Month: May 2020

Will We Ever Know?

May 27, 2020

Today we find ourselves still mired in nothing but a big pile of question marks. We’ve been dealing with COVID-19 since February when the U.S. started having confirmed cases of Coronavirus. We’re less than a week away from June. And we still don’t know the answers to this virus!

Why is knowing all this stuff so important? There are many reasons:

  • The cost in human lives, human resources, national resources, lost time and gross domestic product, skyrocketing unemployment, massive business losses not to mention the political costs for the blame for everything to do with responses are incalculable;
  • If we cannot find a verified source for the virus, how can we know for certain what measures will be effective to first eradicate it and then assure it doesn’t happen again?
  • What if China or Russia, either in solo or in tandem, weaponized the virus against the U.S. and/or any other countries on Earth? Wouldn’t doing so be sufficient to initiate massive actions against any responsible country by any and all countries impacted?
  • “If” China really did weaponize it to use against the U.S., and its “accidental” leaking from their Wuhan laboratory sparked the worldwide pandemic, are there no financial repercussions for China for their responsibility?

But, I guess the most important thing we need to know is when will it be safe for us to return our normal lives? I’m fearful that until we can answer that question, American life MAY recover some of its economic vitality, but I think it will take years to revitalize multiple segments in our economy. There are certainly horrors in our economic infrastructure that as of yet have not even been identified.

For today, why don’t we start at the beginning and go to the “horse’s mouth” to lay some type of foundation on which we can build answers to try to get going in our massive rebuilding project?

Wuhan

Chinese virologist Shi-Zheng Li, who has studied the origin of the coronavirus in SARS-like bats previously, said the virus everyone now knows is just “the tip of the iceberg.” Shi works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an institution that, in light of international criticism blaming the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for spreading the virus, has aligned itself with the CCP’s misleading explanations. Although there are now a growing number of reports denying the natural origin of the CCP Virus, in an interview on Monday, May 25th with a CCP state-run television station, Shi said an international effort is needed to prevent similar outbreaks of infection and that knowledge of viruses carried by wild animals is necessary. Shi’s recent warnings created even more suspicions about the CCP’s intentions in the pandemic after she was the target of numerous criticisms. She did manage to decode the virus strain in three days in December last year. As reported, Shi’s discovery could have been very useful in the early development of diagnostic tests as well as vaccines to treat the disease, “IF” the CCP would have warned the World and cooperated with the U.S. who offered on multiple occasions to send virologists and immunologists to China to help with the virus problem. The CCP declined each time. Shi confessed that after communicating her findings in a conference she had attended last year to research new unidentified diseases, she was fearful about the possibility that the CCP Virus had escaped from the laboratory. Rumors began to circulate on social networks that Shi had at one point been pressured to discard the reports she had prepared, was forced to flee with several confidential documents to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, although later she herself denied the information through the Chinese social network WeChat.“No matter how difficult things are, it (defecting) shall never happen. We’ve done nothing wrong. With a strong belief in science, we will see the day when the clouds disperse and the sun shines,” wrote Shi.

Gao Yu, a reporter who interviewed Shi, said, “We learned later her institute finished gene-sequencing and related tests as early as January 2 but was muzzled.” That meant, of course, that the knowledge of the virus, its release, and how and where it initially traveled was already known at the first of the year.

Amid the controversy over Shi’s statements, a 15-page intelligence report obtained by the Australian newspaper Saturday Telegraph was released, which points to the silencing of several doctors by the CCP who tried to talk about the virus. The document also indicates that important evidence was destroyed and doctors working on a vaccine were denied access to samples. According to the declassified file, the CCP began censorship on Dec. 31 of last year.

The CCP has at the same time reinforced the idea that the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab after Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said this month that the Wuhan Virology Institute was not the source of the outbreak after reviews of the facility were conducted, The Washington Times reported.

But amid the global alarm generated by the pandemic, more studies and statements by medical experts have gradually come to light that suggests the CCP Virus may have had an artificial source.

In April, Richard H. Height, a well-known molecular biologist whose expertise on the CCP Virus has been highlighted several times by the Washington Post and MSNBC, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that there was a high probability that the virus had leaked from a laboratory accident.

A recent study by a group of Australian scientists investigating a cure for the CCP Virus found “a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention.”

The findings made by the scientists led by Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky of the University of Flinders, Australia, were observed after analyzing high-throughput computer models to study the virus’s ability to attack 12 varieties of exotic and domestic animals.

“The results clearly show that the COVID-19 virus is exquisitely adapted to infect humans,” Petrovsky said.

Summary

There you have it from the horse’s mouth: the scientist who was there from the beginning. And here we are at least six months into the existence of this virus and its being loose running amuck all over the Earth and we still don’t know almost everything!

Call me a simple guy, but to me, something just doesn’t smell right. We’ve all heard the conspiracy theories about the purpose and the origins of the virus: Chinese scientists developed it in a Canadian laboratory on behalf of the CCP and sneaked it out of Canada back to the lab in Wuhan; a Chinese scientist who hated the U.S. and the rest of the West intentionally took the virus from the lab and personally carried it to Canada and the U.S. and then released it. And the stories go on and on. But we’re here almost six months later and we know very little about this virus — heck we don’t even know if it for sure is a virus!

One would think that being the foremost country on Earth in just about every field of science and medicine, having THE virus guy in this from the get-go who has for half a century been up to his eyeballs in infectious disease research on behalf of the nation, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and having what is reputedly the most proficient national science research entity on earth in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we would already know something. But here we sit after the first boring Memorial Day weekend of my life and we cannot even agree how far apart it is safe for people to socially distance!

One thing IS certain: our current President, even with the incessant flack and insults and even threats he faces daily, is the only President I can remember who actually performs better when he’s under fire. If all it takes for him to step up to the plate to hit a guaranteed homer is pressure, we have the right to expect nothing less! But the problem for President Trump is this is happening in a field that is outside his circle of knowledge. That certainly doesn’t mean he’s stupid — anything but that. But as a successful business manager who has run companies with thousands of employees for decades, he knows that when knowledge in any specific area is missing, there’s someone out there that has the information necessary to push through any challenge. And for this challenge, the “experts” — Pelosi and Schumer — made it clear he needed Anthony Fauci. Of course, they insisted that he have someone who could “get him to listen to real advice” and take whatever actions the experts recommended.

How’s that Fauci guidance working out for us right now?

“If” the Democrats are somehow NOT part of the initiation of this pandemic, (and I pray they have no involvement) they certainly didn’t waste a minute to line up with stones and are wasting no time to start the stoning of President Trump. They, as quickly as they could, weaponized COVID-19 and made it a Donald Trump responsibility — or they’ve tried to.

I don’t know what their weaponization intentions were, but I doubt they considered the cost to the American people and the economy this pandemic and its fallout is today. So they just continue to go with the flow. Nancy and Chuck better pray that if they did have some role in this that it never comes to life. You think those Michigan folks showing up at the state Capitol in Lansing with those guns strapped to their legs were a bit upset for missing their haircuts and manicures, wait until they are told that Democrats orchestrated this shutdown!

I always like to end by giving my advice about what we can do. But I don’t have any! I’m just like every other American at this point. We can pray. We can watch, listen, and learn. We can continually try to find answers even though to do that we are forced to wade through the weeds of disinformation and lies from the Left.

Here’s the one thing I hold onto: our divine Father led our forefathers away from the totalitarian rule and gave them a new start in a new place with a new clean slate. They very carefully used that slate to craft and establish the greatest representative republic in World history. I believe that the same process is being put in place today to lead us out of this desert in which we find ourselves: hungry, thirsty, lonely, and confused.

