Tag Archives: Emory University

Not Surprising

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There are still enough rumblings around about the 2020 presidential election to cause me to wonder if we will ever know the truth. Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some new information that further indicates that there could have been massive cheating.

The article reports:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) said on Friday that 82,766 mail ballots sent to voters in Wisconsin’s November 2020 presidential election “went missing or undeliverable,” a number more than four times greater than Joe Biden’s 20,682 vote certified margin of victory in the state.

More than 1.6 million votes were cast in the November 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, and Biden’s certified margin of victory was just 1.2 percent of all votes cast.

The article continues:

“83K mail ballots went missing or undeliverable amid 20k vote margin of victory in WI 2020 Presidential,” the headline read in a statement that accompanied the release of a report by PILF on Friday morning.

“We now know the cost of the rush to mail balloting – lost ballots. The federal data show the 2020 election had more mail ballots that were never counted than the margin of victory in the Presidential election in Wisconsin. This isn’t the way to run an election. Mail ballots invite error, disenfranchisement of voters, and puts the inept U.S. Post Office determining the outcome of elections,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in the statement.

The report showed that, unlike the results of the 2012 and 2016, the number of “missing or undeliverable” mail ballots in 2020 exceeded the margin of victory in the election to determine which presidential candidate would be awarded the state’s ten electoral college votes.

In 2020, for instance, 1.4 million ballots were mailed to Wisconsin voters, which was 86 percent of the 1.6 million votes cast. (emphasis added)

In 2005 the bi-partisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican who served in the George H.W. Bush administration, analyzed the US election system and made recommendations to preserve election integrity.

The website pure integrity for Michigan elections notes the following:

The Carter Center, founded by the former president and first lady Rosalynn Carter, is affiliated with Emory University and promotes peace and democracy efforts globally and domestically. 

A Carter Center press release in May said the commission report “noted among its many findings and recommendations that because it takes place outside the regulated environment of local polling locations, voting by mail creates increased logistical challenges and the potential for vote fraud, especially if safeguards are lacking or when candidates or political party activists are allowed to handle mail-in or absentee ballots.”

“However, the Carter-Baker Commission found that where safeguards for ballot integrity are in place—for example in Oregon, where the entire state has voted by mail since 1998—there was little evidence of voter fraud,” the Carter Center statement continued. 

The commission’s main recommendations on vote-by-mail and absentee voting were to increase research on vote-by-mail (and early voting) and to eliminate the practice of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots.  

We need to look at the reforms the Commission recommended and put them in place.

Don’t Look For This Information In The Mainstream Media

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The Epoch Times posted an article today with the following headline, “Most Recovered COVID-19 Patients Have Broad, Robust Immunity That Likely Provides Some Protection Against Variants: Study.” Then why are people who have recovered from the virus being encouraged to get the vaccine?

The article reports:

Most people who have recovered from COVID-19, even with mild illness, retain a broad and durable immunity to the disease, including some degree of protection against its variants, according to an Emory University study published in the journal, Cell Reports Medicine.

The longitudinal study, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, involved 254 COVID-19 patients, between the ages of 18 to 82 years, who provided blood samples at various points for a period of over eight months beginning in April 2020. About 71 percent of the patients had mild disease, 24 percent experienced moderate illness, and five percent had severe disease.

The researchers found that most of the patients who recovered mounted a strong and wide-ranging immune response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus for up to 250 days.

“We saw that antibody responses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast majority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated, which suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,” Rafi Ahmed, director at Emory Vaccine Center and lead author told Emory News Center on July 22.

The article concludes:

The authors also found that COVID-19 recovered patients displayed stable antibody responses to the other human coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV).

“These data are most consistent with the generation of long-lived plasma cells and refute the current notion that these antibody responses to human coronaviruses are short lived,” the researchers said. “Moreover, the COVID-19 patients mounted increased IgG antibody responses to SARS-CoV-1, a related pathogen that none likely had experienced previous exposure to.”

The researchers will continue to follow the cohort for several years, with the last sample collection of the participants set for February 2023. Doing so allows the researchers to gather more data to “define the progression to long-lived immunity” to the CCP virus after natural infection.

The findings add to the growing body of research that indicates that recovered COVID-19 patients develop long-lasting immunity.

