'Show us the evidence': Scientists call for clarity on claim that new Covid-19 variant strain is 70% more contagious

Boris Johnson was last night urged to publish clear evidence of the Covid data he used to cancel Christmas for millions.

The Prime Minister has warned the new variant of coronavirus may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible than previous strains and could overwhelm the NHS.

But last night one scientist demanded greater transparency over the number that shut down swathes of the UK.

Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Primary Care, expressed scepticism over the 70 per cent figure.

He said: 'I've been doing this job for 25 years and I can tell you can't establish a quantifiable number in such a short time frame.'

He added 'every expert is saying it's too early to draw such an inference'.

Professor Heneghan said there was no doubt this time of the year, the 'height of the viral season', was a difficult time for the NHS. But he said failure to put out the basis of the figures was undermining public trust.

He added: 'I would want to have very clear evidence rather than 'we think it's more transmissible' so we can see if it is or not.

'It has massive implications, it's causing fear and panic, but we should not be in this situation when the Government is putting out data that is unquantifiable.'

He added: 'They are fitting the data to the evidence. They see cases rising and they are looking for evidence to explain it.'

The new variant was found on September 20 in Kent.

By mid-November, 28 per cent of cases in London were attributable to it. And in the week starting December 9, it was responsible for 62 per cent.

Professor Heneghan said that if it was true the new variant was more transmissible 'we should be locking down the whole country' as people leaving the capital to avoid restrictions would spread it.

Announcing the new Tier Four restrictions, Boris Johnson blamed the new Covid strain and said 'it may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the old variant'.

He also said the new virus could boost the reproduction rate – known as R – by 0.4. When R is above 1 the virus is increasing. If it is below 1, it is decreasing.

Mr Johnson said the figure, which came from analysis by government advisory body The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), was 'early data' and 'subject to review'. But he added: 'It's the best we have at the moment.

'We have to act on information as we have it because this is spreading very fast.'

Peter Horby, chairman of Nervtag and Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford, said the figure of 70 per cent was based on 'converging data'.

He said: 'This is including, but not limited to, the rate of change in the frequency of detection of the variant (the growth rate) and the correlation between R values and the frequency of detection of the new variant.'

Minutes from the Nervtag meeting from December 18 said they had 'moderate confidence' that the new variant, known as VUI-202012/01, 'demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants'.

The variant demonstrated exponential growth when national lockdown measures were in place, the minutes added.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9073765/Scientists-call-clarity-claim-new-Covid-19-variant-strain-70-contagious.html

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Australian Bureau of Statistics: Australian deaths, 1 January to 27 October 2020

The coronavirus has actually SAVED lives. It has wiped out some of the elderly but the rest of the population is doing fine

Deaths have been lower than average during the winter months in 2020.

Respiratory disease deaths have been lower than historical minimums since June.

Throughout this report, counts of deaths for 2020 are compared to an average number of deaths recorded over the previous 5 years (2015-2019). These average or baseline counts serve as a proxy for the expected number of deaths, so comparisons against baseline counts can provide an indication of excess mortality. The minimum and maximum counts from 2015-19 are also included to provide an indication of the range of previous counts. Minimums and maximums for any given week can be from any of the five years from 2015-19.

Deaths remained below historical averages since mid May, although the difference temporarily narrowed in late July and mid August. The number of deaths typically declines during spring with the end of the influenza season. Despite the lack of a severe 2020 influenza season, the number of deaths has followed traditional patterns, declining during the spring months.

Deaths were below the historical minimum range for most of June and July, late August and since mid September. Between 3 June and 27 October, there have been 57,939 deaths, 3,388 below the average of 61,327.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release

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Rep. Kevin Hern: Capitalism pulled me out of poverty, why can't AOC admit it saved her, too?

It is well-documented that my colleague, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., worked in the service industry before running for Congress. It’s part of the reason why she gained so much traction with young people in her party.

To be honest, I admire her ambition and think it should be applauded that she has found such success. It’s only possible in America.

What’s less well-known is that she is far from the first person to make that economic jump and that there are several sitting members of Congress who come from much poorer backgrounds and worked their way to prosperity.

No one wants to talk about it because we’re conservative. We believe that capitalism is what pulled us out of poverty and we want to maintain that system for future Americans.

The beauty of America is that anything is possible. No matter what economic class you are born into, there is an opportunity to turn yourself into anything, if you are willing to work for it. There’s no limit to what you can achieve with a big idea and a strong work ethic.

There are not many people in Congress who can testify to that statement quite like I can.

For many years of my childhood, we didn’t have electricity or running water, because my mom and stepdad couldn’t afford to pay the bill.

I remember coming home from elementary school not knowing if we’d have food for dinner most nights. I was mocked by my classmates for my worn-out clothes. I was looked down on for receiving free lunches at school. We were constantly moving from house to house because my stepdad never made the rent.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and I walked through similar doors of opportunity, a door called capitalism, but she wants to permanently shut that door to everyone behind her.