Hang in there! And as my Cajun Mom used to say to me when I would get discouraged as a kid: “Keep on Keeping on.” Good advice for me then and good advice for all of us now.

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The Story of Archie

May 26, 2020

Racial biases in the criminal justice system have started to decline, according to new research by the bipartisan Council on Criminal Justice, but that is no reason to celebrate. Mostly black and brown faces still fill the country’s jails and prisons, and people of color make up most of the parole and probation rolls. The work is not done until the gap is eliminated and the unfair targeting of people of color has ended.

Still, the strides the report outlined shouldn’t be ignored. The imprisonment rate for black men decreased for all crime categories except public order offenses, such as disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, according to the report, which analyzed data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics spanning 2000 to 2016. African Americans were incarcerated at a rate 8.3 times higher than white people in 2000, and for Hispanic people the rate was 2.6 times higher. By 2016 those ratios dropped to 5.1 to 1 and 1.6 to 1, respectively, according to the study.

While that represents progress, African Americans are still five times more likely to be imprisoned than white people and Hispanics nearly twice as likely, and both imbalances are wholly unacceptable. The culture of locking up people of color, whether because of unconscious biases our outright discrimination, is still alive and well. Just recently, The New York Times reported that police officers said they were told by a commander to go after blacks and Latinos for minor offenses like jumping turnstiles. Leave Asians and whites alone, they were instructed.

If there is a bright spot to the numbers, it’s that they offer encouragement to those who have kept issues like mass incarceration, mandatory minimums, and unfair sentencing in the spotlight. It adds even more credence to the good work of groups like the Innocence Project that have worked, sometimes on shoestring budgets, to free those who have been wrongly convicted based on trumped-up charges, coerced confessions, and bad witness testimony. All of this activism has helped keep up the pressure to end biases by showing the tragic result such disparities in sentencing and imprisonment have. It’s well-documented that people with prison records have a hard time getting jobs and that incarceration breaks up families. We need more resources directed at these issues, and these groups need to keep plowing ahead to keep the biases in law enforcement at the forefront.

Researchers with the Council on Criminal Justice say they will use the data collected to come up with policies that can help further erode the disparities in the system. They concede that outcomes vary by race and type of crime, making it hard to point to a single cause for the disparities. The largest drop in racial disparity occurred for drug offenses, which also correlated with a drop in the disparity of those who were jailed. We need to know more about why those drops occurred and whether similar principles should be applied in other areas.

Researchers also should conduct an analysis by state and region to see if the problem is more pronounced in certain parts of the country. Do factors such as past criminal history impact whether or not someone ends up in jail again? In other words, is the prison pipeline cycle perpetuating itself? Also, how do police departments change a culture in which police officers scrutinize people of color more intensely than white residents? Racial bias, bail reform, and the over-policing of low-income neighborhoods are all areas ripe for reform.

Before we look at Criminal Justice reform, Meet Archie Williams:

Of all the Presidents who a large majority of Americans thought could possibly get a criminal justice reform bill — one of ANY kind passed — Donald Trump would have been the last name mentioned. But he’s the one that did it: The First Step Act.

The First Step Act, which replaced a federal “three strikes” rule that imposed a life sentence for three or more convictions – with a 25-year sentence, is benefiting thousands of incarcerated Black men, according to a new report. More than 1,000 individuals incarcerated in federal prisons were granted sentence reductions in the four months since the First Step Act was signed into law, according to the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC).

Their sentences were reduced by a mean of 73 months or 29.4 percent, as a result of the resentencing provisions allowed under the Act which, in addition to shortening mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, applied resentencing to be applied retroactively to individuals convicted of crack cocaine offenses before 2010 – when the federal government reduced disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

Over a quarter of the 1,051 resentencing motions were granted by federal courts in Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Over 91 percent of the individuals whose sentences were shortened were African American and 98 percent were male, the USSC said.

The average age of those granted resentencing motions was 45 – and the average age at the time of the original sentence was 32.

Summary

Is there still racism in America’s criminal justice system? Absolutely. Is it better with The First Step Act? Probably so. I say “Probably,” because there are many who feel it really IS just a first step and that much more needs to be done.

But isn’t there something to be said for getting a start that in just months achieved the startling results that it has? Isn’t it startling that the United States first African American president was unable to get it done and it took the rebel from Queens to muster sufficient votes in the House and Senate so he could sign it into law?

As our story on Saturday said, “Racism has no color.” But there’s no doubt that in criminal justice, the African American community has been profusely disadvantaged in dramatic fashion.

I don’t care if you’re a mother of several black children, or an African American high school football coach or even if you’re a Caucasian billionaire Wall Street banker, you’d be blind if you didn’t see systemic racism that has plagued our nation for years. The First Step Act is just the first step.

No, this is not a call to allow law-breakers to not pay for their crimes. It’s a call for justice for all: nothing more and nothing less. It’s a call for law enforcement agency members and those in robes that pass sentences and every other man, woman and child to recognize there’s no right for minorities and another for whites when it comes to laws. “Equal Justice Under the Law” means just that.

The First Step needs to be just that: the First Step. There are many more steps necessary. Let’s see who will step up to lead the charge for the Second Step.

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A Soldier Died Today

May 23, 2020

Most Americans respect and honor our veterans. Unfortunately, it seems we have two Veterans Days each year — often we forget the fact that Memorial Day is NOT another Veterans Day. Today we honor all those who gave their lives for the cause of Freedom.

It’s days like today that remind us of the importance of the Star-Spangled Banner, The Pledge of Allegiance, The U.S. Constitution, and America the Beautiful. The family members of those who gave their lives during their military service will certainly agree that today,

EVERY American owes reverence, honor, and thanks for those heroes’ sacrifices — forget about raising voices against The Stars and Stripes, and The National Anthem, and The Pledge of Allegiance.  Jesus said “No man has greater love than this; that he would lay down his life for a friend.” If you’re reading this, you’re one of those that either did not serve or you survived. In either case, you too are fortunate. And we honor you.

Thanks to everyone who has paid that price — including the families who today will think back on fond memories of outdoor cookouts, swimming parties, weddings and graduations shared with a loved one taken while defending our nation.

If a tear runs down your cheek today while remembering a hero who gave their life in keeping America free and safe, don’t be ashamed. Why? Because by sunset somewhere in the greatest country on Earth,  a man or woman in uniform (or in a retirement center after wearing that uniform standing watch for us against our foes) paid the ultimate price for your freedom.

This nation is bigger than any one person. It was made that way by people who abandoned the tyranny of totalitarianism in Europe to give their families and descendants — U.S. — a future with life and liberty with justice for each and every one.

“A Soldier Died Today”

What Color is Racism?

May 23, 2020

This whole racism thing is getting out of hand. Politicians have normalized the practice of pandering to people of one race or another, changing their tune to say what they think the specific crowd to whom they’re speaking will consider being “good” for those of their ethnicity. In doing this, they seem to forget one thing: that practice in itself is racist!

Presumptive Democrat nominee for President Joe Biden slipped a bit at the end of a radio interview with an African American host. As the interview was concluding, Biden became a bit testy. In doing so, Biden slipped and may have shown something he’d prefer the world not know.

Appearing on the syndicated program “The Breakfast Club,” the Democratic presidential nominee told co-host Lenard McKelvey, known professionally as Charlamagne tha God, that there were “multiple” black women on his shortlist for VP. Biden has pledged that he will select a woman to be his running mate.

The conversation was initially for Biden to defend his record of helping African Americans and advancing civil rights and voting rights. As the interview was ending, Biden concluded by telling the black radio host that if he can’t decide whether to vote for Biden or Trump, then he “ain’t black.”

The African American community has gone nuts in response.

Just the Facts, Please!

