Tag Archives: Covid

Economic Vulnerability

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

A strong economy is essential to the security of any nation. Not only to provide a reasonable standard of living for its citizens, but as protection from external adversaries. This was never more evident than in World War II when American industrial might saved the world from fascist tyranny.  As the “Arsenal of Democracy,” America provided the military equipment and weapons without which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would have succeeded in their wars of conquest. This was made possible, in large part, by the conversion of existing factories producing consumer goods to producing military hardware. Unfortunately, the American economy does not have the dominant manufacturing capabilities that we once had.

Let’s look at manufacturing in America today. It is difficult to find any manufactured product nowadays that is not labeled “Made in China.” In 1980, 22% of jobs in the U.S. were in manufacturing; now that percentage is 8%. Just this past July, 24,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. In addition, many factories are owned by foreign entities. The recent approval by the Biden/Harris administration to allow the purchase of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company is a perfect example of what has been occurring. Not only has this been occurring in the manufacturing sector, but with pharmaceuticals as well. Many Americans were shocked during the COVID crisis to find out that most of our essential medications are manufacture overseas. A disruption in the supply chain signaled what could happen if a global conflict occurred.

Recently, we have begun to rely on imports of essential food products. A recent article in the Epoch Times reported that thousands of U.S. cattle raising operations have gone out of business. This appears to be due to increasing imports of beef from Mexico and South America as well as the burden of green energy demands imposed on U.S. farmers. In addition, China has been greatly expanding its commercial fishing fleet. Like many things done by China, they are violating international restrictions. China was described as the world’s “biggest perpetrator of illegal fishing.” Not only does China have over 3,000 commercial fishing vessels deployed worldwide, but they pay poor countries to allow them to fly those countries flags so they can fish in their local waters. They are putting our fishing sector out of business and destroying fish stocks.

It should concern every American that our economy can no longer support our needs. Former President Trump recently announced his intention to reverse this dependency on foreign countries. One way is to give tax incentives to American corporations to return production to this county and cancel the green new deal. So far, no comments from the Harris campaign on this critical issue.

Not Surprising

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On Friday, PJ Media posted an article about the misuse of Covid funds by the state of Minnesota. Minnesota was not the only state to misuse those funds, but since their Governor is running for Vice-President, it is interesting to see what he did with the money.

The article reports:

Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) spent money using pandemic relief funds that could have easily come from the state’s general budget. It’s not a crime. But don’t you think it gives us an idea of what kind of a politician he is?

Reason.com:

A few of the biggest line items should also get more scrutiny, though there is limited information available on the Treasury’s site. For example, the state distributed more than $11 million to the Minnesota Zoo and nearly $3.8 million to the Science Museum of Minnesota to cover operating and maintenance costs. In some ways, that is connected to the pandemic: Fear of the disease and government social distancing mandates certainly harmed museums and zoos. The same could be said of the $237,000 line item for a “movie theater relief grant program.”

But Walz should be asked why he believes federal taxpayers—who may not live in Minnesota or ever visit the state—should be on the hook to pay for that.

As Reason has reported over the past few years, the federal bailout of state and local governments after the pandemic was largely unnecessary, and many governments have struggled to find ways to use the $350 billion in free cash distributed by the ARP. A good chunk of the funds have been put to questionable use, including subsidizing money-losing, government-owned golf courses, padding the paychecks of public employees, and funding tourism promotion campaigns.

The article concludes:

Until someone — not Congress — begins investigating this massive misuse of government power and taxpayer money, we’re in danger of having history repeat itself when the next national health emergency is upon us.

We need someone in Washington who has some respect for the taxpayers’ pocketbooks!

The Legacy Of The Biden Presidency

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On Saturday, The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece evaluating President Biden’s legacy as President. It wasn’t a real positive article.

The article notes:

Leaving aside whether or not the country needed saving from Trump, Biden has not “done an excellent job as president,” as claimed by the sweetly generous New York Times. If he is “one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history,” as the dulcet-tongued Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said when he asked Biden to step aside, those consequences have been overwhelmingly negative.

I guess Schiff believes that flattery will get you everywhere.

The article continues:

Biden could have been remembered as a president who united the country and passed the baton to a new generation of leadership. To do this, he needed to govern as a commonsense centrist and then stick to his word and pass the baton. The economy was already adding 1.4 million jobs a month before Biden was sworn into office. If he had simply speeded the reopening of the economy after the COVID shutdowns, he would have presided over strong, equitable economic growth.

Instead, he allowed fawning historians to convince him he could be the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. This manipulated by the Left, he pushed for massive and unneeded spending on a purely partisan basis, sending inflation through the roof and thus punishing vulnerable workers. As a direct result of Biden’s partisan overspending, consumers have accumulated $12.8 trillion in housing debt, $1.62 trillion in car debt, and $1.1 trillion in credit card debt, all record highs. According to the latest Federal Reserve Economic Well-Being survey, inflation has worsened the finances of 65% of people, including 19% who said it was “much worse.” Almost one-fifth of adults, 17%, said they could not pay all their bills in the month before the survey was taken.

No wonder voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy by 20 points.

The article concludes:

It is hard to see how Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, a politically rushed maneuver that got 13 American service members killed, did not encourage Russian aggression. And while Biden has done some good in managing NATO’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, he has been slow and indecisive in getting Ukraine the weapons it needs to push invading Russian troops out.

Then there are the divisive actions Biden has taken on forcing women’s dorms and bathrooms to take in men, forcing consumers to buy electric cars, and selectively prosecuting his political opponents.

