Coronavirus: WHO backflips on virus stance by condemning lockdowns

Trump vindicated

Dr. David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus.

He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.

“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.

“We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Dr Nabarro’s main criticism of lockdowns involved the global impact, explaining how poorer economies that had been indirectly affected.

“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” he said.

“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

Melbourne’s lockdown has been hailed as one of the strictest and longest in the world. In Spain’s lockdown in March, people weren’t allowed to leave the house unless it was to walk their pet. In China, authorities welded doors shut to stop people from leaving their homes. The WHO thinks these steps were largely unnecessary.

Instead, Dr Nabarro is advocating for a new approach to containing the virus.

“And so, we really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems for doing it. Work together and learn from each other.”

His message is timely. In a world first, a number of health experts from all over the world came together calling for an end to coronavirus lockdowns earlier this week.

They created a petition, called the Great Barrington Declaration, which said that lockdowns were doing “irreparable damage.”

“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection,” read the petition. “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

The petition has had 12,000 signatures so far.

It was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University.

When asked about the petition, Dr Nabarro had only good things to say. “Really important point by Professor Gupta,” he said.

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The Election in Black and White

A response to Michelle Obama’s racist attack.

America is heading towards the abyss – whatever the outcome of the coming election. If Trump wins, we have a fighting chance to save our democracy as we know it. If he loses, the racial totalitarians will be in power and our fight will be a rearguard action based on the hope that when the American people get a full dose of governance by the party of hate they will gather their forces to defeat them.

Michelle Obama – to pick one among a myriad of examples to hand – has declared the coming election to be an election about racism. According to Michelle, Trump and his supporters are racists, and their helpless victims are people of color like her. In this delusional vision – typical of the racial messages coming from every benighted American who considers themselves “progressive” – Trump supporters are white nationalists who oppress people of color. Thus, in a recent message, Michelle Obama has urged undecided voters to, “’Think about all those folks like me and my ancestors,’” and then vote Democrat, “like your life depended on it.” Like her arrogant supporters she thinks that a reflection on the state of benighted black people provides a self-evident reason to condemn the half of America who would vote Republican. The Democrat electoral cause is a crusade against a racist president and the white supremacists and racists, who support him and are determined to attack the most vulnerable citizens among us and make their lives hellish.

Okay, Michelle, since you asked for it, here’s what I think about folks like you. You are worth $100 million, a lot more than most of the people who inhabit this country. In short, you are incredibly privileged. I won’t insult you the way you insult white people by calling this black skin privilege, though many Republicans voted for your husband because they wanted a black American to be president even though he was a Democrat.

Not only are you privileged and rich, but despite your cavalier contempt for our country and its achievements – you are one of the most admired women in America, however implausible and tragic that may be. As for your ancestors, black Africans enslaved every one of the unfortunate men and women who were sold at slave auctions to Europeans and shipped to the New World. There, the English had indeed established a slave system. But in 1776, the creators of this great country founded the first nation in human history – black or white – dedicated to the proposition that all human beings – black as well as white – are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with a right to liberty that no government can take away.

Immediately on the creation of their new nation, they began ending slavery first in what rapidly became the Free States of the North, then in the vast territory incorporated under the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Seventy-six years later – not the 400 your devious and malicious friends reflexively attribute to “American slavery” - the Emancipation Proclamation sounded the death knell of a hateful system. The costs of this world-shaking effort were 350,000 mainly white Union lives, and that of the noblest president with which this country has been blessed.

I won’t deal with the specifics of your paranoid view that only black people experience the frustrations of modern life, and only because they are black. But I will dredge up this unpleasant fact: Ninety-percent of interracial crimes in the United States – more than half a million in all - are committed by blacks against whites. Yet, this has not led to a wave of anti-black racism on the part of whites. On the contrary, there has never been a time when white Americans have more generously and openly and virtually unanimously embraced the idea that black lives matter, and proceeded to do what they could to help that minority of the black community that has fallen behind. Indeed, the president you slander as racist has done more for black people in his four years in office than your husband did in eight. It is time for a little humility Michelle and color-blindness, and for putting away the racist rhetoric you are hoping your party will use to get back in power.

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President’s Coronavirus Spikes the Left's Trump Derangement Syndrome

"My heart goes out to Covid."