Democrats claim that they have always supported equal rights for black Americans and that Republicans are racists who always oppose them.

Both claims are flat out lies. From its founding in 1854, the Republican Party led the fight to end slavery and then eradicate the racist Jim Crow system that held blacks down right up to securing the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Democrats opposed the Republicans at every turn.

So, let’s take an honest look at the history of civil rights in America. On the legislative level, congressional Republicans proposed, and Democrats opposed, a series of Reconstruction-era laws intended to elevate blacks, in particular, to force Southern states to enforce the Constitutional amendments extending full civil rights and voting rights to blacks. These included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the Enforcement Act of 1870, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Democrats consistently opposed legislative efforts to confer voting rights and other civil rights on blacks, including the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and even the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

Here are the facts:

April 8, 1864

The 13th Amendment banning slavery passed the U.S. Senate 38 to 6, with 100% Republican support amid Democratic opposition.

January 31, 1865

The 13th Amendment banning slavery passed the U.S. House by a vote of 119 to 56 (with eight abstentions), with all 103 Republicans voting yes, along with 16 Democrats. Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed it, sent it on to the states, with final ratification on Dec. 18, 1865.

March 27, 1866

Democrat President Andrew Johnson vetoed a bill granting citizenship to blacks.

June 8, 1866

The U.S. Senate passed the Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens. Nearly all Republicans voted yes, and 100% of Democrats voted no.

June 13, 1866

The U.S. House passed the U.S. Senate’s version of the Republican-sponsored 14th Amendment by a vote of 120 to 32. All Republicans voted yes.

January 10, 1878

U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage. The Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it repeatedly before the election of a Republican House and Senate that guaranteed its approval in 1919.

February 8, 1894

The Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland joined in repealing the Republicans’ Enforcement Act, which had enabled blacks to vote.

May 6, 1960

Republican President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, expanding protections for blacks in voting. In the House, the measure was approved by 89% of Republicans and 52% of Democrats. After a Democrat filibuster, the Senate approved it 71-18. No Republicans opposed. All 18 “no” votes were from Democrats.

A History of Shame

The Democratic Party’s militant arm following the Civil War was the Ku Klux Klan, of which prominent Democratic West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd was a high official, as was Hugo Black, a Democrat. The latter became a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

For 88 years, Democrats in the South enforced a vicious Jim Crow system of outright discrimination against blacks, particularly measures aimed at preventing them from voting. They opposed Republican-sponsored civil rights legislation at the state and federal levels.

In 1964, a Republican U.S. Senate majority introduced and passed the Civil Rights Act despite a filibuster by Democratic senators.

Similarly, Republicans led the fight for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when 94 % of GOP lawmakers in the House voted for it, while 27% of Democrat House members opposed it.

Today, Democrats would like us to forget that they were the party of Jim Crow, the Klan, and racists such as Woodrow Wilson, the globally-thinking progressive who, upon taking office as president, promptly segregated the U.S. Civil Service and instituted policies designed to discriminate against blacks and other minorities.

Democrats defended tooth and nail, a plantation-style racial spoils system right up to 1964, and then converted it into a federal version, with welfare policies that destroyed the black family and institutionalized dependence on government. To this day, the party promotes destructive, addictive welfare policies that keep its constituents dependent.

Summary

Do you realize that 300,000 white men died to set blacks free from slavery in the Civil War? I mention that fact for one reason only: racism has NO color. It never has. What’s tragic is that in the political world, we have allowed the use of weaponization of racism for political purposes. Instead of our confronting such cases and making public examples of such for our kids and grandkids, we sit quietly, shaking our heads. Shaking our heads won’t do anything.

“But…”

There’s always someone who, in such a conversation, feels compelled to correct statements like mine above. And those “buts” come from white and African-American “experts” on race.

I’m no expert. I’m just an old white guy from South Louisiana who grew up in a small town where we lived racially blended. We had no all-white or all-black schools. We just went to school. We participated in sports, sang in the choir, joined the debate team, and, for the most part, race seldom was a “big deal.” I discovered real racism when I moved to north Louisiana in 1970 right in the middle of desegregation. That’s when I discovered REAL racism.

I hate it. But more than that, I hate the fact that so many try to find ways to use it for personal benefit. Yes, it’s a “human thing” to try and make oneself seem superior to others. (That applies to much more than race, but that’s a story for another day)

A wise teacher once told me “insecure people feel compelled to make themselves look better by putting others down.” Is that part of racism? Again, I’m no expert. But it seems to me that is a HUGE part of this problem.

So how can we end this? Again, the answer to that is WAY above my pay grade. I can only deal with myself and those with whom I interact. I would NEVER say to a person of color, “I know how you feel.” I think that in itself is racist.

I hate when I hear a minority American blast white people saying, “You cannot know how we feel. That’s impossible! Only African-Americans understand.”

That’s true: to a point. But we should treat that the same way we treat many such characterizations of non-racial issues. I don’t need to know how it feels to drive a car off a cliff to know the results are going to be bad. I don’t need to know how it feels to have my legs ripped off by a Great White shark to know the outcome is probably death.

How should we deal with racism personally? 

I have racially blended family members who I adore. They are no less or more in any way than am I. But I accept there are things in their lives that I can never understand just as I have things they can never understand. Why? Because we ARE different. 

Racism ends when we choose to even consider that we “know” what they feel about certain things. If we can do that one person at a time, we will quickly move far down the road to handling racism.

I doubt we can ever eradicate racism. But what we can do is teach others in our circles of influence how to stop looking at those of different races with any perspective other than that of their being fellow humans.

Yes, they’re different! But so are we. Adopting this practice is NOT specific to people of one or two or three or four races. It applies to everyone.

Am I so naive to believe what I’ve said will be heard and adopted by many people, or ANY people? Absolutely not. We all struggle throughout our lives with finding and “doing the right things.” This is one of those.

What I DO know is that if we all — or even most of us — adopt that thought process, a world of social problems will melt away fairly quickly. Along with that melting would come the dissolution of social barriers which human nature dictates that we erect to keep distance between ourselves and others. The racial trust would begin to be adopted: slowly, but as results appear, it would happen.

And to determine where someone is in a paradoxical dilemma, just listen to them. After all, “The mouth speaketh from the abundance of the heart.” That includes presidential candidates, every other politician, and every other American, no matter race, creed, or social standing.

It begins with the determination of what’s in our hearts.

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Will the Real Anthony Fauci Please Stand Up?

May 22, 2020

NOTE: There will be no podcasts until Monday, Memorial Day. There WILL be daily stories. Additionally, “TNN LIVE” will NOT air today through Monday but will return Tuesday morning, May 26. In the way of explanation, we are making some changes — upgrades — to make our programming better and more inclusive of our audience. Please pass this message along to those you know are part of the TruthNewsNetwork family.

 

For three years, critics of President Trump have claimed that he arrogantly refuses to listen to his experts and that his exaggerated sense of self prevents him from accepting his limitations.

Applying that narrative to Trump’s initial failure to appreciate the gravity of the coronavirus, NBC host Chuck Todd asked former Vice President Joe Biden, “Do you think there is blood on the president’s hands, considering the slow response? Or is that too harsh of a criticism?” Even Biden called the criticism a “little too harsh.”

“A little too harsh”? Trump, neither a doctor nor a scientist, merely followed the advice given to him from his medical experts. The problem is that a lot of the advice was vague, inconsistent, contradictory, or flat-out wrong.

Dr. Anthony Fauci needs no introduction. He has become a respected voice in explaining the coronavirus, what to expect from it and how we can fight it. Democrats and Republicans praise him and his dedicated service under six presidents, both Republicans, and Democrats. But his advice has been well short of perfect. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a “pandemic.” Before this declaration, what did Fauci say?