There is a reason — indeed many reasons — that Biden has the lowest approval rating among presidents at this point in his presidency: He is a bad president. No amount of flattery from the New York Times or Democrats eager to push him out of his reelection campaign is going to change that.

Biden must go not because his legacy is splendid but because he has been an unmitigated calamity for America.

That pretty much sums it up!

Stopping Transgenderism

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

The United States was once known for introducing the rest of the world to technological improvements that benefited all mankind. We are now, sadly, known for introducing destructive ideas. One case in point is transgenderism, which is the doctrine that a person can be any gender they choose, regardless of whether they were born male or female. America is leading the charge on this false doctrine. Now, other countries are choosing not to follow this absurd notion.

A recent article appearing in the Epoch Times reported that in April, the Cass Review was published in the United Kingdom. Described as “The most comprehensive summary on transgender youth medicine,” the review, chaired by Dr. Hillary Cass, British honorary physician and president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, stated that there was “insufficient evidence to demonstrate the long-term benefits of medicalizing children who want to identify as a different gender”. In short, they concluded that children should not be given hormones, puberty blockers, and other medical treatments that alter the physical characteristics of their birth gender. Instead, they should be considered for psychotherapy to address why they are dissatisfied with being their birth gender. It was noted in this extensive study that many of the children who express a desire to change their birth gender have other identifiable mental disorders such as depression and autism. It was also reported that most children grow out of their gender dysphoria over time, many without any treatment. Evidence also did not support the belief that prescribing hormones reduced the risk of suicide; quite the opposite is true, with children going through gender transition having a higher rate of suicide than non-transitioning children.

As a result of this science based information, the United Kingdom joins other countries such as Sweden and Norway in banning hormone treatment for minors. The Cass Review noted that the United States remains the main driver of hormone treatments for gender dysphoria, even though 18 conservative controlled states have implemented laws prohibiting this practice. The recent trend to place mental health social workers in public schools should raise a red flag to parents, since most of them would undoubtedly favor facilitating children’s expressed desire for gender change. The Biden regime’s recent efforts to change the wording of Title IX to prevent gender discrimination rather than the original intention to prevent discrimination based on biological sex must be stopped since it takes us further down the path of encouraging the idea that gender is a choice rather than a biological reality.

This entire effort by the left to push transgenderism points out the serious error of basing decisions on “consensus” rather than demonstrated scientific facts. Beliefs, based on the consensus of experts, led us to implement mask mandates and shutting down our economy during COVID19, neither of which did any good. Similarly, we are destroying our economy by eliminating fossil fuels, again based on consensus not facts. We must not allow ourselves to be persuaded by those who have an ideological agenda and use consensus to control us. Freedom can only survive when we demand rigorous scientific facts before taking any action. Otherwise we are being led by the Pied Piper to our own destruction. Truth has never been a leftist value!

 

The Court Got It Right

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The Covid lockdown resulted in one of the largest transfers of wealth from small business owners to large corporations. In many cases, that was the result of the fact that the small business owners could not comply with the myriad regulations in a cost-effective way. Many small restaurants are gone forever, and many boutique dress shops are closed. One business that refused to shut down (and frequently made the news) was the Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey. The co-owner, Ian Smith, was charged with 80 charges stemming from keeping his gym open despite Democrat Governor Phil Murphy’s tyrannical COVID-19 lockdown orders.

On Sunday, The Gateway Pundit posted an update on the case.

The article reports:

Ian Smith, co-owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey, has achieved a monumental victory. A New Jersey court has dismissed all 80 charges against him, charges that stemmed from his bold decision to reopen his gym in direct defiance of Democrat Governor Phil Murphy’s tyrannical COVID-19 lockdown orders.

The saga began in May 2020, when Smith reopened Atilis Gym, challenging the Murphy administration’s mandates, which he and his supporters argue are unconstitutional and detrimental to small businesses.

The confrontation escalated in July 2020 when police officers forcefully arrested Smith after he continually violated the state’s shutdown orders.

A swarm of police officers burst through the door of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey arrested the owners for violating Governor Murphy’s authoritarian shutdown order.

The article reminds us of the extreme actions of the Governor:

The state’s aggressive response did not end with the arrest. In a controversial move, Governor Murphy and his administration seized $165,000 from the gym’s accounts—funds that Smith claims were amassed through donations and apparel sales to support the gym’s legal battles. This act was a punitive strike meant to cripple the gym financially and serve as a stern warning to others who might consider similar defiance.

“Governor Phil Murphy seized 100% of our assets today – $165k, all of which came from donations and apparel sales. This is done in the middle of ongoing litigation defending ourselves against these fines, our 80 charges, the revocation of our business license, and the unconstitutional health department shutdown.⁣ This was never about protection, it was always about control,” said Smith in a video statement in January 2021.

The article concludes:

Special thanks to our fearless attorneys – John McCann and Giancarlo Ghione. Some of the most high profile attorneys around the country ran from our case – knowing it would be a long, hard road and would make them a target of the stare. These two gentlemen stood with us through the darkest days of the storm, have not flinched, and never once cared about being in front of cameras to gain notoriety from their work.

More updates later.

Nobody is coming to save you, save yourself. Spit on your hands and hoist the black flag. No quarter.

We win by standing strong and calling out unconstitutional laws.

Important Legislation Has Been Passed By The Tennessee Legislature

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HB 1894 and SB 1903 have passed the Tennessee Legislature.

This is the bill:

This needs to be done in all fifty states. Although I can find no evidence that mRNA vaccines are currently being used on American cattle, it is a good idea to stop that practice before it begins. Many Americans felt that the mRNA vaccines’ side effects outweighed the risk of getting Covid. They chose not to get the vaccine. That should be a decision left up to the individual. If mRNA vaccines are injected into the food supply, that decision is taken away from the individual.

