‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their government with certain Rights that may only be rescinded if exercising those Rights carries any risk.’ //

the coronavirus should teach us that these ideas are far too risky to stay the way we learned them as kids. They often even led to people dying!

Let’s start by updating a short one so you get the idea. Some of you probably know the state motto of New Hampshire. It comes from a quote by Revolutionary War Gen. John Stark. “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

Obviously, that concept is terribly dangerous, but we can fix it. Instead, it should be, “Live free and you’ll die.” With a barely noticeable adjustment, New Hampshire license plates go from being a reckless endangerment to a somber warning. //

A lot of crazy fringe people who still want to do things have been using a famous quote by Patrick Henry. They fail to point out that life expectancy back in that era was only about 38 years, so people wouldn’t have lived to be old enough to die of coronavirus anyway.

That means his words are obsolete and need an update. Possibly, “Give me a mask or give me death!” It now becomes a practical health advisory instead of a dangerous demand for freedom.

Here’s one for the kids to recite before they watch school on the computer. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with social distancing and unemployment benefits for all.” //

For those who are not sufficiently scared by coronavirus simply because the odds of dying from it are incredibly small, you need to remember what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is being around people!”

You need to hear what he has to say. //

“What really has been pissing me off lately is the fact that these officers that are going out here and enforcing these tyrannical orders, what they’re doing is they’re…putting my job and my safety at risk. Because…you’re widening the gap between public trust and law enforcement officers.” //

The special ops vet culled from his experiences oversees in order to lay down a lesson on law:

“[T]he thing that I want you guys to realize is that our power that we hold as law enforcement officers, it’s nothing more than a facade. It’s a badge and a gun. And…you don’t realize if you haven’t lived in anarchy, if you haven’t seen combat, things can be stripped from people in a heartbeat. And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

The man knows the American spirit:

“I’m afraid these actions are going to wake a sleeping giant, i.e. the American people… They’re going to be put in a position where they won’t have their rights trampled anymore. And us as law enforcement officers, we’ll have our ability to enforce the law stripped from us in about 10 minutes.” //

“And I promise you,” he went on, “most of you out there doing these tyrannical acts against our citizens, you’re not ready for combat. You’re not mentally or physically ready for combat in the first place. I promise you, you don’t want to go through that, and I hope I never have to go through that again.

America is in an extraordinarily vulnerable state at the moment and Democrats recognize they will never have a better opportunity to take control. //

Why is California implementing this rigorous plan now? This is about control, not COVID-19.

This is not paranoia. America is in an extraordinarily vulnerable state at the moment and Democrats recognize it. They will never have a better opportunity to take control and they intend to take full advantage.

Unless we stop them, this is the beginning of the loss of our freedom.

This is our generation’s call to action.

It’s time to fight.

This should worry us. //

Appearing on Fox News with host Maria Bartiromo, Navarro gave us a quick timeline of China’s actions beginning with patient zero in November //

We know that patient zero in China was about mid-November. It was in Wuhan. We know that ground zero had the P-4 weapons lab, where the virus likely came from. For the next two months, we know that China hid the virus from the world behind the shield of the World Health Organization.

And, as they did that, they sent gleaming passenger jets from China, not into the rest of China from Wuhan, but to places like New York and Milan, seeding the world with what would become a pandemic.

As they did that, we also know, Maria, from their own customs data that they vacuumed up virtually all of the world’s personal protective equipment, including over two billion masks.

And we also know that, today, what China is doing, sitting on that stockpile of what we call PPE, is, they are selling it at profiteering prices to some. And, to other countries, they are actually putting pressure on those countries to deny the virus came from China or to talk about Taiwan or to do other things.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. And what that means for us here is, this morning, Americans won’t go to church because of the China virus. Sons and daughters of America won’t be taking their mothers to brunch. Tomorrow, 33 million Americans won’t be going to work, and millions of children in America will be home climbing the walls, instead of learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

So, that’s the China problem that we face. President Trump built the most powerful and beautiful economy in the world in three years.

The Chinese Communist Party took it down in 60 days.

"Mistakes" that always go in one direction. //

the U.S. “took the lead” in infections and deaths only because we are actually honest about our numbers. This is especially true of infections, in which we lead the world in total testing by far. The more you test, the more positives you get. That does not mean we actually lead the world in infections. There’s a reason our death rate is so much lower than other countries. It’s not because we have a magic serum (although our care is better and more prevalent). It’s because we are more accurately reporting infections, which lowers the mortality numbers.

By framing the U.S. as uniquely failing, 60 Minutes is doing China’s bidding, something CBS and others have been more than willing to do over the course of this pandemic. Does anyone really think China, with no therapeutic, was suddenly able to cut their domestic cases to zero? //

The biggest lie told here wasn’t that, though. It was that Pompeo pushed a “debunked” theory that the virus was man-made. In fact, Pompeo did the opposite, proposing it was an accident, something there is plenty of evidence for. The bat in question was not proven to have been sold in any of the markets in Wuhan because the closest native habit was over 600 miles away. Meanwhile, the Wuhan lab was studying coronaviruses in bats at the time. Incompetence and bad lab practices seem far more likely than speculation about wet markets at this point. //

Morgan Ortagus
✔
@statedeptspox
.@CBSNews intentionally misled its viewers with a report Sunday evening that failed to accurately portray the clear intent of Secretary Pompeo's remarks to Martha Raddatz on ABC News regarding the origin of the virus in Wuhan, China.