This is from a Jan. 21 interview with Newsmax:

Host: “Bottom line, we don’t have to worry about this one, right?”

Fauci: “Well, you know, obviously, you need to take it seriously and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But this is not a major threat (emphasis added) for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”

On Feb. 3, Fauci told CNBC: “It’s still an evolving situation. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to go, what the pattern is. But clearly right now at least the number of cases are accelerating.” And in late March, William Haseltine, Ph.D., former professor at Harvard Medical School and distinguished researcher in biophysics and biomedicine, admitted: “Well, we know it’s highly infectious, and as the days go by, we’re learning it’s more infectious than we thought it was, say, a month ago, even two weeks ago.”

The medical experts’ advice has also been inconsistent on whether nonmedical personnel with no symptoms should wear face masks in public. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently issued a directive to do so: “Out of an abundance of caution, this is what I’m saying to all New Yorkers: Take a scarf, take a bandanna, just anything you have at home, just cover your face if you’re going to be in close contact with people who are not your own family under your own roof.” The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, issued a similar directive.

But just days earlier, on March 26, the World Health Organization tweeted: “If you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask. When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly.”

On Feb. 3, Fauci told CNBC: “It’s still an evolving situation. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to go, what the pattern is. But clearly right now at least the number of cases are accelerating.” And in late March, William Haseltine, Ph.D., former professor at Harvard Medical School and distinguished researcher in biophysics and biomedicine, admitted: “Well, we know it’s highly infectious, and as the days go by, we’re learning it’s more infectious than we thought it was, say, a month ago, even two weeks ago.”

The medical experts’ advice has also been inconsistent on whether nonmedical personnel with no symptoms should wear face masks in public. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently issued a directive to do so: “Out of an abundance of caution, this is what I’m saying to all New Yorkers: Take a scarf, take a bandanna, just anything you have at home, just cover your face if you’re going to be in close contact with people who are not your own family under your own roof.” The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, issued a similar directive.

But just days earlier, on March 26, the World Health Organization tweeted: “If you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask. When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly.”

“To Mask or not to Mask?” Here are Fauci’s instructions on what to do:

Let’s quickly see a potpourri of “Fauci-isms” that do a whole bunch to discredit his credibility. These are in addition to what was shown above.

1.)  Dr. Fauci says he warned Trump in January that the US was in real trouble but that is not what he said publicly.

**Fauci said he told the administration “we were in real trouble” from the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus in mid to late January and that Trump’s travel bans were instituted too late to be effective. Earlier that same weekend Fauci told CNN that lives were lost because Trump didn’t heed his advice for social distancing and lockdowns in February.

**In January Dr. Anthony Fauci told Newsmax TV that the United States “did not have to worry” about the coronavirus and that it was “not a major threat.”

2.)  Dr. Fauci warned of an apocalyptic coronavirus pandemic — then just weeks later he later compared the coronavirus to a bad flu.

(March 26, 2020) Last week morning Governors Gavin Newsom from California and Andrew Cuomo from New York announced complete lockdown on state residents due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There had been 16,067 cases of the coronavirus reported in the US at the time.
There had been 219 deaths in the US due to coronavirus at that time.

The following morning NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters during the daily White House press conference, “I strongly agree” with the New York and California governors for shutting down their state economies.

This was based on the highly flawed models on the coronavirus that were being peddled at that time.

But what a difference a week makes! The previous Thursday, Dr. Fauci co-authored a report on the coronavirus in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the report Dr. Fauci now argues that the mortality rate of the coronavirus may be much closer to a very bad flu.

(Here are the details of THAT News)

Dr Fauci authored article in NEJM today supports contention below that COVID fatality rate may be much closer to very bad flu. H/t @mizdonna @Barnes_Law @ITGuy1959 @ScottAdamsSays @theconservador https://t.co/4hQZR8DvZb https://t.co/d4wvZzgctS pic.twitter.com/9x59TsVEKk

— BlackJack (@BlackJackBoGre1) March 26, 2020

3.) Dr. Fauci based all of his predictions on garbage IHME models that were OFF BY MILLIONS and then told reporters the next week, “You can’t really rely on models.”

4.) On March 20th Dr. Fauci jumped in and “corrected” the president during a press briefing on hydroxychloroquine treatment for coronavirus saying, “You got to be careful when you say ‘fairly effective.’ It was never done in a clinical trial… It was given to individuals and felt that maybe it worked.”

5.)  Dr. Fauci pushed these garbage models every step of the way.

March 20th Dr. Fauci claimed 1 million to 2 million Americans would die from coronavirus. Then he said 100,000 to 200,000 Americans will die from the virus. A month ago he agreed 81,766 Americans would die from the coronavirus. Five days later the experts cut the number of deaths to 60,415 projected deaths.

6.) WHITE House coronavirus expert Dr. Tony Fauci said Sunday (April 12th) lives could have been saved if the U.S. had been shut down earlier. Speaking on CNN, the immunologist said the U.S. could start to reopen next month, but warned a second wave of the virus could still hit the country. During the interview, Fauci revealed that the government had been advised to begin social distancing measures in February. President Trump announced plans to roll out “self-isolating” in mid-March.

Dr. Fauci said President Trump should have shut down the economy in February.

But on February 29th,  Fauci told the TODAY Show that you don’t need to “change anything you’re doing.”:

Fauci: February 29 pic.twitter.com/PxwbdQ5WSu

— Steph (@steph93065) April 12, 2020

Summary

Here’s the short from this journalist on the validity of what Dr. Anthony Fauci has to say regarding COVID-19: listen to what he says. Before making ANY decision about taking action based on his advice, confirm it in at least two other sources or ignore it altogether!

This man almost by himself gave advice to all those responsible for the life and death of Americans, he parlayed his perceived knowledge and expertise into convincing 50 governors, a President, and 300 million other Americans that if we did not totally shut down the economy of the U.S., we were all going to die!

We listened…we acted…and he is WRONG!

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It Is What It Is

May 21, 2020

Huh? What in the world does THAT mean?

You certainly know. But I need to put it in a different form. Sometimes things we see and hear are not what we think they are or sound. Sometimes they’re different. What does that have to do with a story on TruthNewsNetwork? Simple: there are far too many things daily playing out on an international stage that is in our eyes and ears — and they’re playing loudly and vividly. But the sounds they’re playing or saying and the pictures they’re showing are NOT what they appear to be.

So what does that mean in the context of “It Is What It Is?”

Set The Stage

How old were you when you discovered that Santa was Mom or Dad or both? You had labored for years with that picture-perfect perception of the round man in the red suit dropping in through the chimney — and we never asked how that worked if we didn’t have a fireplace. He had reindeers pulling a sleigh despite his morbid obesity passing out toys and other goodies overnight all around the world. And he circled the Globe making every kid on Earth happy in 24 hours!

I think you are now seeing a bit of what I’m explaining.

It often looks good, smells good, feels good, sounds good: but it is NOT okay. It’s terrible.

Yes, I know: sometimes it IS good. And when it is, it’s glorious! But more and more in our lives, we’re seeing the opposite being revealed again and again. Its happening becomes more prevalent every day, so much so that we have numbed to it. And that’s dangerous.

Do you remember that story about the frog and the pot of water on the stove? Put the frog in the pot full of cold water, and he’ll just swim around in it. Put the frog in the pot full of hot water, and he’ll quickly jump out too. Put the frog in the pot full of cold water; he’ll swim around. Slowly raise the temperature of the water until it boils, and what happens? What happened? The frog was lulled to sleep: his fear of hot water had been wiped from his memory.

