Category: Coronavirus

“Justice” Barrett Hits Homerun; Fauci Strikes Out

October 27, 2020

A Catholic girl from Metairie, Louisiana who attended a girls’ school and then Notre Dame is now the ninth Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In spite of her amazing qualifications as the World saw during three days of exhaustive attacks by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett — who will be known now as “ACB” — shocked many of the experts by staring down those Senators who sought desperately to find reason to disqualify her. They failed miserably. Last night, Amy Coney Barrett assumed the seat of former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

There is not yet much to say about ACB, but you can be in just a few days there will be MUCH said about her sitting on the SCOTUS. Consideration of a challenge to Obamacare will be heard by the new Court. Many on the Left swear she’ll be the swing vote to kill Obamacare even though she reminded Senators the challenge is on just one provision of the law and “Severability” could easily determine that one part unconstitutional but allowing the law to survive. Never mind, this is election year and Democrats need fodder to feed their minions to convince voters to vote Left.

The other pending law being challenged is Roe v. Wade. This law too is NOT being challenged in its entirety, but several parts of the law. And Barrett three years ago in Judiciary Committee hearings when asked stated she sees Roe v. Wade as possibly NEVER being overturned.

What we absolutely know is certain is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would, if still with us, be pleased to know that her replacement is probably as close as a judge can be to Ginsburg herself in the understand of the Law with a similar commitment to view every case without political prejudice and rule soley based on law. That may not be good enough for Democrats, but it certainly will prove to be good for the Rule of Law and protect for years to come the U.S. Constitution.

Amy Coney Barrett stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park, a homerun for the American people!

The Strikeout King: Dr. Anthony Fauci

The Washington Post has been a joke for a long time, at least since the days when it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for a story about a child heroin addict who turned out not to exist. The paper is now filled every day with poison pen “analysis,” backed by phony “fact-checkers,” criticizing almost anything President Trump says or does. Somehow, basic facts that may impact the coronavirus story, such as the federal record of failure in the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine, escape mention.

President Clinton in May 1997 had announced a “comprehensive AIDS vaccine research initiative” that has failed. To repeat: 23 years later, the project has failed. To emphasize this fact is not to denigrate the efforts that were made. Instead, it is appropriate information that might help us understand if the current push for a coronavirus vaccine, strongly backed by the United Nations, makes any medical sense at all. Perhaps money for a coronavirus vaccine can be spent more effectively somewhere else. Perhaps vitamin therapy, nutritional supplements, and other alternative treatments such as Hydroxychloroquine should be used on a massive scale immediately. In a major breakthrough about this,  Governor Kristi Noem announced that South Dakota will become the first state to conduct a full clinical trial on hydroxychloroquine, to understand its role in treating and potentially preventing coronavirus.

In the same way that HIV/AIDS may have been misunderstood by the “experts,” the jury is still out on the nature of the China virus. But such information is critical to understanding whether a vaccine is even possible and whether fast-tracking a risky vaccine is wise. In addition to the failure of the HIV/AIDS vaccine experiment, the swine flu vaccine scandal of the 1970s confirms how government vaccination programs can go horribly wrong.

The Post ran a story about Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, who specialized in HIV/AIDS vaccine research, referring to them as having “worked together at the dawn of the AIDS crisis.” It said Birx and Fauci are still “on a continuing search for a cure and vaccine,” a backdoor way of acknowledging that the vaccine project has failed. But the paper won’t say that in a direct or factual way.

Fauci and Birx are clearly knowledgeable but they are not infallible. Their records are not above reproach. But because they carry the label of doctors and “scientists,” they seem to be immune from serious criticism. It’s time for that to change. More and more it seems — at least as it pertains to COVID-19 — our “experts” are not very “expert” at giving us accurate information that, each time they do, they tell us they are “facts.” Too often they are NOT.

The paper is defending Fauci’s record as an “infectious disease specialist” but his comments about the nature of the China virus have varied, depending on which program he has been on. And there have been a lot of such programs. On one show in January, Fauci said, “But this is not a major threat 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.” This followed the WHO’s claim on January 14 that coronavirus could not be spread person to person. It cited China as the source of that information.

Fauci told the NBC Today show as late as February 29 that “there is no need to change anything that you are doing on a day-by-day basis.”

One thing we do know is that Fauci has been a reliable contact of the U.N.’s World Health Organization, having signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the WHO’s Dr. Tedros in 2018. The “understanding” seemed to be that Fauci would rely on the WHO, a China front, or China itself, for information on virus outbreaks and pandemics originating in China. That was a big mistake.

Ignoring his pattern of misleading statements, the Post claims that Fauci “developed a reputation as a skilled public health expert while combating the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.” He was certainly “skilled” in public relations. But in fact, the federal government’s HIV/AIDS vaccine initiative has been a failure. The American people have a right to know that these “experts” can be wrong and often ARE wrong.

As recently as 2014, Fauci was writing scientific papers about how an HIV/AIDS vaccine “remains essential” and that “recent advances in vaccinology offer new promise for an effective HIV vaccine.” But HIV/AIDS vaccines have repeatedly failed. The latest failure was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The $100 million experiment was 10 years in the making.

Fauci has served as director of the NIAID at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1984, the year scientists claim to have identified and isolated HIV. Controversy continues to surround this “discovery.” Recently, during a daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, Fauci talked about alleged “health disparities,” in terms of the numbers and backgrounds of people getting sick and dying from the coronavirus, and asserted he saw something similar when HIV/AIDS struck LGBTQ people.

“During that time, there was extraordinary stigma, particularly against the gay community,” Fauci said. “And it was only when the world realized how the gay community responded to this outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism — I think that really changed some of the stigma against the gay community, very much so.”

His comments ignore the fact that life-threatening and deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS emerged in the gay community because of the manner in which they have sex. To this day, male homosexuals are still far more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV. The book, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality, speaks about the power of the LGBTQ lobby and “unprecedented censorship” in the medical profession and scientific establishment about how the gay lifestyle spreads the disease.

This is still a taboo subject for many but the story needs to be told. Fauci won’t tell it, apparently because he thinks it somehow contributes to the “stigma.” Yet, smokers are regularly shamed into quitting because they use tobacco, rather than marijuana. Indeed, the government funds programs to discourage smoking but not gay sex.

Other so-called “disparities” consist of federal funding that has favored AIDS over other diseases. Indeed, a group called the FAIR Foundation was formed in order to point out that AIDS was getting a greater  share of the federal research budget, even though it is killing a fraction of Americans each year when compared with diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Typically, the flu kills far more people than AIDS.

In 2017, for example, 5,698 people died of AIDS. But 55,000 died of the flu. It was number eight on the list of leading causes of death. The figures show that HIV disease has not been among the 15 leading causes of death since 1997.

Strangely, the biography of Dr. Birx says she “helped lead one of the most influential HIV vaccine trials in history (known as RV 144 or the “Thai trial”), which provided the first supporting evidence of any vaccine’s potential effectiveness in preventing HIV infection.” But that was 10 years ago and note the use of the word “potential.” At this date, there is still no HIV/AIDS vaccine.

A history of failed HIV/ADS vaccine efforts notes, “Factors that led the U.S. government to take action included vocal activism by people infected with HIV and their allies as well as persistent efforts by advocates in the scientific world.” In other words, the gay community and people like Fauci and Birx rushed into development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

Some might review this failed project and nevertheless conclude that at least they tried to help people. But the fact is that the gay community lobbied for a quick-fix vaccine that failed to materialize when it can be argued that the “Medical Deep State” should have been spending their time (and our money) on projects to solve other health problems affecting many more people, such as the flu.

Consider that while billions were wasted on an HIV/AIDS vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says current flu vaccines reduce the risk of getting the flu by only 40% and 60% among the overall population “during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.” This caveat means that effectiveness also depends on the nature of the flu and which vaccine was produced for which year.

All of this proves that the scientific “authorities” need oversight and fact-checkers. The American people should not leave their health in the hands of bureaucratic “experts” who have wasted billions on failed vaccine experiments and played politics with disease.

Over 11000 Scientists Sign Petition Against COVID 19 Lockdowns

October 8, 2020

More than 11,000 scientists and medical practitioners have signed a petition against lockdown measures put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, saying that they are causing “irreparable damage.”

At least 7,000 medical practitioners and 4,000 medical and public health scientists joined more than 100,000 members of the general public in signing the petition, which was created on Oct. 4 and co-authored by Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Oxford professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection,” reads the petition, which is titled the Great Barrington Declaration after the Massachusetts town it was signed in.

The petition calls for an end to current lockdown policies, saying that they are producing “devastating effects” on short and long-term public health.

Some of these devastating effects, the doctors wrote, including lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health. They argue that this will, in the future, lead to greater excess mortality, with the working class and younger generation “carrying the heaviest burden.”

“Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice,” the petition continues. “Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”

They instead insist on an approach that instead focuses on protecting the most vulnerable, while working towards achieving so-called “herd immunity,” which they describe as “Focused Protection.”

“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk,” the doctors state.

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” the petition adds.

