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Ruth King

The COVID-19 Pandemic: What Do and Don’t We Know BY Robert P. George & Nicholas Christakis

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/04/62065/

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He directs the Human Nature Lab.

This is a fundamental human experience that we’re having. Plagues have been described for a very long time. It’s just that we ourselves are not used to having it. I would happily stay at home for three months if it meant that my neighbors are not going to die. 

This interview is adapted from the Webinar conversation “Pandemic! What Do and Don’t We Know? Robert P. George in Conversation with Nicholas A. Christakis.”

Robert George: Could you begin by giving us a summary of what we know from the past about pandemics?

Nicholas Christakis: We’re experiencing something that’s very unusual in the history and life of our species: the introduction of a new pathogen that has entered our species and will circulate widely among us. As near as we can tell, this coronavirus bears a strong similarity to viruses that had been circulating in bats. It’s a bit odd that bat viruses so often cause us problems. There’s been some speculation that their immune system is very similar to ours. The virus first adapted to being transmissible in bats, and by some time in November in the Wuhan region of China was pre-adapted to the human immune system. By December, there were many people getting sick and dying in Wuhan by means we still don’t fully understand.

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Chuck Brooks is a thought leader, cybersecurity and technology evangelist, Forbes contributor, and just a nice person who is always willing to help the cybersecurity community. Also, he received Presidential Appointments for Executive Service by two U.S. Presidents and helped “stand up” Office of Legislative at The Department of Homeland Security.

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https://dacybersecurity.com/blog/chuck-brooks-book/

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dacybersecurity.com

FRED SINGER: A GIANT OF SCIENCE R.I.P.

https://www.cfact.org/about/

It is with a heavy heart that we at CFACT share sad news with you today.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, a giant in the field of science and a good CFACT friend, passed away quietly yesterday at the age of 95.

His loss will be deeply felt not just by myself and those of us at CFACT, but by all of our friends and allies engaged in the cause of promoting sound science and liberty.

Dr. Singer’s accomplishments are truly legendary, but his life wasn’t always easy. Born to a Jewish family in Austria in 1924, Fred had to escape with his life as a young boy to England when Adolf Hitler invaded the country in 1938. During the war, he immigrated to the U.S. where he assisted the U.S. Navy, later obtaining a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1947. From there his years were to be marked by a number of high achievements.

Among these would include serving in the U.S. Embassy in London as a scientific liaison officer (1950-53), serving as one of 12 members of the American Astronautical Society of the nation’s top 300 scientists (1954-56), director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland (1953–62); first director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962–64); founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964–67); deputy assistant secretary for water quality and research, U.S. Department of the Interior (1967– 70); deputy assistant administrator for policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970–71); vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) (1981–86); and chief scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987– 89).

Dr. Anthony Fauci: There are ‘good signs’ in US battle against coronavirus, but we’re far from ‘claiming victory’ Jordan Culver

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/07/coronavirus-anthony-fauci-social-distancing-deborah-birx/2959335001/

As the U.S. braces for what health experts and President Donald Trump say will be an especially devastating week in the nation’s battle against the novel coronavirus, “positive signs” are emerging in some of the areas hardest hit by the virus.

While Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was quick to caution that the U.S. still has much work to do amid this public health emergency, he pointed to “good signs” from New York, citing data saying the numbers of hospitalizations, ICU admissions and requirements for intubations over the last three days have started to level off. 

“Everybody who knows me know I’m very conservative about making projections, but those are the kind of good signs that you look for,” Fauci said during Monday’s coronavirus task force briefing at the White House. “You never even begin to think about claiming victory prematurely, but that’s the first thing you see when you start to see the turnaround.”

Fauci stressed the importance of continued mitigation and social distancing. 

