Alexander Hamilton. The due process and taking clauses are a shambles and even the First and Second Amendments have been de facto suspended in some states. What Happens When the Coronavirus Models are Wrong? The human tragedy that follows the virus will be horrific. Drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health issues, domestic violence, homelessness, and suicides may extract a toll far worse than the virus. Yet these costs are given scant attention, leaving the focus on ICU beds, hydroxychloroquine, and death counts. When will the restrictions be lifted? How long until life returns to some semblance of normal? The answers will come from state governors and the president, but how do they know? They have advisors, like the basketball player and scarf queen, who use models, which are simply educated guesses based on certain data and assumptions. [...] Models used to predict the course of the coronavirus are based on data and assumptions, providing estimates of cases, hospitalizations, resource need, and deaths. How have these models performed? The IHME model is considered the gold standard. In mid-March, without social distancing, they predicted 2.2 million American deaths. By early April they reduced their death projection to 100,000 to 240,000 assuming social distancing measures in place. Their April 17 update now projects 60,308 deaths, 3% of their original prediction. What changed? Greenies panicking over the discrediting of computer models predicting disaster. We have learned the hard way that the scientists who produce mathematical models predicting disaster are not to be granted the presumption of infallibility. Nor are their demands that we impoverish ourselves in order to avert a disaster a matter of "settled science." The coronavirus doom that the Cassandras of prestigious scientific organs predicted is nowhere to be found, and it turns out that models are based on assumptions and can be spectacularly wrong. Americans have sacrificed trillions of dollars and turned our lives upside-down based on predictions of millions of deaths if we didn't follow radically change our way of life, based on the pandemic predictions of modelers in the U.K. and USA. How embarrassing for the modelers that tell us we have to make even deeper sacrifices for a global warming disaster that is decades away, if it ever develops. You can smell their panic in this planned propaganda blitz from the Olympian heights of the media establishment. Ch COVID-19 — Another Benghazi? The Washington Post report last week saying that U.S. Embassy officials in China warned the State Department in Washington as early as January 19, 2018, about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) lab, in addition to scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats. [...] Taking into account this may be the "costliest government cover-up of all time" according to one of the sources, it would be disturbing if State Department officials knew about this and said nothing in public, especially after the U.S. National Institutes of Health awarded a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab. The Coronavirus Lockdown: Saving Adults But Killing Children. The coronavirus has almost entirely spared children. The same can't be said of the global lockdown. In fact, by trying to save the lives of those at high risk of COVID-19, countries around the world are condemning hundreds of thousands of children to death. Has anyone bothered to factor this in when deciding when to reopen the economy? One thing that has become abundantly clear since the virus emerged is that it targets older and sicker people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that of those with confirmed cases by mid-March, only 5% were younger than 19, while 62% were over 55. Of those who ended up in the hospital, fewer than 1% were under 19, and none of these young people were admitted to intensive care units. But a little-noticed United Nations report out last week found that the massive disruptions and global recession caused by the shutdowns will disproportionately harm children. Miami Herald Columnist: Packed Beaches Will 'Work Nicely to Thin The Ranks' Of Trump And DeSantis Supporters. As some Florida beaches reopened under social distancing guidelines, Miami Herald metro columnist Fabiola Santiago tweeted on Sunday [4/19/2020] that Florida residents packing beaches "should work nicely to thin the ranks" of supporters of President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis. [...] Reaction from Trump supporters was swift. [...] Some pointed out that Santiago had nothing to say about the decision by three Democratic governors — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont — to reopen marinas and boatyards also under social distancing rules. America's Huddled Masses Yearn to Breathe Free. Americans are tired of an oppressive government that, for our own good, they tell us, locks us in our homes based on computer models that have never been right from day one and health guidelines that keep changing so much they might as well be written on an Etch-a-Sketch. They want to "flatten the curve" by crushing our hopes and dreams. They seek treatments and a cure for a virus, ignoring the health-care costs of crushed lives and dreams, the human costs of lost jobs and careers, of nest eggs broken on the ground, of people who used to provide for their families fighting in stores over rolls of toilet paper. We are being guided by the best infectious disease experts in the world, we are told, experts so smart they didn't anticipate or consider the lives lost from depression, suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, and despair in a land where abortion is considered an essential procedure but heart stints and CT scans not so much. Americans are poor from an economy brought to its knees by an incompetent adversary, China, and a government whose leaders sit at home in their mansions in gated communities eating expensive ice cream stored in refrigerator freezers few Americans could afford when times were good and normal. They Can't Stop Us from Re-Opening America. We're going to come out of this nightmare whether the Democratic politicians like it or not. The pandemic is subsiding, so America is done with this lockdown nonsense, and the inevitable re-opening is coming. It will start out slow, then get faster, then get very, very fast, and then get finished. That's how these things happen. But it won't happen without #resistance. The lib establishment and its media gerbils clearly think it's in their interest to have the Bat Gobbler flu crisis continue indefinitely. They think it hurts Trump, plus they really love wielding power over you. [...] We could deal with it when it looked like a commonsense thing to do, but now it's just getting stupid. Things are getting better and they are doubling down on the social distance Stasi act. You got police departments tweeting that protest isn't essential, but apparently being petty fascists is. Cooperation vs. Coercion: The Coming Cultural Conflict. On March 16th, President Trump unveiled coronavirus task force's guidelines to help slow the spread of the disease. The original 15 days became an additional 30 days by the end of March. [...] Soon state governments got involved. Instead of issuing guidelines, governors across the country barked out orders: Restaurant dining rooms must close, nail and hair salons must close; dentists and other non-emergency medical providers must close; social distancing must be practiced. [...] The problem with those orders, however, is that they may not be constitutional. Now It's Obvious: The Political Class and the Media Are Spinning Tales. At the outset of the coronavirus lockdowns my colleague Pete Earle penned a prescient article about the propensity of political actors to rewrite the history of the unfolding crisis in real time. [...] Sadly but not unexpectedly, this real-time revisionism has only accelerated in the last month. We've now reached a point where reporters, public officeholders, and federal bureaucrats are now revising their own words and actions from only a few weeks prior — all while hoping that nobody will notice. The latest example involves the unfolding controversy over President Donald Trump's assertion of authority to set a national timeline for the repeal of the ongoing economic lockdown, presumably superseding state governors and local officials who refuse. [...] While the press today fumes in outrage at Trump's newly claimed power, only 10 days ago many of these same news outlets were clamoring for the very same national lockdown that Trump demurred. Just two weeks ago reporters peppered Trump with questions about his failure to impose a national shelter in place order. Stir crazy. Democrat governors and mayors are going nuts with power. The pandemic panic has them turning into King George IIIs. He had an excuse. He was mentally ill. For some reason, parks and beaches are closed across the nation but subways aren't. I fail to see how being 60 feet away from anyone on the shore is a public health threat, but being jammed in a rapid transit car is perfectly OK. Leftists Don't Want The Shutdown To End Because They Are Living Out Their Wildest Dreams. [N]ow that things are on the downward swing, it seems some conservatives and only conservatives are chomping at the bit to get things moving again in order to save the lives of countless people for whom a second Great Depression would mean the end of their livelihoods and even some of their lives long-term. The left, on the other hand, is in no hurry, and who could blame them? Of late, they've witnessed many of their most insane policy goals come either to fruition or within palpable reach, and they aren't about to let some lame protesters trying to feed their families get in the way of "progress." Non-Essential Workers? Most Are in Government. There's a stark contrast in suffering between the private and public sectors in this era of unprecedented government intrusion into American life and business. Millions of mom-and-pop shops are shut and their income is decimated and large-company employees are furloughed. But we hear virtually nothing about government workers being laid off — or even taking a pay cut. Let that sink in: the folks whose work and taxes underwrite bureaucrat pay are cut off from livelihood while those they support in government are not only not hurting, but many are being given what are essentially paid vacations. And we're hearing talk about non-essential workers? The vast majority of non-essential jobs are in government. The Rutherford Institute's Statement on the Right to Religious Freedom During COVID-19. At the moment, the government believes it has a compelling interest — albeit a temporary one — in restricting gatherings, assemblies and movement in public in order to minimize the spread of this virus. Yet these lockdown measures — on the right of the people to peaceably assemble, to travel, to engage in commerce, etc. — unquestionably restrict fundamental constitutional rights. While these measures might pass muster for a short period of time, they cannot be sustained for longer stretches constitutionally, nor should they be allowed to stand if the days and weeks of the government's social distancing campaign stretches into months-long quarantines. Facebook Coronavirus 'Fact Checker' Worked with Wuhan Virus Lab. Breitbart reports, "Facebook is relying on a 'fact checker' that uses 'expert opinion' from a researcher who conducted projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the biolab next to the wet market in Wuhan where the Chinese virus originated." An article from Danielle E. Anderson, assistant professor at Duke-NUS medical school, was used by Facebook to "fact-check" and censor a video from the Epoch Times. Democrats Ignore Lockdown Protests At Their Peril. In addition to killing thousands of Americans and robbing millions more of their livelihoods, the COVID-19 outbreak has evidently deprived the Democrats of their political judgment. At the national and state levels they have disregarded voter lockdown protests with the same disdain with which they ignored the Tea Party movement ten years ago. The Democrats have clearly forgotten the price they paid for that blunder. [...] The voters have been extraordinarily patient with stay-at-home orders imposed by their governors and willingly incurred enormous financial risk for the greater public good. Likewise, they have shown remarkable self-control as their lives have been upended by wildly inaccurate projections by overcautious Beltway bureaucrats. Now, they have had enough and and are hitting the street. Coronavirus brings Europe's borders back. The coronavirus has not just brought globalization to a standstill. The COVID-19 crisis also shows how fragmented united Europe actually is — not only relations between countries but between generations and classes. Our Garbage Media. The mendacity and mediocrity of our major news media have seldom been on display more clearly than during the COVID-19 crisis. While the media pretend to be "objective" and are now clearly on the side of the Democrats' narrative that Trump was negligent and slow in responding to the virus, there is plenty of evidence of the media downplaying the threat of the virus and criticizing Trump's early moves, especially his China travel ban, which the media decried as "xenophobic." And then there is the media's lack of interest in the Tara Reade allegation about Joe Biden, which is so blatant that even Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gets it. De Blasio Wants New Yorkers To Rat On Neighbors. Don't Do It. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took to Twitter Saturday [4/18/2020] to urge his constituents to monitor, photograph and report each other if they aren't strictly obeying his social distancing guidelines. Just fire off a photo to 3-1-1 of a few guys having a chat in a bodega and Hizzoner will send police officers, with guns and everything, to break it up. What could go wrong? [Video clip] Throughout the video de Blasio holds a creepy smile as he imagines millions of New Yorkers ratting each other out to help perfect his vision of government-constructed existence. We will be soldiers in his dream socialist army, pointing fingers and getting a nice pat on the back from the powers that be. It is a disturbing dystopia future to imagine. Downstate New York Is Skewing the United States' Coronavirus Numbers. New York is a hotspot when it comes to coronavirus cases and deaths, but that's only because of downstate. Upstate New York's coronavirus situation pales in comparison to downstate. New York City, in particular, was doomed due to the incompetence of local leaders, as well as other factors, such as population density and its subway system aiding in the spread of the virus. Personally, I've thought for weeks we should be counting downstate New York separately from the rest of the country. So, I looked at the numbers to see what happens when you separate downstate New York from the rest of the country. One US City Is Deploying A Chinese Firm's Drones To Police Americans Who Are Not Social Distancing. Elizabeth, New Jersey, is using a Chinese company's drones to police citizens who fail to employ social distancing guidelines. Past reports suggest the drones are feeding China data. Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage is deploying drones from Chinese-based company DJI to warn Elizabeth citizens who are walking outdoors not to get too close in physical proximity to other people. The drones blare sirens and issue this warning: "Stop gathering, disperse and go home." 'They go after churches but they don't tend to go after mosques': Trump accuses Democrats of anti-Christian bias. President Trump on Saturday claimed that states have been unfairly targeting Christians by not allowing religious gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic while suggesting that they won't enforce the same rules with Muslims during Ramadan. 'You know I just spoke with leaders and people that love mosques,' the president said on Saturday [4/18/2020]. 'They love mosques! And I'm all in favor of that. 'But I would say that there could be a difference. And we'll have to see what will happen. The strange case of Gov. Murphy's selective drive-through tulip farm shutdown. Something stinks in New Jersey. Gov. Phil Murphy is doing his best to style himself as the Gretchen Whitmer of New Jersey by initiating a series of capricious, absurd, lockdown diktats in the name of combating the coronavirus. In reality, they help no one. He's a stupid guy all right, given that his fiats are killing his state's economy, for one. And he was last seen trying to tell Fox News's Tucker Carlson that the Bill of Rights was "above his pay grade." [Video clip] More disturbing, he seems to be trying to outdo Whitmer, who banned the sales of garden seeds to locals anxious to grow their own food, with an even stupider measure of his own. Murphy banned drive-through tulip viewing from inside cars at a farm at the peak of the crop's limited growing season. And his goons threatened to arrest the owner if he did. SD Gov. Noem Drops a Truth Bomb on Critics Demanding She Issue a Stay-at-Home Order. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is one of the few governors that decided not to issue a stay-at-home order during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Her decision was based on the fact that her state had very few cases and she did not want to trample on South Dakotans' civil liberties. Critics are now citing an outbreak at the Sioux Falls Smithfield Foods, which had 438 employees test positive for the virus, as a reason to issue a lockdown. Another 107 people who came into contact with the processing plant also tested positive. As of now, the state has 1,311 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus and seven deaths. Despite that, Noem believes a statewide stay-at-home order is not the answer. Cuomo hires firm with close ties to CCP to develop reopening plan. Earlier this week, Allahpundit wrote about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's strategy of developing a "Trump-proof" strategy for reopening businesses in his state without letting the President take credit for it or Cuomo taking the blame over a longer shutdown and/or a resurgence of the virus, depending on how it plays out. As part of this strategy, Cuomo has hired the consultant firm McKinsey & Company to help him develop the plan. While this may not look like an unusual choice at first glance, a deeper look into McKinsey's history makes them a very problematic option at best. It's not that they aren't experienced in such things... they absolutely are, so this sort of work should be right up their alley. But what should be making people suspicious is the firm's long, very close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Their associations with the Chinese government are lengthy and well documented. Bombshell study finds most outbreaks in China were from family indoors and mass transit. More than five weeks into this crisis and with hundreds of thousands of cases to study, our government has still declined to offer more information and data on the nature of the viral transmission. It's all guesswork and assumption. However, the results of recent studies from other countries raise serious questions about the lockdown strategy of Western countries. It turns out keeping people inside and shutting down everything except mass transit might be the most counterproductive epidemiology strategy imaginable. Earlier this week, I asked the question whether our strategy of locking people in their homes is actually spreading more cases among families while also preventing herd immunity from developing among the broader population. A new study published last week of China's outbreaks in January and February lends credence to this concern. Why China may have manufactured COVID-19. [Scroll down] In the absence of conclusive evidence that COVID-19 is naturally-occurring, the burden of proof as to the origin of COVID-19 is now on China. Trump blasts governors for 'unreasonable' coronavirus lockdowns. President Trump signaled his support of escalating protests against coronavirus restrictions — accusing certain states of being "unreasonable" with lockdowns that are too strict. "I really believe that they're being unreasonable," Trump said at a White House briefing Saturday, a day after tweeting for Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia to be "liberated." "There are a lot of protests out there. And I just think that some of the governors have gotten carried away," he said. Lockdowns Lead To Civil Unrest-Violent Crime. American health care, as we call it today, and for all its high-tech miracles, has evolved into one of the most atrocious rackets the world has ever seen. By racket, I mean an enterprise organized explicitly to make money dishonestly. All the official reassurances won't be worth [anything]. The Globals are behind the CoronaVirus, It Is a Man-Made Bioweapon. [Numerous video clips] The Wu Flu: Even Better than the Green New Deal. In the West, we've learned that politicians playing on fear of imminent death beats fear of the planet burning up in the unspecified future, when it comes to taking unpopular action. Just look how successful this pandemic has been: [...] A few of the more enlightened U.S. governors have helped by redefining what constitutes a necessity. Arguably, people only "need" food, toilet paper, paper towels, disinfectants, and maybe a few products that you can't really rope off in Costco or Target. TVs remain available because a captive population needs brain deadening entertainment. Closing all commerce was beyond the hopes of anyone who formulated the Green New Deal; telling people to do without everything that they can't get from Amazon — who ever thought the U.S. would go for that? Of course liquor stores remain open, as do newly legal weed stores, to keep things under control. Fentanyl-laced heroin is being sold in the usual places, as cops back off crime and focus on arresting citizens out walking, swimming, or rowing; families playing ball; and church goers. U.S. Intel says Obama gave millions of dollars to Wuhan lab that produced coronavirus. For once a reporter asked a pertinent question at a White House daily virus briefing. On Friday one reporter asked President Trump if he was aware of U.S. Intelligence reports that the Obama administration sponsored the Wuhan lab, the same lab coronavirus may have come out of, to the tune of $3.7 million in 2015. The president does not usually speak of ongoing intel matters and said he would follow up the query. However, if it is true then the regime of the disgraced 44th president gave millions of U.S. tax dollars to a facility that was probably thought to be, even then, a biowarfare lab making toxins and viruses that target American troops and possibly American civilians. If it is true it would represent a betrayal of U.S. interests on par with the worst of Obama's actions. Also posted under A partial list of Obama's bad decisions. Could anti-lockdown protests be new Tea Party movement? Growing discontent with stringent state-level restrictions imposed to mitigate the coronavirus is pouring out into the streets near state capitols in ways reminiscent of the last decade's conservative activism. "They have a very Tea Party feel," said Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo of the demonstrations. "The current protests are because of government overreaching and infringing on our rights," said Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin. "The protests are an extension of what the Tea Party movement has stood for the last 11 years — constitutionally limited government, personal and economic freedom. In the time of crisis and to remain on solid ground with those whom they represent, elected officials should lean on the