How George Soros’s Marijuana Advocacy Makes the COVID-19 Panic Worse By Rachel Ehrenfeld

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/how_george_soross_marijuana_advocacy_makes_the_covid19_panic_worse.html

George Soros’s first major effort to reshape America was undertaking the legitimization of illegal drug use, especially marijuana.  Soros initially said his overarching goal was to promote informed discussion of drug policy.  But debate and discussion are not his style and were not his objects.  Instead, he used his resources to fund think-tanks, foundations, and public policy action groups that successfully muddled public opinion enough to change public laws, making illegal drug use legal.

In the early 1990s, the notion of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. was unthinkable and unacceptable.  The voices to legalize drugs were marginal and not in sync.  This changed in 1993, when Soros, who claimed that prohibitionist drug policies are wrong because they contradict his vision of the “Open Society,” launched a $15-million pro–drug legalization propaganda campaign that has made him the new darling of the media left.  Soros and his acolytes have garnered enormous press attention through a barrage of magazine articles, op-ed pieces, and television appearances.  By 1996, the slogans of “medicalization” and “compassion” joined “legalization” and “decriminalization,” as well as “nonviolent drug offender.”  All of these were shaping the vocabulary of the public dialogue.  Soros’s sponsorship provided the credibility theretofore lacking in the movement to legalize drugs.

Obama Frets About Trump’s ‘Climate Denial’ Amid Coronavirus Pandemic By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/chicken-little-obama-frets-about-trumps-climate-denial-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/

On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama ripped into President Donald Trump’s decision to loosen environmental standards, comparing “climate denial” to the original skepticism officials expressed at reports of the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, in the midst of a pandemic that is choking the economic life out of this country, Obama focused on climate change.

Obama shared an article from The Los Angeles Times entitled, “Trump rolls back biggest U.S. effort to combat climate change.” The article details Trump’s move to loosen fuel efficiency standards as the oil and gas industry struggles with extremely low prices amid an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. This oil war has hit companies particularly hard during the coronavirus crisis. Obama instituted the higher standards in 2012 and he likely sees this move as a blow to his legacy.

Trump Destroys Connecticut Governor’s Claim the Strategic National Stockpile Has Been Emptied By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-destroys-connecticut-governors-claim-the-strategic-national-stockpile-has-been-emptied/

Ned Lamont, the Democrat governor of Connecticut, claimed on Tuesday that the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies is now empty and alleged that the state is now on its own in securing ventilators and masks to fight the coronavirus pandemic without the help of the federal government.

“It was disturbing today to find out that the national strategic stockpile is now empty. We did get 50 ventilators, for which I am very thankful,” Governor Lamont said. “For now we are on our own. For now, we are doing the best to scour the globe for PPE (personal protective equipment) as best we can.”

This, it turns out, was not true. President Trump was asked about Lamont’s claim during the Coronavirus Task Force press briefing, and he explained what’s really happening.

“It’s not emptied, let me explain something. What we’re doing […] rather than having it brought into the stockpile, where appropriate […] we’re trying to have supplies sent directly to the states,” Trump explained. “Because we don’t want medical supplies coming into warehouses all over the place and then we take them from there and bring them to another warehouse. So we’re having them brought, ideally, from the manufacturer directly to the hospital or the state where it’s going.”

Israel Gives Palestinians Desperately Needed COVID-19 Aid, Gets Bizarre Blood Libels in Return By P. David Hornik

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/israel-gives-palestinians-desperately-needed-covid-19-aid-gets-bizarre-blood-libels-in-return/

Israel has been providing the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza with crucial aid against the coronavirus—not simply out of love and charity, but because populations in such close proximity to each other have a mutual interest in tackling the problem. Israel fears the security implications of a meltdown of Palestinian society in either or both enclaves, which could result in massive rocket fire or large numbers of desperate people storming Israel’s borders.

For now, the aid and cooperation have prompted even the United Nations, known for obsessive and severely disproportionate criticism of Israel, to sing the praises of the Jewish state.

The Palestine branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—not considered one of Israel’s greatest fans—reported that the Israeli and Palestinian Authority ministries of health, along with Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), have been meeting regularly.

“As part of this effort,” the UN agency said, “COGAT is facilitating four trainings for Palestinian medical teams, while the Israeli [Health Ministry] donated over 1,000 testing kits and thousands of PPEs [Personal Protective Equipment] to the West Bank and Gaza.”

Did CDC’s Focus on Social Justice Reduce Its Readiness? Adam Mill

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/30/did-cdcs-focus-on-social-justice-reduce-its-readiness/

The Centers for Disease Control should spend its money and time fighting disease, not playing politics.

You had one job, CDC: to prepare America to combat infectious disease. It’s a sign of what’s happened to the government generally over the last 20 years, that CDC used its resources to advance left-leaning agendas instead of focusing on positioning itself to fight infectious disease. 

We’ve seen the headlines blaming the president for the lack of readiness in response to the outbreak. In mid-March, the Guardian reported, “Trump’s staff cuts have undermined Covid-19 containment efforts.” You can find other such headlines here, here, and here. 

Most of these accusations are either completely untrue or wild distortions of the facts. The get-Trump media are so obsessively politicized that much of the coverage of the virus has been corrupted in the same way that Russian collusion coverage was so unreliable. PJ Media, for example, published this list of the “Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus.” 

Lost in the debate over whether CDC had enough money to prepare for the crisis is this critical question: What was the CDC doing with the money it already had?

