Tag Archives: Covid-19 pandemic

Good News

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On Wednesday, NBC News reported that overdose deaths in America decreased 27 percent last year.

The article reports:

There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded.

An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023.

The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.

All but two states saw declines last year — with some of the biggest in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic.

Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited:

    • Increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.
    • Expanded addiction treatment.
    • Shifts in how people use drugs.
    • The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.
    • The number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths.

The article notes that drug overdose deaths are still higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article notes:

Naloxone has become more widely available, in part because of the introduction of over-the-counter versions that don’t require prescriptions.

Meanwhile, drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacy chains and other businesses have settled lawsuits with state and local governments over the painkillers that were a main driver of overdose deaths in the past. The deals over the last decade or so have promised about $50 billion over time, with most of it required to be used to fight addiction.

Hopefully the increased border security under the Trump administration will also help reduce the number of drug overdose deaths.

The Cost Of Bidenomics

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article that provides some insight into the actual state of the American economy.

The article reports:

Small-business bankruptcies are up 61% on the year. It is a cackle-nomics miracle.

The data comes from bankruptcy analyst Epiq, which reports that commercial filings for Chapter 11 bankruptcies soared to 4,553 so far this year.

Meanwhile, total corporate bankruptcies are also rising, hitting the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which is hitting especially hard in retail, with a parade of chains going under this year, including Red Lobster and its beloved endless shrimp. Never forget what they have taken from us.

What’s causing it? Simple: Inflation, high interest costs, and COVID-19 loans.

Inflation, of course, drives up business costs to the point they have to hike prices, which chases consumers out.

High interest rates are well-known to strangle business. In fact, that’s why the Fed does them, to strangle household spending enough that federal spending has inflation all to itself.

And then the COVID-19 loans: During the pandemic, the Small Business Administration pumped out 4 million loans—worth about $380 billion—in so-called economic-injury disaster loans. Note these were separate from the Paycheck Protection Program loans, where $800 billion were handed out to bribe voters into lockdowns.

While many of the PPP loans were fraudulent—actually, most of them, according to NPR—96% of those loans were forgiven.

Incidentally, one gang member recently killed in a Baltimore shootout had, it turned out, an outstanding PPP loan for a nanotech company. Not a joke.

Thing is, those $380 billion in injury loans actually do have to be paid back.

And it turns out a lot of companies can’t. Eighty percent are still outstanding—$300 billion—so, we’re probably just seeing the tip of the injury-loan bankruptcies.

As Tim Walz stated at a recent Pennsylvania rally, “We can’t afford four more years of this!”

Please follow the link above for further details.

Follow The Money

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the relationship between the National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical industry during the Covid pandemic.

The article reports:

During the pandemic, the American people started to feel that Big Government was very cozy with Big Pharma.

Now we know just how close they were.

New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists.

Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists.

Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions.

We had to sue a second time, with Judicial Watch as our counsel, to pry open this new release.

Payments skyrocketed during the pandemic era: Those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined. All told, it’s $1.036 billion.

It’s unclear if any of the COVID vaccine royalties from Pfizer and Moderna, the latter of which settled with NIH by agreeing to pay $400 million, is even included in these new numbers. NIH isn’t saying.

Anthony Fauci is currently testifying before a House subcommittee hearing about the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus. There are a lot of things that the American people are entitled to know about the virus, its origins, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the dangers of the vaccine. Hopefully these hearings will provide some of that information. However, if the public was intentionally misled, there need to be consequences. We have had an awful lot of hearings on various subjects and very little consequences.

Ignoring The Law Or Skirting The Law When It Is Convenient

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On April 5th, Channel 15 News in Wisconsin reported that migrants (illegal immigrants) in the state are being given Covid funds.

The article reports:

 Wisconsin state Senator Duey Stroebel, R-Cederberg, sounded the alarm Thursday after learning of a decision in the state’s capital to aid migrants with pandemic relief funds.

The City of Madison, State Sen. Stroebel wrote in a press release, is diverting State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to aid asylum seekers arriving in the city. These funds were issued through the American Rescue Plan to help state and local governments through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Madison is aware asylum seekers arriving in the city can’t receive direct government assistance funds and is therefore using SLRF “as a way around the system,” the senator wrote. Taking to X, he explained these funds can be used to pay utility bills and buy gas and food for migrants.

Notice the use of the word ‘migrants.’ I have no doubt that these are not migrants–they are illegal aliens who have invaded our country and are using up resources that should be spend on Americans in need.

The article concludes:

State Sen. Stroebel concluded by asking Rey to provide copies of the grant applications for undocumented migrants, as well as a breakdown of how the $700K is being used.

Earlier this week, Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., demanded answers from President Joe Biden over a program providing asylum seekers with $500 in monthly housing assistance.

How many homeless Americans could use $500 in monthly housing assistance?

America Is Slowly Waking Up

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On Tuesday, The Postmillennial posted an article about an article on the ballot in Tuesday’s Wisconsin election.

The article reports:

Wisconsin voters have approved a constitutional amendment banning private money for elections. The constitutional amendment passed on Tuesday after it was proposed by Republicans who were fed up with the money funneled into elections by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, dubbed Zuckerbucks.

