RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-incurable-spenders-11586717599?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says that Congress’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill short-changed New York, but then the $177 billion blowout budget he signed recently suggests that Albany doesn’t think it has to practice any spending discipline.

The state budget is $2 billion larger than last year’s despite what Mr. Cuomo says could be a $10 billion hit to revenues this year on top of a $6 billion deficit before the coronavirus. Legislators didn’t even attempt to triage spending or rationalize priorities.

The budget authorizes a $3 billion Restore Mother Nature Bond to “adapt to the intensifying impacts of climate change, and reduce emissions.” It also includes a 7.5% refundable tax credit for green jobs and a 5% investment tax credit for green projects. Expect every New York business to claim it’s “green.”

There are also hundreds of millions of dollars of more pork for upstate New York to make up for Mr. Cuomo’s ban on fracking, which the budget made permanent. The politicians made sure to help themselves too with $100 million in public campaign financing, including up to $375,000 for state Senate candidates and $175,000 for Assembly candidates.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/no-the-united-states-does-not-lead-the-world-in-coronavirus-cases-or-deaths/

Last month, the media jumped on the news that the United States had more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any other nation. That was bogus on two fronts. First, U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China is lying about its true numbers, and reports from inside the country tell of crematoriums working around the clock and people being paid off to keep quiet.

Second, the United States does not lead the world in coronavirus cases per capita—which is the best way to compare how the pandemic is being contained in each country. For much of the pandemic, Italy has been overwhelmed by the coronavirus, but Italy has fewer cases and deaths than the United States. The United States has nearly six times the population of Italy, and when you measure cases and deaths per capita it’s easy to see why Italy was overwhelmed and the United States is not.

Here are the top six countries by confirmed cases (based on the case numbers from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as of 9:00 am ET April 12) in descending order (excluding China because their numbers are bogus):

USA (530,006)
Spain (166,019)
Italy (152,271)
France 130,730
Germany (125,452)
The United Kingdom (79,885)

Now, here are the top six countries by confirmed cases per million people (based on population numbers from the CIA World Fact Book) in descending order:

Spain (3319.33)
Italy (2440.14)
France (1926.80)
USA (1593.34)
Germany (1565.03)
United Kingdom (1214.78)

See? When looking at the number of confirmed cases compared to the population, the United States is not number one.

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

One of the main takeaways from the interview Attorney General Bill Barr did with Laura Ingraham was his saying that the Russia hoax would lead to criminal charges and would prove to be “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” Barr, however, didn’t limit himself to the Russia hoax.

In addition, Barr discussed America’s COVID-19 response and, specifically, addressed the media’s disgraceful behavior regarding hydroxychloroquine. As he said, they were temperate in talking about the drug until Trump expressed enthusiasm about it, at which point they went on a “jihad” (emphasis added):

And the politicization of decisions like hydroxychloroquine has been amazing to me. Before the president said anything about it, there was fair and balanced coverage of this very promising drug, and the fact that it had such a long track record, that the risks were pretty well known, and as soon as he said something positive about it, the media’s been on a jihad to discredit the drug, it’s quite strange.

As if to lend credence to Barr’s words, NPR’s Vanessa Romo wrote an article that implies that a Houston doctor – a Republican Houston doctor – is another Dr. Mengele, the monster of Auschwitz, because he’s giving nursing home patients the Z-Pack of Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and zinc. The jihad starts with the headline, COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home In ‘Disconcerting’ Move, and then goes on from there:

Concern is mounting after a doctor at a Texas nursing home started giving the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to dozens of elderly patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and tracking the outcomes in what he’s calling an “observational study.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/10/house-republicans-request-hearing-on-potentially-flawed-coronavirus-modeling-platforms/

Roy’s letter was cosigned by Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), James Comer (R-Ky.) and Gregory Steube (R-Fla.).

A group of House Republicans led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) are calling for a review of the “modeling platforms” the government has been using to make projections on the impacts of the coronavirus during the pandemic.

In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the Republicans urged her to schedule a “formal hearing” to review the “conflicting data” that led to draconian decisions like the stay-at-home orders across the country.

“At the forefront of decisions regarding response efforts lies our ability to understand the breadth and depth of the spread of the illness,” the Republicans wrote.

“To date, there seemingly have been two primary coronavirus modeling platforms—one from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and one from the Imperial College of London,” the letter continues.

“While widely distributed and used by many thought leaders, these models have exhibited conflicting data over time, as we all as within comparison of the models themselves,” they said. “These models have also undergone multiple wildly varying revisions, and have not seemed to account for real world behavioral changes, even demonstrating assumptions at odds with visible data in real time.”

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

 Legislation proposed by Sens. Romney and Murphy would do just that. It’s more political opportunism on the back of the pandemic. 

Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) have introduced a “Global Health Security Act” creating “a new directorate” ostensibly “empowered to press the preventative levers that can protect the nation.”  More accurately, the bill (not yet assigned a senate number at this writing) requires the U.S. to adopt and implement the World Health Organization’s “Global Health Security Agenda” (GHSA) across the government.  The GHSA includes a detailed set of “International Health Regulations” (IHR) meant to ensure prompt and effective responses to international health incidents.  The Murphy-Romney legislation will embed the IHR into U.S. health policy and ultimately into our lives and homes.