A limitation of the study is that it didn’t include more severe COVID-19 patients and those who are asymptomatic. However, the authors noted that “mild-moderate illness accounts for [more than] 80 percent of COVID-19 cases, highlighting the relevance of our findings over time.”

The authors said that the study’s findings will “also serve as a benchmark for immune memory induced in humans by SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.”

If my having had COVID-19 means that I will be less likely to get a cold this winter, then it was worth it! Seriously, COVID-19 is serious and not to be taken lightly, but anyone who has not yet taken the vaccine needs to weigh very carefully the risk/benefit ratio. Getting COVID-19 was not a pleasant experience, and I am grateful that my case did not include serious complications, but one problem with this virus is that no one can predict how it will impact a particular person. I am in a high-risk group, yet I did not experience severe symptoms. I strongly encourage anyone who has not yet taken the vaccine to do their own research to determine what is best for them as an individual.

How Much Does It Cost?

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The Daily Signal posted an article today about single-payer health care. This was one of the signature issues of the Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President and is still being considered in some states.

The article reports:

Earlier this year, Sanders introduced a big and comprehensive “Medicare for All” proposal that would create a government-controlled health care system at the national level. The plan has gained momentum among Senate Democrats, but has also slammed into a fiscal reality check.

Three independent estimates from a diverse range of health care economists and policy analysts have highlighted the enormous additional cost of Sanders’ proposal. The liberal Urban Institute estimated that the 10-year costs would amount to a stunning $32 trillion, while the conservative Mercatus Center at George Mason University put the cost at $32.6 trillion.

Professor Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, used a different set of assumptions and set the 10-year price tag at $24.7 trillion.

Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center said his own $32.6 trillion estimate made generous concessions for the purposes of calculation, and he accepted Sanders’ assumptions that the proposal would also generate savings, such as massive payment reductions to doctors and other medical professionals.

Blahous added that more realistic assumptions underlying estimates of the Sanders legislation would likely push the total taxpayer price tag even higher than $32.6 trillion.

The article mentions what has happened to state efforts to institute single-payer programs:

Officials in Sander’s home state of Vermont tried to make their state the first in the nation to create a “single payer” health care system. The ambitious proposal died after the costs were made known. According to an official state analysis, the proposal would have cost a total of $4.3 billion, with the state cost reaching $2.6 billion. As The Boston Globe noted, the entire Vermont budget in 2015 was just $4.9 billion. The state would have to increase the state personal income tax to 9.5 percent and add an 11.5 percent payroll tax.

Same problems with Colorado. Voters overwhelmingly rejected a Colorado ballot initiative to create a government-controlled health care system. That’s no surprise. According to an independent analysis, the proposed program, funded by an increase in state taxes, would still run an estimated deficit of $7.8 billion by 2028.

Even liberal California legislators have struggled to advance a “single payer” program. Their proposal has stalled, lacking the necessary legislative support. Again, this was not surprising given the cost. A California State Senate report concluded that the cost would total $400 billion and the state would have to raise $200 billion in new taxes.

There are things to consider other than cost. People in countries with single-payer often come to America for health care–it’s not that we are cheaper–we are not–but health care is available here. In Britain, people sometimes wait more than a year for heart surgery. Often they die while waiting. The free market works–even in health care. If America wants to improve its health care and reduce the cost, it needs to introduce the free market. That means getting rid of over-regulation by the government. There should be basic safety standards imposed by the government, but that should be the end of it. The free market works.

Duke Raises Its Student Fees–But Not Because Of Educational Expenses

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On Tuesday a website called Campus Reform posted an article stating that Duke University has raised its student fees by 0.3 this year. The increase was put in place to cover sexual reassignment surgery for students. There is a limit of $50,000 on the coverage of the surgery.

The article reports:

The official plan is in-line with a Student Government Resolution passed last March that called upon the school to cover sex change operations. The school previously covered mental health care, hormone therapy and breast augmentation and reduction surgery to students who wished to change their gender.

There are 37 universities in America that cover sex change operations, according to TransgenderLaw.org. Emory University is the only other college in the Southeast, besides Duke, to offer sexual reassignment surgery to students.

What in the world is going on in our universities?

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