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Ruth King

How to End Lockdowns Next Month Target vaccines to the most vulnerable, and don’t give them to people who have already been infected. By Jay Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-end-lockdowns-next-month-11608230214?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The approval of several Covid-19 vaccines is an impressive technological development that should rapidly end the lockdowns and allow normal life to resume. But authorities like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates argue that lockdown restrictions may have to continue through the fall and even into 2022, notwithstanding the catastrophic harms the lockdowns have caused, especially to young people, the poor and the working classes.

The imminent dissemination of vaccines can help end lockdowns by the end of January. The Great Barrington Declaration, which we wrote with Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School, provides the key idea: focused protection of people who face a high risk of mortality should they become infected.

The risk of mortality from Covid-19 infection is now well established by seroprevalence studies conducted world-wide. Seroprevalence studies measure a lower bound on the number of people who have been infected. There is a sharp age gradient in the survival rate after infection. At least 99.95% of people under 70 survive infection; that figure is only 95% for 70 and older.

Covid-19 is thus especially deadly for the old and others with chronic conditions. But the lockdowns are deadly as well. The harms include plummeting childhood vaccination, worse cardiovascular disease outcomes, and less cancer screening, to name a few. It’s impossible to quantify the total deaths they have caused and will cause, but it’s safe to conclude that for people under 70 without chronic conditions—especially children and young adults—Covid-19 is far less deadly than a lockdown. For children, the cessation of in-person schooling has led to severe learning losses, which are predicted to shorten the lifespans of affected students. Among 25- to 44-year-olds, the CDC reports a 26% increase in excess all-cause mortality relative to past years, though less than 5% of 2020 deaths have been due to Covid-19.

Want Real Economic ‘Stimulus’? End Economy-Killing Lockdowns Now!!!!

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/18/want-real-economic-stimulus-end-economy-killing-lockdowns-now/

Congressional negotiators, we’re told, are inching ever closer to a deal for what’s being called a “second round of stimulus spending.” Sorry, but what’s planned has nothing to do with supercharging the economy. Want to really “stimulate” growth? End the foolish COVID-19 lockdowns that have decimated small businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The sound you’ll no doubt soon be hearing is hundreds of Washington, D.C., politicians and policymakers clapping themselves on the back for the pending stimulus package.

As it now stands, the $900 billion-plus deal is likely to include “direct payments to all Americans, funding for vaccine rollout and delivery, and an extension of unemployment benefits as well as much-needed aid to small businesses,” according to The Week.

But this is not “stimulus” by any means. It is the economic equivalent of putting a dying patient on life support.

So call this bill what it is. Government relief for a problem the government itself caused through mandated lockdowns.

Why Los Angeles Is In Trouble — Average Pay For 20,000 Highly Compensated City Employees Nears $150,000

BREAKING: Why Los Angeles Is In Trouble — Average Pay For 20,000 Highly Compensated City Employees Nears $150,000

LA is asking for a $3.9 billion coronavirus bailout from American taxpayers. So, our auditors dug into how LA spent their budget in 2019. 

You are not going to believe the pay in LA city agencies!

Here is just a small sampling of our findings:

The police chief raked in $590,764 last year — double dipping a $350,764 salary and a $240,000 pension. Read this to learn about the “30-day official retirement” strategy used to pocket a $1.3 million lump sum payout, a pension, and a new salary!
Twelve “port pilots” made between $400,000 and $515,000 steering cargo ships to the dock. 
Two firefighters made $486,674 and $481,020 respectively because of massive overtime hours. 
Mayor Eric Garcetti made $269,375 in pay – topping CA Gov. Gavin Newsom by $67,000.  
Tree trimmers in LA are called “tree surgeons” and made up to $207,058 last year!

Read our piece at Forbes where you’ll find more jaw-dropping compensation.

Leaked CCP Member List Shows 70-member Strong Unit at NYU Shanghai

https://www.theepochtimes.com/leaked-ccp-member-list-shows-70-member-strong-

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unit at the New York University Shanghai has grown to over 70 members, according to a leaked database of CCP members in the Chinese megapolis.