That didn’t stop me from dreaming. In fact, it motivated me. It inspired me to work so hard that my future family would never live like that.

To that end, I went to work and I worked hard. I earned an architectural drafting certificate while still in high school to earn money for college. I earned a degree in engineering and started working in aerospace.

My career took a detour when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, changing the aerospace industry forever. I was out of a job and didn’t know what was next when I first learned about the opportunities available as a McDonald’s franchisee.

What AOC and far-left have done for Democrats: SmithVideo
I spent 10 years flipping burgers at McDonald's while saving up $100,000 to buy my first restaurant in the franchise system. I wasn’t just flipping burgers, though. I worked every role in the store, from the cash register to the fryer to the drive-through.

I was learning the management side as well, every aspect of running a McDonald's. In my spare time, what little I had, I was writing code, developing real estate, pig farming – any small job I could do to save up for that first restaurant.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez likes to tell people that Republicans make fun of her for being a waitress, but you can imagine the condescending comments and ridicule I get for McDonald’s?

No doubt about it, I’m the butt of endless jokes. People call me the ‘McCongressman’ and trivialize my real-world experience because it’s tied to the golden arches.

It doesn’t bother me because the McDonald’s franchise program helped me realize my American Dream. I’ve embraced the nickname ‘Big Mac’ and I share my ‘secret sauce’ to success with anyone who wants to listen.

America is a one-of-a-kind place. We are lucky to live in a land of opportunity, where someone like me can build a multi-million-dollar company after growing up with absolutely nothing, where someone like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez can bartend one day and be elected to Congress the next.

She and I walked through similar doors of opportunity, a door called capitalism, but she wants to permanently shut that door to everyone behind her.

The American Dream is achievable for those who are willing to work for it. The same opportunities I had 40 years ago are still available today, but they’re in danger.

We must fiercely protect and defend those opportunities from socialist policies that would destroy us in pursuit of ill-conceived ideas that have repeatedly destroyed the countries who employ them.

What we’re seeing in California and New York under hypocritical COVID mandates is the future that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues want.

The American entrepreneurial spirit will be crushed under their policies and the American Dream will die a tragic death.

It’s easy to promote impossible ideas and ride them to fame, but the danger comes when people expect you to act on them; you can never live up to those promises. Socialism has long been a dirty word because of the very real destruction it has caused across the globe.

Nevertheless, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez wants you to believe that this time will be different. We can’t afford to find out.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/capitalism-poverty-aoc-kevin-hern

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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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2020: The Year We Lost The Plot

Rob Slane

“Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines.”

Anyone making this claim at the beginning of the year would rightly have been thought to have mislaid the plot and their marbles, long ago. But here we are, at the end of that same year, and it is precisely what has happened.

Only it is much worse than that.

Had you somehow been persuaded to give credence to this insane prophecy, you would probably have been comforted by the following thought: “They’ll never get away with it. The people will never stand for it.”

Not a bit of it. Somehow, millions of people across the country, and in fact across the world, were persuaded to accept it. By far the majority somehow thought that quarantining whole nations of healthy people for a virus, for the first time in history, was a good idea. Well, actually the second time in history to be precise. It was tried in 2009 by the Mexican Government during the Swine Flu outbreak, but they had the good sense to end it after a couple of weeks after realising how much it would devastate the country.

Yet not only do we have our imaginary conspiracy loon’s mad ravings come true, but those same people who have accepted it look upon those of us who have been pointing out the madness of it all as if we were those who had taken leave of our senses. Oh irony, thou hast had a field day in 2020. As St. Antony the Great put it:

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

To cut to the chase, we have gone and thrown out reason, rationality and proportionality this year. A coronavirus, which posed a danger to a very small proportion of our society, but which actually has an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26% (not too dissimilar to a bad seasonal flu), and which could thus have been dealt with proportionality, somehow became the catalyst for the biggest mass hysteria in the history of the human race. Indeed, many were so taken in by the great hypnotic spell set in motion by charlatans with their “hard-hitting emotional messaging,” that they adopted practices so irrational and disproportionate to the threat, one wonders how they managed to live before this year.

The history books tell of one of our great Kings, Canute, demonstrating to his courtiers that contrary to their supposition, he could not in fact control the waves. In our day, it’s like King Canute has gone rogue, telling his subjects that he can control the waves and viruses, and his subjects have responded by not only believing him, but by taking any action he tells them they must do to stop the waves or the virus, including confining themselves to their homes, closing their businesses, wearing cloths on their faces, along with umpteen other truly bizarre and wholly useless diktats. Then, when the waves or the virus continue doing what waves and viruses do, a wave of Covidian Logic bursts over us and we find it is our fault that they have not been controlled. We didn’t shut down hard enough or long enough, or we played board games at Christmas.

In the real world, the only thing that got controlled this year was not a virus, but people. That all went off spiffingly, or spaffingly as Comrade Johnson might put it. People were suppressed, people were controlled, people were — you might say — owned. And by and large they acquiesced in putting their hand to this National Suicide Plan.

