Having read that Massachusetts was experiencing a surge in COVID cases, I just checked the MA COVID dashboard and found the below. Shouldn’t this information be more readily available in the news? It strongly suggests that an isolation strategy focused on the most vulnerable would help a lot!Read more here.
New video evidence proves that accuser Tara Reade was forced out of her job as a senate staffer for 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, Reade told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday.Read more here.
The 56-year-old Reade had previously told The Intercept that her mother called into “Larry King Live” on CNN regarding Biden’s alleged assault. A transcript obtained by The Intercept, as well as a video uncovered by the Media Research Center, show that someone from her mother’s city did indeed call into CNN in 1993 and asked for advice about her daughter’s problems with a “prominent senator.”
Reade reminded the DCNF that she had told reporters that her mother called the Larry King show about her alleged assault.
...Reade worked as a Senate staffer for Biden in 1993 and has accused the then-senator of kissing her, touching her and penetrating her with his fingers without her consent. The Biden campaign has denied the assault and said it “absolutely did not happen.”
...The Intercept’s Ryan Grim discussed Reade’s comments during a podcast interview with Katie Halper, who first aired Reade’s allegations.
After the podcast aired, a listener located the transcript of a call very similar to the one Reade had referenced. The transcript of the call was dated Aug. 11, 1993, the publication reported, noting that congressional records show that August 1993 was the last month of Reade’s employment with Biden’s Senate office.
In the transcript of the Larry King program titled “Washington: The Cruelest City on Earth,” King introduced a caller from San Luis Obispo, California — the California city where Reade’s mother resided, according to The Intercept.
Sedalia knife shop owner Hal Van Herke on Tuesday posted a Declaration of Business Independence on Facebook saying he would reopen CastleGate Knife and Tool Tuesday in defiance of Governor Polis’ stay-at-home order.Read more here.
Van Herke’s declaration says in part:
“WHEREAS: Small businesses have carried the burden of this effort more heavily than special interests, large corporations and major banks who once again received preferential treatment and largess from the Federal Government at the further cost of small business taxpayers, and
WHEREAS: Non-essential Government, Academic, and Corporate staff continue to remain unconscionably fully paid at the same time that Small Business, the Self Employed and the Unemployed suffer, and
WHEREAS: Our attempts at petition and righteous redress, to Our Government has fallen on uncaring ears, and in some cases has been actively suppressed, and
WHEREAS: We refuse to become second-class citizens, beholden to the entitled class for our safety, freedom, and wellbeing, and
WHEREAS: We have the ability to operate our business in such a manner as to reduce and mitigate the risk to our Community, Customers, and Staff, and to adjust operations in a responsible and balanced manner commensurate with local conditions.”
“What we’re going to be doing is have our staff wearing masks. We’re going to ask our customers to wear masks. If they don’t have a mask we’re going to have masks available they can purchase at a reasonable price. We’re also asking them to use hand sanitizer before they enter the store and then when they leave,” said Van Herke. “We feel along with controlling the number of people in the store and social distancing that should provide an adequate guard against transmission of the virus.”
Van Herke points out that the Second Amendment protects all “arms” not just firearms, and believes this means edged weapons as well.
“We believe that we are an essential business,” Van Herke said. “We believe that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms and that includes not only firearms but also knives and other means of self-defense.”
In his declaration, Van Herke quotes President Ronald Reagan’s farewell address of January 11, 1989 in which Reagan says, “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Good morning, kids. Friday, and another grim milestone of yet another day of America held hostage. Let me start off by declaring here and now that come this November, I will gladly crawl over molten lava, eat ground glass washed down with a mug of battery acid, and contemplate necrophilia with the moldering bones of Helen Thomas to vote for Donald Trump. That said, I am not a blinkered true believer and have always held the position that if and when he does something wrong, I'm not going to behave like a typical Democrat to circle the wagons and place the blame elsewhere. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced that the situation in his state warrants the lifting of the lockdown and the start of a return to a normal routine. He is not ordering people back to work, nor is he mandating they exchange bodily fluids, as the Democrat-Media Complex is implying. It's highly suggested that people continue to exercise common sense hygiene, but they have the freedom to choose whether or not to open and/or patronize businesses. I can hear Charlie Gibson now - "Individual freedom to choose? Never heard of it."Go here to read his links.
