RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/covid-hospitalizations-reach-new-highs-states-failing-distinguish

States throughout the U.S. are failing to distinguish between patients hospitalized because of COVID-19 and patients who merely test positive for the disease while being hospitalized for other reasons.

Hospitalizations have for months been viewed as one of the critical indicators of the coronavirus pandemic: Countries worldwide have relied heavily on the number of patients sent to hospitals because of the virus as a way of measuring how severe a region or a nation’s outbreak really is. 

In the United States, as in most other countries, one of the chief concerns of the pandemic has been whether or not hospitals have enough capacity to treat surges in COVID patients in addition to more routine procedures and emergency issues. The most recent surge in positive COVID-19 tests, which began in early October, has led to record highs of hospitalized COVID-positive patients.

The COVID Tracking Project, a group of public health experts and journalists who have been collecting COVID-19 data from state health departments since early 2020, currently lists over 125,000 hospitalized COVID patients nationwide, roughly double the earlier peaks seen in the spring and summer. 

Differentiating between ‘with’ and ‘due to’

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16909/new-year-better

To start with, it made most of us understand that as members of the human species, we are all in the same leaking boat. The pandemic was like a general amnesty or a conflagration that transcends boundaries and includes everyone, high or low, rich or poor, young or old.

One other important feature of the crisis may have been the reassertion of capitalism as the surest means of coping with a disaster hitting us out of the blue. The huge mass of available capital with historically low interest rates…. and virtually inexhaustible productive capacities across the globe, provided many nations with a shield against potentially fatal economic and social shocks.

The year just ending taught us not take things for granted and to value even the most pedestrian joys that existence allows us, such a walk in a park….

As 2021 begins, one is reminded of the verse by Persian poet Masud Saad Salman, hoping that the new year would not resemble the old one.

Masud, of course, was expressing that hope from the Nay Fortress where, having fallen from the grace in the court of a local despot, he had been imprisoned for a year, and was to remain there for the rest of his life. He lamented the fact that Saturday was like Friday and April like March and his share of sunshine reduced to a sickly ray from a hole in the roof of his cell. In other words, he wasn’t doing any better than many us did in the year just ended.

But, let us be provocative, didn’t 2020 have any redeeming feature?

I think it did.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/02/calling-out-the-fauci-administration/

“If he wants to lead the nation, he should run for office.” 

That sounds like Nancy Pelosi discussing the prospects of a Gavin Newsom presidency, but it’s really Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) calling out Dr. Anthony Fauci in a December 30 Fox News opinion piece. 

For most of 2020, Fauci had been telling Americans that to reach herd immunity and make the coronavirus a non-issue, about 60 to 70 percent of the nation would need a vaccine. Then in a December 24 interview with the New York Times, Fauci said he had been looking at “polls” showing that only half of all Americans would take a vaccine. 

Fauci thought “I can nudge this up a bit,” and boosted the number to 80-85 percent for herd immunity. So by “the beginning of the fall of 2021, we can start to approach some degree of normality.” If embattled Americans thought Fauci really had 2022 in mind it would be hard to blame them. 

Rubio granted Fauci’s good intentions but “let’s be clear about what he was doing: lying to the American people in order to manipulate their behavior.” That was a long overdue spanking but Rubio was not the first to give Fauci the smackdown he deserves. 

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/stacey-lennox/2021/01/02/who-would-give-a-tyrant-like-andrew-cuomo-more-power-the-new-york-state-assembly-n1300865

A new bill in the New York State Assembly seeks to give one of the nation’s worst governors, Andrew Cuomo, even more power. It is currently sitting in committee, and hopefully, New Yorkers will see it die there. Assembly Bill A416 is scheduled for the 2021-22 legislative session. It amends the public health law to give the governor additional powers after they declare a state of health emergency due to an epidemic. I guess that means now.

The additions to the law allow the governor, after consulting with the health commissioner, to order the removal or detention of groups or individuals deemed to be a suspected or actual case, contact, or carrier of a contagious disease that, in the governor’s opinion, poses a significant threat to public health. The governor or his delegees in the state’s public health apparatus may order the removal or detention. They only need to identify individuals and groups by a reasonably specific description.

Individuals could be detained until the health department determines they are no longer contagious or not infected. The good news is you can only be detained for three business days before having an opportunity to be heard. In other words, the Assembly is about to make it easier to detain someone suspected of having COVID-19 than someone who is having an obvious mental health crisis.

The good news is that the bill requires an individual’s medical needs and condition to be assessed regularly and they must be detained in a manner that includes isolation and infection control procedures. So that you know, prisons fit that bill. Yet New York has released thousands of inmates under the pretext of COVID-19. So detaining a few contrary citizens makes complete sense in this environment. Nothing to see here, right? Let’s look at the groups that are suing Governor Cuomo and the tactics he has used to quell dissent against his decrees.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/01/black-lives-matter-vandalizes-st-patricks-daniel-greenfield/

During the original wave of mostly violent Black Lives Matter race riots, St. Patrick’s Cathedral was one of their targets and was hit with BLM graffiti. 

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance however decided to give BLM race rioters a pass while trying to prosecute a woman who called the police in Central Park.

The Manhattan district attorney’s poor relationship with the police had cratered when he announced that he was giving Black Lives Matter rioters a pass. That included the BLM racist who had scrawled obscene and hateful graffiti on the walls of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

he Queens man arrested for scarring the landmarked façade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a George Floyd protest is now free — because the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute him.

Yadir Avila Rosas, 26, was taken into custody at 5:30 a.m. Saturday, an NYPD spokeswoman told The Post.