Constitution, not abandon it." Crowds flock to Jacksonville beaches; model significantly lowers Florida's expected coronavirus death toll. Crowds returned to beaches in Jacksonville Friday after Florida's governor gave the green light for some to reopen if done safely — as a new model significantly dropped the number of forecasted fatalities in the Sunshine State. Cheers could be heard at 5 p.m. when barriers to Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach and Neptune Beach came down. Hundreds of people were subsequently pictured enjoying their newfound freedom. Federal judge blocks Kansas limits on religious gatherings. A federal judge signaled that he believes there's a good chance that Kansas is violating religious freedom and free speech rights with a coronavirus-inspired 10-person limit on in-person attendance at religious services or activities and he blocked its enforcement against two churches that sued over it. GOP Governor Greg Abbott Disappoints With a Timid Reopening Plan for Texas. In a series of Executive Orders issued on Friday [4/17/2020], Texas Governor Greg Abbott laid out the initial aspects of his plan for re-opening the Texas economy. The plan will be managed by what Gov. Abbott is calling a "statewide strike force" chaired by Austin banker James Huffines. If these initial steps and the governor's statements about them are any indication, the reopening in red-state Texas will be little different than the process in many blue states around the country. [...] The disappointment comes in the lack of any effort whatsoever to distinguish Texas, which has had far fewer cases of the Wuhan Virus than much smaller states on the East and West Coasts and even Louisiana, from the approaches that will be taken by those other states. For example, why no attempt to treat the 100+ Texas counties who have had 5 or fewer cases of the virus differently than the big-city epicenters of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin? 64 counties have reported ZERO cases of COVID-19. Here in Sweden we're playing the long game, and listening to science not fear. For the first (and probably last) time in living memory, the whole world seems to care about the domestic policy of my plucky little home country. Sweden's approach to dealing with coronavirus has been hailed by some, but the majority of commentators seem to think we're conducting some kind of heartless and dangerous experiment. Even Donald Trump has attacked us. For those that aren't aware, while the rest of the world has been shutting down schools, shops and restaurants, banning non-essential travel, and sending the police to shout at those who dare to dawdle in their local park, Sweden remains largely open for business. Our schools are full of students, and I can still visit restaurants in Malmo, where I've lived for more than 20 years. Director of Wuhan lab denies coronavirus escaped from his facility. The director of a lab studying the coronavirus in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the global outbreak is believed to have originated — denied that the bug accidentally spread from his facility. "There's no way this virus came from us," Yuan Zhiming, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, told state media on Saturday [4/18/2020]. Yuan's denial came days after a fresh round of reports suggesting the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute or another similar laboratory miles away in the Chinese city. COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society? Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king. Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society — easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down — would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners). To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now. What is this war on cash? It's a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. Also posted under The Abolition of Cash. Comrade deBlasio Introduces New York City Snitching Program. Comrade Bill deBlasio in New York City is making it easier than ever to snitch on your neighbors. If you happen to spot someone not obeying social isolation orders, or if you spot someone without a mask, the mayor is now asking people to take a picture of the rebellious activity and text it to the New York Division of Compliance Monitoring. Put on a mask, stop having fun, and get out of the fresh air! Scores gather in Huntington Beach to protest coronavirus stay-at-home orders. Scores of protesters defying stay-at-home orders gathered in downtown Huntington Beach on Friday [4/17/2020], rallying for an end to restrictions on businesses and public gatherings that health officials say are needed to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic. Mobilized largely through social-media posts, several dozens of protesters gathered at Main Street and Walnut Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. The crowd grew to more than 200 people, according to police. Many had signs, such as "Live free or die." Some wore masks. The group periodically chanted "U.S.A" as some passing vehicles honked in support. Stand by for a show trial, as the state makes an example of this lady. Texas To Lead The Charge In The Return To Normalcy. We're a long way from kicking the economy back into high gear, but the good news is there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel. That's really good news for everyone who would rather be earning a paycheck than getting a handout, especially since there really isn't much 'free' money to go around in the first place. [...] Seven states managed to dodge the bullet, and never had to order stay-at-home measures: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, & Wyoming. Exercise Boosts Your Chances Of Beating Coronavirus. This shutdown has been hurting people, including their health. But there is at least ONE way that it could be putting people at greater risk of the virus itself. Unless you've already got a home gym or some kind of exercise tech, it's been a lot harder to work up a sweat, or even 'get your steps in', with everyone holed up in our homes for weeks. [...] Maybe the super-snitches looking to narc out their neighbors for playing catch with their kids or hitting the beach should go home and rethink their lives. THEY could be the ones that are, ultimately, 'endangering society'. Congratulations, You've Just Won A 60-Day Trial of Authoritarianism. The coronavirus pandemic is a real threat. COVID-19 has become the leading cause of death in the United States. I'm not and won't minimize any of that. But no one should minimize the lengths governments are now going in the name of keeping us safe. We've had pandemics before. They didn't result in the strong-arm Big Brother government we are subjected to now. Welcome to your free, 60-day trial of authoritarian government. You have been compelled. Some states have decided what you can buy, and what stores like Costco, Walmart and Target can sell. Elizabeth, NJ is deploying its own miniature air force to make sure its residents stay the appropriate social distance apart. Five drones equipped with loudspeakers now shout at people to stay the hell away from each other. They have cameras on them. They can and will take your picture. Face recognition software is now part of most police departments' arsenals. And you can be fined up to $1000 if you don't do what the drone orders you to do, so never forget to obey your drones. Remember that Texas nursing home experiment with hydroxychloroquine? Laura Ingraham interviewed Attorney General Bill Barr. In addition to calling the Russia hoax "one of the greatest travesties in American history", Barr touched on COVID-19. One thing Barr found bizarre was how the media ignored informing Americans in favor of discrediting President Trump. Barr specifically noted the media's response to Trump's hope that hydroxychloroquine might stop the Wuhan virus's malignancy. Hydroxychloroquine has been approved for decades as a treatment for malaria, lupus, and arthritis. The media, though, isn't giving Americans objective information about the drug. Instead, Barr said (accurately), "the media's been on a jihad to discredit the drug." Immediately after Barr's interview, NPR's Vanessa Romo wrote about Robin Armstrong, a Houston doctor, who was treating nursing home patients with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc. Romo implied that, because the doctor is a Republican (even scarier for Democrats, he's a black Republican) and used his political connections to get hydroxychloroquine, that meant he was a veritable Dr. Mengele, the Nazi who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz. Scientists: Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic May Have Started in September. The first cases identified of the Wuhan coronavirus may have occurred south of Wuhan in September, a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge found. The South China Morning Post reported the findings on Thursday [4/16/2020]. In a newly published study, which has not been peer-reviewed, researchers investigating the virus's origin analyzed global viral samples and concluded that the virus must have first infected humans between September 13 and December 7. We funded Red China's world dominance. COVID-19 — the Red Chinese Disease — has awoken Americans and the rest of the world to the fact that Red China now dominates the world. While the United States was busy fighting a Global War on Terrorism, Red China was using its trade surplus with the United States to buy influence across the world. The seminal event of 2001 was not 9/11 but rather 12/11, the day in December 2001 when Red China joined the World Trade Organization. Both presidents Bush and Clinton trusted China. The whole world did. Because of their misguided trust, someday soon this video will no longer be available. [Video clip] COVID-19 Crisis And The Church. [Scroll down] This isn't a castastrophe, it's an opportunity. All the little competing voices that would vie for the hearts and minds of the unwashed massess — consumerism, entertainment, random hookups, sports, all of it is shut down. There is a short window of opportunity to be about the Father's business — if only the church is willing to lean into it. [Video clip] 13 Petroleum Products Crucial to the COVID-19 Pandemic. A public service announcement for all of you poorly-educated "leave it in the ground" hippies who hate the petroleum industry. A free nation cannot long survive if its press takes sides. When the coronavirus outbreak hit the news in January, mainstream journalists routinely referred to it as the "Wuhan coronavirus" or the "Chinese coronavirus." When they noticed Trump was using the same descriptions, and sensing a chance to cripple him politically, they abruptly stopped using those terms, and are now accusing him of being a xenophobic racist for calling the virus what they themselves called it until they sensed a chance to bleed him. Ten days after the first confirmed coronavirus case in this country, Trump took decisive action by restricting flights into the U.S. from China. Rather than applaud the decision, or merely question it, the mainstream media called him a xenophobic racist for that too. Australian man denied refund for $10,000 worth of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. An Australian man who purchased AU$10,000 worth of hand sanitizer and toilet paper was denied a refund by a supermarket owner after the man requested one. The man, who has remained unnamed, purchased the items as news spread about the deadly coronavirus causing a worldwide pandemic. He contacted the supermarket requesting a refund after he was unable to sell the items on eBay. Texas Protest Reflects Spreading Frustration With Coronavirus Closings. Millions of Americans have sheltered in their homes for weeks in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, avoiding strangers and friends alike. Mass gatherings have been canceled. But in a public act of defiance, protesters in Texas are preparing to converge on the steps of the Capitol building in Austin on Saturday [4/18/2020] and call for the reopening of the state and the country. It would be the latest in a wave of similar protests from North Carolina to Michigan to Idaho. By merely assembling, the conservative activists and supporters of President Trump who are expected to participate in the "You Can't Close America" rally would be in violation of state and local stay-at-home orders that have been replicated across the country. On Thursday, protesters demonstrated outside the governor's mansion, largely without incident. Gov. Ron DeSantis: Florida Will Use Trump's Plan to Reopen as 'Baseline'. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Friday [4/17/2020] that the state will use President Trump's plan to reopen the nation as its "baseline," but he added that the state may vary in its approach. "I think there's a number of things if you look at the president's — what the president put out in terms of the different stages," he told reporters at Friday's press conference. With China's economy on life support, it's time to turn off the ventilator. On Friday [4/17/2020], Chinese officials said their country's economy shrank by 6.8 percent from January to March 2020, compared with one year ago. The "China Dream" of dictator Xi Jinping is now on life support, in grave danger of succumbing to the same novel coronavirus that he and his fellow communists have unleashed upon the world. I say we turn off the ventilator. This sentiment seems to be even more infectious than the disease itself. A Harris poll released on April 6 found that 77 percent of the US population believes China is to blame for the pandemic. Before this thing has run its course, most of the world's seven-plus billion people will likely agree as well. The Tyranny of 'Scientism' and the Subversion of Science. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday [4/15/2020], New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy unintentionally defined this critical moment in America's history. "We weren't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this," he explained about his draconian decrees, including a ban on religious gatherings, to fight coronavirus. "First of all, we looked at the data and the science and it says people have to stay away from each other." Murphy's comments undoubtedly buoyed the egos of academic "experts" across the country. A leading politician boasted, without the slightest sense of remorse, that his fidelity to the almighty deity of "science" prevailed over protecting the rights of his state's citizens. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution? Meh. The six-foot distancing rule concocted by a handful of careerist bureaucrats in Washington? Bow and scrape. Gov. Abbott reveals phases of reopening Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued three executive orders Friday that outline how to reopen the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement from the governor has been long awaited, with Abbott adding that the state and its decisions must be guided by data and doctors. He started Friday's [4/17/2020] briefing with hope, noting that, "We are now beginning to see glimmers that the worst of COVID-19 may soon be behind us," and that Texas has the second-most recoveries of all the states. Mainstream media in America truly is an enemy of the people. Culminating in the coronavirus, most everything has changed in this world over the last couple of years — except the biased media. In January, the media did not criticize, and did not question, the virus misinformation, lies and stonewalling coming out of China, thus failing to give us information early on. When it became obvious that Communist China was lying, the media avoided condemning them and failed to call China's hand when it accused the U.S. of causing the virus outbreak in China. Instead, the press blamed the president. The leftist media even poo-pooed the seriousness of the virus. [...] The American institutional media truly has become an enemy of the people. They withhold the truth or bury it on the back page. They whitewash or ignore good news coming from conservative politicians and instead create false news to undermine them. No need to wipe down food packaging during coronavirus pandemic, FDA says. Heads up, consumers: When running the essential errand that is grocery shopping during the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S., there's no need to wipe down the food packaging after you've returned home, according to a federal agency. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to quell Americans' fears that their food packaging may be contaminated with the novel coronavirus, as recent studies have suggested it can live on certain surfaces between hours and days. But in a statement posted to its website on Thursday, the FDA said: "We want to reassure consumers that there is currently no evidence of human or animal food or food packaging being associated with transmission of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19." Battle Lines Drawn: Texas Opts for Liberty, While Washington State Makes Liberty Illegal. On the same day [4/17/2020], Gov. Inslee (D-Wash.) and Gov. Abbott (R-Texas) issued statements that display the fundamental question facing America. Shall the United States remain a nation founded on liberty, or shall we capriciously remove those rights as an exercise to increase the power of the state? [...] Abbott believes that Texans can continue safe behaviors and practices while conducting business and picking up the pieces of shattered livelihoods — returning to jobs, reopening businesses, and slowly returning to normal. [...] It appears Inslee doesn't share Abbott's belief in self-governance and would prefer that Washington remain unliberated. He would prefer more draconian measures to keep Washingtonians from their basic activities, even when those measures don't make sense in fighting a pandemic. Inslee followed the example of New Jersey's Democrat governor by banning private construction while declaring construction on government projects essential. Inslee has also ordered a ban on fishing and hunting, closed parks to camping and hiking, and ordered boat launches closed, among many other restrictions that will have little effect on slowing the virus. How Small Businesses Are Sacrificing for America. In 2019, there were 30.7 million small businesses in America. Together, they employed an astonishing 47.3 percent of the private workforce. For many such enterprises, it is a continuous struggle to get access to capital. Far more of them than we realize were first started with a loan begged or borrowed from family and friends. But however they started, small businesses are indispensible for the creation of wealth that allows many other Americans to realize their dreams. So much of what has been created by all that hard work and risk-taking, not to mention the job opportunties facilitated by small enterprises, is presently being crushed in every state in the Union. In areas ranging from accommodation to food services and retail, millions of small businesses are facing the prospect of destruction. How the World Health Organization collects its money. President Trump sent shock waves around the world this week when he slammed the World Health Organization, claimed it favored China, blamed it for causing thousands of coronavirus deaths and ordered a freeze on funding from the U.S. His decision was criticized by world leaders as well as political rivals at home, who called it reckless, irresponsible and an attempt to deflect criticism from his own administration's decision to downplay the novel coronavirus when warnings first surfaced. WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, along with China and private donors, have asked Trump to reconsider. So far, the president has refused to budge. Pence says states have enough COVID-19 tests to start phase 1 of White House recovery plan. The Trump administration sought Friday [4/17/2020] to alleviate fears about the availability of mass testing for the coronavirus, with Vice President Mike Pence telling reporters that states "have enough tests to implement the criteria of phase 1" of the White House plan to reopen the economy "if they choose to do so." A slide in the White House briefing room touted that the U.S. had completed more than 3,780,000 tests as of Thursday. Trump calls on voters in swing states to 'Liberate' from Dem governors and heavy-handed restrictions. Sensing the growing restlessness of the American people over heavy-handed actions taken by some states, President Donald Trump took to social media Friday to call on voters to "LIBERATE" several swing states from their Democratic governors. No state has been more draconian in responding to the coronavirus pandemic than Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as the Democrat has taken to dictating what stores can and cannot sell. Items she deems to be nonessential, such as lawn and gardening supplies, are cordoned off from customers. In three separate tweets, the president called on Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia to liberate themselves. Strassel: Here's Why the Democrats Keep Moving the Shutdown Goal Posts. In mid-March, President Trump announced his 15-day plan to shut down the economy. His administration's hope was that we could "flatten the curve" and "slow the spread" of COVID-19. Toward the end of that period, the situation was reassessed and the decision was made to extend the shutdown until the end of April. By now, most cities and regions of the US, including New York State, the epicenter of the pandemic, have managed to achieve this milestone and Americans, currently ending our fifth week of the quarantine, are growing restless. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel writes, "The goal of the shutdown was never to eradicate the disease — an impossibility absent a vaccine. The lockdown was designed to buy the health sector time, to make sure all the cases didn't hit at once in a crush that would overwhelm hospitals, à la Italy." Disaster or Mass Hysteria? Depends on Who's Saying It. Just as climate change finds itself at the center of the left/right divide, so today, coverage of COVID-19 — both in major and minor news networks — points to a similar fissure in American perceptions of this worldwide pandemic. Those on the ideological left forecast a doom and gloom scenario as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Alternatively, those on the right are less alarmist, questioning the science and data behind these dismal data projections. A logical question ensues: why such a divide? What is it about left and right ideologies that produce such stark differences in perception? Why Did the NIH Fund Wuhan Labs? Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has asked an obvious question, one that has not come up at the daily White House coronavirus press briefing — why is the Wuhan Virology Lab a grantee of the National Institutes if Health, whose National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — headed by one Dr. Anthony Fauci — and a recipient of $3.7 million to study coronavirus in bats? Gaetz has gone beyond mere curiosity, writing a letter to HHS Secretary Azar demanding the grant be terminated. Defending Trump 'Opening Up America Again'. Coronavirus placed Trump between a rock and a hard place. Upon learning about the coronavirus, Trump immediately implemented a travel ban from China. Democrats and fake news media accused Trump of overreacting and racism. Democrat and conservative media began reporting coronavirus as the worst to hit the planet and that we were all gonna die. I stopped watching Tucker Carlson on Fox News because every evening his reporting about the virus became scarier and scarier. Media scared [...] Americans on both sides of the political aisle. Some folks say Trump should not have gone along with Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts' proven-false prediction of two million deaths. Trump could not challenge the "experts." With nationwide fear so high, members of his base would have joined fake news media and Democrats in crucifying him. Therefore, I do not think Trump screwed up by appearing to listen to Dr. Fauci. Trump did what he had to do. He did not willingly risk collapsing the remarkable economy he built via deregulation. What to do About China. [#1] Seize China's U.S. Treasury Notes. For America, the China virus attack was a 21st century medical Pearl Harbor, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties and placing our healthcare system under enormous strain. To counterattack China's criminal negligence and mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic, the U.S. needs to hit our communist comrades where it hurts the most — their pocketbooks. China owns approximately $1.07 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, according to the Treasury Department. The United States government should seize the Chinese treasury obligations that Beijing holds in their name, and inform the CCP that this is a down payment for the death of tens of thousands of American citizens and the economic devastation Beijing has unleased on the U.S. economy. And the U.S. should encourage Canada, the U.K., Japan, Switzerland, and other allies to do the same. The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn't. In March, one of the most feared aspects of the pandemic was the widely reported coming shortage of ventilators. One well-publicized estimate, repeated by the New York Times, the New Yorker and CNN, was that the U.S. would need roughly one million ventilators, or more than five times as many as we had. Gulp. Ventilators are expensive, they're complex machines, and they can't be churned out in the thousands overnight. [...] The ventilator shortages of which we were all gravely warned have not yet come to pass. If we have indeed reached the crest of the crisis, perhaps they won't.
California's top cop defends extraordinary virus shutdowns. What would normally be broad constitutional protections for freedoms of assembly, religion — even buying guns — have their limits when they endanger others during the coronavirus pandemic, California's top law enforcement officer said in an interview. Belt and Road and 'bribes': China paid off home country of WHO boss, Cotton says. Sen. Tom Cotton said today [4/17/2020] communist China paid "bribes" to Ethiopia when World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom was a cabinet minister there. In 2017, the WHO spoke of a "strategic partnership" with China as Mr. Tedros prepared to travel to Beijing to cement ties as one of his first acts as new director-general. Mr. Cotton, Arkansas Republican, is a fierce critic of Beijing for what he says is an unprecedented coverup of a health catastrophe that has killed thousands globally. He offered the Ethiopian history as a way to explain Mr. Tedros' continued defense of China. The End Of New York: Mayor deBlasio Says New York City Will Not Reopen Until July or August At The Earliest!. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined Bill Hemmer today [4/16/2020] on FOX News Channel. The mayor told Hemmer he does not expect New York City to open until July or August. Texas Pastors, Activists Sue Governor Over 'Unconstitutional' Stay-At-Home Orders. Activists and pastors have filed a lawsuit against Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for imposing coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders, alleging the orders violate their constitutional rights. Conservative activist Steve Hotze and several Houston-area pastors accused Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of "imposing draconian, unconstitutional requirements" on Texans in a suit filed Thursday [4/16/2020] in Travis County, according to the Houston Chronicle. Can You Beat COVID-19 Without a Lockdown? Sweden Is Trying. Sweden has a way of triggering people. It represents everything we're supposed to do or everything we're not supposed to do. It is the welfare state at its best or multiculturalism at its worst. True to form, or contrary to form, Sweden is now setting off everyone in its handling of the coronavirus. Unlike most of the developed world, including neighboring Norway or Denmark, Sweden has kept its elementary schools running and allowed most its businesses, including restaurants and bars, to remain open. Travel in and out of the country remains possible for E.U. nationals. And social distancing remains, for the most part, voluntary, provided the group in question has fewer than 50 people. In short, Sweden has refused to join the rest of us in a lockdown. This has caused a lot of traditional Sweden lovers and Sweden bashers to trade places. Much of the MSNBC left, which normally loves Sweden, now shakes its head. Much of the Fox News right, which often scorns Sweden, is now a fan. White House Redirects WHO Funding to Other Charities. Following President Trump's announcement that all American funding to the World Health Organization has been halted, the White House has since confirmed that the money will instead be directed to more reliable charitable organizations, as reported by the New York Post. The United States had previously provided 10 percent of the WHO's total budget of $4.8 billion, with such agencies as the USAID office, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Health and Human Services collectively contributing anywhere from $300 million to $400 million per year. The funding will instead be redirected to several charities such as the Red Cross and Samaritan's Purse, while the WHO undergoes increased scrutiny for its mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak. California's 'Reopening' Economic Task Force Is As Absurd As It Gets. California Governor Gavin Newsom has introduced his new economic task force to begin plans for reopening the economy. The task force is 80 members and will include: [#1] Former Governor Gray Davis, who — in a rare event of complete voter unity — was recalled from the governorship for his utter incompetence. [#2] Former Governor Jerry Brown, who brought us our disastrous pension liability. [#3] Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave us the current Democrat super majority by bringing us the insane notion of "jungle primaries." [#4] Failed presidential candidate and very rich man Tom Steyer, who proudly supports a New Green Deal and is very vocal about working to end vital business in the energy sector. Let's not forget that Newsom said recently he views this crisis as a chance to usher in a "new era" of progressive policies. After Repeated Failures, It's Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models. "The ... crisis we face is unparalleled in modern times," said the World Health Organization's assistant director, while its director general proclaimed it "likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced." This was based on a CDC computer model projection predicting as many as 1.4 million deaths from just two countries. So when did they say this about COVID-19? Trick question: It was actually about the Ebola virus in Liberia and Sierra Leone five years ago, and the ultimate death toll was under 8,000. With COVID-19 having peaked (the highest date was April 4), despite the best efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase numbers by first saying any death with the virus could be considered a death from the virus and then again this week by saying a positive test isn't even needed, you can see where this is going. California Shuts Down Chinese Birth Tourism Motel That Took Advantage of American Birthright Citizenship. A city in California has ordered the shutdown of a "birth-tourism" motel that specifically catered to pregnant Chinese women who travel to the United States to deliver babies and earn them citizenship. Council members in the city of Orange voted unanimously to revoke the JR Motel's conditional use permit on Thursday [4/16/2020] and ordered them to shut down by the end of the month. The JR Motel does not rent rooms to the public, instead, they only cater to wealthy Chinese families who travel to the states to give birth and take advantage of America's birthright citizenship. The More Anger at China, the Worse for Biden. Cozy, profitable, and possibly corrupt connections with the Chinese government are the last thing Americans want to hear about their politicians right now. Those voters are closeted at home, worried about their future, thanks to a virus that originated in Wuhan. They are mad [...] at Beijing for hiding what it knew, early on, about the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party knew something terrible was happening, and it refused to share honest information about it. It denied the virus could be spread by human contact, weeks after it knew patients were infecting health care workers, and it hid vital information about the origins and genetic structure of the virus. The World Health Organization spread that misinformation. Beijing's deception cost lives and livelihoods. Americans are reminded of it every day they are home from work or school under quarantine. How to get the economy back into gear. [Scroll down] How should it begin? The first issue to consider is why the economy is actually shut down. Is it the result of all those government restrictions on public and private life? Listening to the media debate, there is a widespread impression that the government closed the economy and the government can open it back up. But some of the officials most thoughtfully considering how to move forward don't see it that way. "What has caused the economy to grind to a halt is not some governor or mayor's order, or some public health bureaucrat's recommendation," said Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who warned of the coronavirus's danger back in January. "It's just the fear of the virus." Spitting criminals are NYPD's new scourge amid coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus has given criminals a new deadly weapon: saliva. Spit-slinging sickos are declaring they are infected with COVID-19 and spraying their targets with sneezes, coughs or sputum. "[...], now you have coronavirus," Jason Mason, 28, told four NYPD officers last Wednesday [4/15/2020] as he spit on them from inside a holding cell, police said. Cops said he was collared after being caught with a knife in a suspected drug deal. 