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April 2020

More Shoddy Hydroxychloroquine Journalism By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-shoddy-hydroxychloroquine-journalism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

Last week, I wrote about the stupidity of rooting against hydroxychloroquine simply because Donald Trump has mentioned that it holds some therapeutic promise in the fight against coronavirus. This NBC News piece by Heidi Przybyla is the kind of shoddy journalism to which I was referring:

A New York woman with coronavirus symptoms died last week after being prescribed a drug cocktail with known cardiac side effects, and family members say she was not tested for COVID-19 or for heart problems before receiving the medication.

The piece goes on to mention — twice — that Trump touted the drug, and notes that Media Matters says that Fox News touts the drug. But it offers no evidence that the woman’s death had anything to do with hydroxychloroquine.

Despite strongly suggesting that Trump had a hand in death of a defenseless 65-year-old woman, the reporter failed to speak to the physician who prescribed the drugs, or even to obtain additional confirmation about the cause of death.

Stanford study suggests coronavirus is more widespread than realized If SARS-Cov-2 is already endemic in the population, there is nothing we can do to stop it — but no great reason to try to stop it, either Ross Clark

https://spectator.us/stanford-study-suggests-coronavirus-more-widespread-realized/

Another day, and yet more evidence has appeared that could indicate the number of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, might be vastly higher than official figures suggest. This time a Californian study suggests the figure in one county could be more than 50 times the number who knew they had had the virus.

A team from Stanford University and other colleges recruited volunteers in Santa Clara County via Facebook adverts and produced a sample of 3,000 representatives of the county as a whole. They were then invited for blood tests to detect the presence of antibodies to the virus. The result was positive in 1.5 percent of cases. Adjusting for age, gender and ethnicity the results suggest that 2.8 percent of people in the county had already had the virus. That might not seem many, but at the time of the study — on April 4 and 5 — only 1,094 people in the county were recorded as having the virus. The study suggests the real figure is between 48,000 and 81,000.

Like many studies which have been pre-published in order to aid understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper produced by the Stanford-led team has not yet been peer-reviewed. Moreover, it took place in a part of the United States where very few people have so far tested positive with the virus. It would be interesting to see the experiment repeated in New York City, where recorded infections are far higher.

Coronavirus Update: Encouraging Results for Treatment By Daniel Tenreiro

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-update-encouraging-results-for-treatment/

Yesterday, STAT News reported positive results for the antiviral medicine remdesivir. A clinical trial at the University of Chicago treated 125 patients with the drug, developed by pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences.  Of the 113 patients in severe condition, most were discharged, and only two died.

While the complete results of the trial have yet to be released, and the drug will still have to go through further studies, these results are an encouraging sign as policymakers plan to reopen the economy. Stocks rallied on the news.

The medical data from the U.S. has been mixed. While the number of new cases increased yesterday, the number of new deaths fell.

There is variation across states. In New York, daily deaths have been falling of late, whereas deaths in the rest of the country have increased. This heterogeneity accentuates the difficulty of coordinating a federal pandemic policy. The White House has published guidelines for states to reopen, including a sustained reduction in cases and robust testing and contact tracing. The reopening of the economy will be staggered as states assess their capacity to prevent further waves of infection.

While almost all the hardest-hit states have seen case growth fall to around 5 percent a day, the number is considerably higher in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Louisiana and Florida, which both appeared slated for massive outbreaks, seem to have avoided the worst.

However, testing has plateaued, which makes it difficult to gauge the actual number of cases. Until we have widespread testing, including serology tests for immunity, we won’t know how vulnerable the population is to further waves of infection.

Can We Talk About American Media’s Connections to Chinese Interests? Larry O’Connor Larry O’Connor

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2020/04/14/can-we-talk-about-american-medias-connections-to-chinese-interests-n2566887?utm_campaign=inarticle

Several weeks ago, we detailed how American mainstream media outlets were intent on parroting communist propaganda talking points coming from disinformation ministers in Beijing.

At first glance, it would be easy to write this disturbing surrender of journalistic integrity to advanced stages of Trump Derangement System. It would be reasonable to suspect that reporters, producers, anchors and editors held such an intense zeal to oppose, resist and damage President Trump that they’d even stoop so low as to hand their bylines over to propagandists supporting the totalitarian murderers at the top of the Red China food chain.