How many of us has that happened today? Millions of us who are caught up in our busy lives working so hard to stay ahead, pay bills, put a few bucks back for a new outfit and summer vacation, and a new “used” car. We’re so caught up that we ignore some of the apparent facts that the water in the pot in which we’re swimming is getting hotter and hotter. When we realize we’re about to boil to death, it’s too late to get out.

What’s the Pot?

Everyone has a pot of their own, but we’re talking about the BIG pot we as frogs are all in the United States. The critical question we need to answer is who regulates the temperature of the water? 

Conventional wisdom and the U.S. Constitution tell us plainly that the People are to control the pot, its content, and the water temperature. It was pretty much that way for the first 200 years of us being a nation. It began to change in the 60s and 70s. And today there’s a continual fight — a war — for control of the pot, the water, the water temperature and what frogs go in the pot!

The Players

Through our 2 ½ centuries, there have been perpetual arguments about all of this, even though the Constitution detailed it all. Our court systems stay clogged over the control dispute of the pot. But that’s part of the beauty of a representative republic: the people are THE deciders of what does and does not happen in our government. During that time, the People decided who would represent us in D.C., where all the laws are made by those we send to do just that. As opinions are developed, and their variations in thought are passed to those representatives, rules and guidelines are changed through representative voting. That’s legislation.

What has changed is those folks we send to Washington have slowly every two years moved away from representing the People. What’s at stake is the power to determine those rules and guidelines that now are almost totally based on THEIR thoughts and desires and not so much on those of the People.

We are rapidly becoming an Autocracy, and we may already be there.

An autocracy is a system of government in which an autocrat, today best defined as a party or group of influential people, possesses supreme and absolute power. The decisions of this autocrat are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control, except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d’état or mass insurrection. Absolute monarchies (such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Eswatini, Brunei, Oman, and Vatican City are the main modern-day forms of autocracy.

Throughout American history, there have been numerous presidents that many thought were “autocrat-wannabes.” Even President Trump was accused even before elected of wanting to be an autocrat, and many said a dictator. But what has happened is the people in the pot of cold water have not noticed the water temperature turning up. We’ve been content in the pot swimming around, doing our thing, and never saw the heat.

News flash: Trump hasn’t been turning up the heat. The American Left has control of the water temperature.

How so?

The People have allowed it. We’ve sat quietly while the mantra of politics has steadily and stealthily slid further to the Left in this century. Today’s American political philosophy looks nothing like it did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. A generation of U.S. citizens has come and gone since Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. And with them went to memories and lessons learned from a war that nearly destroyed the nation. The U.S. united as a People like never before and killed not one but two totalitarian governments, Germany and Japan. WWII almost destroyed us.

To make it through, our fathers and grandfathers had to put everything on the line. Meism was DEAD. It was everything for the nation. And everyone pitched in. Self was WAY in the rear. To make it as a country, they knew it had to be what JFK reminded us in his inauguration speech when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask instead what YOU can do for your country.”

Imagine hearing that from today’s politicians and the majority of our governed. Rarely will that sentiment be expressed.

That’s made us a generation of frogs that began in a pot of cold water and are content while the temperature heads for boiling. Most of the frogs don’t pay attention to the water temperature. The rest started jumping from the pot about ten years ago.

What Are We Facing?

We’re facing a pot that is boiling. We think we’re OK. We’ve ignored most of the signs of the water temperature going up very slowly.

The pot controllers have taken over and are in charge. Many of the frogs have awakened and are franticly trying to alert the other frogs of the impending danger. It may be too late.

What’s going to happen? The water is certainly going to boil. Many other frogs are going to pay the ultimate price. What needs to be stopped is the senseless loss of any more frogs. The message is out there with the truth of the pot, the water, and what’s at stake. The problem is that too many frogs are turning deaf ears on the truth and just keep on swimming.

Summary

Who’s in control? Just take a look at what has happened in Washington for the last 17 months. Democrats took over the House, which gave them the power of the People. Yes, the Senate is still under Republican control. But the Senate’s everyday legislative powers are limited. The House is the birthing place of legislation that regulates the water temperature.

That put Pelosi in charge. I know of no other Speaker of the House in U.S. history that has taken such vile and unethical actions as the leader as has Nancy Pelosi. Her lust for more power and control is breathtaking. It’s become more and more evident that anyone with whom she disagrees is finished in politics.

She met her match, however, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her seat in the House. It’s hard to believe that someone could bloviate more and louder than does Pelosi. But AOC does. Her socialist message resonates with millions of young Americans that were educated in a system void of knowledge of that generation, which cut its teeth on the memories of an America that won the greatest war in human history. All they know is Meism, and “What’s in it for me?” Pelosi was shocked when AOC was not only elected by how quickly her message took control in the House. It took Pelosi a year to regain control. But of course, she has.

She has her hand on the temperature knob. She’s in control. She and her minions stand around that pot, watching the frogs who try to jump out, kicking them back in as quickly as they can. The educated frogs are the ones who endanger that autocratic model that she leads. They cannot let that happen.

Their plans have been in place for some time. Barack Obama activated it. Hillary Clinton was to take it up to the next level. After that was to be an Autocratic/Socialist move to take over the American government. Donald Trump thwarted the master plan.

What’s next? Three years ago, I predicted the Left will do anything and everything within their power to take him out. They have tried with all their efforts for three years. But to their chagrin, he’s effective dodged all their bullets: so far. Even if he survives the rest of this year and wins re-election, their drive to remove him will NOT stop. They’ll just keep turning up the water temperature.

What’s at stake? Losing 250 years of history of being the greatest nation in World history. For the autocrats to win control, they must obliterate the recorded facts of the structure of the greatest country on Earth. Knowledge is power. Removing proof of the past from the minds of this generation is mandatory for that change to happen.

When you watch the news, read the newspaper, listen to the radio or talk to fellow workers or friends, be careful to instead of benignly accepting everything you hear and say as factual, notate in your mind and find out for yourself if what message you are given is real. Teach your children to do the same thing.

We’ve got to get as many frogs out of the water as quickly as possible.

We’re NOT going to be able to change the product the Left is selling to unwitting Americans. We must simply teach them that “It Is What It Is.” And it’s undoubtedly NOT utopia.

NOTE: There will be no podcasts until Monday, Memorial Day. There WILL be daily stories. Additionally, “TNN LIVE” will NOT air today through Monday but will return Tuesday morning, May 26. In the way of explanation, we are making some changes — upgrades — to make our programming better and more inclusive of our audience. Please pass this message along to those you know are part of the TruthNewsNetwork family.

Have a wonderful time through this holiday weekend, keeping in mind that Monday should NOT be the only day of the year we express our gratitude for those champions who numbered among those who fought in multiple battles to keep our freedom in place. Whisper a prayer of thanks for their sacrifices. “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend.”

We love you at TNN. And we’re thankful you’re part of this Family!

Dan

 

The Facts are In: Hydroxycloroquine is a Hoax

May 20, 2020

Washington Post Opinion Piece

THE HYPE over the drug hydroxychloroquine was fueled by President Trump, who touted it repeatedly. The president’s claims were not backed by scientific evidence, but he was enthusiastic. “What do you have to lose?” he has asked. In desperation, the public snapped up pills and the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization on March 28 for the drug to be given to hospitalized patients. On Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “So we have had some great response, in terms of doctors writing letters and people calling on the hydroxychloroquine.”

Now comes the evidence. Two large studies of hospitalized patients in New York City have found the drug was essentially useless against the virus.

