One place we haven't heard much about amid the COVID hysteria is Cambodia

Tom Woods

Cambodia is reporting zero deaths from COVID. Not zero deaths yesterday, or last week, or last month. Zero deaths, period.

Now you know the standard view: places that "listen to The Science(TM)" manage to keep the virus under control, and wise government policy is what makes the difference between one country and another.

How anyone can still believe this in December 2020 is beyond me. The phrase "policy invariance" is now one of my favorites. It doesn't seem to matter what we do. The mayor of Los Angeles even admitted that the behavior of the people there hadn't changed at all and they were seeing a major spike anyway. He's so close to an important truth, but you know what they say: none so blind....

Cambodia was ranked 89th in the world for its preparedness for an infectious disease outbreak.

Are we supposed to believe that the reason Cambodia is at zero is the huge supply of public-health PhDs they have there?

Could there be explanations other than government policy? Practically every chart in existence screams out this conclusion at us -- the charts in yesterday's email, which I hope you saw, being particularly revealing.

Here's the thing:

Dr. Fauci has been doing his level best to give the impression that COVID is an equal-opportunity killer. He will emphasize extreme outliers to give the impression that the average 35-year-old is at genuine risk, when the average 35-year-old has a vastly higher chance of dying in a bicycle accident.

Not only is COVID not an equal-opportunity killer for individuals, but it is evidently also not an equal-opportunity killer for countries and regions, either.

Africa has barely been touched by the virus -- and again, not because public-health PhDs have been having their way.

In east Asia we've seen "policy invariance," according to Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya. Hard lockdown in China, lackluster response in Japan, and evidently good results in both cases.

The COVID crazies in the West want to blame us: why, if only we'd been like east Asia, etc. But it's obvious, given the policy invariance, that something other than government policy is at work.

That could be:

Overall health, Vitamin D levels, age, or low obesity levels -- or T-cell immunity (Bhattacharya's supposition).

In Japan, in fact, a September seroprevalence study yielded an astonishing result of 47%, which suggests masks and social distancing aren't the explanation for the low death count. Lots and lots of Japanese had it (so they failed to "stop the spread"), but they didn't get sick or die -- almost certainly because of preexisting immunity. Not because of the public-health PhDs.

If government policy were the explanation, there should be piles of corpses in Florida at the moment, where even theater and live music have made a comeback. And yet such blue-state, "follow the science," ruin-people's-lives states like New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and New Jersey, among others, have worse hospitalization numbers per million right now.

All of this should be excruciatingly obvious by now.

And yet chances are, you're surrounded by people trying to blame you and your neighbors for their bad behavior -- for bad behavior is what makes "cases" rise!

If the insanity has reached a point that you've decided the time has come at last to join my private group, where you'll be surrounded by normal people and be able to stay up on what's actually happening as opposed to panic-mongering lunacy, I remind you of an added bonus: the group is permanently off Facebook.

So if that was holding you back, no longer.

See you there:

http://www.SupportingListeners.com

https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/cambodia?e=e73edc2b1d

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Amid fears of overwhelmed medical systems, data shows ample hospital capacity nationwide

As fears persist of overwhelmed medical systems and at-capacity hospitals nationwide, data indicate that ample hospital space remains available for both COVID-19 patients and other medical needs, with one official at a major hospital network stating that the country is "managing pretty well" the latest surge of COVID-19.

For most of 2020, rising positive test results of COVID-19 have brought with them fears of swamped hospitals, overwhelmed medical systems, emergency patients being turned away, and COVID-19 patients being triaged, suffering and dying in hallways and vestibules.

Much of that fear crystallized in the early stages of the pandemic, when parts of the northern Italian medical system were put under significant strain due to a crush of COVID-19 patients. In response, leaders and medical officials around the world suspended elective surgeries and constructed emergency medical facilities to cope with anticipated waves of COVID-19 patients.

In many cases those facilities were eventually shuttered for lack of patients, even after millions of dollars had been invested in their construction. In Chicago, for instance, the city spent $120,000,000 on four facilities to treat a total of 38 patients.

The latest spike in positive COVID tests has brought renewed fears of hospitals straining under an influx of COVID-19 patients, with some facilities across the country reporting difficulties managing large numbers of patients, either from a dwindling number of scarce beds or not enough medical officials to man them, or both.

Capacity nationwide appears to be far from overwhelmed

Yet federal government data compiled from state-level reports suggests that hospitals nationwide have considerable space left to deal with both routine medical issues and COVID-19 patients.

The Department of Health and Human Services offers on its website estimates of hospitalization rates across the United States. The data, the department says, is "estimated from hospital submissions, either reported through their state or reported through HHS Protect," which the department describes as "a secure data ecosystem ... for sharing, parsing, housing, and accessing COVID-19 data." (HHS did not respond to queries about any limitations or caveats to the data.)

The HHS numbers belie forecasts of impending collapse of the U.S. medical system. As of Saturday, the department estimated that hospitals nationwide were at about 75% capacity. ICU beds were even lower, at 63.5%. Patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 occupied just under 15% of all beds nationwide.

Even in areas that have recently posted huge surges in positive COVID tests, the numbers were largely similar to the national average: In New York, 76% of hospital beds (and 61% of ICU beds) were taken.

In California, where positive test results have skyrocketed, 76% of inpatient beds were likewise filled (though the ICU numbers were notably higher than New York's, at 79%).

Ohio, which has also seen a surge in positive tests over the last few months, has 71% of inpatient beds taken, and 77% of ICU beds.

Those numbers are not far out of line with national average occupancy rates seen in normal times and are, in some cases, lower than what are widely considered optimal rates.

'We are not in crisis care'

Dr. Joanne Roberts, the chief value officer of Providence St. Joseph Health system, told Just the News that "a well-functioning hospital probably runs about 85% capacity on an average day."

The problem, she pointed out, is that a virus like COVID-19 can "quickly overwhelm that last 15%" due to its virulency and ability to send a significant number of patients to the hospital at once.

Roberts, who coordinates the chief medical officers of Providence St. Joseph's 51 constituent hospitals across seven states, said her system has been working creatively to address spikes in patients.

"We've spent a whole lot of energy decreasing the other number of patients as we possibly can," she said, "trying to do hospital-at-home models, stopping non-urgent procedures that require ICU space. You can't stop emergency. But you can stop some things that are coming into the hospital, say, a knee replacement."

"It's a dance that every one of our hospitals is doing today," she said. "Some are still doing elective procedures, some are not. Because governors have allowed our hospitals to figure that out, we are seeing our hospitals figure that out themselves."

Roberts confirmed that none of their hospitals is turning patients away.

"What we have done is we've done some creative bed usage," she said. "We've done some agreements with smaller hospitals that they would send some surgical cases to us in our larger hospitals, and once the patient was stable after surgery, we'd send them back to recover in the smaller hospital."

"We've not done anything like close our emergency departments," she added, "and I can't imagine that happening."

Roberts said that her system's hospitals are "reflecting the national emergency" as they deal with increases in patients.

"There are guidelines for emergency situations of normal care, contingent care, and crisis care," she said. "We are not in crisis care. That's where New York was, earlier in the pandemic. They were in crisis mode." Improvements in such factors as personal protective equipment have mitigated those challenges somewhat since then, she said.

Roberts noted that the critical issues are "less about bed capacity and more about staff capacity," particularly as staff get sick — including with COVID-19 — and must take time off, stretching other staff even thinner.

Of course, many medical facilities across the country are working under considerable strain to deal with the current spike. Some hospitals, such as locations in California, Texas and elsewhere, have been forced to set up tent-based medical facilities to deal with surges in patients. Yet similar circumstances have been seen during particularly virulent flu seasons, as happened in 2018 in states across the country.

The novelty of COVID-19, of course — along with its high virulence — means the coronavirus pandemic may pose a more significant risk of overwhelming hospitals than even a nasty flu season.

"The difference now compared to the spring and summer surges," Roberts said, is that "in those first two surges ... we would see a surge in Seattle and the rest of our system would be okay. A week later we'd see a surge in Southern California, and the Seattle surge would be down. What we're seeing now is a surge across the whole country. It's not so local as it used to be."