Morgan Ortagus
✔
@statedeptspox
This reporting — intending to deceive — seeks to obfuscate the Secretary’s core point: the Chinese Communist Party continues to refuse calls for transparency, thereby compounding its cover-up, and further risking American lives. //

CBS lied here, and it wasn’t an accident. One of the chief pieces of Chinese propaganda going around is to claim the U.S. is falsely blaming the communists for the spread of the virus. By propagating the notion that Pompeo claimed the virus was man-made, something we haven’t seen evidence of yet, they might as well be taking orders directly from Chinese dictator Xi.

Our media are disgraceful, and these “mistakes” always go in one direction. That’s not a coincidence.

This is not a coincidence //

Andrew Cuomo
✔
@NYGovCuomo
Are you are interested in being a COVID tracer?

Great! NY is building an army of contact tracers.

You can apply online here:https://careers-pcgus.icims.com/jobs/5244/contact-tracer/job … //

DeAnna Lorraine 🇺🇸
✔
@DeAnna4Congress
CAli is training an army of 20,000 "Contact Tracers":
To identify & intervw anyone who tests positive, track down all of THEIR contacts, then keep tracking & checking in on all of their symptoms indefinitely thru text, chat, emails calls.
Sound good to u?https://tinyurl.com/ya5cg7c2 //

Selena Simmons-Duffin
✔
@selenasd
UPDATE: Since @NPR published our contact tracing survey results, states have announced plans for 30k more tracers.

We now have data from 44 states and D.C., and plans are for 66,197 contact tracers.

Updated map and state lookup tool here 👇https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/28/846736937/we-asked-all-50-states-about-their-contact-tracing-capacity-heres-what-we-learne?live=1 … //

The current protocols for contact tracing do not allow tracers to tell you who you came into contact with, you have to take it on faith that you did, in fact, come into contact with such a person. It isn’t hard to see this model being used against any person or group who fights this silliness. You can actually lock them up forever via a rolling series of 14-day self-quarantine orders imposed without the ability to legally challenge them.

And if you think Levin misspoke about dragging you from your home and locking you away is farfetched, I’d only suggest that you have not been paying attention. //

I think WuFlu contact tracing is a trial run. Pretty soon, the next 'contaigon' will be dangerous ideas like freedom--and who you contact will be studied by these Kravits. If one of these nosy busybodies calls, tell them to show you a warrant. Me? I;m going to tell them to pound sand.

Scientists document a growing list of atypical coronavirus infection symptoms, giving doctors more insight into the emerging disease.

the cure may ultimately be more deadly than the disease. The engine of our economy is small business. Business owners are having their American Dream shattered by these extended shutdowns. The Federal Reserve is spending a million dollars a minute from our children’s future to prop up business revenue.

The entire economy is at risk. We are losing jobs to the tune of nearly 1 million every day. Since mid-March, some 33 million people have filed claims for unemployment.

This creates an immense human toll, the other side of the equation that is not being appropriately considered. The unprecedented economic revitalization during the first three years of the Trump administration is seriously threatened. The U.S. economy will struggle to recover for months or even years.

Unemployment causes stress, health problems, and suicides. According to RestartNOW!, there are counties where the number of suicide deaths resulting from the shutdown have exceeded the number of COVID-19 cases, never mind COVID deaths.

Many hospitals are laying staff off because there are so many open beds. At the same time, people with critical need for surgeries and other procedures are staying home because their treatments are considered “elective.”

A friend recently suffered heart failure and went to the hospital to receive a stint. He was sent home because it was not COVID-19 related. He said to me, “So Jim, I sit at home waiting to die, while abortion clinics are open for business and marijuana dispensaries are considered ‘essential services.’ This is insane!”

When you look at the numbers of dead throughout the Wuhan virus pandemic, one pattern follows in almost every state. Namely, that nursing homes are the epicenters of the outbreak. We’ve seen incredibly large death rates among our most vulnerable populations.

But one state in particular did something that make the issue that much worse. New York instituted and enforced a rule which required nursing homes to re-accept COVID-19 positive patients back into their facilities. The toll for that has been enormous. New York added 1,700 more nursing home deaths to the fatality rolls in just the past few days. It’s a massive scandal that no one is talking about.

In fact, Gov. Andrew Cuomo went on CNN last night. Not once was even asked about why he put that order in place and its consequences. //

The sheer arrogance is incredible and it’s exactly why so many are looking upon New York with disdain right now. These people have cast aspersions and blame on states with that have only a fraction of the same issues, yet it took until last night for them to shut their subways down to clean them for the first time in 115 years. But when a major hot spot is identified such as the nursing homes, New York’s politicians doesn’t even want to change their practices while everyone else suffers.

To capstone his ridiculous answer, de Blasio then flips to his communist playbook and blames “for profit” nursing homes for what’s happened. These are facilities that have been overrun with the virus by order of the state and city. They contain hardworking healthcare workers barely making it, and New York’s mayor is suggesting they are letting people die to make more money. That suggestion is absolutely disgusting and deserves total condemnation.

The impact continues. //

Deep cuts, Wuhan. Deep cuts. ///

Wendy's: where's the beef??

By spiking unemployment benefits with an additional $600 a week, Congress made it more profitable to file for taxpayer handouts than remain employed.

Tens of thousands of health care workers across the United States are going without pay today, even as providers in the nation's hot spots struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

This "tale of two hospitals" is a function of clumsy, if well-intentioned, federal and state directives to halt all non-emergency procedures, which appeared at first blush to be a reasonable precaution to limit unnecessary exposure and safeguard staff, beds and equipment.

But instead of merely preserving hospital beds and other resources, this heavy-handed injunction has created a burden of its own design: a historic number of empty beds in systems left untouched by the pandemic.

Those hospitals have resorted to unprecedented levels of furloughs to stave off temporary budget shortfalls, but industry and economic trends point to more lasting outcomes unless immediate action is taken. //

Outpatient services account for half of all hospital revenue, which means hospitals are now making, and spending, half what they were this time last year.

It's not surprising, then, that the industry shed a record 43,000 health care workers in the first month of this crisis. Experts expect equal or greater layoffs this month, when the sustained forbearance has made revenue even more urgent.

Even before this crisis, one in four rural hospitals were vulnerable to closure. Now, many of these rural systems have more empty beds than ever before.

It doesn't take an economist to understand the underlying economics here. And it won't just be rural health care that will suffer—hospitals in every corner of the country might close for good. //

In the past 30 years, there have been only four months where the industry destroyed jobs. What used to be the worst case, in 2003, was just one-quarter of the losses experienced in March.

Hospitals are in the business of treating patients, but few are any more—which means more furloughs are ahead unless and until hospitals are allowed to perform their basic function: provide health care.

Because one in eight Americans is employed in health care, the fastest way to get Americans back to work is to allow hospitals to treat patients. Allowing these workers to get back on hospital payrolls will also save the federal government as much as $2 billion a day through safety net benefits.

Scientists Who Didn't Predict A Single Thing Accurately For Last Two Months Confident They Know What The Weather Is Going To Be Like In 100 Years

Hospitals in California have been half empty this whole time

She who is brave is free...

The fastest way to help the poor is to let billionaires make money. //

People thrive when the economy thrives because the economy and the people are one and the same. That graph you see of the market’s ups and downs isn’t just a series of numbers, it’s our collective heartbeat. When people say they want to get the economy back on track, they mean the well being and health of the people. The economy is our vehicle to not only comfort and wealth but health as well. When our economy thrives, our medical system does too. New technologies are developed that improve treatments and life expectancy. In a world where AOC runs the economy, medical systems stagnate at a certain level and healthcare has to be rationed. //

At this time, we have stagnated. Tech isn’t advancing, the things these men produce aren’t being produced, and, as such, our options are shrinking. The first to be affected will be the poor that many people who hate Musk claim they care about.

It’s always been amazing to me that the very people who despise the system they’ve benefited so much from and blame for all the world’s ills is the very system that has lifted the lowest of us into heights people in lesser systems could only ever dream of. Sure, capitalism can create monstrous people and has its negatives. The free market can sometimes be unfair.

However, it’s far fairer than any other system and even the monstrous men it creates can go on to change the world. For all intents and purposes, Steve Jobs was a real piece of crap but, thanks to the capitalist system, this piece of crap changed our lives for the better.

The second data point is this: we’re already in the second wave.

Why do I say that?

The current policies are all predicated on the idea that Wuhan virus emerged in a big way in the United States in late-February/early-March. //

But now we know for a scientific fact that is not true. The first fatality with Wuhan virus in the US (I say with rather than from because the actual cause of death was a heart attack) happened on February 6. The consensus is that this was a ‘community’ based infection as the dead person had no history of overseas travel or using cruise ships. //

this moves the date of a significant influx of Wuhan virus from the late February time frame back to early January at the absolute latest. And that meshes with the stories we had in November-December about an especially hard flu season. If, as it now seems, what we were experiencing in November was the initial onslaught of Wuhan that no one recognized, what we are reacting to now is the ‘second wave.’ //

As one of my favorite bosses used to say at times like these, “Maybe we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop and we’re fighting with a one-legged man.” //

If this is the first wave, it is really no big deal and we need to man-up and work through any ‘second wave.’ If it is, as I suspect, actually the much-feared second wave, we need to start putting statisticians and public health officials up against walls for waging a war of aggression upon our nation.

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.

Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. //

Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding. //

Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. //

Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. //

Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. //

Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures. //

The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

The longer we go without adequate cancer screenings, the more lives we will lose in our attempt to save other lives.