RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/florida-evidence-based-reopening-working

For a moment in April, the Internet tried to cancel Florida. Photos showing crowds flocking to Jacksonville Beach amid the Covid-19 pandemic brought the hashtag #FloridaMorons to the top of Twitter. The media eagerly spun scenes of ignorant spring breakers endangering themselves and others. Nearly two months after America’s first case of coronavirus, here was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, joining neighboring state Georgia’s “experiment in human sacrifice” by letting locals lift restrictions on their own.

Nearly a month later, Jacksonville’s Duval County reports new Covid-19 hospitalizations in the single digits. Rates of hospitalizations, cases, and deaths remain steady across Florida. So far, fewer Floridians have died of the novel coronavirus than in New York’s nursing homes alone (2,259 compared with 5,800, at least). More than half of the state’s known cases of Covid-19 are found in just four South Florida counties—the top out-of-state destinations for fleeing New Yorkers. As Politico recently concluded, “Florida just doesn’t look nearly as bad as the national news media and sky-is-falling critics have been predicting for about two months now.”

There’s still a lot that we don’t know about mitigating Covid-19, but Florida’s approach—a decentralized health response with targeted lockdowns and quarantines reinforced by voluntary social distancing—appears to have worked. Other populous states adopting this approach, such as Tennessee, have seen similar success. Governor DeSantis’s experience suggests that it is possible to keep a lid on the coronavirus even while gradually reopening.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-does-the-cdc-think-the-covid-19-fatality-rate-is-so-low-and-why-wont-it-tell-anyone/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm

Last week I was searching the Internet for some COVID-19 statistic or other, and I came across a new CDC website. The site featured some numbers the federal government is using to model the spread of the epidemic. One in particular caught my eye: 0.4 percent, the “current best estimate” of the disease’s “case fatality rate.” The document also said that 35 percent of infections are asymptomatic, which suggests the infection fatality rate is just 0.26 percent.

These numbers struck me as low for several reasons. For one thing, the virus has already killed 0.2 percent of all New Yorkers, and obviously a much higher percentage of those who’ve actually been infected in the city. For another, if we’ve had 100,000 deaths nationwide and a CFR of 0.4 percent, that means we’ve had 25 million symptomatic cases; including cases without symptoms, more than 10 percent of the entire country has been infected, which seems out of sync with what we’re hearing from serology tests. Individual studies and reviews of the evidence tend to put the infection fatality rate somewhere around 0.5 to 1 percent, though there’s at least one dissenting review that puts it lower (while managing not to include any studies finding a fatality rate above 0.5 percent, of which there are plenty).

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/28/just-how-exaggerated-is-the-covid-19-death-count/

As the “official” tally of COVID-19 deaths tops 100,000 in the U.S., we keep hearing how that number is likely a low-ball estimate. But there’s far more evidence that the death count has been knowingly exaggerated – possibly by a very wide margin.

A recent Seattle Times article pretty much lays out the charade going on.

The headline reads: “Washington state’s actual coronavirus death toll may be higher than current tallies, health officials say.”

But the story itself leads one to the exact opposite conclusion.

Well down in the article, the reporter reveals that:

“The rapid onslaught of this coronavirus forced officials to part from their normal process of counting deaths. … Their goal was to get the data out as quickly as possible, ‘in near-real time so immediate decisions could be made to protect the health of Washingtonians.’”

The story goes on to say that the state’s dashboard “reflects anyone who died, that tested positive for COVID, irrespective of cause of death.” (Emphasis added.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/coronavirus-pandemic-us-death-toll-passes-100000/

More than 100,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the U.S. as of Wednesday, with almost 1,700,000 infections confirmed throughout the country.

As of May 22, 43 percent of coronavirus victims were residents of nursing homes or assisted-living facilities, according to an analysis conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. In the state of New Jersey alone, one-tenth of all long-term care residents in nursing homes have died during the pandemic.

The state of New York, which has seen over 5,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes, along with New Jersey and Michigan, have compelled nursing homes to readmit coronavirus patients discharged from the hospital. That policy stood in contrast to Florida, where state health officials worked to keep coronavirus patients out of nursing homes. At least 650 Florida nursing home residents have died of coronavirus.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-claims-obligation-is-on-the-nursing-homes-to-reject-covid-patients-despite-his-march-order-prohibiting-testing/?utm_

New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said that nursing homes are obligated to transfer coronavirus patients if they cannot provide “adequate care.”

“The obligation is on the nursing home to say, I can’t take a COVID-positive person,” Cuomo said at a press conference. “The regulation is common sense: if you can’t provide adequate care, you can’t have the patient in your facility and that’s your basic fiduciary obligation — I would say, ethical obligation — and it’s also your legal obligation.”

Cuomo’s March 25 executive order forbid nursing homes from rejecting Covid-positive patients or even testing prospective patients for Covid after they were released from the hospital.

“No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. [Nursing homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission,” the order states.

New York health commissioner Howard Zucker said at the Wednesday press briefing that he was not aware if the state’s Health Department had received any requests from nursing homes to transfer coronavirus patients to other facilities.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/499586-new-fbi-document-confirms-the-trump-campaign-was-investigated-without

Late last week the FBI document that started the Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was publicly released. It hasn’t received a lot of attention but it should, because not too long from now this document likely will be blown up and placed on an easel as Exhibit A in a federal courtroom.

