We’ve been censored. Hollered at by Karens in the grocery store and sometimes even outdoors. We’ve been lectured, demonized, scoffed at, and called murderers and rubes — all for the sin of ignoring mask security theater and daring to show the lower half of our faces in public. That’s why it’s just remarkable to hear the experts now admit that the same face coverings required in so many establishments and localities are not stopping any virus from spreading.
CNN medical analyst Leana Wen, who was previously president of abortion giant Planned Parenthood, said so on the network — and not only in reference to the current variant, as if new data has suddenly justified a change in guidance. She explicitly said cloth masks haven’t been effective since the dawn of the Wuhan virus.
“Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic. It’s not appropriate for omicron, it was not appropriate for delta, alpha, or any of the previous variants either, because we’re dealing with something that’s airborne,” Wen said.
And just like that CNN admits cloth masks do not stop COVID
It isn’t just one floating head on CNN. In a letter to Capitol Hill staffers, the attending physician reportedly announced the end of blue surgical masks, cloth masks, and gaiters, ordering that “the more protective KN95 or N95 masks” must now be worn.
“…[S]urgical masks are NO LONGER ENOUGH for an airborne virus that’s transmitting as fast or faster than any virus known to mankind,”tweeted a paranoid professor from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Washington Post jumped in too.
And here’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spilling the beans that a surgical mask “is not considered respiratory protection.”
WebMD piled on also, urging Americans to discard the kind of cloth face masks worn by busybody fellow shoppers while they lecture the unmasked to cover their faces. Those aren’t good enough and never have been.
This is now the wisdom imparted by the experts, that the sweaty, flimsy, itchy muzzles that have been forced on schoolchildren, healthy athletes, socially distant employees, grocery-shopping moms, and even their toddlers are “not appropriate.” They’re nothing more than “facial decorations” against a virus that’s in the air and can’t be contained.
It’s almost like conservatives have been reading the available scientific studies and saying this since the beginning, like here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Maybe sweat-soaked cloth masks in the gym actually aren’t great for your health, many on the right suggested. My 3-year-old’s mask that she can’t stop touching probably isn’t keeping her healthier, others thought. Yet the response from the left to this pushback was routine scorn and censorship.
Amazon banned a book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson that discussed the scientific evidence that mask mandates are ineffective. Big Tech weaponized fake fact-checks to choke out The Federalist’s science-backed reporting on masks. Former White House COVID Task Force advisor Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from publishing references to scientific mask studies, as CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta cheered Twitter on. Google-owned YouTube infamously nuked a June interview of Atlas.
Yet now, the left’s “experts” are going on network television to announce that we must stop wearing the cloth and surgical masks that have become synonymous with COVID morality, and they’re announcing that actually we’ve known these masks have been “inappropriate” all along.
Americans are just supposed to take this. In response to the gaslighting, they’re just supposed to obediently discard the cloth masks they’ve been berated and coerced into wearing and instead go buy some stronger mask to protect God-knows-who from this wave of a virus that manifests as the common cold for even the vast majority of the yet-unvaccinated.
While in many sane areas of the country, masks have long been an afterthought, that’s not the reality for other Americans. Mask mandates still prevail in too many places, with the entire state of Oregon tossing around the idea of a “permanent” mask mandate.
Other authoritarian pockets such as Madison, Wisconsin, just never let their temporary mandates expire. Of course, these mandates don’t require any particular kind of face covering. So as Wen said, the masks are nothing more than “facial decorations,” meaning the mandates are nothing more than political theater.
The gaslighting is enough to drive anyone absolutely mad, but with the experts’ admission that most of our masks aren’t cutting it, they’ve also admitted something far more consequential. These masks and the mandates that accompany them have never been about controlling a virus. They’ve always been about controlling people.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
An American scientist recovered the deleted data from cloud storage and published his analysis Tuesday. The paper, “Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic,” suggests that early virus samples from the Wuhan seafood market that until now have been the focus of most studies on the origins of the pandemic “are not fully representative of the viruses actually present in Wuhan at that time.”
The paper is not yet peer-reviewed, and its findings should not yet be considered conclusive. The recovered virus samples do not support either the “lab leak” hypothesis or the “natural origins” hypothesis of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, according to scientists who have examined the paper. But these scientists say it does suggest the virus was spreading in Wuhan earlier than the Chinese government claimed, and the paper’s author, Dr. Jesse Bloom, says his findings should reinforce skepticism that China has fully shared all relevant data on COVID-19.
Bloom, an influenza virus expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, also says his study should be a cause for hope that scientists can recover additional information about the early spread of SARS-CoV-2 without an international investigation.
In the course of his research into SARS-CoV-2, Bloom read a paper that analyzed data from a project by Wuhan University that sequenced 45 positive coronavirus cases from January and early February 2020. The Chinese study, which developed an improved technique to test for and diagnose COVID-19 cases, was peer-reviewed and published in June 2020.
The SARS-CoV-2 sequences obtained by the Chinese researchers were uploaded to the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA), a database for storing what are essentially maps of how viruses are built. These sequences can help scientists study how a virus originated and evolved over time, and such study may lead to knowledge that can prevent the next pandemic.
But when Bloom went to the SRA to examine the Chinese sequences, he found the data had been deleted. He explained in his paper that the SRA “is designed as a permanent archive of deep sequencing data.” The only circumstances under which data can be removed is if the original researchers make an email request to have it deleted, provide reasons for doing so, and have that request approved by SRA staff.
A spokesperson for the NIH told the Telegraph that the NIH had “reviewed the submitting investigator’s request to withdraw the data” in June 2020 and subsequently removed it.
“The requestor indicated the sequence information had been updated, was being submitted to another database, and wanted the data removed from SRA to avoid version control issues,” the spokesperson said. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data.”
Bloom attempted to contact the Wuhan University researchers asking why they requested the data be deleted but did not receive a response. He noted in his paper that “there is no plausible scientific reason for the deletion” and suggested “it therefore seems likely the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence.”
Fortunately, he was able to recover some of the data from the Google Cloud, obtaining 34 early positive COVID-19 samples, and he was able to reconstruct partial viral sequences from 13 of them.
In a Twitter thread about his paper, Bloom explained why these sequences are crucial for understanding the origins of the virus.
“Although events that led to emergence of #SARSCoV2 in Wuhan are unclear (zoonosis vs lab accident), everyone agrees deep ancestors are coronaviruses from bats,” Bloom said.
“Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!” he continued.
“Instead, early Huanan Seafood Market #SARSCoV2 viruses are more different from bat coronaviruses than #SARSCoV2 viruses collected later in China and even other countries.‘
These findings suggest that the first virus samples from Huanan Seafood Market, originally suspected by scientists to be the source of viral outbreak, were not the earliest evolutions of the virus. That would mean SARS-CoV-2 was circulating before China reported its first confirmed COVID-19 case on Dec. 8, 2019, and did not necessarily originate in the wet market.
Reacting to this new information, University of California, Berkeley, Professor Rasmus Neilsen, a genomics expert, said the findings “are the most important data that we have received regarding the origins of Covid-19 for more than a year.”
Bloom said his work has several important implications.
“First, [the] fact this dataset was deleted should make us skeptical that all other relevant early Wuhan sequences have been shared,” he tweeted, noting that China ordered many labs to destroy early samples of the virus.
“Sequence sharing could be further limited by fact that scientists in China are under an order from the State Council requiring central approval of all publications,” he added.
The second major implication of this work is that “it may be possible to obtain additional information about early spread of #SARSCoV2 in Wuhan even if efforts for more on-the-ground investigations are stymied.”
Bloom explained in his paper that “it should be immediately possible for the NIH to determine the date and purported reason for deletion of the data set analyzed here, since the only way sequences can be deleted from the SRA is by an e-mail request to SRA staff.” He also suggested that SRA email records should be reviewed to determine if there were any more requests to delete early SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the database.