'There's no direct evidence that the lockdowns are working'. The UK government has extended its lockdown for another three weeks. But could the shutdown of society be doing more harm than good? In fact, is there any evidence it is doing any good at all? Dr John A Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, has repeatedly called for a critical and dispassionate examination of the evidence in relation to Covid-19, raising questions about the government and its advisers' interpretation of the data. We're Going to Reopen Soon, and We Should. The extraordinary social distancing measures were designed to slow the spread of the virus. They were a hedge against the worst-case scenario — a spike in the number of severe infections that would overwhelm local health care systems. That kind of spike happened in China and in Italy, and no one wanted it to happen anywhere else. [...] The measures have succeeded beyond the expectations of health authorities. This epidemic will continue to claim too many victims, but the infection rate is slowing, and the virulence of the disease looks to be less than feared. [...] That means the severe restrictions have served their primary purpose and the benefit of the doubt should be given to lifting them in the next few weeks. Nearly 300 Illinois nursing home patients and staff have died from COVID-19, but the state won't say which facilities are infected. Nearly 300 Illinois nursing home patients and staff have died from COVID-19, but exactly where still remains largely cloaked in secrecy. Unlike some states, Illinois hasn't named specific facilities where the virus has been detected. That's been true even in cases of significant clusters of deaths. Coronavirus: CDC reviewing 'stunning' universal testing results from Boston homeless shelter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now "actively looking into" results from universal COVID-19 testing at a Boston homeless shelter. The broad-scale testing took place at the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter in Boston's South End a week and a half ago because of a small cluster of cases there. Of the 397 people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms. Commentary on the article immediately above: Passengers sue cruise lines over coronavirus exposures. Former passengers are suing Carnival-owned cruise lines and accusing company management and crew members of knowingly exposing them to coronavirus. In one case, the decision to continue boarding passengers caused a customer's death, lawyers representing a family said. The most recent case, filed this week, involves Susan and Michael Dorety of Texas, who boarded a Princess Cruise Line ship February 21. Michael Dorety became ill while on board, according to court documents. He later died from coronavirus complications and Susan contracted the disease COVID-19, said Rusty Hardin, a Houston lawyer representing the couple. What are 'COVID toes'? Dermatologists, podiatrists share strange findings. The longer the novel coronavirus circulates, the more unexpected symptoms pop up. To name a few, ophthalmologists have said pink eye may be a rare sign of COVID-19, and anosmia, or a loss of smell, can occur in patients with no other symptoms. Coughing blood and tingling all over the body have also been reported. Now, another condition possibly linked to the coronavirus has captured researchers' attention. Dubbed "COVID toes" by the dermatology community, it can look like "purple lesions" on feet or hands, Dr. Esther Freeman, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told TODAY. Drivers swarm Michigan capital to protest coronavirus lockdown measures. Hundreds of cars, trucks and SUVs descended on Michigan's state capital Wednesday afternoon as part of a noisy protest against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's social-distancing restrictions that critics say have gone too far. Dubbed "Operation Gridlock" and organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, the protest did just that — creating bumper-to-bumper traffic throughout downtown Lansing as demonstrators blasted their horns, waved Americans flags and hoisted placards deriding Whitmer's orders and demanding that she reopen the state's economy. The lockdown measures are meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, but Whitmer has gone further than some other governors — and the backlash in Michigan is among the most heated in the country. Time To Push Back Against Draconian Lockdowns & Tyranny. Bill Gates, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and anyone else advocating for a federally mandated lockdown either doesn't understand the Constitution's structure or doesn't respect it. The lockdowns are both unconstitutional and trash the fundamental human rights every single person on this planet was born with. [...] Americans have to push back against this tyranny or those in power will never check themselves when it comes to taking our basic human rights or worse, our lives. If we accept this level of draconian power, there will be more. They will enslave us only to the point we allow. It's time to start pushing back. We Are Needlessly Devastating Our Country. [Scroll down] The goal of social distancing was to flatten the curve so as to avoid overwhelming hospitals. But hospitals are not being overwhelmed, even though social distancing should just now (at a 3-week lag) have started to reduce hospital demand. Hospitals are so empty that they're laying off workers all across the country! The demand on hospitals from coronavirus is a mere fraction of what models suggested it would be. Meanwhile, in Sweden, which has taken a far less draconian approach, hospitals are still not being overwhelmed, [...] I am sure that lots of folks will insist upon staying home until they do feel safe, but government-ordered shutdowns need to be lifted. There will be great, inevitable economic damage from the pandemic. But let's not compound it by ordering everyone to stay home and shutting everything down. People should be able to consider their own risks, as long as hospitals aren't at risk of being overwhelmed. Michigan residents take to the streets for a massive protest. The experts assured Americans that, unless they addressed aggressively, the pandemic wave about to sweep over the country would kill millions of people, while breaking the healthcare system and, by extension, destroying America itself. The only way to make a dent in this apocalyptic scenario was for America to come to a complete halt. People had to isolate themselves within their homes, venturing forth for only the most essential errands. Michigan was one of the states that took these prescriptions more seriously than others, shutting down virtually every aspect of life in Michigan, including earning any type of living. On Wednesday, several thousand Michigan citizens, as well as citizens from surrounding states, got fed up and took to the streets. Dr. Phil: Lockdown Could Eventually Create More 'Destruction,' 'Death' Than Coronavirus. Dr. Phil McGraw joined Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday [4/16/2020] during a web exclusive broadcast to discuss the larger impact of the economic shutdown from the coronavirus. "This is invisible, I can't show you an x-ray of depression, I can't show you an x-ray of anxiety, but the fact of the matter is the longer this lock down goes on, the more vulnerable people get, and it's like there's a tipping point," McGraw said. "There's a point at which people start having enough problems in lock down that it will actually create more destruction and actually more death across time then the actual virus will itself. [...]" Hey, NBC News, You Buried This Critical Detail in Your Article About Hydroxychloroquine. Well, it looks like NBC News is at it again. With no vaccine against the Wuhan coronavirus, there have been reports that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine has been effective in combating the symptoms of the virus. It is not a cure and it has yet to get the seal of approval from the task force as something which is recommended as a treatment for those infected with COVID-19. It's a stopgap until we get a vaccine, giving us some breathing room regarding preventing future deaths. It's a hopeful story that the anti-Trump opposition press is trying to squash. They can't have hope. That means Trump is doing something right. Protests erupt in state capitals nationwide over coronavirus restrictions. In Frankfort, Kentucky, a small-business owner wielded a microphone to accuse Gov. Andy Beshear of stifling free enterprise by shuttering businesses and ordering people to stay home. In Raleigh, North Carolina, a protester was arrested while a crowd urged Gov. Roy Cooper to ease his restrictions. In Oklahoma City, motorists circled the capitol decorated with signs imploring Gov. Kevin Stitt to put the state back to work. Ohio's new normal: Officials describe a hypervigilant, cautious future in coronavirus era. "It's going to be different," Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday, referring to an ever-vigilant future for the state of Ohio. The blunt reality is the coronavirus will linger until a vaccine is developed, the governor said, and it may be more than a year before the state and the nation return fully to normal. During a Tuesday afternoon [4/14/2020] news conference on the spread of COVID-19 across the state, DeWine and top health officials described a new world in the era of coronavirus — an era in which social distancing and wearing protective masks are the new norms. The Editor says... Trump [is] pulling off the impossible again. I am a pioneer of the Tea Party movement. Even patriots whom I fought side-by-side with are so filled with fear that they are willing to surrender their constitutional freedoms over to Democrat dictator governors. A friend said his 40-something-year-old son caught coronavirus and wrote funeral instructions. His son made a full recovery in four days. I am excited to announce that more and more people are finally realizing fake news media and health experts bludgeoning us with their lie that corona is the deadliest virus of all times is politically motivated. In the past, viruses have come and gone without worldwide attention. Instant internet worldwide communications could be the cause of the global shutdown. Countries and governors immediately began competing to implement the most overreaching draconian decrees. [...] I am delighted that the nationwide rebellion against unconstitutional coronavirus dictates has begun. In Michigan, citizens will launch "Operation Gridlock," a traffic jam protesting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's absurd overreaching shutdown. Citizens in North Carolina started a social media campaign titled, #ReOpenNC." They held a protest rally at which a woman was arrested. Like the black civil rights movement, people are willing to go to jail for their rights and freedom. A hot thread on twitter is #ReopenAmericaNow. Reopen rallies are popping up in Ohio, Utah and other states. What happened to the HIPAA laws? Operation Gridlock: Stay At Home Order Causes Huge Protest In Michigan. Michigan residents don't appreciate the government overreach by Concerned Karens and are out in the thousands today to protest Gov. Whitmer's totalitarian shutdown. Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan used a swipe of her pen to tell her residents to stay home. After weeks of impact by her overreach with the coronavirus shutdown, tens of thousands of Michigan citizens are responding to her demand by gridlocking the entire capitol city of Lansing. Wisconsin governor extends coronavirus stay-at-home order for over another month. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers extended the state's "Safer at Home" order from April 24 to May 26 on Thursday [4/16/2020], in an effort to continue fighting the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). [...] Evers instructed the state's Department of Health to carry out the directive, which will institute new safety measures but also allows for certain things to start up again, according to a press release. Coronavirus Authoritarianism Is Getting Out of Hand. Under what imperious conception of governance does Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer believe it is within her power to unilaterally ban garden stores from selling fruit or vegetable plants and seeds? What business is it of Vermont or Howard County, Indiana, to dictate that Walmart, Costco or Target stop selling "nonessential" items, such as electronics or clothing? Vermont has 628 cases of coronavirus as of this writing. Is that the magic number authorizing the governor to ban people from buying seeds for their gardens? [...] The criminalization of movement ends with 10 Philly cops dragging a passenger off a bus for not wearing a face mask. It ends with local Brighton, Colorado, cops handcuffing a father in front of his family for playing softball with his daughter in an empty park. It ends with three Massachusetts men being arrested, and facing the possibility of 90 days in jail, for crossing state lines and golfing — a sport built for social distancing — in Rhode Island. Protesters air shutdown grievances outside Kentucky capitol as governor gives coronavirus briefing. A group of angry demonstrators amassed Wednesday [4/15/2020] outside the state capitol building in Kentucky to voice their disdain for the closing of non-essential businesses to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus as Gov. Andy Beshear was inside the building making an announcement on the number of new deaths related to COVID-19. Holding signs that read "Our Businesses Pay Your Bills!!! Reopen Ky" and "China has declared war/Kick butt/Open doors," a few dozen protestors gathered outside the capitol building in Frankfurt to express their displeasure with Beshear, a Democrat, for the shuttering of businesses during the pandemic. Social media posts showed protesters chanting "We want to work." Dumb Policies Erode Public Support for Lockdown. [Scroll down] The protesters do not have to look far for examples, which are everywhere. Mayors in several Southern locales tried to prohibit drive-in church services before an outcry or court order got them to back down. In some cities, police have forcibly ejected people from subways for not using masks. In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer allowed Home Depot to stay open but forced it to close off parts of its stores. "I just don't understand," said one Michigander doing odd jobs. "You can put up drywall, but you just can't paint it right now because that's not essential." Most people understand that even basically sensible policies can be taken too far. But excess in enforcing social distancing poses special risks that deserve attention from government officials. The coronavirus and the new American middle. A justifiable fear drives public opinion. This anxiety is not limited to the virus. It extends to the economy and to the mechanisms of globalization that spread the disease. Infectious diseases are now the greatest threat in the eyes of the public. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and cyberattacks rank second, third, and fourth. China is fifth. The percentage of Americans who identify China as a major threat has risen 20 points in three years. Hawks have thought for a while that Americans would not recognize the danger of China without a showstopping event. Coronavirus is it. Coronavirus Crisis: Our Civil Liberties Are Being Crushed By Authoritarian Edicts. Driven by fear, panic, and irrational reliance on deeply flawed statistical "models," state governors and local leaders have dangerously jeopardized more than 200 years of constitutional rights and civil liberties with their imposition of mandatory mass quarantine orders. No exigent circumstances, however well-intentioned, can justify many of these authoritarian tactics employed to fight the COVID-19 contagion. While it is true that the law authorizes states to respond aggressively during health emergencies, such actions have limits. Restrictions must be rational, consistent, and justified. Power is abused when the government orders quarantines that are arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable because they arguably violate the 5th and 14th Amendments' rights of Due Process and Equal Protection. Some actions have violated the Bill of Rights. Four Michigan Sheriffs Say They Won't Enforce Governor's Totalitarian Orders. Four sheriffs in northern Michigan declared Wednesday [4/15/2020] they would not be enforcing recent executive orders signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer implemented to slow the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus in the state. Citing concerns over violating civil liberties, sheriffs Mike Borkovich, Ted Schendel, Ken Falk, and Kim Cole who protect counties along Lake Michigan in the northwest part of the mitten said in a joint statement that the governor "has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens." Mississippi Mayor Reverses Ban on Drive-in Church Services After DOJ Intervention. One day after the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting a Mississippi church in its lawsuit against the city government for a ban on drive-in worship services, the mayor relented, saying those types of gatherings are now acceptable. "Today, given the definitive guidance from the governor, in the city of Greenville we will allow drive-in and parking lot services in the city — so long as families stay in their cars with windows up," Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons said Wednesday in a press conference. The Democratic mayor said his decision came after speaking with Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who told local leaders across the state that drive-in services are OK so long as social distancing guidelines are followed. Texas doctor successfully treats 39 patients in senior home with hydroxychloroquine with zero side effects. A Texas doctor has treated 39 patients in a senior home with hydroxychloroquine after 56 residents came down with Covid-19 and says they are all doing well and on the mend. [Video clip] What Price Victory, in the Coronavirus War? The same day the number of U.S. dead from the coronavirus disease hit the 15,000 mark, we also crossed the 15 million mark on the number of Americans we threw out of work to slow its spread and "bend the curve." For each American lost to the pandemic, 1,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of conscious and deliberate decisions of the president and 50 governors. Some 60,000 citizens, we are told, will likely be lost in this pandemic. Are we prepared to accept 60 million unemployed to "mitigate" those losses? What price victory in this good and necessary war to kill the virus? Is it unseemly or coldhearted to ask? At what point do we "declare victory and get out," as one senator told us to do in Vietnam, rather than continue to sustain the U.S. war dead, even if that meant South Vietnam would fall to our common enemies? May 1st, That's The Day President Trump Plans to Reopen America's Economy. According to new reopening guidelines that were shared with governors on Thursday, President Trump has a set May 1st as a date to start getting Americans back to their normal lives. The "Opening Up America Again" guidelines say states which show a downward trend of COVID-19 cases will be able to re-open their restaurants, bars, theaters, workplaces, sporting centers and gyms as soon as May 1st. Before laying out the new guidelines President Trump told governors and state leaders on a conference call "You're gonna call your shots. Bottom line, if you're ready and you have those beautiful, low numbers like some of you have, let's get going, let's open up your state." [...] The guidelines are tiered into three phases: In Phase 1 non-essential travel is discouraged, bars should remain closed and visits to nursing homes and hospitals should remain prohibited, the guidelines warn. The Editor says... Horowitz report is enough to make J. Edgar Hoover blush. The good news these days is that all the most dire predictions in the media about coronavirus are turning up negative. All the "models" showing hundreds of thousands of Americans dying were just pipe dreams cooked up by globalist government bureaucrats and breathlessly peddled by the media. In truth, it now appears we have shut down the booming American economy in response to what amounts to a very bad flu season. That does not diminish the tragedy of each and every death; but it puts the larger pandemic into some perspective. Are We Witnessing a Targeted Hit Against Trump Voters? The debate about "reopening the economy" is a phony debate. It's phony because "the economy" isn't shut down. Far from it. Walmart is still open. Dollar General is open. Amazon is open. Alibaba is open. It just so happens that the big-box mass merchandisers and online retailers responsible for flooding our country with crap from Communist China are open. Meanwhile, other, very specific parts of the country are shut down. Family-owned shops and workshops, the backbone of America, are closed. Fast-food franchises remain open — drive-through windows are operating at full tilt — but independently owned restaurants are shuttered or trying to survive at diminished capacity doing takeout only. Conveniently, if not coincidentally, small-business owners make up an important segment of Trump's base. Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken the World? We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People's Republic of China leader Xi Jinping's actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China's actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China's obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits. Ex-Police Officer Arrested in Empty Park for Playing Catch with Daughter During Pandemic. A former Colorado State Patrol Trooper was arrested and handcuffed this week for playing catch with his six-year-old daughter during the Coronavirus crisis; prompting the Department to ultimately issue a formal apology. "In an incident caught on video, a former Colorado State Patrol trooper said he was handcuffed in front of his 6-year old daughter on a near-empty softball field Sunday by Brighton police officers enforcing social distancing rules. The department apologized Tuesday afternoon, calling the incident an 'overreach by our police officers," reports ABC News. Possible 'Imprisonment' Or Fine Of Up To $5,000 For Violating Maryland's Executive Order On Face Coverings. On Wednesday, during a COVID-19 press briefing, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced an executive order requiring citizens of the state to wear face masks or coverings while out in various public locations. Violation of the order could be punishable with a hefty fine or even prison time, according to the text. The order states that "a person who knowingly and willfully violates this Order is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to imprisonment not exceeding one year or a fine not exceeding $5,000 or both." How Much Do The Pelosi's Have Invested In China? President Trump announced Tuesday that he was immediately suspending funding to the World Health Organization (WHO). The State Department was otherwise poised to hand over to the WHO $893 million over the next two years. The President's move came in response to the actions of the WHO and particularly its Director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in defending China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Estimates are that 95% of the deaths worldwide from the ongoing pandemic could have been avoided had Chinese authorities not lied about the scope of the outbreak and had instead warned the world of the scope of the problem on their soil. In making the announcement that funding would be withheld the President also noted that an investigation was being launched into the actions of the WHO stating that the WHO had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures" and that the WHO was "China-centric." Suspending WHO Funding Should Be Just the Beginning. President Trump has announced a suspension of U.S. funding of the World Health Organization (WHO). This suspension was long overdue: the World Health Organization has been an ineffective and wasteful organization in desperate need of reform for at least a decade. Trump should go further, going on the warpath against this organization and committing to forcing reform on it, one way or another. The full argument against the WHO takes some explaining, but it involves several different elements: first, some education about what the WHO actually does, and, crucially, what it does not do. Second, a brief review of some of the WHO's recent hiccups and leadership problems. And, finally, an assessment of the WHO's COVID response. How Much Do The Pelosi's Have Invested In China? President Trump announced Tuesday that he was immediately suspending funding to the World Health Organization (WHO). The State Department was otherwise poised to hand over to the WHO $893 million over the next two years. The President's move came in response to the actions of the WHO and particularly its Director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in defending