One study, by Eli S. Rosenberg and colleagues, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined 1,438 patients suffering from infection across 25 hospitals in the New York area between March 15 and 28. The study also looked at those who received hydroxychloroquine along with the antibiotic azithromycin. Mr. Trump had heralded the combination as “a real chance to be one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine.” The conclusion of the study: “Among patients hospitalized in metropolitan New York with COVID-19, treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both, compared with neither treatment, was not significantly associated with differences in in-hospital mortality.”

The second study, by Joshua Geleris and colleagues, examined 1,376 patients at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Irving Medical Center in northern Manhattan from March 7 to April 8. Their conclusion in the New England Journal of Medicine: “In this analysis involving a large sample of consecutive patients who had been hospitalized with Covid-19, the risk of intubation or death was not significantly higher or lower among patients who received hydroxychloroquine than among those who did not.” The results, they said, “do not support the use of hydroxychloroquine at present” except in clinical trials.

The two studies were observational. Separate, controlled clinical trials are underway, including one sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. But both of these hospital studies examined a group of patients significantly larger than the tiny, initial research by the maverick doctor Didier Raoult in Marseille, France, that triggered the frenzy.

Then there’s this story:

TRUMP’S MIRACLE DRUG: French Study of 1,000+ Patients Including Seniors See 98% Success Rate with Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin Regimen

In late March FOX News host, Laura Ingraham reported on the latest study by the French research team led by the renowned epidemiologist Dr. Didier Raoult was able to repeat his findings from a previous study.

This time Dr. Raoult administered hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to 80 patients and observed improvement in EVERY CASE except for a very sick 86-year-old with an advanced form of coronavirus infection.

(Here are the details of the trials of this test. It may be hard to read.)

My Few Questions for the “Experts:”

• Why were not the findings of the two studies for the summary of their findings listed as are those in the French study? Isn’t it mandatory for a reputable study to disclose those findings so as to give them some credibility?
• Stories all over the news yesterday quoted “experts” and “doctors” who said, “Hydroxychloroquine will kill you.” Where are any facts to confirm those claims?
• If as media pundits keep saying that HCQ CAN kill you, why would the FDA even allow its use in any format under any conditions? “Will Kill” is pretty demonstrative and final.
• If tens of thousands of doctors around the world are self-prescribing Hydroxychloroquine for themselves as a prophylactic against COVID-19, doesn’t it make medical sense there should be a sound basis for their doing so?
• Why do the deaths of 60,000 Americans not spur the “experts” to conduct the clinical trials they demand are necessary to green-light Hydroxychloroquine for formal use against COVD-19 in an emergency 24/7 setting? Could it be that either 60,000 is to them an acceptable loss of life against a virus or could it be there’s some reason they want to downplay the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine for use against COVID-19?

Summary

It is curious that although the new “miracle COVID-19 drug” remdisivir is still in early testing and there are no completed clinical trial studies from which its efficacy is confirmed – in Dr. Fauci’s analysis of Hydroxychloroquine’s test results, remdisivir’s results currently would be called “anecdotal” as he has termed Dr. Raoult’s results – the FDA immediately when notified of its readiness for clinical trials green-lighted remdisivir human tests. That is VERY rare.

Many experts feel there is an economic purpose for the downplay of Hydroxychloroquine’s benefits of treating the virus.

Wait: don’t think for a second big Pharma has no stake in this pandemic and therefore no concern for the findings of clinical trials for both remdisivir and Hydroxychloroquine. That’s exactly what Democrats who were begging for control of the House in the 2018 election promised they would immediately do after being sworn: FORCE BIG PHARMA TO SLASH DRUG PRICES FOR EVERYDAY AMERICANS! That has NOT happened. Any price reductions in prescription drugs Americans have seen came about by measures taken by the Trump Administration with NO involvement of Congress. Big Pharma is “Big” solely because of their monopolies in the U.S. perpetuated by the largest and most financially qualified to “facilitate the legislative concerns” of Big Pharma: Lobbyists.

Several years ago I spent two months on business in Switzerland. My original plan was for that trip to last two weeks at most. I had prescriptions that while there needed to be refilled. I had my doctor email those prescriptions from the U.S. and headed to a Swiss pharmacy. To be brief, one month of my prescriptions purchased at my pharmacy at home cost about $150. The exact same prescription drugs in Switzerland cost $35.

What’s the difference? Big Pharma through U.S. federal legislation through the years has parlayed contacts with legislators to make sure drug prices are artificially inflated that are sold in the U.S.!

You don’t think they see drugs for COVID-19 as the latest gravy train they need to control?

By the way, I have a Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin prescription that I WILL fill if and when I show the first symptom of COVID-19. I have total confidence in MY doctor who told me to do it because he’s doing it!

Lock-down Anger Just Got Started

May 19, 2020

Protesters shouted “I want my life back” and held up signs with slogans such as “Protect constitutional rights,” “Freedom isn’t everything but without freedom, everything is nothing,” and “Daddy, what is a kiss?” Police said on Twitter they had arrested more than 100 people.

Some protesters tried to keep a distance from each other, sitting on the ground and wearing masks, but others clustered together.

Like dozens of countries around the globe, strict guidelines have been enacted on public activity to slow transmission of COVID-19, imposing its lockdown on March 17. The protesters handed out newspapers entitled “Democratic Resistance,” which said the new coronavirus is an attempt to seize power by spreading fear. The papers quoted 127 doctors from around the world who question the need for strict lockdowns.

A Police spokesman said permission had been granted for a flyer distribution campaign, but authorities had not granted permission for a public demonstration.

“According to state emergency declarations, we are obliged to prevent a gathering,” a spokesman said, adding 180 police officers were on duty.

A State Court ruled earlier this month that people have the right to hold demonstrations if they adhere to social distancing rules after activists brought a case that argued that the lockdown breaches freedom of assembly.

On Saturday, some protesters sat peacefully on the ground at a distance from each other, holding white roses in reference to the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazis in Germany. “We are here today … to stand up for our opinion. For the protection of constitutional rights, freedom, and above all freedom of speech,” said a woman holding a rose who gave her name only as Sandra.

This story actually came from a German newspaper and is about the demonstrations and protests currently underway in Germany! That story eerily parallels what could easily be an exact story about the United States. Are there any ties there?

There is so much of this type of protest going on around the world, it’s hard to accept that each is about a specific nation’s issues addressing COVID-19 and its fallouts in each. But in the case of Germany, it appears that the German people are taking plays from U.S. workers playbook on protests. Or maybe it’s just the opposite. Either way, citizens of at least these two countries are facing similar horrors at the hand of the virus — or is it the fault of COVID-19?

Who Is In Control?

If we only knew! Is it possible that there is someone who is maybe not actually pulling these strings, but might be coordinating the pulling? Don’t take this the wrong way: I am NOT claiming there is any such coordination nor is this a conspiracy theory. But in numerous countries around the world, similar protests are underway for the same reasons.

Let’s be perfectly clear: I don’t know of any of these protests that are actually protesting COVID-19. Covid-19 is NOT the culprit. There’s no doubt it is “a,” if not “the” major player in all this. But the disease is NOT locking down the citizens of Germany, Hong Kong, the U.S. or Kyiv. Protests are underway in India and Lebanon.

Protests have been ongoing in Colombia since November 2019 against a range of proposed economic and political reforms. While they stopped in January 2020, following the outbreak of coronavirus, they appear to have started once again. Since March 24, Colombia has been under lockdown, first starting at city levels and expanding across the country.

France has been under lockdown since March 17 to curb the spread of COVID-19 and amid the global health crisis, the news of riots in a Paris suburb that occurred on March 18 may have slipped under the radar. Paris has become accustomed to the “yellow-vest” demonstrations of which some turn violent. It was natural for those to morph into protests against France for lockdowns regarding the virus.

