IM
@ianmSC
It’s been a while since I updated the chart of Florida, Fauci’s favorite target for criticism, vs. all the states that blindly follow his advice

Shockingly, nearly 3 months after he said Florida was “asking for trouble”, they’re still having the best results

Playwright David Mamet (who is not a conservative) writing in the Wall Street Journal comes to a different conclusion. Our experts are making bad decisions because that is all they know how to do.

We have seen shameless incompetence rewarded before.

Consider Prof. Frederick Lindemann, a close adviser to Winston Churchill during World War II. He treasured his access to the prime minister. Experts couldn’t get near Churchill unless they came through Lindemann. He feuded with everybody he perceived to be a threat, and was especially threatened by Sir Henry Tizard, who helped to develop radar, one of the most useful tools in the war effort. Naturally Lindemann mocked it. Later, Lindemann dismissed the possibility that the Germans were developing a liquid-fueled rocket capable of bombing London—the V-2.

Lindemann was feted and honored to the end of his days.

Or consider Joseph Stalin’s science adviser, Trofim Lysenko. He, too, had complete access to the boss. He believed that plants, like good Communists, could be educated—that peas and wheat could be trained to grow in winter. The Soviet ministry of agriculture, acting on Lysenko’s bogus theories, managed to ruin crops all over Eurasia and starve as many as 10 million people. Later his ideas influenced agriculture policy in Mao’s China and killed several million more.

Lysenko was a talented flatterer. He outlived Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, dying peacefully in 1976.

Now we have climate change and its attendant alarmists. In 2001 a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted a recent study claiming that the Earth’s temperature had risen dramatically during the period coincident with the introduction of fossil fuels—the famous “hockey stick graph.” The news media, backed by those parts of the “scientific community” the media chose to honor, presented this analysis as though it were indisputable fact. In fact, it was riddled with problems. That would have been fine—no harm done—except that the American left, and the running dogs in education and the press, saw the fear occasioned by the hockey stick as an opportunity. No correction was forthcoming.

Most recently we have Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that masks are useless outside health-care facilities, that there is little possibility of catching the virus from a “passing interaction in a public place.” Happy news, save that they, one week later, issued a squishy semiretraction, saying, in effect, “It couldn’t hurt.”

What could the shutdown hurt? A pandemic was allowed to destroy the American economy. Tens of millions are driven out of work, cover their faces, and walk down the streets in fear of their neighbors.

A friend owns a restaurant. He is going broke. He had seating outside, but winter approaches and heaters are back-ordered until next spring. He is holding on. One is “permitted” to sit at his tables and eat without a mask. Indeed, how would one eat while wearing one? Does the virus know that one is sitting down?

He greeted two regular customers the other night, and sat at their table to chat. He took off his mask. The customer informed him that the regulations stated that employees of a restaurant are required by law to wear masks at all times. The owner put his mask on and rose. But does the virus know he is an employee of the restaurant? With whom would he argue, being an employee and a proprietor? With the virus?

The virus here is government—or at least the incompetents who advise our rulers and cannot admit the legitimacy of dissension. Absent intervention, this virus may eventually kill the host organism.

As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes. //

The study found that “This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years.” In fact, “the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.”

Briand concludes that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is misleading and that deaths from other diseases are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths. //

Today, on November 27th, The News-Letter officially posted their reason for retracting the article, stating inaccuracies in the analysis. I am frustrated at the explanation, and I think it is disrespectful to Dr. Briand’s hard work putting data together and doing an honest analysis. If her analysis was to be contradicted, then at least an equal-level analysis should be done to provide more data and thus a new conclusion. Dr. Briand and her work deserve such respect.
I have received many messages asking the reason for taking the article down, and so I would like to officially express my opinions here. I even got emails saying that thanks to me, people now will not be wearing masks or practicing social distancing. They called me “a COVID denier and a minimizer” and that I have no idea the damage and the lives cost in me writing such an article. I was devastated to receive such accusations, but I stand my ground. The goal is never to undermine the effects of COVID-19 but to suggest a possible over-exaggeration in death numbers due to the pandemic.

United Airlines has already begun flying Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine into position — including trips to and from locations in the U.S. and Europe — in anticipation of approval by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulators, according to a report.

The first charter flights are part of Pfizer’s efforts to move quickly once approvals are granted, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Pfizer has final vaccine assembly centers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in Puurs, Belgium, and runs distribution storage sites in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., and Karlsruhe, Germany, the paper said. //

The FAA told the paper it would allow United to fly five times more dry ice than is usually permitted — 15,000 pounds per flight — to keep the vaccine at the extremely chilled temperature it needs to prevent spoiling.