Still, she acknowledged, "the country is managing pretty well" — an assessment which accords well with current national hospital occupancy data.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/amid-fears-overwhelmed-medical-systems-us-appears-have-ample-hospital

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IN BRIEF

Despite record turnout, 80 million Americans didn't vote (NPR)

Judge releases Dominion audit report, which claims system "designed" to "create systemic fraud" (Daily Wire)

Georgia Runoff: Mail-in ballot requests top one million as early voting begins (Disrn)

Jon Ossoff says feds should ensure illegal immigrants receive good wages (Free Beacon)

Michigan Rep. Paul Mitchell leaving GOP over Trump's attempt to overturn election (NBC News)

Special Counsel John Durham is expanding team with prosecutors, making "excellent progress" (Fox News)

The New York Times has not covered the Eric Swalwell honeytrap scandal a single time (Not the Bee)

The Times slams writer not calling Jill Biden "Dr." Here's how the NYT referred to Dr. Ben Carson for years. (Daily Wire)

Media scramble to un-remember their dismissals of Trump's Operation Warp Speed win (National Review)

Governor Cuomo is destroying New York City's restaurant industry (FEE) | And yet, NYC could face "full shutdown" beyond indoor dining, Mayor de Blasio warns (NY Post)

United Auto Workers union pays $1.5 million to settle corruption probe (Free Beacon)

Portland autonomous zone removing barricades after totally weak-kneed mayor and police chief apologize (Daily Caller)

California church displays nativity scene that incorporates Black Lives Matter (Just the News)

NFL ratings plummet, despite a pandemic forcing millions to sit at home with nothing to do (Post Millennial)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Statement on Second NYC Lockdown from New York Young Republicans

Today, we wake up to a quieter city—a dying city. Democrat politicians like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have taken direct, authoritarian, anti-American action to effect the destruction of thousands of small businesses. In doing so, they have destroyed the American Dream for untold numbers of entrepreneurs to satisfy the whims of an elite that disrespects and disserves all Americans.

Andrew Cuomo stands at the vanguard of these rabidly power-hungry politicians. This morning’s closure of indoor dining is but the latest anti-business action he has taken. The callous, arbitrary, and malicious technocracy that the Democrats have constructed and the altar at which they worship the deity “Science” (which bears little relation to the faithful execution of the scientific method) exists only an excuse to justify their every self-serving action.

Cuomo’s own statistics hold dining, both indoor and outdoor, responsible for less than two percent of China Virus transmissions, while indoor gatherings at residences account for over seventy percent. This action, taking effect just as a cold spell swoops into the city, will lead to greater China Virus transmissions. Cuomo does not care about this; he cares only about his own image. We know that Democrat politicians across the country, including Cuomo, have hypocritically violated their own restrictions; do they seriously expect everyday Americans not to do the same?

This Club knows that indoor dining can be conducted in a safe manner. We proved that with the execution of our 108th Annual Gala, which was held in accordance with all applicable regulatory restrictions and which resulted in zero known or suspected cases of China Virus transmission. We also know that the restaurant industry has been strung along by Cuomo and de Blasio, asked to invest in an ever-changing set of infrastructure that aligns with the order of the day. This makes for an untenable state of affairs.

We stand with every business that suffers due to Democrat-mandated, unscientific lockdown orders. We call on the business community to defy these orders en masse as Mac’s Public House has. We call for civil disobedience to defend Liberty and the rights of Americans to associate freely and to conduct business as they choose.

We condemn Democrats’ new favorite hobby of rule by fiat. We condemn Cuomo’s actions and denounce his pathetic charade of success best demonstrated through the recent publication of his self-laudatory book on his handling of the China Virus in New York. And we stand with the families of the thousands of nursing home residents whose blood indelibly stains his hands.

Via email: Info@nyyrc.com

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Mourning the death of the great Republic

Over the last month, I like tens of millions of other Americans have been wrestling with grief. We may not have recognized it as such but what we have been feeling and experiencing is a deep, painful, raw grief.

It would be too simplistic to chalk it up to a bitterly fought election. It is far more than that. For what I believe we are mourning is the loss of our nation. I have come to see what I and so many others are going through as the mourning process for the death of the United States.

For those who dismiss this or laugh, you have no power over me or my thoughts. With the death of my country, I no longer care one way or the other what you think. You are alien to me, vile creatures who frankly disgust me. And how else could we react? The evidence is crystal clear that the election was stolen. The individual you are about to install is a demented fool who cannot prevent himself from spouting out the truth – he had the greatest voter fraud operation ever known and he is prepared to step down and hand the government over to a pathetic witch who couldn’t get 1% of the vote in the Democrat primaries.

As with any death, there are five stages of grief that most people experience. Once on the “other side” of those stages you can begin to look forward. That is where I find myself today and where I trust millions of my fellow patriots will soon join me. Let’s review the stages

The first stage of grief when the loved one has expired is denial. Everyone I know tasted that on November 4 and 5. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true that the communists had won. When people went to bed, Trump was winning in all the states in question. By morning, large “dumps” had turned the tide. That denial clouded our judgement and prevented swift action in the days immediately following the election that might have saved America’s life. But we didn’t move, we trusted someone in the GOP or the campaign or the White House would do what was necessary. They didn’t – either from the same paralysis we had or due to collusion with the enemy. Now, it doesn’t matter. What could have been done was not done.

The second stage is anger. No need to dwell on that one. The rage that most of us felt was debilitating. I, for one, could not speak to anyone but my closest friends. I found myself falling into fantasies of mass retribution of the most heinous kind. But life intervenes and the rage fades. Oh, it is not gone. The overwhelming thirst to hurt the usurpers and their fellow travelers will, I hope, never go away. But for now, the anger needs to be put aside.

The third stage of grief is “bargaining.” That one has not lasted very long for me either. Once I saw that the so-called “leaders” of the Republican Party were already licking their chops at working with the Commander-in-Thief Biden, I knew there was no deal to be made. We always knew in our hearts that the GOP was complicit in the attacks on Trump starting from before he took the oath of office as was the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of deep state traitors. But once it smacked me and others in face, it was obvious that there was no bargain to be had. That hated Trump. They hated the millions of us to who voted for him more. They had nothing for us.

Of course, the fourth stage of grief is depression. And, it is very hard not to be depressed. The agenda that will be pushed now is not just the death of America; it is an act of contempt for all that America was and what many of us had prayed it would be again. But now the government will open the borders and destroy any cultural cohesion while killing the hopes of American workers. The plutocrats will get their wage cutting, job killing dreams come true. We will trade away our sovereignty to a gaggle of globalist bureaucrats from failed counties just so the scum of Corporatist America can make a few more points on their mountains of money.

And, worst of all, our sons and daughters will be put to war to be policemen of the world, dying and being mangled to make the world safe for Central Bankers and their trolls. The cycle of endless war that Donald Trump did so much to be bring to an end will be relaunched in a sea of American blood and wasted treasure.

Pretty tough to not be depressed. But out of this progression we reach the final stage of grief, acceptance. And that is where I find myself today, accepting the fact that the election was stolen, that an illegitimate occupation government sits in Washington and that all of us will have a very heavy price to pay for our failure to prevent it. I accept that this is where we are today.

But acceptance does not mean I am stuck where I am. It does not mean that I have to meekly go along with the insults and indignities that flow from the occupiers. I am still free to act, to refuse to participate in the orgy of destruction and hate that are the hallmarks of the Democrat-Marxist regime. And, regardless of the censorship and the daily dose of raw propaganda sold as “news” or “entertainment” or “sports,” I can seek ways to find the others with whom I agree and speak with them, to build a true organization free of the death-grip of the empty husks that pass for political organizations today.

This is where I am, accepting where we stand and looking for an effective vehicle and platform from which to launch the most vicious counter-attack possible. Time for grief is over. Yes, it is sad. The United States was a great place and beautiful experiment in self-government. But it is gone. All any of us can do now is fight to have a say in what will rise from the ashes and work for the Restoration of our once-great nation.

https://dailytorch.com/2020/12/on-the-other-side-of-grief/

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Asymptomatic People Do Not Spread COVID-19

According to media reports, COVID-19 “cases,” meaning positive PCR test results, are soaring across the U.S. and around the world, leading to the implementation of measures that in some cases are stricter than what we endured during the initial wave.