Is it just a coincidence that all these countries along with others find themselves not only dealing with a health crisis but a crisis that involves their citizens protesting? Sometimes protests turn violent as a result of their governments’ attacks on the economies of their nation in the name of beating a virus.

Usually, when something like this happens in places that appear to be unattached there are some connections. But I have no idea if any or all of these have some ties to the others or, if so, with whom and why they are related in some way.

Why is The Anger so Threatening?

That’s the easiest question to answer. Peoples’ lives have been turned upside down by those who are supposed to make sure everything is OK. And when the entity that is chosen to do that suddenly becomes the entity that shuts down the economic life source for everyone one of their citizens, tempers quickly boil over.

It’s the same across the Globe.

But the protests while are partly due to economic reasons, most of these countries are democratic or some combination of democracy and socialist in their governments. Their populace is accustomed to working in jobs and being paid for their work. And their pay allows them to survive, paying necessary amounts for their families to make it. Through no choice of their own — no election and therefore no authorization of shutdowns — citizens find themselves with no jobs and no way to make it financially without government assistance. And turning to federal governments for that assistance leaves bad tastes in everyone’s mouth.

Summary

That’s why the populace in these countries have resorted to demonstrations and sometimes even protests: to have their lives restored. In each of these countries impacted there have been numerous epidemics of various sorts through the years, none of which has forced these total lockdowns that are in place today.

The U.S. is NOT the only such country whose citizens have Constitutional rights that preclude governments from arbitrarily taking the lockdown and quarantine actions that have been put in place. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ensures that Americans’ right to free speech and to assemble will be unilaterally maintained “by the People.” And the state governments seem to have weaponized the coronavirus against its own citizens.

We didn’t see that happen in the Spanish flu, the HIV epidemic, H1N1 flu, or any other epidemic. So why now?

Any answer here is totally subjective. We may be given an answer or some answers to the “why” question. But we don’t know right now.

What we DO know is that our government at the federal level and at state levels had better act quickly to get these skirmishes resolved before protestors create an environment that can easily escalate and create real problems for many people.

What exacerbates the problem is that none of the “experts” can give solid and believable information about the virus and how to defeat it. Having so many die with only guesses for answers just lights the fires of fear and anguish. That must be stopped.

It’s horrible but typical of many in government to shed any responsibility or any of this and point to President Trump when blamed by the People. In fairness, at its inception, those same people were prosecuting him for abuse of power! But even while that was happening he established the White House task force to spearhead the quick building of a response team with all the “experts” that Democrats demanded he brings to the fray already in place. Unilaterally he quickly through executive order closed our borders to any travel from China. Such is only rare exceptions. Democrats, on the other hand, in all of January and the first week of February this year dealt with one and only one matter: the impeachment of the President. The House of Representatives were allowed by Speaker Pelosi to take up any coronavirus matters until February 5 — 6-days after Trump closed our borders to travelers from China. They were too busy attacking him first in impeachment and then for racism and xenophobia on his part for the China travel ban. Their own experts would state that Trump’s actions doing so saved thousands of U.S. lives.

Will we discover who, what, and why for all this? I hope we do, but not for the purpose of blaming someone politically. We need to find out the causes and the “caus-ers” so we can confront all those involved and implement processes to assure it will never happen again.

Shame on any Americans who are scrounging for the answer just to use for ammunition about their counterparts! We’re a better nation than that. Let’s while we’re looking for those answers continue to find ways to restart our economy and quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible to put Americans back on the job! Unless we find ways and find ways quickly to do that, our nation as we know it is doomed.

But in retrospect, that may be the actual objective of those who continue to want division and animus in our political atmosphere, knowing it will spill out into the streets and perpetuate the atmosphere. Nothing but further division can possibly result from that scenario.

Who’s responsible? Don’t look to others for those answers: Watch the players in all this. They’ll give you a sign — the proof — of who’s making it happen.

We need that to happen immediately!

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Healthcare: Fear Driving the Narrative of Decisions

May 18, 2020

Lot’s of us have memories of getting in pretty serious trouble as a kid and Mom or Dad making US go pick the switch with which we were going to the “tar beat out of us!” Which switch do I choose? If I pick one too skinny, they’ll get mad and get a BIG one. If it’s too big, it will hurt too much!”

That fear came knowing the certainty our penalty for making a wrong decision was an “either-or” choice. We’re facing a much different fear today.

Danged if We Do and Danged if we Don’t

“What are the RIGHT things to do about Coronavirus? What are the WRONG things to do for Coronavirus?”

If your answers for those two questions you are certain are the correct answers, please share them with all of us– QUICKLY!

The truth is, we’re getting answers for everything. But we’re not getting CORRECT answers for everything. And our fear comes from not knowing which are true.

If you want to see the most effortless picture of the fear that has engulfed several hundred million Americans over this, take a walk through Central Park on Memorial Day.

Go to the park early. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wears masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their unsuspected coronavirus infection? Who knows. But if you run towards an oncoming runner on a path that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in fear if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists must think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to get into their mucous membranes and, “AHA: you’ve got Coronavirus!”

These are probably dead-wrong beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its message that we are all going to die if we participate in ordinary life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans choosing to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely so they won’t die! The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will show up at reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life.

Very few find the facts of outdoor viral transmission. The truth is that the chance of getting infected across a wide-open, windswept space is virtually nil, even if the imaginary carrier were not moving quickly past his potential victim. Closeness to the carrier, prolonged exposure, and being in an enclosed space are the biggest risk factors. Even the New York Times, one of the most aggressive purveyors of virus hysteria, could not avoid acknowledging this commonsensical truth about outdoor transmission. Most viral specialists will agree that outdoors is safe, and there is undoubtedly no cloud of virus-laden droplets hanging around. The key word in that sentence is “Most.” And even then what they tell us is their opinion based on the best information they have. But in the back of our minds we know that all of the COVID-19 views are still mainly minus factual explanations. The bottom line, most doctors THINK, “It is safe to go for a walk and jog and not to worry about the virus in the air.”

Those fearful Central Park bikers would ask, “Are you sure enough of that to base your life on it?”

FEAR.

Scientific studies of how viruses travel usually assume indoor settings. A recent study from China confirmed that the risk of coronavirus infection occurs overwhelmingly indoors. The researchers identified only one outdoor outbreak of disease among over a thousand cases studied. Most transmissions occurred at home.

Japan, with an elderly and highly urban population of 126.5 million, rejected a nationwide economic lockdown and emphasized instead the need to avoid the three Cs: confined spaces, crowded places, and close contact. It has had only 360 deaths at the end of April.

Americans, for the most part, have NOT adopted those opinions of the Japanese. And the American media and the healthcare officials we see everywhere on television are NOT considering that Japanese plan to fight Coronavirus either.

The public health establishment is fighting desperately to maintain the current degree of hysteria in the populace, to prolong its newfound power over almost every aspect of American life. “Death will erupt if the lockdowns are lifted,” the experts warn every few minutes on the cable news networks. “It’s going to backfire,” Dr. Anthony Fauci warns again and again. Even as evidence keeps mounting that the virus is MANY-TIMES less deadly than was advertised, the public health professionals are hardening their economy-killing prescriptions, rather than loosening them.

David Kessler, a former head of the FDA, claims that Americans will need to eliminate two-thirds of their social contacts for a year or more until a vaccine is developed. The federal government should commandeer private factories to produce the millions of test kits that will be required daily before anyone can be “fully free,” he says.

A professor of pediatrics warns that restrictions must not be loosened “anytime soon,” because the models that show a decline in cases after a peak are untrustworthy. Of course, the invariably inaccurate upward slopes of those same models have been endlessly quoted to us to justify the shutdown.