Of course, the reply that comes the way of anyone who points this out is:

“Ah, but if we hadn’t locked down and masked up, the deaths would have been in the hundreds of thousands.”

To which the answer is simply:

“Nope. Lockdown cannot be shown to have saved a single life.”

Sweden, by not turning itself into a basketcase, failed to have the anything like wave of mass deaths predicted by the Enthusiasts for Lockdown. Nor did other nations that took a similar approach. A recent peer-reviewed study from France, looking at 188 countries, has confirmed what should have been obvious all along:

“Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.”

Then of course there was the Danish RCT study, which showed no significant statistical difference between infection rates of those wearing surgical masks, and those with no masks.

Imagine that!

Imagine that we were put under house arrest for months, made to cover our respiratory passages with bits of cloth, forced to alter our lives, and threatened with fines for non-compliance — and none of it made any difference to mortality.

Imagine that this Government and Parliament caused the complete shutdown of the economy for months, putting millions on the dole, wrecking 1,000s of businesses, causing the worst recession for 300 years, and piling up a future of debt, poverty, mental health issues and reduced life expectancy — and none of it saved any lives.

Imagine that we are still in this situation, with people still acquiescing in the destruction of their own country, the Government and media still feeding us lies, and with no real plausible end to this madness.

Actually, you have no need to imagine it. Even though it is so outlandish that even the most unhinged, basement-dwelling “conspiracy nut” on the planet could not have come up with this, it is indeed the year you just lived through. We lost the plot in 2020, and the most pressing question is: will we get it back in 2021?

Trump's Legacy: Blacks, Hispanics, and Blue-Collar Workers

The president's performance wasn't historic, but it was an improvement.

One of President Donald Trump’s many achievements is the way he shifted the demographics of the country’s electorate with his unique appeal. There are three key demographics that, for the last half-century or so, have been particularly tough for Republicans: blacks, Hispanics, and blue-collar workers. Trump made inroads with all three groups for a lot of overlapping reasons. And he gained among minorities while being slandered as a “racist” almost daily by the mainstream media. In many ways, this shift IS the Trump legacy.

Caveat: Ballot harvesting and bulk-mail balloting skewed a lot of things in the 2020 election, so, as always, keep that in mind with any discussion of results.

Call us crazy, but it’s almost like the color of someone’s skin or the amount of money they earn doesn’t automatically determine their political interests. In fact, most humans simply want jobs to provide for their families, economic security, and a culture and country they feel they belong in. Democrats win votes by dividing people along those lines and fomenting hate. Trump won them by bringing voters into the big tent. He continuously spoke to blacks, Latinos, and blue-collar workers in kitchen-table terms.

For blacks, Trump had the guts to ask for their votes in 2016, essentially asking, What do you have to lose? He continued to court the black vote in 2020. And why not? What president in recent memory had actually done more for blacks? 

Trump advocated school choice (which Democrats and their teacher-union backers hate) and increased funding for historically black colleges and universities. He pushed through significant criminal justice reform, which in large part undid the over-incarceration effects of legislation written by the 1990s version of Senator Joe Biden. President Trump advocated economic-empowerment zones and the “Platinum Plan,” which were just part of the policy agenda specifically designed to increase black employment. Prior to the pandemic, Trump’s presidency saw the lowest black unemployment on record.

That resulted in winning the votes of 9% of black women and 19% of black men — 12% overall, and a big improvement from his 8% showing in 2016. To put it in perspective, however, that’s not a historic achievement. While Trump did improve upon his own showing four years ago and upon that of Mitt Romney and John McCain (who ran against an incredibly popular black man), he only matched Bob Dole in 1996 (12%) and he fell short of the black vote (as a percentage) won by Ronald Reagan (14% in 1980), Gerald Ford (17% in 1976), and Richard Nixon (15% in 1968).

Hispanics have not been nearly as one-sided for Democrats as blacks, but Republicans still struggle to reach Latinos. Surely the “racist” wall-builder Trump, who “wants to keep out all the Mexicans,” wouldn’t gain among Hispanics, would he? Yes, he would. Heck, Trump even carried Zapata County, Texas, which is on the Mexican border and may be the most heavily Hispanic county in the nation.

As it turns out, being Hispanic doesn’t mean automatically and unthinkingly demanding open borders, as Democrats now seem to think. It also doesn’t mean you’re automatically a ward of the state, as Democrats seem to think.

Hispanics have families and want jobs to provide for them. The ones who went to the trouble of emigrating legally (or who have been here for generations) don’t want to compete for those jobs with low-wage illegals, regardless of their nation of origin. They have that in common with blacks.

Our Louis DeBroux wrote in January, “By assuming Hispanics will always vote Democrat and are driven primarily by immigration, Democrats are making little effort to understand the other issues that are important to Hispanic voters. Those include good jobs, a decent education for their children, the rising cost of college, affordable housing for their families, etc.”