How Misinformation About the U.S. Needing ‘1 Million Ventilators’ Spread Even the New England Journal of Medicine was misled. Jeryl Bier

https://thedispatch.com/p/how-misinformation-about-the-us-needing

The global COVID-19 crisis seems on track to eclipse 9/11 as the leading defining episode of the 21st century thus far. The dystopian trajectory of the pandemic calls for clear, accurate information to ensure efficient distribution and use of resources. Yet one recent example of misinformation related to the likely total number of necessary ventilators (indispensable devices in treating the most serious cases of COVID-19) not only appeared at major media outlets, but even misled the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine. The error conflates the total number of ventilators required with the number of patients who may need the use of a ventilator over the course of the pandemic. How the error spread is a cautionary if convoluted tale. 

On March 25, the New York Times published an article titled “Amid Desperate Need for Ventilators, Calls Grow for Federal Intervention.” That same day, former Timesreporter and author Alex Berenson pointed out a flaw in the article on Twitter.  The article asserted that “[t]he United States currently has between 160,000 and 200,000 ventilators, but could need up to a million machines over the course of the outbreak, according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine.” As Berenson noted, the study in question did not call for 1 million ventilators, but rather that “as many as one million people in the United States [may] need treatment with a ventilator over the course of the pandemic.” [emphasis added]

 On the same day the Times posted a correction of that article, the Times published another article that made the same error about the study. The second article, titled “For Dr. Deborah Birx, Urging Calm Has Come With Heavy Criticism,” used the identical inaccurate wording that appeared in the first article: “The United States currently has between 160,000 and 200,000 ventilators but could need up to a million over the course of the outbreak, according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine.” Despite the first correction, the second correction took several days to appear and did not note the Times’s repetition of the error.

Rethinking University Dependence on Foreign Students David Randall

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/06/rethinking-university-dependence-on-foreign-students/

Once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, might it not be better if we tried to attract American students and their tuition dollars by competing to provide a rigorous, remunerative education?

Were all of the foreign students returning to America’s campuses in January vectors of infection for coronavirus? Especially the students from China? There’s no evidence yet to prove the point, although the odds are that at least some coronavirus infection came to the United States from foreign students.

If we’ve been spared a campus plague, it’s owing to the grace of God, and not to any actions by our colleges and universities.

To my knowledge, before the decision was taken out of their hands by the general lockdowns, no American college or university barred foreign students from returning to campus. No academic administration even suggested that foreign students should self-quarantine for two weeks before interacting with other students or professors.

The most active were institutions such as Princeton, which followed “a recommendation by the New Jersey Department of Health that students and faculty at K-12 schools and colleges who have recently returned from China ‘self-quarantine’ for two weeks if they’re at moderate or high risk of potentially contracting the illness.” Colleges and universities did nothing better than grudgingly acquiesce to ineffective directives from state health departments.

Are COVID-19 Deaths Being Overreported? Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/06/are-covid-19-deaths-being-overreported/

Playing loose with the number of fatalities or giving local officials the greenlight to inflate those figures is inimical to the public’s need to get a firm grasp on the danger of the disease.

According to some tracking sites, the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus reached 10,000 victims on Monday. Grim reapers on social media noted the “grim milestone” and forecast more grim days ahead for Americans now trapped by government-imposed house arrest as they helplessly watch their savings and livelihoods and freedom implode in real-time.

The U.S. surgeon general warned that this week’s catastrophic death toll will rival those not seen since the most horrific attacks on American soil. Jerome Adams said that the next several days will be “our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only, it’s not going to be localized, it’s going to be happening all over the country.” President Trump and his closest medical advisors also have reiterated that terrifying scenario.

But there is little information available as to what qualifies as a coronavirus fatality for official counts. And there is good reason to approach such tallies with skepticism since reporting from states like New York is suspiciously vague.

If Americans are to believe that COVID-19 poses a mortal risk to the general population and therefore requires the most intrusive measures ever invoked to stop the spread of the deadly virus, then government officials must clarify the classification. Health officials have confirmed that older people and those with underlying medical issues such as heart disease or diabetes are most at-risk; the concern, however, is that fatalities in such cases are always attributed to coronavirus as the main cause of death instead of just noting it as a contributing factor.

Questionable Guidance

Guidelines recently released by the Centers for Disease Control bolster concerns that the death toll is being rigged to show a higher fatality rate.