“Importantly, SRA deletions do not imply any malfeasance: there are legitimate reasons for removing sequencing runs, and the SRA houses >13-million runs making it infeasible for its staff to validate the rationale for all requests,” Bloom said. “However, the current study suggests that at least in one case, the trusting structures of science have been abused to obscure sequences relevant to the early spread ofSARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan.‘
“A careful re-evaluation of other archived forms of scientific communication, reporting, and data could shed additional light on the early emergence of the virus.”
For as difficult as the past year has been, from politics to the pandemic, it has at least helped to illuminate and clarify certain things about the state of our country.
Above all, 2020 has illuminated and clarified the relationship between America’s elites—in government, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate America and the corporate press—and everyone else. In short, our elites believe, contra Thomas Jefferson, that most people were born with saddles on their backs while a favored few were born booted and spurred to ride them, legitimately.
The rigors and suffering of the coronavirus pandemic demonstrated the perseverance, resilience, and generosity of the American people, but also exposed—sometimes in mind-boggling detail—the greed, hypocrisy, and indifference of our elites.
We like to think we live in a country where everyone, rich and poor alike, is equal before the law. But we know now, thanks to the exigencies and emergencies of 2020, that isn’t true—or at least it’s only true sometimes, when the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to weigh in and enforce equal treatment.
But left unchecked, as many of our leaders were over the past year, we all know what they will do. In no particular order, then, here are the five big things we learned about America and its elites in 2020.
1. Democrats Don’t Care About Science—Or Religious Liberty
This year we learned Democrats aren’t the “party of science,” and in fact don’t care about science at all—especially if it gets in the way of their policy agenda or the exercise of emergency powers.
How else do you explain the actions of Democratic governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom? They both tried to ban indoor religious gatherings based the unscientific belief that people are more likely to contract COVID-19 in a church than in a liquor store or a Lowe’s. In both cases, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such restrictions were unconstitutional because they singled out houses of worship for unequal treatment.
Lost in the media coverage of these and similar cases was the disturbing fact that these governors weren’t basing their pandemic-related restrictions on science or data. When a Los Angeles judge earlier this month struck down an outdoor dining ban issued by county health officials, he noted that the county hadn’t presented any scientific evidence justifying the ban or even done a basic cost-benefit analysis on the effects of shutting down more than 30,000 restaurants.
“It’s not rational to make a decision without doing everything you’re supposed to do, and you haven’t,” the judge said. “You’re imposing restrictions but there’s no reason to believe it will help with ICU capacity.” In all these cases, science had nothing to do with the attempted shutdown. Power and prejudice did.
2. Lockdowns For Thee But Not For Me
Speaking of Newsom, he became the poster boy for elite hypocrisy when he was photographed at a fancy Napa Valley restaurant with a bunch of wealthy and powerful friends right after imposing harsh pandemic-related lockdowns on much of the state.
He wasn’t alone. All over the country, elected officials—almost all of them Democrats—were spotted flouting their own pandemic rules and restrictions. My colleague Tristan Justice catalogued some of the most high-profile instances.
There was Austin Mayor Steve Adler telling residents to stay home—and threatening them with more restrictive measures if they didn’t comply—while he was vacationing in a Mexican resort town.
There was Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who boarded a flight for Houston to visit his daughter for Thanksgiving right after telling residents to “avoid travel if you can.”
There was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, mask-less, visiting a shut-down hair salon in San Francisco, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot doing the same thing—then getting caught mask-less in the streets with a bullhorn at a rally celebrating Joe Biden’s victory. Her excuse (they all have excuses) was that the “crowd was gathered whether I was there or not.”
On and on, all over the country. The mayors of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, D.C., all of them Democrats, all of them caught flouting their own lockdown orders.
We can conclude two things from this. The first is that our ruling elites, despite their grave intonations and warnings, don’t really believe the coronavirus is very dangerous or that their lockdown orders are necessary—at least not for them. The second is that they hate you and think you’re stupid.
3. Lockdown Elites Don’t Care If Small Businesses Die
The elites’ hypocrisy went beyond their personal behavior. It also affected the pandemic policies they supported and imposed. Especially in blue states and cities, elected officials opted for pandemic restrictions that disproportionately harmed small businesses and working families, while giving generous carve-outs and exemptions to special interests.
Nothing illustrated this better than a viral video by a distraught restaurant owner in Los Angeles, who was justifiably upset over an outdoor dining ban that shuttered all bars and restaurants but exempted the film and television industry. Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles, had spent tens of thousands of dollars to create an outdoor dining space that complied with Centers for Disease Control and county health guidelines in an attempt to save her business, only to have the rules changed on her without warning.
The real slap in the face, though, was an outdoor dining area for a television production set up not 50 feet from her restaurant. The two dining spaces were nearly identical. The only difference is that she, a small business owner, wasn’t powerful or important enough to get an exemption.
4. Silicon Valley Wants You to Shut Up
Another disturbing revelation in 2020 was that Big Tech doesn’t care about free speech or the free exchange of ideas, and will, given the right circumstances, censor what you can read and share on their platforms according to criteria they invent out of thin air.
We saw this over and over again, not only with COVID-19 commentary and reporting but with coverage of the presidential election and the many instances of fraud and illegal electioneering that were documented in the days and weeks after the vote. Twitter and Facebook in particular were aggressive in their censorship of any opinions or information that challenged their chosen narratives about the pandemic and the election.
Again, science and data and verifiable facts didn’t factor into these decisions. Experts like former White House advisor Scott Atlas were censored by Twitter for sharing studies that showed the ineffectiveness of masks. Amazon did the same thing to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s booklet on the ineffectiveness of masks.
Most infamously, Twitter and Facebook conspiredwith corporate media before the election to impose a blackout on coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal, including an unprecedented move by Twitter to suspend The New York Post’s account for breaking the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails. This was done rather straightforwardly to shield voters from the Biden family’s corruption. After the election, the FBI confirmed that it is in fact investigating Hunter Biden.
5. Elites Are Okay With Chaos and Violence From the Left
Another glaring instance of elite hypocrisy in 2020 was the reaction to riots and looting in American cities throughout the spring and summer. Because Democrats and corporate media agreed with the ideology and politics driving this violence, and approved of groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) that were fomenting it, they excused it. Over and over, reporters and commentators characterized violent riots and urban unrest as “mostly peaceful protests,”sometimes even while showing images of burning buildings and mayhem in the streets.
By contrast, peaceful and orderly protests of pandemic lockdown orders in the spring were reported as dangerous and threatening, not because they were actually dangerous or threatening but because the protesters were mostly conservatives and Republicans who thought governors and mayors were overstepping their authority. At the same time, these same outlets downplayed or simply refused to report on the many instances of violence, including shootings, perpetrated by Antifa rioters and BLM demonstrators across the country.
We learned from all this that the left is prepared to burn down cities to seize power, and will make excuses for rioters and looters as long as it serves their political and ideological agenda.
That’s of a piece with everything else we’ve learned about our elites in 2020. They don’t really care about the things they claim to care about. They don’t care about science or data or even keeping us safe during a pandemic. They don’t care about small businesses or working families or getting kids back to school. They don’t care about free speech or the free exercise of religion or anything else that hinders their power—and they certainly don’t care about you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John is the Political Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.
The Supreme Court’s ruling last Wednesday against discriminatory targeting of religious groups with COVID-19 restrictions marked a significant victory in the ongoing battle to preserve religious liberty. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, hostile stakeholders in public office have assaulted the first freedom through superciliously labeling religious services “nonessential.” Christians in much of the country now find themselves in the demeaning and intolerable position of being allowed to worship only in the manner and on terms dictated by politically motivated governors.
Respecting authorities’ claims about an unknown disease made sense early in the outbreak, but now after better scientific information shows many initial fears are false. Yet politicians refuse to come clean while ignoring their own rules forbidding us from fulfilling our Christian duties. So it is time for us once again to assert that church is the most essential activity, period. Instead of valiantly fighting in the vanguard, however, many religious leaders have quickly retreated.
It is one thing for a church leader to prayerfully consider the individual needs of his church, striving to maintain unity among members in disagreements, protecting the health of the vulnerable, and offering stability amid uncertainty. It is quite another for shepherds to forsake the assembling of their flocks and enable the propaganda that congregating freely to worship God is selfish and “could kill grandma.” This unbiblical stance also overlooks the hypocrites in public office and the media who don’t even play by their own silly rules and ignore the data, for much lesser purposes than the health of our souls.