Why, for example, is the CDC spending resources to study transgender health? There are 2,287 search results for “transgender” within the CDC website. The CDC published the following guidance for LGBT youth: 

It’s Not The Federal Government’s Fault New York Doesn’t Have More Ventilators, It’s Andrew Cuomo’s Once again, government intrusion into the health-care sector has proved disastrous. By Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/30/its-not-the-federal-governments-fault-new-york-doesnt-have-more-ventilators-its-andrew-cuomos/

While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blames the president and the federal government for the lack of beds and ventilators in his state, the power to determine the number of these critical medical supplies in New York hospitals falls squarely upon the shoulders of the governor.

During a Tuesday press conference, Cuomo lashed out at the federal government for not sending enough ventilators as the Wuhan coronavirus continues to rattle the state. “Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo said. “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators?” The state is projecting it will need approximately 140,000 beds in 14 to 21 days, which is higher than its previous estimation of 110,000 beds by early to mid-May.

However, New York, along with 35 other states and the District of Columbia, have in place what are known as certificate-of-need (CON) laws. According to Reason, “Their stated purpose is to keep hospitals from overspending, and thus from having to charge higher prices to make up for unnecessary outlays of capital costs. But in practice, they mean hospitals must get a state agency’s permission before offering new services or installing a new medical technology. Depending on the state, everything from the number of hospital beds to the installation of a new MRI machine could be subject to CON review.”

Feds Find Smuggling Tunnel Linking San Diego to Tijuana, Seize $29 Million in Drugs By Mairead McArdle

The tunnel extends more than 2,000 feet underground from a warehouse in Tijuana to a warehouse in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego. Authorities found an estimated $29.6 million in drugs in the tunnel, seizing 1,300 pounds of cocaine, 86 pounds of methamphetamine, 17 pounds of heroin, 3,000 pounds of marijuana and more than two pounds of fentanyl.

Investigators estimated the passageway is several months old based on “advanced construction” in parts of the tunnel, including reinforced walls, ventilation, lighting and an underground rail system. U.S. investigators worked with the Fiscalia General de la Republica and Secretaria de la Defensa Naciona to find the tunnel’s entrance on the Mexico side.

The discovery comes two months after authorities in January discovered the “longest cross-border tunnel” yet in the same area, a 4,309-foot passage running from Tijuana to San Diego.
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“Despite the current COVID-19 pandemic, DEA employees continue to work tirelessly to serve and protect the community,” DEA special agent in charge John W. Callery said in a statement.

“I hope this sends a clear message that despite the ongoing public health crisis, [Homeland Security Investigations] and our law enforcement partners will remain resilient and continue to pursue criminal organizations responsible for the cross-border smuggling of narcotics into the United States,” Homeland Security Investigations San Diego acting special agent in charge Cardell T. Morant said.

Coronavirus: The California Herd By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-california-herd-immunity/

By now, California should be, as predicted in so many models, ground zero of infection.

T he bluest state’s public officials have been warning for weeks that California will be overwhelmed, given federal-government unpreparedness and the purported inefficacy of the local, state, and federal governments.

California governor Gavin Newsom has assured his state that over half of the population — or, in his words, 56 percent — will soon be infected. That is, more than 25 million coronavirus cases are on the horizon, which, at the virus’s current fatality rate of 1–2 percent (the ratio of deaths to known positive cases), would mean that the state should anticipate 250,000–500,000 dead Californians in the near future. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti predicted that this week Los Angeles would be short of all sorts of medical supplies as the epidemic killed many hundreds, as is the case in New York City.

It’s been well over two months since the first certified coronavirus case in the United States, so one might expect to see early symptoms of the apocalypse recently forecast by Governor Newsom. Yet a number of California’s top doctors, epidemiologists, statisticians, and biophysicists — including Stanford’s John Ioannides, Michael Levitt, Eran Bendavid, and Jay Bhattacharya — have expressed some skepticism about the bleak models predicting that we are on the verge of a statewide or even national lethal pandemic of biblical proportions.

Fauci offers more conservative death rate in academic article than in public virus briefings By Sharyl Attkisson

http://stupidfrogs.org/articles/fauci_offers_more_conservative_death_rate_in_academic_article_thatn_in_public_briefings.html

You’ve probably heard that COVID-19 is far deadlier than the flu. But it could turn out to be more akin to a severe flu season. Surprisingly, both of those assessments come from the same authority at the same time: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s chief infectious disease specialist.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly cited more jarring figures in public. For instance, Fauci declared in March 11 congressional testimony that the current coronavirus “is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,” which would be about 1 percent. His testimony generated news headlines that blared across the internet and television news, and it remains frequently cited today.

But among his learned colleagues in academia, he has provided the more conservative analysis.

“[T]he case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%,” Fauci wrote in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 26. “This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.” 

Haredi statistics show that social distancing works They have served unwittingly as a control group in the experiment to combat the pandemic. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/haredi-statistics-show-that-social-distancing-works/

The carry-on about the dangerous spread of COVID-19 within the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community in Israel is understandable. While the rest of us are cooped up at home, with increasingly severe limitations on our freedom of movement, certain ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods have been conducting business as usual.

Indeed, the contrast between Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood and the city of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv with the shuttered shops and empty playgrounds of cities from Metula to Eilat naturally causes rage on the part of a populace forced to comply with regulations aimed at flattening the curve of the coronavirus. Video footage from a funeral in Bnei Brak this past Saturday night—attended by masses of members of an extreme haredi sect all huddled together, yet not arrested by police for ignoring the two-meter-apart rule—elicited furious reactions from secular and religious Israelis alike.

For the past month, health officials have bemoaned the situation in the nation’s hospitals and warned that the exponential rise in infection, due to the incredibly contagious nature of the virus, would result in disaster. More specifically, it would lead to a situation in which the number of patients requiring ventilation outweighed the equipment. At such a point, doctors would face dilemmas about which people to put on respirators. It is imperative—the authorities tell us ad nauseam—for everyone to comply. No exceptions.