Just as the case is with all the articles touting the coronavirus vaccine’s reported effectiveness, we’re finding out the truth about the lack of a factual basis for indoor gathering limits because it would appear that it would take a miracle for Trump to win the election at this point.

Now that it looks all but impossible for him to do that, the media are doing all the pillow plumping they can for the Biden campaign (and Democrats in general) by making it so by the time Biden-Harris take office – assuming they are certified next month – the media can paint them as the heroes of the pandemic, make it appear as though we’ve turned the corner in January, things can get back to normal soon, yada yada – just as they’ve (baselessly) done with NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Though this is some stellar reporting from the NY Times, they don’t get a cookie here for telling us what most of us have long suspected. People should be infuriated over how they didn’t bother to dig into the data on small gatherings until after the election. Was it purely coincidental? Don’t count on it.

A thorough marketing campaign for the use of low-quality masks has convinced millions of people that masks will reduce COVID-19 spread, but do they really?

A new study from Danish researchers found that mask-wearers were not protected from becoming infected by the novel coronavirus more than their mask-less counterparts, contradicting the mainstream consensus, including that of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Researchers in Denmark reported on Wednesday that surgical masks did not protect the wearers against infection with the coronavirus in a large randomized clinical trial,” The New York Times reports in a piece titled, “A New Study Questions Whether Masks Protect Wearers. You Need to Wear Them Anyway.”

Mike Pence
@Mike_Pence
From the time President @realDonaldTrump announced Operation Warp Speed, General Perna and his team have been working around the clock to build a distribution plan. We’re proud to report, 100 MILLION Moderna vaccine kits are already assembled and ready to go.

Kayleigh McEnany
@kayleighmcenany
SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!

After lying to the American People for an untold number of pre-election months in claiming that the @realDonaldTrump vaccine is not to be trusted, CNN REVERSES!

Post-election, CNN now admits the “unmitigated success” of Trump. ⬇️

If you’ve had the virus, you do not need to worry about social distancing. In fact, if you’ve had the virus, you probably don’t need the vaccine either.

More importantly, if the vaccines work, then there is zero reason to keep in place (as though there was now) any of the stupid and arbitrary restrictions on human and commercial activity no matter what the “public health” experts say.

All of this goes to demonstrate one key point. All of the measures taken in response to this virus that did not focus on prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable were nothing more than theater. //

Ron DeSantis
@GovRonDeSantis
CDC recently updated estimated infection fatality rates for COVID. Here are the updated survival rates by age group:

0-19: 99.997%
20-49: 99.98%
50-69: 99.5%
70+: 94.6%

No matter how strictly mask laws are enforced nor the level of mask compliance the population follows, cases all fall and rise around the same time. //

The narrative says that if cases go down it’s because masks succeeded. It says that if cases go up it’s because masks succeeded in preventing more cases. The narrative simply assumes rather than proves that masks work, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

The narrative further ignores places like Sweden and Georgia, which never required masks in the first place, and it suppresses new scientific evidence if it doesn’t support desired political results, such as data from the world’s only randomized trial investigating if masks actually protect from COVID-19. Even a Nobel laureate has been canceled because his COVID charts and data were found to be undesirable.

History does not bode well for times that politics meddles with science. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious disease outbreaks, describes the current COVID scientific environment this way: “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”

In the end, it will be the loss of credibility in our scientific institutions, and the unnecessary division they have sowed among us, for which masks will be remembered.

A major study out of Denmark that sought to examine the efficacy of face masks at limiting the spread of COVID-19 has reportedly been rejected by multiple academic journals amid hints that the study found face coverings are not effective in protecting individuals from the coronavirus. //

a team of Danish scientists earlier this year sought to carry out a major randomized controlled trial study to determine how effective masks might be at stopping COVID transmission. The study, begun in April, involved around 6,000 Danish citizens, half of whom wore face coverings during "normal behavior" and the other half of whom went without them.

The study concluded in June. Yet the Copenhagen newspaper Berlingske reported this week that it has been rejected by at least three elite medical journals so far — the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"They all said no," Christian Torp-Pederson, one of the study's researchers, told the Danish newspaper this week. He added that the study's scientists "cannot start discussing what [the journals] are dissatisfied with, because in that case we must also explain what the study showed, and we do not want to discuss that until it is published." //

The paper's lack of publication thus far is not, on its face, unheard of. Peer review — the process by which independent experts analyze, criticize and edit scientific papers prior to publication in official journals — can take several months or more from start to finish.