Why Are They Asking This?

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On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article about a new question the Red Cross is asking blood donors.

The article notes:

How curious then, that the Red Cross is not only screening applicants for their vax status but also requiring them to undergo additional scrutiny if they self-report COVID vaccination: “Have you EVER had a Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine? If you answer YES to the question, please call 1-800-RED CROSS… before coming in to donate to determine if this will affect your eligibility.”

The article includes the following screenshot:

There is a ‘context’ note added at the end of the Tweet. The context note says:

They ask this question to make sure you haven’t received a self-replicating vaccine; and if you have, there is a two-week wait.

Most Covid vaccines are not replicating, and do not require a waiting period.

Generally speaking, when you give blood, you are not asked about vaccines. Why is this vaccine different?

It May Be A While Before This Is Reported In The Mainstream Media–If Ever

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On Wednesday, News Addicts reported the following:

Italy’s top health official is under criminal investigation for mass murder for his actions during the pandemic that allegedly resulted in the nation’s soaring Covid vaccine-related deaths.

Roberto Speranza served as the Italian Health Minister between September 2019 and October 2022, overseeing the pandemic and the Covid vaccine rollout.

However, evidence has now emerged to suggest that Speranza knew that the Covid mRNA shots were dangerous to public health but concealed the information and pushed the national rollout anyway.

Speranza is under investigation for mass homicide after emails reveal that from the very start of the vaccinations, he knew the shots were killing people and gave orders to local health authorities to conceal deaths and serious side effects.

According to investigators, he covered up the information in order to reassure Italian citizens that the injections were “safe and effective” and to not jeopardize the vaccination campaign.

“He knew the shots were killing people and gave orders to local health authorities to conceal deaths and serious side effects,” according to Vigilant News.

You can debate whether or not the shots actually worked–it seems as if the CDC had to change to definition of ‘vaccine’ to call the Covid shot a vaccine, so there have been questions all along. However, the problem is hiding information from the public that the public needed in order to make an informed decision as to whether or not to get the shot. There are a lot of stories coming out about people harmed by the vaccine, but there are also a lot of people who took the vaccine seemingly without having a problem.

Again, the problem is the withholding of information from the public. The public has a right to know about possible side effects of any drug or medical procedure they are asked to take.

Laws Have Consequences

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On Tuesday,  Stephen Moore posted an article at Townhall about the current employment situation in America.

The article notes:

A policy question these days that has befuddled federal lawmakers is why so many millions of people have not returned to the workplace in the post-COVID-19 era. The labor force participation rate among employable adults is near a record low today. There are at least 2 million to 4 million employable adults who could and should be working but aren’t.

Very few people with even minimal skills can credibly say they can’t find a job. Employers report some 10 million job openings. Small business owners say their biggest problem is finding competent workers. There are many explanations for why so many people aren’t working — fear of COVID-19, the skills mismatch, more people taking early retirement, and so on. But a major factor is that the federal government is back to doing what it did in the 1970s and 1980s. The welfare state today is paying people not to work — even a single hour.

That problem went away in the 1990s after many states, such as Wisconsin and Michigan, began reforming their welfare systems with work requirements. Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and the Republican Congress in 1996 passed a historic bipartisan welfare reform bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law.

The article reports on the results of the passage of that law:

Few laws in the last half-century have had such stunning success. Here is a quick summary of the impact, as reported by Brookings Institution welfare expert Ron Haskins:

No. 1: Caseloads declined by 60%, and the number of welfare recipients fell to its lowest level since 1969.

No. 2: Between 60% and 70% of those leaving welfare got a job.

No. 3: The child poverty rate fell every year between 1994 and 2000 because parents were working.

No. 4: The federal government saved more than $50 billion (almost $100 billion in today’s dollars).

During the Covid pandemic, the work requirements were removed.

The article concludes:

America is a rich nation, and we should absolutely have a safety net so that those who fall on tough times, lose a job or become disabled — and that happens to almost all of us at some point in our lives — do not go hungry or homeless or suffer from deprivation.

But welfare is supposed to be temporary and a hand-up, not a handout. The goal of welfare was to end poverty, not perpetuate it.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) said that restoring work for welfare requirements is “a top priority” of his panel. It should be a top priority for our country. Let’s make work, not welfare, pay.

Let’s put the work requirement back into welfare.

The Fauci Deposition

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On Monday, The Epoch Times posted an article that includes the transcript of the Deposition of Dr. Fauci taken as part of a lawsuit alleging collusion between the U.S. government and Big Tech to censor people.

The article reports:

Fauci said he did not have the expertise to determine whether COVID-19 came from nature or a laboratory, despite repeatedly dismissing the theory that it originated in a Chinese lab.

“I am not qualified since I am not an evolutionary virologist to make any kind of definitive determination about whether a genome could or could not be a laboratory construct or experimentally manipulative,” Fauci said at one point. “I have relied, as anyone would, with highly qualified, respected evolutionary virologists to come to that conclusion or not.”

Portions of the deposition dealt with a paper released in early 2020 as a preprint and later published following peer review by Nature Medicine.

Kristian Andersen and other scientists claimed that they analyzed genomic data and that “our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Fauci held a secret phone call with all of the authors of the paper just weeks before it was published—some of the authors before the call expressed in since-released emails that they thought the virus did not come from nature—and has since acknowledged receiving multiple drafts of the document prior to its publication. Kristian Andersen, the lead author, told Fauci at one point, “Thank you again for your advice and leadership.”

