RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/02/who-invited-the-world-to-infect-america/

Hate the Chinese government if you wish, but hold your own government responsible for hollowing America out like a husk.

On March 31, the number of Americans dead from the Chinese coronavirus stood at 3,900! A mere month on, at the time of writing, and 63,801 Americans have perished.

American deaths by COVID-19 account for a quarter of the world’s, including those in the undeveloped world. To ignore this Third-World-like specter is to dismiss the dead and the dying. It’s tantamount to cancel culture.

China sucks. But if the United States must rely on the Chinese government to keep its citizens safe, then what kind of a Mickey Mouse country are we?

If the American people can be convinced by their government to saddle a foreign power with the responsibility for their existential welfare—what kind of people are we?

China didn’t force the traitors of the American economy to shift crucial production lines to its country and strand Americans without surgical and N-95 masks and medication; homegrown turncoats made that decision, all by their lonesome.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-flynn-and-epicureanism/

The prospect of death, Epicurus knew, upset many people. Hence he and his followers expended a great deal of effort trying to remove the sting, the fear, from the prospect of death.

I am weary, I confess, both of the CCP Virus—COVID-19 for all you budding epidemiologists out there—and the shameful case of General Michael Flynn (the shameful thing in his case being the Obama Administration’s effort to destroy him).

I am not sure how many pieces I have written about the former—probably a score—but by now it is clear that going forward there will be two main questions about the Chinese coronavirus crisis. The first is this: why did we commit social suicide for a virus whose hospitalization rates for those 65 years and older (as the CDC just admitted) are comparable to recent bad flu seasons, while the hospitalization for children for the Wuhan flu “are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons”?

The second question is, what will our response be to the busybodies and bureaucrats whose policies destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth and put 30 million people out of work?

A friend of mine with a dark sense of humor speculates that the millions of face masks we’ve been saddled with might wind up repurposed as blindfolds. In any case, I suspect once the dust clears and people take note of the thousands of ventilators lining the doorways of businesses that have had to close their doors because of our insane overreaction, there will be a lot of anger abroad. Right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to be riding high on a crest of public adulation. Look for that to come crashing down soon.

From Leon K.

Two of the most important medical members of the President s White House Task Force to combat Covid 19 Coronavirus are Dr Anthony Fauci of the NIH and Dr Robert Redfield of the CDC.

Few people are aware of the fact that the NIH and the CDC is each affiliated with a dedicated  federally-chartered charitable foundation which accepts donations from third parties  and funds some of the NIH and CDC activities. The donors to these foundations (or the “partners” with these foundations for targeted programs) are pharmaceutical companies, bio-science   companies, other foundations (e.g., Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation) and others.

There have been questions raised over the years about potential conflicts of interest between certain donors  to the foundations and the work of the NIH and the CDC. See attached article. While I would not question the integrity of either Dr Fauci or Dr Redfield, I find the absence of full public disclosure of these affiliations troubling.

This week during a White House session Dr Fauci was unusually upbeat about the preliminary results from trials involving the experimental  Gilead Science drug Remdesivir. I hope Dr Fauci s upbeat appraisal is justified but from my reading of the results of the study,  it appears that the benefits to the Remdesivir patients over the placebo patients was modest.

It should be noted that Gilead is a contributor to or partner with the charitable foundation which supports the NIH. Dr Fauci has not disclosed this fact at the White House session or at any other public White House press conference over the last few weeks. 

I’m guessing, but I bet you dollars-to-donuts that neither  Dr Vladimir Zelenko nor Dr Anthony Cardillo , front line physicians who are actively using a Hydroxychloroquin regimen in the battle against Covid 19 Coronavirus, are donors to these foundations.

READ:https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/us-lawmakers-want-nih-and-cdc-foundations-say-more-about-donors

U.S. lawmakers want NIH and CDC foundations to say more about donors

By Jeffrey MervisJun.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/28/with-states-re-opening-where-do-we-go-from-here/

With many states starting to reopen significant portions of civil society that were closed, it’s time to assess where we are and what should come next. Much of the commentary for the past month or so has revolved around widely varying assessments of the “real risk” from COVID-19. Opinions vary widely, to say the least.

Much of the argument has taken place in a rapidly evolving context which started with very little definitive knowledge. Unfortunately, many policymakers and much of the media cited epidemiological models created very early in the crisis and, declaring them authoritative, used them as the basis to justify mass shutdowns to “flatten the curve.”

When the dire predictions did not come to pass—a good thing—combatants on both sides dug into their positions. Those who had cited the studies generally have taken the position that the shutdowns worked and saved many lives. Those who oppose the shutdowns point to the fact that the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are much lower than the models predicted they would be with shutdowns in place, let alone without any shutdowns at all.

The good news is that with so much attention focused on this one problem, we are learning about this virus more quickly than humanity has ever learned about any disease ever before. What can be done to end the threat of this virus and create a model for addressing the next one? Because, you can rest assured, there will be a next one. Novel coronaviruses are going to be with us for a while. How did we get here and what should come next? Are shutdowns really going to be the new normal?

https://spectator.us/paranoid-style-covid-19-central-park-safetyism/

To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City’s Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park’s inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them.

These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its implicit message that we are all going to die if we engage in normal life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans opting to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely lest they be ‘unsafe’. The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will patronize reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/the_lefts_listen_to_the_science_mantra_is_growing_old_trump_listened_and_thats_the_problem.html

One of the left’s standard attacks on the President is that he doesn’t listen to the science!  Sadly, he did listen to the so-called experts who predicted wildly hyperbolic death and destruction and he agreed to the economic shutdown.  

