The results are in from last night’s referendum on Gov. Tom Wolf’s tyrannical COVID orders. In both cases on the ballot the votes to limit the power of future “emergency orders” passed, putting a constitutional barrier between petty Democrats who seek to weaponize “the science” instead of doing what’s legal and logical.

The CCP virus death toll in the United States is now, May 20, 2021, by one count, 593,419. Another has the count at 601,969. The New York Times reports 587,499. The variation among the counts is not great; the magnitude is clear.

Although there has been much agonizing over differential death rates among different races or ethnicities, allegedly due to “structural racism,” in fact the death toll has tracked population percentage quite closely. The 60.1 percent of whites in the population have suffered 60.7 percent of the deaths; the 18.5 percent of Hispanics in the population have suffered 18.6 percent of the deaths; the 13.4 percent of blacks in the population have suffered 14.8 percent of the deaths; and the 5.9 percent of Asians in the population suffered 3.9 percent of the deaths. If wealth and poverty are held constant, the differences between the races would more or less disappear.

There is a substantial differential death rate associated with sex. Males have suffered 314,875 deaths, in comparison with the 259,170 deaths of females. So far we have heard no accusations of “systemic sexism,” because, you know, “the future is female.” //

Annually, the better part of a million American babies are killed by abortion. The figures from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute are 874,100 American abortions for 2016 and 862,300 abortions for 2017. Guttmacher collects its statistics directly from abortion providers. (CDC figures, around 200,000 lower, suffer from non-submission of statistics by New Hampshire, Maryland, and California.) //

According to the relative percentages in the (underestimated) CDC figures, abortions by race and ethnicity in 2018 were as follows:

Non-Hispanic white women: 239,782 estimated abortions
Non-Hispanic black women: 208,183 estimated abortions
Hispanic women: 123,918 estimated abortions
Others: 47,709 estimated abortions
These figures show that black women, at 13 percent of the female population, account for 34 percent of the abortions, while white women, at 60 percent of the female population, account for 39 percent of the abortions. Hispanic women, at 18.5 percent of the female population, account for 20 percent of abortions.

Abortions of black babies are almost three times higher than the black population, which is why the percentage of black Americans gradually shrinks over the years. Abortions of Hispanic babies matches the population percentage of Hispanics. Abortions of white and other babies are much lower than their percentage of the population, one reason that the percentage of whites does not shrink. //

The number of American babies killed in the womb (or after birth) does not tell the entire story. If we consider “years of lives lost,” calculated on the basis of American life expectancy—81 for females, 77 for males, for an average of 79—the 862,300 abortions of 2017 would be a loss of 68,121,700 years of lives lost. Sixty-eight million years of American lives lost! //

The birthrate in the United States has been falling for years. In 2019 it was 1.7, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. In many places across the globe, the birthrate has fallen. //

This seems to happen as modernization and urbanization increase. Children are no longer needed for family productive labor, and become financial liabilities, pets rather than workers.

In America and elsewhere, secularization and the decline of mainline churches has contributed to the decline, as practices once prohibited are now not only accepted, but celebrated.

So we present to you this amazing video of John, who is a fourth-grader at Felix A. Williams Elementary School in the Martin County School District in Stuart, Florida. While Gov. Ron DeSantis eliminated the mask mandates for the rest of the state, schools still have mask orders in place. School districts are considering making them voluntary for next year.

Listen as John addresses the board asking for masks to be made voluntary while calling out the hypocrisy of his teachers and explaining how this has adversely affected him and his friends. He says he didn’t think it would stay this way all year long. “Two weeks to slow the spread,” remember?

Tom Elliott
@tomselliott
.@RandPaul evicerates Dr. Fauci over the “theater” of requiring Americans already immune from Covid to continue wearing masks.

Fauci’s ultimate rebuttal: “I totally disagree with you”

11:19 AM · Mar 18, 2021

Tom Elliott
@tomselliott
Dr. Fauci admits his wearing masks indoors despite being vaccinated was based on imagery, not science:

"I didn’t want to look like I was giving mixed signals but being a fully vaccinated person, the chances of my getting infected in an indoor setting is extremely low."

7:23 AM · May 18, 2021

Now, what do you call someone performing for purposes of imager instead of objective data? You might call that “theater,” right? In other words, Paul was right all along and Fauci was not only wrong, but he was maliciously misleading at the same time.