However, as detailed in several recent articles, including “Why COVID-19 Testing Is a Tragic Waste,” PCR tests are being used incorrectly, resulting in the false appearance of widespread transmission.

In reality, the vast majority of people who end up with a positive test will not develop symptoms and aren’t infectious. Needless to say, if you’re not infectious, you pose no health risk to anyone, and being placed under what amounts to house arrest is nothing but cruel and unusual punishment for no reason whatsoever.

Positive Test Rates Have No Bearing on Mortality Rates
In The Highwire report above, Del Bigtree breaks down how excessively high test sensitivity leads to falsely elevated “case” numbers that in reality tell us nothing about the situation at hand. As noted by Bigtree, what’s missing from the COVID-19 conversation is the actual death rate.

“If COVID is a deadly virus, what should we see when cases increase?” he asks. The answer, of course, is an increase in deaths. However, that’s not what’s happening.

Aside from a small bump at the beginning, when doctors were unsure of the appropriate treatment and some states recklessly and irresponsibly sent infected patients into ill equipped nursing homes, the death rate has remained relatively flat while positive test rates have dramatically risen and fallen in intervals.

In the video, Bigtree features a November 4, 2020, tweet by White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas showing the number of positive tests (aka “cases”) in blue and COVID-19 related deaths in red, since the start of the pandemic up until the end of October 2020. As you can see, there’s no correlation between the positive test rate and subsequent deaths.

Vast Majority of ‘COVID-19 Patients’ Are Asymptomatic

One of the explanations for why positive test rates and mortality do not go hand in hand is the simple fact that a vast majority of those testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They simply aren’t sick. The PCR test is merely picking up inactive (noninfectious) viral particles.

In one study,2 which looked at pregnant women admitted for delivery, 87.9% of the women who tested positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 had no symptoms. Another study3 looked at a large homeless shelter in Boston. After a cluster of COVID-19 cases was observed there, researchers conducted symptoms assessments and testing among all guests residing at the shelter over a two-day period.

Of 408 people tested, 147, or 36%, were positive, yet symptoms were conspicuously absent. Cough occurred in only 7.5% of cases, shortness of breath in 1.4% and fever in 0.7%. All symptoms were “uncommon among COVID-positive individuals,” the researchers noted.

Asymptomatic Transmission Is Very Rare

During a June 8, 2020, press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, made it very clear that asymptomatic transmission is very rare, meaning an individual who tests positive but does not exhibit symptoms is highly unlikely to transmit live virus to others.

“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts, and they’re not finding secondary transmission … it’s very rare, and much of that is not published in the literature,” Van Kerkhove said.

Just one day later, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program, backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted.”4 Needless to say, when you’re trying to justify the implementation of a vast surveillance network, it’s no good to admit a vast majority of people are having their privacy infringed upon for no good reason whatsoever.

Asymptomatic People Pose No Risk to Others
Most recently, a study5 in Nature Communications assessed the risk posed by asymptomatic people by looking at the data from a mass screening program in Wuhan, China.

The city had been under strict lockdown between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Between May 14 and June 1, 2020, 9,899,828 residents of Wuhan city over the age of 6 underwent PCR testing. In all, 92.9% of the entire city population participated in the testing. Of these, 9,865,404 had no previous diagnosis of COVID-19 and 34,424 were recovered COVID-19 patients.

Not a single one of the 1,174 people who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive.

In all, there were zero symptomatic cases and only 300 asymptomatic cases detected. (The overall detection rate was 0.3 per 10,000.) Importantly, not a single one of the 1,174 people who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive.

Additionally, of the 34,424 participants with a history of COVID-19, 107 individuals (0.310%) tested positive again, but none were symptomatic. As noted by the authors:6

“Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no ‘viable virus’ in positive cases detected in this study … The 300 asymptomatic positive persons aged from 10 to 89 years …

The asymptomatic positive rate was the lowest in children or adolescents aged 17 and below (0.124/10,000), and the highest among the elderly aged 60 years and above (0.442/10,000). The asymptomatic positive rate in females (0.355/10,000) was higher than that in males (0.256/10,000).”

More HERE (See the original for links)

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IN BRIEF

Black Lives Matter accuses Biden of ignoring it: "It's demeaning to our hurt and trauma" (Fox News)

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former VP contender, turns down Team Biden offer (Daily Wire)

Smart strategy: Trump urged to send Paris climate plan to Senate for ratification to block Biden (Washington Times)

NY Times assistant who edited Senator Tom Cotton's "Send in the Troops" column resigns (Daily Beast)

Facebook "fact-checking certifier" is a Hillary Clinton superfan (Post Millennial)

For the record: Media said a vaccine by end of year was impossible (Daily Wire)

The hidden crisis: Elderly people are dying from isolation (NBC News)

Self-victimhood (read: "wokeism") is a personality type, researchers find (Reason)

Russian hackers breach U.S. government, targeting agencies, private companies (NBC News)

Seattle City Council considers new "poverty defense" to excuse misdemeanor crimes such as theft and assault if culprit is homeless, addicted to drugs, or has mental health issues (Daily Mail)

Multiple people stabbed, 23 arrested during election protest in Washington, DC (National Review)

Video shows Proud Boys tackling counterprotester wielding a knife amid DC violence (Washington Examiner)

Despite the Illinois State Police's best efforts, deep-blue Illinois leads the way in 2020 gun sales (The Truth About Guns)

California judge blocks Governor Newsom from enforcing lockdown order on Catholic churches (Washington Times)

While New York goes out of business, Cuomo throws himself a birthday party (FrontPage Magazine)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Americans Said No to Coronavirus Contact Tracing Spy Apps

But will they be able to stay off the “national server” if the Democrats take over?

When the NHS, Britain's socialized medicine system, debuted its contact tracing app, six million eagerly rushed to download it. After a few days, 10 million had downloaded and installed the app, and after a month, around 40% of smartphone users had put a monitoring device on their phones that would trace their social interactions and could tell them to isolate at any moment.

In October, Governor Cuomo launched a New York contact tracing app based on technology from Google and Apple, and some assistance from Bloomberg’s organization.

"It’s going to not only bring contact tracing to a new level," Cuomo boasted, while claiming that it wouldn't violate anyone's privacy.

Few New Yorkers seemed to believe him. Despite being available in Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Korean, Russian, Haitian Creole, and, even more unexpectedly, English, the app hasn’t taken off and Cuomo’s regime has refused to reveal the data that would actually show if it’s tracking positive cases. The lack of data transparency has been the second biggest story about Cuomo’s mismanagement of the pandemic, after the deaths of 11,000 nursing home residents when his administration forced nursing homes to accept infected patients. The numbers are likely higher, but the Cuomo administration, in its typical fashion, is refusing to release the data.

After a month, only 5% of New Yorkers have downloaded Cuomo’s spy app. That’s far short of the 60% that’s needed for contact tracing to work.

Even Europeans haven’t hit that 60% target. Few outside Communist China have.

Apple and Google claimed that they needed at least 15%. Only a few states in America hit that bar and they tend to have small populations that lean leftward. Most Americans have opted out.

Governor Murphy launched his state’s contact tracing app to great fanfare, urging a, “shared sense of personal responsibility to support our contact tracing efforts”. Only 4% of New Jersey residents decided to take up the former Goldman Sachs tycoon on his modest proposal.

Murphy, like Cuomo, had forced nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients. Some of the state’s deadliest outbreaks had also taken place in state hospitals for veterans.

Pennsylvania's Governor Wolf and Secretary of Health Richard Levine, debuted their contact tracing app in September.

“We won’t know who has downloaded the app, who has received notifications and who used symptom check,” Richard (Rachel) Levine, who had taken his mother out of a nursing home and into a hotel, while forcing nursing homes to take in infected patients, assured Pennsylvanians.

Only 4% of Pennsylavanians were convinced. Richard Levine has begun pleading with 13-year-olds to download the app. If there’s anything that’s bound to reassure state residents, it’s a strange man in a blonde wig urging their children to download an app to monitor them.

Contact tracing app adoption in America isn’t likely to get much better even with more time.

Governor Northam rolled out a contact tracing app in Virginia back in August. After half a year, the state has passed Google's 15% bar with an estimated 19% of smartphone owners having installed the app.

But few people are actually using it.

Only 553 people submitted their positive results out of 100,000 positive tests in the state.