Hygiene measures including staying at home when unwell and frequent hand washing can help achieve the goal of herd immunity, the petition says. Young “low-risk” adults meanwhile return to the office rather than working from home, it adds.

“Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport, and other cultural activities should resume,” the doctors advise. “People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

The Epoch Times contacted Gupta, Kulldorff, and Bhattacharya for comment, but didn’t immediately hear back.

In August, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the United States does not need another lockdown to contain COVID-19, provided that Americans embrace “five or six fundamental public health measures.”

Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told Politico’s “Pulse Check” podcast on Aug. 5 that he thinks “we can get through this without having to revert back to a shutdown,” but only if everyone follows such basics as wearing masks, social distancing, and thorough hygiene.

In its guidance on preventing COVID-19 infection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists six measures to stay healthy and stem the spread of the potentially deadly bug: hand-washing, avoiding close contact with other people, covering the nose and mouth when around others, always covering the mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing and then immediately washing or sanitizing one’s hands for at least 20 seconds, daily cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces, and monitoring one’s health daily.

Here’s a .pdf version of this letter if you want to download:    

 

COVID-19’s Expiration Date Exposes the Facts of the Pandemic!

October 8, 2020

Note: Today, on TNN Live, we will dive into the facts of Wednesday’s vice presidential debate. We’ll break down the lies and misrepresentations, questions that were avoided or answered incompletely or incorrectly, and put in perspective what these candidates really mean in this race. Please join us live by clicking on the link directly below at 9:00 AM Central. Immediately after starting the show, we will launch into debate details. Please join the show and express YOUR thoughts. Call anytime during the show toll-free at 1-866-37-TRUTH. That’s 1-866-378-7884. Here’s the link you can click to join: 

Let’s get down to business!

The Realities of COVID-19

“Listen to Science!”

How many times in the last six months have you heard that screamed? It seems that every Democrat and every person in America who dislikes President Trump utters that continually. Let’s be honest: Science is NOT exact! That may shock you to hear that, but it is a fact. If we KNEW everything about everything — which is the premise that MUST be used to justify saying “Listen to the Science” — we wouldn’t have any questions about anything! But we still do. There are very few absolutes in our lives. And I can honestly say, COVID-19 and everything about it is FAR from being absolute! Any doctor, epidemiologist, infectious disease expert, or anyone else who claims to know absolutely how COVID-19 is transmitted, how it can be stopped, what will keep it from spreading, how fast is its incubation process, who is susceptible, where it originated, and the efficacy of masks of any kind to stop its transmission, that person is lying!

But here’s the problem: many of the so-called “experts” have very few facts about those things listed above. But what they each plenty of are “opinions.” Let me shock you by saying this: “Opinions are not necessarily facts!” And calling something, a “fact” does NOT necessarily mean it is.

Want an illustration? How about Dr. Anthony Fauci. He was presented to the Word in February as THE expert on Earth — there are no OTHER experts than he — on all things having to do with viruses and all other infectious diseases. Fauci was immediately tagged as the go-to guy for the Trump Administration for all-things COVID-19.

Yet, from the very beginning, Dr. Fauci missed numerous “facts” he gave to us. The nation and our people made serious decisions only to discover later the facts he gave to us were not facts at all but were little more than his opinion.

There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion. There is also nothing wrong with an expert not knowing the details of something in Science that is brand new. What IS wrong with many experts is their propensity to force their opinions on others couched as facts. And in the case of COVID-19, experts of every ilk, not just Dr. Fauci, have foisted their opinions on the populace instigating major life decisions that not only in many cases have not helped people, but have hurt people and sometimes fatally.

For example, pause a moment and look at our story published July 20, 2020, “To Mask or Not to Mask”  (here the link)  https://truthnewsnet.org/to-mask-or-not-to-mask-the-science-according-to-multiple-laboratory-reports/. You will read multiple reports from some of the greatest and most sophisticated laboratories on Earth who have tested every type of mask known to man over a period of a decade or so. Their purpose: to discover “scientifically,” which, if any, will prevent the COVID-19 virus particle from piercing the mask material either coming from the outside or being breathed out by the wearer. In these tests, the universal finding is not a single mask in manufacturing today is effective at stopping COVID-19! That’s as scientific as one can be in consideration of mask efficacy, yet there are now government rules in some states that mandate the wearing of masks at all times when in public.

What’s the problem with forcing Americans to wear masks? One would think that wearing a mask is no big burden on folks. At least by wearing a mask, one will not scare little ladies to death shopping with you at the same time and seeing you maskless: “He’s going to kill every other person and me in the store by breathing out COVID-19 wearing no mask!”

I don’t have a problem with that. It’s a small price to pay to help someone escape unnecessary fear. But there is a HUGE problem with this, according to the studies you just read: though it is not “absolute” that masks don’t work, creating a false sense of safety for those who believe masks are the answer will often lead them to eliminate or reduce OTHER measures given to us to help prevent spreading. “False hope” is often worse than “No hope” at all.

COVID’s Expiration Date

There’s no expiration date for the virus: at least not one that’s known. Yet many government “experts” and political leaders act like there is not only a date, but they KNOW the date of expiration.

Take Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. On March 7, 2020, Cuomo issued an Emergency Declaration for the entire state of New York with the provisions and requirements detailed. The expiration date for his Emergency Declaration is November 3, 2020!

Numerous other states which have issued emergency provisions have also aimed their expiration date to be some time in November.

Is COVID-19 political? Does it know when the election is being held? Why would any politician conclude that their state’s emergency and subsequent needs for its citizens would expire on any certain date?

I don’t subscribe to this or any other conspiracy theory. But it is happening, and happening so often gives pause. But, forget about the expiration date. How many other egregious political acts happened during this pandemic for which the governors and mayors of American states and cities have NO constitutional power to initiate? Monday of this week, the Michigan Supreme Court hammered Michigan Governor Whitmer for overreach in COVID-19 restrictions on Michigan’s citizens. The Court ruled that her actions were not constitutionally allowed.

It seems to many people that the political weaponization of COVID-19 has been and is a purposeful act by governments to see just how willing Americans are to allow governments to snatch decision-making that heretofore was exclusively made by individuals and not the government. That might explain Cuomo’s artificial COVID-19 “expiration date.”

Are We Alone in all This?

Not in any way! Don’t forget, approximately 200 other countries on Earth are experiencing COVID battles of their own. Yes, many have different circumstances and problems, but all face the same virus. And ALL must make the same decisions as those which confront the American populace today: how far are we willing to allow our government to reach into our lives by restricting our constitutional rights?

Take Australia as an example. COVID-19 cases pummel the nation. And the Australian government has actually clamped down on the nation’s citizens more forcefully than in the U.S. Aussies are today facing many critical questions that MUST be answered regarding what to do and how to do it when their experts cannot agree on but just a few details of how to handle COVID-19 safely. Does that sound familiar?

On Wednesday, a 65-year-old Aussie news anchor on Sky News took the airwaves and made his thoughts crystal clear on the subject. His words and thoughts parallel those of millions of Americans today (this is about 10 minutes long, but it is critical to watch):

Summary

This is NOT a story to tell anyone what we must do. It’s to alert Americans that people in other western countries face the same intrusions by their governments as are we. Those intrusions are impacting those citizens just as they are Americans.

So what do we do? Ignore the politics! Very few politicians can even claim to be medical “experts.” And none that I know of ARE experts on COVID-19. Sadly, most of the experts in medicine that are called-on to teach us about COVID-19 are NOT experts.

That’s where this travesty MUST stop! Americans MUST ignore the constant bickering between these experts. We all must embrace this one simple “fact” of medicine: most decisions about our healthcare are simple, fundamental, and attainable by Americans — ALL Americans!

What are those things? I’m not going to suggest that I know those things. But I suggest you pause today. Gather your family members around you and talk. In almost every case, if you and your family members can find a way to totally dispel the fear of COVID-19 that our media and many government officials have foisted on us, you and your family members can plot an equitable, feasible, and successful path for you to beat COVID-19.

None of this suggests in any way that COVID is NOT a killer. It is. But a COVID-19 infection is NOT a death sentence for more than 99% of all those infected.

Concentrate on the positive “what-ifs” rather than the “Oh-no’s!” Because in almost every case, if you are infected, you will make it through.

“Don’t let the fear of COVID-19 control your life.”

Rachel Maddow Has Determined What is the Trump Plan for COVID-19 Treatment: “Let Them Die!”

September 22, 2020

Everyone reading this knows my personal and professional animosity for Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. She seldom delivers the truth to her tiny audience, is the “shock-jock” for her television network, who always relies on some sensational “Uh-Oh!” to stimulate her fans. Who can forget that famous expose’ she gave to America by revealing one year of President Trump’s tax returns that mysteriously appeared in her mailbox. She built the expectation of blockbuster news the entire day. When she finally shared her terrible news, it seemed that President Trump paid “only” $15 million in federal taxes that year. Woe! Throw him in jail!

In the current uproar in D.C., Maddow finds herself lacking in relativity to today’s big news stories. “What to do?” Hmmm, how about another blockbuster, “Gotcha!” Her latest attempt to crawl back into being relative in the news is about Coronavirus. Why not? With RBG’s death, the holocaust of rioting, looting, and election hoopla, just flip the calendar pages back 30-days or so and find yourself another conspiracy. And that she has done.