However, something even more disconcerting may be at work here.

Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty has assembled a disturbing and thorough timeline of the communist Chinese government’s complicity in the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The story of the coronavirus pandemic is still being written. But at this early date, we can see all kinds of moments where different decisions could have lessened the severity of the outbreak we are currently enduring. You have probably heard variations of: “Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be transferred from human to human until it was too late.” What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.

It’s fantastic reporting and well worth your time when you’re finished reading this.

This is fantastic work by Jim, but why is he the one who put this together? Jim’s one of the best, don’t get me wrong, but he, like so many of us, works for a scrappy media outlet with limited resources. I mean, there are huge media companies in this country covering this story who have resources and reporters all around the world at their fingertips to assemble this data.

Why didn’t NBC News do this reporting? Or ABC News? Or CNN?

Walter Russell Mead Amid the Pandemic, Anti-Semitism Flares Up ‘This virus is surely an outcome of the Jews’ concealed hatred,’ writes a Jordanian journalist.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-the-pandemic-anti-semitism-flares-up-11586991224

The world’s newest disease has unleashed another wave of the world’s oldest hate. Difficult as it might be for the uninstructed mind to make a connection between a global pandemic originating in China and the Elders of Zion, the world’s anti-Semites have risen to the challenge.

Coşkun Başbuğ, a retired colonel who appears frequently on Turkish state television, shared his views about the coronavirus in an appearance on the A Haber television network. Apparently, the Jews who engineered this virus were following up on their earlier work with avian flu. The goal was the usual: global domination. Also in Turkey, Fatih Erbakan, head of a small Islamist party in Turkey and son of a former prime minister, declaimed that “this virus serves Zionism’s goals to decrease the number of people in the world and prevent it from increasing. Important investigations confirm this fact.”

It is not always clear how the plot is supposed to unfold. Some think reducing the world population ranks high on the “Jewish” agenda; others focus on the opportunities for insider trading that a shock like the coronavirus develops. A Jewish member of the Brazilian delegation that accompanied President Jair Bolsonaro to visit President Trump later tested positive for Covid-19. For some conspiracy theorists, this was enough to demonstrate a Jewish plot against Messrs. Bolsonaro and Trump.

Rasem Abidat, a columnist for the East Jerusalem-based Al-Quds newspaper, has a slightly contrasting view. Mr. Abidat, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, sees the virus as a joint U.S.-Israel strategy to attack China and Iran. “Faced with these dangers—an American loss of global military and economic hegemony and a threat to Israel’s existence,” he gravely opined, “Israel and the U.S. had no choice . . . but to resort to biological weapons, for the economic solutions and military options were unable to halt China’s advance and its economic takeover of the world.”

Why Is Turkey Embracing Hamas? by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15706/turkey-hamas

If the reports about Erdogan’s readiness to invite Hamas leaders to live in Turkey are true, that would also turn Erdogan into the spiritual father of a terrorist group that seeks to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state.

It now remains to be seen whether the international community, including some Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, demand that Turkey distances itself from Hamas.

A Hamas move to Turkey would mean the terrorist group would continue masterminding and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel — but this time, under the protective eyes of the Erdogan administration.

The leaders of Hamas living outside the Gaza Strip are desperately searching for a country that will agree to have them. According to a recent report, one country seems prepared to play host to the Hamas leaders: Turkey.

Two senior Hamas officials, Ismail Haniyeh and Saleh Arouri, have already decided to settle in Turkey, apparently after getting the green light to do so from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Three other Hamas officials, Zaher Jabareen, Musa Abu Marzouk and Nizar Awadallah, have also relocated to Turkey, from Qatar and Lebanon respectively.

Haniyeh’s wife and children, who are based in the Gaza Strip, are expected to join him in Turkey in the near future.

Haniyeh, who left the Gaza Strip in December 2019, has reportedly been banned by the Egyptians from returning to the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, home to some two million Palestinians. Reports in the Arab media have suggested that Haniyeh fell from Egypt’s good graces when he broke a promise not to visit Iran after Egypt allowed him to leave the Gaza Strip through the Egyptian-Gazan Rafah border crossing.

