Free Republic

And even all that spending isn’t enough: Social Security’s “unfunded liabilities” — how much money the government would need today to make up the difference between the money that will be paid into Social Security in the future and the benefits that have been promised — is about $40 trillion. How much is $40 trillion? It is all the money in the world — literally: All the cash in circulation, plus all the deposits in checking accounts and savings accounts, adds up to about $40 trillion. That is a big hole to climb out of. Just as inflation can cause...

For the duration of the pandemic, while hundreds of thousands died and the world economy was decimated by lockdowns, Moderna's highly effective vaccine was available. Few people realize that the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19—which the FDA has finally declared "highly effective," and which is now being distributed to Americans—has actually been available for nearly a year. But the government wouldn't let you take it. The vaccine, a triumph of medical science known as mRNA-1273, was designed in a single weekend, just two days after Chinese researchers published the virus's genetic code on January 11, 2020. For the entire duration of...

In a clinical trial testing whether a daily regimen of hydroxychloroquine could protect those most likely to be exposed to COVID-19, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found there was no difference in infection rates among health care workers who took the drug versus those taking a placebo. While the researchers observed a lack of effect associated with hydroxychloroquine, infection levels were low among the participants, which the researchers believe points to the effectiveness of other prevention measures in the health system: social distancing, use of personal protective equipment, and proper hand hygiene. The...

Speaking on the New York Times opinion podcast Sway, Musk told host Kara Swisher that he and his family would not be taking a coronavirus vaccine because he doesn't believe the virus poses a serious enough risk to their health. “I’m not at risk, neither are my kids,” Musk said. Musk said sweeping restrictions on movement and business enacted due to the coronavirus had “diminished" his "faith in humanity." The entrepreneur said that instead of sweeping lockdowns, governments should focus on isolating those most at risk while allowing the rest of society to continue with normal life. Musk told Fisher...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday denied his office was at fault for the coronavirus deaths of more than 6,000 nursing home residents in the state, calling such accusations a "political charade." Cuomo defended his office's response to the pandemic during an interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle. “Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else, because we had more people die, because the federal government missed the boat and never told us this virus was coming from Europe and not from China,” Cuomo said. “And January, February, March, before they did the European travel...

https://youtu.be/IUD_wvkNhnk

The governors of all 50 states and the mayors of many large cities have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and – presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen – prosecuting the alleged offenders in court. It is hard to believe that any judge in...

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)...

...Based on this serology test, they were able to determine that 3% of the population (at the time) were infected and were therefore able to divide the numerator of those who died of COVID-19 by the extrapolated denominator of those who were likely infected and break out the infection fatality rate by age group. Study this chart for a few minutes and take in all the data – from the asymptomatic/mildly symptomatic rates to the hospital and fatality rates divided by age. You have to get to the 50-59 age group just to reach a 0.1% fatality rate, the level...

What is the true infection fatality rate of COVID-19, broken down by age and health status? This is a simple question for which the CDC should have a clear answer by now, accompanied by a readable chart – a chart showing everyone’s demographic risk assessment so that we can better target our infection mitigation efforts. Yet it’s the one thing our government hasn’t done. Wonder why?

Newsom is proposing to significantly shrink the footprint of California’s prison system, partly because of massive budget cuts prompted by the pandemic but also because of philosophy. The revised budget he sent to state lawmakers this week closing two state prisons in the coming years; cutting nearly one in five of the 43 inmate firefighter camps; and eventually closing all three state-run juvenile prisons. He’s also seeking unspecified increases to sentencing credits that allow inmates to leave prison more quickly. And he proposes to shorten parole to a maximum of two years, down from five years for felonies, and let...

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.

..The authors estimated that the drugs put patients at up to 45% higher risk of dying from Covid-19 compared with underlying health issues. ... "Treatment with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine does not benefit patients with COVID-19," said Mandeep Mehra, lead author of the study and executive director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Advanced Heart Disease in Boston. "Instead, our findings suggest it may be associated with an increased risk of serious heart problems and increased risk of death." ... Despite Mr Trump's enthusiasm for using hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 treatment, his own government's Food and Drug Administration warns against...

...Ferguson’s model, however, isn’t the only fraudulent model that led to destructive policy decisions. Citing the Imperial College model, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, produced another set of graphs at the end of March that expanded on Ferguson’s pseudoscientific “social distancing” demands. Much like Ferguson, Murray portrayed plague-like conditions in the United States once COVID-19 took hold... Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, without subjecting the raw paper to any peer review, presented Murray’s charts to President Trump at the end of March. According to the president, they then insisted he “shut...

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...

As states around the country begin to open up, Illinois appears to be stuck in a COVID shutdown that may never end. This week, neighboring states Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa all began opening what Illinois' governor deems "non-essential" businesses - including bars, dine-in restaurants, small retail shops, gyms, nail salons, and hair stylists. Yet similar businesses in Illinois remain closed. There are now frequent rallies, protests and a growing number of lawsuits with the hope of getting Pritzker to reopen Illinois. This past weekend saw two large rallies - one at the State Capitol in Springfield and another at the...