What is her blockbuster? President Trump’s new COVID-19 strategy is to simply allow herd immunity, which enables the virus to run its course while in doing so, killing millions of Americans as we “hope” in doing so most Americans will develop a natural immunity to the disease. And to show us just how great a travesty for the President to don’t that strategy, she gave us some “shock-jock” data.

The President’s “new” position on treating the virus (according to Maddow) will result in millions upon millions of deaths throughout the country! Never mind this in NO way is part of what the CDC or the White House has shown to be a process that they have or will initiate to fight COVID-19. How in the world did Maddow even find herself in possession of those numbers?

To arrive at those death numbers, Maddow took the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the U.S. (what she claimed was just over 6.6 million) and compared it to the number of recorded deaths from the virus (around 200,000), concluding that the death rate from the disease was 2.9% and that pursuing a herd immunity strategy countrywide would thus result in multiple millions of American deaths before the virus would burn out.

“That would be what [President Trump] is aiming for,” Maddow said.

Here’s Rachel Maddow making her case directly to her viewers a few days ago after the President mentioned that “while” we are completing the aggressive development, testing, and getting an approved vaccine to the marketplace, we look at what has already developed in multiple countries around the world, “herd immunity.” She takes the President’s words and takes off on a trip to Planet Krypton:

 

Can you believe the insulting insinuation that runs throughout Maddow’s presentation? She states plainly in her closing that continuing the already aggressive and historic push to get a vaccine for COVID-19 to the marketplace is simply “too hard for this president.”

Let’s put that to the side for a moment and examine Maddow’s data and conclusions:

Strictly speaking, Maddow’s math is correct, but the numbers she’s using to make those calculations are, at least by the measure of earlier expert analysis, wildly off-base, or in TruthNewsNetwork-speak, “insane!”

The U.S. has indeed recorded well over six million COVID-19 cases (the website Worldometers puts it at slightly more than Maddow’s 6.6 million estimate, at just under 7 million). Comparing the number of recorded U.S. deaths to those cases will get you Maddow’s high death rate of around 2.9%.

But only counting the number of confirmed cases isn’t how virologists and public health officials calculate the total caseload of a pandemic disease. Instead, they use various tools — including serology tests, hospital data, and epidemiological projections — to estimate how widespread a virus is within society.

For instance, that’s how the CDC calculates the severity of influenza seasons in the country. “Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides [estimated] ranges to reflect the larger burden of influenza better,” the CDC says on its website.

Public health officials have made similar projections with COVID-19. One study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July estimated “six to 24 times more infections” than had been recorded by public health officials in the U.S. at the time. And remember: “cases,” which is the word used by ALL media in reporting those tested positive for COVID-19, is an incorrect medical term. Testing positive for the virus is simply, in medical terms, called an “infection.” Cases are only confirmed when a patient becomes symptomatic and begins to require medical treatment. Those are two VERY different things that, if factored into the “official” COVID-19 numbers, would dramatically REDUCE the number of actual COVID cases in the nation. “Infected” and “Symptomatic” are vastly different in number. But classifying every infection as a case gives those anxious to petrify Americans with fear ammunition with which they can (and have) used against us all.

Several estimates of total COVID numbers throughout the country have been put forth throughout the pandemic in the U.S., with most of them falling more or less within the range of CDC Director Robert Redfield’s estimate in July that “for every case that’s reported, there are ten other infections.” (there’s that word “case” again, instead of using “infections”)

It is unclear if Maddow is aware of those estimates. Applying Redfield’s figure to current confirmed U.S. coronavirus infections would put the United States at close to 70,000,000 infections since the pandemic began in this country. Assuming the death toll is roughly accurate, then the national death rate of the disease in the U.S. would hover around 0.28%, or approximately ten times lower than Maddow’s claims.

Maddow stated that a minimum of 65% of the U.S., or about 215,000,000 citizens, would likely need to contract the disease for herd immunity to kick in. Applying an 0.28% death rate to that number of infections still produces a shockingly high number — a little over 600,000 deaths.

Yet that estimate also fails to account for the belief among some scientists that most of the population may have some degree of preexisting immunity to COVID-19, meaning much less than 65% of the people might have to become infected by the coronavirus before the disease begins to burn out.

The actual number of infections of COVID-19 throughout the United States may never be known; we also cannot yet say how much of the population is at least partially immune to the virus.

But Maddow’s approach to epidemiological analysis — in which she implicitly assumes that a disease’s spread is fully captured by merely the number of confirmed cases of it — is significantly divergent from that which is practiced by epidemiologists and other public health authorities.

Summary

I can only surmise ONE explanation for Rachel Maddow’s creating this faux horror story so that she can attempt to make herself and her failing show relevant during the current political “Scamdemic” in which we find ourselves. Consistently throughout her career at MSNBC, Maddow finds herself riding a rollercoaster of success and struggling to rescue her dwindling audience numbers based on the “conspiracy wind of the day.” Maybe she missed it: today’s conspiracy in D.C. is President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell throwing all reason and historical perspective regarding replacing a Supreme Court Justice to the wind! And she has NOTHING new to add to that conversation.

I will end by repeating something a former employee said to me in an office full of fellow employees when I reacted to some comment a person made with a funny quip that was innocent in my intent and its substance. But, somehow, it struck her the wrong way. She looked at me and said in a gentle and normal tone: “Dan, go lay down by your bowl!”

I think that might be an appropriate response to Maddow regarding this rush for relevance and struggle for ratings. But I won’t say it to her. You just think about it!

COVID-19 No Farce: But Numbers of Cases and Mortality Rates ARE!

August 31, 2020

“Facts Matter.” Have you heard that during this the most charged political atmosphere in U.S. history?

Tidbits have popped up since the very beginning of our COVID-19 pandemic about the “numbers:” questions about the accuracy of tests given to those with symptoms, questions about the treatments for the virus itself, and even the accuracy of the official “cause of death” entered on death certificates for those who die.

We were told from the early days of COVID-19 that the elderly were most vulnerable and specifically the elderly with underlying conditions are the greatest targets of COVID. But we were never given any specific percentages that gave us a clear picture. We discovered by the numbers actual elderly deaths, especially in the state of New York, that in almost every case in which a 67+ aged American who died there was an average of 2.6 MORE critical medical issues those elderly people were struggling with.

The CDC listed the top comorbidities found in these patients: Heart Disease, Liver Disease, Diabetes, Chronic Lung Disease, Kidney Disease, and Immunocompromised Conditions.

UPDATE

As of the latest report published by the Centers for Disease Control, just 6% of the elderly stated to have COVID-19 listed as the “Official Cause of Death” did NOT have comorbidities! (Here’s the CDC Report link)

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR3-wrg3tTKK5-9tOHPGAHWFVO3DfslkJ0KsDEPQpWmPbKtp6EsoVV2Qs1Q)

What does that actually mean?

We’ve heard from the early days of COVID-19 that when patients showed in hospital emergency rooms with any type of respiratory symptoms, ER doctors were to “assume” COVID-19 at least as a “contributing cause” of their illnesses. Further, when a patient in that classification passes away, their Death Certificate prepared by the local coroner was to list COVID-19 as at least one of the causes of death and most of the time “THE” chief cause of death, even without giving that patient a COVID-19 test! Here’s the CDC directive: https://truthnewsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CDC-Guidelines-to-Reporting-COVID-Death-Certificates.pdf

Wait: There’s More…

COVID-19 Testing

Do you remember in January-February when COVID-19 cases began to appear in the U.S., President Trump wanted to accept the offer of South Korea to use the tests that were so successful in their country? Dr. Anthony Fauci vehemently opposed doing so, stating that the CDC would quickly have safer and more accurate tests to use in the U.S. Do you remember that, for some reason, it took a month or longer for the U.S. tests to be available for testing in large numbers? Do you know why that happened? The tests that under Fauci’s watch were created by the CDC were found to be contaminated! What was the contamination in those CDC tests? COVID-19 cells!

I wonder why President Trump didn’t throw Fauci under the bus to the media? Instead, the President (as true leaders do) took all the heat from the Democrats and their media lapdogs and simply pushed forward to get testing ramped up quickly. And now the U.S. has created and given more COVID-19 tests than any other country on Earth.

But there was one more “oops.” According to a July report, half the CDC COVID-19 tests have been showing incorrect results! https://www.msn.com/en-us/Health/medical/half-of-cdc-coronavirus-test-kits-are-inaccurate-study-finds/ar-BB16S6M6?ocid=sf&fbclid=IwAR2iwZ5jMTyIhJJBRzOfcqCgk99WyIv9CJRRo9jVYITD7hN3levPeZjNPaY

Wrap-Up

Let’s put all this together:

  1. We knew all along that the death rate among elderly Americans was far higher than that of younger Americans. What we DIDN’T know (until recently) was that 8-of-10 COVID-19 deaths were among those 65-years-old and older;
  2. A large number of those elderly people were never actually tested for COVID-19. Why? Many (and we don’t know the actual numbers) were admitted to hospital emergency rooms because of pre-existing known conditions and were treated for those other conditions;
  3. Because of the flood of cases in hospital emergency rooms, especially in New York, patients who died after admission were in large part NEVER tested for COVID-19. But CDC guidelines to coroners when completing death certificates purposely clouded the principal causes of death for a large portion of those patients. In fact, the CDC encouraged coroners in a release to use COVID-19 as at least ONE of the causes of death even when the patient had never been tested at all! (see the “Guidelines to Reporting COVID Death Certificates Link above)
  4. Now we’ve learned that according to the above report, half of the CDC manufactured and FDA approved tests have provided false results from the very beginning.

