CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

marsh said:

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Again, not going to work.

They stick three kids in every school bus seat! They'll have to buy way more buses. More taxes incoming. Have to build more school buildings and hire more teachers and administrators as well!

marsh said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv4yeHoJ9Wg
3:25 min
School students around the world return to class, COVID-19-safe classrooms are the new normal

•May 21, 2020

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So, finally there is a good justification for smaller class sizes? How long have teachers and parents tried to get this done? Takes a pandemic, huh?

How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns
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By Yinon Weiss
May 21, 2020

Reliance on Faulty Models

In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked.

That is the story of what may eventually be known as one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time. The collective failure of every Western nation, except one, to question groupthink will surely be studied by economists, doctors, and psychologists for decades to come.

To put things in perspective, the virus is now known to have an infection fatality rate for most people under 65 that is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day. Even by conservative estimates, the odds of COVID-19 death are roughly in line with existing baseline odds of dying in any given year.



Yet we put billions of young healthy people under house arrest, stopped cancer screenings, and sunk ourselves into the worst level of unemployment since the Great Depression. This from a virus that bears a survival rate of 99.99% if you are a healthy individual under 50 years old (1, 2).

New York City reached over a 25% infection rate and yet 99.98% of all people in the city under 45 survived, making it comparable to death rates by normal accidents.

But of course the whole linchpin of the lockdown argument is that it would have been even worse without such a step. Sweden never closed down borders, primary schools, restaurants, or businesses, and never mandated masks, yet 99.998% of all their people under 60 have survived and their hospitals were never overburdened.

Why did we lock down the majority of the population who were never at significant risk? What will be the collateral damage? That is what this series will explore.

Experts took a measured approach early on

In early February the World Health Organization said that travel bans were not necessary. On Feb. 17, just a month before the first U.S. lockdown, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that this new strain of coronavirus possessed “just minuscule” danger to the United States. In early March the U.S. surgeon general said that “masks are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus.” As late as March 9, the day Italy started its lockdown, Dr. Fauci did not encourage cancellation of “large gatherings in a place [even if] you have community spread,” calling it “a judgment call.” NBA games were still being played.

So how did we go from such a measured tone to locking up 97% of Americans in their homes seemingly overnight?

Enter faulty assumptions and faulty models

China concealed the extent of the viral outbreak, which, if you believed its data, led many scientists to believe that 2% to 5% of all infected patients would die. This turned out to be off by a factor of 10, but academic epidemiologists have a history of wildly-off-the-mark doomsday predictions.



The March 16 report by Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson is credited (or blamed) with causing the U.K. to lock down and contributing to the domino effect of global lockdowns. The model has since come under intense criticism for being “totally unreliable and a buggy mess.”

This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2005 predicted 200 million could die from the bird flu. Total deaths over the last 15 years turned out to be 455. This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2009 predicted that 65,000 people could die in the U.K. from the swine flu. The final number ended up around 392. Now, in 2020, he predicted that 500,000 British would die from coronavirus.

His deeply flawed model led the United States to fear over 2 million deaths and was used to justify locking down nearly the entire nation. Dr. Ferguson is a character of Shakespearean drama and tragedy. His March 17 presentation to British elites on the dire need to take action ironically may have infected Boris Johnson and other top British officials, as Mr. Ferguson himself tested positive for COVID-19 two days later. Then in May he resigned in disgrace after he broke his own quarantine rules to meet clandestinely with a married woman.

But I don’t place most of the blame on people like Ferguson. If you are a hammer everything looks like a nail. I blame government leaders for failing to surround themselves with diverse viewpoints and to think critically for themselves.

Politicians claim lockdowns were the cause of fewer deaths

It would be highly embarrassing to force citizens to quarantine themselves only to later admit it was all a colossal blunder, so it is easier for politicians and modelers to claim the lower death rates were based on the lockdowns themselves. It was a success!

But several inconvenient thorns keep bursting that narrative -- and none larger than Sweden,  the only Western country not to lock down its citizens. Sweden never closed borders, restaurants, businesses, or primary schools. The only legal action officials took was to ban events that entail crowds larger than 50 people.
One of the most well-known and respected models in the United States is from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and is commonly cited by the White House. Since the IHME model accounts for lockdowns and social distancing, or lack thereof, they should be validated by their predictions on Sweden.

Below is a screenshot of the IHME model for Sweden taken on May 3, along with actual results (black line). The model predicted up to 2,800 daily deaths within 11 days and a final death total as high as 75,000 if Sweden didn’t enact strict social distancing measures.



These were not complicated long-term projections; they were predicting what would happen in the next two weeks based on months of data. Yet the daily death peak was 75% lower than the baseline prediction and 96% lower than the worst-case prediction.

Not to be outdone, Uppsala University (the oldest university in Sweden) also presented a model that could have caused the Swedes to abandon course and lock down as the U.K. did. However, Sweden did not buckle. While the Uppsala University model predicted 90,000 deaths within a month, the actual result was around 3,500.



Besides deaths, there were also doomsday projections about hospital capacity, but those models also proved to be grotesquely exaggerated. On March 29, Columbia University projected a need for 136,000 hospital beds in New York City. The maximum ever used was under 12,000. At peak, New York City still had around 1 in 6 hospital beds open and around 1 in 10 ICU beds open. Hospitals had capacity, both in New York City and in Sweden.

While far below projections, Sweden’s short-term results are worse than Norway, Finland, and Denmark, but better than the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium. Sweden likely also benefits from longer-term herd immunity, faster economic recovery, and fewer deaths from lockdown collateral damage.

Political leaders ignored early evidence when it conflicted with their models

There are those who say that we couldn’t have known these outcomes early on, so even if lockdowns were unjustified later they were still necessary early due to lack of information. That is plainly false. Italy’s alarming number of deaths fanned many of the early fears across the world, but by March 17 it was clear that the median age of Italian deaths was over 80 and that not a single person under 30 had died in that country. Furthermore, it was known that 99% of those who died had other existing illnesses.



A much more rational strategy would have been to lock down nursing homes and let young healthy people out to build immunity. Instead we did the opposite, we forced nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients and locked down young people.

There are now places like Santa Clara County in California, entering its third month of lockdown despite COVID-19 patients occupying less than 2% of hospital capacity and none on ventialtors. Yet there are 2 million county residents effectively under house arrest. Some doctors and nurses in the area had their pay cut by 20% so hospitals could avoid bankruptcy, reflecting perhaps the epitome of this senseless catastrophe.

There were, of course, people warning us all along. Among them was as John P.A. Ioannidis of Stanford University School of Medicine, who ranks among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists on Google Scholar. On that pivotal day of March 17 he released an essay titled “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data” — but it got little attention. Mainstream media was not interested in good news stories or dissenting views. The world instead marched lock step into its man-made calamity.

Yinon Weiss is a tech entrepreneur, a U.S. military veteran, and a bioengineer by education.

seraphima said:

So, finally there is a good justification for smaller class sizes? How long have teachers and parents tried to get this done? Takes a pandemic, huh?