Many such religious leaders are neglecting the soul-saving mission of the church. The notion that being a good Christian requires indefinite cessation of communal worship — and for Catholics, the suspension of the sacraments — to prevent the spread of illness is a falsehood that has confused the faithful and undermined religious freedom.
Supreme Court Upholds Religious Liberty
In the case brought by the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Supreme Court held that “the restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.” In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch posed a pertinent rhetorical question: “Who knew that public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”
Gorsuch held that “the only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as ‘essential’ as what happens in secular spaces.” He warned that “in too many places, for far too long, our first freedom has fallen on deaf ears.”
For several months now, elected officials and many church leaders around the country have flagrantly ignored religious liberty. States such as California, Oregon, and Washington have witnessed a new wave of post-election crackdowns on religious services. In San Diego County, churches are currently prohibited from holding indoor services. Meanwhile, a San Diego court just issued a temporary order exempting coronavirus restrictions from applying to a strip club, ruling that such entertainment constitutes “constitutionally protected speech.”
In Oregon, new restrictions limit faith-based gatherings to a maximum of 25 people regardless of church size but allow businesses to continue operating at a reduced percentage of their total capacity. Archbishop of Portland Alexander Sample rightly argued that allowing a measly 25 worshipers in a cathedral that can seat 1,000 isn’t data-driven and doesn’t make sense.
The Church Is Essential
I expressed concern back in May about politicians labeling religious services “nonessential” and allowing the state to determine on what terms churches can hold services. At that time, Washington bishops effectively thumbed their noses at President Trump for declaring that state governments should allow houses of worship to reopen.
The bishops instead hitched their wagon to Gov. Jay Inslee’s rogue horse. Hence six months down the road, Inslee again targeted Washington churches as part of his latest round of arbitrary fiats. Church capacity is reduced to 25 percent, and congregational and choral singing is prohibited.
Meanwhile, the very authorities who tut-tut and wag fingers clearly don’t adhere to or believe in the merits of their own nonsense rules. Sanctimonious public officeholders have lectured us about keeping business closed, taking unemployment on the chin, staying home, and wearing masks while they visit salons, attend private dinners, and jet off out of state for holidays with family. The duplicity of notorious mask shamers such as CNN’s Chris Cuomo and White House correspondents Kaitlan Collins and Jonathan Karl has similarly been on display.
The hypocrisy is not limited to the secular sphere. Pope Francis condemned peaceful lockdown protests despite the World Health Organization’s warning against using lockdowns as the primary means of controlling the virus. Francis believes that closing churches, businesses, and schools, and forcing people out of work are all “necessary for people’s protection.” He has even canceled public celebration of Christmas liturgies at the Vatican.
Yet Francis didn’t appear particularly worried about Wuhan virus transmission when, free from any semblance of social distancing and masks, he enjoyed a cozy chat about poverty and social justice with a group of handsomely paid NBA players and fellow pals of the Chinese Communist Party. Evidently, on protecting the freedom to assemble, to provide for one’s family, and even to freely worship, government-imposed restrictions are non-negotiable, but when it’s about racial and economic politics, the holy grail of neo-Marxists, lockdowns are a suggestion only.
Against this backdrop, Christians should be prepared for the usual suspects in public office and the press, facilitated by an array of religious leaders, to crack down on Christmas celebrations. We will no doubt hear more of the “we do this not out of fear but out of love” mantra. Given, however, that the survival rate is 94.6 percent for those 70 years and older and between 99.5-99.997 percent for those 69 and younger, rapid breakthroughs in therapeutics have been announced, three reportedly effective vaccines are on the way, and government authorities are flouting their own restrictions, the “love thy neighbor”lecture is becoming as tedious as it is false.
Christians Need Church to Obey God’s Commands
The Gospels tell us the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We cannot fulfill the second greatest commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves if that love is not solidly founded in an encounter with God. This means gathering with the faithful in sung praise and thanksgiving, as we read in Psalms and was the custom from the earliest church, as well as explicitly commanded in scripture.
The Greek word for church, “ekklesia,” comes from the Old Testament and originally referred to the assembly of the people of Israel. When St. Paul first used the term, he intended it as the new community of believers in Christ. This “ekklesia” is not a human association borne of common interests and beliefs but a summoning by God himself.
For Catholics, the encounter with God is achieved even more profoundly through the sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus is literally and wholly present — body and blood, soul and divinity — under the appearances of consecrated bread and wine. Whatever way you look at it, religious services are essential, and church leaders should say so.
Religious leaders must get their priorities straight. No doubt, pastors are genuinely concerned for the health of the most vulnerable in their communities and trying to accommodate the confusion and fears of their congregants. Some must feel their hands are tied by unsupportive leadership. Still others, I suspect, find themselves effectively cornered by congregants whose political indoctrination runs deeper than their catechesis.
Nevertheless, the role of preachers is to win souls for Christ, not to protect us or themselves from physical infirmity. St. Paul urges a return to God through Christ and cautions against domination by earthly pleasures and preoccupations. In other words, if, as St. Ambrose of Milan taught, we have a wound to heal, Christ is the doctor; if we are parched by fever, he is the spring; if we fear death, he is life; and if we are in darkness, he is light.
After a dismal year, and in sober anticipation of Joe Biden’s threatened “dark winter,” it is more important than ever for Christians to unite in praise of the Light that shines in the darkness and which the darkness has never put out. We should demand that our religious leaders mark the Nativity with fitting pomp and ceremony and refuse to support churches whose pastors spread or cower behind the lie that the celebration of Christmas is nonessential.
ABOUT TYHE AUTHOR:
Carina Benton is a native Australian living in Washington state. She is a practicing Catholic and has taught for many years in Catholic and Christian schools. She is a mother of two young children.
My parents and in-laws haven’t seen their grandkids in nearly a year. Because we live states apart, the most time we spend together is during the holidays and a week in the summer. Due to the lockdown this year, the grandparents have only been able to see our kids during video calls.
It could be worse; some dear friends of ours buried a parent during the lockdown with no guests or funeral, and the grandchildren had to stay away. Family bonds do more than just unite people with the same origin or name, however. Those bonds hold us up and together during times of struggle and grief.
These painful life events can shape our perspectives for the remainder of our time on Earth. I learned a lot about dealing with grief when I attended family funerals growing up. When my grandmother passed away years ago, my cousins and I stood solemnly together as we watched our aunts and uncles say their final graveside goodbyes.
When our uncles walked my grandpa to her casket, we witnessed this quiet, strong man cry for the first time in our lives. I would not have been able to watch it without the rest of my family there. He didn’t just cry; his sobs shook his thin, 6’3” frame and threw him off balance. He leaned on the casket to help support his weight, and we gave him a moment before swarming him for comfort.
The sight was a shock that swept us into a new reality: We, the grandkids, wouldn’t be “the grandkids” in our family’s hierarchy much longer. Each generation took one step up that imaginary staircase with the death of our grandparents. Our kids assumed the step below us where we once stood. The presence of family makes that meeting with mortality easier to process.
I had just given birth to my second child when my grandfather passed away, living long enough to learn that his second great-grandson was on this Earth, miles away from him, but healthy. I didn’t get to attend his funeral because it was too soon after childbirth, the day I brought my baby home.
That night, I rocked my son to sleep in the solitude and darkness of his nursery and cried until there was nothing left in my soul to expend. That heavy sort of grief is meant to be borne by more than one. It took a long while to get past that.
Lockdowns Have Caused Immense Harm
That’s the closest experience I have to compare when I read about grief during lockdowns. This is why my heart truly breaks over stories from others who were forced by lockdowns and restrictions to endure this with their loved ones.
The emotional dam of a non-political, grief-stricken friend burst forth on Facebook after she read about politicians defending protest gatherings while she and her sister had to bury their father alone, just themselves, on a cold, clear March day earlier this year. The pain seems endless, and the lockdowns have predictably caused immense unintended consequences:
Depression rates for every age demographic have tripled.