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr  

The President surely realizes by now that he should have operated on his gut instincts which rarely fail him.  Dr. Fauci, for example, sees no patients.  He looks at computer models, all of which were wrong.  Dr. Birx probably has more hands-on experience, but she too recommended closing up the nation.  They were wrong.  

Governor Cuomo was wrong when he whined that he needed 40,000 ventilators and thousands more hospital beds. Trump provided everything he demanded, but they were not needed.  Cuomo has no common sense and sent Covid-positive patients into nursing homes rather than the Navy hospital ship or either of the two other Army-engineered field hospitals.  This one order caused the deaths of fragile elderly people.  Cuomo’s handling of the crisis in his city has been disastrous on every front.  His state was the least prepared for such an event after bragging that New York was ready.  It was not.

https://quadrant.org.au/

One of the things this infernal Wuhan virus has taught us is that many of our fellow citizens will dance to any tune governments play. I find it entirely credible that instructions to cower in the bathtub would be greeted with, ‘Oh well you know, the government must be right’. Sheep, looking for all the world like people, are seemingly in great abundance.

The are no doubt other things we are learning but I want to end with a confirmation rather than with an instance of new learning. As we know from the economic desolation they cause when in charge; from their national self-loathing; from their agenda to rob us of pride in our past; from their determination to tear down institutions (like traditional marriage) which have served us so well; from their overt hostility towards Christianity; from their intrigue to divide us by race and by sex, leftists are a plague on the world, more virulent than any virus. And, true to form, is their doleful advocacy in the current crisis.

Want more stringent lockdowns to keep more people out of work and in despair? Look left. Want ever-longer lockdowns to maximise long-lasting damage to people’s livelihoods, mental health and wellbeing? Look left. Want the loss of yet more individual liberties and inalienable rights? Look left.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-some-hospitals-overwhelmed-many-underutilized/

We feared hospitals would be overwhelmed. Instead, in many states, they’re emptying out and laying off doctors and nurses.

We had to destroy the hospitals to save them.

You could be forgiven for thinking that’s the upshot of the coronavirus lockdowns that have suspended elective surgeries and generally discouraged people from going to hospitals.

Many hospitals are getting pushed near, or over, the financial edge. At a time when we feared that hospitals would get overwhelmed by a surge of patients, they have instead been emptied out. At a time when we thought medical personnel would be at a premium, they are instead being idled all over the country.

We are experiencing an epidemic that bizarrely — and in part because of the choices of policymakers — has created a surfeit of hospital beds and an excess of doctors and nurses.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Protests have been around for centuries. The Protestant Reformation in northern Europe in the early 16thCentury was a protest against the universality of the Catholic Church. Americans protested England, beginning with the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and ending at Yorktown in 1781; the French stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The Russian Revolution of 1917 toppled the Tsars. Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution in China in 1949 forever changed that country, killing an estimated 20 to 40 million people. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 followed protests. In our country, in the past half century, we have seen marches for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights. We have had anti-war protests. More recently we had the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Woman’s March and March for Life. How productive they have been is a matter of debate. Writing last year in “Perspective Magazine,” Chaya Benyamin wrote: “Protest rhetoric is more about preaching to the choir than it is about changing hearts and minds.” A Harvard study of the Tea Party movement, three years ago, had similar nebulous conclusions. But, as an observer, it seems that all these protests resulted in change, some revolutionary.

A reader in Louisiana, a retired lawyer, e-mailed a week ago: “President Trump’s having essentially accepted the epidemiologists’ over-reaction to an admittedly dangerous virus will be historically judged to be by far his greatest first-person policy error.” I tend to agree. Never before, in the history of this Country, was a decision made to intentionally shut down the nation’s economy. In an essay titled “Innovation versus the Coronavirus,” Bill Gates referred to the current pandemic as “the first modern pandemic.” But is it? The 1957-1958 H2N2 virus was called a pandemic, as were the 1968 H3N2 virus and the 2009 H1N1 pdm09 virus.  Those three pandemics killed 2.25 million people worldwide, including 230,000 in the U.S.

The President was put in an untenable position. In early January, when China knew of how contagious and deadly the virus could be, scientists and medical experts around the world, including the WHO, CDC, FDA and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID downplayed its malignancy, as did politicians from both Parties. It wasn’t until February that models, many using erroneous data inputs, began showing horrific projections. So personal and political fears, as well as the dread of litigation, obviated a calculated, rational response. Politicians did U-turns, with the media, which had been largely silent in January, jumping aboard. Lockdowns were imposed. Executive Orders were issued and, if not obeyed, offenders could be arrested. In truth, the virus was worse than Pollyanna’s first claimed, but not as bad as Cassandra’s later suggested.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/americas-china-dependency-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley/

““We cannot outsource our independence,” the president said last Monday. “We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I’ve been saying this for a long time. If we’ve learned one thing it’s let’s do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.”

“Made in China” has been a familiar label on products for years but it wasn’t until March of 2020 that Americans learned of the perils that might entail. China threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals that would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.”

Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters the United States was “dangerously reliant” on China for critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19. Since 2004, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been supplying 80-90 percent of U.S. antibiotics. Americans might wonder how they landed in such a dependent position, and that invites a comparison with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The world’s first socialist state, established in the world’s largest nation, never produced a single product the West wanted or needed. For all its vast natural resources, the USSR was an economic basket case, and by the mid-1980s in serious trouble.