A lot of Hispanics from nations like Cuba or Venezuela are terrified of Democrat socialism. They’ve seen it before, and it’s why they fled their home countries. You don’t board a makeshift raft and cross an ocean only to vote for the same policies you fled.

Trump’s pitch was simple: He was far preferable to the alternative. “Joe Biden has spent 47 years betraying the Hispanic American community totally,” he said, “sending their jobs to China, raising taxes on their families and small businesses, making their communities less safe, attacking their values, and trapping their children in failing government schools.” Trump worked to do the opposite of every one of those things, and an increasing number of Hispanics rewarded him with their votes — 47% of Hispanics in Texas went for Trump, for example, and according to Bloomberg, “he took 61% of Miami-Dade’s 482 majority-Latino precincts, up from 26% of them in 2016.” Nationwide, Trump won 32% of the Latino vote, up from 28% in 2016. That’s not the best ever for a Republican, as Ronald Reagan won 37% and 34%, respectively, and George W. Bush netted 35% and 34%, respectively. But, again, Trump saw improvement over recent Republican presidential performance.

Non-whites overall? Trump got 26% of their votes. Only George W. Bush outperformed that in 2004 with 28%.

Interestingly, however, according to Breitbart, Trump lost ground with whites: “President Donald Trump won 64 percent of white people who did not graduate from college in the 2020 election — which is down from his 70 percent share of those voters in 2016.” And he lost “roughly 4.5 million votes” among the “white/college-grad” segment.

Worst white supremacist president ever.

Blue-collar workers of any race — the hourly workers at your local grocery store, the servers at your local restaurant, the factory workers who made your car — have traditionally voted Democrat. Beginning at least with FDR’s “New Deal,” it was Democrats who were perceived to be “for the little guy,” who pushed for higher wages and better benefits. Somewhere along the line, however, Democrats forgot that and began pushing for speech codes, race (bait) training, and gender confusion in the workplace, and then shut down the country, costing many of those workers their jobs.

It was Barack Obama who called us “bitter clingers,” Hillary Clinton who dubbed us “deplorables,” and Joe Biden who derided the “chumps” voting for Trump. Leftist elitist contempt for the average American has only increased over the years, and, by golly, the average American noticed.

As our Douglas Andrews aptly put it, “Democrats are now the elites, the paternalists, the Chardonnay-sippers, the theater-goers, the media darlings, the foundation favorites, the advanced-degree types, and the party preferred by Wall Street. Republicans, on the other hand, have welcomed in the workers, the grinders, the hog butchers, the middle-managers, the guys and gals in the field and on the shop floor. The Republican Party is diverse, but the common thread is Patriotism. We love our country, and we don’t apologize for it.”

Lisa Lerer of The New York Times looked at blue-collar workers and found some “striking” results: “Of the 265 counties most dominated by blue-collar workers — areas where at least 40 percent of employed adults have jobs in construction, the service industry or other nonprofessional fields — Mr. Biden won just 15.” In other words, Scranton Joe underperformed among this cohort, and if he can’t win among these voters, what Democrat can?

Indeed, Donald Trump, the blue-collar billionaire, set about to get government out of our way by lowering taxes and reducing regulation. He battled the media over its gross bias, effectively revealing their tarnished reputation forever with the “fake news” moniker. He challenged the condescension from coastal elites and put a stop to divisive swamp-think like Critical Race Theory training in federal agencies. He undid bathroom mandates and rejected speech codes. In other words, he fought the same culture battles your average, er, Joe is out there fighting in the heartland.

As George Hawley and Richard Hanania write at National Review, “Cultural concerns, not economic interests or policy preferences, were the real dividing line in 2016, and remain so today.”

To sum it all up, what Trump accomplished was to significantly broaden the base of the GOP. If other Republicans can learn the right lessons from that, even Trump’s loss will provide a template for future victories.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76495-trumps-legacy-blacks-hispanics-and-blue-collar-workers-2020-12-16

Why The Number '3' May Make You Rethink The COVID Hysteria

Yesterday I promised to explain why the number three is among the most compelling data points discovered so far in Covid-19 research. And it’s something that you most likely won’t see in the mainstream media, even though the data is right there in the FDA’s research.

Covid has clearly been THE most heavily researched topic of 2020. Google Scholar shows roughly 90,000 scientific studies and academic papers on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 that were published this year, which is a great testament to how quickly researchers can mobilize.

Many of these studies, however, were limited in nature. They were small-scale, involving only a handful of test subjects. Or they relied upon data from numerous, disparate sources, which introduced a lack of uniformity into the experiment.

But late last week, the FDA published its analysis of the Pfizer/BionTech COVID-19 vaccine trial results, called BNT162b2.

And the results are extremely valuable:

1- The study was very large, involving tens of thousands of people;

2- The participants came from all walks of life and highly diverse genetic compositions;

3- The rules and protocols were completely uniform across the entire experiment.

This is quite rare. Of the nearly 90,000 COVID-19 studies this year, very few meet these criteria.