This is yet another example of the federal government, including Fauci, lying to the American public for what they deem as “their own good.” That’s not how any of this is supposed to work. How can there be any expectation that people trust “the science” when bureaucrats citing said science continue to mislead for political purposes? Further, it should scare everyone that the government is willing to lie about what’s real and what’s not without even a hint of remorse. If they will lie to you about masks, what else will they lie to you about?

“Democrats are now wearing Binkies to wean themselves off masks.” As The Bee reported:

With the CDC finally relaxing some guidelines around mask-wearing, Democrats are facing the dread of parting with something that has been giving them feelings of safety and security for over a year.

To help them cope with the loss, many Democrats are turning to baby pacifiers to help wean them off the masks.

“The binky is a perfect bridge toward a maskless future,” said one Democrat.

“He then quickly popped the rubber nipple back in his mouth for a few minutes before continuing. “I think it’s important to be open and vulnerable about the trauma we have all experienced in the last year.”

The Neanderthals were right. That’s the story this morning after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared the news that Texas reported zero deaths from COVID for the first time since they began collecting data. This comes after Joe Biden called Texas, Mississippi, and other red states “Neanderthals” for daring to lift clearly ineffective business restrictions and mask mandates.

Greg Abbott
@GregAbbott_TX
Today Texas reported:

• 0 Covid related deaths--the only time that's happened since data was tracked in March, 2020.

• the fewest Covid cases in over 13 months

• the lowest 7-day Covid positivity rate ever

• the lowest Covid hospitalizations in 11 months.

Thanks, Texans!
8:41 PM · May 16, 2021

Justin Baragona
@justinbaragona
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, somewhat confusingly, says they are aware of 223 people who have died with covid after being vaccinated.

"Not all of those 223 cases who had covid actually died of covid. They may have had mild disease but died, for example, of a heart attack." //

All I can do is shake my head at this. What Walensky is doing is trying to draw a distinction between those who died directly because they got COVID and those who may have tested positive, but ultimately died of another comorbidity or condition. Now, to most people, that would seem like common sense. After all, why would you count someone with terminal cancer or an already failing heart as a COVID death — just because they had the virus when they died?

But what’s so astonishing about this is that what Walensky is saying has previously been declared to be completely off-limits for over a year by the powers that be. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that has often gotten right-leaning sites in trouble with the social media censors. Yet, here is the Biden administration saying what was previously labeled as taboo, just because it fits their narrative. Meanwhile, the media don’t question it, and the social media overlords just shrug.

Obviously, what Walensky is saying is true, though. What we know about COVID — and who is hit the hardest — says that co-morbidities, including heart problems, lung problems, and morbid obesity, are the top factor. If someone is otherwise terminally sick, even a mild case of COVID could expedite matters.

As RedState has chronicled, the last week has been an absolute disaster for the Joe Biden Administration. It started with a disastrous jobs report which fell 700,000 below expectations. Then there was the report on inflation which showed a 4.2% rise in April alone, crushing the savings and buying power of normal Americans. Meanwhile, war has broken out between Israel and Palestinian terrorists at a level that hasn’t been seen since the year 2000. But if that weren’t enough, we also had a ransomware attack on a major pipeline that caused days of gas shortages.

Yeah, it hasn’t been a good week. That meant that a distraction was needed. Enter today’s CDC guidance changes.

Megyn Kelly
@megynkelly
Thoughts and prayers for her during this difficult time.

David Rutz
@DavidRutz
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on new CDC guidelines: Need to 'rewire' myself to not see unmasked people as 'a threat' https://foxnews.com/media/rachel-maddow-cdc-unmasked-people-threat #FoxNews

Imagine my surprise when I saw the open letter published late Thursday in Science Magazine online, is titled, “Investigate the Origins of COVID-19.” As I reported earlier, it’s penned by renowned virological expert physicians from MIT, Harvard, Cal Tech, Yale, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Stanford – including the US researcher who worked directly with the Wuhan Institute of Virology performing gain-of-function research in coronaviruses – states that the “accidental release possibility remains viable,” meaning they believe there’s a viable possibility that this pandemic is the result of an accidental release from WIV. //

Does anyone else find it funny that the organization that funded the very type of research that may have led to the release of COVID-19 is suddenly defending the Chinese government’s lack of transparency (or cover-up, depending upon your choice of words)? Why are they all circling the wagons when it comes to research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

In 2013 NIH awarded Dr. Baric a $10 million grant to study “the pathogenic activity of viruses including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, highly pathogenic influenza and herpesvirus HHV8.” Dr. Baric put that money to work and in 2015, it was announced that his research had led to the development of “SARS 2.0.”

Since Dr. Baric is affiliated with UNC-Chapel Hill, yes, his research is done in North Carolina. However, as Sen. Paul asserted, Baric has partnered with Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (yes, that’s in China) to conduct NIH-funded gain-of-function research on SARS and MERS viruses.

In June 2015 Baric and Shi published results of NIH-funded research into the mutations necessary for the bat-to-human transmission of MERS coronavirus. They found that when viral protein spikes mutated, humans could become infected with MERS-CoV. In other words, this is the exact research that would be necessary for a lab to synthesize a virus that would infect humans.

A few months later, in November 2015, the duo published the results of separate NIH-funded research which led to the discovery of a new SARS coronavirus, a chimera, they used gain-of-function techniques to create. That research was allowed to go forward even though the US government had issued a moratorium on gain-of-function research on the viruses that cause influenza, SARS, and MERS in October 2014. According to a VICE article on the research (emphasis added):

“The strain grew equally well to SARS in human cells,” Dr. Ralph Baric, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the lead author of the study, told Motherboard. “It resisted all vaccines and immunotherapy, too.” //

The US Department of Health and Human Services has a board that must review the authorization of funding for “research that could make dangerous pathogens more contagious.” According to the Daily Caller, the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (the agency headed by Dr. Fauci) “systematically thwarted” the funding review process for the grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance. Even more specifically, and much more damning for Fauci, is that according to gain-of-function research regulations, Fauci himself should have flagged the grant for review by the HHS Board, and he did not. Fauci also missed or ignored the part of HHS’s guidelines which state:

“[T]he research will be supported through funding mechanisms that allow for appropriate management of risks and ongoing Federal and institutional oversight of all aspects of the research throughout the course of the research.”

Call me crazy, but it might be a bit hard to accomplish that in a secretive lab in China.

Furthermore, Politico reported that US diplomats in China had been sending warnings to State Department bureaucrats in Washington DC regarding the WIV as far back as December 2017, specifically stating that the lab had “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.” There was no action taken, and the NIH continued to fund the research conducted there. //

As an aside, NIH announced in December 2017 that it was lifting the moratorium on gain-of-function research. It has been reported that Fauci ordered the resumption of funding without consulting the White House or, by extension, the HHS, which is required under the gain-of-function research guidelines. //

clconnett
20 minutes ago
This is a prime example of the "two realities" we now live in. Those on the Right, Conservatives, Libertarians, even Centrists, all read this and think, "Yes, this is public information. We're aware that Fauci intentionally couched his words so as to obfuscate in his answers to Rand Paul. He avoided perjury, perhaps, but created a misleading view by what he said."

The Left, however, read this and say, "Fauci had to correct Rand Paul because Paul is an ignorant man who wants to push conspiracies instead of face science. Paul is being needlessly antagonistic and should be thankful we have a man like Fauci, committed to science and saving lives, in his position."

The media, being primarily leftists, puts out the view of the Left. Social Media mocks the view of the Right, and the ability to engage in reasonable discussion at the popular level is destroyed. Perhaps you can reason on a one-to-one basis with your friends, but, if they are on the Left, as soon as they are around others with their views, the group insulation tends to bring them back into the groupthink of those around turn. Effectively, culture has become merely cult. //

clconnett VL
14 minutes ago
Hi, my name is Post, Post-modern in full. I like to go by nicknames like, "open minded" and "affirming" when I'm around my friends.

"Oh, you want to know what I look like under this face mask? That changes. It just depends on what you need me to look like. After all, appearances are merely the construct we place upon the locations we choose to focus. Because I have no present meaning, the past is also fluid. After all, meaning comes from you."

Why is the world still being hit by wave after wave of Covid when we know how to stop it?
Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Leaders failed to act fast enough when Covid-19 appeared. They must not keep making the same mistakes

Covid pandemic was preventable, says WHO-commissioned report

Here are some CDC graphics that won’t be shown or discussed on CNN or MSNBC any time soon. The first is a graph showing new virus cases in the US over the 7-day period ending 7 May: //

Virus deaths nationwide have been trending downward since January, too:

While the graphical representation is illuminating, the CDC’s commentary is even better:

The current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (45,817) decreased 13.2% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (52,772). Compared with the highest peak on January 8, 2021 (249,672), the current 7-day average decreased 81.6%.

Vince Coglianese
@VinceCoglianese
The CDC has been DRAMATICALLY overstating the risk of outdoor transmission.

They claimed it's been "less than 10 percent." It's a lot closer to .1 percent.

https://nytimes.com/2021/05/11/bri....

Jason Willick
@jawillick
NYT report violates YouTube’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits “content that contradicts WHO or local health authorities’ guidance” including on “transmission” and “social distancing and self-isolation guidelines.”
Ross Garber
@rossgarber
NYT says CDC Report is "misleading" and "deceiving" https://nytimes.com/2021/05/11/bri....

Joe Biden got his vaccine under the Trump Administration. https://t.co/1FHhZdhnEY

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 3, 2021

Kyle DeMarino
@KyleDeMarino
It’s inappropriate to copy and paste verbatim ‘guidance’ from a political organization; rather than CDC using science and their own methods to form guidance. It’s clear the AFT was leveraging their power to keep kids out of school, regardless of science.

Med Hypotheses. 2021 Jan; 146: 110411.
Published online 2020 Nov 22. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110411
PMCID: PMC7680614
PMID: 33303303
Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis
Baruch Vainshelboim⁎

Abstract

Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing prosper information for public health and decisions making.

Remember when Dr. Fauci emphatically told Americans not to wear facemasks when the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores more than one year ago?

If you don’t recall, allow me to jog your memory. During a “60 Minutes” interview on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”

In the same interview, Fauci also said:

“While masks may block some droplets, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. Wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences: People who wear masks tend to touch their face more often to adjust them, which can spread germs from their hands.”

Fauci was far from the only government official downplaying masks once upon a time.

On February 27, during a congressional hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded, “No,” when asked if Americans should wear facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Two days later, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted, “They [facemasks] are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus.”

That was then. This is now.

So, what happened? Somehow, almost every infectious disease expert did an abrupt 180 and got fully on board the facemask bandwagon. By late spring 2020, in the blink of an eye, wearing a facemask became a requirement to participate in society.

However, the question remains: Do facemasks actually prevent the spread of COVID-19?

According to a recent study by Stanford University, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” the answer remains, “No.” //

“Clinical scientific evidence challenges further the efficacy of facemasks to block human-to-human transmission or infectivity. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 246 participants [123 (50%) symptomatic)] who were allocated to either wearing or not wearing surgical facemask, assessing viruses transmission including coronavirus. The results of this study showed that among symptomatic individuals (those with fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose etc…) there was no difference between wearing and not wearing facemask for coronavirus droplets transmission of particles of >5 µm. Among asymptomatic individuals, there was no droplets or aerosols coronavirus detected from any participant with or without the mask, suggesting that asymptomatic individuals do not transmit or infect other people.”

Yet when I asked him why of the top 10, the top 9 all had mask mandates, he pivoted to the final argument:

“I get what those numbers say, but I am still going to wear a mask to help other people feel more comfortable.”

The trap was sprung.

He knew at that moment he had screwed up. Mask-mandates do nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19, full-stop. The data shows it, the numbers coming out of these states show it, and any state that has lifted their mask-mandates has not seen an increase in cases or deaths (aside from the predicted second wave) after the action was taken. Masks are worthless, aside from the performative relief it provides certain people. If you are fully vaccinated (that is, two weeks after the second shot), you have even less of a reason to wear a mask. This isn’t a directive that people should ignore mask-mandates on private property, rather it is an argument against government forced mask-mandates. //

It is the basis for 95% of my arguments. Government is a failure at every turn. More government control almost exclusively ends with disaster. People say that government is here to protect us. The truth of it is, government is here to protect itself and expand its own tentacles of control into anything into which it can. Government inherently grows. No government has ever willfully retracted power it has asserted. As Ronald Reagan said, “There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.”