Located in Lujiazui, Shanghai’s wealthy financial hub, NYU Shanghai is a joint venture between New York University and East China Normal University (ECNU), one of the 76 institutions directly owned and managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Founded in 2012, the university boasts on its website as “the first Sino-U.S. joint venture university,” a model that has since been adopted by other American schools such as Duke.

The presence of a CCP unit at NYU Shanghai is no surprise, as the party’s constitution requires any institution or organization with three or more members to form a cell. The ECNU, which oversees party activities at NYU Shanghai, has also been publishing information about the units’ leadership changes over the years. Its size and the identity of its members, however, remained unclear until recently when a database containing the personal information of nearly 2 million Shanghai-based CCP members was shared to the Daily Mail.

According to the database, which was reportedly retrieved from a server housed in the British Consulate in Shanghai, NYU Shanghai has employed some 71 CCP members, among which are at least two faculties. All CCP members swear an oath to “strictly observe party’s discipline, protect party’s secrets, be loyal to the party, work hard, fight for communism for the rest of one’s life, always be prepared to sacrifice everything for the party and the people, and never betray the party.”

Hack of Federal Government Larger Than Previously Thought, Warns CISA By Jack Phillips

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hack-of-federal-government-larger-than-previously-thought-warns-cisa_3623466.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-17-5

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Thursday that the hacking campaign that targeted the federal government is larger than what was previously known.

The alleged foreign actors gained backdoor access in more ways than through the SolarWinds software, which was publicly disclosed by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this week.

“One of the initial access vectors for this activity is a supply chain compromise of the following SolarWinds Orion products. CISA has evidence of additional initial access vectors, other than the SolarWinds Orion platform; however, these are still being investigated,” CISA said in a statement on Thursday.

But it stressed that the “SolarWinds Orion supply chain compromise is not the only initial infection vector this advanced persistent threat actor leveraged.”

The agency also furthermore warned that the threat “poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities” as well as the private sector.

Foreign hackers, whose country of origin is not known, compromised “government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and private sector organizations” starting in March 2020 or before, according to CISA.

The cybersecurity agency noted that it “expects that removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations,” adding: “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures that have not yet been discovered.”

KT McFarland Explains Why the Intelligence Report on the Election Is Being Delayed Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/17/kt-mcfarland-explains-why-the-intelligence-report-on-the-election-is-being-delayed-n2581739

Yesterday the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced a report about foreign interference in the 2020 election will be delayed. Reportedly, there is a dispute about how much influence China had in the outcome.

During an interview with Fox News Wednesday night, former White House Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland gave her assessment about why the report is being delayed.

“That’s [the delay] pretty significant. What that means is there’s not uniform agreement within the intelligence community about whether there was or wasn’t Chinese influence and how much there was or wasn’t. I think you’ve got to assume that at least one part of our intelligence community thinks that there was major interference which is why there’s debate over this,” McFarland said. “Now, I suspect that when the report comes out, you know they always want to make these things sound like everybody agrees, well chances are not everybody does agree on this and what kind of influence and what kind of interruption it was. Was it something to do with cyber attacks? Was it something to do with the balloting? Was it something to do with influence peddling? Was it something to do with bots and kind of stirring the pot? All those things are a range of issues and I’m assuming these reason this is delayed because there’s probably something pretty explosive there.

Michael Flynn, American Patriot “The deep state buried me six feet under.” Mark Alexander

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/76545-michael-flynn-american-patriot-2020-12-17

Former White House National Security Advisor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (USA, Ret) has been under siege for the last four years. He was the earliest target of the deep-state co-conspirators in their effort to take down President Donald Trump.

Michael Flynn served our nation with great honor and dignity as a career defender of American Liberty, which is precisely why he was chosen to join the Trump administration as national security advisor. But that didn’t stop the cabal who set him up in order that he wouldn’t be an obstacle to what amounted to a coordinated subversive coup d’état against the Trump administration. Beyond Flynn’s indictment, and the long-overdue dismissal of the contrived case against him by leftist Judge Emmitt Sullivan, it is the principal coup orchestrators, John Brennan and James Comey, who should be indicted.

Of course, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will form a gauntlet against any such indictments.