Unfortunately, President Trump has decided to join the bandwagon and criticize Governor Kemp for his decision, albeit much less harshly than the usual suspects. But it's just as damaging, perhaps even more so, because it runs contrary to the President's own decision to leave these policies to the governors in the first place. Worse, it legitimizes the Left's shifting goalpost narrative that everyone must remain in suspended animation until we have a cure, until there are no more deaths, no new cases, or until we achieve total world peace, love and understanding; i.e. never.
It is now evident that this virus, though nastier than most, never was and is never going to be the Andromeda Strain Black Death. The original predictions and models were about as close to reality as the past 50 years of prognostications about global warming, which originally predicted Manhattan under 1,000 feet of ice. The other myth that the lockdown mitigated the spread of the disease has also been exploded since evidence from Stanford and NYC that millions might have been infected weeks or months before the lockdowns and travel bans, and the resultant herd immunity mitigated mass death, just like with every other flu season or severe viral outbreak in the past. Doubt me? See the link about Sweden. As for "bending the curve," that never meant preventing infection and death; it meant slowing the rate of those things to keep hospitals from being overrun. And that never happened since hospitals and medical professionals are facing closure and mass layoffs as much as anyone else. Huge numbers were infected, many got sick, sadly some died and will continue to die... and at least 98% of them recovered completely.
Naturally, the "experts" will poo-poo the facts in evidence and the Left, sensing the opportunity for a national kill shot are not going to relent. But frustratingly and now alarmingly, the President continues to play along. Yes, it's great that he's calling out the media and blasting China as well as the intransigent Democrats. But it doesn't amount to much because by accepting their narrative, he's playing cricket on a hockey rink. I get the fact that he, and we, may have been initially frightened and bamboozled into the lockdowns. And G-d bless Trump, it's not in his nature to admit mistakes. But by going along with this bullshit and accepting the premise that Brian Kemp is acting hastily or recklessly is just flat out wrong and dangerous.
I think the President needs to do what he does best, and that is communicate. While the optics perhaps of firing Dr. Falsie would be sub-optimal to say the least, he has to have some other epidemiologists who can counter him. The other thing he can do is to cite the new evidence that this virus is nowhere near as lethal as we thought it might have been and most importantly shift the focus of these daily press conferences away from the drumbeat of viral doom and gloom and make it about Lifting the Lockdowns and Reopening the Country. Look, people are going to die and for sure the Democrat-Media Complex will make the first death post the return to normalcy the Horst Wessel albatross to hang on Trump's neck. But all across the country, red states and blue, people are fed up and are desperate. If anything, the political winds are at the President's back on this. All he has to do is hoist his sails and tell it like it is. As has been his wont to do since he came down the Trump Tower escalator five years ago.
Yes, the onus is on the governors to lift the lockdowns, but by standing by the governors, mayors and county executives that do lift them, the political pressure will be on the Democrat-Fascist tyrants that refuse. The sight of Trump and Pence visiting reopened states will be the psychological boost the country desperately needs. And when blue staters see the rest of the nation getting back on its feet while their life savings, pensions and businesses disintegrate in front of their eyes, a good many will turn their ire on the likes of Whitmer, Cuomo, Newsom, Murphy and the rest of the Grating Bi-Coastal Covid-Non-Prosperity Sphere.
But if Trump does not change course, and fast, he's going to be in serious trouble this November and risks not only losing this election, but sinking the nation into an abyss from whence we will never emerge.
The time to change course and lead us out of this nightmare is now, Mr. President. You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists.