We Need A Manhattan Project To Create a Coronavirus Vaccine Chris Buskirk

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/16/we-need-a-manhattan-project-to-create-a-coronavirus-vaccine/

It’s a sign of institutional failure and a lack of cultural vitality that we resort to the most draconian, most primitive response to a virus. And instead of science, we get scientism—the ritualistic display of competence rather than truth. We can and must do better.

There are only two ways human action can get the SARS-CoV-2 virus permanently behind us and return to normal life: we either develop a knock-out therapy that kills the virus dead in people who have contracted it, like powerful antibiotics do with bacterial infections, or we need to develop herd immunity. Without one of those, we are left hoping that the virus simply burns itself out and disappears. That would be foolish. But a knockout drug—a cure—is highly unlikely. There is no such drug for the seasonal flu or for the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold. So while effective therapies should be a part of the strategy to combat the ill effects of this virus, and sensible precautions like masks can prevent its spread, the only way to permanently defeat it is through herd immunity.

Doctors and public health officials all know this. So do politicians. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) said during a press conference describing his plan for reopening California: “Normal it will not be. At least until we have herd immunity and a vaccine.”

Most people think, having “flattened the curve” and avoided the dire predictions of millions dead made just weeks ago, that we’ve defeated the virus. We haven’t. What we did was slow the infection rate and that’s good; but the virus is still circulating and countries with much better testing and tracing systems like South Korea and Singapore have experienced further outbreaks after reopening which, in turn, have led to more lockdowns. We want to avoid both of those things. Escaping that unhappy fate means getting to herd immunity quickly.

The Tyranny of ‘Scientism’ and the Subversion of Science Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/16/the-tyranny-of-scientism-and-the-subversion-of-science/

Let’s not pretend we’re being guided by “science.” It’s tyranny disguised as the common good to rationalize authoritarian tactics employed by politicians like Phil Murphy and his like-minded colleagues. And too many Americans are falling for it, no questions asked.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy unintentionally defined this critical moment in America’s history. “We weren’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this,” he explained about his draconian decrees, including a ban on religious gatherings, to fight coronavirus. “First of all, we looked at the data and the science and it says people have to stay away from each other.”

Murphy’s comments undoubtedly buoyed the egos of academic “experts” across the country. A leading politician boasted, without the slightest sense of remorse, that his fidelity to the almighty deity of “science” prevailed over protecting the rights of his state’s citizens.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution? Meh. The six-foot distancing rule concocted by a handful of careerist bureaucrats in Washington? Bow and scrape.

“Science” is a one-word cudgel wielded by dishonest elected officials, journalists, and yes, scientists, to force us to conform to their political whims; this is particularly true of climate change. The Democratic Party, we are assured, is the “party of science.” Democratic lawmakers and candidates routinely promise that they “believe in science.” The idea that humans are the main (or sole) drivers of global warming is “settled science.”

Hillary, Comey And Brennan Must Face Justice For Deep-State Spying On Trump

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/17/hillary-comey-and-brennan-must-face-justice-for-deep-state-spying-on-trump/

The media have been saturated with coronavirus news for weeks now, with literally hundreds of stories each day about the pandemic. But while you’re quarantined and self-distancing yourself from the dreaded COVID-19 virus, you might not have noticed something big: the investigation into the Russian spygate fiasco is coming to a head.

As the old saying goes, the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. Some time after our nation reopens for business in a few weeks, the wheels will turn when the Durham report on the Russian collusion case will be released and hit the front pages.

If recent revelations are any indication, it will be a blockbuster, potentially leading to indictments of former senior intelligence and justice officials.

By now, most of us know that top officials in the Justice Department, FBI and CIA pursued an investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign for alleged “collusion” with Russia to tilt the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

The main premise of that investigation proved to be false, as the subsequent Mueller report showed conclusively.

That’s bad enough. But new revelations show that not only did U.S. officials wrongly pursue the investigation and spy on the Trump campaign, they did so knowing that it was based on Russian disinformation.

And why did they do it? To aid the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, which financed the spurious anti-Trump “dossier” put together by former British spy Christopher Steele.
Damning Footnotes

As investigative reporter Sara Carter recently noted, “Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.”