Perhaps more importantly, there was no funny arithmetic involved, like how the government and media tend to count anyone who sets foot in a hospital or mortuary as Covid-related.

I told you yesterday that the vaccine results are very promising: only 8 people out of 20,033 who received two full doses of the vaccine ended up testing positive for COVID-19.

And perhaps even better, ZERO out of the 805 subjects over the age 75 (who received the vaccine) tested positive for COVID.

So Pfizer has clearly done something extraordinary here.

But as the New England Journal of Medicine wrote late last week, “Important questions of course remain.”

There were numerous adverse reactions to the vaccine, and the Journal rightly wonders whether “unexpected safety issues [will] arise when the number [of vaccinated individuals] grows to millions and possibly billions? Will side effects emerge with longer follow-up? How long will the vaccine remain effective?”

These are among the big questions that remain unanswered.

But the FDA felt that the benefits of Pfizer’s vaccine outweigh its potential risks… so they approved an ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ for BNT162b2.

And that’s great. Pfizer’s vaccine is now available to anyone who wants one. Imagine if everything in government could move so briskly.

This is what leads me to the number three… because, in addition to the people who received the vaccine, another roughly 20,000 people received a placebo.

How many of them do you think ended up testing positive for Covid during the same evaluation period?

5,000?

500?

Well, out of 20,000 people who did NOT receive the vaccine, 162 of them expressed symptoms of acute respiratory illness and tested positive for COVID-19 during the evaluation period.

And out of those 162 in the placebo group who tested positive for Covid, THREE of them had ‘severe’ Covid. And only one of them was hospitalized.

(The study also clearly defines ‘severe’ Covid by a quantitative measurement of oxygen saturation. So there was no subjectivity involved.)

So from the roughly 20,000 participants who did NOT receive the vaccine, 162 (0.8%) tested positive for COVID-19 during the evaluation period. And THREE (1.9% of the positive tests) had ‘severe’ Covid. [see page 30 of the report]

Remember– this was a BIG test. Tens of thousands of people, from all walks of life, under uniform research conditions. So this is pretty pristine data.

Yet the numbers show that 98% of the people who tested positive for Covid during the evaluation period had a mild case.

It’s astonishing that they still want to shut down the economy given this data.

Now, I’m not dismissing Covid. A lot of people have suffered from it, and a lot of people have died.

But it’s absurd that COVID-19 has become a sacred, hallowed, untouchable topic that outweighs every other priority in our society.

Covid is more important than any other medical condition. It’s more important than freedom. It’s more important than our value system. It’s more important than basic human decency and the ability to engage civilly with one another.

Politicians and public health emperors don’t want a single person to die of Covid. But they don’t give a damn about suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, and every other disease that’s going untreated right now because of the Covid hysteria.

They’ll happily arrest people who dare to open their businesses.

They’ll pepper spray people who, even if sitting by themselves, take off their masks.

They’ll censor and cancel you for expressing a view that doesn’t conform to the fear narrative.

They’ll shame and ridicule you if you have any concerns about the vaccine.

And they want us all afraid and locked up against our will.

Human beings aren’t meant to live like this. Yet now we can see the data for ourselves: 1.9% of people who tested positive for Covid had a severe case.

And if you include people who had asymptomatic Covid and didn’t even realize they were sick, the percentage of severe cases is even lower.

Certainly there will be people who reject this data. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t dismiss the Covid severity rate while claiming that the vaccine is safe.

Both results come from the same research and the same conditions. So they’re either both true, or neither is true.

Yet all we hear about now is gloom and despair.

Joe Biden talks about the dark winter ahead and waffles about a national lockdown. Bill Gates insists we’ll be locked up until early 2022. And Fauci says even if we take a vaccine we’ll still have to wear masks, social distance, and avoid other people.

But maybe they ought to ‘listen to the scientists’ and have a look at their own data for a change before abusing the Constitution and playing God with people’s lives.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/why-number-3-may-make-you-rethink-covid-hysteria

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More Evidence Shows Total Deaths in 2020 Are No Different Than Prior Years

This year will go down in history as a year to be remembered for many reasons, one of them being the coronavirus that has ravaged our country.

If you listen to the media, this virus has added hundreds of thousands of excess deaths this year that otherwise would have been alive.

But in reality, when you look at the actual numbers nothing is different than what it should be. It falls completely within average numbers.

The total mortality rates in the USA in 2020 are no different compared to previous years. There is no massive spike due to COVID as reported by a John Hopkins University article which was mysteriously taken down recently.

Panic has resulted in the wake of recommendations by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) to shut down the economy because of reports that 300,000 Americans have died from COVID. Just recently, the CDC quietly corrected itself that only 9,210 Americans have actually died from Covid 19 and the others died from other diseases like influenza and pneumonia that closely resemble COVID.