Again, exactly what have the Democrats done that disputes the hypothesis that they seek to ratchet up the pain for cheap political advantage? They’ve trashed and undermined the president. They’ve flacked for the Red Chinese and the WHO hacks. They’ve fought tooth and nail against the aid small businesses need. They’ve been the #resistance to reopening America.Read more here.
Actions speak louder than words, and the Democrats’ actions shriek, “Your family’s security being destroyed is a small price to pay for us regaining power.”
Read more here.
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 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded "age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization." Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.
Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response — antibodies — so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.” Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases — to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy. That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group — older people and others with underlying conditions — is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.
On Tuesday, an Idaho mother was arrested in front of her children for refusing to leave a playground that was apparently closed by the city due to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.Go here to read more.
Video of the confrontation shows a woman later identified as Sarah Brady, 40, being cuffed for refusing to leave an area playground. “Do it,” Brady dared an officer threatening to arrest her.
“Her kids are here! Her kids are here! What is going to happen? Who’s got her kids?” another woman at the playground can be heard saying as Brady is taken away in handcuffs.
...There is indeed a plague upon this nation. It is the Globalist Left that includes the Democrat Party, the propagandist media, governmental bureaucracy, academia and anyone and everyone who support it. Ronald Reagan once said:Go here to read and click on his links.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
You tell me if what is going on right here and right now is not an extinction-level event. Because it sure as hell is. Tick-tock-tick-tock.
Not for the first time, I have been to led to wonder why a practice that is so patently antisocial should have been baptized ‘social distancing’. What’s social about it?Read more here.
‘But a couple of weeks ago you said there would only be hundreds of deaths.’ Yes, I did. I got that wrong, but just how wrong is not clear. Dr. John Lee, writing in The Spectator, made the important point that there is ‘a big difference between COVID-19 causing death, and COVID-19 being found in someone who died of other causes’. Indeed. It is one thing to die from the effects of the coronavirus, quite another to die with the virus. If you are 87 and ailing and are infected, your chances are not good. But who’s to say whether you died from the virus or that congestive heart failure you’d been battling all these years?
...Let me be clear. The CCP virus is a nasty bug. People should exercise caution. They should wash their hands frequently, etc. If they are in one of the few hot spots — New York City above all — they should be especially careful. But remember, 2.8 million people die every year in the US. The seasonal flu hospitalizes hundreds of thousands every year and kills anywhere up to 80,000. Overall deaths this season are actually down because of the coronavirus: people are not out and about as much, so fewer have died. In one sense, then, it has been a lifesaver. The panic surrounding it, on the contrary, has been a lethal assault. It’s too soon to say what the fatality rate of our insane overreaction will be. It will be many months, maybe years, before the tally of lives blighted, as well as lives ended, can be toted up.
The White House budget office has told federal agencies to redirect World Health Organization funds to groups that do similar work, indicating a 60-day suspension of WHO funding ordered by President Trump will be permanent.Read more here.
The funds will flow instead to outfits such as the Red Cross and Samaritan’s Purse after Trump said Tuesday the WHO needed reform after failing to vet coronavirus data from China, contributing to a pandemic that infected more than 650,000 US residents.
Locked at home, we face a crisis of mundane absurdity—and a challenge to craft an art of living.Read more here.
...And the contrast between nature at a time of exploding, blossoming colors and the drawn faces of passersby is stupefying.
...Paris, like Rome or Madrid, has become the set of a horror film, but your monster is your neighbor, and you are his.
...One might say that our time has created the sickness that reflects it. Just yesterday, we feared the stranger; now we dread the renter on our floor. We have gone from agoraphobia—the fear of open, borderless spaces without guard rails—to claustrophobia, the feeling of being incarcerated in one’s own home. Now the world is more present to itself than ever. For the first time, we are contemporaries of our contemporaries in real-time, in Iran or Argentina as in Korea. Globalization by pandemic has replaced globalization by trade.