Fauci said in the deposition that he had “very little” to do with the paper and that he did not recall making any “substantive comments” to the authors regarding the paper.

The article also notes:

Fauci said that he was concerned about misinformation and disinformation, and believed that such information could lead to the loss of life.

“I think in any situation where egregious misinformation such as some of the ones I referred to before, such as information that would discourage people from getting vaccinated, that in my mind, would be a way that life that could otherwise have been saved would be lost, if people were persuaded not to pursue a life-saving intervention,” Fauci said.

Asked if he thinks steps should be taken to curb misinformation and disinformation, he demurred.

“That’s not my area. I’m very well aware of the concept of freedom of speech. The area of the curtailment of that is something that is not in my area of expertise. Those are legal and other things. And I really don’t have any opinion on that,” he said.

Fauci said he favors open debate and, generally, the best way to combat misleading and false information is to “flood the system with correct information.” But he also said: “I think honest debate is important, but when it goes beyond debate and leads people who are unwitting about these things to do things that are clearly detrimental to their life and their safety, I find that disturbing. How you mitigate against that, I would leave to other people.”

I guess the most important question I have is why did Dr. Fauci block cures that doctors who were practicing medicine were having success with? People died because their doctors were not permitted to treat them with drugs that had been proven to be effective. Was there a financial reason for pushing the expensive vaccine rather than the cures that were less expensive?

The Damage Done

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Dr. Fauci announced recently that he was planning to retire in December. What a coincidence! If the Republicans take the House of Representatives and hold investigations into his behavior, he will be retired.

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article about the legacy of Dr. Fauci. The article mentions a number of Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds–lying to the public, conflict of interest with companies making Covid vaccines, not reporting the ill-effects of the vaccine, championing shutdowns, masks, questionable vaccines,  etc.  But the article focuses on what it considers the greatest of Dr. Fauci’s transgressions.

The article explains:

Because of Anthony Fauci, Americans have a dwindling – if non-existent – level of faith in their public health institutions. When the next “expert” stands in front of the American people to deliver information, advice and warnings about a public health issue, most of us will be skeptical and wonder if what we are hearing has been politicized. And that’s Fauci’s fault.

Fauci is worse than the boy who cried wolf. He’s the boy who told fantastical tales about multiple wolves and wrongly advised on how to protect yourself from those wolves even after saying the wolves would cause you no harm. And now, the next time we hear about a dangerous wolf, our understandable reaction will be to ignore the warnings. And people will die.

Fauci did that. Because he let his ego and petty, political battles take precedence over his duty and responsibility to the American people and the truth.

Goodbye and good riddance.

The government is always reluctant to give up control over the people. The powers that were usurped during the Covid epidemic need to be turned back over to the people. We need to go back to the days of the government not being able to tell a business that it has to close for two weeks or an indefinite period of time. We need to go back to the days of visiting terminally ill relatives in the hospital. We need to back to having the privilege of deciding what shots we put in our bodies.

Lastly, we need to go back to the days of being the free country our Founding Fathers created.

Adding Humor To A Serious Announcement

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On Sunday, Hot Air reported that Attorney Jonathan Turley announced on Twitter that he has tested positive for Covid.

This is the Tweet:

Makes sense to me.

The article notes:

Does anyone really think that Merrick Garland’s DOJ will indict Hunter Biden? The workings of grand juries are supposed to be secret but it is reported that the grand jury looked at the possibility of criminal charges for alleged influence-peddling with foreign contacts in China, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries. Hunter was very successful in cashing in on his father’s position in the government. We don’t know if the grand jury decided on any indictments. Turley points out that there is clear evidence of some crimes. “For example, Biden seems clearly to have lied on the federal form to acquire a gun by denying his drug use; he also appears to have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And there are obvious tax charges that could be brought, even though he paid outstanding taxes after the investigation began.”

Perhaps he’ll be indicted over tax evasion or for lying on a federal form about that gun. Just don’t count on him being held accountable for his slimy dealings with foreign countries – unless the indictments are postponed.

The article concludes:

Turley points out that since Joe Biden isn’t on a ballot in November and Hunter isn’t a candidate, just using the excuse of not wanting to interfere in the November midterms – and potentially dragging down Democrat candidates- is politicizing the grand jury investigation. Turley makes the case for a special counsel in the Hunter Biden case. Joe Biden (a.k.a. The Big Guy) is directly referenced in Hunter’s documents found on his laptop. The U.S. Attorney is unlikely to include any of that in a report. If Hunter pleads guilty of lesser charges to make a plea deal, he’ll be protected from future congressional hearings – such as are expected when Republicans take back majority control of the House. DOJ could cut a deal with Hunter and decline further charges. On the other hand, the U.S. Attorney could present evidence to a new grand jury, since this one has now expired, but it would take months to do and the midterm elections would be over.

It does not look as though Weiss called any witnesses who could testify about influence-peddling, including the president. Joe Biden would have to be called as a witness to answer any questions about The Big Guy’s involvement. We now know that Joe met with Hunter’s business partners, though he has consistently denied knowing anything about Hunter’s business dealings.

We’ll see what happens and if indictments do come down. Just don’t get your hopes up that Hunter will ever be held to the same standard that others are in these matters. He’ll likely write a check or two if his wrist is slapped and be on his merry way.

That is not equal justice under the law.

Suspicions Confirmed

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On Sunday, Red State posted an article about Silent Invasion, a book by Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator for President Trump. It’s a very interesting article that includes a few excerpts from the book that confirm what most of us already suspected.