Sixty percent of small businesses that closed during the last lockdown will not reopen, and others barely hanging on are giving up.
Even though schools aren’t superspreaders and medical professionals have been telling districts to reopen, many haven’t. New York City just closed its schools again.
Deaths from non-coronavirus health issues have climbed since the start of the last lockdown as people don’t seek medical care for treatable illnesses. The lockdown could kill more than the virus.
‘Experts’ Have Given Us Every Reason Not to Trust Them
Later, Fauci admitted he lied when he told people masks weren’t essential. Politicians and “experts” shouldn’t be surprised when their actions like these make reasonable people lose faith in their leadership and unwilling to follow their rules.
Many of us comforted ourselves through the dark, lonely spring and desolate summer with visions of family gatherings over the holidays. Now we’re told to skip those too or just have a “virtual Thanksgiving.” If you can’t do that, limit guests, make everyone wear masks, stay away from each other, and have everyone bring their own food — unless your name rhymes with Schmavin Twosome, that is:
California Medical Association officials were among the guests seated next to Gov. Gavin Newsom at a top California political operative’s opulent birthday dinner at the French Laundry restaurant this month.
CEO Dustin Corcoran and top CMA lobbyist Janus Norman both joined the dinner at the French Laundry, an elite Napa fine dining restaurant, to celebrate the 50th birthday of lobbyist and longtime Newsom adviser Jason Kinney, a representative of the powerful interest group confirmed Wednesday morning.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dodged a reporter’s question about his family’s Thanksgiving plans — they traveled to their second home in Florida — and it made the rounds on social media. Pritzker had to return to do damage control: “I was taken aback by yesterday’s question about my family’s holiday plans, in part because my wife and I were in the process of making the very hard decision that we may need to celebrate Thanksgiving apart from one another for the first time ever, and it was weighing heavily on my mind.”
He was “taken aback” that reporters, during a press conference about COVID-19 Thanksgiving plans, asked him if he was going to follow his own lockdown orders — especially knowing that Pritzker’s wife violated the last lockdown by fleeing to their multimillion-dollar equestrian estate in Florida?
We would be fined for this, but these Democratic governors are exempt from coronavirus and lockdown concerns, apparently. It’s not just governors, however. Don’t forget House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the shuttered salon.
Before her was Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her lockdown salon trip. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser locked down residents while she attended Biden rallies. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo refused to wear a mask and self-quarantine.
California lawmakers lived it up in Maui during lockdown on the excuse of a “conference” (We all have to Zoom, why can’t they?). New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went to the gym while you were locked down at home. The Daily Caller compiled a list of hypocritical lawmakers violating lockdown, and you can find an additional great thread here.
Americans Are Sick of the Double Standard
We have all sacrificed, some more than others, and we are tired of the double standard. We are sick of bureaucrats leading us around, treating us like children instead of the employers whose tax dollars form their paychecks.
Americans are weary of speculation presented as science. We are tired of being told that our businesses are nonessential, that worker lives are nonessential, and that our kids and their wellbeing are nonessential. We are sick of hearing that any deviation from the mandates passed down to us by politicians who refuse to follow the rules means sentencing our neighbors to death.
I rejected that outright:
I wrote about this accusation in April, noting that the intent of our elitist overlords is murky. Who are they to decide which workers are essential? By the politicians’ own rhetoric, those “essential” workers are actually “expendable,” since they are most susceptible to the same virus the electeds use to scare the rest of us into our homes.
For those maligning business owners as murderous monsters because they simply want to pay their bills consider this — certain businesses were declared essential: Food delivery is essential but cancer treatment isn’t. So you’re fine with risking the lives of delivery drivers to avoid picking up your pizza yourself? Is it acceptable to risk the lives of restaurant staff because you don’t want to make your own food? Is it acceptable to risk the lives and health stability of cancer patients as well as the livelihood of medical staff being furloughed around the country to demonstrate a devotion to saving lives? If you want to discuss murkiness of intent, this is it. By declaring that some people are essential, haven’t you already decided that some lives are expendable?
This is an awful virus. Unlike a military battle, this is a foe that will never be vanquished. We can vaccinate against it and build up our immunities, but just as with chickenpox, polio, and other illnesses before this virus, there is no cure, only prevention and acclimation. Overreaction is a lesser enemy, and moderation is an ally. There is a difference between reasonable concern and “Chicken Little” hysteria.
The hysteria is exhausting. We are tired of being told that contracting the virus means instant death when it emphatically does not — it has a 99.98 percent survivability rate. We are tired of being told that because some can’t venture out, no one should. Nothing in life is perfectly safe, including freedom. But freedom is a lot safer than the statist systems so many leftists champion.
It’s Time to Declare Our Freedom
As a daughter who doesn’t have much of her family left, whose kids are growing up faster than she can even capture with her phone camera, I am not going to miss out on life. I am not going to let my parents age out of this world while lying to my own heart that it’s OK if I missed an entire year or more with them. I am not going to tell my children that it’s alright if they don’t see their family anymore because we have to hide in our homes.
More than anything else, I am sick of being told I don’t have the right of risk when risk is part of freedom. I will not be lectured by people who say that eating in a restaurant with health protocols is riskier than shutting down the largest economy in the world. I won’t be bullied by bureaucrats who say it’s risker to reopen schools than to force an entire generation into lockdown for nearly a year, stunting them in every way but loneliness. I will not be shamed by lawmakers who don’t follow their own rules. I won’t be preached at by pundits too purposefully obtuse to see nuance over their partisanship.
I am going to host my parents for Thanksgiving, and I hope to host my in-laws for Christmas. I will continue living as a free and responsible American with liberties for which my family has taken bullets and mine shards, until the day comes that our government wants to stage a modernized version of 1776 by trying to end that perfectly wonderful freedom.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.” Freedom is beautiful and scary. It’s up to each of us to maintain it.
Dana Loesch is a nationally syndicated talk radio host of “The Dana Show” with Radio America and a best-selling author.
Doctors have attributed a Croatian man’s death to the Wuhan coronavirus even though he died after falling off a ladder, according to the Journal of Forensic Pathology.
The 51-year-old man died in what appeared to be a workplace incident, falling off a 10-foot ladder while working on a home this year. The man suffered minor external injuries, as well as a subarachnoid hemorrhage, described as “bleeding within the subarachnoid space, which is the area between the brain and the tissues that cover the brain” — an often fatal condition. However, the autopsy also discovered “visceral congestion,” particularly in his lungs.”
During the autopsy, doctors found that large swaths of the man’s lungs were blocked. The finding then led scientists to conclude that he suffered from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) — a life-threatening condition that can be caused by COVID-19.
According to the journal, the man had been complaining about a respiratory-like illness in the days leading to the fatal incident, experiencing symptoms including a headache, fever, cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
“He had refused the suggestion to see a doctor and had kept working until the moment he died,” the journal wrote.
A test taken postmortem showed him testing positive for the Chinese coronavirus.
“Based on all findings, the death was ruled as natural, caused by COVID-19,” the journal wrote:
Informed by this case, we would like to send a message to healthcare providers working in autopsy suites and to coroners to be vigilant, even with suspected violent deaths, SARS-CoV-2 can be hidden as the natural cause of death. The full autopsy performed on the deceased contributes greatly to the limited data available on the pathological findings in COVID-19 cases.
The case furthers mounting concerns among critics, who fear data is not giving a clear picture due to the way deaths are reported, as well as the purported failure to place an emphasis on the prevalence of comorbidities.
This issue arose again in July after Florida’s Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino revealed that one of their reported coronavirus victims died in a motorcycle accident.
In all the back and forth of Tuesday’s Big Tech hearing, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons’ exchange with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey stood out most starkly, offering a window into the next step of the left’s long-championed Big Tech censorship of scientific dissent from liberal orthodoxy.
“You do, Mr. Dorsey, have policies against deep fakes or manipulated media, against Covid-19 misinformation, against things that violate civic integrity,” the Delaware senator began, “but you don’t have a standalone climate change misinformation policy. Why not?”
