Free Republic

Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on world leaders to form a "temporary" global government in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The ex Labour prime minister, stressed the need for a task force comprised of world leaders, health experts as well as leaders of the international organisations that could have executive powers to execute the response. Brown would like to see the G20 lead this charge in co-operation with the UN Security Council while giving more resources and power to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

...The smash hit has now overtaken the 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ” to become the highest-grossing foreign language film in the United Kingdom. According to CJ Entertainment, “Parasite” has achieved earnings of 11,088,149 pounds (approximately 14.32 million dollars) in the United Kingdom as of March 6 local time. This beats the previous record of 11,078,861 pounds (approximately 14.03 million dollars) achieved by the Mel Gibson-directed film “The Passion of the Christ” 16 years ago...

There is room for different interpretations of the dataIn announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of Britain nation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the UK government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation...

That the Bible refers to these structures as "cities" instead of merely "buildings" is likely a consequence of the magnitude of these projects. The area that these depots covered sometimes exceeded the area taken up by the temple itself. Examples of storage depots can be found surrounding several mortuary temples, for example, the Ramesseum. The reason why the temples needed such storage depots was because Egypt had a barter economy that did not use money. Any temple cult only lasted as long as there was food to make offerings and feed priests. Storing food for offerings was essential for a...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Benjamin Franklin. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Ben Franklin flew a kite one night. 250 years later, we gotz the Interwebz. How about that. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares on the bottom half (answer grid)...

Senator Tom Corburn passed away today after battling cancer for years after stepping down as a United States Senator from the state of Oklahoma. When it comes to national politics, there are elected officials who vote pro-life and do the right thing. Then there are lawmakers who actively carry the banner and lead the charge to protect unborn babies from the travesty of abortion. That was Tom Coburn, who frequently sponsored legislation and amendments to stop abortions and protect Americans from having to fund abortions. As a doctor by training, Coburn stood up for the conscience rights of medical professional...

Amid ever-changing models, it's hard to put a finger on just how dangerous the coronavirus is. We know at this point that COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — has led to more than 85,356 illnesses and more than 1,246 deaths in U.S. For comparison, the flu has caused an estimated 38 million illnesses, 30,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (snip) When it comes to lives claimed by the opioid epidemic, for example, in 2018, the most recent year available from the CDC, nearly 47,000 died from opioid-related...

All Los Angeles County beaches are closing temporarily in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases topped 1,400 Friday, officials said. The countywide closures come after large crowds of beachgoers were seen at beaches last weekend, despite stay-at-home orders and calls for social distancing. “The crowds we saw at our beaches last weekend were unacceptable,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a written statement. “In order to save lives, beaches in LA County will be temporarily closed." The order goes into effect "immediately" and runs through April 19, 2020, according to the...

The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus deal that the Senate passed this week includes $100 billion for hospitals. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling these funds "a Marshall Plan" for the health care system. Yet unlike the post-WWII Marshall Plan, these healthcare stimulus dollars come with little accountability to ensure they're used efficiently. First, some credit where it's due: Policymakers agreed to language in the legislation that requires providers to publish cash prices for coronavirus tests online, so patients and employers can easily shop around for the best deal. Clear market prices for tests will offer taxpayers some protection by providing a powerful check on providers'...

Cuomo trying to explain the stockpile of ventilators in NY

[snip] "We started then to find out what we could make," he said. "We worked with the administration. They have a coalition to what kind of masks are need out there. Obviously, we specialize in cotton and we found out different materials that they didn't want -- latex...and stuff. So, finally, we got the final prototype three days ago." Lindell said it took MyPillow workers three days to turn over a 200,000-square-foot factory into a facility to produce the masks. They are currently making about 10,000 a day and aim to produce up to 50,000 a day.