The article notes:

If you read Birx’s bio, it is obvious that she was Fauci’s creature. She hitched her wagon to his star. He mentored her. The odds of her acting independently, and the odds of Fauci letting a molecule of power slip from his grasp, are slim. I think the nation would be unwise to arbitrarily absolve Fauci of his role in the COVID fiasco before a jury has returned a verdict.

Birx deliberately deceived and lied to President Trump and his advisers.

Shocking, right? The idea that a privileged and entitled liberal with a terminal case of god syndrome would deceive people to get her way, I mean, smack my ass and call me Sally; what will happen next?

This is from Jeffrey Tucker’s review of the Birx book.

Birx admits that she was a major part of the reason, due to her sneaky alternation of weekly reports to the states.

After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit.

Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected. In slipping these changes past the gatekeepers and continuing to inform the governors of the need for the big-three mitigations—masks, sentinel testing, and limits on indoor social gatherings—I felt confident I was giving the states permission to escalate public health mitigation with the fall and winter coming.

As another example, once Scott Atlas came to the rescue in August to introduce some good sense into this wacky world, he worked with others to dial back the CDC’s fanatical attachment to universal and constant testing. Atlas knew that “track, trace, and isolate” was both a fantasy and a massive invasion of people’s liberties that would yield no positive public-health outcome. He put together a new recommendation that was only for those who were sick to test – just as one might expect in normal life.

After a week-long media frenzy, the regulations flipped in the other direction.

Birx reveals that it was her doing:

This wasn’t the only bit of subterfuge I had to engage in. Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted Bob Redfield…. Less than a week later, Bob [Redfield] and I had finished our rewrite of the guidance and surreptitiously posted it. We had restored the emphasis on testing to detect areas where silent spread was occurring. It was a risky move, and we hoped everyone in the White House would be too busy campaigning to realize what Bob and I had done. We weren’t being transparent with the powers that be in the White House.

Keep in mind that these are her words. Lying to the American people and cheating were okay if it met her goals. That is a disgrace.

Remote Learning Is An Oxymoron

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On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the impact the closing down of our schools during Covid had on our children.

The article reports:

Remote learning had an even worse effect on U.S. students’ education than was previously known, new research shows.

K-12 students who attended school from home in the 2020-2021 school year lost 50 percent of their typical math curriculum learning, according to a Harvard study first reported by the New York Times. Even students who went back to school in fall 2020 lost 20 percent of their typical math curriculum learning due to pandemic disruptions in the spring. The learning disparities were the worst for poor, black, and Latino students, a gap that one of the study’s authors called “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

The schools were closed by the Teachers’ Unions. Many teachers were afraid of catching Covid from their students (a largely unfounded fear, but understandable at the beginning of the Covid crisis), and many teachers simply enjoyed teaching remotely from wherever they chose to be.  After scientists realized that children were neither major spreaders of the virus and generally not at high risk from complications from the virus, the schools should have reopened, but not all of them did.

The article notes:

“It’s pretty clear that remote school was not good for learning,” Emily Oster, a Brown University economist and the coauthor of a similar study, told the Times. Oster was one of the first to sound the alarm about the danger of school closures. In October 2020, she wrote a piece for the Atlantic, “Schools Aren’t Superspreaders,” which argued the risk of COVID spread in schools was overblown.

Children are at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19. In-school transmission is also “extremely rare,” according to a 2021 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“In places where schools reopened that summer and fall, the spread of COVID was not noticeably worse than in places where schools remained closed,” the Times‘s David Leonhardt wrote on Thursday. “Schools also reopened in parts of Europe without seeming to spark outbreaks.”

The article concludes:

Students who suffered the greatest learning losses were often in districts that succumbed to powerful teachers’ unions and Democratic officials who fought to keep schools closed. Schools in the poorest areas on average stayed remote five weeks longer than affluent areas.

As late as March this year, Chicago Public Schools, in coordination with its teachers’ union, was implementing at-home learning periods for classes after COVID exposures. Additionally, any school could flip to remote learning provided at least 30 percent of teachers were absent for at least two days or at least 40 percent of students were told to quarantine by the city’s health department.

Let’s hope that the damage done to the ‘children of Covid’ can be undone by the time they reach high school.

Do They Get Their Jobs Back Now?

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On Thursday, The Washington Times reported that the Senate voted Wednesday to end the vaccine mandate on health workers at places that receive federal funding. There is serious doubt as to whether the measure will actually get through the House of Representatives (which is controlled by the Democrats), although that may depend on whether or not the Democrats are reading the polls.

The article reports:

The Supreme Court struck down a broader mandate that required large companies to regularly test workers who refuse to get vaccinated. However, the justices upheld the health-worker mandate.

Republicans say the mandate is bad policy because it could lead to staffing shortages at hospitals and punish workers who served on the frontlines of the COVID-19 battle for two years and choose to remain unvaccinated.

The GOP is betting that forcing Democrats to defend COVID-19 mandates will help Republicans retake the House and the Senate in November’s elections.

One of the really sad aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic is that both political parties attempted to use to crisis for political gain. There was a time when both parties totally ignored the science. Now we are beginning to see that lives could have been saved if we had pursued early treatment as hard as we pursued a vaccine. We know now that early treatment works. We can’t say the same about the vaccines.

Americans are done with mask and vaccine mandates. I was recently told by a pulmonary specialist that when the masks come off we can expect an uptick in pneumonia cases–not because the masks were protecting us, but because wearing a mask interferes with your natural immunity system. After mask wearing, your immune system is not as strong as it would be without a mask, so you are more prone to illness. That’s not good news for the elderly who have been told to keep wearing their masks. Consider not wearing a mask to be like sending a child out to play in the dirt. The germs the child comes in contact with in playing in the dirt strengthen the child’s immune system. Walking around bare-faced exposes your immune system to germs and strengthens it. Also, the fibers in the mask are not close enough to each other to block virus germs. The masks were to make us feel better and to control us. Medically they were not helpful.