The report from Johns Hopkins stated,

After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same…

Total deaths in 2020 (as of November) for all types of mortality causes totaled 2.5 million, whereas, in 2018 and 2019, they were 2.8 million and 2.9 million respectively. There is no massive spike that had happened and there is no reason to shut down the economy.

https://thinkamericana.com/more-evidence-shows-total-deaths-in-2020-are-no-different-than-prior-years/

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The Unholy Trinity of Fake News

There are three basic ways that the Leftmedia grossly misinforms the public.

If it’s true that the cornerstone of a healthy republic is a free press, then America has a big problem. The seizure of the legacy news media by rabid leftists has created a situation in which we can no longer trust the information we’re given. All major news outlets (print, television, and digital) have become mouthpieces for the Democrat Party and the Left, spinning stories to fit their narrative, burying others that don’t fit, and flat-out lying when those two tactics fail. Welcome to the age of fake news.

President Donald Trump has been credited with popularizing the term fake news, but he didn’t create the phenomenon. It arose in the 1990s during the Clinton years — and we started The Patriot Post in 1996 in large measure to counter this problem. Left-leaning reporters and editors, sons and daughters of the 1960s and Watergate, fawned over Bill and Hillary, burying or downplaying stories about Bill’s personal indiscretions and the crimes committed by his closest associates.

The perversion of the legacy media into a Democrat Party organ reached its zenith during Barack Obama’s presidency. In partnership with tech oligarchs who helped them weaponize social media, leftists tried to shape a narcissistic, politically tone-deaf, anti-American community organizer into the Second Coming. They were so effective at their work that by the time Trump became president, media figures were no longer afraid to show their true colors and go after the 45th president with all guns blazing.

Three key types of fake news have been used in the assault to take down Donald Trump and the American republic he so steadfastly defended — omission, hypocrisy, and lies. Perhaps the most effective at this point, considering the circumstances, is omission.

News outlets routinely bury stories they don’t want us to hear. Earlier this election season, the New York Post published a series of articles revealing the extent of the Biden family’s corruption. The paper shared concrete evidence of Hunter Biden’s shady foreign dealings while his father was vice president. Seeing what happened to Hillary Clinton after her illegal email server took up too much of the news cycle in 2016, other news outlets refused to report on the story, and Twitter and Facebook censored any mention of it. They knew that widespread coverage of the story would harm Biden’s chances of winning the presidency. It is only now that the Electoral College has met that we are starting to hear more about it. But don’t count on the media to go after Biden. They are much more selective in their “investigative journalism.”

This brings us to the second brand of fake news: hypocrisy. The former vice president tried to burnish his bona fides two years ago with the #MeToo movement by saying that all women should be believed when they come forward accusing males of sexual misconduct. Except, of course, when that male is Joe Biden. When Tara Reade came forward with her own credible story about Biden’s sexual misconduct, the media did not chase down the story, or any of the multitude of accusations about Biden that have surfaced over the years. Instead, they collaborated with Biden’s campaign to downplay the story. Never mind that they trained their sites on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, targeting him for character assassination and making his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the poster woman of the #MeToo movement.

It turns out that Ford’s story and all the other smear stories against Kavanaugh were lies, which is the third tactic of fake news. When in danger or in doubt, the Left will simply lie to get its message across. Much of the coverage of the Trump administration was predicated on this tactic, whether it be the bogus Russia-collusion narrative that eventually led to his impeachment, the smears that he was willfully ignorant in combating COVID-19, or the false narrative that he supported white supremacy. None of these stories hold any basis in fact, but they were repeated so often that people believed them.

While the “fact-check” has become the Left’s most potent tool to bolster its fake news strategy, there were few fact-checks on the aforementioned fake news. Leftmedia outlets use the “fact-check” not to investigate their own stories but to smear Republicans and conservatives for voicing facts and ideas that go against leftist dogma. In May, Trump was “fact-checked” for predicting that we would have a coronavirus vaccine by year’s end. His statement proved to be true, but rather than wait until January 1, 2021, to see if Trump was correct, the media leaped to rebut the prediction as soon as he made it. And not because of what Trump said, but because it was Trump who said it.

Since its earliest years, American journalism has always had a political tilt. But there were journalistic standards that were taught, handed down, and respected. Journalism was considered a serious vocation entered into by people dedicated to informing the public and keeping politicians honest.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world right now. Freedom of the press is listed first in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Without it, none of the other freedoms or the Constitution itself mean all that much. Leftists know this, and if they are going to turn America into a socialist country, the press has to be the first thing they control and thus destroy. Our mission is to provide a bold voice against that leftist agenda.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76516-the-unholy-trinity-of-fake-news-2020-12-17

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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 Road Ahead for Our Compromised Republic

Under a Biden administration, our spirit and our resolve will be put to the test.

With his Electoral College victory putting Joe Biden one step closer to the presidential oath on January 20, grassroots Patriots have to face a sobering reality: The Supreme Court’s refusal to even grant Texas a hearing in its suit against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin leaves millions of Americans believing our republican form of government as established by the Constitution has been compromised — badly.