President to wave off USNS Comfort as it departs for New York ‘I think it’s a good thing when I go over there and say thank you’ Despite repeated warnings from authorities against non-essential travel during the coronavirus outbreak, Donald Trump was set to visit Norfolk, Virginia on Saturday, to bid bon voyage to the US navy hospital ship USNS Comfort as it departs for stricken New York City. As the 73-year-old president prepared for his visit, which also flew in the face of official insistence that older people refrain from travel, he continued to attack favorite targets including the...

On Friday, the U.S. media gleefully reported that the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. had surpassed the number of confirmed cases in China. In addition, the number of people who have died from the virus in both Italy and Spain has exceeded the total in China. As of Thursday, according to the Chinese Government, there have been 81,340 cases and a total of 3,292 people people have died. On Friday, the government claimed only one new person had been infected through local transmission, but that there had been 54 new imported cases. Remarkably, the country reported...

List of closed hospitals in New York City – Full list of all 174 hospitals that are now closed in Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx in NYC, USA. ALL OF THESE FACILITIES WERE CLOSED DURING THE GOVERNORSHIP OF ANDREW CUOMO AND WHILE DEMENTED JOE AND THE ROGUE KENYAN USURPER WERE IN OFFICE.

A densely populated neighbor of China, Vietnam has a weak health care system and a low budget for combating the coronavirus. So how has it managed to keep its COVID-19 infection rate so low? At the end of January, Vietnam's government said it was "declaring war" on the coronavirus, although the outbreak at that time was still confined to China. Premier Nguyen Xuan Phuc said "Fighting this epidemic, means fighting the enemy". Vietnam instituted rigorous quarantine policies, and carried out complete tracing of all people who came in contact with the virus. These measures were implemented much earlier in the...

...As the clock struck midnight on the east coast Friday morning, Dylan released a new song, “Murder Most Foul,” that has a 16:57 running time — and it’s an epic free association on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy...In the song’s view, the killing of JFK, “right there in front of everyone’s eyes,” is the “greatest magic trick” — and one he presumably thinks has some relevance in 2020.

Throughout the ancient world, many people, including Jews, carved and painted words and pictures (we might call them graffiti today) in places that would shock modern sensibilities -- inside and around holy spaces and shrines, pagan sanctuaries, synagogues, and churches; and throughout cemeteries, necropoleis, and tombs in regions of modern Israel, Syria, Greece, Italy, Malta, Sardinia, Tunisia, and Libya. The ancients also made their marks in other locations: upon cliffs and open-air sanctuaries along desert roads and trade routes of Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia; and around public theaters and hippodromes (horse racecourses) along the Syrian coast (modern...

A stampede for an unproven “cure” for Covid-19 is clearing the pharmacy shelves of a medicine that is vital for up to 5 million people around the world suffering from lupus, as countries bow to populist pressure and abandon the trials that would show whether hydroxychloroquine works against coronavirus infection. Both Italy and France have said doctors can now prescribe hydroxychloroquine – a less toxic version of the malaria drug chloroquine – even though there is no robust evidence to prove that it is effective against Covid-19. Popular pressure for access to the drug has been ramped up by pronouncements...

President Donald Trump is rightly talking about when we can reopen the country for business, noting that we cannot allow the cure to become worse than the disease. However, Trump does not have the keys to the shop. It is the country's governors and mayors. Thus far they have not been expressing the same sentiment. If they do not loosen their shutdown orders within a reasonable time, we may have to turn to the courts. It turns out that many, if not all, of these orders would likely be struck down as unconstitutional. The federal government thus far has only...

I'm sure this is not such a terribly unique idea, but it seems to me we don't really need a randomized double-blind clinical trial on the drug when we know about 2 million people are prescribed hydroxychloroquine. How hard would it be for the government to ask rheumatologists to contact their patients prescribed hydroxychloroquine to find out how many of them have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus? While the total number of people that have acquired this disease related to the population of the United States is probably somewhat insignificant, the absence of cases among hydroxychloroquine users in areas...