In a recent interview, General Flynn’s statements provide great insight into the depth of this Patriot’s faith both in our Creator and our people: “The American people saved me. They saved my family. If there’s something I get emotional about, it’s that. I mean, I don’t know why. Prayer. Faith. The American people have been buddy breathing with me for four years. Another way to describe it is the deep state buried me six feet under ground, wanted me to die. Somehow, somebody stuck a straw up through that, a straw was allowed to be stuck up to the air, and I laid down there for four years breathing through that straw, but that straw became wider and wider and wider over the years because the American people came to my family’s aid. That’s an amazing story about people that had nothing, and they were willing to give me everything they have because they believed in something, they believed in me, they believed in my family, they believed in something that was bigger than what it is we are about, and thank God they did. I’ve been buddy breathing for four years down under, and the American people were giving me that oxygen to survive, to get through this.”

Wisconsin Attorney: Evidence of 200,000 Votes Illegally Counted By Melina Wisecup

https://www.theepochtimes.com/wisconsin-attorney-evidence-of-200000-votes-illegally-counted_3622971.html

At a Senate hearing, Trump’s team raised allegations of hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots in Wisconsin.

The margin between Trump and Biden in Wisconsin is around 20,000 votes, but Trump’s lead attorney in the state says his team has evidence that around 200,000 votes were illegally counted. Some came from voters who claimed they were unable to go to the polls, saying they were “indefinitely confined.”

“Among those claiming this status is one of the electors for Joe Biden, who said, I can’t get to the polls. We have poll workers who claimed it. We have people who went to protest, people who had weddings, people who had vacations, all claimed this status, I can’t get to the polls. So they were able to vote without identification. There were 28,395 people we explicitly identified,” said James Troupis, lead attorney for Trump’s campaign in Wisconsin.

He says under Wisconsin law, voting in advance is not legal. But in one city, they were accepting ballots at least 5 weeks in advance.

“What did the city of Madison do? They created a system where people could arrive at a park, hand in their ballots in envelopes five weeks before the election. They also created boxes, no controls at all, just boxes on corners that you could throw the ballot in, no attempt at all. And our statutes explicitly say there are only two ways to submit an absentee ballot: in person or delivery to the clerk’s office. That’s it, nothing else is allowed,” said Troupis.

They identified 17,000 ballots that were illegally cast this way, and he says there’s likely more since the elections officials mixed all the ballots together afterward, making it hard to detect which ballots were cast in advance.

Troupis says there are other categories in which as many as 170,000 other ballots were submitted without any application at all.

Hemingway: Following Awful 2020, AOC Says Pelosi Needs To Go By Elle Reynolds

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/17/hemingway-following-awful-2020-aoc-says-pelosi-needs-to-go/

Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway and New York’s Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agree on one thing: Democratic congressional leadership has had a bad year.

Ocasio-Cortez told journalist Jeremy Scahill on Wednesday that she thinks Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) need to go.

“I think [we’re seeing] the results of just many years of power being concentrated in leadership with a lack of, you know, real grooming of the next generation of leadership,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So when you have really talented members of Congress that do come along, the opportunities to lead are so few and far between.”

On Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” Thursday morning, Hemingway agreed that 2020 was rough for congressional Democratic leadership, noting that Ocasio-Cortez’s comments show a disconnect within the party.

Democrats “technically control the House of Representatives, they’ve won the presidency, have a shot at winning the Senate,” Hemingway said. “And the party is in complete disarray because of this issue that Ocasio-Cortez is talking about.”

Comey to teach at Columbia Law School By Cameron Jenkins

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/528315-comey-to-teach-at-columbia-law-school

Former FBI Director James Comey will begin teaching at Columbia Law School next year.

The school announced on Tuesday that Comey will be a senior research scholar and part of the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership beginning in January. He will also lead a seminar called “Lawyers and Leaders,” according to its website.

Comey will take on a role as one of two “Leaders-in-Residence” through the Mark Initiative’s Leader-in-Residence Program, which invites executives from government agencies, corporations and top law firms to teach classes at Columbia and share their professional experience with students through advising and engaging in other programing at the school.