Yet there have been indications that the study may be ruffling feathers among medical officials and researchers, with some of the study's directors suggesting, cryptically, that its results may run against the grain of current public orthodoxy on mask usage.

Responding to a query last week about when the study will be published, one of its researchers — University of Copenhagen infectious disease Professor Thomas Benfield — replied: "As soon as a journal is brave enough to accept the paper."

Benfield in a later interview with Berlingske warned against taking that quote "out of context," stating: "The article is being reviewed by a respected journal."

President Donald Trump was absolutely correct on Thursday night when he called New York City a “ghost town.”

President Donald Trump was absolutely correct on Thursday night when he called New York City a “ghost town.”

So many people have died from suicides and drug overdoses, lost their jobs and livelihoods, and have suffered unbelievable amounts of depression just so that the Democrats can have a chance against Trump in November.

The Daily Caller reached out to health officials in states that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and conducted an analysis of publicly available health data. These officials confirmed that the number of coronavirus cases could not be “directly tied to campaign rallies.”

In his insistence that we just didn’t do lockdown right, Emanuel sounds a bit like the old communists who frequent the coffee shops of the Upper West Side of Manhattan muttering about the real communism that never got its fair test. //

The Obama-era Emanuel had sermonized that the 75-and-overs should “stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions.” Even antibiotics would be out, as he wrote in his famous Atlantic article. “Death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.”

“I will die when whatever comes first takes me,” the then-57-year-old promised cheerfully.

Emanuel Is the ‘Rationer in Chief’ //Emanuel earned his reputation as “rationer in chief” when he wrote, “Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one, but things are rarely equal.” Accordingly, a system he proposed “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

Emanuel conceded that his plan appeared to discriminate against the elderly but explained: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. … Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.” //

Another reason the doctor seems so committed to the lockdown is that he’s now in the business via a newly formed company called COVID-19 Recovery Consulting, which helps “business reopen safely, responsibly, efficiently, and in compliance with the law.” In other words, it makes money helping people emerge from lockdowns — the same lockdowns Emanuel pushes.

Humans are pack animals. We need social interaction and peer to peer presence. Keeping someone in isolation is such a nasty thing that even prisons are looking to reform solitary confinement. It’s unnatural to us as a species to be so alone for so long without our family and friends.

We’re so naturally geared toward being around one another that our bodies use one another to make sure we stay healthy. We develop immunities by sharing germs and viruses.

In short, what we’re doing now is not only killing ourselves by not allowing our bodies to do what they do naturally in order to conquer sicknesses like COVID-19, but we’re killing ourselves by keeping each other isolated from one another. We have vastly overestimated the virus that we’re hiding away from but have given almost no attention to one of the very basic needs of the human race and it’s going to have longer-lasting effects on people than the virus ever will.

The Democrats have been attempting to sell the idea that Trump failed the coronavirus response and that there are so many dead here in America because he failed to act in a timely manner. This is, of course, a whopping falsehood. When Trump was closing off countries from the United States in order to limit the spread, Democrats were calling him xenophobic for doing so. In fact, it was Democrats who were out in the streets telling everyone to come out and not be afraid of the virus at all.

Now, the New York Times released a report citing experts who have “genuine confidence” that the pandemic will be over far faster than many anticipated and that Trump’s plan to combat the virus called “Operation Warp Speed” is “working with remarkable efficiency.”

New York Times Author Donald G. McNeil Jr. wrote of the optimism and good signs being seen in America. For instance, he notes that the U.S. is doing far better under the coronavirus than it did under the Spanish flu: //

How this will affect the campaigns is yet to be seen, but I can’t expect it to have a good effect on the Democrats who have been selling fear and pushing for lockdowns. Trump, who has been pushing for fearlessness and not being ruled by this virus, can only benefit. //

ss396
12 hours ago
They're preparing for a Biden win. All the polls show Biden winning, so they need to make sure that the country sees itself on a good path to recovery in time for Biden to not have this monster hanging around his neck, claiming victory even, in the way they've hung it on the President's.

flguy ss396
11 hours ago
Oddly, I read it the opposite, way, as if they know Biden will lose so there's no point dragging out the Covid-scare any longer, because NYC is dying economically and they are based there. But you may be correct.

ss396 flguy
9 hours ago
That has a good chance of being correct, too. They have to know that killing the economy did not help them: that Cloward-Piven can backfire. Plus Biden just announced today that anyone who actually thinks the economy has improved shouldn't vote for him then.

Odds are, the growing public opposition to the lockdowns, and news of a return to normal in places like Sweden, made WHO’s support for the measures untenable.