China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Estimates are that 95% of the deaths worldwide from the ongoing pandemic could have been avoided had Chinese authorities not lied about the scope of the outbreak and had instead warned the world of the scope of the problem on their soil. In making the announcement that funding would be withheld the President also noted that an investigation was being launched into the actions of the WHO stating that the WHO had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures" and that the WHO was "China-centric." Bread Lines Next? Maryland County Proposes Plan to Limit Grocery Shopping Trips Based on Last Names. A Maryland county is proposing assigning days that people are allowed to go to grocery and convenience stores based on what letter their last name begins with. Calvert County's voluntary plan would limit people's shopping to once every five days. The Hill reports that under the plan, A-C last names can shop on dates ending with 0 and 5, D-G names shop on dates ending with 1 and 6, [etc.] The Editor says... Rome Mayor Uses Drone to Hunt Down, Fine Jogger During Lockdown. Rome mayor Virginia Raggi boasted on social media this week that she used a drone to track down and eventually fine a jogger who violated the coronavirus lockdown. On Easter Monday [4/13/2020] in Rome, local police carried out more than 14,000 checks and issued 162 sanctions, Ms. Raggi has tweeted, adding that a runner on Rome's Appian Way tried to evade police but was tracked down with a drone and fined. Carnival Executives Knew They Had a Virus Problem, But Kept the Party Going. [Scroll down] But this wasn't Carnival's first outbreak, nor its last. In February, another of its ocean liners, the Diamond Princess, accounted for more confirmed Covid-19 infections than any nation except for China. Since then no cruise operator has been hit harder than Carnival. At least seven more of the company's ships at sea have become virus hot spots, resulting in more than 1,500 positive infections and at least 39 fatalities. Carnival notes that "other cruise companies have been impacted." Carnival's ships have become a floating testament to the viciousness of the new coronavirus and raised questions about corporate negligence and fleet safety. Civil disobedience can end the coronavirus stupidity. Most Americans, when first informed of the coronavirus, wanted to simply do the right thing and help their neighbors, help their communities and families, help their country. [...] Then things got stupid. Really stupid. Then government ran amok. The Americans saw tyrannical types, up close and personal, up close and in their own communities, seize powers the Constitution doesn't grant and run roughshod over the rights of individuals and business owners. And Americans saw how these tyrannies were taking place in the face of failed computer modeling that showed wildly inaccurate coronavirus numbers. "Michigan cracks down on seed purchases and tiny gatherings," The Post Millennial reported, of Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's ridiculous executive-issued prohibitions against the purchase of plant seeds and grains in the state — and against neighbors from visiting their next-door neighbors. Police state, anyone? This Isn't the Pandemic You're Looking For. [Scroll down] But it appears that many more lives will be affected by hardships invoked through the current economic freefall than the virus itself. Now is the time to practice appropriate risk assessment for our nation and allow its citizens to get back to work. One day, a pandemic of real consequence will sweep across the globe. People will need to be able to listen to adept and accurate warnings without wondering if they're hearing the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Thanks for the helpful tips, for which we pay $400 million a year. The Editor says... Why Trump Will Win the Post-Pandemic Election. It is by now obvious that the Democrats are determined to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in a last desperate attempt to get the president. [...] Meanwhile, the nation's Democratic governors refuse to ease their job-killing lockdowns, despite indications that the spread of COVID-19 has already passed its peak. The Democrats clearly hope that the resultant recession will cause Trump to lose in November. Protests draw thousands over state stay-at-home orders during coronavirus pandemic. Multiple states have seen protests as stay-a-home orders meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus continue. Many protesters were angry about the economic ramifications the restrictions are causing. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimate the Labor Department will report Thursday [4/16/2020] that 5.5 million Americans filed initial applications for unemployment insurance last week. The protests are occurring as President Donald Trump and governors debate over when states should loosen the restrictions put in place to ensure people practice social distancing. NYC Adds Nearly 4,000 People Who Never Tested Positive To Coronavirus Death Tolls. New York City added nearly 4,000 people who never tested positive for the coronavirus to its death toll Tuesday, bringing coronavirus-related deaths in the city to around 10,000 people. The city decided to add 3,700 people to its death tolls, who they "presumed" to have died from the virus, according to a report from The New York Times. The additions increased the death toll in the U.S. by 17%, according to the Times report, and included people who were suffering from symptoms of the virus, such as intense coughing and a fever. It appears that the lockdown and quarantine is and was unjustified. Resentment grows as governors pile on rules for reopening economy. The federal government has issued constantly evolving criteria for Americans to return to work safely during the coronavirus crisis, while various governors this week began adding their own layers of rules for reopening states for business — a process increasingly leading to partisan disputes in state capitals. [...] In the Northeast, seven governors led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are crafting their own rules for determining how and when it's safe to reopen. All but one of them are Democrats, and some of them are talking about keeping stay-at-home restrictions in place well into June. A Time for Statesmanship. President Trump was right to declare war on the contagious Chinese virus that has trespassed our borders and now threatens our lives and our livelihoods alike. President Trump was right to deploy medical experts within the federal bureaucracy whose job it is to advise and act in such situations and support their initial recommendations. Now it is time to propose a long-term political plan to the American people that will turn this crisis into a victory that revitalizes America. The "lockdowns" in many parts of our country are not a plan, but an understandable and plausible initial reaction to the virus. Most Americans understand, and have thus far willingly complied. Continuing in this manner indefinitely, however, ensures that our national security, peace, and happiness will be threatened by Great Depression II, what will become the Greater Depression. Fed-Up Michiganders Stage Massive Protest Against Whitmer's One-Size-Fits-All Lockdown. The people of Michigan are done being told they can't go check on their parents or buy "non-essential" goods like tomato seeds on the order of that woman, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who thinks she has magical powers to dictate to free people what they can or can't buy. Thousands of cars descended on Lansing Wednesday to bring the clear message that Michigan is still a free state, and its citizens have not suddenly lost their constitutional rights because of a viral pandemic. Hydroxychloroquine: A New Low for the Liberal Media. [Scroll down] The liberal Democrat media could possibly be afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome so severely that they can no longer think straight. Although conceivable, even the angriest CNN and MSNBC celebs or the ones with lowest SAT scores should sense, by instinct if nothing else, the non-viability of their jihad against hydroxychloroquine. Even lower life-forms can tell when they are too far out on a limb, as the lib-Dem media are on hydroxychloroquine. Even the media's reptilian-type collective brain can discern a threat to self-preservation. What if the drug works? What if it works as well as it appears to be working? That outcome would leave the lib-Dem media humiliated, with the meager remnants of their credibility in shambles. [...] The media know full well that scaring people away from using an effective medical treatment can cause fatal consequences. That, apparently, is their intention because they aggressively perpetrate cynical scare tactics nonetheless. Perhaps they despise Trump so much that they relish the prospect of more American coronavirus fatalities, just to damage the President. The rules are for you, not for him. Media Hope In COVID-19 They Finally Have The Event That Will Destroy Trump. Unable to chase Trump from office through Russia, Russia, Russia; impeachment; and incessant whining about the Electoral College, the media are now riding the coronavirus panic. If they could just convince the public the president is responsible for every COVID-19 death, that he acted too soon, and acted too slowly, that he's wielded too much power, and not enough, that he hasn't said enough, but now he's said too much, they could get their man elected in November. It's almost as if the press was working from a list of Get Trump bullet points. Showing a level of irresponsibility that borders on evil intent, the media have put in the overtime to poison malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Why? Because Trump said it "could be a game-changer" and held "tremendous promise" in the treatment of the Wuhan virus. But they can't allow him to be right, to have so obviously contributed to the solution. Why Did New York's Coronavirus Death Count Just Spike? Even in the face of a global pandemic and an unprecedented government-ordered economic shutdown, politicians are using their power to corrupt vital needed data regarding the Chinese coronavirus and its deadly toll on Americans. The latest escapade comes from America's "ground zero" for COVID-19 infections, New York, where the death tally just surpassed 10,000. Or did it? The New York Post explains how previously unreported deaths are now, suddenly being included in the city's death count, and the reasons deserve scrutiny: [...] The Stress Pandemic. Deliberately closing down the economy, which has never been done before, has created a more infectious, possibly more lethal disease than COVID-19. Let's call it the Stress Virus. For the Stress Pandemic there can be no vaccine. There is only one cure — more jobs, more economic growth. Federal, state, and local governments should immediately begin to open the economy. Conditions in states, cities, localities vary. State and local officials should act accordingly with a clear goal: remove restrictions as fast as prudently possible. On 4 Fronts, How China Quietly Infiltrates American Life. If it wasn't already clear before the coronavirus outbreak, China is particularly aggressive in how it tries to control the spread of information, not just in regard to its own citizens, but people around the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic has put these efforts on overdrive. One eye-opener came when President Donald Trump got aggressive last week with a reporter from Phoenix Television, who first stated that Chinese companies such as Huawei and Alibaba have donated supplies to the U.S. Then she asked the president: "Are you cooperating with China?" Trump responded by asking if she worked for China or if her company is owned by the Chinese state. Despite her denial, the answer essentially is "yes." But Beijing's influenc |
