Friday, October 16, 2020


NYT: Experts Confident Pandemic To Be Over ‘Far Sooner’ Than Expected, Trump Efforts ‘Working With Remarkable Efficiency’

A new report from The New York Times indicates that experts have “genuine confidence” that the coronavirus pandemic will end “far sooner” than originally expected and that President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — the administration’s efforts to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics — has been “working with remarkable efficiency.”

The report, published on Monday, comes with just over three weeks left in the presidential race between Trump and Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“Events have moved faster than I thought possible. I have become cautiously optimistic,” New York Times science reporter Donald McNeil Jr. wrote. “Experts are saying, with genuine confidence, that the pandemic in the United States will be over far sooner than they expected, possibly by the middle of next year.”

The report noted that the U.S. was “faring much better than it did during the Spanish influenza,” which cost 675,000 Americans their lives, adding, “the country’s population at the time was 103 million, so that toll is equivalent to 2 million dead today.”

The report noted numerous positive developments that have come along the way as the U.S. battles the pandemic, ranging from the average age of those being infected being significantly younger now than at the start of the pandemic to nursing homes becoming better at protecting their patients.

“Sometime in the next three months, health experts say, the F.D.A. is likely to begin granting approval to vaccines now in the works,” the report said. “Despite the chaos in day-to-day politics and the fighting over issues like masks and lockdowns, Operation Warp Speed — the government’s agreement to subsidize vaccine companies’ clinical trials and manufacturing costs — appears to have been working with remarkable efficiency. It has put more than $11 billion into seven vaccine candidates, and the F.D.A. has said it will approve any one that is at least 50 percent effective at preventing infection or reducing its severity.”

The report notes that Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific adviser, Moncef Slaoui, believes that some of the early vaccine candidates will be 75 to 90 percent effective and that at least two will have won approval by sometime in January.

“By then, Dr. Slaoui has estimated, the factories under contract will have produced enough vaccine for 30 to 40 million people, and then another 80 to 90 million people every month after that,” the report added. “Assuming nothing goes wrong, he said, there will be enough doses for all 330 million Americans to be vaccinated by next June.”

The report noted that the military is standing by to assist in the rapid distribution of any vaccines that become available and that skepticism and hesitation to taking a vaccine may quickly fade as people begin to weigh the relatively minuscule risks of a vaccine against the potential effects of contracting the virus, including “the prospect of being unable to return to work, having to home-school one’s children for years and not eating in a restaurant, flying on an airplane or watching a movie in a theater without the specter of anxiety.”

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FACT CHECK: More People Delaying Health Care Over Costs Now Than Pre-Obamacare

A common myth being presented during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings is the notion that many Americans who couldn’t afford healthcare before the Affordable Care Act was passed and implemented suddenly could.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the data suggests otherwise. According to a Gallup survey from December 2019, 33 percent of Americans say they or a family member put off treatment for a health condition because of the costs.

This number has remained virtually unchanged since Obamacare was passed. In fact, the number has averaged about 30 percent since 2006, which is significantly higher than it was back in 2001, when only 19 percent of Americans said they or a family member put off treatment for a health condition because of the cost.

Worse yet, Obamacare hasn’t improved the situation for those with pre-existing conditions. “Reports of delaying care for a serious condition due to costs are also up 13 points compared with last year among Americans who report they or another household member has a ‘pre-existing condition,'” Gallup reported. “At the same time, there has been virtually no change in the percentage of adults without pre-existing conditions in the household who delayed care for a serious health issue in the past year, currently 12% versus 11% in 2018.”

Gallup does urge some caution with regard to the four-point jump in those reporting delaying care over the previous survey. “Most of the recent increase in reports that family members are delaying treatment for serious conditions has occurred among self-identified Democrats,” explains Gallup. “This is up 12 points since 2018 among Democrats, compared with three- and five-point increases among Republicans and independents, respectively.”

The partisan gap in the responses to these questions is the largest in two decades. The reason for this, Gallup can’t say for sure. But seeing as Gallup reported there’s been no major change in health coverage, the sharp spike of self-identifying Democrats reporting delaying healthcare over costs is likely done for partisan reasons, as the survey occurred in the heat of a Democratic presidential primary.

But one thing that is clear: fewer people were delaying medical care over costs back in 2001, and Obamacare has done nothing to reduce the number of people delaying health care over costs. Nothing at all.

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Handmaids of Bigotry

Well, they dusted off those colorful “Handmaid’s Tale” outfits that were so visible at Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2018.

Even before Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing on Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats were being cheered on by permanently angry women (and maybe some men) dressed in red cloaks with white duckbills extending from their hoods.

This is the uniform of the oppressed women in Hulu’s serialization of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic, anti-Christian novel. If you thought atheist crusader Philip Pullman’s thinly disguised depiction of church authorities as evil in “The Golden Compass” book and movie were bad, Ms. Atwood runs circles around him. In her 1985 book and TV series, the polygamous men cite Bible verses and treat the women as sex slaves.

Braving the rain on Monday, the demonstrators held signs festooned with messages such as a giant NO! in rainbow colors over “Trump/Pence Must Go!”