While Democrat governors and their European counterparts have brandished download figures, many people download apps and then uninstall them. Or leave them on and then pay no further attention to them. The actual utilization of contact tracing apps is laughably miniscule.

Virginia’s 800,000 plus downloads figure still only comes out to 553 people submitting results.

That’s why Governor Cuomo in New York and the NHS in the UK refuse to release their impact numbers. Considering the performance of contact tracing apps in Europe, it’s not hard to guess what they’re hiding.

Italy's Immuni app was downloaded by 14% of the population, but only had 155 positive results submitted in three months. In France, after 2.3 million downloads, only 72 risk contacts were flagged.

A lot of people can be badgered into passively downloading an app, but when it comes time to upload their results and have the system notify everyone they’ve been around, they just as passively choose not to do it and the system fails.

After a year of touting contact tracing as the answer, the assault on privacy has stalled.

Contact tracing apps have failed miserably in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. California only got around to launching its contact tracing app now. The numbers are worse in much of the rest of the country with only 8 million Americans actually using contact tracing apps.

Trust is the biggest factor in the adoption of contact tracing apps. And very few Americans trust Big Tech, the government and its public health experts with tracking their lives and the lives of those around them. The NHS app intends to start asking users about their personal lives to "score" their lifestyles for coronavirus risk. It's easy enough to see this sort of thing as not only a privacy violation, but as an echo of China's public surveillance and social credit system.

In a socialized medicine system where people are already penalized for their risk factors by being denied access to medical care, leaving them with few options except emigration or death where age or obesity can mean a denial of medical care, and where babies can be killed because saving them is not deemed to be the best use of resources, a “score” isn’t just a score.

Few people want to be denied medical treatment because they failed the social credit system.

Conservatives are the most likely to see the downside of such calculations and the more conservative parts of the United States have the lowest utilization rates of contract tracing apps.

Nevada's contact tracing app was only downloaded 70,000 times, as of last month, and zero exposures were registered in September. In Wyoming, its app only managed 5,000 downloads.

South Carolina’s legislature banned the use of contact tracing apps by government agencies.

But all of that may be about to change if the Democrats succeed in their plan to place Biden in the White House. Biden's team is filled with Big Tech lobbyists and strongly favors a national contact tracing app infrastructure. While the Trump administration allowed states to define their own policy, the Democrat plan has been to nationalize the crisis and control the response.

Key to their plans is the creation of a national server that would store information across state lines, and allow national authorities to monitor everyone’s movements even if they leave a state.

Ten states have already moved their codes to Microsoft’s National Key Server maintained for the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Another five are following suit. As of now, virtually every state and area, such as D.C., with a contact tracing app, is on the National Key Server. That includes heavily populated states such as California, New York, and Michigan.

The hodgepodge of apps and approaches will be replaced by one system to rule them all.

Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, has also been touting Biden’s plans for app contact tracing. A national server will make a national contact tracing app much easier to implement. Google, which is also involved in the national server using its own cloud system, has, along with Apple, rebranded “contact tracing” as “exposure notification”.

Big Tech decided that people were leery of “contact tracing” so they gave it a new name.

Meanwhile, Biden’s people have been coordinating with the Rockefeller Foundation on testing plans.

"Policy makers," the Rockefeller Foundation had urged, must "allow the infection status of most Americans to be accessed and validated in a few required settings and many voluntary ones."

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito recently warned that the "pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty".

Despite that, under President Trump, Americans have still enjoyed an oasis of human rights compared to the brutal restrictions and measures in the rest of the world. Red states were able to choose less restrictive and abusive routes for tackling the pandemic, even while blue states relentlessly violated civil rights under the guise of a public health emergency.

All of that may be coming to an end.

The near future may be a mandatory national app based either on the existing Apple or Google architecture embedded into virtually every smartphone, or, worse, GPS tracking like Norway’s app which was withdrawn after being panned by Amnesty International, linked to the National Key Server, which will serve as a key element of a national pandemic social credit system.

Americans rejected contact tracing, but a Biden administration won’t take no for an answer.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/americans-said-no-coronavirus-contact-tracing-spy-daniel-greenfield/?utm_campaign=1813266&utm_content=2496016

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France allows care home residents to spend time with their families over Christmas even if they are POSITIVE for Covid in new rules to fight loneliness

French care home residents will be allowed to spend time with their families over Christmas in a bid to tackle loneliness - even if they test positive for Covid-19.

The relaxed rules will be in place between December 15 and January 3 and have been deemed 'essential' to maintain family ties and fight loneliness.

News of France's policy comes amid a raging row over care home rules in the UK - with many slamming lockdown visitor bans for causing severe damage to pensioners' mental health.

Last month it was revealed that Britain may also see relaxed care home rules around Christmas - with the Cabinet Office suggesting that residents can be one of the three-households in a family's Christmas bubble.

More than a third of France's 57,500 virus deaths have occurred in care homes. Residents have been subjected to strict isolation measures - including being restricted to their rooms - to slow the spread of the disease.

A new six-page document from France's Health Ministry that laid out the relaxed visitation rules for the Christmas-New Year period said they applied even to homes that have infected residents. Residents who haven't tested positive will be allowed out again to spend time with their families.

Residents who have tested positive will be allowed to receive up to two visitors in their room.

The rules said care home residents, 'like the rest of the population, should benefit from the possibility to spend the end of year holidays in the company of their loved ones.'

Earlier this week it was announced that Paris will be under curfew on New Year's Eve to avoid another spike in cases.

France's Prime Minister Jean Castex said the City of Light would be in darkness on a night traditionally associated with parties and fireworks.

It is all part of a nationwide curfew across France which starts next Tuesday, December 15, when everyone will have to stay at home from 8pm until 6am.

The only exception will be Christmas Eve, when people will be able to go out, but only in small groups.

Mr Castex said: 'Christmas occupies a special place in our lives and our traditions…We therefore authorise travel for this evening of December 24, but by reminding you the rule I gave you last week – no more than six adults at a time.'

Explaining why this was necessary during a live TV address about the Coronavirus crisis on Thursday night, Mr Castex said: 'We are not yet at the end of this second wave and we will not be on December 15.'

Mr Castex said this was the date when the objective had been to get 'below 5,000 new Coronavirus cases per day,' but this had not happened.

'The curfew will be strictly controlled with only limited possibilities for exemptions,' said Mr Castex.

'The establishments which we had planned to reopen on December 15, will remain closed for three more weeks,' said Mr Castex, referring to theatres, cinemas, concert halls, museums, zoos and casinos.

On Wednesday of this week, 14,595 new cases of Coronavirus were recorded in France – the highest figure since November 25.

When the second lockdown was announced at the end of October, there were about 60,000 new cases per day, but the new figures are still considered too hight.

President Macron had set the threshold of 5,000 cases per day as the target to proceed with an end to lockdown.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9046919/French-care-home-residents-spend-Christmas-families-POSITIVE.html

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http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Gov. Noem Posts COVID-19 'Graphs the Media Won't Share with You'

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been criticized for her freedom-first approach to the coronavirus pandemic. While she always took the health and safety of residents in her state seriously, she pushed back on calls for a statewide lockdown early in the pandemic because the numbers did not justify it.

"I took an oath when I was in Congress, obviously, to uphold the constitution of the United States," she told Fox News in April. "I believe in our freedoms and liberties. What I've seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security, and they don't have to do that."

She has continued with that mindset ever since, refusing to lock down as a second surge of the virus sweeps the nation.

On Thursday, she posted graphs of New York and California’s coronavirus cases, which she said, "the media won't share with you."

"California and New York locked down, closed businesses, and mandated masks. They did the 'right' thing. And STILL cases are climbing," she said.

Earlier in the week, she said South Dakota was in good financial shape due to her administration's approach to COVID-19.

In comparison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Wednesday that tax hikes are coming, and they could be significant.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/12/10/gov-noem-shares-covid-graphs-the-media-wont-show-you-n2581352

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The plague of White College Democrats

Eighty-five percent of counties with a Whole Foods store voted for Joe Biden. That factoid, relayed by The Cook Political Report's David Wasserman, tells you something important about the election -- and about today's Democratic Party.

"The Democracy," as it was called in the 19th century, long thought of itself as the party of the people, the defender of the little guy, the side that stood up for the folks not able to stand up for themselves.