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, will rightly point out that the document that spawned three years of political misery fails to articulate a single justifiable reason for starting the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.  

Those of us who have speculated there was insufficient cause for beginning the investigation could not have imagined the actual opening document was this feeble. It is as if it were written by someone who had no experience as an FBI agent.

Keep in mind the FBI cannot begin to investigate anyone, especially a U.S. citizen or entity, without first creating a document that lists the reasonably suspicious factors that would legally justify the investigation. That’s FBI 101, taught Day 1 at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va.

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below (if you would like to follow along, the document is here):

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/advice-to-keep-d-c-schools-closed-until-theres-a-vaccine-proves-weve-been-gaslit/

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is advising D.C.’s mayor not to fully reopen schools until there’s a vaccine for COVID-19.

“The idea is at least in Stage 1 to have distance learning…but then over the next 2 stages….we would slowly begin to bring students in,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday. Eventually, schools would “basically reopen but in a very measured and deliberate way.”

D.C faces unique challenges, Chertoff explains, given that people from all over the world visit for work and can be vectors for transmission. He didn’t explain how outbreak mitigation efforts are served in any significant way by keeping schools closed to children, who are not only local but at extremely low risk for becoming seriously ill from the disease and are, contact tracing studies show, less likely to spread it.

But we can no longer expect scientific explanations for such absurd recommendations, much less why pandemic mission creep has gone unchecked over the past two months. I’m sure the Homeland Security secretary under George Bush would know nothing about that.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/legal-scholars-embarrass-themselves-in-pompous-letter-attacking-michael-flynn/

Twenty legal luminaries led by Harvard professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case.

Twenty legal luminaries calling themselves “Separation of Powers Scholars” and led by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case and to proceed to sentencing.

The brief is a shoddy piece of work. It tells little about the Flynn case, even misleading on that score, but it triggers disturbing ruminations about the sad state of current legal academia.

How We Got Here

Here’s a quick review of the case. For more detail, visit the roster of documents compiled by Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell.

Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, was charged with lying to the FBI. After great pressure was put on him in threats of extensive jail time, possible indictments of his son, and financial ruin from lawyers’ fees, he, advised by the D.C. establishment firm of Covington and Burling (headed by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder), agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a government recommendation of no jail time.

$100 billion+ of your taxpayer dollars will be funding this behemoth effort – an army of contact tracers.Malkin (Jewish World Review) asks some poignant questions and makes a few astute observations:

1) What happens when “experts” get diagnoses and assessments wrong? 2) Is this an opt-in or opt-out intrusion into your life? 3) What about built-in privacy considerations?  MTX, the software company with a mega contract to monitor vaccinations, treatment and testing, has already expanded into monitoring jobless claims and childcare facilities.  What’s next?4) Big Pharma and other businesses now have access to your previously protected personal health care information.5) Texas governor, Greg Abbott failed to provide advanced notice to the state legislature of the almost $300 million MTX deal (funded by taxpayer dollars). Janet Levy,

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/27/cashing_in_on_contact_tracing_143298.html

Ca$hing In on Contact Tracing-Michelle Malkin

Look out. An “army of contact tracers” is about to be unleashed on America. Corporations, political lobbyists and government bureaucracies all win. Privacy, freedom and family autonomy all lose. Big time.

You may have already heard of the aptly named House Bill 6666, sponsored by Illinois Dem. Bobby Rush. Known as the Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, the legislation would allocate $100 billion in public funding to “eligible entities” to “conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals’ residences, and for other purposes.”

The cash could be used to hunt down infected individuals, quarantine them in their homes for undefined periods under unknown conditions and subsidize a hiring spree of untold thousands of trackers from nonprofits, schools and medical facilities.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/26/smoothing-the-bumpy-road-to-reopening/

It is clearly past time to rein in the baseless, arbitrary restrictions that have been imposed by some politicians, as they can only inspire disrespect and non-compliance.

Every day seems to bring some new, unexpected, unpleasant revelation about the SARS-CoV-2 and the illness it causes, COVID-19. 

The infection has a long, often asymptomatic incubation period, high transmissibility, the ability to infect many human tissues, and, frequently, rapid deterioration of the clinical course. Some curious aspects of the infection, such as long duration of symptoms, multi-organ involvement, blood clots, and patients’ ability to tolerate extremely low blood oxygen levels have put critical care doctors on a steep learning curve, trying to understand how best to keep patients from falling off a cliff.

If the clinical aspects of the disease have been difficult to catalog and manage, the public health considerations have been equally vexing. We know enough now, however, to offer improved guidance for setting public health policy. Rather than using projections of cases and fatalities to guide policy decisions, the focus should be on the granular level of how the virus physically spreads. It is time to relegate the COVID-19 epidemiological models primarily to projecting required hospital and ventilator capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment.  

Based on a survey recently in New York, it appears that a very high percentage of new cases can be traced to individuals’ homes and to care facilities such as nursing homes. The survey found that 83 percent of new cases came from unemployed or retired individuals who are largely sheltered in place, while almost a quarter (22 percent) of these cases originated in long term care facilities. In the nation overall, 11 percent of COVID-19 cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, while deaths from the infection in long-term care facilities account for more than one-third of the country’s pandemic fatalities.