This time around in the Senate star chamber, the Democrats who pretend to honor religious liberty while assailing nominees’ faith think they have a smoking gun. The word “handmaid.”

Mrs. Barrett and her husband have long been members of an ecumenical charismatic Christian group begun in 1971 called People of Praise, based in South Bend, Indiana, home to Notre Dame University and its law school, from which she graduated summa cum laude and taught constitutional law.

Women leaders in the group, including Mrs. Barrett, previously held the title of “handmaid,” which is derived from Jesus’s mother Mary’s own description of herself in Luke 1:38 as “the handmaid of the Lord.”

The group dropped that title in favor of “women’s leader” because “the meaning of this title has shifted dramatically in our culture in recent years,” a spokesman said.

Mrs. Barrett, 48, now serves on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, to which she was nominated by President Trump in 2017. At that time, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said at a hearing that Mrs. Barrett’s religious beliefs worried her because “the dogma lives loudly within you.”

Wow. Talk about open religious bigotry. But it’s OK because the senator is a Democrat, and they get to do this sort of thing. It’s not as if the media would have a problem with it.

Here’s a front-page headline from last Wednesday’s Washington Post: “Barrett long active with insular Christian group: Community preached subservience for women, former members say.”

Ah, those “former members.” You can always dig up a dissident or two to make the point you want, unless you’re reporting on Black Lives Matter or the Democratic National Committee, which are pretty much the same thing.

As for People of Praise, here’s more from their own media statement provided to Heavy.com:

“A majority of People of Praise members are Catholic, and yet the People of Praise is not a Catholic group. We aim to be a witness to the unity Jesus desires for all his followers. Our membership includes not only Catholics but Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals and nondenominational Christians. What we share is a common baptism, a commitment to love one another and our teachings, which we hold in common.

“Freedom of conscience is a key to our diversity. People of Praise members are always free to follow their consciences, as formed by the light of reason, experience and the teachings of their churches.”

As the Apostle Paul instructs, and many biblically sound churches teach, men are to be the spiritual leaders in the church and in their own households and they are to love their wives as they love themselves. This is considered scandalous by our cultural commissars.

In Ephesians 5:25, Paul writes: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for her.” That means laying down your life if necessary. It’s why when things go bump in the night, the guy should be the one who goes downstairs with the baseball bat or the Sig Sauer.

Democrats are terrified of the attractive and articulate Mrs. Barrett, a mother of seven, just as they were threatened by Clarence Thomas, who destroyed their narrative that blacks belong on the leftist plantation.

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Barrett Nomination Shows Trump Is Giving Power to Everyday Americans, Not Ivy League 'Elites'

President Trump was elected on a simple premise. For too long, the American and global elites had ignored the plight of the average American. Trump’s 2016 electoral victory was echoed in other nations with the Brexit vote and the “yellow jacket” protests in France. The president’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court shows that he continues to be committed to returning power to the forgotten people.

In her opening statement before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Barrett observed that she would be the only justice on the current court that did not attend Harvard or Yale. She defended the honor of her Alma Mater, Notre Dame Law School, and quipped that she might be able to teach the other justices something about football.

There is no question that Atlantic Coast Conference football, where Notre Dame now plays, is far superior to Ivy League football. The same cannot be said about the quality of legal education at Harvard or Yale compared to the many other fine law schools we have across the country. Excellent legal thought and scholarship are not restricted to Boston, Massachusetts or New Haven, Connecticut.

It is interesting to note, that the last four presidents before Donald Trump were all graduates from Yale or Harvard at some level. George W. Bush actually attended both, Yale undergraduate and Harvard Business school. The last two unsuccessful Democratic nominees for president, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, were also Yale products. The last president before Trump who did not go to Harvard or Yale? Ronald Reagan.

Judge Barrett attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee for her undergraduate work and Notre Dame Law School in Indiana. It speaks volumes about Judge Barrett’s talent, abilities, and character that she was able to secure a spot as a clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, under Justice Scalia, without a Yale or Harvard pedigree. It says even more about her that after the lofty heights of Washington, D.C. and the Supreme Court she decided to return to the heartland to continue her career and raise her family. In a time period where diversity is touted as a virtue, a Justice Barrett would bring diversity of thought and life experience to the Court.

This is not to say that Harvard and Yale are bad schools but thinking that they are the only excellent law schools is based more on snobbery than fact. The people who voted to place President Trump in office had grown tired of the bicoastal elites, who have more in common with the global elites than people in the heartland or as they call it “fly over country.” The elites promised that they knew better than the rest of us, and Americans watched as we lost our sovereignty and our jobs to countries overseas. The elites told us that America is not “exceptional.” The elites did not appear to put the interests of their fellow citizens above their own or those of the rest of the world.

That is why the nomination of Judge Barrett is so refreshing. She is an authentic wife, mother, and brilliant legal mind, straight from the heartland. By putting her forward, President Trump continues to demonstrate his affection for the forgotten people of our country and his disdain for the condescending elites.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

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)

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

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