RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-point-of-care-rapid-test

In June 1981, the rapid-response newsletter of the Center for Disease Control, the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, published news of an unusual pneumonia in otherwise healthy young men in Los Angeles. It would take four years from those first recorded cases of AIDS to the first FDA-approved test for HIV, and over a decade before the first rapid test. And so, if just a year ago, any of my colleagues had told me that we could have a point-of-care rapid test after mere months of a new pathogen’s emergence, I would have regarded it as hopelessly optimistic.

Yet that is what the first-of-its-kind alliance between the U.S. biotechnology industry and the federal government has delivered. Just four months after the emergence of Covid-19, a dizzying array of tests is available to patients, physicians, and researchers. The initial tests, dependent on identifying the viral genome, have now been supplanted by much faster, much less expensive antibody tests. Unlike genomic tests, which require laboratory equipment and take several hours to complete, the new antibody-based tests are portable, and some don’t require any special materials other than saline. The antibody tests may answer questions not only about a patient’s current state but also about whether he has been exposed in the past by measuring antibodies that the immune system creates in response to the coronavirus. Finally, just today, the FDA announced that it is granting authorization for the first Covid-19 test that can be taken at home, affording an opportunity for many people in at-risk groups who have forgone testing up to now. By all measures, the emergency regime set up by the FDA has opened the floodgates of innovation on one of the most vexing problems of responding to a viral outbreak, and with great success.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/1-in-5-new-york-city-residents-infected-with-ccp-virus-antibody-testing-shows_3324032.html

Preliminary results from antibody testing in New York state found a 13.9 percent infection rate, officials announced Thursday, suggesting 2.7 million in the state have been infected by the CCP virus.

People who test positive are believed to have had the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, in the past. Some patients with virus never show symptoms and have no idea they were infected. Experts believe past infection could make people immune to the virus, though that theory has not been confirmed.

Preliminary results from 3,000 tests carried out across 19 New York counties found 13.9 percent of those tested have antibodies against COVID-19. But that figure climbed to 21.2 percent in New York City and dropped to 3.6 percent in counties outside the city, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties.

The percent positive on Long Island was 16.7 percent and 11.7 percent in Westchester and Rockland counties combined.

Forty three percent of those tested were in New York City, 14.4 percent were on Long Island, 9.8 percent were in Westchester and Rockland counties, and 32.8 percent of them were in the rest of the state.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/23/looks-like-trump-was-right-about-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate/

Two new studies suggest that President Trump was right in early March when he guessed the fatality rate for coronavirus is under 1 percent.

In early March, President Donald Trump was lambasted for saying on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that he had a hunch the coronavirus fatality rate, which the World Health Organization pegged then at 3 to 4 percent, was in fact much lower, under 1 percent. Many commentators, myself included pointed out that the beginning of a pandemic medical crisis was not the time to be floating hunches. But, as we always knew was possible, it looks now like the president might well have been right.

New data from random antibody tests conducted in New York State suggest that as many as 2.7 million people statewide have had the coronavirus. That along with the just over 15,000 deaths that have occurred leads to a fatality rate for the virus of .5 percent according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Here is what Trump said on March 4:

“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor.”

He went on to say:

“I think that that number (the WHO number) is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

Democrats and media pundits blasted Trump for spreading “misinformation.”

While this data is preliminary, it is backed up by another study in Los Angeles that found 40 times more people had carried the virus then were previously known. This dropped the fatality rate in LA from 4.5 percent to .1-.3 percent.

It is difficult to stress how important these findings are. The 5-week lockdown that has destroyed the American economy was put in place by contemplating what looks to be rather absurd numbers by the WHO.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/22/the-chinese-coronavirus-is-this-generations-tiananmen-test/

We are suffering a catastrophe of the Chinese Communist Party’s making. It must be held accountable, made to pay for the destruction it has caused, putting every lever of American power on the table to ensure it.

Observers of the Chinese coronavirus crisis have cast it, with good reason, as a potential Chernobyl for General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party regime.

America, too, is faced with a challenge with relevant historical parallels, separate and apart from the wartime comparisons regarding the mobilization and sacrifices of our countrymen.

As with the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, we are once again at an inflection point in our relationship with China, faced with the carnage caused most directly by a malevolent CCP.

The Chinese coronavirus crisis may well represent this generation’s Tiananmen Square test.

The test is as follows: With the CCP inflicting incalculable costs in blood and treasure through its unique role in spreading the coronavirus, and its related menacing behavior, will we demand reparations, or will we let the regime off scot-free, emboldening it, and encouraging it to act with impunity and still more reckless abandon in its quest for hegemony going forward?

We failed this test in 1989.

Then, when presented with the image of “Tank Man,” we did something even worse than turning our back on him. Our immediate response to the CCP’s massacre of democracy protesters was toothless. But ultimately, we proceeded still further to embrace the Communist regime, effectively rewarding its villainy by integrating it into the global economic, financial, and geopolitical system.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/22/the-deadly-costs-of-extended-shutdown-orders/

The focus on saving “just one life” from the coronavirus to the exclusion of all other considerations likely will prove a catastrophic failure of policymaking. The devastation to individuals’ ability to flourish or even survive may soon become irreversible.

More than a dozen governors extended their economic shutdown orders recently into May and beyond. Those officials should have publicly addressed the following questions first:

How many coronavirus deaths do you expect to avert by the shut-down extension?
What will your state’s economy look like after another month of enforced stasis?
How many workers will have lost their jobs?
How many businesses will have closed for good?
How many of your state’s young residents, seeking employment for the first time, will be unable to find it?