Police charged Rosas with criminal mischief in the third degree and making graffiti, alleging that he was the “getaway driver” for two women who tagged the famous house of worship with spray-painted slogans on May 30.

But an expected Saturday afternoon arraignment never happened, at the DA office’s discretion.

Now here we go again.

Vandals tagged St. Patrick’s Cathedral with anti-police graffiti early on New Year’s Day, according to the NYPD.

https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/

I. The collapse of institutional liberalism

For a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most Americans and Europeans regarded Marxism as an enemy that had been defeated once and for all. But they were wrong. A mere 30 years later, Marxism is back, and making an astonishingly successful bid to seize control of the most important American media companies, universities and schools, major corporations and philanthropic organizations, and even the courts, the government bureaucracy, and some churches. As American cities succumb to rioting, arson, and looting, it appears as though the liberal custodians of many of these institutions—from the New York Times to Princeton University—have despaired of regaining control of them, and are instead adopting a policy of accommodation. That is, they are attempting to appease their Marxist employees by giving in to some of their demands in the hope of not being swept away entirely.

We don’t know what will happen for certain. But based on the experience of recent years, we can venture a pretty good guess. Institutional liberalism lacks the resources to contend with this threat. Liberalism is being expelled from its former strongholds, and the hegemony of liberal ideas, as we have known it since the 1960s, will end. Anti-Marxist liberals are about to find themselves in much the same situation that has characterized conservatives, nationalists, and Christians for some time now: They are about to find themselves in the opposition.

This means that some brave liberals will soon be waging war on the very institutions they so recently controlled. They will try to build up alternative educational and media platforms in the shadow of the prestigious, wealthy, powerful institutions they have lost. Meanwhile, others will continue to work in the mainstream media, universities, tech companies, philanthropies, and government bureaucracy, learning to keep their liberalism to themselves and to let their colleagues believe that they too are Marxists—just as many conservatives learned long ago how to keep their conservatism to themselves and let their colleagues believe they are liberals.

This is the new reality that is emerging. There is blood in the water and the new Marxists will not rest content with their recent victories. In America, they will press their advantage and try to seize the Democratic Party. They will seek to reduce the Republican Party to a weak imitation of their own new ideology, or to ban it outright as a racist organization. And in other democratic countries, they will attempt to imitate their successes in America. No free nation will be spared this trial. So let us not avert our eyes and tell ourselves that this curse isn’t coming for us. Because it is coming for us.

In this essay, I would like to offer some initial remarks about the new Marxist victories in America—about what has happened and what’s likely to happen next.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/senate-majority-leader-mitch-mcconnells-house-v

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) Louisville house was found vandalized on Friday.

White spray paint on the door read “Weres my money [sic]”.

The quote is most likely referring to McConnell blocking the pandemic stimulus package that included $2,000 stimulus checks for Americans that was backed by President Donald Trump.

Besides the main door, red and white spray paint could be seen from the WDRB footage, that reads “Mitch kills … (illegible)”

“I’ve spent my career fighting for the First Amendment and defending peaceful protest. I appreciate every Kentuckian who has engaged in the democratic process whether they agree with me or not,” Sen. McConnell said in a statement released after the vandalism occurred, “This is different. Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society.”

“My wife and I have never been intimidated by this toxic playbook. We just hope our neighbors in Louisville aren’t too inconvenienced by this radical tantrum,” McConnell said.

The Republican Party of Kentucky wrote on Twitter: “Vandalism is reprehensible and there’s no place in our politics for acts like this. Kentuckians deserve better and the Democrats should join us in condemning this act of vandalism.”

The Governor of Kentucky also wrote about the incident, reprimanding the acts.

https://flipboard.com/topic/aging/new-york-is-sitting-on-2-3-of-the-vaccine-doses-it-s-received/f-3ac0ea99ab%2Fhotair.com

As we discussed yesterday, Florida has been running into massive problems in trying to get enough doses of vaccine for all the senior citizens signing up to be inoculated. Far to the north, in New York State, pretty much the opposite problem is being encountered. Large numbers of vials of vaccine from both Pfizer and Moderna have been arriving in the Empire State. The problem is, they aren’t being injected into hopeful patients at anywhere near an acceptable rate. As of the end of the year, 630,000 doses have been received, but barely 200,000 have been administered. This has a lot of people, particularly healthcare workers and nursing home residents, asking what the holdup is and who is actually in charge of this mess. (NY Post)

New York has administered less than a third of the coronavirus vaccine doses it has on hand so far — even as Mayor de Blasio boldly claimed Thursday he’d have a million city residents inoculated within a month.

Around 630,000 vaccine doses have been sent to the Empire State, but just 203,000 doses had actually made their way into New Yorkers’ arms as of Wednesday, state data shows…

In New York City, some 88,000 people have received a first dose over the last three weeks, as the vaccine began being administered to health care workers and nursing home residents.

“We are far, far behind where we need to be,” said Councilman Mark Levine, chairman of the New York City Health Committee.

As the New York Post editorial board points out, while this highlights the ineptitude of the Cuomo and de Blasio administrations, it’s sadly not simply a local problem. Pfizer and Moderna had shipped 12.4 million doses around the entire country by the end of the year but only 3.1 million had been administered.

https://jamieglazov.com/2021/01/02/glazov-gang-president-trump-most-admired-man-in-2020/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He researches Islamic terrorism, left-wing radicalism, and the decline of the free world.

Daniel discusses President Trump Most Admired Man in 2020, unveiling the Bad news for Barack. And for the media.

Don’t miss it!