...Let’s maintain some perspective: this is not the Black Plague, nor the Nazi occupation, and still less the situation of a hostage captured by terrorists. But it is our present challenge, and it is unprecedented. It is not up to us to conquer this illness, but at most just to slow its spread. Our part, instead, is to rise to the occasion, whatever happens. Every day is a discreet battle against doubt and discouragement. It is important in exceptional times not to let oneself go, but to carry on “as if”—to dress as if social life continued, to tidy up the house as if guests were expected, to decorate rooms, prepare delicious dinners—in a word, to carry on.
...We are not equal in the face of boredom. Some defeat it by perpetual distractions; others use it to dive into a fertile reverie—these are the aristocrats of the interior life. This aristocracy is in principle open to all, being independent of riches and of birth. It consists in a mental hygiene that orders us to find within ourselves the resources needed to survive. The perception of time has changed; it is no longer oriented toward a goal but toward our improbable deliverance. There is no longer any Sunday or Monday; each day is a single day that resembles all the others in a perpetual present. What threatens us, as much as illness, is the specter of dissolution, the tempest of languid hours. Each of us deploys a thousand ruses in order to escape monotony: some transform their living room into a gym, their driveway into a running track, and move their bed into the hallway just for a change. Others exchange poems, or songs. We even hear of couples making love on the balcony to defy propriety, while across the street, music lovers improvise arias. Ingenious competitions take place, thanks to the telephone or video-streaming. A thousand jokes circulate online, including some that, we must admit, reveal a touch of nonsensical genius. Historians will tell us later how populations developed a mental immunity against fear, or how they built for themselves an interior fortress in order to repress sadness and allow the entry only of beauty, talent, humor, the unusual, and testimonies of love and friendship. And so we find ourselves, in our seclusion, forced to craft an art of living, to transform confinement into freedom. Our calamity is also an opportunity.
Some doctors on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic are having success treating COVID-19 patients with a simple technique called 'proning.' The term basically means putting a patient in the prone position, or "flat on their belly with their chest and face down, rather than on their back,” Jack Stewart, MD, a pulmonologist with St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California, tells Health.Read more here.
Proning requires little or no equipment, and the technique may prove to help patients who are critically ill avoid being put on ventilators for breathing assistance.
Why does proning work? Flipping a patient on their stomach helps respiration because “oxygenation (getting more oxygen into the blood) is easier in the prone position," says Dr. Stewart. It's a function of anatomy, as the human body has more lung tissue in the back of the body than in the front. The coronavirus causes abnormal fluids and secretions to pool toward the back, where there's more lung tissue, and leads to greater interference with lung function.
“When a patient is in the prone position, gravity helps the secretions move downward, so more of the ‘good’ lung is on top and therefore less affected,” Harry Peled, MD, a medical director in critical care at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, California, tells Health.
Proning is also an effective treatment for a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening complication of coronavirus infection that manifests as shortness of breath and quickly progresses. A study published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that more than 40% of individuals in the study hospitalized for severe and critical COVID-19 developed ARDS—and over 50% of those diagnosed died from the disease.
ARDS poses a risk to patients who have influenza, pneumonia, and pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs from heart disease) as well. “Proning has been used to treat ARDS for a number of years,” says Dr. Stewart. A 2013 study by French doctors published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients suffering from ARDS had a lower risk of death if prone positioning was used in the hospital early on.
If COVID-19 resurges at the peak of flu season this winter, the health care system will be even more strained than it is now, CDC director Redfield warns.Read more here.
...The first wave of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has already killed nearly 46,000 people across the country since the first known U.S. case was reported in January. The outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and exposed huge shortages of test kits and personal protective equipment like masks and gowns for health care workers.
...Second, the country needs to massively scale up testing and contact tracing (individuals exposed to infected people) so that new COVID-19 cases can be identified before they become larger outbreaks. And finally, Redfield said, U.S. health officials must spend the summer months persuading citizens about the importance of getting flu shots in the fall, in order to minimize the number of flu-related hospitalizations.
As Redfield puts it, getting a flu vaccination this year "may allow there to be a hospital bed available for your mother or grandmother that may get coronavirus."