Let’s put these numbers together:

  • Of the reported 5,990,965 reported positive cases in the U.S. since February, 2,995,482.5 may have been false. And if not fully half, a very large portion were actually false;
  • Of the 183,005 reported COVID-19 U.S. fatalities, 80%, or 146,404 were of American who were 65-years-old and older at the time of their death;
  • According to the CDC, of those 146,404 elderly who died, just 6%, or 8,784 died with their official cause of death indicated as “COVID-19.
  • The other 94% of those elderly, a large but unknown number died primarily from one or several of the 2.6 OTHER underlying conditions (which are listed above) as their official cause of death.

Summary

On March 12 of this year, we spent one hour and forty-five minutes live on “TNN Live” with Dr. Judy Mikovits who worked side by side with Dr. Anthony Fauci on HIV and AIDS research along with that of other viruses and infectious diseases. She is definitely an “expert.” And, opposed to Dr. Fauci, none of her findings have ever been disproven nor has she changed her information about any of it.

Dr. Mikovits stated that any American who in the last 5-8 years has received a flu shot would likely test positive with COVID-19 if tested! Why? Because flu vaccines — ALL OF THEM — contain traces of the COVID virus!

Are you confused now? Don’t be. Please know this:

  • Based on the elements in the August 26, 2020, CDC report linked above, it is probable that many COVID-19 cases that were confirmed were NOT actually COVID-19 cases but of other serious respiratory infections or viruses;
  • Dying in this fashion is horrible — primarily because of the questions that have been answered by experts only to be discovered later to have been patently false, leaving behind many questions and much fear;
  • The worst element intrinsic in this pandemic (that we may learn soon was actually NOT a pandemic) is the now-perceived-to-be purposeful fear instilled in the minds of Americans and millions of others around the world that governments have intense control of people through Healthcare manipulation.

You can call this a conspiracy if you desire. But facts are almost daily now showing COVID-19 was certainly far worse in perception and its treatment as mandated by governments than it apparently really was, is, and probably will be.

Why is that?

Important Note:

When we broke this story, President Trump tweeted about its contents and numbers. Within a half-hour, Twitter deleted his tweet, claiming “information had been manipulated and misrepresented!”

CNN and MSNBC picked up the Twitter gauntlet and attacked Mr. Trump saying that the CDC numbers did NOT result in the President’s finding and ours’, but simply showed that “those people would have probably died from one of their other medical issues anyway.”

You don’t think that the Media nor any political party would manipulate the news to appear COVID-19 to be far worse than it really is, do you?

COVID-19: What a Sales Job!

August 11, 2020

There’s nothing new about COVID-19 itself. The equally “novel,” equally “infectious” Asian flu of 1957 had similar fatalities in Britain: scaled to equal today’s population, the equivalent of 42,000, while the UK’s COVID death total (untrustworthy death total) now stands at 46,000. Globally, the Asian flu was far more lethal, causing between two and four million deaths. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 also killed up to four million people worldwide, including 80,000 Britts. Yet, in both instances, life went on. What is unprecedented: never has a virus been so oversold.

Want a few examples?

  • In a recent poll, British respondents estimated that nearly 7 percent of the UK population has died from the coronavirus. That would be 4.5 million people.
  • Scots thought that more than 10 percent of the UK population has died. That would be seven million people.
  • Americans believed that COVID-19 has killed nine percent of their fellow residents or almost 30 million people! The real US total has crossed the milestone of 150,000, but for pity’s sake, “only” 20 million people died in World War One.

True, your average man and woman are not statistics-wizards. Nevertheless, broadcast news has pounded audiences daily with COVID-19 death totals. And a populace ought to have some idea of their country’s population. So folks convinced that in five short months they’d lost an eighth of their fellow “inhabitants.” But then, the public is never good with zeroes — a “citizenry” characteristic which nations in deficit count on.

Many worldwide “scholarly” writers are not immune to COVID-19 Hyperbole Syndrome. One British national writer stated this virus is “killing millions worldwide.” One would expect a plethora of editors and fact-checkers would have jumped on that claim immediately. But it was published, and millions read it. But the true worldwide death toll at the time was about 650,000.

I’m not one to “excuse” US or British editors for allowing something so ridiculous to scare to death millions of their citizens and millions more around the world. So let’s instead take those exaggerated numbers as proof of a grandly successful propaganda campaign. The UK is just ONE government that has destroyed their country, and need to keep ramping up the hysteria the better to keep destroying it. Honestly, several world leaders are doing a good job.

Do you tire of hearing groans from politicians and media “experts” that “nothing will ever be the same again?” Think about those complaints: have you heard any world leader on a national or international stage say, “COVID-19 is horrible, it is lethal, and it IS killing our citizens. But, if we work together, communicate constantly, and refuse to weaponize this horror for political purposes, we can get to the end of this?” If you have, you’re more fortunate than I.

When I was a kid, there was no MMR (“measles, mumps, rubella”) vaccine, and children were expected to get measles, mumps, chickenpox, and rubella: it was just going to happen. And I did! My parents or teachers never took cover or hid under desks. There were no school or business closings. Every kid I knew and I didn’t think much about it. It was just something that happened to kids. I know NOW that each of these was MUCH more serious than my parents made each appear. Today, things are much different!

Naturally, in my house, we also contracted flu and colds throughout my life (no flu for me, Thank God!) and I’ve been resigned to the fact that these disagreeable ailments were due to contact with other people. Abstractly, I’ve known that other people could also infect me with more deadly pathogens: whooping cough, meningitis, and TB, to name but a few. Yet before COVID-19, it’s never occurred to me that I should, therefore, wrap myself in cling film, tie a sanitary towel across my face and lock myself in a cupboard.

The more relentless these micro-managing policies of “social distancing” (an expression I’ve come to loathe), mandatory masks, continued closures and arbitrarily restored regional lockdowns apparently on the basis of a miserable uptick of 14 extra cases, the more we relocate what had lurked far at the back of our minds to the front: other people are sources of contagion — or so the EXPERTS say. We used to live with that fact. But this on-going risk of mixing with other human beings we’re now, apparently, to find intolerable.

Have you checked on New York’s current COVID-19 status? The medical paranoia is doing live and well at “full throttle,” and social life is nearly nonexistent. In the Big Apple, no one is visiting friends. Everyone is afraid of everyone else. If you see anyone coming out of an office or someone’s home or apartment, you can see the distress of “I may have caught COVID-19 from those in there!” I’d say you could see it on their faces except you cannot see their faces: that sterile-mask, you know. Of course, they grab that hand sanitizer from a pocket or purse and do everything but drink it to kill that crazy COVID-19 virus they picked up! It may not be any different next summer. Google, for example, has already advised its employees to work from home for the next 12 months.

The graph of new cases in the US roughly leveled off through August 9th and has even declined after a peak July 31, 2020, of 290,100 confirmed cases.  Daily COVID-19 deaths leveled off on July 23 at just under 10,000 each day. Daily deaths have daily declined since by 50%: 4951 on August 9.

What Next?

So what should we do knowing all these numbers? Go back to school and work, lockdown once more, or just to “give it a go” being careful with social distancing, masks, and slapping sanitizer on everything around us? Usually, Americans would have been able to just turn to the experts, get the proven best practices to beat this virus, and valiantly go forward. Nope. We can’t do that now. Why? The “experts” agree on VERY little! And even what they all agree on has changed at least once but, in some cases, multiple times.

In trade for this valiant vigilance on our behalf, we merely have to sacrifice: our friends. Any new friends. All live performances — music, plays, restaurants. (ever try to drink wearing a mask?) We’ve lost all occasions, like proper weddings, funerals, birthdays, and extended-family celebrations, travel, and our friends. Any search for love in this environment is little more than Russian Roulette.

Our states have made taboo any moving communal experience, like festivals, sporting events, and church services. Casinos are fine as are marijuana dispensaries and abortion clinics. I almost forgot: Black Lives Matters in New York City have full permission to march, protest, and demonstrate, however, and as much as they wish. Dentistry. Honestly, with just a few exceptions, the bulk of our economy is pretty much at “full-stop.

What scarily remains on our nation table is another total national lockdown. Why on Earth? The one constructive conclusion to draw from this debacle is that extended, indiscriminate national lockdowns to suppress infectious diseases are a catastrophe. Yet the most horrifying consequence of COVID-19 could be that lockdown — which once applied only to prisons — becomes officialdom’s established knee-jerk response to any new contagion.