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My daughter is a teacher in CA. Their budget is being cut and they have no contract. She still has no idea whether she will have a job next year or what the school will look like. In addition, she has 3 kids of her own so if they stagger class days, she is going to have a transportation and child care problem if she works.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf8uYzgMsEw
13:27 min
Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol) and Vitamin D2 (Ergocalciferol) and Calcitriol
•May 21, 2020

Doctor Mike Hansen
The Vitamin D supplement that I take: https://amzn.to/2zjaqqb Vitamin D3, Cholecalciferol, Vitamin D2, Ergocalciferol, Calcidiol, Calcitriol. What are all of these things? They are all referring to the various forms of vitamin D in our body, or in the food we eat.

Vitamin D3 is also known as cholecalciferol, this is the form made naturally by the body in response to sunlight. Vitamin D2 is also known as ergocalciferol, and comes from plants. Vitamin D supplements come in the form of either Vitamin D3 or Vitamin D2. Calcitriol, or 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D if you prefer, is the active form of vitamin D in our body.

When sunlight contains ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation, and when it hits your skin cells, it turns 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D3, meaning cholecalciferol. Vitamin D3 in turn binds to vitamin D-binding protein (VDBP) and is transported to the liver, where it gets converted to calcidiol, aka 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

Calcidiol is the storage form of vitamin D in the body. Calcidiol is later converted to the active form of vitamin D in the body, meaning calcitriol, or 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D. This conversion of calcidiol into calcitriol mainly occurs in the kidney. But it also takes place in different tissues and cells of the immune system, such as lymph nodes and alveolar macrophages. And not only in alveolar macrophages, but the alveoli themselves.

Vitamin D3 is only found naturally in a few different food sources, mainly fatty fish, like cod, swordfish, tuna, and salmon. Milk doesn’t naturally contain vitamin D3, but it has been fortified with it for almost 100 years now. But other dairy products made from milk like cheese and ice cream aren’t typically fortified with vitamin D and contain only small amounts. For older adults to meet the RDA of 800 IU, they would have to drink about 4 cups of fortified milk per day.

Vitamin D3 mainly comes from sunlight though, not food. But the skin’s production of vitamin D depends on a number of factors, only some of which you have control of. Depending on the season, where you live, where you travel, the time of day, the clothing you wear, the umbrella that you use, all of these factors determine how much UVB light hits your skin.

The sun’s rays are most direct between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. However, the farther you live from the equator, the less UVB radiation you receive. People who live north of about 37° latitude can’t make any vitamin D from sunlight from November to March, even if they spend all day outside bare naked. Why is this the case? During the winter months, the earth tilts away from the sun, ultimately leading to less sun rays hitting the earth. Having darker skin means less UVB absorption, which means less vitamin D3 production.

Also, as we age, our body become less efficient at converting UVB light into vitamin D3. This is why older people, as well as darker skin people, are more prone to having lower vitamin D levels. To make matters worse, many older people have reduced exposure to sunlight for different reasons, and may not be getting enough vitamin D in their diet.

Vitamin D signals the intestines to absorb calcium into the bloodstream. This happens even if you have enough calcium in your diet. Besides strengthening bones, vitamin D helps reduce fractures in the elderly by preventing muscle deterioration, and reducing the chances of falling. The official definition of a vitamin deficiency means that specific health problems arise as a direct result of not having enough of a specific nutrient.

True vitamin D deficiency in children causes rickets, a bone disease where the legs become bowed. This is rare in the United States. Vitamin D deficiency in adults can lead to osteomalacia and osteoperosis, leading to bone fractures. So what if you don’t have deficiency per se, but you have less-than-ideal levels of a specific vitamin? Well, this can increase your risk of various health issues, even though they are not solely responsible for these problems. This is what we call “Insufficiency.”

Most medical societies consider someone vitamin D insufficiency if their level is between 12 to 20 ng/mL (30 to 50 nmol/L), and Vitamin D deficiency is a level less than 12 ng/mL (30 nmol/L). Most experts consider normal levels being above 20 and less than 50 ng/ml. Most people in the United States have values around 20 ng/ml. But having too high of levels can cause other health issues. In one study, levels above 32 ng/ml resulted in people getting less quality sleep. The risk of vitamin D toxicity typically occurs at levels over 100 ng/mL in adults who are also ingesting substantial amounts of calcium.

Vitamin D toxicity, whether its from vitamin D3 or vitamin D2, generally occurs after inappropriate use of vitamin D. It’s especially important to avoid excess vitamin D in pregnancy, because that can cause calcium levels to rise to the point of causing seizures in the mother, and developmental problems in the baby.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbz2ajnZyHY
1:54:10 min
Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) Assocd. with COVID-19
•May 21, 2020

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
During this COCA call, clinicians will learn about the clinical characteristics of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, how cases have been diagnosed and treated, and how clinicians are responding to recently reported cases associated with COVID-19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA_m0PYN1AI

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcJoLk0KaqA
1:00:49 min
Talking with RN Karli from Oregon
•May 21, 2020

Dr. John Campbell
Fascinating to get a local prospective from a registered nurse in Oregon, thank you very much Karli.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkr2MyF8d1M
LIVE at -39
President Trump Delivers Remarks at Ford Rawsonville Components Plant
•Started streaming 2 hours ago


The White House
Ypsilanti, MI

MAY 21ST, 2020

Michigan Democrat Attorney General Warns Trump: Wear A Mask Or You’ll Be Barred From Closed Facilities Here
By Hank BerrienDailyWire.com
Photo by Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

On Thursday, Michigan’s attorney general threatened President Trump that he will be told not to visit any enclosed facility in Michigan in the future if he didn’t wear a face mask when visiting a Ford Motor plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Thursday afternoon.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who like Governor Gretchen Whitmer is a Democrat, told CNN, “Honestly, if he fails to wear a mask, he’s going to be asked not to return to any enclosed facility inside our state,” The Daily Mail reported.

In late April, Whitmer issued an executive order stating, “Any individual able to medically tolerate a face covering must wear a covering over his or her nose and mouth—such as a homemade mask, scarf, bandana, or handkerchief—when in any enclosed public space … all businesses and operations whose workers perform in-person work must, at a minimum, provide non-medical grade face coverings to their workers.”

“Ford has a policy that all visitors must wear personal protective equipment and originally indicated Trump would wear one. But the company later backed down and said the White House has its own protective procedures and will make its own determinations about whether masks will be worn,” The Daily Mail noted.
Nessel continued, “’I know that Ford has asked him to do the same thing, but if we know that he’s coming to our state, and we know he’s not going to follow the law, I think we’re going to have to take action against any company or any facility that allows him inside those facilities and puts our workers at risk. We simply can’t afford it here in our state … We are just asking that President Trump comply with the law in our state, just as we would make the same request of anyone else in those plants … We’re asking if President Trump doesn’t care about his own health, doesn’t care about the health and the safety of people who work in those facilities, at least care about the economic situation of, you know, costing these facilities so much money by having to close down and disinfect the plant after he leaves.”