Hamas Wants Americans Dead of Coronavirus, Democrats Want to Send Hamas Aid “They talk about 25 million infected people in just one of the 50 states. Allah be praised.”Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/hamas-wants-americans-dead-coronavirus-democrats-daniel-greenfield/

Thousands of Americans have died of the coronavirus. But ‘Gaza Firster’ Democrats don’t care.

Eight Senate Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, dispatched a four-page letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding to know what America was doing about the coronavirus.

Not in America. In Gaza.

According to the Senate letter, “as of March 24, the first two cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the Gaza Strip.”

That’s two cases. Two. The United States has over 200,000 as of now.

By the time you read this, there will be many more.

Bernie and Leahy’s Vermont has 293 cases. But Sanders cares more about Gaza than Burlington. Warren’s Massachusetts has 6,620 cases. Van Hollen’s Maryland has 1,660 cases. Udall’s New Mexico has 315 cases. Thomas Carper’s Delaware has 319 cases. Jeff Merkley’s Oregon has 660 cases. Sherrod Brown’s Ohio has 2,199 cases.

None of these eight Democrats represent states that are free of the pandemic. All of them represent states that have far more severe coronavirus problems than the terrorist occupied West Bank or Gaza.

Who Really Failed to Stop the Coronavirus from Hitting American Soil? A troubling look at the CDC’s elite Epidemic Intelligence Service. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/who-really-failed-stop-coronavirus-hitting-lloyd-billingsley/

By Sunday, the United States marked almost 350,000 cases of COVID-19, with nearly 10,000 deaths. The pandemic took down a strong economy and millions of Americans are out of work. This disaster might not have happened if a little-known American government agency was doing its job.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deploys something called the Epidemic Intelligence Service. As Diana Robeletto Scalera of the CDC Foundation explains, the EIS “works day and night domestically and globally to ensure epidemics in other countries do not hit American soil.” EIS disease detectives are “are the ones responsible and they take this role very seriously.” Even so, the coronavirus epidemic certainly hit American soil, so Americans have good cause to wonder about this epidemic intelligence service.

Established in 1951, Scalera notes, the EIS is “a two-year postgraduate program of service and on-the-job training for health professionals interested in the practice of epidemiology.” Since the program began, more than 3,500 EIS “officers” have been trained.

According to the CDC, “EIS officers serve on the front lines of public health, protecting Americans and the global community.” When diseases and public health threats emerge, “EIS officers investigate, identify the cause, rapidly implement control measures, and collect evidence to recommend preventive actions.”

The EIS did not identify the cause of the coronavirus and any rapidly implemented control measures proved a complete failure. So coronavirus victims have a right to wonder what these intrepid disease detectives are really about. As the CDC explains, EIS alumni have gone on to become CDC directors, leading CDC scientists, acting surgeons general, and even World Health Organization assistant directors-general.

‘Caliphate’ – The Series Every Western Feminist Needs to See Forget ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – this harrowing thriller exposes real-world, Sharia misogyny. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/caliphate-series-every-western-feminist-needs-see-mark-tapson/

As an act of #Resistance! to the misogynistic dystopia America would surely be plunged into by the election of Donald Trump, the leftist media hyped the 2017 Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are subjugated and dehumanized under a totalitarian patriarchy. “Relevant!” and “Timely!” were the marketing buzzwords used to sell the show to liberal females as an allegory of the horrors they would experience under a Mike Pence-led theocracy. The Handmaid’s Tale became a cultural touchstone for unfulfilled Western feminists whose lives were suddenly given meaning by costuming themselves as handmaids from the show and milling about in protest of their oppression – for example, outside the chambers where Brett Kavanaugh was smeared as a rapist during his Supreme Court confirmation.

The internet series and the original 1985 novel were both set in America, of course, because everyone who has been processed through our Progressive propaganda – er, education system knows that the United States is the historic epicenter of religious intolerance and sexual oppression. Precisely because of this indoctrination, the same feminists who were so inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale are either oblivious to, or intentionally silent about, the real-world suffering of girls and women who are oppressed under an actual totalitarian theocracy outside the West: territories ruled beneath the iron fist of sharia law.