There will be a new contagion, too, and a new one after that. How many times can you send the national debt soaring, devastate a small business, paralyze government services — including healthcare — and cancel for months on end the civil liberties of an otherwise “free people?” In preference to this repeated carpet-bombing, a literal nuclear option might at least get the agony over pretty quickly.

Summary

Have you stopped to consider just how much money the federal government is spread around during the COVID-19 pandemic? Without having the numbers for the “nickel and dime” spending, we’ve “know” about $5-$6 Trillion in direct aid to Americans and American companies. Trying to find an accurate number that the pandemic has cost the nation’s overall economy. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers have not yet been published for the third quarter. So, for the sake of this conversation, let’s assume in dollars and cents COVID-19 has cost American businesses close to $4 Trillion. Let’s be “spending-generous” and add the COVID direct aid of $6 Trillion and the $4 Trillion of business and personal losses and say, just for grins, “COVID-19 has cost American taxpayers $10 Trillion through July 31, 2020.

Stay with me: I am headed down a VERY interesting path here — a really short path!

How many COVID-19 deaths have occurred as of July 31, 2020? 145,425 is the published number. For our purposes today let’s add another 55,000 deaths before we stop this death-spiral. That’s 200,000.

Where are we going with this?

Let’s do some math:

  • 200,000 total U.S. deaths from COVID-19;
  • $10 Trillion of U.S. taxpayer money spent in COVID-19 relief and stimulus;

If you factor the per/death cost to American taxpayers, the value is mindboggling: $50,000,000!

Think what these numbers do NOT include: the cost of healthcare for the extremely COVID-ill Americans that have fought for days and weeks and finally lost the battle. Hospital bills easily total $150,000 in many of these cases.

“Wait a minute, Dan: are you trying to put a price tag on any of these peoples’ lives to justify physician-assisted suicide somehow?”

I AM NOT!

What’s my purpose for publishing these numbers? I think it’s time for Americans to know EVERYTHING that goes into the costs of operating this country in every area: the REAL costs.

These stimulus and aid packages for Americans are not funded by transferring dollars in some “holding” account owned by the federal government. Two or three or four trillion dollars, when spent by Congress, are funded by little more than pieces of paper. For lack of a better term, we’ll call those pieces of paper “IOUs.” Someone will be required at some point in the future to pay the bill.

I am not a “Debt-Hawk.” I’m just a businessman that knows the trap called “Debt” kills more businesses and people than most diseases. I’m 67 years old. There’s no way in my lifetime I see any scenario in which this country buys back all those IOU’s plus paying the purchasers interest due. The repayment burden then falls to our children and grandchildren, then THEIR children and THEIR grandchildren.

How far will repayment fall? Will it get paid? CAN it get repaid?

All are questions that must be considered in situations where government deficit spending is under consideration for anything at any time.

I’ll finish by saying this one thing: if my Congressman heard that I was diagnosed having COVID-19 and my case worsened to the point of hospital intensive care treatment and called my wife and said, “Mary Ann, the medical professionals have advised us that Dan IS going to die. Did Dan express wishes to you in this case?”

Honestly, my wife already knows my wishes: I don’t want to live in a vegetative state and would instead move on over “to the other side.” I’d rather her hear from the Congressman, “Mary Ann, because Dan said he didn’t want to live in this situation, the government will pay you forty percent of the per person death cost to taxpayers for each COVID-19 death or $20 million.”

I know, I know, that’s REALLY extreme! Let me be clear: I DON’T believe in death panels, I DON’T want anyone to commit suicide. And I certainly don’t want any “Death Panel” empowered to determine when my life “should” be over. That’s not my reference here. What I am pointing out is the outrageous dollars our government has and will spend on COVID-19 in total during this pandemic is FAR beyond any acceptable amount. And there is NO similar historical pandemic in which such drastic financial measures have been taken anywhere on Earth.

I’ll wrap this up by simply saying that somebody needs to be paid a really generous sales commission for successfully foisting the biggest scam in history on the entire Earth. There is no doubt this virus is mysterious and unknown in many ways. It’s deadly and it has killed and will kill millions more. But so has numerous other historical pandemics. And in none of those did any government take actions as has this government during this pandemic.

Who is the “COVID-19 Circus Ringmaster?”

I have no idea. But I guarantee that there is one.

He or she have put together a really GOOD circus!

 

Do You Even Know What’s In The Heroes Act?

August 4, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) passed her $3 trillion phase-four coronavirus bill in the House. All it contains is a “policy wishlist” for Democrats and progressives. The Heroes Act is a 1,815-page bill that the House passed but will never pass as written in the Senate. While House and Senate leaders continue their bickering over what to keep, what to throw out, and what they can sell to the American people, several million unemployed Americans lost that $600 weekly stipend they received in the previous bill. And those Americans are hurting.

“We have passed our bill, the appropriate thing for the Senate to do is to pass a bill, and then we can negotiate with them, but they can’t even get a bill passed on their side, even if it just took 51 votes, they’re in disarray,” Pelosi said.

But what Pelosi and House Democrats did was launch into the new  Pelosi “Take our bill and pass it as-is or NOTHING” legislative process. After all, Pelosi knows what’s best for the American people!

The legislation was not negotiated with congressional Republicans or the Trump administration. If it ever is taken up in the Senate, it will likely languish and die. Though Pelosi has met several times with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, nothing meaningful has been accomplished. What Pelosi and Company are demanding is just too big a pill to swallow. Politico reported even before the House bill passed that it serves as more of a wishlist for the House Democrat conference’s most progressive lawmakers than a piece of meaningful legislation to help Middle-Class Americans weather the COVID-19 pandemic’s slaughter of the nation’s economy.

Privately, several House Democrats concede the Heroes Act they passed feels like little more than an effort to appease the most liberal members of the caucus. Many of them were chafed that their most important priorities were minimized or ignored entirely in previous coronavirus negotiations.

The Heroes Act  contains mostly leftist provisions, including:

  • $755 million for the government for Washington, DC. The bill would also allow the D.C. government to participate in the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity (MLF) to support additional lending to the city.
  • $1 million for the National Science Foundation to study the spread of coronavirus-related “disinformation.”
  • $10 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as well as $10 million fo the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Eliminates limitations on the federal deduction for the state and local taxes (SALT). Republicans limited this deduction through the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The SALT deduction primarily benefits wealthy, largely Democrat states.
  • Grants additional aid for State and local government bailouts. The bill contains $500 billion in funding for state government relief and $375 billion in aid to local governments. Senate Republicans such as Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have contended this will particularly aid fiscally irresponsible blue states such as California, New York, and Illinois to the detriment of more fiscally responsible states such as Texas and Florida.
  • $25 million for migrant and seasonal farmworkers, including emergency support services through the Department of Labor.
  • $1.7 billion for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions, $20 million for Howard University, $11 million for Gallaudet University, $11 million for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
  • $15 million to maintain operations, rental assistance supportive services, and other actions to mitigate the impact on low-income people with HIV/AIDS through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
  • Create a two month special enrollment period for Obamacare. The bill also extends full premium subsidies to allow workers to maintain their health insurance coverage through COBRA.
  • Allows Attorney General William Barr to make grants to states to create state-run hate crime reporting hotlines.
  • Relief for up to $10,000 of up-front debt relief for all Department of Education loan borrowers.
  • Authorizes up to $50 million in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “environmental justice” grants to investigate or address the disproportionate impact of coronavirus in environmental communities.
  • $75 billion for housing assistance.
  • Mandatory early voting for every state and mandatory mail-in ballots for every state. Nate Madden, a press secretary for the House Oversight Committee Republicans, said it would be a “nightmare scenario for voter fraud.”
  • Allows wealthy people who make money from dividends and royalties to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is designed for lower-income Americans.
  • Extends assistance designed for nonprofits to political action groups and chamber of commerce-style associations. Open Markets Institute fellow Matt Stoller called it a “corporate lobbyist bailout.”

Pelosi’s Heroes Act represents a staggering amount of spending.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) noted that the bill has “70 appropriations over a billion dollars each.”

Norman asked rhetorically, “When you walk out of secret negotiations with an 1800 page, $3 trillion bill that has no chance of becoming law, why is that portrayed as an accomplishment?”

What’s Next?

As of 5:30 PM, Monday talks stalled once again. The Senate put together a bill they’re calling the “HEALS Bill.” House and Senate leaders met on Monday once more with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to try and reconcile differences between the HEROES Act and the HEALS Bill. It seems to Americans it would be prudent to find consensus and get something put in place quickly.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful in all of this screaming at each other in closed meetings if negotiations would be publicized — at least in part — so that 330 million Americans would have some firsthand knowledge of where these serious and important negotiations stand? Better yet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone would put all of what is in both bills in the public’s hands so WE could peruse what both parties are demanding? Is that too much to expect? After all, they each work for us!

As usual, TruthNewsNetwork has done the deep dive for our partners. The HEALS Bill has not been put forward in legal format to the Senate. It is still in “production.” But here’s what we are doing today: the following link is a .pdf of the House-approved HEROES Act. Feel free to read or download to examine yourself. Please know, however, it is more than 1,800 pages long! And it’s full of pork that in no way has anything at all to do with COVID-19. There are billions of dollars of unnecessary spending that each is little more than Democrat payback to whomever they need to payback.

