RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/rep-ocasio-cortez-wants-reparations-for-minority-coronavirus-victims/

True to form, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is playing the “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” game and is calling for reparations because minorities are getting the coronavirus at a faster rate than white people.

Reparations for being sick, reparations for being a distant ancestor of a former slave, reparations for being a victim of “redlining,” reparations for business inequalities — eventually she’s going to run out of white people’s money to take.

But that won’t deter our fearless warrior queen.

New York Post:

“COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted to her 6 million followers  on Friday morning.

“Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions,” the Bronx-born lawmaker added.

“Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations,” she wrote.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/491021-how-deadly-is-the-coronavirus

“That is why random sampling is important. John Ioannidis, a Stanford epidemiologist who is famous for debunking bad research, has been pushing for it. He told me that random sampling is needed and could be done with a couple of thousand tests. When I told him that I previously worked in the polling industry, he put it in terms that resonated with me. He said, “Random representative testing is like polling. We run thousands of opinion polls in this country. We should similarly get a representative sample of the population and get them tested. It is just so easy.”

How deadly is the coronavirus? It is a simple but vital question that we don’t know the answer to right now. With American lives and livelihoods on the line, we need a science-based baseline from which to make public policy decisions. Hopefully those answers come sooner than later as the White House looks to do random sampling, something I recently reported. 

To be clear, every single life has value, and the overburdening of hospitals in places such as New York City is real and devastating. The toll on our doctors and nurses, many of whom have contracted the coronavirus by selflessly putting their own lives on the line to save others, is also real. We mourn the loss of each precious life and are in debt to the heroes on the front line.

The economic toll of shutting down nonessential businesses across the country is also real. A record-shattering 10 million Americans filing for unemployment in just two weeks and the largest bailout in United States history — $2.2 trillion — are sobering numbers that reflect the economic calamity we are facing. As government and public health officials make decisions of enormous magnitude, shouldn’t we know how infectious and lethal the coronavirus is?

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/other/491200-cdc-begins-testing-blood-for-antibody-coronavirus-treatment

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has started using antibody blood tests to confirm coronavirus infections, even among those who have not developed symptoms, Politico reported.

The test scans for antibodies in a blood sample to confirm whether a person has been exposed to the coronavirus, The New York reported. The tests, called serology tests, can help confirm whether there have been populations of U.S. residents carrying the virus across the country.

Determining how many people who come into contact with the coronavirus and do not get sick is key to understanding the spread of the pandemic, according to Politico.

The tests will focus on three groups. The first group tested will be those who were not diagnosed with the coronavirus in hot spots where the disease has multiplied across the country. This would include areas like New York City, now the epicenter of the virus in the United States. 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/03/why-is-queens-the-hotspot-of-hotspots-in-the-nations-coronavirus-crisis/

While failing to offer an honest explanation about how this disease continues to consume New York City, Cuomo nonetheless is demanding the rest of the country surrender to tyrannical and punitive government “cures” to do what he did not.

According to reports, the death toll from coronavirus-related illness in the United States, according to some sources, reached 6,000 on Thursday. The country remains in lockdown and the economy is in freefall after the White House warned this week that between 100,000 to 200,000 people will die in the United States over the next few months from the Wuhan flu.

The country’s main hotspot remains New York City. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is holding daily press briefings to riff about how we are “all in this together,” whine about the dearth of critical supplies his administration failed to secure as the crisis unfolded overseas, and wisecrack with his brother. Nearly half of all U.S. fatalities have occurred in New York state, according to tracking reports.

Cuomo insists that New York is the “tip of the spear” of COVID-19 cases; it’s only a matter of time, Cuomo predicts, before the rest of the country is under siege by the lethal virus.

But New York is not the tip of the spear—it is the spear.

As I detailed here, Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio failed to prepare for the inevitable spread of coronavirus until it was too late. There were warning signs dating back to January that the disease would sweep through certain areas of the city, endangering the lives of health care workers, state residents and people across the country.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/04/trump-derangement-syndrom-is-immune-to-the-coronavirus-and-the-facts/

Even as China’s role in creating the COVID-19 crisis becomes more clear, the left is trying to blame President Donald Trump for the resulting deaths. None of it makes sense, and all of it is beneath contempt at a time when the country is still at war with this invisible enemy.

On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union” that “The president’s denial at the beginning was deadly. His delay in getting equipment to where it’s needed is deadly … As the president fiddles, people are dying.”

Even as Pelosi was uttering this shameless screed, intelligence officials were putting the finishing touches on a report showing how China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak and has been underreporting how many contracted the disease and the number of deaths.

When that report became public, Vice President Mike Pence noted that “What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.”

State Department immunologist Dr. Deborah Birx added that “The medical community interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/03/virus_experts_early_statements_belie_prescient_portrayal_142845.html

As predictions of the coronavirus’ impact have grown more dire and the White House has belatedly acknowledged the pathogen’s repercussions on the nation, the media have increasingly sought to portray the administration as out of touch with early warnings from medical experts about the coming storm. A closer look at the public statements of those very same experts during the early weeks of the outbreak reveals that the administration’s initial reassurances were largely aligned with the assessments of the medical community.