“Wisconsin has spoken and the message is clear: elections belong to voters, not out-of-state billionaires,” GOP Chairman Brian Schimming said. Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 after $8.8 million went into the state’s largest five cities.

…A second question offered by Republicans amended the state constitution to say that elections could only be administered by actual election officials. Though this was already state law, enshrining it in the constitution firms up the practice against legislative change.
 
President of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Rick Esenberg said “Voters sent a clear message that they want to keep private money out of election administration,” per ABC.

“Whether you identify with the left or the right, ensuring the fairness and integrity of our elections should be a shared priority,” he said.

In 2020, Wisconsin saw an influx of funds from the Center for Tech and Civil Life, which had in turn received $300 million from Zuckerberg and his wife. The purpose of the leftist group is to fight for voter access. The funds were used to “help election officials buy supplies and run elections at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic before vaccines were available.”

There were a lot of anomalies in battleground states in 2020. There are a lot of things that can be done now to make sure that the 2024 election is fair and that the votes tallied reflect the choice of the voters.

Protecting Our Freedom

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On Monday, The Conservative Review posted an article about a suggestion made by Senator Rand Paul. Senator Paul has a medical background and has not always been happy with the edicts of Dr. Fauci during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The article reports:

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has proposed an amendment that would nix the position of director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a role Dr. Anthony Fauci has occupied for more than three decades.

Under Paul’s proposal, Fauci’s role would be eliminated and replaced with three directors tasked with leading three new institutes: A National Institute of Allergic Diseases, a National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and a National Institute of Immunologic Diseases.

“To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve introduced this amendment to eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and divide his power into three separate new institutes,” Paul said, according to a press release. “This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The article concludes:

Paul noted that the amendment will receive a vote this week.

Fauci, who has been a prominent and controversial public health figure throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, began serving as the NIAID director in 1984. He is also currently serving as the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden.

During the past two years we have seen an unelected bureaucrat tell business owners to shut down their businesses, tell Americans they did not have the right to go to church, put treatment of Covid on the back burner while searching for a (relatively ineffective and expensive) vaccine that generated millions for those invested in certain pharmaceutical companies, and generally disrupt the freedoms Americans fought for generations ago. It is time to divest Dr. Fauci of that non-existent power and get on with our lives.

 

A Constitutional Republic Will Only Stand As Long As Its Citizens And Voters Are Able To Stay Informed

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about the lack of transparency and misinformation coming out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the past two years or so.

The article notes:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is being called out for not sharing the vast quantities of data it had been gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some medical experts are speculating that the reason why is the fear the data will be “misinterpreted” and used as justification not to follow the agency’s guidelines regarding vaccination and other matters.

“Tell the truth, present the data,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, The New York Times reported.

…Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, told the news outlet the reason much of the data has been withheld is “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.”

Bureaucracy is another reason.

The CDC is weighed down by multiple layers of bureaucracy, including a requirement to first run information to be released through the Department Health and Human Services and the White House.

“The CDC is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, the Times reported.

“The steps that it takes to get something like this [covid data] released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the CDC.”

The article concludes:

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal last month, Makary (Dr. Marty Makary, a professor and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) contended that another topic the CDC has been reluctant to address is natural immunity.

“For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused,” he wrote.

“Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination,” he continued.

Makary further noted the National Institutes of Health resisted acknowledging natural immunity.

“Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99 percent of them up to nearly two years after infection,” he wrote.

Makary argued the failure of the CDC to release the data sooner meant many who had previously recovered from COVID and had better immunity than those were just vaccinated needlessly lost their jobs.

He concluded that they should be hired back.

There was a political agenda here and a monetary agenda here. The CDC is too closely tied financially to the drug companies. There was more money in vaccines than there ever was in ivermectin!

Keeping Your Word

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has done an amazing job of handling the Covid-19 pandemic in Florida. Despite having a large percentage of elderly in his state, he has managed to balance freedom and safety. He has kept the death rate down without some of the government overreach that is obvious in the federal government and some other states. Gregg Jarrett posted an article today that illustrates Governor DeSantis’ commitment to protecting the freedom of Florida residents.

The article reports:

The Florida Department of Health fined Leon County over $3.5 million last week after it fired 14 workers for refusing to show proof of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

Florida notified the county in a letter sent to Leon County administrator Vincent Long saying that the county had violated state law.

“By way of media reports, Leon County was made aware of a notice from the Florida Department of Health regarding the County’s vaccination requirement,” Long told Fox 4 in response. “There is a genuine disagreement about the applicability of the statute and rule, and the County will enforce its rights using any remedies available at law, if necessary.”

“It is unacceptable that Leon County violated Florida law, infringed on current and former employees’ medical privacy, and fired loyal public servants because of their personal health decisions,” a spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in a statement Tuesday. “Governor DeSantis will continue fighting for Floridians’ rights and the Florida Department of Health will continue to enforce the law.”

In September, DeSantis announced that Florida would protect its citizens after reports that Leon County fired employees for not being vaccinated.

Stay tuned. I am sure this is headed for the courts.