Somehow that’s not surprising.

Below the link to the HEROES Act file to download, please see a bullet point summary of where negotiations ended Monday afternoon. Please know these are just summary points:

https://truthnewsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Heroes-Act-of-2020.pdf

Now, as promised, here are the fundamental differences between the two as of Monday:

Bullet Point Differences between HEROES Act and HEALS Act

  • Total Cost of each: HEROES — $3 trillion; HEALS — $1 trillion
  • Stimulus payment to Americans: HEROES — identical to that in the previous CARES Act
  • Additional stimulus payment to dependents: HEROES — $1200 for dependents, maximum of three; HEALS — $500 for dependents, no age limit
  • enhanced unemployment: HEROES — $600 per week; HEROES — $200/week, then up to $500/week to match 70% of lost wages when added to state benefits
  • unemployment benefits paid: HEROES — January 2021 for most; HEALS — $100/week through Sept. Then 70% matching of lost wages until 12/31/2020
  • Paycheck Protection Program: HEROES — Expands eligibility, eliminates 75% payroll requirement, and extends application period to 12/31/2020; HEALS —  Injects another $190 billion into the PPP fund, expands eligibility and allows businesses to request a second loan. Eliminates 75% payroll requirement and expands approved uses of funds for loan forgiveness
  • Employee tax credit: HEROES — Increases tax credit to 80% of up to $15,000 in wages; HEALS — Increases tax credit to 65% of up to $30,000
  • Bonus for employees who start new jobs or are rehired: HEROES — not included; HEALS —  There could be a return-to-work bonus of up to $450 per week for unemployed workers who secure a new job or are rehired
  • Eviction protections and a moratorium: HEROES —  Expands to cover nearly all rental properties in the US, extends eviction moratorium an additional 12 months, allocates $200 billion for housing programs and another $100 billion for rental assistance; HEALS — not included
  • School reopening: HEROES — $58 billion for grades K-12, $42 billion for higher education; HEALS —  $70 billion to K-12 that open for in-person classes, $29 billion for higher education, $1 billion to Bureau of Indian Education, $5 billion state discretion
  • Liability protection from coronavirus illness: HEROES — not mentioned; HEALS — 5-year liability shield to prevent schools, businesses, hospitals, from being sued over coronavirus-related issues
  • Coronavirus testing: HEROES — not included; HEALS — $16 billion

Summary

There’s only ONE thing we know is certain: what you see above, which is exactly where Leadership found themselves Monday afternoon will most certainly NOT be where this will end. It’s nothing more than typical partisan poker where all the players watch and listen intently to see which blinks first.

Am I the only American who is nauseated at the games these politicians play at every level, and with every part of our lives and seem to care little what THEIR diddling costs our nation? My temptation is to delve on that. But then I recall that this IS politics. Congress constitutionally is supposed to craft and implement legislation for their bosses: the American people. They are certainly NOT authorized to play any game in which the fate of 330 million Americans lies on who blinks first.

If you decide to go to a dictionary to find a definition of “Congressional Negotiations,” there you’ll undoubtedly see as part of the definition in Webster’s the word “Insanity.”

 

 

Politics Not Science Keeping Schools Closed

August 2, 2020

Politicians speak about following the science to set COVID-19 policy, but their decisions are more about political objectives than they are about medical efficacy. Why else did California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down retail businesses in March when the state had under 300 cases per day but allow them to be open in July when the state clocked in at over 10,000 cases per day?

Why else would Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear allow liquor stores to stay open but close down churches? Why did Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer insist that buying lottery tickets remain legal but made it illegal to buy garden supplies? And how did New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo use “science” to prohibit outdoor funerals but allow outdoor protests?

But as badly as our lockdowns have damaged local businesses, a potentially even bigger problem is created by the physical closure of schools. One of the most important functions of a civil society is to protect and educate its children, and the cancellation of in-person education stands to become one of the most detrimental acts of collateral damage during this pandemic.

California currently expects its 5-year-olds to complete kindergarten exclusively through online distance learning. For this dubious undertaking, the politicians are given passionate political cover. The Los Angeles Teachers Union maintains that “the only people guaranteed to benefit from the premature reopening of schools amidst a rapidly accelerating pandemic are billionaires and the politicians they’ve purchased” — as if billionaires typically send their kids to L.A. public schools. The wealthy will send their children to in-person private schools or hire additional tutors, while most American families will suffer from a widening education gap that could set their kids back years. Worst of all, none of this is medically substantiated. 

There is a great deal of fear generated in the media about risk to children, but the truth is that children are incredibly resistant to coronavirus. So much so that children are far more likely to die from the flu, or even just from driving to school, than from COVID-19.

The CDC has recorded a total of 20 COVID-19 deaths in children ages 5-14 compared to almost 2,000 deaths from non-COVID causes in the same time period for the same age group.  It means children have been 100 times more likely to die from non-COVID causes during the pandemic than from COVID. This puts the risk of COVID death for children 5 to 14 in the same ballpark as deaths by lightning.

Claims of long-term damage or mystery illnesses have not been backed by any definitive evidence and they therefore serve more as a scare and intimidation tactic than as a medical guide. The truth is that children so far have had around a 1 in 20,000 rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the CDC. While controversial to some, Sweden’s policy of keeping primary schools open even at the height of the pandemic serves as an excellent counterpoint. With over 1 million children, Sweden did not have a single death of a school-aged child despite full attendance and no masks.

Sweden is not alone in sending kids to school. Denmark opened its schools back up in April. Finland kept normal class sizes when it reopened. Parts of Montana opened schools back in May, as did parts of Canada and Germany. The Netherlands announced that Dutch students didn’t even need to socially distance anymore as they experienced very low transmission rates. Schools all across Europe have reopened successfully, both with and without masks. The risk to the children themselves therefore cannot be used as a justification for the massive damage created by ceasing in-person education. But what about the teachers?

A study in Switzerland, including a review of World Health Organization contact tracing, failed to find evidence of a single case of a child passing coronavirus to an adult. A comprehensive study in Iceland isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced the virus genome, and tracked the mutation patterns. This analysis, along with contact tracing, allowed researchers to identify definitively who passed the virus to whom. The study concluded “[E]ven if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.” A study of schools in Ireland found “no evidence of secondary transmission of COVID-19 from children attending school.”

New Zealand conducted a study across 15 schools in which 18 individuals with COVID-19 were in close contact with 735 other students and 128 staff members, yet no teacher or staff member contacted COVID-19 from any of the initial 18 cases and only two students out of the 735 would later test positive. The New Zealand study concluded: “Our investigation found no evidence of children infecting teachers.”

Denmark, The Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, and Austria all opened schools and “found no evidence of increased spread of the novel coronavirus after schools reopened.” The same was found in scientific studies in France, Sweden, and Germany. A leading British epidemiologist goes even further to claim there is not a single known case of a teacher being infected of coronavirus from a student anywhere in the world.

Since there could still be a rare school outbreak, such as experienced in Israel, students with high-risk household members should be given a distance education option, and teachers who believe themselves or their households to be at high risk should be allowed to teach remotely, balancing the risk for all parties. This way healthy students can be be educated by healthy teachers. With science overwhelmingly pointing to reopening schools, why do so many schools intend to remain closed?

The Politics of Teaching

If children are at minimal risk, transmission to adults is rare, and both can be accommodated with optional distance learning, why are some schools suspending all in-person education?

It’s certainly not because of the parents, who would be the last people to send their children into a dangerous situation. The vast majority of parents support reopening schools with modifications, perhaps because they best understand the cost-benefit of depriving their children of a full education.

The reason many schools won’t open, just like why so many places originally locked down, comes back to fear and politics. The Los Angeles’ teacher’s union, for example, recently came out with a list of demands before returning to teach in person. These included defunding the police, ending charter schools, “Medicare for All,” and a new wealth tax. It was not until the union came out with these demands that Newsom announced closure of nearly all schools in California — overriding individual school districts that had planned to open.

In a brazen announcement, the union put in bold words the conclusion of their argument: “Normal wasn’t working for us before. We can’t go back” – openly conveying that this negotiation was more about changing what they didn’t like about American education and society before the pandemic, and certainly not about what is best for children. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to the safety of school reopening, union President Cecily Myart-Cruz labeled doing so “anti-science.” Yet, it’s also no wonder that so many teachers have concern for their safety now, as media outlets like CNN continue to run sensationalized stories building up school reopenings as dangerous while downplaying the actual science and evidence.

Day Care at School Gives the Game Away

Cities left with little choice due to their political environment are trying to mitigate the situation for parents. New York City will offer day care for 100,000 students attending schools that are only partially reopening, though this largely defeats the point of keeping children from being at school in the first place. If school closing advocates are correct, this would only expose children to a broader cohort of peers and would make teachers, children, and their caretakers less safe.

Some districts in California are offering day-care right-on school campus for half and full day programs, at a cost. So, parents can pay to send their kids to school to be watched but not to be taught. Ironically, a student might be physically at a school under the watch of paid day care while simultaneously “attending” the very same school online.