“Our policies are living documents,”Dorsey replied. “They will evolve, we will add to them, but we thought it important we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could.” And then:
Well, Mr. Dorsey… I cannot think of a greater harm than climate change, which is transforming literally our planet and causing harm to our entire world. I think we’re experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation about Covid-19 manipulated media also cause harm but I’d urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.
This has been ongoing for years in corporate media. In 2019, Chuck Todd pompously announced his show would no longer “give time to climate deniers.” Two years before that, when The New York Times’ Bret Stephens used his debut column to call out “The Climate of Complete Certainty” that seeks to shut down completely reasonable dissent, the paper faced vicious backlash labeling Stephens a “climate denier.” For more than a decade before this, more of the same — often trickling up, from activists to the reporters who sympathize to the powers that can truly silence voices.
Four years ago, reporters demanded then-President Barack censor fake news, pushing Press Secretary Josh Earnest into the awkward position of having to remind apparent journalists of the First Amendment four times. The targets that day were the Bat Boy-like farces they blamed for Her 2016 loss, but it was already obvious the definition of “fake news” would rapidly expand. Once President Donald Trump assumed office, corporate media and allied politicians bypassed the White House and turned to Silicon Valley, which fell in line quickly enough.
COVID-19 provided the first preview of the new alliance, where even doctors and scientists were censored for carefully — we once said “scientifically” — questioning the alarmists’ narrative of the day. At the same time, Democrats, corporate media, and even corrupt, foreign bodies like the World Health Organization have been permitted to push whatever information supports that day’s goal post.
Completely rational appeals are met with absurdities like “the science is decided,” as if constantly evolving experimentation in search of knowledge can be bottled into some oracle-like decree to support the mob’s latest demand. Rather than decided science, these decrees are mere hypotheses susceptible to support and opposition, but through the alliance of Democrats, corporate media, and Silicon Valley, they become unquestionable edicts ranging from No Business to Eternal Mask-Wearing to No Family For Thanksgiving.
Coons’s comments are a good reminder that what is COVID today is climate tomorrow. Indeed, COVID policy has offered Americans a perfect preview of what will happen if climate alarmists get their way: Science not as method, but as god. And not the strong and mysterious God of the Jewish and Christian faiths, but a shifting one, whose every dictum and desire is whispered to the kings and enforced at their whims.
Do you have a problem with that? You can take it up with The Science. And The Science is decided.
Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on Twitter.
Evidence continues to mount that the new infections throughout much of the country are extremely mild, with the exception of some serious cases coming over the border from Mexico.Those two facts continue to be obscured from our policy debate over containing the virus in the southern states. The governors of California, Arizona, and Texas refuse to recognize that the mild nature of these cases is good news going forward, and they continue to ignore the threat of serious cases from the border.
Distinguishing between the two phenomena has become difficult, because the cause of both of them appears to have begun in late May and continued into June, especially in border states, which weren’t hard hit to begin with and therefore had little herd immunity to combat a new round of spread. But the timing of these serious cases at the border combined with milder cases in the interior seems to make it clear that we are seeing two distinct waves: the second and mild American wave and the importation of Mexico’s first, more serious wave.
In my previous article, I focused on the serious cases coming from the border. That issue appears to be confined to certain hospitals in the border states. What about all other cases throughout the country? They are turning out to be less potent than even the flu.
Increasing evidence that the new wave is mild for most of the country
As I pointed out regarding Florida, cases have been spiking for weeks, yet the deaths and numbers of serious cases are not rising. That dichotomy is perfectly illustrated in this graphic:
Also, much of the increase is superficial and illusory because of mass testing, multiple tests to return to work, and people coming back to the hospitals for normal care that was previously suspended. Such patients are automatically tested for the virus, regardless of their reason for admission. It appears that the virus has now spread to younger people but is also milder than it was when it first hit in earnest in March and April.
This reality is borne out by a fascinating data point about positive cases and Hispanic people. As of the week of April 25, according to the CDC, just 12.2% of the cases were among those identified as Hispanic. As of yesterday, 34.4% of all cases were among Hispanics. That is simply astounding. If you peel into some state data, you will find that cases among Hispanics compose 46% in Florida (twice their share of the population), 46% of cases in North Carolina (nearly five times their share of the population), 35% in Tennessee (nearly seven times their share of the population), and 24% of cases in Arkansas (nearly three times their share of the population).
Those numbers are astounding. But what is even more shocking is that while Hispanics compose 34.4% of confirmed positive cases, they account for just 17.7% of the fatalities, more line with their share of the national population. For example, in North Carolina, where they compose 46% of all cases, they account for just 9% of the deaths. What gives?
The only logical answer is that this is merely an illusion of mass testing of meatpacking plants and farm labor camps, where they began testing every worker, most of whom are Hispanic, especially in the southern states. Thus, as we saw with the Arkansas Tyson Foods plants, almost all of them are asymptomatic. Lots of cases; few deaths.
Why does there appear to be resurgence even beyond the accounting gimmicks? That could either be the next evolution of the virus itself or due to the mass protests and rioting. There is increasing evidence of the latter. Either way, it makes sense that it would hit in states like California, Texas, and Florida, large states that were previously barely touched by the first round and not in the northeast, which has likely achieved some degree of de facto herd immunity.
While there is still very little data quantifying who has a severe case or a mild case and who was hospitalized for coronavirus vs. hospitalized with coronavirus discovered through testing, here are two powerful anecdotes that drive home both points.
Car crashes are now COVID-19 cases
The New York Times reported on Sunday: “One-third of all patients admitted to [Miami’s] main public hospital over the past two weeks after going to the emergency room for car-crash injuries and other urgent problems have tested positive for the coronavirus.”
That is huge news that most people are not properly dissecting. Car crashes plummeted by as much as 75% in some states during the shutdown because the roads were empty. Now we are back up to normal levels of car crashes. For that matter, hospitals are now back up to normal levels of cancer, heart, stroke, and any number of procedures and treatments that were either suspended or declined because people were too scared to come in. Now that we have universal testing in the hospitals, we are merely discovering what already existed, but we never detected because hospitals were empty and we did not have universal testing capability.
These are people who would never have known they had COVID-19, much less rushed to the emergency room if not for the coincidence of their car accident or other ailment driving them into the hospital. Once they test positive, they are regarded as coronavirus patients, even if they are asymptomatic, which is the case with the majority of younger people who contract the virus.
What percentage of people counted as COVID-19 patients came because of COVID-19, vs. what percentage happened to have it asymptomatically? We don’t know, but the number has to be pretty substantial.
Cold-like symptoms as the new panic and threshold to trigger shutdown
What about those people coming to the hospital because of COVID-19? Most Americans probably conjure up images of people coming in with their lungs filled with fluid and suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome, as we saw in New York in late March. That was never the case in most parts of the country, but it most certainly is not what’s happening now.
I long suspected, given the massive gap between deaths/ICU admissions vs. hospitalizations and cases, that these cases were much milder. Which leads me to the second anecdote. An emergency care executive from Texas explained to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson that most cases he sees now in Texas are milder than a typical full-blown cold.
The managing partner and general counsel of the company that owns Complete Care, which operates 13 emergency care clinics in Texas, emailed Berenson with a statement illuminating the situation on the ground.
He noted that out of 2,231 tests the clinics have administered in June, although the positivity rate is at 20%, the “vast majority of the cases are mild to very mild symptoms.” He observed that most patients were in their 30s, most would not even have met the criteria for testing during the peak when kits were scarce, and that very few of them really need hospitalization. “Vast majority of the patients are better within 2-3 days of the visit and most would be described as having a cold (a mild one at that) or the symptoms related to allergies,”he said.
He further noted that half of them come in because they sneeze or cough and their employer makes them get tested.
Thus, ironically, the spike in hospitalizations now is because of the pervious lockdown, which they are now pushing again. As Dr. Robert Hancock of Texas College of Emergency Physicians said, “We saw just a rash of people that came in for relatively treatable conditions that had just waited to the point that it deteriorated. That’s kind of added to the ICU stress on top of just having the COVID-19 patients.”
