RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/jobs-report-august-2020-.html

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.37 million in August vs. Dow Jones estimates of 1.32 million.
The unemployment dropped to 8.4% from 10.2% in July and well below expectations of 9.8%.
Government hiring led the way, with gains also coming in retail and education and health services.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.37 million in August and the unemployment rate tumbled to 8.4% as the U.S. economy continued to climb its way out of the pandemic downturn.

The unemployment rate was by far the lowest since the coronavirus shutdown in March, according to Labor Department figures released Friday. An alternative measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also fell, down to 14.2% from 16.5% in July and 22.8% at the peak in April.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting growth of 1.32 million and the jobless rate to decline to 9.8% from 10.2% in July.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/514948-restore-our-lives-using-medical-science-data-and-common-sense

Americans are anxious to get back to work and to send their children to school. The science backs them up. We have learned a lot over the past months, and we are putting that knowledge to use. We are capitalizing on the advanced capabilities that we have developed, as we redouble our efforts to protect vulnerable populations and deliver new and effective treatments in record time.

Here’s what we now know: 

We know who is at risk. Only 0.2 percent of U.S. deaths have been people younger than 25, and 80 percent have been in people over 65; the average fatality age is 78. A JAMA Pediatrics study of North American pediatric hospitals flatly stated that “our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.”

We may see more cases as social interactions pick up, because this is a contagious disease. However, the overwhelming majority of cases are now occurring in younger, low-risk people — decades younger, on average, than seen in the spring. And the vast majority of these people deal with the infection without consequence; many don’t even know they have it.

While we saw more cases in July and August, we are not seeing the explosion of deaths we saw early on. An analysis of CDC data shows that the case fatality rate has declined by approximately 85 percent from its peak. 

That is partly because we are much better now at protecting our most vulnerable, including our senior citizens. States have learned from those that experienced outbreaks before them, and they have implemented thoughtful policies as a result.

We are doing much better with treating hospitalized patients. Lengths-of-stay are one-third the rate in April; the fatality rate in hospitals is one-half of that in April. Fewer patients need ICUs if hospitalized, and fewer need ventilators when in ICUs.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/03/we-have-had-enough-lockdown/

Take off the masks and remove the “social distancing” circles from the floors. Open the schools, liberate college campuses, fill the restaurants and the gyms and the churches and the salons. Enough.

If 2020 wasn’t twisted enough, the current political imbroglio centers around a verboten visit to a California boutique for a routine blow-out. Americans are lining up either behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who claims she was “set up” to visit the San Francisco salon, or the salon’s owner, a woman struggling to keep her business alive amid cruel and unscientific edicts issued by her governor months ago.

The incident is the latest in a series of “rules for thee but not for me” gut punches from the ruling class; whether it’s mask-free trips to the park or crowded funerals for anointed heroes or casual meals munched indoors, the government-ordered shutdowns apply to everyone except the sadists running government who order said shutdowns.

But here’s the rub: No one should be talking about Pelosi’s coif controversy because it should not even be a story. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Erica Kious should never have been forced to close her business, fire her stylists, and sneak in customers like some 1940s underground operation hiding from the nation’s modern-day face covering and social distancing Gestapo. Pelosi should be able to get her hair done whenever and wherever she pleases without concocting a preposterous excuse that she was framed for fluffy follicles.

Almost a half a year ago, Americans were asked to suspend their personal freedoms, business pursuits, and schooling for 15 days to “flatten the curve” of rising cases of the novel coronavirus. Americans, fearful of the unknown and willing to do what they imagined was the right thing to protect themselves and their family, acquiesced.

That was 172 days ago. What has happened since will be studied and debated for decades with one likely conclusion: Global lockdowns, particularly in the United States, were one of the costliest man-made disasters of all time. The decision was rooted in unscientific hocus pocus that resulted in economic, educational, mental, physical, and emotional catastrophes on a scale that can never be fully quantified—not to mention the way stay-at-home orders fueled racial and civil unrest across America months before a national election.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-against-covid-tests-for-the-young-and-healthy-11599151722?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School. Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Should people who aren’t sick be tested for Covid-19? In August the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention revised its guidance to suggest focusing on the elderly and patients with symptoms. One may be excused for thinking that more testing is always better, but that isn’t true. Anyone can be infected with the virus, but there is a thousandfold difference in the risk of death between the young and the old. Testing strategy should reflect that.

There is little purpose in using tests to check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school. When children are infected, most are asymptomatic, and the mortality risk is lower than for the flu. While adult-to-adult and adult-to-child transmission is common, child-to-adult transmission isn’t. Children thus pose minimal risk to their teachers. If a child has a cough, a runny nose or other respiratory symptoms, he should stay home. You don’t need a test for that.

What would routine Covid-19 testing of children accomplish? A child with no symptoms who tests positive would be sent home and deprived of an education. Enough asymptomatic cases would lead to school closures. Yet the public-health consensus is that classroom learning is important, and closures are highly detrimental. That’s especially true for working-class children, whose parents can’t afford tutors or learning “pods,” but must instead make difficult choices between supervising their children’s education and paying the bills.

Sweden was the only major Western country that kept schools open for kids 15 and younger throughout the pandemic, with no masks or mass testing. How did it turn out? Zero Covid-19 deaths among 1.8 million children attending day care or school. Teachers didn’t have an excess infection risk compared with the average of other professions.