The issue isn’t even fraud, although ballot fraud will have to be addressed if Republicans expect to win the White House ever again. The real issue is the failure to follow the law and the U.S. Constitution. When election officials and judges in the aforementioned four states usurped electoral powers reserved by the Constitution to their respective state legislatures, they did far more damage to the norms, standards, and traditions of America than Donald Trump was ever accused of doing.

We simply cannot be confident that every legal vote was counted, nor every illegal vote disallowed. For example, Scott Adams notes that we were forcibly denied transparency during the vote counts in crucial states. That alone is good cause to question just how free and fair the 2020 election was — although Joel Pollak noted in an interview with Adams that there are other reasons to do so as well. The simple question is this: If they had nothing to hide, why did they go to such great lengths to avoid transparency?

Worse, they’ll claim that those who did stand up in opposition to and then demanded accountability for the extra-constitutional changes are the ones harming the country, and then they’ll use such nonsense to justify retaliation. Assuming Biden takes office, that threat will become much greater — especially should he pick Andrew Cuomo for attorney general, given the war on dissent currently being waged by the Cuomo regime in New York.

The situation is undeniable: Our rights under the First Amendment will be in danger. The Second Amendment will also be in their sights. We noted earlier that the deck would (continue to) be stacked against grassroots Patriots by Big Tech and the mainstream media, but we must also be wary of the state and its ever-growing powers.

We’re at a dangerous point. The Left may indeed have defeated Trump, but doing so may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. Already, there are glimmers of good news. Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar group — a pollster who called the 2016 election accurately — notes that grassroots Patriots are demanding answers from their leadership. Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer is also taking steps to ensure election integrity, even taking on a fellow Republican to do so.

No matter what happens over the short term, grassroots Patriots must maintain hope that the Republic can be reborn from the ashes of this compromised state. Anything less would be a failure, and failure cannot be an option.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76458-the-road-ahead-for-our-compromised-republic-2020-12-15

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Pandemonium of Pandemic Prattle

With vaccines shipping out, the Leftmedia is still sowing doubt and panic.

As the first shipments of vaccines roll into America’s heartland, the focus has been on process and politics rather than ensuring Americans of the safety and need to choose to take the coronavirus vaccine. Americans are understandably weary of the topic of COVID because if its politicization — mask versus no mask, open school versus no school, outdoor dining versus no dining at all. And now, it’s a matter of who recommends the vaccine — a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter. Perhaps that’s why the modern-day miracle of getting a vaccine to a population in the same year the novel virus locked down the American economy has been met with scorn instead of applause.

At the early stages of the virus, when it wasn’t clear what demographic was most impacted or which treatments worked, Americans were willing to adjust their lives for their safety. During that window of time, the initial actions of Operation Warp Speed began. This emergency response team of experts assembled by the Trump administration planned on having millions of doses of vaccine to the American public by January 2021. (Remember when the Leftmedia “fact-checked” that prediction?) After just nine months, OWS hopes to administer the first immunization by today, December 14.

While Americans in growing number are protesting the closure of their businesses permanently, Bill Gates declared that the America-first approach is “selfish.” Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the new measure of success will be when up to 80% of Americans are vaccinated, pushing real relief into the late summer or fall of 2021.

The same voices in the media, elected world, and unelected bureaucracy that have been demanding mask mandates, closures, and lockdowns are now among those politicizing the vaccine and sowing doubts of its research and trial processes. This shouldn’t be a surprise in light of then-candidate Kamala Harris’s declaration in the VP debate with Vice President Mike Pence that “if Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it,” or New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s criticism that he was “not that confident” and viewed the vaccine during the Trump administration as “bad news.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar was grilled about the funding and reimbursement for the vaccine instead of being asked intelligent questions about its development and distribution. Azar did manage to communicate that the U.S. will have 900 million doses of vaccine under contract for its citizens, with options to purchase three billion doses more and that excess inventory will be made available to allies of the U.S. The second Pfizer doses will follow along with Moderna’s vaccine, likely to be approved this week, yielding up to 20 million Americans vaccinated by the end of this year.

On Fox News, Chris Wallace challenged Moncef Slaoui, PhD, the chief scientific advisor for OWS who was handpicked by the Trump administration after a distinguished career of three decades leading in vaccine science. Instead of interviewing Slaoui about vaccine administration and effectiveness, there were just more questions about hypotheticals and political arguments. Slaoui expertly navigated his answers to underscore the importance of Americans taking the vaccines to achieve a level of immunity that gets this viral spread under control.

Appropriately, a group of parrots is called a pandemonium. No matter the work, the science, or the data, the pandemonium of media haters parroting the destructive distrust in our country will continue to sow fear in whatever way it can. The goal is to redefine life, gender, and family, accuse neighbors of racism and bigotry, and now to sow fear of taking an innovative vaccine. May we all be aware of the pandemonium prattling on with the seeds of discord that will only further the Left’s agenda of growing government and reducing freedoms for the average American.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76436-pandemonium-of-pandemic-prattle-2020-12-14

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US intel veterans lied about ‘Russian plot’ — and the media bought it hook, line and sinker

If there is one thing that the Hunter Biden laptop episode has proved, it is that former directors of the CIA aren’t as adept at evaluating evidence as advertised.