It is clear that science is not the driving principle behind any of these policies, which helps explain why both the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have advocated for opening on-campus education.

Teachers Are Essential Workers

There are few functions in society more essential than educating our children. “Education of our children is an essential Texas value,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently wrote in a letter directing that health officials cannot completely close schools, and they certainly cannot preemptively close schools with no evidence of local school spread.

The CDC recently concluded that “in-person schooling is in the best interest of students, particularly in the context of appropriate mitigation measures similar to those implemented at essential workplaces.”

The education of our children is too essential to be used as a political bargaining chip. If nurses can come to work every day and treat the sick and infected, then certainly teachers can be expected to come to work and teach the young and healthy.

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“COVID-idiocy”

July 24, 2020

Yep, “COVID-idiocy” is now a word. I made it up. Why? We need to create a new COVID-19 group in which we can relegate the ever-growing number of idiotic plans and ideas pulled from the air by private “experts” to assist Americans in the fight against our current pandemic — you know, the medical pandemic “thing” that, according to the CDC guidelines, ceased even to be a “pandemic” six weeks ago. That doesn’t matter at all! We still need to spoon-feed Americans with a daily dose of stupidity to guarantee American leaders are always the smartest people who breathe!

We had the mask: “to wear” and then “not to wear;” “to medicate with Hydroxychloroquine,” then it was “don’t dare take it cause you’ll die!” Then we could take it “only in a doctor’s direct care,” then “don’t take it cause you’ll die!” “Everybody stay inside,” then,” then “go back to work, but only in small numbers.” Then, once again, we hear the cries of “stay at home, don’t work. If you do, you’re going to die!”

Everyone responsible for the creation of these lines of “COVID-idiocy” needs to be marked so that everyone will know they are the manufacturing of caustic, hateful, demeaning, and fearful “musts” that have together torn apart the hearts and minds of good and honest Americans.

But there’s more.

As New York City schools grapple with how to handle a virus that has an under 1 percent infection rate in children, parenting boards frequented by the educated, monied-but-not-so-monied-as-to-send-their-kids-to-private-school set, are forming “pods.” A ‘pod’ will be a small group of children, usually no more than five, who will meet at each other’s homes instead of traditional schooling in September. You, and four other families in your same tax bracket, will hire a teacher to educate the five children in the pod. Parenting boards are overwhelmed with requests for these tutors. The families will agree to only interact with each other: an absurd and impossible promise that will surely be broken.

We’re in a time where there is a ‘right’ opinion on everything, and every other idea is stupid and likely racist. The right advice right now is that it would be just crazy to open schools in New York City in the fall. This is even though every other country is opening schools, and New York’s governor is on a prolonged victory tour on late-night television for his celebrated handling of the COVID crisis…which resulted in the death of 32,000 New Yorkers.

If you’re a parent who is pushing to open schools, well, you don’t care about the lives of teachers. Those sending their kids to private schools that plan to open must love their kids less than the podders. Pods have become the only acceptable way to educate your children this fall.

The idea that moving a group of children from house to house, and bringing in a commuting educator who is theoretically isolating herself from others in the name of teaching the group, is somehow seen as safer than just sending the kids to a traditional classroom, is a testament to how much science and reason have ceased to matter. It’s the latest in our COVID security theater, which now includes having a temperature check when entering certain restaurants or buildings. However, someone can be COVID-positive and asymptomatic, or ya’know, take Tylenol.

It would be one thing if parents revolted and asked for $25,199, the amount spent per student in New York City’s mainly failing school system, to be returned to them to educate their kids as they wish. But school choice is stupid, and racist and only those terrible Republicans want that. These parents are doing something very different than icky school choice. They’re choosing, you see, to keep their white, affluent kids safe and educated when their local schools won’t do it. As for the people who don’t have the money to hire a tutor, and need to be at their own jobs while their kids are either on some wacky part-time school schedule or fully remote, that’s their problem.

The one-two punch of pods, while not demanding the money be returned, will go so far to keep down poor kids across the city. It’s almost as though that is the intention. Anyone sane still left in New York City must demand funding to be returned to parents to use how they see fit for their child’s education. Don’t let the rich podders get to ignore the choices they are making that will further exacerbate inequality in education. Make them face it.

Anything other than that is pure “COVID-Idiocy.”

What Other COVID-idiocy Can we Expect?

Every TV Show Is Going To Have A Coronavirus Episode

Or at least all of the medical drama’s will. I’m not sure how they’ll work a coronavirus episode into The Simpsons or whatever, but I’m sure they’ll try, and I’m equally sure that it will be terrible.

It’s weird how we want to consume media about the things that scare us, but we totally do. The popularity of the 2011 drama Contagion has increased by about 9000% since the pandemic started. Do people think that they’ll find some secret code to surviving the virus in a movie about a similar outbreak? Or does watching Matt Damon go through what we’re going through while also being hot just make us feel better? Maybe we enjoy the superiority of seeing Meredith Grey get a slight cough and wave it off as nothing while we sit at home eating popcorn and saying, “Oooo girl, you got no idea.”

Will We Ever Wear Pants Again?

Global disasters always affect fashion. After World War I, skirts and haircuts got shorter. During World War II, pants became more widely accepted as casual wear for women. During the pandemic, very few people are choosing to get out of their pajamas.

With each global disaster, humanity has said “Heck No!”, fewer layers, more comfort. After working from home for possibly many months putting on real pants might as well be climbing into an Iron Maiden. A suit? Don’t even joke about that.

Not only are clothes going to get even more comfortable but now that we’re all used to seeing facemasks in public you might start seeing them in daily life outside of the hospital and airport. Yes, the Mortal Kombat Ninja look is going to be walking the runway at Paris fashion week next year.

Get Ready For Running To Become Stupidly Popular

While most of us are trapped inside feasting on those fancy Pepperidge Farm cookies that were all that was left in the snack aisle, apparently some people are using this pandemic to get swole. One of the few ways you can safely leave your home during a pandemic is to go for a run outside.

Once you start running, your brain produces some pretty great chemicals that tell you running is good for your body. After you’re done feeling like you’re going to die, you feel pretty great after a long run, and the hardest part of running is having the time and energy to get started.

The end of the pandemic will be the start of everyone running a 5K. Everyone you know will suddenly not shut up about running. I mean, I figured the apocalypse would involve a lot of running, but I hoped it would be from something rad like a big dinosaur.

Our Butts Will Never Be The Same

Bidets have been in America for a while. You probably know a few people who have one and at least one unfortunate soul who’s chosen to take on the personality of Bidet Guy. You know, Bidet Guy, the guy who will not stop talking about how clean his rear-end is. If there isn’t one in your current group of friends, there’s about to be.

The toilet paper shortage is causing more than just the obvious issues. Cities are concerned that people flushing non-toilet paper items like paper towels could royally overload sewer systems. Bidets are the most obvious problem to the lack of TP issue, and Amazon is still selling out of them like crazy. Once the hoards lust for butt paper is satisfied, and we have a stable toilet paper supply line again, lots of people are still going to have bidets. We’re going to discover that they’re not as scary and European and as we initially thought and why uninstall one when the next toilet paper shortage could happen eventually. Guess what? We’re all Bidet Guys now.

There’s Going To Be A Divorce Boom

Everyone has been talking about the potential for a quarantine baby boom, and I’m sure that’s a distinct possibility. Still, when people got out of quarantine in China, the first thing they wanted to do was get divorced. Allegedly there were so many people going immediately from quarantine to their divorce lawyer that there was actually a shortage of appointments. That’s right. We had a toilet paper shortage; China has a divorce shortage.

It’s tough being locked inside with anyone for months, even someone you have loved and cherished since you were nineteen years old, who may have for example had a job that required frequent travel and routine sixty to eighty-hour workweeks, and now he’s home all the time, and you’ve suddenly realized that he doesn’t know how to open a door. It’s like every door he encounters, he rams his entire body into and then at the last possible seconds remembers to turn the and nob and somehow at the same time as he full-body slams the door he burst into the room, every single time he opens a door! It’s like living with Kramer from Seinfeld.

Anyway, that’s just a totally random example. What I’m trying to say is if there is something insignificant about your quarantine partner that annoys you get ready for it to be amped up by a hundred after a month inside. Once that’s over, maybe you’ll be prepared to split up over it.

Summary

If we don’t get back to normal life — you know, getting up at 6:00, drinking a cup of coffee after showering and dressing for work, skimming the overnight news, jumping in the car and headed to the office or packing the kids’ lunches and hauling them to school — we’ll ALL be making shrink appointments! Don’t get me wrong: I love being with my wife of 45 years. But, 24 hours a day? That’s burning way to much time from the “Tolerance Clock.”

There’s plenty of COVID-idiocy to go around as we watch the Democrat big-city mayors and state governors face turn green and spew COVID-idiocy insults toward Washington D.C. But I’ll bet you one thing: you haven’t yet seen the craziness that will shock us all the longer we live in this semblance of sanity at the hands of COVID-19 and the lack of REAL information. It’s getting ugly now, but, in New York City, imagine how the parents and kids in the “pod-schools” are going to feel being cooped-up for another nine months. There might be some killings — both by parents AND kids before it’s over.