Instead, the announcements of the prolonged shutdown were representative of government decision-making during the coronavirus crisis: opaque, lacking in criteria for measuring success and failure, and bereft of any attempt to measure the benefits of mitigating one particular health problem against the costs—including other health problems.

New York’s tele-ubiquitous governor, Andrew Cuomo, for example, announced on April 15 that New York’s economy would now be shut down through May 15, instead of reopening on April 29, as previously scheduled. How did he arrive at May 15? It is a mystery. Other governors had just as inscrutably chosen May 3, May 4, May 8, May 20, or June 10 for their extensions.

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

“It is not President Trump who has fallen short in doing his job. Rather, it is Governor Cuomo and his sidekick Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City.”

Many Americans have witnessed daily briefings in which New York State’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, makes repeated demands of the President and exploits his moment in the sun by condemning the President and even maligning him. Instead of constantly complaining, it’s about time Cuomo apologized to President Trump and to those Americans across the country who specifically helped NYC during her time of need. It is not President Trump who has fallen short in doing his job, rather governor Cuomo and his side-kick Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City.

Three weeks ago Cuomo was demanding ventilators, masks, gowns, and hospital beds.  He made no demands of himself, rather of the President. But now many are asking why the governor had not spent his many years in office accumulating the supplies needed for the emergencies and epidemics that surely transpire. In President Trump’s desire to help the country and specifically the state where he was born and raised, Mr. Trump did not haggle over the question of whose responsibility it is to take care of state needs, but instead dove headlong to supply what New York needed. While Cuomo spent his days grandstanding and pontificating, and alternating his made-for-TV attire between informal leather jackets one day, blazers the next, presidential suits, and then sweaters, Mr. Trump was marshaling and corralling every force in this country and around the globe to provide the needs of New York state. Cuomo always looks well rested while Mr. Trump, the heroic workhorse, looks exhausted. We now know why: one is playing soap-opera governor while the other is a minute-by-minute, indefatigable President.

Mr. Cuomo is never satisfied. Like a spoiled prince he upped the ante every time the President fulfilled Cuomo’s previous demands. Cuomo spoke of 4,000 ventilators, then 30,000 ventilators, then possibly a million ventilators. The governor of New York had the luxury of extrapolating his demands because it was not he, rather President Trump, who was personally bearing and shouldering the supply-chain responsibility.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/22/even-the-manipulated-senate-intel-report-cant-hide-fbi-spies-and-lies/

A close reading of the report—or at least those portions of the report that could be read—cements the reality that the FBI intentionally snowed the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump.

On April 21, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report on its review of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) drafted for President Barack Obama on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Corporate media immediately touted the Republican-controlled committee’s finding that “the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” including by hacking Democratic National Committee emails, as vindication of the intelligence communities’ handling of all things Russia. But a close reading of the report—or at least those portions of the report that could be read—instead cements the reality that the FBI intentionally snowed the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump.

After Trump’s surprise election, then-President Obama directed “CIA Director John Brennan to conduct a review of all intelligence relating to Russian involvement in the 2016 election and produce a single comprehensive assessment.” With Brennan at the helm, the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and FBI compiled a report for Obama, which the FBI insisted include the now-discredited Christopher Steele dossier.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/congresswoman-on-panel-overseeing-virus-payouts-admits-failure-to-disclose-stock-sales_3322899.html

Shalala was also president of Hunter College, and chancellor of University of Wisconsin….and she “misunderstood” the ethical lapse?  Oh Puleez…. rsk

A U.S. representative named to a panel overseeing a portion of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill admitted she failed to disclose stock sales while in Congress, a violation of federal law.

Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), elected in 2019 after serving as the president of the Clinton Foundation, called what happened a “mistake.”

Under the STOCK Act, members of Congress are required to report stock transactions. But Shalala made a number of sales last year and didn’t report them.

“I missed the deadlines. But I was doing the opposite of insider trading I was getting rid of any conflict of interest in the process. I was unloading the entire portfolio so I could put everything in mutuals and ETFs so I could avoid any conflict of interest,” Shalala told CBS Miami.

“I apologize for them. It was my mistake. And I take full responsibility.”

The lawmaker, who headed the Department of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, said she knew about the STOCK Act, describing herself as a strong supporter of the law.

But a spokesman sounded a different tune, describing what happened as a “misunderstanding.”

“She had a misunderstanding about the periodic transaction report process and her need to report the sale of these stocks while preparing a blind trust,” Shalala spokesperson Carlos Condarco told the Miami Herald. “As a new member with a broker and attorney who were not familiar with the congressional disclosure rules, there was a misunderstanding.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/va-chief-hydroxychloroquine-has-been-working-against-covid-19_3322683.html

The anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has been working in COVID-19 patients, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said on Wednesday.

Wilkie’s comments come after a study looking at the effects of the drug in 368 patients in Veterans Health Administration hospitals found no evidence the drug is effective against COVID-19, a new disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Responding to the results during an appearance on MSNBC, Wilkie said, “That’s an observational study. It’s not a clinical study. It was done on a small number of veterans; sadly, those of whom were in the last stages of life, and the drug was given to them.”

The drug “has been working on middle-age and younger veterans,” Wilkie added. By that, he meant that it was “stopping the progression of” COVID-19.

The study in question can help inform doctors who are caring for veterans who have the CCP virus, Wilkie said.