Unfortunately, those International Health Regulations have already failed in the case of COVID-19 (and to be clear, not through any fault or omission of the United States).  The IHR procedures unequivocally and explicitly required China to report immediately the existence of the outbreak and to cooperate fully and transparently in its international investigation (emphasis added):

“Notification is now based on the identification within a State Party’s territory of an ‘event that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC). This non-disease specific definition of notifiable events expands the scope of the IHR (2005) to include any novel or evolving risk to international public health…”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-ccp-virus-death-rate-stabilizing-cuomo_3308049.html

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday that deaths from COVID-19 in his state are stabilizing, but at a “horrific rate.”

Speaking at his daily briefing on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, Cuomo said that while there were encouraging signs that the dynamics of the outbreak were slowing, the death toll is stark.

“That is not an all-time high, and you can see that the number is somewhat stabilizing, but it is stabilizing at a horrific rate,” Cuomo said, noting that 783 people died from the virus in the past 24 hours, with the number of deaths ranging between 777 and 799 for each of the previous three days.

“These are just incredible numbers depicting incredible loss and pain,” he said, adding, “we mourn all those who we lost to this vicious virus.”

The pandemic has hit New York City especially hard, with 94,409 confirmed infections and 5,429 deaths, according to an NYC Health tally from April 10.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-consent-governed-authoritarian-overreach-unnecessary/

There are worse things that can happen than a pandemic.

‘An overreach by our police officers.” Yeah, I’ll say.

“Overreach” was the concession that the police department in Brighton, Colo., grudgingly offered regarding their arrest of Matt Mooney, a 33-year-old former state trooper. Mooney was handcuffed in front of his six-year-old daughter. His “crime”? Playing tee-ball with her on an empty field. Cops on the scene capriciously decided that this transgressed the state’s social-distancing restrictions.

The incident would be madness under any circumstances. But it wasn’t even true as alleged. Under the rules — which are executive edicts, not criminal laws enacted by the people’s legislative representatives — the fine print said the park was not closed to groups of fewer than five. Mooney, his wife, and their toddler were social distancing. Indeed, they were farther apart on the empty softball field than at home. It was the police who sloughed off social-distancing: physically handling him, cuffing him without wearing protective gear as unworn masks dangled from their belts, sticking this insolent criminal in the back of a squad car as they sought guidance from headquarters — because what cop wouldn’t need guidance on this one, right?

The dragnet was called off and Mooney was released after a few minutes. The state is really sorry. And its officials would love to tell us more but, you see, an internal investigation is underway so they can’t be expected to comment — just to shelter in place, hoping this lunacy slides down the memory hole but quick.

And who’s to say it won’t?

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

…or at least partial economic recovery.   As a physician, it has long been my humble opinion that a reasonable response to COVID-19 would be for our government to strongly urge anyone over 65 with medical co-morbidities to strictly stay at home, self-quarantine, and become compulsive hand-hygiene and disinfection Nazis!  And then I’d allow everyone else — with some relatively few exceptions noted below — to pretty much go about their daily lives, while continuing to voluntarily observe the commonsense protective measures we’re all very familiar with by now.

At this point in time, we have a pretty solid way to test the efficacy and safety of such an approach.  We already have a study group readily available.  For the last two-plus months, a substantial number of Americans have indeed continued to go about their daily business while observing commonsense protective measures.  An off-the-cuff list would include such people as clerical and administrative health care workers, bank workers, supermarket employees, gas station and convenience store employees, tire and auto repair shop employees, delivery service employees, truck-drivers, and utility workers — and a large number of local, state, and federal government employees.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-developed-their-coronavirus-vaccine-in-salks-shadow-11586557454?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Pittsburgh

Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine at a University of Pittsburgh lab. The deadly disease that crippled infants disappeared almost overnight, and Salk became a hero. He wasn’t Steel City’s only history-making physician. Thomas Starzl, who performed the first liver transplant in 1963, joined the Pitt faculty in 1981.

As the world faces another terrifying disease, Pitt medical scientists are again at work on a potentially revolutionary vaccine. Louis Falo and Andrea Gambotto, respectively a dermatologist and a surgeon, have developed a Covid-19 inoculation that rapidly produces large numbers of coronavirus antibodies when injected in mice. A peer-reviewed paper describing their work appeared in the journal EBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet. They await approval from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct human trials on their vaccine candidate, which is delivered via a unique skin patch containing 400 tiny needles.

“This is a collision of two stories,” Dr. Falo says. “We’ve been developing the delivery technologies for this for the past several years and working with Dr. Gambotto in trying to use the skin as the ideal target for vaccine delivery. While we were doing that, Dr. Gambotto has been working on SARS and MERS.” The two physicians’ labs are next door to each other.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-disinformation-fed-the-fbis-trump-investigation-11586548963?mod=hp_opin_pos_3

Senator Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Declassified footnotes to a Justice Department inspector general report show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation team investigating members of the Trump campaign received classified reports in 2017 identifying key pieces of the Steele dossier as products of a Russian disinformation campaign. This might be only the tip of the iceberg because other recently declassified information demonstrates that even more disinformation may have been planted in Christopher Steele’s reporting.

Let that sink in. The FBI knew that at least some of its evidence against the Trump campaign, and maybe more, was likely part of a Russian disinformation campaign—evidence from a source that was “central and essential” for getting the first FISA warrant. It isn’t clear what if anything the FBI did to determine whether their investigation was based in substantial part on Russian disinformation.

Yet the FBI assistant director in charge of the investigation, Bill Priestap, told the inspector general that as of May 2017 (when Robert Mueller took over as special counsel), the FBI “didn’t have any indication whatsoever” that their evidence was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.