More encouraging data. //
From the result of their blood survey, the German team estimated the death rate in the municipality at 0.37% overall, a figure significantly lower than what’s shown on a dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins, where the death rate in Germany among reported cases is 2%. //
Germany joins China and Taiwan in concluding that COVID-19 rarely spreads through casual contact
It spreads through repeated, large doses, such as you get while sheltering in place.
Stunning new data from the Center for Disease Control, as well as other international studies, has shown what smokers have always hoped for. Smoking, it turns out, actually seems to improve outcomes for people with the coronavirus. Those of us who have used the leaf that made America great for years have been the targets of extreme abuse. We have been mocked, derided, accused of weakness. But we are basically a happy people. I mean, we smoke, so this is not a time for us to say we told you so.
Instead, we would like to provide some advice for those of you thinking of taking up the only truly unique pleasure since the Romans in an attempt to fend off Chinese plague. Smoking is not as easy as it looks, it takes some skill and dedication, but these five tips will help you master it in time for the next outbreak of the Wuhan Flu.
That's going to sting...
The full story.
China has tried to downplay the reports but the videos of discrimination on social media mean it's evolving into a full-fledged race row
Free exercise of religion is in one of those Amendment thingies, isn't it?
Game, set, match. //
Earlier this week, I wrote about how the New York Times allowed Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, premium op/ed space to deceptively call for peace and harmony between China and the United States as the battle against the Wuhan coronavirus rages on. //
Morgan Ortagus
✔
@statedeptspox
The U.S. welcomes China’s call to combat the #COVID19 pandemic together. We urge Beijing to share all virus data, let intl teams investigate how the outbreak began in China, & allow citizens free speech. True cooperation requires transparency & real actions, not just rhetoric. //
Hua Chunying 华春莹
✔
@SpokespersonCHN
Welcome to China anytime and talk to anyone in the streets to enjoy the freedom. BTW Where is freedom & transparency when Captain Crozier was dismissed for a letter to save thousands of lives and medical workers fired for talking about working conditions?
//
Brendan Carr
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@BrendanCarrFCC
Replying to @BrendanCarrFCC
- They’re not available for comment? That’s odd.
Then let me speak with Ren Zhiqiang.
He committed the high crime of writing an article criticizing your regime’s attempt to cover up the Covid outbreak.
Could you un-disappear him so we could speak?https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3075256/chinese-tycoon-ren-zhiqiang-goes-missing-after-criticising …
//
Brendan Carr
✔
@BrendanCarrFCC
Replying to @BrendanCarrFCC
- @SpokespersonCHN does your offer still stand? Or has it suddenly disappeared as things tend to do over there?
President Trump demonstrates that Federalism, combined with the Private Sector, will win this fight. //
that promoted the concept that the major Wuhan Virus fight is going to be won by logistics. The longer this current crisis goes on, the more I am convinced of that.
Read: Opinion: Beating the Wuhan Virus Will Be More of a Logistical Fight Than a Medical One //
In another article, I mentioned that America has a lot of capacity that could be moved around to deal with surge situations. That Army Field hospital, along with the hospital ships USNS Comfort and Mercy, are just three examples.
Read: Opinion: We Have Excess Capacity, No Need to Panic
As I noted in my previous pieces, once we get the behemoths that are our military and commercial supply chains focused on something, we can kick out supplies, equipment and trained personnel like no other nation on Earth. As the President quipped during one daily briefing, “By the time we get through, ventilators will be going for five bucks apiece.” And he’s correct. Washington State’s experience is just one example. //
Along the way, I noticed something else, something pretty darned neat. I’ve always considered President Trump to be a typical Manhattan “limousine liberal.” //
During one of the afternoon briefings a few days ago, there was this exchange between a reporter and The President regarding the manufacture and distribution of masks.
Reporter…Don’t you want one National Standard?
Trump: No. If a state can get masks faster than we can, then do it. No need for a national standard at this point. The states know better.
U.S. Nightly Wuhan Virus Numbers without political spin.
Thread by @rambletastic: My family and I took an @StateDept evacuation flight from Senegal to the US on Friday. I’d like to say a few things focusing on 1) The people who work for State (wonderful) & 2) The impression it left me about coordinated US…
Travelers are finding a wide range of health screenings at U.S. airports, even after repatriation and other international flights. //
The State Dept. has brought more than 45,000 Americans home on repatriation flights, it said earlier this week. The flights came from a wide range of countries, such as Peru, India, Egypt, Nepal and Burundi, according to Ian Brownlee, who runs the department's repatriation task force. Those countries, like Senegal, have not been among the world's hotspots for COVID-19.
The massive repatriation effort is in response to the Level 4 travel advisory the State Dept. issued last month instructing U.S. citizens not to travel internationally — and for those who are abroad, to either return immediately or be prepared to remain abroad indefinitely. //
[Flight from Dakar (DSS):]
"Listen up!" one yelled, according to Honig. "This isn't a normal flight, and we're not flight attendants — we're medical professionals. Our job is to get you home safe."
They had been working for six days straight and had another flight coming up the following day; when someone asked if they were being paid overtime, the medical professional laughed, Honig said.
"We're government employees. No. This is our job," Honig quoted the man as saying. "This is why I signed up for this job. I'm proud to do this — I'm honored to help y'all get home."
Everyone clapped, Honig said.
The state has decided that religious practice is not “essential” during an “emergency.” That is not the state’s decision to make.