Today Anthony Fauci is held up by the media as a national hero of the pandemic response and the only reason to listen to a White House coronavirus briefing. Yet, rewind the clock back to January and his public statements essentially mirrored those of the administration.

On Jan. 21, he emphasized that it was unclear whether the virus could spread from person to person: “Is it a continual spread? Is it sustained? We’re not quite sure yet.” A University of Minnesota expert offered that “this is one of those inflection moments in outbreak history where we have enough information to be very concerned, but not enough information to say this is going to be an international crisis.”

In a Jan. 23 Journal of the American Medical Association podcast, Dr. Fauci repeatedly downplayed the virus’ potential impact on the U.S., noting that all five cases here were travelers from China. He also noted that due to limited testing in China, the number of infections was likely much higher than official counts, meaning that the death rate of the virus was likely much lower than feared.

Asked whether the U.S. might contemplate city-wide shutdowns like those China was enacting at the time, Fauci replied, “There’s no chance in the world that we could do that to Chicago or to New York or to San Francisco, but they’re doing it.  So, let’s see what happens.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/the_time_has_come_for_some_answers_about_the_coronavirus_pandemic.html

How much does the general public really know about the Chinese Coronavirus?  What is the death rate solely attributable to the virus?  Of those that have died, how many had serious underlying conditions?  Do the reported deaths include those who died of other ailments but had also contracted the virus?  What is the actual age breakdown of fatalities?  The CDC claims that this virus is extraordinarily contagious; how much of a threat to spread the virus to others are those who are asymptomatic (have the virus but report no symptoms) yet are still contagious?

Since the Chinese Communist Party has refused to fully share their actual experience with the world, including the death toll, one has to turn to other sources.  There are presently two primary sources that can be analyzed: Italy and New York City.

As of April 1, 2020, Italy had recorded 13,100 deaths (4.3% of its recorded cases).  By far the highest number in the world, if China’s extremely dubious 3,300 deaths can be believed.  87% of all the deaths in Italy have occurred among those over 70.

It is generally acknowledged that not only does Italy have the oldest median population in Europe but also among the unhealthiest due to smoking and air pollution in Northern Italy, the epicenter of their coronavirus outbreak.  Further, its medical care system is among the worst in Europe and overstretched even in the best of times.

As to how they have categorized the death toll, Professor Walter Ricciardi, Advisor to the Italian Ministry of Health:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/up-from-expertise/

Scientists must ultimately address the threat of the virus, but they cannot solve the immediate problem of mobilizing the country against it.

The political-opinion factory has moved from downplaying the coronavirus outbreak to haranguing the president for his alleged dismissal of science. The New York Times’s Paul Krugman charges not just Trump but the Republican Party as a whole with cultivating “an attitude of disdain toward expertise.” Never mind that the president and the media have taken a similar trajectory during this crisis — from dismissal to alertness to panic — while others on the right, such as Tom Cotton, sounded the alarm from the beginning. The underlying assumption that experts alone can resolve this crisis is wrong.

For one, a monolithic expert opinion on the present pandemic does not exist. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerged only three months ago; scientists haven’t had nearly enough time to conduct conclusive research into it. And constraints on testing, compounded by uncertainty as to the number of asymptomatic cases, make the current medical data largely unreliable.

While some epidemiologists have used previous flu pandemics to inform their thinking, that approach requires rough estimates of factors such as reproduction and fatality rates, leading to wide variance in projections. To take one example, Oxford University researchers found that as much as 40 percent of the U.K. might be immune to the novel coronavirus, while a team from Imperial College London projected more than 250,000 domestic deaths, even under strict social-distancing measures. For all their sophistication, computational tools rely on inputs that are difficult to observe in real time.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/03/trumps-move-to-ease-fuel-efficiency-rules-will-save-money-and-also-save-lives/

President Donald Trump’s decision to slow the huge increases in fuel-efficiency standards put in place by the Obama administration in 2012 was met with derision and scorn by green groups, the big media and others on the left. In fact, it’s a wise move, one that will save Americans money, but more importantly, will save lives.

Trump’s action is perfectly timed. With the economy in turmoil from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, automakers will not have the means to retool, research and revamp their car lines to obey President Barack Obama’s absurdly stringent rules. Auto sales are now plunging.

Obama’s rules would have required automakers to push the Corporate Average Fuel Economy from 25.3 miles per gallon per vehicle in 2012 to 54.5 mpg by 2025. To do that, fuel efficiency had to increase about 5% a year.

Contrary to complaints in the media of Trump’s “rollback” of standards, all the new rules do is reduce the fuel efficiency gains required to 1.5% a year, rather than the unreachable 5%. So the U.S. fleet average will be 40 mpg, not 54.5, by 2025. Even so, that will still be 28% higher than Obama’s rules.

More importantly, automakers strained to meet the Obama requirements, forced to radically downsize cars and create a money-losing electric-car fleet that still requires subsidies even to exist.

Of course, everyone likes clean air. But our fuel-efficiency standards didn’t start out with that as their goal. In fact, America’s fuel-efficiency standards got their start in 1975 as a way to mitigate the impact of the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo. At the time, with oil prices surging, inflation raging and increasingly worthless dollars flooding global oil markets, it seemed like a good idea.