Last week, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Democrats quickly deployed their bullhorns.

“If President Trump can’t be out there on the campaign trail for the next two weeks, then he is going to rely on his surrogates and unfortunately, one of his surrogates is Vladimir Putin,” Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN. “So, unfortunately, you are likely going to see this campaign ramped up by Russia over the next few weeks to try to substitute for the president’s absence on the campaign trail.”

Senate minority leader Charles Schumer said the plan to hold hearings for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was unfeasible. Schumer also demanded isolation for Barrett and “anyone she was in contact with.”

Over in the House, Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib proclaimed that the president “only cares about himself and his life, NOT those around him or the people he took an oath to protect. Too many lives lost because of his deadly lies.” Last year, it might be recalled, Tlaib crowed, “We are going to impeach this motherfucker!”

Donald Trump “knows better than anyone he shouldn’t be president,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2016, and last year she derided “his own insecurity as an imposter.” After the president tested positive for the virus, Pelosi told reporters, “I have concerns about the test because obviously the tests that are happening at the White House are not as accurate as they should be.”

Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC told the Speaker she was “second in line for the presidency” and asked whether the White House had contacted “contacted you about the continuity of government?” Pelosi responded “that is an ongoing- not with the White House but with the military, quite frankly, in terms of some officials in the government.”

Joy Reid of MSNBC, a former press aide for the Obama campaign, wondered if Trump, who “lies so much,” is faking his test “to get out of the debates?” Over on CNN, Don Lemon proclaimed the president’s “own dereliction” was to blame for his condition.

“So President Trump and the First Lady have COVID. Man, anyone else just in a really, inexplicably good mood this morning?” That was Emily Cassel, editor of City Pages, owned by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “I think I speak for everyone when I say that it would be insanely funny if he died of the coronavirus,” wrote Cassel, who found company in professional entertainers such as comedian Paul Tompkins.

“Wishing harm, sickness or death on someone, even a bad person, is petty & small,” Tompkins wrote, “BUT: it is genuinely & extremely funny that Trump got COVID. It’s objectively funny. He downplayed it & mishandled it & thousands of people died. Now he has it. It’s funny!”

Filmmaker Michael Moore (Sicko) was in a more reflective mood. “My thoughts and prayers, too, are with Covid-19,” Moore tweeted. Comedian Chris Rock took up the theme on Saturday Night Live.

“President Trump’s in the hospital from COVID and I just want to say my heart goes out to Covid,” said Rock, adding, “I think Joe Biden should be the last president ever. I mean, do we even need a president president?” Jim Carrey played Biden, who pauses Trump with a remote and says “Let’s bask in the Trumplessness,” which is not a new idea.

Back in 2017, comedian Kathy Griffin thought it was funny to posed with a mock severed head of Donald Trump. Last week, after Melania Trump’s positive test, Griffin wrote, “You may want to quarantine until after Christmas, sweetheart.” Comedian David Cross was “Sending thoughts and prayers out to Melania’s trainer,” and comic Whitney Cummings added, “I don’t get how Melania got it, she’s been social distancing from Trump since they got married.”

Actor Cary Elwes wondered “How fake is it now?” and Rob Reiner chimed in with “That damn hoax.” For Bette Midler, “Timing’s so interesting. I guess Trump’s quarantining will mean no rallies, and no more debates. Convenient.” And so on.

“Good Morning Britain” host Piers Morgan found it “interesting to see those who’ve spent the last few years screaming that Trump’s an uncaring, heartless empathy-devoid b*stard now spewing their gleeful joy that he & his wife have a deadly virus. They’re no better than the man they loathe.” In reality, the responses confirm Trump’s judgment that these are horrible people and sick people.

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), spreading worldwide since 2016, has now spiked to a tertiary stage. Festering ignorance and malice produce cognitive dissonance and uncontrollable hatred, with no cure in sight. On the other hand, Dr. Qanta Ahmed expects President Trump’s “full and complete recovery” for three reasons.

“His disease was detected very early due to the frequent testing he receives,” Dr. Ahmed explained, “he has access to extraordinary medical care and experimental treatments as announced, including receiving the drug Regeneron; and apart from COVID-19, he has been reported to be in good overall health.”

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