A Harvard epidemiologist predicts the necessity of social distancing through at least 2022. “Employers should not let their employees leave the office for lunch until a vaccine is developed,” said former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, and a former CDC deputy director. Restaurateurs may not appreciate this recommendation.

For some reason, scientists circulate ancient findings that have little bearing on actual risk but hold great potential to increase anxiety. An infectious aerosols scientist from the University of Maryland told the New York Times for the paper’s social distancing infographic: “It’s not like, oh it’s six feet, the viral particles are all fallen, and there’s nothing.” Translation: “don’t dare to think that you are safe from others at distances over six feet.” The New York Times notes happily, with another scary diagram, MIT researchers have observed particles from a cough traveling 16 feet and those from a sneeze traveling as far as 26 feet. But the dosage at such distances would be incapable of infecting anyone.

The experts’ alarms over a post-lockdown surge in infections may not be necessary, however. A majority of Americans already believe that danger is everywhere at the same time (that’s correctly called “ubiquitous”), and are prepared to sacrifice millions of more livelihoods to feel “safe.” Seventy-three percent of respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal poll were worried that they or someone in their immediate family would become infected — a proposition that would translate to over 300 million infected Americans. Though recent data from New York and California reveal that the virus’s existence in the population has been much greater than previously known (and the death rate much lower than our experts have asserted), it is unlikely that 300 million Americans will become infected. Fifty-eight percent of poll respondents were more worried about relaxing the stay-at-home restrictions than about the economic damage that prolonged restrictions would inflict. Only 32 percent of respondents were more concerned about a failure to lift the quarantine restrictions promptly.

Newspaper reader comment sections and the Twitter-sphere spew righteous anger upon anyone who suggests the most minimal reinstatement of ordinary life. Even blue state politicians are not immune from backlash. New York mayor Bill De Blasio came under fire for announcing that the city’s traditional Fourth of July fireworks celebration would go forward. “We’ll find a way to put on a show that will show how much we love our country,” he said uncharacteristically. A representative Twitter commenter shot back: “is this genuinely what you think people are worried about right now?”

We are in a race between the ideology of “safetyism” (that’s a brand new word — another -ism) and the facts. The future depends on which side wins. The data is clear. The coronavirus danger is narrowly targeted at a particular portion of the national population: the elderly infirm, especially those located in New York City and its surrounding suburbs. It possesses a minimal risk to everyone else. New York State accounted for 42 percent of the national death toll on April 24, with 77 percent of those New York State deaths occurring in New York City.

The average death rate from coronavirus in New York City is 128 per 100,000. In New York State, it is 71 per 100,000. To put those numbers in perspective, the national death rate for all causes was 723.6 per 100,000 in 2018; for heart disease, it was 163.6 per 100,000. New York’s coronavirus death rates bear no resemblance to the country at large, despite New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent pronouncement that “an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere.” California’s coronavirus death rate is four deaths per 100,000; Pennsylvania’s, 13 deaths per 100,000; Utah’s, one death per 100,000; Washington State’s, nine deaths per 100,000; Wisconsin’s, four deaths per 100,000; Georgia’s, which we are supposed to believe is about to unleash a mortal plague upon the country, eight deaths per 100,000 and after several weeks of the “stupidity of reopening their economy slowly” has NOT evidenced those dire predictions; Texas’s, two deaths per 100,000; and Florida’s, four deaths per 100,000, despite its elderly population. An MSNBC pundit gleefully predicted several weeks ago that Missouri would succumb because it had not halted its economy soon enough. Its virus death rate stands at four deaths per 100,000.

For further perspective on those state rates, the death rate of flu and pneumonia in 2018 was 14.4 per 100,000, for kidney disease, it was 13 per 100,000, and for diabetes, it was 21.4 per 100,000. In other words, most of the country has suffered a toll from coronavirus that is markedly lower than the annual deaths from the flu and a host of other ailments.

Nursing homes are ground zero for the disease since their populations are exclusively the elderly infirm. Twenty-three percent of all coronavirus deaths nationwide were in nursing homes, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. In Minnesota, 73 percent of total deaths were linked to long-term care facilities. In Massachusetts, 55 percent of all deaths were in such facilities.

To cancel most of the country’s economy for a problem, however tragic, that is highly localized was a devastating policy blunder that must be immediately corrected. The lockdowns are setting fires to everything that makes human existence both possible and meaningful. Lives are being lost to the overreaction. Heart attack and stroke victims shrink from calling 911, so they don’t burden hospitals now dedicated exclusively to COVID-19 cases. People with Cancer have had their stem cell transplants put on hold; heart surgeries are being postponed indefinitely. The cancellation of “nonessential” procedures has prevented the diagnosis of life-threatening diseases. Tumors and potentially deadly brain aneurysms are going undetected. Drug abuse deaths from economic despair and isolation are already rising, as data out of Ohio suggests. The United Nations predicts tens of millions more lives globally, stunted by extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths.

Summary

What’s going on in the messaging of Healthcare officials and many politicians? Purposeful creation and perpetuation of FEAR. Think about this: every example of countries throughout history falling to pieces lies prey to someone or some group of people who sow fear in the populace. Why do they do that? Human beings from every country on Earth have one thing in common: fear. Evil people, despots, dictators, and conquering marauders know that seeding a battle, war, or political coup d’état with fear gives the insurgents power over the people they are attacking. Fear most often is used quietly and kept hidden. Details of the unknown keep the fires of fear burning brightly.

But isn’t that what this is all about? Daily we hear the stories that tell us that COVID-19 mortality numbers have been way too high from the beginning, that infections have been low because of the numbers of tests given, and when tests are given in large numbers the cases of COVID-19 drop significantly when put in the context of the number of infections. Those are pretty good things to know when keeping 330 million citizens informed, don’t you think?

Sadly, we may be too late to stop the devastation. More people will certainly die from COVID-19. But the numbers which have been artificially inflated by many healthcare officials to make this pandemic seem a real pandemic are NOT going to increase rapidly. Few will honestly state the truth of this, but I will: when the dust settles, we will know that COVID-19 has been devastating to one demographic of people. You already know who comprises it: elderly with comorbidity. In other words, they have additional serious medical conditions. Remove the numbers from that segment along with all the FAKE numbers added at the advice of the CDC to purposely INFLATE mortality rates, and we’ll all suddenly realize: this has been just a slightly above normal flu season!

And for that to be used to add to fear to weaponize the political climate around the world is a travesty and a fraud against billions of people!

You just can’t make this up!

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Only One Way We’re Gettin’ Out of Here: Death!

May 17, 2020

He was a better football quarterback than was Terry Bradshaw in college. In fact, according to Bradshaw, if Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty had not quit the Louisiana Tech football team to start working full time in what had been his hobby, Bradshaw would have never been named starting quarterback for the Bulldogs. It all happened, including four SuperBowl rings, a bunch of Pro Bowl appearances and a seat in the NFL Hall of Fame for Bradshaw. For Robertson, when he put the football down to full time manufacture duck calls and guide duck hunts, he never picked up a ball again.

Many years and a longer, grayer beard later, Robertson has some very valuable insight, not about football OR duck calls, but about the COVID-19 pandemic and how you and I are and should be handling it:

Summary

When we decide at some point in our lives that we’re really not who should be making ALL of our personal decisions without some really good assistance, but that we need to give God at least a little input, things begin to change. And that’s not a bad thing!

Why is it we take for granted all the good things we have and have had through the years, and give just a smidgeon of concentration on the importance of things we cannot see or touch? What will it take to put us on that road?

Maybe it will take something like a Pandemic to get us in the right place in our thinking. Maybe there are some things we need to change.

As you digest this Sunday input from Phil, remember this one thing:

“Nothing changes if nothing changes”