That’s why these practical matters are also completely beside the point. No government official has any legitimate authority to tell Christians how Jesus’s body and blood must be prepared or served. That is individuals’ religious prerogative. Christians have historically never allowed any secular government to dictate our religious practices, even during pandemics. And this religious prerogative is secured by Indiana’s state constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
“All people shall be secured in the natural right to worship ALMIGHTY GOD, according to the dictates of their own consciences,” says Indiana’s state constitution. “No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience” (emphasis added). //
There is no medical or public health reason to ban churches from their own religious activities within the same parameters that apply to other organzations, such as the 10-person limit. Even that limit in Indiana has been discriminatorily applied against religious worshippers. It still does not apply to places like grocery stores, which are allowed unlimited numbers of shoppers.
The state has decided that religious practice is not “essential” during an “emergency.” That is not the state’s decision to make.
That’s why these practical matters are also completely beside the point. No government official has any legitimate authority to tell Christians how Jesus’s body and blood must be prepared or served. That is individuals’ religious prerogative. Christians have historically never allowed any secular government to dictate our religious practices, even during pandemics. And this religious prerogative is secured by Indiana’s state constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
“All people shall be secured in the natural right to worship ALMIGHTY GOD, according to the dictates of their own consciences,” says Indiana’s state constitution. “No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience” (emphasis added). //
Some people believe that there are more important things than physical health. Freedom. Protecting the nation’s poor and its future by not destroying our economy and tax base that uphold myriad already strained social welfare programs. Worship. Christians especially have historically placed obedience to God above their physical safety and very lives. We are in fact commanded to do so. For us, “to die is gain.” This elevation of health above all else has quickly become a competing god.
As the declaration of the state of emergency comes, many people had preempted earlier that without a proper economic plan in place to get low-income earners, extremely poor people and people with disabilities have some basic needs especially food, the state of emergency may turn fiasco as people may force their way out to seek their daily needs. Some Liberians who raised the concern prior to coming into force the state of emergency were Liberian infectious disease scientist, Dougbeh Chris Nyan, and Grand Kru County Representative Fonati Koffa.
However, despite this concern amid economic hardship, there was no measure put in place as to how citizens, many of who rely on street selling and casual labour will get money to sustain their families within the 14 days being declared for people to keep indoors. Some civil servants in the wake of the declaration have complained that they have outstanding arrears with the government.
This would have been a good thought to have before setting off a worldwide panic. //
You’ve all heard the story of the guy who murdered his parents and then asked for leniency because he was an orphan? Well, now we have the academic equivalent of that. The Financial Times did a lengthy interview with Neil Ferguson, he’s the guy who authored the infamous Imperial College study that predicted over 2 million deaths from Wuhan virus in the US and started the stampede towards creating a paleolithic society in place of what had existed. Ferguson, in my opinion, is the chief and most irresponsible scaremonger behind this manufactured crisis and deserves a thorough proctological examination by law enforcement in the near future, //
Jordan Schachtel
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@JordanSchachtel
The man behind the popular doomsday projections for COVID-19, which claimed 2MM dead Americans, whose data unleashed global panic and hysteria, reveals he wrote the code for his model 13 years ago. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713?s=20 …
Because of the strategy public health officials have foisted upon our national leadership, there is no real exit strategy. The social distancing nonsense has created a situation that guarantees a second and third and fourth and a fifth, etc. wave of infections as there is no vaccine and we are not developing the herd immunity necessary to reduce this virus to its rightful place as background noise. Political authorities are going to be reluctant to reduce restrictions because when they do, new outbreaks will happen. When that happens you know that the same people who are saying we should be shut down for months on end are going to reappear on the Sunday shows saying “I told you so.” Unless someone shows some political courage and calls this nonsense out as the obvious fraud that it is, we are stuck right where we are. Forever.
Sometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously given the similar Chinese origins of the prior toxic SARS coronavirus and the resources of a Level 4 virology lab nearby.
Yet the government initially hid all that knowledge from its own people in particular and in general from the world at large.
"When you add it all up it would be naïve to think that California did not have some exposure." //
California has had lower-than-expected coronavirus case numbers during the current pandemic, and one hypothesis has been that the illness started spreading in the state in the fall of 2019, much earlier than previously thought. //
Hanson said he thinks it is possible COVID-19 has been spreading among Californians since the fall when doctors reported an early flu season in the state. During that same time, California was welcoming as many as 8,000 Chinese nationals daily into our airports. Some of those visitors even arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
They knew and they did it anyway... //
Why did China cut off travel from Hubei, the province with Wuhan in it, to the rest of China — on Jan. 23 — but not from Hubei to the rest of the world? //
To quote Ferguson, “And so long as a fifth of humanity are subject to the will of an unaccountable, corrupt and power-hungry organization with a long history of crimes against its own people, the rest of humanity will not be safe.”
We said this when the media and business connections to the China were all exposed over the Hong Kong protests. But now it’s clear that we need to disconnect, for the safety of our nation and our very lives.
The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn't going to work for a large number of small business owners after all. //
If you don’t make the Senate’s requirements, you have to pay that loan back, and thanks to Mnuchin, you’re not going to be able to do that either. In the bill, Congress set a window of a maximum interest of 4 percent and loan repayment within 10 years. This was just a window, so it was up to Treasury to set the final costs and they put them at 1 percent interest and two years to pay the bank.
In real life, that means you’re looking at beginning your third quarter in debt, limping on into the winter, losing an entire year’s profits getting your business running again, and owing nearly half of next year’s profits to the bank, all before any other loans you had to take out to keep from bankruptcy. You might have been able to spread that pain out, but two years is too little time
The global response to Sars-CoV-2 is the greatest science policy failure in a generation. The signals were clear. Hendra in 1994, Nipah in 1998, Sars in 2003, Mers in 2012 and Ebola in 2014; these major human epidemics were all caused by viruses that originated in animal hosts and crossed over into humans. Covid-19 is caused by a new variant of the same coronavirus that caused Sars.