The New York Post Analysis

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On Wednesday, The New York Post posted a list of the top 10 ways President Biden deluded himself during his State of the Union address.

Here is the list:

1. FEIGNING to stand up for Ukraine when he publicly told Vladimir Putin last month that a “minor incursion” was tolerable, and when his son Hunter treated Ukraine like a private piggybank during Biden’s vice-presidency.

2. CALLING for unity to a room full of Republicans while falsely claiming that the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut only helped “the top 1%.”

3. POSING amusingly as an America First nationalist — complete with Trumpian “USA! USA!” chants from his colleagues on the floor. All power to Biden if he follows through on his promised “revitalization of American manufacturing,” but he will be going against his own record.

4. Securing our border: This takes some chutzpah when Biden deliberately dismantled Trump’s hard-won border protections and is still in court fighting the remain-in-Mexico policy.

5. BEATING the opioid epidemic: The “opioid crisis” he anointed as a bipartisan cause was turbocharged when he flung open the southern border to record quantities of fentanyl, a drug which is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

6. GASLIGHTING us on the pandemic: “Let’s stop looking at COVID as a partisan dividing line,” said the president who has done nothing but manipulate COVID fear for political purposes, and changed tune only after opinion polls on his handling of the pandemic headed south.

7. BLUNTING gas prices: He’s pulling our leg. Biden boasted about tapping into 30 million barrels of our emergency oil reserves — less than two days’ supply — while not mentioning a word about unleashing our plentiful untapped oil and gas supplies.

8. CHAMPIONING police “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police,” Biden thundered.

9. VALORIZING the military Biden paid tribute to soldiers said to have contracted cancer from “burn pits” — an as-yet unproven claim on which he dwells in hope of a combat-related cause of his own son’s death from brain cancer.

10. MYSTIFYING the world Biden went off script after saying “God bless our troops” at the end of his speech. “Go get him!” he ad-libbed.

It would be wonderful if President Biden actually closed the southern border and acted to lower fuel prices for Americans by using our own resources. However, I think the chances of that are slim to none.

 

The Current Culture Wars

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On Sunday, The Blue State Conservative posted an article listing six key cultural battles currently going on in America.

Here is the list:

#1: The political science might have determined Covid is no longer useful, but that doesn’t mean half of this country can easily escape their brainwash.

#2: The effort to instill wokeness on every level in our military continues, and the consequences are dire.

#3: The participation of female swimmers and presence of a crowd at the NCAA women’s swim finals proves most people are either cowards, idiots, or both.

#4: The left continues trying to expand what is considered ‘racist,’ but Americans aren’t buying it.

#5: Women demand equality when it suits them, and only when it benefits to identify what a woman is.

#6: Resistance is building against the left’s sexual and gender values being taught in schools.

Americans are beginning to wake up to the war against the American family and traditional American values. Just for the record in case anyone is reading this who has doubts, racism is NOT a traditional American value.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. All Americans need to get involved in the cultural war that is going on now in our country. If you are a parent or grandparent, pay attention to what your children or grandchildren are learning in school. Our future as a nation depends on involved parents.

Ten Lies Told

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On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article listing ten lies President Biden told during his press conference.

This is the list of lies:

1. The Nation’s Problem Is COVID

2. Wages Are Up

3. Biden Created Jobs

4. The Supply Chain Crisis Isn’t That Bad

5. Inflation Was Already A Thing Before I Took Office

6. Republicans Want To Steal Minorities’ Right To Vote

7. Schools Aren’t Closed

8. Build Back Better Will Save Americans Money

9. White House Reporters Are The Most Informed Americans Of All Time

10. I Didn’t Compare My Democrat Colleagues To Racists

Please follow the link above to read the details. Some of these statements are such obvious whoppers I don’t even want to comment on them. I remember how often the press accused President Trump of lying with no evidence. Now we have a President who truly struggles to tell the truth and the media is generally silent. It is my hope that American voters are smarter than the press thinks they are.

The Tyranny Variant

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Because it has been done gradually, most of us have been slow to realize how many of the freedoms we had taken for granted have disappeared in the past two years. I am still hoping to see some of my grandchildren this summer without having everyone in their house go into quarantine because I am visiting from another state. Americans used to travel freely. I keep a mask in my car. I never know when someone will demand that I wear it in order to enter a building. Its effectiveness is questionable, but those in authority choose to ignore that fact. If a friend is in the hospital, I can’t visit them. In some situations I need a Covid test every week if I have not had the vaccine in order to go to work. Some college students, fully vaccinated, need a Covid test to return to school after Christmas break. Will we soon have vaccine passports that can be demanded by any authority at any time? (Papers, please.) Where are the freedoms our Founding Fathers fought for?

On Wednesday, American Greatness posted an article asking the question, “Will We Reach Herd Immunity Against the Tyranny Variant?” That’s a good question.

The article notes:

The good news is that the end of all of the COVID madness is apparently in sight. While low IQ pundits and hosts on MSNBC and CNN were doing their best to whip up one more frenzy of lockdowns and mandates over the “great and terrible” Omicron variant, the truth is Omicron, while highly contagious, is not evenly remotely deadly. It means most people, even the triple vaccinated (technically triple jabbed with a therapeutic medicine, as we don’t actually have a vaccine), multiple booster shots while wearing five masks Karens are probably going to get it—which means we’ll reach herd immunity and be back to normal within a few months. 

