RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/advice-to-keep-d-c-schools-closed-until-theres-a-vaccine-proves-weve-been-gaslit/

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is advising D.C.’s mayor not to fully reopen schools until there’s a vaccine for COVID-19.

“The idea is at least in Stage 1 to have distance learning…but then over the next 2 stages….we would slowly begin to bring students in,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday. Eventually, schools would “basically reopen but in a very measured and deliberate way.”

D.C faces unique challenges, Chertoff explains, given that people from all over the world visit for work and can be vectors for transmission. He didn’t explain how outbreak mitigation efforts are served in any significant way by keeping schools closed to children, who are not only local but at extremely low risk for becoming seriously ill from the disease and are, contact tracing studies show, less likely to spread it.

But we can no longer expect scientific explanations for such absurd recommendations, much less why pandemic mission creep has gone unchecked over the past two months. I’m sure the Homeland Security secretary under George Bush would know nothing about that.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/legal-scholars-embarrass-themselves-in-pompous-letter-attacking-michael-flynn/

Twenty legal luminaries led by Harvard professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case.

Twenty legal luminaries calling themselves “Separation of Powers Scholars” and led by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case and to proceed to sentencing.

The brief is a shoddy piece of work. It tells little about the Flynn case, even misleading on that score, but it triggers disturbing ruminations about the sad state of current legal academia.

How We Got Here

Here’s a quick review of the case. For more detail, visit the roster of documents compiled by Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell.

Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, was charged with lying to the FBI. After great pressure was put on him in threats of extensive jail time, possible indictments of his son, and financial ruin from lawyers’ fees, he, advised by the D.C. establishment firm of Covington and Burling (headed by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder), agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a government recommendation of no jail time.

$100 billion+ of your taxpayer dollars will be funding this behemoth effort – an army of contact tracers.Malkin (Jewish World Review) asks some poignant questions and makes a few astute observations:

1) What happens when “experts” get diagnoses and assessments wrong? 2) Is this an opt-in or opt-out intrusion into your life? 3) What about built-in privacy considerations?  MTX, the software company with a mega contract to monitor vaccinations, treatment and testing, has already expanded into monitoring jobless claims and childcare facilities.  What’s next?4) Big Pharma and other businesses now have access to your previously protected personal health care information.5) Texas governor, Greg Abbott failed to provide advanced notice to the state legislature of the almost $300 million MTX deal (funded by taxpayer dollars). Janet Levy,

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/27/cashing_in_on_contact_tracing_143298.html

Ca$hing In on Contact Tracing-Michelle Malkin

Look out. An “army of contact tracers” is about to be unleashed on America. Corporations, political lobbyists and government bureaucracies all win. Privacy, freedom and family autonomy all lose. Big time.

You may have already heard of the aptly named House Bill 6666, sponsored by Illinois Dem. Bobby Rush. Known as the Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, the legislation would allocate $100 billion in public funding to “eligible entities” to “conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals’ residences, and for other purposes.”

The cash could be used to hunt down infected individuals, quarantine them in their homes for undefined periods under unknown conditions and subsidize a hiring spree of untold thousands of trackers from nonprofits, schools and medical facilities.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/26/smoothing-the-bumpy-road-to-reopening/

It is clearly past time to rein in the baseless, arbitrary restrictions that have been imposed by some politicians, as they can only inspire disrespect and non-compliance.

Every day seems to bring some new, unexpected, unpleasant revelation about the SARS-CoV-2 and the illness it causes, COVID-19. 

The infection has a long, often asymptomatic incubation period, high transmissibility, the ability to infect many human tissues, and, frequently, rapid deterioration of the clinical course. Some curious aspects of the infection, such as long duration of symptoms, multi-organ involvement, blood clots, and patients’ ability to tolerate extremely low blood oxygen levels have put critical care doctors on a steep learning curve, trying to understand how best to keep patients from falling off a cliff.

If the clinical aspects of the disease have been difficult to catalog and manage, the public health considerations have been equally vexing. We know enough now, however, to offer improved guidance for setting public health policy. Rather than using projections of cases and fatalities to guide policy decisions, the focus should be on the granular level of how the virus physically spreads. It is time to relegate the COVID-19 epidemiological models primarily to projecting required hospital and ventilator capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment.  

Based on a survey recently in New York, it appears that a very high percentage of new cases can be traced to individuals’ homes and to care facilities such as nursing homes. The survey found that 83 percent of new cases came from unemployed or retired individuals who are largely sheltered in place, while almost a quarter (22 percent) of these cases originated in long term care facilities. In the nation overall, 11 percent of COVID-19 cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, while deaths from the infection in long-term care facilities account for more than one-third of the country’s pandemic fatalities.