The FBI used the bogus evidence anyway to convince a FISA court to let the FBI spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Page resigned as a Trump adviser in September 2016. But by spying on him, the FBI opened a backdoor into Trump’s entire campaign.

Let the irony of that sink in. U.S. officials knowingly colluded with Russian intelligence using tainted evidence to prove that Trump colluded with the Russian government to weaken Clinton’s campaign.

If so, they were willingly duped by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

In addition, the footnotes show that these same senior officials “were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Communities Assessment.”

Under the legal “fruit of a poisonous tree” doctrine, evidence obtained illegally cannot be used as a predicate for legal action. That means the whole Trump investigation, including the tapping of Trump campaign officials’ communications, was illegitimate if not downright illegal.

The upshot of all this is that former FBI chief James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA top spy John Brennan and an array of their underlings knew the information that came from the Steele dossier was tainted, but used it anyway.
Spying On Trump To Help Hillary

They did so again not for reasons of justice, but to prop up Clinton. In essence, the FBI, CIA and Clinton campaign formed a cozy little cabal using taxpayer money and federal investigative agencies to take down Trump’s campaign.

Moreover, it never ended. Even after Trump was elected, a ring of senior officials plotted ways to remove Trump from office. To us, it was little more than a silent coup attempt.

But ask an attorney: That’s called “conspiracy,” and it’s a felony.

Just look at how Steele, who worked in Moscow for Britain’s MI6, got paid for putting together his bogus dossier. He was paid $168,000 for his work with the political opposition research firm GPS Fusion. But that came from an even bigger chunk of money, $1.02 million to be exact, paid to Steele’s Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., a business intelligence firm staffed by former spooks.

All this money came from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. To hide its true source, payments were “facilitated” by the left-leaning Seattle-based Perkins Coie law firm, which worked both for the DNC and Clinton.

Contrary to later reporting in the mainstream media about Steele being “trusted” and “professional,” the FBI had repeated warnings going back all the way to 2015 that Steele’s contacts included sketchy Russian underworld characters and untrustworthy intelligence sources.

Spying on a presidential campaign was one of the most disgraceful episodes of recent American history, exceeding even the burglary of the DNC by former President Richard Nixon’s campaign.

For those who engaged in this unlawful and unethical behavior, things just got real, as the saying goes.
Barr’s Shot Across The Bow

Speaking to Laura Ingraham earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr called the FBI-Clinton spying on Trump “one of the greatest travesties in American history.”

He promised that the current investigation of wrongdoing by U.S. Attorney John Durham would “bring to justice people who were engaged in abuses” in the Russia investigation, and that those who broke the law would be “prosecuted.”

This should include Clinton, who has become an increasingly unhinged and vocal critic of all things Trump. If there was indeed a Deep State conspiracy, wasn’t she at its very center?

In addition to resolving the Russia spygate mess, which Clinton helped set in motion, the Justice Department said it will not block depositions by former Secretary of State Clinton and her deputy Cheryl Mills, as recently ordered by a federal judge.

The depositions are in response to a Freedom Of Information Act suit brought by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch over Clinton’s possibly illegal use of an unsecured private email server to conduct State Department business.

Stay tuned. The Russian collusion investigation, which was in fact a partisan witch hunt funded by public money, is coming to an end. And it may lead to one or more major former public officials being indicted and going to prison.

For a nation based on the idea of one standard of justice for all, this reckoning is long overdue.

Fixing College Corruption Eliminating all classes with the word “studies” is a good start. Walter Williams

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/fixing-college-corruption-walter-williams/

America’s colleges are rife with corruption. The financial squeeze resulting from COVID-19 offers opportunities for a bit of remediation. Let’s first let’s examine what might be the root of academic corruption, suggested by the title of a recent study, “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship.” The study was done by Areo, an opinion and analysis digital magazine. By the way, Areo is short for Areopagitica, a speech delivered by John Milton in defense of free speech.

Authors Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian say that something has gone drastically wrong in academia, especially within certain fields within the humanities. They call these fields “grievance studies,” where scholarship is not so much based upon finding truth but upon attending to social grievances. Grievance scholars bully students, administrators and other departments into adhering to their worldview. The worldview they promote is neither scientific nor rigorous. Grievance studies consist of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, gender studies, queer, sexuality and critical race studies.