That’s the good news. The bad news? Once COVID fades into the background, most if not all of our major institutions will still be broken. The CDC and NIH need serious reform. Corporate propagandists will still be around, acting not so much as “news sources” but as outlets for administrative state narratives. Tyrants from the federal to the local level will be looking for the next fear tactic to scare Americans into abdicating more power to the state. Big Tech will still be censoring and shutting down anything it disagrees with as it tramples the Bill of Rights. 

The only hope is that enough Americans will have been inoculated after this bout of madness to be immune to, and deeply skeptical of, the next attempt to erode their rights. We will get some inkling of whether that’s the case in the coming elections. If Americans are acquiring a herd immunity to tyranny, look for them to actually demand their supposed representatives look out for and defend their rights.

Have Americans done enough to protect the integrity of our elections in the past year to be able to fight the tyranny variant? I don’t know.

Actually Following The Science

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On December 21st, The New York Post posted an article titled, “Biden needs to tell the FDA to stop blocking lifesaving COVID treatments.”

The article lists a number of treatments for COVID that have been tested scientifically and proven to be effective:

Fluvoxamine, a commonly available medication, reduced COVID deaths by 91 percent in a randomized controlled trial conducted with impeccable methodology and recently published in The Lancet. This study affirms another trial on the drug published last spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The drug is safe, has a plausible mechanism of action, costs $10 and has no contrary studies that might challenge the breathtaking results published. Yet I’ve never heard our public-health officials mention fluvoxamine.

…Merck’s lifesaving drug molnupiravir received an up-vote from the FDA’s external experts three weeks ago, yet the agency has not authorized the drug. Pfizer’s Paxlovid drug cut COVID deaths to zero (compared with 10 deaths in the control group), yet in the five weeks the FDA has been sitting on the application the agency has not even scheduled an advisory meeting to review it. Maybe functionaries don’t want to change their holiday plans.

The article also notes that the outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID may actually contain some good news:

We also need straight talk when it comes to Omicron. Now 73 percent of new US COVID infections are from Omicron, a strain resulting in more mild illness. A University of Hong Kong study found that Omicron is one-tenth as infective in lung cells compared with the Delta variant. That explains why Omicron patients report far fewer cough and fever symptoms and far fewer people develop severe illness. Instead, the vast majority of Omicron-infected people get common-cold symptoms.

The fear headline is that Omicron partially evades antibody immunity. That’s true; so did Delta. But, also like Delta, Omicron does not escape existing T-cell immunity, according to a new Johns Hopkins study, which is consistent with mounting population data. Cases from the epicenter in Gauteng, South Africa, are plunging, down 44 percent Monday from the prior day. According to South African Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla, only 1.7 percent of COVID cases were hospitalized the second week of the Omicron-dominant wave, compared with 19 percent the same week of the Delta wave.

We now have laboratory data, epidemiological data and bedside observations to conclude that Omicron is a milder variant. We are witnessing how pandemics end — a virus mutates down and becomes endemic as population immunity increases.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but our government bureaucrats keep putting it out.

I Hate To Be Paranoid, But This Scares Me To Death

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On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article about New York State Bill A416, which would provide amazing power to the Governor of New York and members of the administrative state.

The article reports:

In roughly three weeks, the New York state legislature will vote on Bill A416, which will give the New York governor (in this case, the power-mad Kathy Hochul), as well as the governor’s delegates (i.e., New York’s administrative state) the power to indefinitely detain anyone the governor or her agencies deem a “significant threat to public health.” Despite the broad power states have, this violates the Constitution. At a practical level, it should scare the pants off every American.

There is absolutely no doubt that, under our Constitution, the states have powers that the federal government lacks. The federal government is explicitly a creature of very limited powers, while the Tenth Amendment makes it clear that those limited powers not reserved to the federal government belong to the state “or to the people.”

The Tenth Amendment, however, does not mean that states can play the dictator. Indeed, since the Civil War, states have been subject to the same constraints as the federal government when it comes to using its police power over the people within its borders. Thus, the second sentence in the Fourteenth Amendment states explicitly that

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Among the privileges Americans have is a pivotal one in the Fifth Amendment assuring us that “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” That deprivation is precisely what New York state contemplates.

The article notes:

No matter the language in the bill, given that the New York governor has the uncontested power to declare a health emergency, people are at risk. If you’re wondering what that looks like, look to Victoria, in Australia. There, people are locked up in concentration camps for the mere suspicion of having COVID.

And again, it cannot be said often enough that this is a disease with an average mortality rate hovering around 1% (a rate that could be even lower if people were allowed treatment with Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine early in their diagnosis). By way of contrast, this is not AIDS, which entered the West with a 100% mortality rate but never resulted in such a draconian response.

If we don’t wake up and stand up quickly, we will lose our freedom and our country.

Good News About Covid

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Sara Carter is reporting today that medical research company Merck announced Friday that their investigational oral antiviral medicine reduced the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The medicine also reduced the number of deaths.

The article reports:

Nearly 1,550 COVID positive patients were a part of the study. Every single one had at least one risk factor. Out of those, only 7.3% of those who received the medicine, molnupiravir, hospitalized themselves as a result of their illness. Meanwhile, out of the control group of the study, 14.1% either died or visited a hospital. After 29 days, eight people who did not receive the medicine died while not a single person who received it died.

Merk’s CEO and President Robert M. Davis hopes that this will ease the strain caused by the virus. “With these compelling results, we are optimistic that molnupiravir can become an important medicine as part of the global effort to fight the pandemic and will add to Merck’s unique legacy of bringing forward breakthroughs in infectious diseases when they are needed most,” Davis said.