Five former directors or acting directors of the CIA signed a letter asserting that the laptop, first reported by this newspaper in the weeks before the election, “has all the hallmarks of Russian information operation.”

More than 50 former senior ­intel officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, signed the letter, which was used by the Biden campaign and the media to discredit the damning e-mails about Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The signatories should have thought better of their missive when they felt compelled to ­include the line, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the e-mails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney, are genuine or not, and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.”

That also should have tipped off reporters to the fact that the letter was rank speculation masquerading as informed analysis. But true to form, they happily ran with it instead.

In a complete reversal from the Cold War era, journalists in the Trump years have not only reflexively believed representations from national-security professionals about nefarious Russian plots, they have actively sought them out and promoted them.

In this case, it was former US ­intelligence officials who were spreading disinformation in an ­attempt to mislead the American public about a consequential matter touching on the front runner in an American presidential campaign. The call came from inside the house.

Anyone believing the officials, who used their past titles and long experience to lend credibility to their letter, would have been shocked to learn last week that Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax crimes.

According to news reports, the laptop hasn’t advanced the investigation, but the feds have looked at it, and there’s no indication that it’s foreign disinfo.

The provenance of the laptop wasn’t, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous line about ­Soviet foreign policy, a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, but as simple as Hunter Biden — not the most careful person — accidentally leaving it at a Wilmington, Del., repair shop.

The idea that the Russians were behind the laptop was always far-fetched. Certainly, no one would ever accuse Rudy Giuliani, who brought the device to light, of being a credible source of information. But if the Russians were behind it, they would have had to fabricate the laptop, drop it off at the repair shop, hoping that the owner would eventually look at it and be alarmed enough to tell someone about its contents — or compromise the repair shop owner and make him a tool in their operation.

This might have been plausible, if we, indeed, have been living in a Russian spy novel for the last five years. We haven’t.

Still, Democrats and the media relentlessly hewed to the Russian disinformation line. Of course, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Adam Schiff spouted it: “We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.” Biden used it to deflect during a debate with Trump: “There are 50 former national-intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan[t].” And the press, like Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” did in an interview with Trump, insisted that there was ­absolutely nothing to see here.

We don’t know where the Hunter Biden story ends up. But if he gets indicted, it’s at least going to be a significant distraction for President Biden and raise questions about how much he knew about his son’s sketchy dealings.

This is the kind of story voters should be aware of when choosing a president. And they would have been if there hadn’t, in effect, been an American conspiracy to misinform people, led by former US intelligence officials who shamefully abused the public trust.

https://nypost.com/2020/12/14/us-intel-veterans-lied-about-russian-plot-and-the-media-bought-it-hook-line-and-sinker/

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What’s so great about a Trump rally?

I’m so glad you asked! My best friend and I attended our second Trump rally over the weekend, and we can’t wait to tell you about it.

Today, if you’ve done any quick skim of fake news headlines about the Trump rally, you’ll have been bombarded with negativity and cries about how Trump supporters are evil, racist, sore losers, and blah blah blah. What a surprise, it’s the same nonsense we’ve been hearing for 4 years. I’m just patiently waiting for the Left to get more clever with their insults, like please come at me with something a little more original. They won’t because it’s all they’ve got and it’s already such a far stretch from the truth!

Women for America First hosted this weekend’s March for Trump rally, not a bunch of old, white, racist men, as the Left would want you to believe. The D.C. Freedom Plaza rally was the final stop on the March for Trump bus tour, which traveled from Florida to D.C. in just two weeks.

We heard from prominent conservative speakers, such as General Flynn, Sebastian Gorka, Mike Lindell, Pastor Mark Burns, David Harris Jr., to name a few; all of whom shared messages of encouragement to tell patriots to keep fighting for President Trump.

In addition to your classic USA chants, we prayed, sang the National Anthem, exclaimed the Pledge of Allegiance, and even witnessed Marine One fly over us.

As my friend and I marched from Freedom Plaza to the Supreme Court, we joined in patriotic chants such as, “USA!”, “God Bless America!”, “4 More Years!”, “Stop The Steal!”, to name a few.

Outside of the Supreme Court, we sang and danced to “God’s Country,” “Eye of The Tiger,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” along with other songs that fit our situation.

We saw old friends and made new friends. Everyone was excited and full of hope. People were kind, polite, and shining with patriotism.

When reflecting on the weekend, my friend, Rachel and co-host of Peachy Patriots (a conservative Rumble series), said, “The Trump Rally was a great reminder to fellow patriots that we aren’t alone and we won’t give up without a fight.”

https://dailytorch.com/2020/12/whats-so-great-about-a-trump-rally/

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

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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

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