There was always something to this. From its formation to reelect Andrew Jackson in 1832, the Democratic Party has always been a coalition of groups not considered typical Americans but that together could form a national majority. Naturally, the precise composition of this coalition has changed over time.

Barack Obama's Democratic Party was a top-and-bottom coalition of those at both ends of the income, education and occupational scales. Obama, who, as an Illinois legislator, gerrymandered a top-and-bottom district for himself, provided substantive and psychological sustenance to both sides.

Joe Biden's Democratic Party has a different balance. The boy from working-class Scranton, as he is billed, ran best not in factory cities but in university towns.

His highest percentage in Michigan was in the county containing Ann Arbor, not Detroit. He ran stronger in Madison, Wisconsin's Dane County than in Milwaukee County; stronger in Iowa City than in Des Moines; stronger in Missoula, Montana, with its university than in Butte with its copper mines; just as strong in metro Columbus (Ohio State University) as in metro Cleveland.

Biden's strongest area in California was the San Francisco Bay (University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University). His strongest county in upstate New York was Tompkins (Cornell University). His strongest counties in North Carolina were Durham and Orange (Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill).

White college grads -- Joel Kotkin's "gentry liberals," Arnold Kling's "highly educated elites" -- have become the dominant constituency in the Democratic Party. Even as the descendants of the party's blue-collar constituents have become Donald Trump Republicans, Democratic percentages among white college graduates have ballooned.

Pew Research Center polling showed white college graduates 50% to 42% Republican in 1994 -- the breakthrough year when Republicans captured the House after 40 years of Democratic control -- and 57% to 37% Democratic in 2019. That's happened even as they've become a larger percentage of the electorate.

To which an old-time Democratic Party boss -- Tammany Hall's Charles F. Murphy or Chicago's Richard J. Daley -- would have asked, "What do these people want?"

In the 1990s, the answers very fairly obvious. Affluent voters wanted tax rates held down, and they wanted their verdant suburban and trendy central city neighborhoods protected from violent crime and welfare dependency.

Led by Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson and New York's Rudy Giuliani, local Republicans and some Democrats cut violent crime and welfare rolls by more than half. In Washington, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton assisted and encouraged this process and largely froze tax rates.

Today's college graduates, more numerous than their 1994 predecessors and schooled on increasingly "politically correct" campuses, don't have such concrete goals. They're unfazed by marginal Obama-era tax increases and untroubled -- so far, anyway -- by the vertiginous increases in homicides after the May 25 incident in Minneapolis.

What they want out of politics is not so much anything concrete as it is symbolic: assertions of opposition to what they regard as America's "systemic racism," and opposition to assertions of "America first," whether that means enforcement of immigration laws or "xenophobic" restrictions on travel from China, where COVID-19 originated.

In Democratic primaries, these voters, as I wrote in June, "flitted from one candidate to the next, tilting toward Sen. Kamala Harris after she whacked Joe Biden for opposing busing in the 1970s, then luxuriating in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's stentorian assurances that, on every issue, 'I have a plan for that,' then swooning for the assured articulateness of then-South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg."

They seem chemically dependent on denunciations of Donald Trump, to the point that subscription- or ratings-hungry news media feel obliged to lard not just news accounts but even food pages and movie reviews with "Orange Man Bad" sneers. Trump is routinely described as a "racist" with no evidence cited.

White Democratic college graduates' central faith is that they oppose other Americans' systemic racism. Nearly a majority of them told pollsters they were bothered that Joe Biden is a white male in his 70s. Only about 30% of black and Hispanic Democrats feel the same, according to Pew. One group has more concern for ethnic origin and personal style than for real-life consequences for actual people.

White Democratic college graduates complain that Trump acts childishly; is impervious to criticism and fixated on symbolic trivia; and refuses to confess error or admit defeat. Fair criticism or self-description? Or both?

https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2020/12/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-white-college-democrats-n2581396

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Lockdown Consequences Include Our Mental Health

Over the last several months, there’s been plenty of debate about whether a V-shaped economic recovery was possible, as “15 days to slow the spread” turned into months, and millions of Americans lost their jobs. The rebound was not quite a V, of course, especially for retail and restaurant workers. Moreover, the worry about finding or even keeping one’s job, combined with the unexpected additional tasks of homeschooling, wearing masks, and socially distancing, has taken its toll on our collective mental health.

It’s a subject we’ve touched on before, when our Thomas Gallatin observed the growing health consequences from the then-two-month-old pandemic lockdown. With the passage of time, more of the consequences are becoming evident. For example, we can now see that the expected baby boom from last spring’s shelter-in-place order isn’t happening everywhere.

But the coronavirus has sentenced the most vulnerable of us to a virtual house arrest for more than eight months now, and their despair has been on display in the form of increased suicide rates, higher alcoholism rates, and other self-destructive behaviors. Now we have more empirical evidence of this depression, as an annual Gallup Health and Healthcare poll taken in November shows the number of people who self-evaluated their mental well-being as “good” or “excellent” fell to its lowest level since the poll was instituted in 2001. In one year, that combined figure fell from 85% to 76%. And as the pollsters warned, “Previous research from Gallup’s ongoing COVID-19 tracking survey in April found that although majorities of Americans said they could continue following social distancing guidelines as long as necessary before their physical health and financial situation suffered, less than half said the same of their mental health.”

While we may joke about today’s date being March 286th, our lives and routines have genuinely been upended. Many kids no longer go to school, workers who can do so toil from home, and all the extra activities in a family’s life — sports, proms, graduations — have been postponed or canceled. In certain ways, people have adapted — witness the new phenomenon of the “fake commute.” It’s also worth noting that the lone subgroup that didn’t register a decline in mental health in the Gallup poll were those who regularly go to church. Out of all 19 groups measured, weekly church attendees had the highest percentage of those rating their mental health as “excellent” at 46%. (This, of course, assumes they can still go to church every week; it’s unclear whether virtual church counts in the category.)

But humans can only be isolated for so long before they lose out to despair — or rebel.

“While public officials are busy cracking down on freedom using a viral pandemic as their justification, another pandemic comes chopping and reaping, this one caused by the extreme measures that have produced no beneficial results,” note the editors of Issues & Insights. They add, “Both the elected and unelected who have brought this on need to be held accountable.”

And, as if to reiterate their point, they argue, “Thanks to power-mad, narcissistic, risk-averse, cowardly me-too public officials, America and other nations under lockdowns are suffering emotionally. … Shut-it-down officials are the worst among us, the last people who should be making decisions about others’ lives.”

It’s rare that our federalist system has shown the divide in America so clearly. In some states, restaurants are open, sports are being played, and — aside from the mandates to mask up — things are relatively close to the pre-pandemic normal. On the other side of the wire, people are being ordered to stay home for the holidays, and small businesses are being shuttered, many of them never to reopen.

Those grounded in faith know that there will be something on the other side of this pandemic, although we can’t be certain of how it will arrive or what form it will take. Perhaps we get all the way back to where we were before, although there are some pandemic-induced innovations we may not mind keeping around, such as working from home (faux commute or not).

More likely, though, there will be a little piece of our complacency lost, just like those who survived the Great Depression never forgot the financial lessons they learned the hard way. In this case, the lesson may need to be one of maintaining our freedom. But we have to get it back first.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76390-lockdown-consequences-include-our-mental-health-2020-12-11

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IN BRIEF

Data analysts believe they've uncovered widespread illegal voting in Georgia (National Review)

House Republicans call for special counsel to investigate the 2020 election (National Review)

Facebook threatened to ban popular YouTube comedian JP Sears for "violating community standards," so he's moving to Parler (Not the Bee)

YouTube to remove videos claiming mass fraud changed election results (Politico)

Major media outlets mostly ignore story linking Eric Swalwell to Chinese spy (Washington Examiner)

Ric Grenell calls out CNN's Jake Tapper for belatedly covering Hunter Biden story (Fox News)

MSNBC lefty partisan Joy Reid to teach "journalism" at Howard University (Daily Caller)

FDA approves emergency use authorization for at-home test (Washington Examiner)

Court strikes another blow against California's absurd restrictions on religious services (Free Beacon)

Michigan Democrat removed from committees, facing "investigations" after making "threats" against Trump supporters (Daily Wire)

Johns Hopkins, long believed by university to be abolitionist, owned slaves (NBC News) Cancel him!