Nessel also wrote an open letter to Trump Wednesday in which she stated:

In light of the current global health crisis, Governor Whitmer has issued Executive Orders designed to safeguard the sustained viability of our businesses and protect the health and safety of our workers.

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Executive Order 2020-91 requires that manufacturing facilities “suspend all non- essential in-person visits, including tours.” (Section 4) It also requires facilities to conduct a daily screening protocol for employees and “any other individuals entering the facility” (Section 4), and that everyone on the worksite be “kept at least six feet from one another to the maximum extent possible.” (Section 1)
Moreover, Executive Order 2020-92 requires that any individual able to medically tolerate a facial covering wear one when in any enclosed public space. (Section 15) We know that Ford Motor Company takes the legal requirements of the Governor’s Executive Orders very seriously. In fact, a spokesperson for Ford has confirmed that the company shared its safety protocols with the White House in advance of your trip.

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While my Department will not act to prevent you from touring Ford’s plant, I ask that while you are on tour you respect the great efforts of the men and women at Ford – and across this State – by wearing a facial covering. It is not just the policy of Ford, by virtue of the Governor’s Executive Orders. It is currently the law of this State.

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Jobs of the post-covid economy
Contract Tracers
thermal scanners
plexiglass installers

video 25 sec - May 21, 2020
View: https://twitter.com/business/status/1263383293325705218

The first copies of Gilead's coronavirus drug will start selling in Bangladesh

First Copies of Gilead Virus Drug to Start Selling in Bangladesh
Bangladesh's Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Said it has become the world's first company to start selling the generic version of Gilead Sciences Inc.'s antiviral drug

View: https://twitter.com/business/status/1263422816277405696

The race for a coronavirus vaccine is gathering pace. Keep up with our treatment tracker
How Close Are We to a Coronavirus Vaccine? Tracking Covid-19 Drugs, Treatments...
We're tracking the experimental products drugmakers and doctors are trying

View: https://twitter.com/business/status/1263406944238395392

Horowitz: We have been lied to: 6 facts that change everything we know about SARS-CoV-2
Daniel Horowitz · May 18, 2020

ArtistGNDphotography | Getty Images

James Madison once said, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” The coronavirus fascists have succeeded in cementing their illogical, immoral, and illegal policies through the prism of false information about the timing of the virus, the specific nature and severity of the overall fatality rate, the number of actual deaths, and the utility (or perhaps harm) of lockdown policies in actually mitigating deaths – all the while obfuscating the much higher collateral deaths and damage caused by the lockdown itself.

Every day we learn new information demonstrating the lies driving lockdown. Here are some of the most important ones from over the weekend.

1) The shocking inflation of COVID-19 death numbers: From day one, we were warned that states are ascribing every single death of anyone who happens to test positive for the coronavirus — even if they are asymptomatic — to the virus rather than the clear cause of death. Now, thanks to a lawsuit in Colorado, the state was forced to revise its death count down by 23 % over the weekend — from 1,150 to 878. The state is now publishing numbers of deaths “with” COVID-19 separate from deaths “from” COVID-19. As I reported on Thursday, county officials started accusing the state’s department of health of reclassifying deaths of those who tested positive for the virus but died of things like alcohol poisoning as COVID-19 deaths just to insidiously inflate the numbers. This revision in Colorado is a bombshell story that, of course, will remain unknown to most Americans. Every state needs to do this, and if they did, we would find an across-the-board drop in numbers by at least 25%, the same %age by which Dr. Birx reportedly believes the count is being inflated, according to the Washington Post. For example, in Minnesota, state officials are now admitting that every single person who dies in a nursing home after testing positive is now deemed to have died from the virus, never mind the fact that 25% of all natural deaths in a given week occur in nursing homes and that most cases of COVID-19 are asymptomatic, which means more often than not, they died exclusively of other causes.

2) States with longer lockdowns had worse results: Kyle Lamb posted a solid analysis on Twitter, grouping states by how long they implemented a lockdown and averaging out the deaths per 100,000 people by each grouping. The results are stounding, as there is a perfectly inverse relationship between how long a state implemented a lockdown and how successful it was in keeping the deaths down. I independently cross-checked these numbers, and they appear to be accurate.

Solid analysis! Kyle Lamb on Twitter
— CO Hurricane (@co_hurricane) May 17, 2020

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While this doesn’t necessarily prove that lockdowns cause more COVID-19 deaths (although they definitely cause other deaths), it’s nearly impossible to assert the other way around – that lockdowns prevent deaths – if we see zero correlation in the data. This is especially true given that Florida is the third most populous state and has the highest concentration of seniors, yet deaths and hospitalizations are way down since the state reopened on May 4. Florida is more densely populated than Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet has one-sixth and one-fourth of the deaths per capita, respectively. The same holds true for Georgia, which is a fairly densely populated state. Infections are down over 40% and deaths are down 31% since reopening. As Secretary of Health Alex Azar said yesterday, “We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases. We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed.”

3) Outside nursing homes, the fatality rate never warranted such action, even if it would work: Every day we find more hard data showing that the overwhelming majority of cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and outside nursing homes, the chance of dying is very low and very limited to a population we can more efficiently shield. For those who are younger and healthier, deaths are almost nonexistent. Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries and has a higher overall fatality rate than others, yet its age-stratified fatality rates mirror what we have seen in the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and elsewhere. One Twitter commentator has broken down the age-based fatality rates of the comprehensive Spanish antibody study, and the results are similar to what we’ve seen elsewhere:

Based on the most accurate antibody testing data available (Spain, 60k, countrywide), you would not be correct.
IFR is less than 0.7% in Spain, but deaths of old skew the numbers. India is a much younger population so the IFR would be much lower. pic.twitter.com/PYaWMgBfo6
— Gummi Bear (@gummibear737) May 17, 2020

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He used public information to calculate the case data and the population age data, and I have spot-checked some data points and they all seem on target. It’s identical to what the Netherlands found.


Remember, Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries, but even there, 57% of all deaths and the overwhelming majority of deaths of those above age 80 were in senior care facilities. When you take them out of the equation, the death rates are shockingly low. Yet the same politicians who focused on locking up an entire country failed to care for those in nursing homes. This demographic COVID-19 death chart from Massachusetts speaks volumes about the targeted scope of the danger.


It’s essentially the same story in every state.

4) Outside New York, this is barely worse than bad flu seasons: While Europe is opening its schools, almost every U.S. state continues to keep schools shut. Yet according to the CDC’s latest weekly report, “For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates at comparable time points during recent influenza seasons.” Even the World Health Organization’s top scientist just admitted that children “seem less capable of spreading the virus.” As for everyone else, if you look at the bump in overall deaths for most states (outside the tristate area), they are either at, slightly below, or slight above the 2018 flu season. But at this point, everything is way below a typical flu season in the winter, yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to the media. According to the CDC, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining in all 10 designated regions for the past 3-7 weeks. Still, we are now being more fascist that even Italy in violating civil rights.