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/09/03/prof-biden-claims-a-black-man-invented-the-light-bulb-not-a-white-guy-named-edison-n886912

Joe Biden, who claims he wants to fact-check Donald Trump in real time during the presidential debates, told a real whopper on Thursday during his visit to Kenosha.

“People fear that’s, which, that which is different. We gotta, for example, why in God’s name don’t we teach history in history classes? A black man invented the light bulb, not a white guy named Edison.”

Fact check: False.

Make no mistake about it, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Joe Biden presumably was referring to Lewis H. Latimer, a former slave who worked as a researcher under Edison, who, three years after Edison patented the incandescent light bulb, patented a more efficient way of manufacturing carbon filaments, which were used in Edison’s bulb design. Fake internet rumors have been circulating for some time now suggesting that Latimer is the actual inventor of the light bulb and even the telephone.

Apparently, fake internet rumors are where Joe Biden gets his history lessons.

https://spectator.us/nancy-pelosi-hair-salon-san-francisco-covid/
Nancy Pelosi’s visit to a hair salon, closed by law because of COVID, is one of those small incidents that illustrates a larger, more troubling problem.

It shows how insiders like Pelosi are allowed to play by a different rules than the rest of us. Worse, they think they are entitled to receive this preferential treatment. That’s what people hate, with good reason, about powerful politicians, celebrities, and billionaires.

Pelosi has plenty of company. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot visited a closed salon herself and caught some flak. Her lame excuse? Lots of people look at her. When the dangerous demonstrations that rage across the city moved toward her residential block, she deployed police to stop them. Her justification? She and her family deserve safety. They certainly do (and more than most because she represents us and is subject to more threats). But what about everybody else in Chicago? Don’t they deserve something better than broken windows, looted and boarded-up stores, free-fire zones in bad neighborhoods, and a city prosecutor who sits on her hands crying “social justice”?

In Seattle, we saw the same hypocrisy and entitlement when the city councilors who voted to defund police added extra security for themselves, at taxpayers’ expense. In New York, we saw it when celebrities coming to the Video Music Awards were allowed to skip the 14-day quarantine imposed on other travelers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/09/gov-cuomo-trump-better-have-army-walk-down-street-daniel-greenfield/

Why yes, these days you do need an army to safely walk around New York City. It’s nice of Governor Grandma Killer to warn the rest of the country.

But I don’t think that was quite his intent. 

Cuomo called an emergency press briefing within a half hour on Wednesday night to tear into Trump for the order, which cites New York’s rising murder rate and defunding of the NYPD.

“He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything to do with him,” the Democrat said, all but threatening the commander in chief.

Is Cuomo aware of what the Commander in Chief part means?

There is an army and if it weren’t still run by the Obama era leadership and assorted politically correct toadies, these riots would already be over. That said, there’s only so far you can Fort Sumter, and threatening the President of the United States, and suggesting that he needs to bring an army to be safe in New York is an unwise invitation. 

Confederate leaders used to make similar remarks about President Lincoln. That didn’t end well.

And I can’t say that I would mind seeing a march through hipster country in which BLM and its allies try to take on an actual army, instead of a bunch of overworked cops with their hands tied behind their backs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/almost-all-americas-failed-cities-are-democrat-john-perazzo/

As Marxist and anarchist radicals continue to turn Democrat-run American cities into war zones, Democrats assure us that they alone understand how the current crisis can be resolved. White House hopeful Joe Biden, for example, vows that “as President,” he “will help lead” a national “conversation” about racial justice, “and more importantly,” he “will listen” to the “anguish” of the long-forgotten “little guy.”[1]

Biden’s “little guy” narrative blends seamlessly with one of the most widely accepted claims in American political discourse today: the notion that the Democratic Party is the party that fights on behalf of the common man. We are told that Democrats in public office advocate for a wide range of policies that would improve the lives of the poorest and most powerless among us.

With regard to crime, for instance, the Democratic Party Platform declares that we need to: end the “mass incarceration” that allegedly targets nonwhite minorities; “invest more in jobs and education” than in jails; eliminate mandatory minimum sentences; “close private prisons and detention centers”; “eliminat[e] the use of cash bail” because “no one should be imprisoned merely for failing to pay fines or fees”; and “abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment.”[2]

Regarding economic matters, the official Democratic Party Platform explicitly pledges to promote “shared prosperity” by: “rais[ing] wages for working people,” “ending poverty” in “underserved communities,” and implementing “a comprehensive agenda to invest in America’s cities.”[3]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/madame-speaker-gets-a-haircut-11599088944?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Six months ago we suggested that many of the elected officials ordering economic shutdowns across the nation failed to understand the human misery they were causing. That thesis now sits atop a mountain of supporting evidence, and it would be easier to take if so many mayors weren’t caught visiting gyms, hair salons and restaurants in violation of ordinances the mayors themselves had imposed.

The news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday visited a San Francisco hair salon, against standing city ordinances, was the latest exhibition of privileged unconcern. The Speaker—a forceful proponent of the lockdown orthodoxy—is seen in a security camera video, robed and hair wet, moving from one room to another in an otherwise closed salon. In San Francisco, salons and barbershops have been closed since March. Beginning Tuesday, they could offer services but only outdoors.

The salon’s owner, Erica Kious, rents chairs to independent stylists, one of whom came in to work on the Speaker’s hair. Ms. Kious resented the presumption. “It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know,” she told a Fox News reporter, “that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work.”