Xenophobic China restricts U.S. official travel to Hong Kong (AP)

Three studies that show lockdowns are ineffective (FEE)

There's rich, and there's Jeff Bezos rich: Meet the five members of the centibillionaire club (NPR)

Policy: Small business is just as important as small government (The Federalist)

New Yorkers Shocked by These Real Joe Biden Quotes — "The first mainstream African American who is bright, articulate, and clean."

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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All you need to know about government healthcare

In Britain, government hospitals even kill healthy people

Hundreds of babies died needlessly amid repeated failures at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, according to the first report from an independent review into its maternity services.

The review by Donna Ockenden, a healthcare expert, found a “lack of kindness and compassion” from staff — with women often blamed for the loss of their babies — and a failure to learn when things went wrong.

A review looked at 250 cases of stillbirths, brain damage, and deaths of babies and mothers at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust and says “urgent action” is needed to improve safety.

In all, 1,862 cases are being investigated, making it the largest review of its kind in NHS history.

A highly critical report found:

An “unacceptable” lack of kindness and compassion from some maternity staff

Families’ concerns about their care were dismissed or “not listened to at all”

Midwives failed to recognise when a pregnancy wasn’t progressing normally

Repeated failures to escalate problems to more senior staff

“Continuing errors” in monitoring babies’ heart beats

Inappropriate use of drugs, including oxytocin to speed up labour

A culture of reducing the number of caesarean births without considering if it was causing harm

The report found 13 mothers died between 2000 and 2019.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-12-10/shrewsbury-maternity-scandal-mothers-were-blamed-for-the-death-of-their-baby

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Don't Let COVID-19 Lockdowns Become a Permanent Power Grab

This week, as Los Angeles County announced it would lock down all outdoor dining, a video went viral. That video featured restaurant owner Angela Marsden, proprietor of the Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill, decrying the lockdown policy while pointing to the erection of production catering set up for a Hollywood shoot just a few feet away. "Everything I own is being taken away from me, and they set up a movie company right next to my outdoor patio," Marsden said, adding that she has spent approximately $80,000 complying with the requirements of LA County, only to see it shut down her business completely.

There is no scientific policy justifying LA County's outdoor-dining shutdown. In fact, during a Board of Supervisors meeting, a community member quizzed LA County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis on the evidence to support such a ban. Muntu provided no such evidence, likely because there is none.

But those who want to run their businesses in a safe and secure fashion are being targeted nonetheless by a political class incentivized to pursue tyranny rather than rational policy. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti -- who told police to stand down as rioters tore through his city during a pandemic -- said that his "heart goes out to Ms. Marsden" and then added, "No one likes these restrictions, but I do support them as our hospital ICU beds fill to capacity." He explained, "We must stop this virus before it kills thousands of more Angelenos." He did not explain why, if outdoor dining was so dangerous, Hollywood is still allowed to engage in it.

That's no surprise. Throughout the pandemic, one set of rules has applied to America's most ardent lockdown advocates, and another set of rules has applied to everyone else. LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted to ban outdoor dining ... and then went to an outdoor restaurant later that evening. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is currently locking down some 33 million citizens but had no problem eating indoors with members of the California Medical Association at The French Laundry. Mayor London Breed of San Francisco ate at that same posh restaurant the next day. Austin Mayor Steve Adler told his constituents, "stay home if you can" in a Facebook video filmed from his vacation timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, where he'd just headed with seven others after a wedding in Austin. Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago got her hair cut and called it an "essential" business activity while promoting lockdown. Gov. Andrew Cuomo told everybody to stay home for Thanksgiving and then announced he would be getting together with his daughters and his 89-year-old mother, only to then reverse himself.

The message is obvious: Our intellectual and moral betters in politics are free to make their own rational calculations on COVID-19 risk. The rest of us are to be locked in our homes until further notice. When these political actors suggest that we must act out of an abundance of caution, they mean that they ought to enjoy abundance while benefitting from our caution.

You and your family are capable of making the same decisions Cuomo, Garcetti, Newsom, Lightfoot and Adler do. You should be careful; you should engage in social distancing, mask up when in close proximity with others and generally avoid social gatherings involving those with preexisting conditions. But you can do all of these things and still live in a free society. Our politicians don't believe that, because our politicians have seen how easily so many Americans were willing to indefinitely suspend their freedoms out of trust in our authorities. Until the incentive structures change, our freedoms will continue to be throttled by people who have no problem exercising their own.

One need not be a COVID-19 skeptic in order to question whether the enthusiastic authoritarian streak revealed by those politicians can be curbed. The longer we tolerate it, the more our politicians will normalize their power grabs.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/09/dont_let_covid-19_lockdowns_become_a_permanent_power_grab_144808.html

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IN BRIEF

Michigan judge allows probe of Dominion voting machines (Fox News)

Joe Biden picks California AG Xavier Becerra as health secretary (Reuters)

"Your daily reminder that ... Xavier Becerra tried to FORCE pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in CA to advertise free abortions." —Liz Wheeler

Now who's contesting elections? The Democrat House could overturn results in Iowa and New York (WSJ)

"House Democrats are sweating, having lost at least 10 seats when they were supposed to gain that many. If Ms. Miller-Meeks and Ms. Tenney prevail, the House will likely be split 222-213, leaving the GOP five seats from a majority in 2022 and potentially narrowing Nancy Pelosi's path to be re-elected as Speaker in January. The Democratic pressure to do everything in their power to prevent these two losses will be immense."

DNI John Ratcliffe urges John Durham to release interim report in order to protect investigation (Daily Caller)

House passes bill to end federal marijuana prohibition (Yahoo Finance)

ABC's George Stephanopoulos directs viewers to Democrat fundraising page (The Federalist)

Trump announces lawyer Rudy Giuliani tests positive (Washington Examiner)

California residents under strict stay-at-home orders through Christmas (NPR)

Sweden's infection rate soars above Britain, Germany, and Spain (Daily Mail)

Trump orders withdrawal of troops from Somalia (NY Post)

Congress moves to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Germany (Military.com)

Diplomats who became ill in Cuba and China may have been targeted with a type of radiation (Daily Wire)

NYC's shooting surge reaches "levels unseen in years" (Fox News)

LA restaurant owner's outdoor dining area shut down by mayor. Days later, film production company sets up outdoor dining area 15 feet away. (Not the Bee)

Ohio allows full-contact wrestling but bans post-match handshakes (Disrn)

Policy: The war on the Electoral College has only just begun (National Review)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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The FDA is as paralytically slow as ever -- denying safe and effective healthcare to millions

On December 1, the UK pharmaceutical regulatory agency, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), approved the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, the US will wait on the FDA bureaucracy to reach a decision.

The British will be able to start receiving the vaccine within days. Their focus will be on protecting the frontline workers and the elderly; those in the highest risk groups. Those in the highest risk groups in the US, on the other hand, will be forced to wait.

On November 9th, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine was over 90 percent effective. A press release is no substitute for the actual data from the study, and review of the data is necessary. They applied to the FDA for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on November 30th.  An EUA allows the FDA to streamline the approval process in the case of an emergency, or if running a clinic trial is impossible.

The FDA released a notice in the Federal Register on Nov. 27, giving the public information about the EUA approval meeting. This provided the public with the opportunity to comment on the proposals being discussed, which is the normal process for federal agencies issuing regulatory changes. Finally, on December 10th, the FDA advisory committee will meet to discuss the EUA request. Upon reaching a recommendation, the FDA will choose whether or not to act upon it, which the FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said in an interview would likely be within a few days.

According to Dr. Hahn, the FDA has been and will continue to review data and generate reports to prepare for the meeting during this time. In his interviews, Dr. Hahn’s description of the process implies that he believes that slow equals safe. But this is a false dichotomy. Rather than setting an arbitrary deadline for how long approvals should take to be complete, approvals should last until a rigorous analysis can be completed. How much additional data will we be able to gather by waiting a week longer than the UK?  

The EUA means that this is an emergency. On average COVID-19 deaths amount to over 1,500 per day. For much of the year, excess deaths were even higher than COVID-19 deaths. Whether those deaths are undiagnosed COVID-19 deaths or deaths due to our response does not matter; they are a result of the virus and need to be considered when we are weighing the tradeoffs. We need to consider the risk of the vaccine and the risks of people contracting COVID-19 without the vaccine.