Thus, what we are seeing in Texas and elsewhere is actually a fulfillment of what we all hoped for – a flattened curve of mild cases and hospitals that are able to handle severe cases, but ultimately few deaths. “Overall, based upon what we are seeing at our facilities, the above information is really more of a positive story,” wrote the emergency clinic executive to Berenson. “You have more people who are testing positive with minimal symptoms. This means that the fatality rate is less than commonly reported.”
This is perhaps why hospital officials in Texas, whose profession has typically led the charge in panic peddling since March, are actually warning the public that they are being misled with illusory data.
Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom complained that the data is “being misinterpreted” “and, quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”
“We do have the capacity to care for many more patients and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage,” Boom said in a press conference with the CEOs of Houston’s largest hospitals as he pointed out the missing context the media and politicians are failing to provide. He pointed out that this time last year, ICU capacity was at 95%. If anything, what was occurring in April was abnormal because everyone was scared away from hospitals. And that was not a good thing.
As the media continues to be addicted to spinning bad news news, it’s incumbent upon everyone else to provide the missing context.
Author: Daniel Horowitz
Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.
And here we thought Democrats were against internment camps? Guess not.
Ventura County officials in California announced plans to remove infected residents with the Wuhan virus from their homes and place them in quarantine centers.
Robert Levin:Some of the people we find are going to have a hard time being isolated. If they live in a home where there is only one bathroom and there are three or four other people living there and those people don’t have covid infections we’re not going to be able to keep that person in that home. Every person who we’re isolating needs to have their own bathroom. So we’ll be moving people like this in to other kinds of housing that we have available.
As Victoria Taft pointed out Ventura County has 846,000 people and only 595 total cases since March.
This is insane.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO if your six year old son or daughter tested positive for COVID19 and was taken from your home to a quarantine center by Ventura Health Authorities? This SHOCKING VIDEO demands that you plan ahead. #BeBrave#HistoryRepeatingpic.twitter.com/e5RC7dCO7o
Jim Hoft is the founder of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Just because the media say something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true. In the case of Trump’s claim that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab — or as I call it, the All Cultures Are the Same! Theory — the media are probably right.
Granted, whatever the truth is, it will somehow become an argument for more immigration and more war. Still, the lab theory sounds a lot like what we were told before going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to liberate the poor Afghans and Iraqis from their vile leaders! They’re just like us! Then it turned out the Iraqis were shooting at our guys, as well as one another, and the Afghans were pederasts. Twenty years later, we’re still there and not much has changed. They weren’t just like us.
The Chinese aren’t just like us. Cultural differences are a more likely explanation for the Wuhan flu pandemic than a simple lab accident.
Here are some of the clues:
1) Chinese people eat bats, dogs, civet cats and live octopuses, as well as a variety of endangered species, which are sold at wet markets, jam-packed with wildlife being slaughtered on site in breathtakingly unsanitary conditions. Among the “high-risk” behaviors at wet markets cited by the National Institutes of Health, shoppers “[blow] the cloacae of chickens” to “examine their healthiness.” (Look it up.)
2) At least a half-dozen other animal-to-human viruses have come from the wet markets.
3) Scientists have been warning us for decades: THE NEXT VIRAL PANDEMIC WILL COME FROM THE CHINESE WET MARKETS!That doesn’t prove that this particular virus came from the wet markets, but it doesn’t sound like a case for Jessica Fletcher.
4) A lot has been made of the fact that there’s a biosafety level-4 super laboratory in Wuhan that just happens to study bats, the original incubator of this coronavirus. More ominously, last year, the lab was cited by the U.S. for safety violations.
On the other hand …
a) Any lab studying coronaviruses is going to be studying bats, the source of a vast number of viruses, including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARS), the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus (MERS), the Marburg, Nipah and Hendra viruses and the Ebola virus.
b) Any lab studying deadly viruses is going to have safety violations. (Just a few years ago, the U.S. military accidentally shipped live anthrax samples to nine labs in the U.S. and a military base in South Korea.)
c) For 20 years, coronaviruses have emerged from Chinese wet markets. Maybe this coronavirus came from a lab accident! (There’s a bio lab nearby.)
For 20 years, nooses showing up on college campuses have been hoaxes intended to raise “awareness” of racism. Maybe this time it’s an actual racist! (There’s a fraternity nearby.)
For 20 years, Muslims have staged spectacular terrorist attacks on the West. Maybe 9/11 was the Israelis! (What about the dancing Israelis?)
5) The lab theory places great stock in the fact that bats were not for sale at the wet market in Wuhan. But the coronavirus didn’t jump from bats directly to humans. Like SARS, MERS and the bird flu (H5N1), it migrated from bats to some other exotic animal, and then to humans. Based on a genetic analysis, the intermediate animal in the Wuhan virus is believed to be the pangolin.
Guess what was for sale at the Wuhan wet market? Pangolins! (“Traditional Chinese medicine” teaches that pangolin scales can cure a score of ailments, from impotence to arthritis.)
6) Western scientists who have examined the Wuhan coronavirus say it’s “improbable” that the virus “emerged through laboratory manipulation” rather than natural selection. Kristian Andersen, director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Research Institute, for example, notes that that “the genetic data irrefutably show that [the Wuhan virus] is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.”
7) Twenty-seven of the original 41 Chinese people who came down with COVID-19 had been to the Wuhan wet market. Several others were family members of those infected at the wet market.
8) New diseases are constantly being attributed to mad scientists whipping something up in their laboratories — AIDS, Lyme disease and Ebola, to name a few. Louis Farrakhan and Spike Lee were big proponents of the idea that AIDS was made in a government lab just outside Virginia.
No matter how much you hate the media, conservatives, you don’t want to sound like those guys.
Finally, we don’t need a crackpot. It Escaped From a Lab! theory to blame the Chinese for this pandemic. They allowed these disease-ridden wet markets to continue, year after year, pandemic after pandemic, putting the entire planet at risk.
We also don’t need another war to “liberate” the Chinese from their Communist masters. (I note that the primary advocates of the lab theory are Permanent War devotees Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Tom Cotton.)
We just need to shut down the wet markets, shut down the border and bring our manufacturing home.
New reopening guidelines in Kansas City that require churches to keeps “lists” of attendees have worried advocates of religious freedoms in the area, according to a report from Metro Voice.
Mayor Quinton Lucas enacted the policy where houses of worship receive the same treatment as “non-essential” businesses when it comes to keeping information of those who attend a service or anyone who enters the building.
“Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined Nazi-like measures designed to surveil, track and spy upon what was once a free American people,” declared Liberty Council, founder and Chairman Matt Staver. “That is exactly what Kansas City’s misguided government officials are now demanding.”
The new policy declares“In-person religious gatherings (including weddings and funerals) may resume, subject to the 10/10/10 rule (if held inside) or limited to 50 people outside, provided social distancing precautions are followed and event organizers maintain records of all attendees.”
The 10/10/10 rule refers to the 10 people or 10 percent of the allowable number of people detailed in the fire code. However, it only applies to individuals who stay in the building for more than 10 minutes. In reality, the record keeping is what worries people. The new rule mandates that all churches to “record the names, contact information, and approximate entry/exit time of all customers who are on premises for more than 10 minutes.” Churches, synagogues, and mosques along with businesses are covered under these regulations. Medical facilities and grocery stores are the only establishments that are exempt.
“This is outrageous on the part of the KC municipal government officials. They are treating churches the same as businesses for COVID contact tracing purposes,” Bott said to the Metro Voice. “This is a massive overreach violating the sanctity of churches and the privacy of their attendees. This must not go unchallenged.”
In a recent letter to supporters, Liberty Council’s Staver declared that Kansas City’s actions constitute “attacks” on basic civil liberties.
“These attacks on our churches cannot stand. The backbone of our country relies on our constitutionally guaranteed ability to worship and serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Staver declared.
According to Liberty Council, churches are also compelled to hand over their “membership lists,” something the city government denies. Morgan Said, director of communications for Mayor Lucas, said that houses of worship must keep a list. That said, the possession and control of the information is still in their hands unless a health emergency comes about.
