Free Republic

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted Monday that coronavirus projections from experts were all wrong -- and he's getting out of the business of speculating because of it. Cuomo said he can't predict when the hospitalization and death rate numbers will drop to the necessary threshold required for reopening certain regions because as he put it, "we all failed" at predicting. "Now, people can speculate. People can guess. I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month," Cuomo told reporters on Memorial Day. "I'm out of that business because we all failed at that business. Right? All...

We’re finally getting a clear picture of exactly how the beating of a 75-year-old nursing home patient by a man nearly one-quarter his age came about. And boy, it is a shocker. It turns out that victim and perp were sent to the Westwood Nursing Center in Detroit due to the fact that both were suffering from COVID. The older man, an Army vet, was snatched from his apartment and dumped in the nursing home without any notification of his relatives, who then spent a considerable amount of time looking for him, to no avail. As for the younger man,...

...Federal failures played a role, of course, but this tragedy was absolutely due, in part, to decisions by the governor. Cuomo initially “reacted to De Blasio’s idea for closing down New York City with derision”, saying it “was dangerous” and “served only to scare people”. He said the “seasonal flu was a graver worry”. A spokesperson for Cuomo “refused to say if the governor had ever read the state’s pandemic plan”. Later, Cuomo would blame the press, including the New York Times for failing to say “Be careful, there’s a virus in China that may be in the United States?”...

When asked if she censors herself when speaking about President Donald Trump, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's response was firm: "Yes." Axios' Alexia McCammond asked whether or not she feels she has to censor herself when speaking publicly in order to continue to receive federal assistance. "Listen, the worst nights sleep that I've gotten in the last 10 weeks is when he has attacked me on Twitter," Whitmer says in the 30-second clip of the interview.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York followed the president’s agency guidance.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we honor the sacrifice of the men and women who died for our country. Too often we forget the meaning of the day and head off to sales, the beaches, and the backyard barbecues. In those states still locked down, it will be a continuation of the grim economy and spirit-busting effects of overreaching dictators, little based on reason. It will be a particularly hard to celebrate day for the many friends and family members of those killed in nursing homes and assisted living residences due to outrageously misguided gubernatorial dictates. There still is a...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is attempting to shift blame onto President Trump for a New York directive that sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes, risking the lives of elderly, vulnerable people. For weeks, despite access to the governor at daily press briefings, a fawning press failed to question the governor about an ill-conceived state directive that may be responsible for the staggering number of coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes and adult care facilities. A March 25th state directive required such facilities to admit patients with either suspected or confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus. The directive even prohibited...

(CNN)New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office deflected questions about a report from The Associated Press that the state sent more than 4,500 patients recovering from coronavirus to nursing homes by saying they followed guidance from federal agencies. "I just want to reiterate once again that the policy that the Department of Health put out was in line directly with the March 13 directive put out by (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) that read, and I quote, 'Nursing homes should admit any individuals from hospitals where Covid is present,'" said Secretary to the...

Even though many lives are at stake, the response to the coronavirus pandemic has been heavily politicized. A bit of research into the separate elements shows some disturbing connections, indicating the media war against hydroxychloroquine may be backed by some nefarious forces. On March 19, President Trump announced that the FDA would fast-track approval of unproven coronavirus treatments, including hydroxychloroquine. Two months later, after much heated debate and a media war over the drug, Trump announced he was taking hydroxychloroquine as prophylaxis. One week after TrumpÂ’s hydroxychloroquine claim, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)...

A West Goshen, Pennsylvania man shot his GOP neighbor twice in the head and killed him late Monday night. Clayton Carter, an unhinged anti-Trump fanatic, shot his neighbor twice in the head on his neighbor’s property.