Unfortunately, the FDA has a long history of risk aversion when considering these tradeoffs. Former FDA Chair Scott Gottlieb detailed the culture of risk aversion at the FDA and its pitfalls. Vahid Montazerhodjat and Andrew Lo used Bayesian decision analysis to analyze the FDA approval stance. They also find that the FDA is too conservative, overweighing the risk of ineffective treatments and undervaluing the cost of rejecting effective treatments for severe diseases. This lengthens the process from discovery in the lab to use as treatment, which already sits at an average of over 15 years.

But this risk aversion and slow process is outdated in today’s rapidly advancing world. Technology is progressing at a rapid pace. It took researchers at Moderna just two days to design their vaccine in January, something unimaginable years ago. The rapid speed with which researchers are able to isolate a problem and design a solution tailored to it is only increasing as our technology improves. For example, just this week researchers released that they have solved the 50-year-old protein folding challenge, successfully cultured meat grown in a lab, and discovered a treatment to de-age and regenerate neurons.

Just 10 years ago it would have been impossible for so many people to seamlessly transition to working remotely. It should be no shock that science is seeing these improvements too.

Despite the rapid advances or science and technology, the FDA is still mired in an outdated regulatory process designed for the world of fax machines, not smartphones. The regulatory process is more suited for the pre-internet age, stifled by much slower data collection and the movement of information. We need nimble regulations that are able to keep up, rather than arcane and ritualized procedures.

Of course, you can’t shorten the time to conduct clinical safety and efficacy trials, but the UK allowed Pfizer to submit information on a rolling basis to shorten the approval process timeline. The FDA can do that to make it easier. The FDA could also end the requirement to fax or mail in hard copies of data.

The FDA also has a history of moving the goalposts, and requesting additional data from pharmaceutical developers, lengthening the approval process. After some time on the market, the Multiple Sclerosis drug Tysabri was found to increase the chance of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy and was voluntarily withdrawn from the market. Despite the FDA advisory committee recommending only a warning accompanying the package, the FDA required they create a risk map and limited the availability of the drug, which they didn’t require for Rituxan, which was in a similar situation.

Similarly, the FDA added requirements during the EUA process. In October, they announced a 2-month post injection review for side effects for 50 percent of participants. This forced Pfizer to wait an additional month to apply in order to meet the requirement. Eric Topol worked to convince the FDA to add this requirement to lengthen the process. The FDA’s decision was called “bureaucratic jujitsu” by a supporter. I’d call it bureaucratic obstruction which cost the lives of thousands of people forced to wait for the vaccine. Meanwhile patients in the UK are able to receive that vaccine. 

The UK approval should inspire us to enact a reform that is far overdue and is a simple alternative that still keeps the protections of a regulatory agency but will allow for some speed. We should have reciprocity agreements with regulators in other countries. This would allow any drug approved for use in another country to be used by American patients. Some countries, like Australia and New Zealand, already take FDA approval into consideration during their approval process. 

The U.S. government can limit reciprocity to countries that have a proven track record of approving safe and effective drugs. This would include countries in the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This reciprocity would reduce delay and limit wasting time and effort applying to multiple regulatory bodies. Comparing the approved drugs in the UK and the US, researchers have found no significant difference in the safety between the countries, suggesting that MHRA approval is no less safe than FDA approval.

Ensuring that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective is important, no one is arguing that. The question is how long a process is necessary, considering the continuing death toll. While the FDA abides by their bureaucratic process, the MHRA has acted quickly and approved the Pfizer vaccine, allowing people in the UK to begin to be vaccinated.

The FDA approval process, even in their Emergency Use Authorization, is a long process, taking time and costing us lives. 

https://catalyst.independent.org/2020/12/08/fda-delays-covid-vaccine-review/?omhide=true

Texas Files Lawsuit With SCOTUS Challenging Election Procedures in 4 Swing States

Texas is suing Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in the Supreme Court over "unconstitutional irregularities" in the election process, saying the states used the coronavirus pandemic to justify "ignoring state laws" with regard to absentee and mail-in voting.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging the four swing states violated state and federal law when they modified election procedures. The four battleground states listed in the suit were key to President Donald Trump's path to victory in 2016 and were vital to his reelection bid. Given the number of electoral votes at stake, the plaintiffs argued the states will "determine the outcome of the election."

"With all unlawful votes discounted, the election result is an open question that this Court must address," Paxton's brief to the Supreme Court said.

Without factoring the four states into the electoral vote totals, former Vice President Biden, who has 306 votes, would be down to 244, compared with Trump's 232. Therefore, the plaintiffs argue, those states are critical to the election. Trump won all four states in 2016 but lost them this year.

The suit charged executive and judicial officials in the four states with making "significant changes" to election rules, a move that the plaintiffs argue "did away" with security measures for absentee and mail-in ballots. Among the measures that the plaintiffs say were removed were signature verification, witness requirements, poll observers and authorized secure ballot drop-off locations.

Signature verification and the ability for people to observe the election process are two issues the Trump campaign and the president have stressed in their election fight. Poll observers being kept too far from where ballots were being opened was one of the first problems the campaign had with the election, and Trump has pushed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to demand signature verification in the election.

"The Republican Governor of Georgia refuses to do signature verification, which would give us an easy win. What's wrong with this guy? What is he hiding?" Trump, who also called Kemp a RINO (Republican in name only), tweeted on Monday.

Without matching signatures, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said, a recount in Georgia means nothing because alleged "fraudulent" ballots would still be added to the total votes for each candidate.

On Election Night, Trump had the lead over Biden as in-person votes were being counted. However, that lead quickly dwindled as states counted mail-in ballots, a voting method the president dissuaded his supporters from using. In the suit, the plaintiffs argue that there was a "one in a quadrillion" probability of Biden winning the popular vote in the four key swing states, given Trump's lead early on Wednesday morning after the election.

"Invalid or fraudulent votes debase or dilute the weight of each validly cast vote," the plaintiffs wrote in the brief.

The four states targeted in the Supreme Court filing are all ones that the Trump campaign has gone after themselves, but so far they've been fighting a losing legal battle. In legal filings, they cited many of the same reasons as the Supreme Court brief, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the most recent development meant "huge."

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel called the lawsuit a "publicity stunt" and not a "serious legal pleading." She said that Paxton, not voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania, was to blame for the "erosion of confidence in our democratic system." Nessel added that the issues raised in the complaint have already been litigated and "roundly rejected."

Legal experts aren't confident the Supreme Court will take the case, though, and the plaintiffs are up against the clock. The plaintiffs' attorneys argued that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over the case because it isn't just a matter of state laws but a violation of the Constitution. They added that the Supreme Court is the only forum that can "delay" the December 14 deadline for states to appoint their electors and pushed for them to do so.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/politics/texas-files-lawsuit-with-scotus-challenging-election-procedures-in-4-swing-states/ar-BB1bJYvt

Patrick Basham Lays Out Why He Believes Biden's Election Win Is 'Statistically Implausible'

Pollster Patrick Basham explained during an interview with Fox News’s Mark Levin why he believes Joe Biden’s supposed election victory, while “not statistically impossible,” is “statistically implausible.”

Basham said during the interview that aired Sunday that he looked at numerous “non-polling metrics,” which have a “100 percent accuracy rate in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election,” to come to his conclusion.

“Something very strange has happened because the numbers just don't add up,” he said referring to the election results.

Some of the “dozen or more” metrics include “party registration trends, how the candidates did in their respective presidential primaries, the number of individual donations, [and] how much enthusiasm each candidate generated in the opinion polls.”

He said these metrics pointed to a Trump victory in 2016 and “that was again the case in 2020.”

“So if we are to accept that Biden won against the trend of all these non-polling metrics, it not only means that one of these metrics was inaccurate ... for the first time ever, it means that each one of these metrics was wrong for the first time and at the same time as all of the others,” Basham explained.

The founding director of the Democracy Institute said if 100 observers were only shown the “vote breakdown by demographic group” on election night, 99 “would say, well, obviously, Trump.”

Basham also called into question the ballot rejection rate for absentee and mail-in ballots, which he said was “historically low.”