5) Excess deaths are from the lockdowns, not the virus: While there is zero evidence that lockdowns saved any lives of coronavirus patients, there is clear evidence they cost other lives. It has been observed in a number of states that there are excess deaths being detected, primarily from people dying at home. The CDC is predicting 21,462-40,097 excess deaths NOT due to COVID-19, likely from those too scared to come to the ER because of the exaggerated risk being associated with COVID-19. Also, a recent analysis of excess deaths in England shows that they are seeing thousands of people dying at home from other symptoms because of the lockdown.

6) Social distancing was invented by a high-school kid and politicians, not scientists: Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic research reports that the origin of this cult of “social distancing” being used for totalitarian lockdowns was the brainchild of a high schooler’s sociology paper in 2006, promoted by the Bush administration during the avian flu. It was widely mocked by the epidemiological community, including by Johns Hopkins, for “causing the potential for a ‘serious adverse outcome,’” thereby ensuring that “a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

How have we allowed such an illogical approach to crush our liberties, economy, hospitals, education, and criminal justice? How have we lost our freedoms?

The answer is that the public is not getting the right information. This is why the political class is doing everything in its power to censor anyone who dares question the idolatry of this lockdown cult. YouTube has censored the videos of Knut Wittkowski, who was a top epidemiologist in Germany and then served as the head of biostatistics, epidemiology, and research design at Rockefeller University. One would think we’d want to hear his opinion, but there is only one view that is allowed to gain traction. Why is it that only one side is scared of the information of the other side?

As James Madison warned, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to note that Florida is the third most populous state, not the fourth. CR regrets the error.

GOP state lawmaker kicked out of Illinois House session for refusing to wear a mask
The lower chamber voted 81-27 to have Rep. Darren Bailey (R) removed from the floor
BRECK DUMAS

A Republican state lawmaker was booted from a session of the Illinois House of Representatives on Wednesday, after the chamber voted to have him removed for refusing to wear a mask in accordance with a new rule amid the coronavirus pandemic.

What are the details?
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Rep. Darren Bailey (R) refused to wear a face covering during the first three sessions, prompting his colleagues—including some fellow Republicans—to vote 81-27 to have him kicked out. The action did not remove him from office, and he is able to return to the people's business if he falls in line and wears a mask.

Following the motion, the acting speaker declared, "Doormen, please remove Rep. Bailey."

But Bailey did not appear bothered by his dismissal from the session, and left with a smile on his face before greeting reporters outside. He told the press, "It's time to put an end to this stuff and say enough is enough."

View: https://youtu.be/yLPyI32w_bY
2:47 min

State Rep. Bailey has been an outspoken critic of coronavirus-related restrictions, according to WMAQ-TV. The Republican even sued Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month for extending the state's stay-at-home mandates.

Pritzker called Bailey's decision to refuse to wear a mask "a callous disregard for life, callous disregard for people's health."

Other GOP members had threatened to attend House proceedings without wearing facial coverings, but ultimately decided against fighting the rule. Rep. Chris Miller (R) told WMAQ, "If we are required, I will play along. I don't want to be a distraction from the real issues of JB's failed leadership."

Rep. Brad Halbrook (R) added, "If the rule is adopted I will abide by it. I trust that we will spend as much time on the long overdue issues of spending reform, pension reform, property tax and many other needed reforms."

NEWSMAY 21, 2020

More Americans venture out in public, especially to restaurants, but the majority are staying home
79% say they wear face masks in public
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

PAUL SACCA

As shelter-in-place orders slowly expire and the coronavirus restrictions are being lifted, more Americans are venturing out in public. However, the majority in the U.S. are still staying at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new Gallup poll found that more Americans are leaving their homes, but still 65% of people are avoiding public places. This is a decrease from the survey from the week before that showed 71% were avoiding public places. The poll also discovered 63% of people are shying away from small gatherings, compared to 71% from the week before last week and 84% in mid-April.

Americans are still not taking public transportation, 76% of respondents said they are avoiding travel by planes, buses, and subways; the figure was down from 81% last week.

People are starting to frequent restaurants once again. Based on the May 11-17 poll of 4,117 U.S. adults, 21% said they had visited a restaurant in the past 24 hours, a significant increase from 13% the week before. The poll does not specify if the people dined at the restaurant or got take-out.

According to the poll, 47% visited a grocery store in the last 24 hours, and 30% have gone to their place of employment in the last day, both have been steady since late March.

When it comes to shopping at a store other than a grocery store, 25% said they visited a store in the past 24 hours, compared to 20% in the previous survey from a week earlier.

With fears of the coronavirus spreading, 79% of Americans say they wear face masks when they go out in public. There were 71% who said that healthy people should continue to stay at home, while 29% said healthy people should live their lives as normally as possible to avoid disruptions to work and business.

There were 51% of respondents who said they were worried about personally catching COVID-19, down from 57% in early April.

Gallup said that the percentage of people who are "completely" or "mostly isolating" themselves from people outside their household was at a new low of 55%.

Over 600 doctors send letter to Trump urging an end to lockdowns, calling it a 'mass casualty incident'

'Exponentially growing health consequences'
Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images
PHIL SHIVER

More than 600 doctors from around the country signed onto a letter Tuesday urging President Donald Trump to end lockdowns in America, describing the widespread lockdown orders as a "mass casualty incident" and warning of "exponentially growing health consequences."

In the letter obtained by Fox News, the doctors describe several of the unintended negative consequences of the shutdown orders, which include patients missing check-ups with doctors that could detect cancer and other serious conditions, an increase in alcohol and substance abuse, and financial instability leading to poverty and poor health.

"Millions of Americans are already [in critical condition]," the letter argued. "These include 150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through routine screening that hasn't happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death, and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse. Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%.

"We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors added, noting real-life examples they have witnessed in their practices. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error."

The doctors noted that since many of the resulting problems will be spread over a large area and not directly linked to confirmed cases of COVID-19, they may go unnoticed.

"The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse," the letter stated.

Four of the undersigned doctors told Fox News they believe the indirect effects of the shutdowns outweighed the direct consequences of lifting them.

"The very initial argument ... which sounded reasonable three months ago, is that in order to limit the overwhelmed patient flux into hospitals that would prevent adequate care, we needed to spread out the infections and thus the deaths in specific locales that could become hotspots, particularly New York City ... It was a valid argument at the beginning based on the models that were given," said Dr. Mark McDonald, a psychiatrist. "What we've seen now over the last three months is that no city — none, zero — outside of New York has even been significantly stressed."

The letter comes as many states have begun to reopen in phases, but much more slowly than perhaps was initially expected. Americans in several states across the country have taken to the streets in protest of stay-at-home orders, which have kept businesses, churches, and schools closed.

Millions have been laid off or furloughed from their jobs or forced out of business since the start of the outbreak, and many are concerned that the country has shifted from flattening the curve to indefinitely locking down until a cure is found.

A Doctor a Day Letter - Signed by Fox News on Scribd

NEWSMAY 21, 2020

Oxford epidemiologist on COVID-19 lockdowns: 'We might have done better by doing nothing at all'
'The epidemic has largely come and is on its way out'
Professor Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford. (Image source: UnHerd video screenshot)
AARON COLEN


A University of Oxford professor who produced a competing model to the apocalyptic Imperial College model said there's a chance that doing nothing would've been a more effective COVID-19 response than the various lockdowns implemented around the world.

During an interview on UnHerd, Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, said the virus is on its way out in the United Kingdom, and the true infection fatality rate is likely extremely low.

"I think the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would definitely be less than 1 in 1,000 (0.1%) and probably closer to 1 in 10,000 (0.01%)," Gupta said.

Gupta is opposed to the lockdowns, pointing out that the coronavirus outbreak has followed similar patterns in different countries with different lockdown policies.

"In almost every context we've seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away — almost like clockwork," Gupta told UnHerd. "Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we've observed is almost a uniform pattern of behavior which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that's a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect."

She blamed government overreaction from the worst-case scenario projections from the Imperial College model, which showed the potential for 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and more than 2 million in the United States.

"I think there's a chance we might have done better by doing nothing at all," Gupta said. "Or at least by doing something different, which would have been to pay attention to protecting the vulnerable, to have thought about protecting the vulnerable 30 or 40 years ago when we started cutting hospital beds. The roots of this go a long, long way back."

View: https://youtu.be/DKh6kJ-RSMI
30:45 min

NEWSMAY 21, 2020

Church refuses to close during lockdown, angering locals. Now it has been burned to the ground.
'Bet you stay home now hypokrits'

SARAH TAYLOR

A Mississippi church whose leadership refused to close the church's doors during the state's COVID-19 lockdown is now no more.

What are the details?

An as-yet identified suspect reportedly burned the church down Wednesday morning.

The First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs was vandalized, which caused an explosion to the rear of the facility.

Authorities are investigating the vandalism as a criminal act of arson.
One message spray painted on the church property read, "I bet you stay home now you hypokrits [sic]."

Stephen Crampton, an attorney for the church, told WHBQ-TV on Thursday that the unknown vandal or vandals spray-painted the church and set it on fire.

"There was a major explosion in the back of the church that blew out the front," Crampton said.

Crampton also said that he believed the church was targeted for "being outspoken and somewhat firm about seeking to protect their constitutional rights" by refusing to close during the pandemic.

"We're in a time where I don't think it's any secret that there's a growing hostility toward churches across the board," he said. "And now, here are churches like First Pentecostal that are sort of stirring up the waters by being outspoken and somewhat firm about seeking to protect their constitutional rights."

He added, "[The church has] had bad comments [sent their way] on social media. There is just a segment that takes issue with the church standing up, and the church just being the church."

What else?
Pastor Jerry Waldrop promised that the church would be rebuilt.

"We are going to keep the faith, and we're going to keep doing what we have always done, and maybe not on this location," Waldrop said. "I'll get with our faithful people, and maybe we'll rent a building or whatever we need to do for the time being."

He added that the church will be rebuilt on site, and said that he didn't feel new construction would be an issue for the church and its community.

"We have the means, so whatever it takes, that's what we will do," Waldrop continued. "We have a tight group that's been faithful, so whatever means are necessary, that is what I will do.

"It's just hard to wrap your head around the idea that someone may have orchestrated this or done this," he concluded.

video on site 2:39 min

China’s new outbreak shows signs the virus could be changing
| Social Share | China Daily
China’s new outbreak shows signs the virus could be changing
The coronavirus seems to manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in China's northeast region compared to those in Wuhan.

View: https://twitter.com/CDHKedition/status/1263327308590362625

...technically, he didn't close the U.S. the first time, either...
Josh Caplan
@joshdcapla
1h

WIRE: Pres. Trump says won't close U.S. if second coronavirus wave hits

Damn it, 2 windows open and I posted in the wrong one again out of habit - sorry.

Xi: China’s Virus Vaccine Will Be 'Global Public Good' When Available

May.18 -- China President Xi Jinping said the country has been acting with transparency and responsibility all along since the coronavirus outbreak began, and provided information to the World Health Organization and countries in the most timely fashion. Xi also pledged to make China's coronavirus vaccine a global public good once one is available. He made the remarks on May 18 in a speech to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the WHO. (Translated excerpts)

video 21 sec - May 18, 2020
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz-14dWrBGs&feature=emb_logo

Obama Staffer, Bill Gates, Soros Behind the Group Pushing a Celebrity Global Response to Chinese Coronavirus
IAN LANGSDON/AFP via Getty Images/Olivier Hoslet/Pool Photo via AP
DAVID NG21 May 202040

The celebrity campaign #PasstheMic is enlisting Julia Roberts, Hugh Jackman, and other A-list Hollywood stars to hand over their social media accounts to the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts to promote a “global response” to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

Who’s behind the push? The roster of donors and leaders reads like a who’s-who of left-wing globalists — U2 frontman Bono, George Soros, and Bill Gates. At the head of the organization is Gayle Smith, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama.

The guest line-up features another physician who has publicly denounced President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and handling of the coronavirus crisis, while praising the World Health Organization, which downplayed the gravity of the outbreak in its early weeks.

In a video interview with Julia Roberts on Thursday, Dr. Fauci urged people to pay more attention to how the coronavirus is impacting poorer countries. “We have, really, a moral responsibility for people throughout the world,” he said.
Fauci also warned Americans not to re-open the economy too quickly. “Now is not the time to tempt fate and pull back completely,” he said. “There is a golden mean there.”

Day 1 #PassTheMic – Dr Fauci, Director @NIAIDNews, tells Julia Roberts about the responsibility we ALL have for people throughout the world in the global fight against #COVID19. Demand Action now #PassTheMic #ONEWorld ὄ #PassTheMic pic.twitter.com/aHQwQEs0aS
— ONE (@ONECampaign) May 21, 2020

Click to expand...

ONE Campaign was co-founded by Bono as an advocacy group to combat poverty and illness, especially in Africa. The group is closely aligned with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated millions of dollars and holds a seat on its board of directors.

The Gates Foundation — the wealthiest philanthropic group in the world — has come under fire for the way its leaders have slammed President Donald Trump while praising China. Bill Gates recently praised China’s handling of the outbreak, saying that “China did a lot of things right at the beginning.” His remarks were promoted on social media by Chinese state media.

Meanwhile, his wife, Melinda Gates, recently gave President Trump a “D-“ for his response to the outbreak, saying that “we need leadership.”

The Gates Foundation is also a major donor to the World Health Organization, the embattled United Nations agency whose botched handling of the Wuhan virus and close ties to China’s Communist regime have prompted President Trump to suspend funding.

ONE Campaign also receives money from the Open Society Policy Center, the Soros lobbying group that opposes the Trump agenda and promotes open borders and other left-wing political issues.

Gayle Smith, who currently serves as president and CEO of ONE Campaign, previously worked as a special assistant to President Obama, who later appointed her to head USAID.

“None of us are safe until all of us are safe,” Smith tweeted this week to promote #PasstheMic.

Smith has publicly criticized President Trump’s decision to suspend funding to the WHO. “A cut in funding would mean a reduction in funding possibly for the fight against polio where we’re near successful,” Smith said in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation.

Future guests in #PasstheMic include Dr. Tsion Firew, a New York-based emergency doctor. Firew has publicly denounced President Trump’s border wall while praising Obama. She has also denounced President Trump’s decision to suspend WHO funding.

“He doesn’t represent what America stands for!” she tweeted this week.

Other celebrities who are set to participate in #PasstheMic include Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, and David Oyelowo.

StarryEyedLad said:

Again, not going to work.

They stick three kids in every school bus seat! They'll have to buy way more buses. More taxes incoming. Have to build more school buildings and hire more teachers and administrators as well!

Click to expand...

Yes... Amazing, that they can't figure that out...

School will have to remain at home and over the internet for a while.

PanBear said:

China’s new outbreak shows signs the virus could be changing
| Social Share | China Daily
China’s new outbreak shows signs the virus could be changing
The coronavirus seems to manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in China's northeast region compared to those in Wuhan.

China’s new outbreak shows signs the virus could be changing

The coronavirus seems to manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in China’s northeast region compared to those in Wuhan.

t.co

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1263327308590362625

View: https://twitter.com/CDHKedition/status/1263327308590362625

Click to expand...

Swell.

At Ford Plant, Donald Trump Refuses to Wear Mask for the Press
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
CHARLIE SPIERING21 May 202016

President Donald Trump on Thursday proudly displayed a mask in Michigan that he said he wore for protection, but he refused to let the press see him wear it.
“I wore one in this back area but I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he told reporters.

Reporters on the trip to Michigan repeatedly asked the president why he decided not to wear a mask during the tour of a Ford Motor Company plant producing personal protection gear and ventilators. Other executives on the tour did wear masks.

“Honestly, I think I look better in a mask,” Trump said, claiming that he wore it earlier during the tour but chose not to wear it on camera.

Trump displayed his mask for the cameras, a black mask with a presidential seal on it.

When a Ford executive was asked whether the president allowed to enter the factory without a mask, he replied, “It’s up to him.”

______________________________________--

Michigan AG Rages at Trump for Not Wearing Mask at Ford Plant: ‘Petulant Child,’ Not Welcome in State
Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty, CNN
JOSHUA CAPLAN21 May 2020715

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) on Thursday lashed out at President Donald Trump for not publicly wearing a face mask during his visit to a Ford manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, comparing him to a “petulant child, who refuses to follow the rules.”

A partial transcript is as follows:

WOLF BLITZER: This morning, right here on CNN, you said that if President Trump doesn’t wear a mask, he’ll be asked not to return to any unclosed facilities in your state. Is the president no longer welcome in Michigan?

Click to expand...

DANA NESSEL: I will say speaking on behalf of my department and my office, that’s right. That’s exactly right. Today’s events were extremely disappointing, and yet totally predictable. I will say that, understanding of course that his own doctor, Dr. Fauci, recommends the wearing of masks in public and closed spaces. The CDC makes that recommendation and in Michigan, that is the law, and a court just upheld that hours ago. And even in Ford, it’s there own policy. The president is like a petulant child, who refuses to follow the rule, and I have to say, this is no joke.

Click to expand...

__________________________________________

LA Mayor Garcetti to Trump: ‘Real Men Wear Face Masks’

PAM KEY21 May 2020771

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said to be a model for the American people President Donald Trump should be wearing a face mask amid the coronavirus pandemic because “real men wear face masks.”

Mitchell asked, “The president is now leaving for Michigan. He’s going into a state that requires wearing a face covering. He hasn’t said yet, as far as I know, whether he is going to wear a mask. He has not been seen wearing one, and he’s also, as you know, done things that go against CDC guidelines and against FDA warnings in taking a risky medication. Mayor Garcetti, what should the president do in terms of the way he models behavior for the rest of the country?”

Garcetti said, “Simply put, he’s our commander-in-chief. I say real men wear face masks when they’re going to be with other people in public. It’s our gateway to increasing freedom and more economic activity and greater opening up. I think modeling that is something so important for all of our leaders, and any men who don’t want to wear face masks got to get over ourselves and just do it.”

meandk0610 said:

That overlooks the people who will have long-term organ damage.

Click to expand...

Not really, most people who live instead of dying look at that as a positive thing, even with the difficulties it leaves.

Even the common cold (Rhinovirus, Coronavirus, RSV, parainfluenza, or the multitude of others)
or regular flu (Influenza) leaves some percentage of those they infect with:

*Sensorineural Hearing Loss
* Guillain-Barre Syndrome
* Pneumonia
* MRSA
* Myocarditis
* Reye Syndrome
* Encephalitis
* Meningitis

I had to have open heart surgery 15 years ago (non-heart attack) and it left me with permanent AFIB with some other nasty heath issues. Yet I have been able to enjoy seeing 5 of my seven grand children be born and all 7 grow up. Not to mention the thousands of things I've done or seen during that time.

The left overs from the surgery slows me down more every year and on some days I'm not worth a plug Nickle, but I've been thankful of every second of every day of every week of every year. I've even been able to continue working in my life long career in IT and even though I'm at the door of 70, still in demand by my customers and stay employed at good rates. That's even with the health issues.

Thanatophobia is a natural condition of mankind. The trick is not to let it become an anxiety that removes the joy of living, even if you have consequences from a disease.

Throughout this whole crisis, I've been amazed by the height of fear that some have shown. It is after all just another of the pestilences that have swept over mankind since our earliest days. Some of which have reached epic proportions and produced mass die offs over decades.

Could this be one is the big question and so far as more information is being obtained, it is just reaching the major flu die offs of the 60's and not nearly as bad as the 1917 great epidemic which was still a long way from the black death.

Infectious disease that springs up out of the blue like this one brings risks and in the beginning there isn't enough information to tell just how bad it or the results of it will reach. EACH person has to manage all of the risks of life the best that THEY determine are best for them and their families.

Just as each person who lives from an infection has to learn to live with its results.

Gretchen Whitmer Loses Again to 77-Year-Old Barber: Judge Rules Shop Can Remain Open

26,947 AP Photo/Paul Sancya
KYLE OLSON21 May 20201955

Karl Manke, a 77-year-old barber in Owosso, Michigan, has defeated Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel in court for the second time in about a week.

The Argus-Press reported:

Judge Matthew Stewart ruled that Karl Manke will not have to close his shop after the state again failed to prove he was an imminent danger to public health.

Click to expand...

Stewart said the state did not arrest Manke when he was cited, so he didn’t represent “an imminent health danger.”

Click to expand...

“(The attorney general) has not presented any studies underlying the doctor’s conclusion. (The attorney general) has not shown any nexus between the cutting of hair and an increased risk of transmission,” Stewart wrote, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“(The attorney general’s) filings rest more on general facts about COVID-19 than specific practices or conditions at (Manke’s) business.”

Nessel’s office said she would appeal the ruling.

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs suspended Manke’s license without a hearing.

“It’s an unbelievable abuse of power,” attorney David Kallman told radio host Steve Gruber, stating there is no legal basis for the action.

“This is pure retribution by the governor’s office and by the AG. This is so petty and vindictive, it’s beyond the pale,” Kallman said.

After her defeat, Nessel attacked Manke publicly.

We want him to discontinue his conduct, which we think is aiding and abetting the spread of the virus,” Nessel claimed.

“Mr. Manke,” she sighed, “He’s not a hero, he’s not a patriot. A patriot is a person that fights all enemies, foreign and domestic, and does everything possible to protect his fellow countrymen and countrywomen.”

“To me, Mr. Manke is doing just the opposite of that and he’s being selfish in his behavior,” the attorney general declared.

CDC Issues Coronavirus Guidelines as America Continues to Open Up
Chris O'Meara/AP Photo
PENNY STARR21 May 20206

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a document only dated “May:” new guidelines for reopening the American economy in the wake of the coronavirus.

CNBC reported that the federal agency has not held a coronavirus briefing for more than two months.

The CDC guidance suggests using a three-phase re-opening strategy.
“This document briefly summarizes CDC’s initiatives, activities, and tools in support of the Whole-of-Government response to COVID-19,” the 60-page document stated:

The plan for reopening America outlines a three-phased approach for reducing community mitigation measures while protecting vulnerable populations. The phased approach can be implemented statewide or community-by-community at governors’ discretion. The guidelines propose the use of six “gating” indicator to assess when to move through from one mitigation phase to another.

Click to expand...

Those “gating” indicators include decreases in new coronavirus cases, decreases in emergency department visits for coronavirus or COVID-like illnesses, decreases in emergency room influenza-like illnesses; decrease in percentage of SARs-CoV-2 positive tests, “treat all patients without crisis care,” and a “robust testing program.”

Under the “Guidance on Infection Control and Contact” heading the CDC names “focus areas” as long-term care facilities, assisted living facilities, dialysis facilities, dental facilities, ambulatory care facilities, pharmacies, emergency medical services, food processing facilities, and correctional facilities and businesses, including links to the specific guidance for each.

It also provides links to CDC guidance on protecting “critical infrastructure workers.”

The guidance includes specific instructions for reopening day care centers, schools, and day camps, “employers with workers at high risk,” restaurants and bars, and mass transit administrators.

Here is a sampling of the CDC guidance:

• Stage 1 for day care centers calls for only allowing children of “essential workers,” with Stage 2 open to all children with “enhanced social distancing measures.” In all three stages, staff should wear cloth face coverings. It also calls or “limited sharing” for children.
• For schools and camps, the CDC suggests for stages 1 and 2 the cancellation of of all field trips and extracurricular activities, space desks at least six feet apart and “turn desks to face in the same direction (rather than facing each other) or have students sit on only one side of tables, spaced apart.”
• For restaurants and bars, even Stage 3 guidance includes severe restrictions, including “consider options for dine-in customers to order ahead of time to limit the amount of time spent in the establishment.”

President Donald Trump released a 18-page “Opening Up America Again” document last month.

Tom Cotton: We Must Block Democrats Using Pandemic to Get All-Mail Voting, Ballot Harvesting
4,794 Don Ryan/AP Photo
ROBERT KRAYCHIK21 May 2020362

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) warned of Democrats’ political exploitation of the coronavirus outbreak as a pretext to nationally implement all-mail voting and ballot harvesting, offering his remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Marlow recalled Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez’s claim that President Donald Trump’s opposition to nationwide vote-by-mail proposals is is an attempt to “steal the election.”

Perez’s statement amounts to “Democratic hysterics over at the DNC,” replied Cotton.

Cotton said, “There have been lots of false predictions about this virus, and especially about the policy responses to it now for two months. Do you remember in early April there was demand that Wisconsin cancel its primary or go to all-mail voting? That didn’t happen. Their predictions that tens of thousands of people were going to die from standing in line at voting places. That obviously hasn’t happened. To my knowledge, there’s been no evidence linking that primary election in Wisconsin to any surge in cases.”

Cotton continued, “States ought to be able to conduct the elections as they see fit. We ought not allow the Democratic Party to use this pandemic at the time to fulfill their wish list of same-day registration, of all-mail voting, [and] of ballot harvesting that creates the kind of fraud that we’ve seen in places like California and North Carolina. We have to protect the integrity of our elections, especially in the middle of a pandemic.”

LISTEN: Audio on site

Democrats regularly call for vote-by-mail and ballot-harvesting as necessary measures above and beyond social distancing and the wearing of masks to ensure safe elections during the coronavirus outbreak.

jward said:

...technically, he didn't close the U.S. the first time, either...
Josh Caplan @joshdcapla 1h
WIRE: Pres. Trump says won't close U.S. if second coronavirus wave hits

Click to expand...

(fair use applies)

Trump says US won't close over second COVID-19 wave
By Morgan Chalfant
05/21/20 05:09 PM EDT

President Trump said Thursday the United States would not shut down in the case of a second coronavirus wave.

“People say that’s a very distinct possibility. It's standard. And we're going to put out the fires. We're not going to close the country. We’re going to put out the fires,” Trump told reporters during a tour of a Ford manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., when asked if he was concerned about a second wave of COVID-19.

Trump expressed confidence in the country’s ability to contain future outbreaks, referring to them as “embers.”

“Whether it’s an ember or a flame, we’re going to put it out. But we’re not closing our country,” the president continued.

All 50 states have announced plans to begin loosening restrictions meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus, opening their economies at varying speeds so that Americans can begin to return to normal life.

States like Texas, North Carolina and Arizona have reported rising numbers of coronavirus cases as they’ve embarked on reopening plans.

The decision on whether to reintroduce restrictions in the event of a second wave would ultimately fall to state governors, not the federal government. While the White House issued guidance to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 it was governors who instituted stay-at-home measures and ordered businesses to close.

Still, Trump has made clear his desire for the country to reopen in order to address the economic damage caused by COVID-19.

Health experts including Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, have warned of the likelihood of a second wave of the virus come fall or winter and cautioned it could be more difficult to contain a future wave that coincides with flu season.

Fauci told a Senate panel last week it was “possible” that a second wave could be as bad or worse than the current situation but expressed confidence that the government’s work expanding testing and contact tracing as well as producing critical medical equipment would well prepare the country to contend with future cases.

“I hope that if we do have the threat of a second wave we will be able to deal with it very effectively to prevent it from becoming an outbreak not only worse than now but much, much less,” Fauci said last Tuesday in virtual testimony. The top infectious disease expert also warned that reopening states too quickly would cost lives.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said in April that confronting the virus in the fall would be “more difficult and potentially more complicated because we would have flu and coronavirus circulating at the same time.”

Trump has increasingly emphasized the need for the economy to reopen amid the pandemic, which has contributed to more than 30 million job losses as a result of business closures ordered by states across the country. He has recently refocused the coronavirus task force on safe reopening and developing vaccines and therapeutics to treat the virus.

But health experts have emphasized the need for robust testing and contact tracing capabilities to contain future outbreaks and cautioned that certain areas could need to retreat back to restrictions in the event there are substantial spikes.

The coronavirus has sickened more than 1.5 million Americans and caused more than 90,000 domestic deaths. The death toll is expected to reach 100,000 by the beginning of June, according to the CDC.

In later prepared remarks at the Ford facility, which is producing tens of thousands of ventilators for front-line health care workers, Trump declared that the country “wasn’t meant to shutdown” and described prolonged shutdowns as a nonstarter.

"A permanent lockdown is not a strategy for a healthy state or a healthy country. Our country wasn’t meant to be shut down,” the president said. “We did the right thing but now it’s time to open it up. A never-ending lockdown would invite a public health calamity. To protect the health of our people we must have a functioning economy.”

EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3
2h

Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus https://nypost.com/2020/05/21/scientists-believe-cannabis-could-help-prevent-treat-coronavirus/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
via
@nypost
View: https://twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1263626192290107392?s=20


Article posted below in it's entirety:

Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus
By Lee Brown
May 21, 2020 | 3:05pm | Updated
More On:
cannabis

Hightimes' acquisition of California marijuana cultivator goes to pot

Weed it and weep: Dems' $3T coronavirus bill mentions cannabis more than jobs

Aurora Cannabis jumps 55 percent thanks to lockdown stockpiling

High Times owner hires Victoria's Secret, cannabis vet as CEO



They have high hopes for a coronavirus breakthrough.
A team of Canadian scientists believes it has found strong strains of cannabis that could help prevent and then treat coronavirus infections, according to interviews and a study.
Researchers from the University of Lethbridge said that a study in April showed at least 13 cannabis plants high in CBD that appeared to affect the ACE2 pathways that the bug uses to access the body.
“We were totally stunned at first, and then we were really happy,” one of the researchers, Olga Kovalchuk, told CTV News.
The results, printed in online journal Preprints, indicated hemp extracts high in CBD may help block proteins that provide a “gateway” for COVID-19 to enter host cells.

Kovalchuk’s husband, Igor, suggested cannabis could reduce the virus’ entry points by up to 70 percent. “Therefore, you have more chance to fight it,” he told CTV.
“Our work could have a huge influence — there aren’t many drugs that have the potential of reducing infection by 70 to 80 percent,” he told the Calgary Herald.
Stressing that more research was needed, the study gave hope that if proven to modulate the enzyme it “may prove a plausible strategy for decreasing disease susceptibility” as well as “become a useful and safe addition to the treatment of COVID-19 as an adjunct therapy.”

Cannabis could even be used to “develop easy-to-use preventative treatments in the form of mouthwash and throat gargle products,” the study suggested, with a “potential to decrease viral entry” through the mouth.
“The key thing is not that any cannabis you would pick up at the store will do the trick,” Olga told CTV, with the study suggesting just a handful of more than 800 varieties of sativa seemed to help.
All were high in anti-inflammatory CBD — but low in THC, the part that produces the cannabis high.
The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, was carried out in partnership with Pathway Rx, a cannabis therapy research company, and Swysh Inc, a cannabinoid-based research company.

The researchers are seeking funding to continue its efforts to support scientific initiatives to address COVID-19.
“While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is crucial for the future analysis of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19,” the research said.
“Given the current dire and rapidly evolving epidemiological situation, every possible therapeutic opportunity and avenue must be considered.”

Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent and treat coronavirus

They have high hopes for a coronavirus breakthrough. A team of Canadian scientists believes it has found strong strains of cannabis that could help prevent or treat coronavirus infections, accordin…

nypost.com

Click to expand...

...married 74 years- how awesome ...
FoxNashville
@FOXNashville
1h

Lloyd Falk, a 100-year-old World War II veteran, has beaten the coronavirus after 58 days in a hospital.
Sadly, his wife of 74 years, died, but the hospital says he stayed strong.
View: https://twitter.com/FOXNashville/status/1263641125820088321?s=20

When your dog learns to tuck itself in bed for a nap...
Turning on a little fan, switching off lights!
Dog: I am ready for my nap!

video 14 sec
View: https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/1262829124944445441

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgILwaVg2Co
41:46 min
COVID-19: Johns Hopkins Experts Share Insights, Risks, and Data About States Reopening in the U.S.
•May 21, 2020

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
With many U.S. states reopening to some degree following shutdowns to slow the spread of COVID-19, leading experts from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Johns Hopkins University map team share their insights, recommendations, and cautions based on the best available data and science. Participants: Tom Inglesby, MD Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Crystal Watson, DrPH, MPH Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Beth Blauer, JD Executive Director, Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact This webcast was moderated by Stephanie Desmon, co-host of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School’s “Public Health on Call” podcast and Director of Public Relations and Marketing for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bLO3hsiW8

Aww. :: sniffin n blinkin :: More forever <3 complete w/ lotsa smooches Mmm



CBS This Morning
@CBSThisMorning
4h

After spending months apart due to the coronavirus pandemic, 89-year-old Jean and 91-year-old Walter Willard, who have been married for 70 years, were reunited at their nursing home in Troy, New York.
View: https://twitter.com/CBSThisMorning/status/1263601751577460736?s=20

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9071OOZL8k
28:06 min
Official forced into mental hospital; 2nd virus outbreak; Trump: US to react strongly to new HK law
•Premiered 2 hours ago

China in Focus - NTD
The Chinese Communist Party is ordering large amounts of medical supplies from Chinese manufacturers, arousing fears the country is preparing for a second wave of the CCP virus. One expert says the virus is behaving very differently in northeastern China. He notes three major differences from Wuhan. China has kicked off its most important annual political meetings in Beijing. Authorities are also tightening their grip on suppressing ordinary citizens seeking redress from state governments. A pro-Democracy local official in China was recently forced into a mental hospital by authorities. This after she went to Beijing distributing leaflets appealing for Democratic reforms in China. And the Chinese Communist Party's latest efforts to infiltrate Hong Kong's legal system-- CCP officials introduced a new national security law. And Trump says the US will react strongly if the law is enacted.

Behaving very differently?

The Babylon Bee
@TheBabylonBee
9h

Florida Ruled To Be In Violation Of Science For Not Having More People Die
View: https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1263530104124321792?s=20