The Capri Drive-in Theater in Branch County, Michigan, was packed on Friday evening, as moviegoers flocked in defiance of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order The Capri opened for business Friday night, just hours after governor Whitmer held a press conference slamming businesses in Michigan defying her orders. Despite Whitmer’s executive orders for people to shelter in place, and for all “non-essential” businesses to remain closed, The Capri opened, and vehicles — roughly a quarter mile long — lined up to get into the drive-in theater on Friday evening. Magocs said that they have made changes to The Capri in an...

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine offer no clinical benefit for people with COVID-19 and might cause serious heart-related side effects, according to a study published Friday in The Lancet. People with severe illness caused by the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, treated with either drug -- either alone or with an antiviral medication -- were up to twice as likely to die than those in the control group, which received standard, supportive care, the researchers found. Those who died did so either as a result of COVID-19 or from side effects from treatment, the authors said. "This is the first large-scale study to find...

Coronavirus lockdowns have 'destroyed millions of livelihoods' but failed to alter the course of the pandemic given many US states have seen lower infection rates after easing restrictions, a JP Morgan study has claimed. The statistical analysis has raised questions about the effectiveness of the lockdowns put in place across much of the United States two months ago to stop the spread of COVID-19. It suggests that the lockdown measures have not only resulted in economic devastation but could have also resulted in more COVID-19 deaths.

A New York state directive to send recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes reportedly resulted in 4,300 such patients going to those already vulnerable facilities before it was cancelled. The directive was cancelled amid the growing concern and realization that residents of nursing homes were highly vulnerable to the virus, according to the Associated Press, which compiled the number. Nursing homes residents are especially vulnerable to the virus considering they live in close quarters and many have pre existing medical conditions. As the pandemic enters its roughly eighth week in the U.S., data shows that a large number of virus...

Congress is considering H.R. 6666, the “Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act” (“TRACE Act”), a bill by U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19. The bill ostensibly would achieve that goal by creating “mobile health units” to “conduct diagnostic testing . . . trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals” and then “support the quarantine of such contacts”—all at the cost of $100 billion. Rush says that “increased testing and contact tracing is the only way we will get back normal and safely reopen our economy.” Essentially, Rush’s position—which is echoed by the bulk...

A state court in Michigan ruled that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has the authority to extend the state’s state of emergency, refuting claims made by GOP leaders in the legislature that she overstepped her authority. The judge called claims by the Republican state lawmakers "meritless." Judge Cynthia Stephen noted that Whitmer did exceed her authority by trying to extend the state of emergency under the Emergency Management Act of 1976, which requires approval by the legislature, acccording to the Detroit News. However, the governor did have the constitutional authority to extend the state of emergency under the Emergency Management Act...

What a disaster!  The actions of New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo have led to thousands of coronavirus deaths in the state.   It was New York state policy to put the sick patients back in the nursing home.More people died in nursing homes in New York, due to Governor Cuomo’s policies, than died on 9/11.  According to NBC News, New York’s policies for nursing homes required the homes to take in individuals that had the coronavirus: The coronavirus patients began arriving the last week of March, transferred to the Gurwin Jewish Nursing and Rehabilitation Center under a New York state mandate requiring nursing homes to...

For two to three months, Americans have suffered the loss of liberty, security, and prosperity in the name of virus control. The psychological impact has been beyond description. We thought we could count on basic rights and freedoms. Then over a few days in March, it all ended in ways hardly anyone could believe possible. The manner in which governments dealt with foundational principles of modernity has been shocking. They put half the country under house arrest and managed every movement in disregard for the Bill of Rights and all legal precedent, to say nothing of the Constitution. It felt...

WHO member states rallied around the U.N. health agency — even as they urged a look into its coordination of the global response to the coronavirus. World leaders like the presidents of the European Commission and Colombia beamed in by video conference, hours after Trump made public his letter sent Monday to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blasting “repeated missteps” of the agency as “very costly for the world.” The European Union, the resolution’s chief architect, urged countries to support WHO in the wake of Trump’s continued attacks. European Commission spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said now wasn’t “the time for finger-pointing...

In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code. But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs...