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What the coronavirus numbers are telling us By Richard Baehr

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/what_the_coronavirus_numbers_are_telling_us.html

There are lots of numbers flying around about the coronavirus, so here is a brief attempt to put some context to them. 

The United States daily new case volume rose to the mid 30,000 range in April, then started a slide to about half that level in mid-May. Since then, there has been a steep rise, to the mid 70,0000 level last week, down a bit this weekend to the low 60,000 level. The distribution of cases among the states has also changed. In the first surge, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana were hardest hit. In the last 6-7 weeks, Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and a few other states in the southeast have had the highest volumes, though a large number of states have rising numbers. 

The fear surrounding the virus is, of course, most associated with its death toll. The daily number of new deaths reported is far lower now, even with the much higher daily new case levels, than at the peak of daily deaths two to three months ago. Daily deaths were regularly in the 2,000 range or higher, reaching 2,500 per day, and dropped to the 500-750 per day range in June. They are up a bit now to close to 1,000 on some days, with higher death tolls in the most severely hit states, likely to increase more since there is a lag between positive testing results and deaths associated with the new cases.  

This country has the highest caseload in the world, and one of the highest caseloads in the world compared to population.  But as far as deaths, many countries have higher death rates per million people than we do. In addition, there is the case fatality rate: deaths divided by positive cases. The US case fatality rate has dropped steadily for several months, from about 6% to below 4%. Death numbers are lagged, as indicated already, but back in April, new deaths were on some days 6-10% of new positive cases. The last few weeks, that percentage has been about 1-2%.  The US case fatality rate is far lower than many other countries, including our developed world peers in Europe. 

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Mandated Diversity Training By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/mandated_diversity_training_.html

Most schools and businesses mandate that their employees take a “Diversity: Inclusion in the Modern Workplace” (EDU) online training course.  Under the umbrella of compassion for all, it is a well-crafted collection of leftwing radical propaganda.   Thus, one learns that “[a]n identity transition describes the process of shifting from a central identity and its associated beliefs and behaviors to the integration of another identity, e.g., a formerly childless person finds out they [sic] are going to become a parent.”

Sounds innocent enough.  And then the program turns to intersectionality which “builds on the idea of multiple identities by viewing them within their social and historical contexts of power, privilege, and discrimination, [emphasis mine] i.e., a young white woman may experience sexism because of her gender. And though she may share a ‘female identity’ with an Hispanic woman who is 62 years old and disabled, she would not share the added experiences of racism, ageism, and ableism by virtue of the race, age and disability.”

The unsuspecting reader has been subtly led to believe that being white is problematic because she is guilty of having privilege.

Under “Workplace Identity Negotiations,” Racial Identity-based Impression Management (RIM) is a process whereby individuals negotiate the way they look, act, and speak ‘in order to influence perceptions of racial identity group membership and characteristics.'”  Thus, “in a 2014 study about the work experiences of Asian American journalists, researchers identified four central strategies of RIM: Avoidance, Enhancement, Affiliation, and Racial Humor.”

In such vagueness does the Left prosper and become ubiquitous. Turgid titles and ambiguous meaning rule the day.

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DAVID SOLWAY: THE AGE OF CONSPIRACY *****

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_age_of_conspiracy.html

I sometimes think that when future historians look back on our time, they will label it “The Age of Conspiracy.” And there would be some truth to that. One tends to see conspiracies, plots and secret plans galore, wherever one looks, whether from the perspective of the left or the right. The left believes that the right is conspiring to promote a fascist takeover of the nation, in line with its presumed colonial history. The right sees a socialist, if not a communist, conspiracy to ignite a coup against the body politic and its political organization. There is no possibility of moderating these views. They are frankly irreconcilable.

The issue is that some so-called conspiracies are hoaxes ginned up by those who seek to alarm a docile and pliable, low-information public. And some conspiracies are precisely what they are called, real plots that can be verified objectively. The problem is how to distinguish conspiracy-mongering from representations of fact.

“Like every successful con,” Rupert Darwall writes in Green Tyranny, “maintaining audience credulity depends on preventing the audience from noticing what the trickster is up to,” a tactic known in the trade as “defining the baseline” — that is, by deceptively touting how damaged the world would be minus whatever transformation is envisioned. In all too many instances, there is no dispositive proof that such would be the case. Much to the chagrin of our false prophets, the seas do not rise to engulf our cities and low-lying islands, famine does not fall upon the land, populations do not grow extinct, the air is not becoming unbreathable, the spring does not grow silent, and the world does not end on a given date — though it may on the next given date, or the next. We can always hope.

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Trump Has Already Won the 2020 Election Roger Simon

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

www.theepochtimes.com/trump-has-already-won-the-2020-election_3430395.html

Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot—and maybe I am. (I’ve been called worse.)

But I can’t help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they’re printed on, digital or otherwise, they’re about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler.

No one sensible is talking about their political allegiance these days in public—especially to an anonymous pollster.

Instead, they’re buying guns, in record numbers.

Why wouldn’t they? Calling 911 has become about as useful as calling tech support for a transistor radio run over by the same six-wheeler.

The destroyed statues are the least of it. They’re inanimate. The actual people of Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and on and on are living a nightmare. Violence stalks the streets of all our major cities whose murder rates are going up stratospherically. (As I type this, the news is reporting 9 more shot in D.C.)

Have there ever been remotely as many stores and businesses smashed, many still not operating, from the Atlantic to the Pacific?

America isn’t in the midst of a civil war. It’s in the midst of a national meltdown with the banana-brained neo-Marxists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, stoned like sophomores (if that) on Foucault or some other self-important “critical theorist,” leading the way to oblivion and mutual hatred (actually a return to tribalism).

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Can Tories Today Find A Leader Like Benjamin Disraeli? Britons are more attached to conservative principles than Boris Johnson seems to appreciate Stephen MacLean

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/can-britain-find-a-leader-like-benjamin-disraeli/91193/

“Conservatism,” wrote Disraeli in his novel Coningsby, “assumes in theory that everything established should be maintained; but adopts in practice that everything that is established is indefensible.”

Much like the Conservative Party in Britain today, the party that Disraeli joined as a young MP was suffering a crisis of faith. Would it maintain old verities at the risk of political annihilation? Or jettison them for faddish ideals and make a play for popular esteem?

This is a moment for Boris Johnson to study his famous 19th century predecessor. Disraeli’s genius was to recognize that Conservatism’s roots remained vital and cherished by the British population. Only electors were denied the best that Toryism could offer, since the party’s leading politicians either abandoned their heritage or lacked the courage to defend it.

Tories are once more at a crossroads. And, like the 1840s, a conservative disposition remains alive in the United Kingdom while its leaders choose to curry favor more with the press than with the voting public. Apostasy starts at the head. Boris Johnson, James Delingpole writes, “is going to go down as the Prime Minister who cancelled London.”

The Prime Minister’s problem, Mr. Delingpole believes, “is that he is a fundamentally unserious person.” Cometh the times, cometh the man? Not with BoJo. Resolving the political and economic crises overwhelming the UK “requires courageous, principled leadership of a kind Boris is quite incapable of providing,” is Mr. Delingpole’s assessment.

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Reopening Schools and the Limits of Expertise By Charles Lipson –

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/20/reopening_schools_and_the_limi

The last thing you want to hear from your brain surgeon (aside from “Oops”) is “Wow, I’ve always wanted to do one of these.” You’ll feel a lot better hearing, “I’ve done 30 operations like this over the past month and published several articles about them.”

Expertise like that is essential for brain surgery, building rockets, constructing skyscrapers, and much, much more. Our modern world is built upon it. We need such expert advice as we decide whether to open schools this fall, and we should turn to educators, physicians, and economists to get it. But ultimately we, as citizens and the local officials we elect, should make the choices. These are not technical decisions but political ones that incorporate technical issues and projections. We should hold our representatives, not the experts, responsible for the choices they make.

When we listen to experts, we should remember Clint Eastwood’s comment in “Magnum Force”:  “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Even the best authorities have them, and one, ironically, is that they seldom admit them, even to themselves. It is important for us both to appreciate expert advice and to recognize its limits every time we’re told to “be quiet and do what they say.” We should listen, think it over, and then make our own decisions as citizens, parents, teachers, business owners, workers, retirees — and voters.

The best way to understand why we need experts but also why we need to weigh their advice, not swallow it whole and uncooked, is to consider this illustration: Should we build a hydroelectric dam in a beautiful valley? If we construct it, we certainly need the best engineers and construction workers. We need engineering firms to project the cost and economists to project the price of its energy and potable water. Their expertise is essential.

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Iran’s Bad Luck Must Continue – – Whoever is behind these various attacks needs to continue them. Jed Babbin

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://spectator.org/irans-bad-luck-must-continue/

There’s an element of chance that affects the lives of men and nations. You can make your own luck or suffer what the world imposes on you.

Napoleon, always one to make his own luck, once was criticized that he won his battles by luck alone. He is reputed to have responded, “I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones.”

Iran has had a long run of bad luck this year. We need to do everything we can to keep it going.

In May, the Iranian regime reported that cyberattacks damaged computers at Bandar Abbas. That non-coincidence followed an Iranian cyberattack on Israel seeking to damage its water supply.

Iran’s bad luck continued in late June with what Iran contends was an accidental explosion at its Parchin military base. Parchin is, of course, where warheads and missiles are being developed. Around then, several damaging cyberattacks have reportedly occurred at other Iranian military facilities.

The best-reported explosion occurred on July 2 at the Natanz nuclear facility in a building where advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium were being constructed.

Gen. Gholam Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense organization, tried to blame the United States for the explosions but — in an enormously significant admission — conceded that “anti-revolutionary” elements might have committed sabotage.

Last week, at least seven ships caught fire at the port of Bushehr. Two fires could be coincidental. Seven can’t be.

On Saturday, a petrochemical plant and oil pipeline in western Kuzhestan province exploded, producing enormous fires.

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Diane Bederman-If Black Lives Really Mattered

Posted By on July 21st, 2020

https://dianebederman.com/if-black-lives-really-mattered/

In the latter half of the 20th century there was a newsman from Buffalo, New York, Irv Weinstein, who ended his newscast with “It’s 11 o’clock, Do you know where your children are?” Perhaps we need to amend that to “Do you know where your children are most of the day?”  Who are their friends? What do they do; where do they go? Parents of children of all colours need to have that information to keep their children safe.

We can all agree: Black Lives Matter.

But…

If Black Lives really mattered, parents would be on the street demanding that their children no longer be sacrificed in gang related shootings and would never support the Marxist call to anarchy with calls for defunding the police, the very people meant to protect your babies.

Where is the anger, the protests, over these deaths?

Eleven people were killed, including four children, and 67 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago during the Father’s Day weekend.

3-year-old Mekhi James, Chicago

21-year-old Gregory Lewis, Chicago

Natalie Wallace; 7 Chicago

On the July 4 weekend a 7-year-old girl playing with children in Chicago was shot in the head; an 8-year-old Atlanta girl riding with her mother and an 11-year-old boy running to get a phone charger in Washington, D.C. were shot. Another Chicago shooting left a 14-year-old dead.

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot, in a series of tweets, lamented another child “whose hopes and dreams were ended by the barrel of a gun.”  Whose gun? She asked anyone with information to come forward.

“As a city we must wrap our arms around our youth so they understand there’s a future for them that isn’t wrapped up in gun violence,” she tweeted. Yet she promotes the defunding of police. Is this what black parents want?

Here is a link to murders in Chicago.   As of July 18 there have been 352 in 2020; many are black.

And

11-year-old Davon McNeal shot in the head in Washington DC

Secoriea Turner, Atlanta, 8 years old, shot near the Wendy’s where Rayshard Brooks was killed last month.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms “We’re fighting the enemy within when we are shooting each other up in our streets.” “We’ve had over 75 shootings in the city over the past several weeks,” Bottoms said. “You can’t blame that on (the Atlanta Police Department).”

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Dr Waqar Rashid- The Oxford Vaccine Surpassed Expectations

Posted By on July 20th, 2020

https://spectator.us/oxford-vaccine-surpassed-expectations/

It has been yet another busy medical day in our ‘new-normal’ coronavirus world. Today, the Phase One results of the University of Oxford vaccine were published, confirming positive reports tantalizingly leaked last week. Also making the news is a press release from the pharmaceutical company Synairgen, touting very positive initial results from its inhaled protein, interferon-beta, in treating hospitalized patients with coronavirus.

In days gone by the publishing of results of a Phase One vaccine study would barely generate a ripple, even in the relevant medical speciality. But of course, this is no ordinary trial and we are truly in extraordinary times.

All medical products undergo a trial process, starting with studies which look purely at safety (not efficacy). Many trials fail at this stage. You may recall the disastrous Northwick Park study in 2006 which saw six healthy young people develop multiple organ failure from exposure. Once this hurdle is passed then a larger scale trial to look at efficacy is undertaken and if successful, a license is applied for and distribution follows.

Today, the preliminary findings for ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (the COVID-19 vaccine) appear to show that it has surpassed expectations. Firstly, the safety hurdle seems to have been met, although 70 percent of the 1,077 volunteers apparently did report fever or headache. Secondly, and in line with the bullish press releases last week, the vaccine garners both an autobody and T-cell response which it is hoped may provide lasting immunity to the disease. This is vital as studies have shown that patient antibody levels may fall after just three months.

There are the usual caveats: the study was over a very small timeframe and was not intended to show if it is a working vaccine, so we know little of its long-term safety or effectiveness. Nevertheless, it is now full steam ahead for the larger Phase Three study and the likely riches of being first on the market.

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China Uses Forced Uighur Labor in Global Medical Supply Chain By Zachary Evans •

Posted By on July 20th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-uses-forced-uighur-labor-in-global-medical-supply-chain/

Workers labor in a production line manufacturing protective suits and masks at a factory of a medical equipment maker in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, January 27, 2020. (cnsphoto/Reuters)

China is using Uighur labor as part of the global supply chain for personal protective equipment in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The workers are assigned as part of a Chinese program to turn Muslim minorities in Xinjiang Province, mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs, into factory workers and indoctrinate them to become more obedient and loyal to the state. The program is considered by observers to employ forced labor, in an attempt to eradicate the workers’ ethnic and religious identity.

Out of 51 companies in Xinjiang that currently produce medical equipment, primarily for domestic use, 17 participate in the labor program. Several other companies outside of Xinjiang that produce supplies for export also make use of Uighur labor.

The Times traced one shipment of face masks that ended up in Georgia in the U.S. to a factory in Hubei Province. That factory uses a contingent of Uighur laborers who are required to learn Mandarin and pledge loyalty to the Chinese state.