“Rejection rates, which in the primaries earlier this year were well into the double-digits and which historically have often been very, very high in these key swing states, or at least in the key swing counties, we're seeing rejection rates of less than 1 percent, often very close to to zero,” he noted. “Given the increase in absentee balloting and the lack of experience that most of the new voters and those doing the counting would have with those ballots, it is implausible, to put it politely, that that figure would be as low as it was.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/12/07/mark-levin-guest-on-puzzling-election-results-n2581144

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More Lockdowns Aren’t Answer to Stopping COVID-19

As infections increase during the “second wave” of the coronavirus, too many politicians are knee-jerking to reimpose harsh restrictions such as business shutdowns, curfews, and home confinements.

These types of sweeping and overly restrictive COVID-19 measures cause needless harm, especially for the majority of generally healthy Americans who will experience moderate to no symptoms if they catch the virus.

More effective approaches include doing more to protect vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions; getting newly approved rapid at-home tests into the hands of more Americans so those who are infected can be immediately identified and quarantined; and preparing for a potential vaccine by developing a plan for quick distribution and prioritizing who gets it first.

Shutting down entire states only worsens the economic devastation as well as the health and welfare of otherwise healthy Americans. The answer to defeating the coronavirus can’t be choosing between our health and our economy. The answer isn’t either-or, rather it’s both-and.

Our economic health has an incredible effect on our physical and mental health, and vice versa. The longer that healthier, lower-risk Americans are out of work, deprived of contact with family and friends, and sheltered at home, the more public health suffers, both physically and mentally.

Governors and local officials need to make shutdown decisions on a targeted, county-by-county basis, based on virus case numbers and infection rates. And such actions must be very temporary.

Research shows that areas where state and local officials have allowed places to safely reopen are well on their way to economic recovery. Meanwhile, in areas with excessive restrictions, including business and school closures, families and children are struggling.

We’ve also seen that strict lockdown orders in many European countries haven’t prevented a second wave of the virus.

A more effective approach to stopping the spread is widespread testing—figuring out who has the virus and temporarily quarantining them from others as they ride out the illness.

The Food and Drug Administration has just approved COVID-19 self-tests that can be easily conducted at home or work and don’t need to be sent off to a lab. Rapid manufacture and distribution of these kits is now key.

Quickly determining who is infected and who isn’t can go a long way toward mitigating the spread of the virus and makes going into businesses, schools, churches, and other facilities much safer.

Especially for nursing home and hospital staff who work around vulnerable people, being able to rapid-test each day before going into work will help prevent more breakouts and deaths.

States also must prepare an effective distribution strategy for a potentially soon-to-be-released vaccine. State public health agencies must prioritize who should receive the vaccine first.

The top of the list should include those with the highest degree of transmission risk and those who may experience the severest consequences of an infection. That means starting with front-line health care workers, the elderly, and those with underlying medical conditions.

States also immediately should allow pharmacists to administer the vaccine, just as many already allow them to administer flu and pneumonia vaccines. Pharmacists are positioned to ensure fast and efficient mass immunization, and that kind of rapid response could prevent millions of additional infections and tens of thousands of additional deaths.

A complete road map to recovery (found here) has been created by the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission; it contains 265 specific, actionable recommendations, including those mentioned above. The road map was developed for governments, businesses, churches, educational institutions, and community organizations to navigate as safely as possible through the pandemic.

Instead of indiscriminate and ineffective statewide shutdowns, public health measures should be focused on continuing to inform Americans how to reduce their chances of catching and spreading COVID-19; doing more to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions; distributing rapid at-home tests to determine who may be contagious; and preparing a strategy for rapid public vaccination once a vaccine is released.

Lockdowns and prohibiting families from visiting one another in their own homes this holiday season aren’t the answers, and there’s no reason they should be the go-to tool for our leaders.

It’s time that the same politicians who regularly lecture us about “following the science” actually look in the mirror and take their own advice.

Following the science and assessing everything that we’ve learned in the months since the pandemic first struck will help us to defeat this deadly disease more quickly; recover our jobs and our economy; and get us reunited with family and community and back to some sense of normality again.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/12/02/more-lockdowns-arent-answer-to-stopping-covid-19

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Universal flu vaccine could be on the horizon after trials show experimental jab can protect humans 'from getting countless strains of the virus'

A universal flu vaccine could protect patients from countless strains of the virus for at least 18 months, scientists have found.

Those over 65, in care homes and frontline medics are told to get the jab every year because the virus constantly mutates to evade the body's defences.

The current jab is based on predictions of which strain of influenza may cause havoc in Britain and only offers protection against three or four.

But today scientists inched a step closer to a universal jab which can protect against countless flu strains, after human trials showed it triggered the production of antibodies that block the influenza virus' spike proteins - stopping it from invading cells and causing an infection.

Despite not being proof that it works, it offers a first glimpse of a possible new jab.

It works by triggering an immune response against the 'stalk' part of the virus' spike protein — which it uses to help it invade cells.

This part, unlike the 'head' of the spike, rarely differs between the hundreds of strains meaning a vaccine against it could provide wide-ranging and long-lasting immunity.

Coronavirus has killed three times as many people as influenza and pneumonia this year, official data has revealed.

Covid-19 was listed as the underlying cause of death in 48,168 fatalities recorded in England and Wales between January and August, according to a September report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Influenza caused just 394 deaths during the same time period and pneumonia — often caused by the flu — was behind 13,619 deaths.

But deaths from the two common respiratory illnesses have actually outnumbered Covid-19 fatalities since July, when the pandemic began to fade away, the data also revealed. For instance, flu and influenza killed 14 people on August 31 — the most recent day figures are available for, compared to five from the coronavirus.

The report also revealed flu or pneumonia were mentioned on more than 70,000 death certificates, which is more than the 52,327 linked to Covid-19. When a condition is mentioned on a death certificate it means doctors consider it to have contributed to someone's death but to have not been the main factor that lead to the end of their life.

Deaths from pneumonia and influenza were seven times below the average 100,000 deaths they cause each year, which experts said was due to social distancing restrictions hampering the transmission of the diseases.

This means that without lockdown restrictions Covid-19 could easily have caused more than a tenth of a million fatalities.

Millions of flu vaccines are rolled out by the NHS in the UK every winter to stop a major outbreak of influenza, which adds pressure to busy hospitals.

But the jabs often miss the mark because they don't protect against all strains and can only be 30 to 40 per cent effective.

Health chiefs called on people to get the flu vaccine this year to protect health services from a 'double-whammy' of Covid-19 and flu cases.

Influenza — considered the most likely to cause a pandemic — kills around 17,000 people every year in England and up to 62,000 in the US, according to statistics.

When Spanish flu struck in 1918/19, it spread through a third of the world's population and is estimated to have killed around 100million people.

Results of the study on the universal flu vaccine, published in the journal Nature Medicine, saw it administered to 65 US adults aged between 18 and 39.

Participants were given two injections of the trial vaccine — which focused on the 'stalk' of a spike protein — three months apart.

Ten blood samples were taken to see if the individuals still had any antibodies — disease-fighting proteins — against the hundreds of strains of the virus.

'Vaccination was found to be safe and induced a broad, strong, durable and (trigger) functional immune response targeting the conserved,' the team from the New York-based Mount Sinai School of Medicine wrote in the study.

'The results suggest that (the vaccine candidate) has the potential to be developed as universal vaccines that protect broadly against influenza viruses.'

Professor Florian Krammer, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine who led the study, said: 'An influenza virus vaccine that results in broad immunity would likely protect against any emerging influenza virus subtype or strain and would significantly enhance our pandemic preparedness, avoiding future problems with influenza pandemics as we see them now with Covid-19.'

Professor Krammer added: 'Our chimeric hemagglutinin vaccine is a major advance over conventional vaccines which are often mismatched to the circulating strains of virus, impacting their effectiveness. 'In addition, re-vaccinating individuals annually is a huge and expensive undertaking.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9026585/Universal-flu-vaccine-horizon.html

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SURVIVING

It seems that I am not dead yet.  Although my energies for blogging are much reduced, I have been able to keep posting to some extent.  I have mainly found material worth posting on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. I have had a bit of fun with postings about China on the latter.  So I think I will continue to be able to post a few worthwhile things

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