“We are not asking that churches provide a list immediately to the city,” Said highlighted. “Churches keep the list and only if a member tests positive, and that member attended a church function, would the church provide a list to the city.”
According to Said, the church or other religious institution only have to keep records for just 30 days, “Unless, God forbid, someone tests positive, the church can destroy the list.”
“Churches must abide by the 10/10/10 rule just like businesses and other organizations,”Said noted when talking about the capacity guidelines laid out by the regulation. “Church capacity is determined by the structure’s fire code limits.”
Metro Voice makes the claim that the guideline’s enforcement “will also be a tricky dilemma for authorities.”
The guidelines outlined what violations look like, “Violations of any provision of this Order constitutes an imminent threat, creates an immediate menace to public health, and shall be considered a violation of Section 50-155 of the City’s Code of Ordinances.”
The city asserts that it can fine churches and subject them to other penalties such as jail time for violations.
Liberty Council has multiple lawsuits on deck against governors who have “illegally and unconstitutionally fomented the arrests of pastors and launched attacks on the liberties of congregants.”
“I am running out of adjectives to describe how completely insane the tyrannical abuses launched by state governors and local officials against pastors and churches are becoming,” Staver with Liberty Council stated. “It is as if these leaders never bothered to so much as glance at the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend. They seem to be governing from some make-believe, dystopian viewpoint.”
We wish all the best for Liberty Council.
Public health crises are serious, but destroying civil liberties is not only immoral but also sub-optimal when dealing with a matter that really needs more of a targeted approach. America is a dynamic polity that can rely on civic institutions, market actors, and minimal government to handle a pandemic like the Wuhan virus.
I try my best not to support, and pass on conspiracy hoaxes. Much of what I’ve read and heard about this virus is found in this video. As you watch please do so with a jaundiced eye.
It turned out they were just defending China. The information was completely inaccurate. Today tens of thousands of people are dead around the globe thanks to China’s false reporting on the disease.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reportedly promotes what China wants him to promote.
On February 15, 2020, the director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, addressed the Munich Security Conference. At that time, there were only about 60K cases of Covid-19 in China and about 500 in the rest of the world. Tedros was more concerned with misinformation than with containment. In his address, he said:
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.” And if we don’t tackle this, he went on, “we are headed down a dark path that leads nowhere but division and disharmony.”
Now the Director General is reporting whatever China wishes. As noted above by Apelbaum, China has invested millions in Ethiopia. This may be in part why Tedros has made the following statements about the WHO:
Given the misinformation about the novel coronavirus epidemic, WHO has communicated with some companies including Google to ensure that the public will get the authoritative information from the WHO.”
“Travel restrictions [to and from China] can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”
“The lockdown of people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.”
“The WHO highly appreciates the tremendous efforts China has made to contain the epidemic.”
Tedros is who the world is relying on to provide accurate information on the coronavirus.
Today President Trump told reporters the White House is “looking into” defunding the Chinese centric WHO. The liberal reporters hated to hear that. They would rather defend communist China than support this US president.
The Republicans introduced a bill to defund the WHO, unless Tedros resigns.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler
✔@GReschenthaler
Today, I introduced legislation calling on Congress to withhold federal funds from the @WHO until @DrTedros resigns.
America is the WHO’s largest contributor. It’s not right that Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars are used to propagate the CCP’s lies.
A molecular biologist is blowing the whistle regarding reports that the Chinese coronavirus was not designed as a weapon of bioterrorism.
Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believes that it is entirely possible that the coronavirus could be a bioweapon and those claims should not be dismissed before serious inquiry can be conducted.
“A denial is not a refutation,” Ebright said in reference to Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli, who works at the research lab in Wuhan that has been widely speculated to be behind the coronavirus outbreak.
The research facility in Wuhan opened up in 2017 despite objections that highly infectious diseases could spread from the center. Just two years after it was established, the Chinese coronavirus pandemic would go on to rock the world:
A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.
“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland…
Many staff from the Wuhan lab have been training at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, which some scientists find reassuring. And the facility has already carried out a test-run using a low-risk virus.
But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says.
Yuan says that he has worked to address this issue with staff. “We tell them the most important thing is that they report what they have or haven’t done,” he says. And the lab’s international collaborations will increase openness. “Transparency is the basis of the lab,” he adds.
Ebright praised Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for his willingness to push back against Chinese propaganda with regards to the origins of the coronavirus.
“After concealing the virus for many weeks in December and then minimizing its severity for most of January, they then peddle an origin story about the food market in Wuhan.” Cotton said during an interview with The Daily Caller.
“Given their dishonesty and the proximity of these labs, which we know were working with coronaviruses, it is only reasonable and responsible for us to ask the question and demand the answers,” he added.
Sen. Tom Cotton fans the embers of a coronavirus conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts https://wapo.st/39Ja1d1
Richard H. Ebright@R_H_Ebright
That was scenario discussed in your Fox interview
I am pleased to hear you now distinguish between possibility virus was engineered bioweapon (which can be dismissed) and possibility virus entered human population through lab accident (which cannot–and should not–be dismissed)
Although Ebright does not necessarily contend that the coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon, he advocates that the possibility should be thoroughly investigated.
When compared to other societal ailments, the coronavirus is receiving much more attention. The common flu does more damage than the coronavirus but the world seems to be reluctant to focus on anything else.
According to overnight updates, the number of coronavirus cases in the US now stands at 9,464 cases. The number of related deaths stands at 155:
According to the CDC, the number of flu cases confirmed in the US since September currently stand at 222,552 cases with 22,000 deaths:
The number of coronavirus cases confirmed in the US as a percent of the number of flu cases confirmed in the US now stand at 4.2% (9,464/222,522). The percent of deaths from the coronavirus to deaths from the flu is 0.7% (155/22,000).
In the past few days the number of deaths in the US from the coronavirus passed the number flu deaths in Hong Kong (7-8 million people) which were 113.
The Centre for Health Protection announced today that the winter flu season has ended. During this period, 113 adults died of influenza and no deaths from children were recorded. The Centre reminds the public that although the winter flu peak period has ended, citizens should continue to maintain personal and environmental hygiene to prevent respiratory diseases.
There have been 4 deaths from the coronavirus to date in 2020 in Hong Kong.
The US is now willing to spend $1 trillion on the coronavirus. It would be nice to see this go to other ailments where it might be better used.
After the George Zimmerman Hoax failed, after it was discovered that a white man had not hunted down and murdered a black teen (Zimmerman is Hispanic and a jury ruled he killed in self-defense), the fake news media moved on to the Hands-Up-Don’t-Shoot Hoax, which was led primarily by far-left CNN and the far-left Washington Post.
The lies and hate spread by the corporate media resulted in multiple nights of rioting in the working class, predominantly black city of Ferguson, Missouri. Then, like a plague of locusts, and apparently under the impression the city doesn’t already have enough problems, CNN moved on to Baltimore.
The reason the media’s coronavirus lies remind me of the CNN Race Riots of 2014 is because This Matters.
What I mean by that is that George Zimmerman, Ferguson, and Baltimore mattered. This was our malevolent media behaving exactly like a Bond villain: pushing a political agenda and looking to juice ratings at the expense of real people. Zimmerman, an innocent man, had his life and reputation ruined. The homes and businesses destroyed by those race riots are homes and businesses owned by everyday Americans, not the wealthy and certainly not CNN chief Jeff Zucker or anti-Trump activist Jake Tapper, whose fancy homes are miles away from the devastation they caused.
You see, as awful as the media have been over the last three years, the Russia Hoax and the Impeachment Hoax were D.C. food fights. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t collateral damage or that innocent people weren’t hurt — like President Trump and his family — but politics is politics. You know the risks going in…
Coronavirus is not a D.C. food fight. Like the CNN Race Riots of 2014, it affects everyday people: we have shut down our economy. The stock market is going insane. People are scared, worried, stressed, and have reason to be. Even if you remove the fear of the virus, no one can escape the fear of the panic, and the media’s blatant lies are only adding to this uncertainty and fear — and are doing so by design.