OMG…if we don’t have a 2020 World Series or NFL football, there’ll be dads running down the streets taking potshots at total strangers! Yep. And there’s plenty of COVID-idiocy to go around to all 330 million of us. We’ll probably use most of it!

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COVID-19 And What the Data Tells Us

July 9, 2020

The Punchline: We got it wrong and now we’re largely tracking it wrong…

Did you know the “new cases” in daily reports are actually “old infections newly reported”??? Most of what is reported is old news and not indicative of what is happening or how we are trending.

We must look at “Date of Onset” to do ACCURATE trend analysis, but the CDC stopped reporting onset data in April.

Using our own Data from the CDC, we can see that while 45,000 cases were reported on March 23, in reality we already had 140,000 positive tests that had yet to be reported (date of onset).

And now that we know testing only captured 5–10% of actual infections, based on multiple studies, it appears at least several million (yes Million) were already infected by March 23rd, which were never tested.

The CDC is also now combining PCR & Antibody tests, so the “new cases” could be some of the millions of cases from 4 months ago. NPR called them out on it.

Per Nate Silver, a world-renowned Statistician, the average person might as well ignore the cases being reported, it’s apples and oranges.

We are suffering from data illiteracy in this country — from the Institutions capturing it (like the CDC) to the Politicians making decisions from it, to the Media reporting on it, all the way down to the Public consuming it.

Think of it this way, the CDC now believes (as do I) that ~10% of the U.S. has already been infected (i.e. 32M). So if we tested everyone with antibody tests, we’d have ~30 million new cases added to the report. Clearly we wouldn’t have truly had 30,000,000 new infections in 1 day… but our main sources of news are reporting it that way. If your state/city is using this data, rather than the date of onset or hospitalization data, then they don’t understand how to use data.

As someone who modeled Covid19 in March and accurately predicted it (so far), this is how I believe our reporting should look. *The CDC actually took a similar approach in reporting the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic*

  • Covid19 is serious, but it’s significantly less than we thought
  • Fatality: According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is on average about 0.3%, which is about ten times lower than originally assumed by the WHO. The CDC is now estimating ~0.26% in the U.S.
  • Fatality in Context (i.e. Risk): The risk of death for the general population of school and working-age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account. i.e. we’re capturing most of the deaths but only 5–10% of the infections. Risk varies by age significantly. For kids (particularly toddlers), they are ~20X’s more likely to die from the Flu or Pneumonia than COVID. For those over age 70, the risk of fatality is ~2.5% — this is much higher for those in poor health.
  • Risk & Symptoms: For every 100 people infected ~20-50 of them will show no symptoms (i.e. asymptomatic). Of the symptomatic, ~80% have mild symptoms. Even among 70–79-year-olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. So when accounting for symptomatic + asymptomatic, ~90% have mild or no symptoms. While most won’t know it, for a few, it’s vicious and deadly. *I had it, and it was brutal*
  • Immunity: For the ~30M Americans who already had Covid19, we don’t yet know how effective or how long the antibodies will last. But based on other Coronaviruses, it’s reasonable to assume it’s protective for 6 to 34 months. We also don’t know what % of our population has a strong enough innate immune system to prevent infection in the first place. But up to 60% of the population may already have some level of cross-reactive protection at a cellular level due to contact with previous coronaviruses. So it is possible up to 70% of the U.S. has varying levels of resistance.
  • Comorbidity: is very high. i.e. The median or the average age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 1% of the deceased had no serious preconditions. In NYC almost everyone had underlying conditions.
  • Highest Risk: In many states, up to two-thirds of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes — we clearly failed our most vulnerable 😢
  • The Costs: (Lives vs. Lives) not Economy vs. Lives. We may never know this fully, but up to 50% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the response, i.e. policies & panic. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients stopped visiting hospitals.
  • The Costs: The number of people suffering from unemployment, psychological problems, suicides, delayed treatment, and domestic violence has skyrocketed. Several experts believe that these may claim more lives than the virus itself. According to the UN, millions of people around the world may fall into absolute poverty and famine, which causes more disease/death. One estimate from professors at Stanford & Duke has calculated we’ve now lost more years of life due to our response than the virus.
  • Data Accuracy: We have gaps everywhere, but “hospitalizations” are probably the cleanest and earliest indicator we have. Everyone wants to talk about Fatalities, and we have work to do there. We’re missing some, but we also have clear instances of over-counting, i.e. gunshot victims counted because they had tested positive. It’s not clear whether we have more instances of over-counting or undercounting — or whether they died from or simply with Official figures usually do not reflect this distinction. We’ll need a strong post-mortem study that looks at these.
  • Data Accuracy: For now the best method we have to cut through the noise is to look at mortality in total, “excess deaths.” And even this depends on what you believe. i.e. if we assume 50% of the excess deaths are from our measures, then we’ve over-counted by 70%. If we assume Covid19 is the only variable at play, then we’ve undercounted by 15%. In any case, our counts are likely “in the ballpark” — i.e. tens of thousands.
  • Baselines & Context: The normal overall mortality per day is about 8,000 people in the US. Influenza mortality per season is up to 80,000. Most of our leading forecasts suggest Covid19 will account for ~5% (150,000) of our typical annual deaths (~3,000,000).
  • Capacity: Many clinics in Europe and the US remained strongly underutilized or almost empty during the Covid19 peak and in some cases had to send staff home. In the U.S. we lost 4M healthcare jobs so far and numerous operations/therapies were canceled, including some organ transplants and cancer screenings.
  • Capacity: At peak, New York City had around 1 in 6 hospital beds open and around 1 in 10 ICU beds open. Hospitals had capacity. Nationally, the CDC reports that “COVID Like Illness” at most represented ~7% of hospitalizations … it’s currently under 2%.
  • Forecasts: Most current forecasts assume we’ll go from ~130K fatalities to 150–200K over the coming months. And using the CDC IFR estimate, this means infections would go from ~30M to ~50M. There is debate about how much higher it will go and the size of the second wave. Some believe we’ll top out between 15–20% of the population infected, whereas others say 70–90%. I’d point out we have never had a pandemic over 20–30%.
  • Sources & Scientific Debate: We’ve  used a long list of great resources to put this all together: WorldoMeter, OurWorldinData, and the CDC. We’ve also found unherd.com to be one of the better sources on “context” and a balanced discussion for Covid19. If you only follow MSM and Social Media, chances are you may be surprised to learn there is a fair number of seasoned and credentialed dissenters, including Nobel Prize-winning scientists who completely disagree on the approach most of the World’s governments have taken. In fact, one of the Top 100 most cited scholars, a BioMedical Statistician, and Sr. Epidemiologist from Stanford, John Loannidis, wrote a scathing paper and then conducted one of the first seroprevalence studies. He was berated for it (and to be fair, it did have issues). Only now the CDC and almost every serology study are showing he was more right than wrong (on a rate basis), and more accurate than those who criticized him. The question has to be asked, are we listening to the right scientists?
  • Source Accuracy: Most of the predictions have been grossly wrong For example, many models assumed a 20% hospitalization rate, whereas we’re seeing ~1%. The models that influenced UK & US policy predicted 90K deaths by now in Sweden for not locking down, they are closer to 5K. At the center of many of our policies/strategies was Imperial College & Neil Ferguson. He is the same modeler who said 200M people could die from the bird flu (vs. 282 actual) and H1N1 had a fatality rate of 0.4% (actual was 0.026% or 15X’s lower). Plus, whoever Cuomo and DeBlasio were listening to in NYC when they said they needed 30,000 more ventilators within a week or tens of thousands more would die — should lose credibility. We need to start listening to those who are right and stop listening to those who are wrong.
  • Media Accuracy— Unfortunately, many media outlets have failed to report accurately and with context, and yes, in some cases have totally misrepresented the data and/or used images incorrectly. Some used emotional headlines like “cases surging” while cases were actually decelerating from 30% daily growth rates down to 2–4% … and they would quote “more people dead than 9/11,” but don’t mention that more people die EVERY DAY from normal causes than 9/11. I make no conclusions as to whether it’s incompetence or mal-intent. But it’s definitely wrong, misleading, and fear-mongering.

Summary

Just remember this while digesting these numbers: these findings are the results of thousands of charts, “facts” given by various government and private healthcare entities, and reams of medical data. Assumptions MUST be made in compiling all this. But we’ve tried to abandon any use of opinion in the preparation of these numbers. True numbers with actual experienced data points are mandatory if we expect any accuracy in results computation.

What we WILL be able to do is build on these numbers as new data and numbers on all fronts are experienced going forward. Projections shown above are estimates, but these estimates are based on past facts and projected going forward using several assumptions drawn for past experiences.

Just know this: COVID19 is no doubt a serious disease. Any medical condition that kills is a horror in itself, and one that kills thousands is hundred times worse. Fortunately, we can all breathe a little easier knowing that it looks certain we will in no way see 1900s Spanish flu numbers with COVID! At least that’s one really good thing we can draw from all these numbers. And there’s no opinion there!