"People without fevers, coughs, sneezes cannot transmit COVID-19."

One person you can depend on to give up-to-date comprehensive overviews of key items in the news is Clarice Feldman. She writes today in the American Thinker about many subjects, as is her custom.

...We were led to believe that even asymptomatic persons could transmit the virus. We now learn that isn't true and was based on a false account. People without fevers, coughs, sneezes cannot transmit COVID-19.

...People who live in Beverly Hills, California, however, just got a big break. Local authorities are now allowing plastic surgeries in their hospitals to resume. (Tell the Indiana farmers whose hospital is about to close for good, that treacly, meaningless nonsense beloved of corporate p.r. spinners everywhere, “We’re all in this together.”)

What began as a short-term admonition to wash our hands frequently and use social distancing to flatten the curve so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed by the many anticipated patients predicted by the epidemiological models became, in the hands of too many politicians, a right to rule, picking those who could live (“essential” businesses) and those who would die (“non-essential” businesses), a made-to-order graft opportunity. Which religions could meet (Moslems in Syracuse, NY) and which could not (Christian or Jewish congregations in NYC), in effect choosing essential religions from non-essential ones.

Some governors and mayors expanded and extended the restrictions, and the arbitrary nature of these became apparent. In Maryland, the owner of a drive-through car wash was cited for violating the lockdown rules. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom opened some beaches to the public but not those in Orange County, apparently on the basis of a fake news account and without contacting local officials. In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order seems remarkably like imprisonment. She has banned motorized boating, purchases of infant car seats and gardening supplies, and a drive-in movie theater was cited for violating her directives. Does she imagine the virus travels from closed car to closed car? If so, she may soon shut down Michigan’s roads (and car factories).

...We were willing to adopt minimal restrictions -- even some more stringent ones -- when the length of the disruption was short term and the data about the virus so uncertain. The data are far less uncertain now. It should come as no surprise that rebellions are growing in response to this unjustifiable and often totally arbitrary exercise of state executive power. In Michigan, hundreds of protestors (some armed, as the law of the state allows) protested inside the state capitol in Lansing.

While promulgating and enforcing (often arbitrarily) lockdown rules, many of the same political figures, actually have made infectious rates soar. Governor Andrew Cuomo certainly has. He just got around this week to beginning a program to disinfect the subways, a known vector for the spread of the virus, and he inexplicably had ordered nursing homes, where we all know the most vulnerable are housed, to accept COVID-19 patients, even as he refused the nursing homes permission to transfer infected residents of nursing homes to the hospital ship the president and military went to such great lengths to promptly navigate there. He has reduced subway hours but not removed the homeless encamped on them, forcing already beset passengers to move into even more crowded subway cars to avoid the stench.

We can say with dismal certainty that shutdowns have destroyed millions of jobs nationwide. But despite the gargantuan costs, it remains unclear whether mandated shutdowns have any long term benefits at all compared to voluntary measures to keep clean hands and surfaces, avoid touching faces, and maintain social distancing.

Not to be outdone by Governor Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the city’s police force to prioritize 311 calls over 911 ones. That means if you are reporting a neighbor for standing too close to someone, the cops will come to the site before they come to an ongoing attempted homicide. My advice to New Yorkers under attack is to call 311 and say, “Someone not wearing a mask is trying to kill me.” Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait your turn.

Read more here.