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics CEO Wendy Holman was equally optimistic. “We are very encouraged by the results from the interim analysis and hope molnupiravir, if authorized for use, can make a profound impact in controlling the pandemic,” Holman said.

The Covid virus will probably be with us permanently. Having a simple oral medication that successfully treats the virus would be wonderful. I also wonder if the research being done on treatments for Covid will eventually lead us to a cure for the common cold.

There Is A Successful Treatment To Covid

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On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit reported that the 33 districts in Uttar Pradesh, India have now become free from COVID-19.

The article reports:

The recovery rate has increased up to 98.7% proving the effectiveness of IVERMECTIN as part of the “Uttar Pradesh Covid Control Model.” Of course, the media won’t mention that Ivermectin is being used for the treatment of COVID-19.

…Hindustan Times reported on this big development:

Overall, the state has a total of 199 active cases, while the positivity rate came down to less than 0.01 per cent. The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent. As per the state’s health bulletin, Uttar Pradesh reported only 11 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths in the last 24 hours.

The article also notes:

Both Uttar Pradesh and Delhi have seen an incredible drop in COVID-19 cases because they use Ivermectin early and preventatively. Whereas Kerala, a tiny state located in southern India that is over-dependent on vaccines and less dependent on Ivermectin, has been reporting a significant increase in COVID-19 cases. Keep in mind that Uttar Pradesh has eight times larger population than Kerala.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes charts of what has happened in India in recent months. American doctors need to take notes.

Learning To Read Between The Lines

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article titled, “How You Can Tell the Delta Surge in Florida Is Waning.” Keep in mind that the political left is attempting to destroy Ron DeSantis before he becomes either a presidential or vice-presidential candidate.

The article reports:

You can almost hear the wailing. If the media wants to keep up the COVID-19 panic porn, they will have to pick on a Democrat governor. Right now, Oregon Governor Kate Brown is seeing a significant surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in her state, just like Hawaii experienced concurrent with the red states in the Southeast. But if the media talks about Hawaii and Oregon, they have to point out that these states enforced some of the strictest restrictions and mask mandates, and cases surged anyway. That can’t happen.

The corporate media prefers to portray Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as incompetent and generally fails spectacularly. They consider him the most dangerous Republican in the mix for 2024 and will do anything to hamper his reelection chances in 2022. So as the Florida surge begins to decline, at least one outlet has taken to doing the media equivalent of “vaguebooking.” This story is like the post you see on Facebook where everyone knows whom a user is talking about, even if the user doesn’t mention a name.

NBC Miami published a story with the headline, “Mentor to Young Men Among 15 MDCPS Staff to Die of COVID in Ten Days.” For reference, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools have 33,179 total full-time staff, which means 0.045% of the staff was affected. I am not providing this statistic to minimize any death. The only person profiled in the report who passed away is a tragic loss for the school and community.

The article also notes:

Between 3,000 and 4,000 high-risk patients are being treated daily in Florida’s 21 infusion centers. That does not include treatment provided in private practice and hospital settings. Hospitalization rates decreased 20% following the implementation of the program in mid-August. As of September 2, 69% of the eligible population received the full vaccine series in Florida and 87% of those over 65 have. Dr. Patrick Lorimer either doesn’t understand the clinical progression of COVID-19 or didn’t read the story.

Patrick Lorimer criticized Governor DeSantis’ handling of the virus in a tweet included in the article. It also needs to be noted that all of the people who were treated and recovered will have some level of immunity. That will slow the spread of the virus.

This is another example of the media skewing facts in order to damage a potential Republican leader. Covid is serious, but if the media has to continue to tell us that this is a pandemic, is it a pandemic?

Fake News From The Mainstream Media

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about a recent article in Rolling Stone.

The Daily Wire reports:

A story circulating social media on Saturday — thanks to it being picked up by Rolling Stone and Rachel Maddow — claimed that hospitals in Oklahoma have been overwhelmed with people overdosing on horse dewormer, leaving gunshot victims in the lurch.

The story on its face was absurd, yet multiple media outlets pushed the claim, based on the word of a single doctor who gave an interview to KFOR. That doctor, Jason McElyea, claimed that the emergency rooms in Oklahoma “are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.”

The first question that comes to mind is, “How many gunshot victims are we actually talking about?”

The article continues:

That, combined with an unrelated quote about hospital capacity, formed the basis of Rolling Stone’s article insisting people are ingesting Ivermectin — a drug that has approved uses for humans and animals — at such high rates they are overwhelming hospitals.

The only people who would believe that are journalists who learned Ivermectin is a popular horse dewormer and wanted to run with the narrative that people were taking that version of it to treat COVID-19.

The article concludes:

Stephanie Six, hospital administrator at NHS Sequoyah, told KXMX that the hospital had “not seen or had any patients in our ER or hospital with ivermectin overdose” nor did it have “any patients with complaints or issues related to ivermectin.”

She reiterated that McElyea hadn’t treated patients at the NHS Sequoyah emergency room in several months.

“I can’t speak for what he has witnessed at other facilities but this is not true for ours,” Six said. “We certainly have not turned any patients away due to an overload of ivermectin related cases. All patients who have come into our ER have been treated as appropriate.”

The story should have been viewed with skepticism from the beginning since fewer than 500 calls about Ivermectin have been made to poison control centers across the country.

It should cause all of us to pause a minute to wonder why some in the medical community (and the mainstream media) are so quick to condemn any possible cure for Covid that might be inexpensive and effective.