And for what? To what end..? Well, for the exact same reasons the media ginned up those race riots: a depraved indifference to human life driven by nothing more than a political agenda and the naked greed that comes with ratings and clicks.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s the evidence…
All the media’s coronavirus lies….
Keep in mind, these are not mistakes. Mistakes are random. Mistakes fall both ways. Our fake news media’s “mistakes” fall only one way — in the direction of ginning up panic in our streets and hatred of Trump and his supporters, who have already paid a very heavy price.
As you read this list, no matter what you do, do not call the media the enemy of the people … because that would be wrong.
Trump Told Governors to Get Their Own Goddamned Ventilators!
Now that the media can no longer attack Trump over the coronavirus testing (as you’ll see below), we’ve moved to ventilators. “Ventilators” is the new Katrina, the new metric with which to beat Trump senseless… So naturally, the media are going to lie shamelessly, which is exactly what they are doing, even as I write these words:
At least eight New York Times authors shared a deceptively edited quote Monday from President Donald Trump’s recent call with state governors, creating the false impression that the president is denying federal support for ventilators that are needed in hospitals treating coronavirus patients.
In his message, the president recommended that states procure respirators and ventilators because it would be faster — but added that the federal government “will be backing you.”
The Times journalists omitted the bulk of the president’s statement as they shared the story on social media. The misleading, partial quote was also boosted by a CNN correspondent and became the lead headline at the left-wing Huffington Post.
Despite growing online backlash to this misinformation, the journalists have yet to delete or retract their comments.
Here’s the president’s full quote:
Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.
He’s telling the governors, Do what you can while we do what we can do. This is excellent advice the liars at the far-left New York Times are deliberately twisting to cause panic, to tell the public the president doesn’t care.
Trump Seeks Monopoly on Coronavirus Vaccine
What better way to increase the world’s hatred of America, everyone’s hatred of Trump, and cause even more illegal aliens to crash into our country (seeking a vaccine) than to spread the fake news the American president is looking to monopolize any potential coronavirus vaccine?
But that is exactly what Reuters, The Guardian, Business Insider, and staffers at the New York Times and MSNBC did.
This lie doesn’t even make sense.
What good would it do America to corner the market on a vaccine? It costs us nothing to share the information so other countries can create their own vaccine. What good does it do the U.S. to sit around and watch everyone else die?
Nationwide Curfew!
Good ol’ Jim Sciutto, one of the most infamous liars in the country, a former Obama official hired by the serial liars at CNN to serial lie.
“New: There are active discussions within the Trump administration to encourage a possible ‘curfew’ across the nation in which non-essential businesses would have to close by a certain time each night,” Sciutto wrote on social media, citing “CNN reporting.”
It’s not true. And unless you’re looking to sow panic, it also makes no sense. What good would a curfew do, most especially a nationwide curfew? Does the virus only strike at night? There are reports Patient Zero ate a bat.
Maybe it was a vampire bat!
Trump Lied About the Google Website
“Google says it’s not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site,” CNN anti-Trump activist Jake Tapper tweeted to his 2.3 million Twitter followers last week.
He linked to a CNN story with the headline, “Google says it’s not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site anytime soon.” This was a story that smeared Trump as a liar for announcing Google will be building a national-scale coronavirus website.
The original and very fake CNN story can be found here.
Here’s the opener:
Google will not be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon, contrary to claims made by President Donald Trump during a Friday news conference.
Instead, a health-focused subsidiary owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, intends to launch a small-scale website next week to begin to triage California-based patients. The website will aim to serve a broader population only “over time” — not “very quickly,” as Trump said.
“What we’re building is a triage tool that will live on ProjectBaseline.com, and we plan to pilot it in California next week,” said Carolyn Wang, a spokesperson for the Alphabet subsidiary, Verily.
Here’s the Google Search screencap which captured CNN’s lie:
But now, if you click on that Google link, the CNN story says the exact opposite of what the original story said. Here’s the new headline and opener:
Google will partner with US government to develop a nationwide coronavirus website, company says
Google now says it is working with the government on the creation of a national website containing information about coronavirus symptoms and testing information.
“Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a national website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information,” the company said in a series of tweets Saturday evening.
The company did not give a time frame of when such a website would be up and running.
On Friday after the President said Google was helping to develop a website and it would be available soon, the company declined to say it would be publishing a national-scale website for coronavirus testing anytime soon.
Naturally, there is no editor’s note informing readers the original story was a lie or has been retracted or updated, which is highly unethical.
CNN spread a bald-faced lie to undermine the president, got caught, and did everything in its malevolent power to cover that lie up.
Trump Shut Down the CDC’s Pandemic Department!
Do I even need to point out how virulent and widespread this talking point has been?
No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.
It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.
…
It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.
The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected[.]
…
It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.
In other words, it wasn’t dissolved, it was streamlined.
Trump Declared the Coronavirus a Hoax!
This desperate lie, launched by the far-left Politico, was quickly debunked by fact-checkers, including the far-left Washington Post. That’s how big of a lie it is — the Washington Post conceded it was a lie.
Calling the Wuhan Virus the ‘Wuhan Virus’ Is Racist
As has already been exhaustively pointed out, the naming of a virus or disease after a location — including a lily-white location like Lyme, Connecticut — is just how it’s done and has been done forever.
But now it’s racist, even though the very same media declaring it racist is the very same media that first called it the “Chinese Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus,” or some variation thereof.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive list that’s been floating around. There are probably more examples, but this more than makes the point:
“Japan and Thailand Confirm New Cases of Chinese Coronavirus,” The New York Times, 1/15/20
“The CDC and Homeland Security begin screening for Chinese Coronavirus at three major US airports as outbreak spreads in Asia,” CNBC, 1/17/20
“Vaccine for new Chinese coronavirus in the works,” CNN, 1/20/20
“First U.S. case of potentially deadly Chinese coronavirus confirmed in Washington state,” Washington Post, 1/21/20
“Chinese coronavirus outbreak has reached U.S. shores, CDC says,” Los Angeles Times, 1/21/20
“The First Case Of The Chinese Coronavirus Has Hit The US, CDC Reports,” Buzzfeed, 1/21/20
“First case of Chinese coronavirus confirmed in Washington state,” NBC’s Today Show, 1/24/20
“Chinese coronavirus infections, death toll soar as fifth case is confirmed in U.S.,” Washington Post, 1/26/20
“Japan confirms case of new Chinese virus, spread is ‘concerning,’” Reuters, 1/15/20
“How the Chinese virus outbreak impacts Lunar New Year travel,” National Geographic, 1/24/20
“China coronavirus ‘spreads before symptoms show,’” BBC, 1/26/20
“Over a thousand ‘likely’ infected by Wuhan virus in China: Study,” Al Jazeera, 1/18/20
To sum this up, the fake news media floods these words and terms into the American lexicon, and then sanctimoniously turns around and attacks those who repeat them as racist.
Trump Blocked Testing Because Lower Numbers are Good for His Reelection
This lie arrives courtesy of the welfare queens at NPR and a Newsweek staffer’s hysterical amplification that has been retweeted almost a quarter-million times.
And once again, I ask, how does this makes any sense?
In the face of the facts, Trump is doing back-flips to start testing. What’s more, how does not testing benefit his re-election chances? It’s not as if people who test positive won’t eventually become symptomatic.
This is not just a lie (no other media outlet has confirmed it, which means even CNN couldn’t find a lying source that has lied to them so many times before to lie about this one), it’s by far the stupidest lie on this list.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday that the blame for the slow pace of testing for coronavirus in the U.S. does not lie with either President Trump or the CDC.
Fauci told Hugh Hewitt on “The Hugh Hewitt” show that a “technical glitch” resulted in the delay in production of usable tests in the U.S., something Fauci prescribed to random error.
…
“This has nothing to do with anybody’s fault, certainly not the president’s fault.”
11. Trump Silenced Dr. Fauci
This lie spread like wildfire before Fauci himself was given a chance to tell the truth.
We are plagued with a dishonest, unreliable, unserious, dangerous media, driven only by political calculation and naked greed.
The media are so evil and indecent, even a pandemic can’t cure them.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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