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In Michigan, Gov. Half Whitmer (D) warned doctors and pharmacists that their licenses could be revoked if they prescribe hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to patients suffering from COVID-19. In Nevada, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) also barred doctors from prescribing these drugs for COVID-19. Sisolak explained that "there is no proof that these drugs are effective in treating this virus. Until there is proof we cannot allow patients to be subjected to a possibly ineffective therapy." The Governor argued that "this action wouldn't have been necessary if Trump hadn't endorsed these drugs on national TV." These bans run directly contrary to President...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to go to war with the state of Rhode Island over its actions in sending the National Guard after visiting New Yorkers to make sure they self-quarantine for 14 days. He is threatening to sue the state for its new policy of targeting visiting New Yorkers by using law enforcement to ensure they self-quarantine.

Week ending 21 March 2020 - USA - "155 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. This number is higher than recorded at the same time in every season since reporting began in 2004-05, except for the 2009 pandemic."

The United States is home to the most innovative biotech companies and university research laboratories in the world. That fact should have given our country a huge advantage with respect to detecting and monitoring emerging cases of COVID-19 caused by the new coronavirus outbreak. Instead, as The New York Times reports in a terrific new article, officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stymied private and academic development of diagnostic tests that might have provided an early warning and a head start on controlling the epidemic that is now spreading...

Do millennials FReepers even now what a crooner. is? Well they include: Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, and Engelbert Humperdinck to name a few famous male singers of that era. Thanks to a tip on Larry Schweikart’s twitter page, I was transported back to Engelbert Humperdinck and his magical ballad, Please Release Me, Let Me Go. We’ve lost something special from the era when crooners ruled the Billboard charts.  Fortunately, even as we’re cooped up at home against a deadly virus, we can turn on the YouTube dial and call up...

Bigger and more powerful than a political revolution and a green new deal combined, the pandemonic reality of the dystopian-science-fiction-docu-psycho-historical-tragedy we’re experiencing is what big, structural change really feels like—a social cataclysm, a political catastrophe, an existential apocalypse.

NBC News anchor Chuck Todd raised eyebrows Sunday morning when he asked if President Trump had "blood on his hands" for his delayed response to the coronavirus outbreak. During an interview with former Vice President Joe Biden, Todd pointed to the Democrat's campaign messaging on the pandemic, which says a failure to take aggressive action "could cost lives." "Do you think there is blood on the president's hands considering the slow response?" Todd asked. "Or is that too harsh of a criticism?" Even Biden, who has been critical of the president throughout the crisis, thought the question was "a little...

The extraordinary success of Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong in limiting the impact of the sudden acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) demonstrates that it is possible to mount an effective response to an outbreak by major investment in pandemic preparedness. Despite their proximity to China, these three regions have managed to keep case numbers and fatalities low. By learning from previous coronavirus outbreaks where these territories bore the brunt, they were able to rapidly deploy widespread testing, combine it with digital surveillance to trace individuals’ movements, and impose strict quarantines in suspect cases, in addition to building large stockpiles of...

The daughter was killed in the same house where her mother was killed. Almost 23 years after an Arkansas mother was murdered by a 16-year-old, the convicted killer allegedly killed her daughter, police said. Deputies from the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office responded to a call on Wednesday at the historical Snowden House in Horseshoe Lake where they saw a possible suspect fleeing the property. Police located "a possible suspect who jumped from an upstairs window and ran to a vehicle that he drove across the yard and got stuck in the yard at the Snowden house, the suspect then jumped...

The public perception problems for Joe Biden are growing. He’s not all there, as is obvious from his disastrous livestreams and TV interviews, and has all but disappeared during the Wuhan coronavirus crisis. A just-released ABC News / Washington Post poll reveals another problem, one that comes as no surprise: Democrats are not enthsiastic about Biden, even as he racks up delegates and appears headed to the nomination. Biden has only bare majority (51%) support among Democrats, and a 24% enthusiasm gap in a match up against Trump.

Vietnam War Topical information: VHS Video tape: Television's Vietnam, narrated by Charlton Heston, Sony Vietnam Video Collection, produced by Accuracy In Media. Note: PBS was legally forced to show this, but only once, as a response to their own completely false representation of the war history. Their response to my inquiry was quite negative, deceptive and misleading. I got my copy, years ago, from an 800 number for the AIM organization, but do not see it on their current website. Amazon no longer carries it, and I can't find it anywhere. It shows how the Mainstream Media, with Cronkite in...

ATLANTA - The CDC estimates that as of March 21, there have been at least 39 million flu illnesses, 400,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths from flu in the United States. The CDC reported that as of March 21, 155 children had died from the flu this season. Hospitalization rates in children 0-4 years old and adults 18-49 years old are now the highest CDC has on record for these age groups, surpassing the rate reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Widespread flu outbreaks are reported in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland,...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that she believes President Donald Trump has done very little to help with preventing the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. In fact, she believes he's "fiddling" with making important decisions. "President Trump is considering relaxing federal guidelines for the coronavirus for some of the lesser infected parts of the country. Do you think he should?" Tapper asked. Pelosi referenced the number of people – roughly 2,000 – who have died as a result of the virus. "This is such a very, very sad time for us so we should be...

The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data, people familiar with the matter said. The data comes from the mobile advertising industry rather than cellphone carriers. The aim is to create a portal for federal, state and local officials that contains geolocation data in what could be as many as 500 cities across the U.S., one of the people said, to help plan the epidemic response. The data—which is stripped...

Posted on March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 by Msgr. Charles Pope Untie Him and Let Him Go Free – A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent In today’s Gospel, we hear the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The story marks a significant turning point in the ministry of Jesus: it is because of this incident that the Temple leadership in Jerusalem resolves to have Jesus killed; a supreme irony to be sure.As is proper with all the Gospel accounts, we must not see this as merely an historical happening of some two thousand years...

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry face having to ask President Trump for 'special help' if they want Secret Service protection for their new life in LA, as Canadians bid the couple and their security costs farewell. Trump will have the final say over whether the couple can have diplomatic protection in the US, because Harry will no longer be classed as an 'international protected person' when he completes the final phase of Megxit next week, according to a royal source. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and ten-month-old baby Archie made a last minute dash across the border from Canada...

Our gospel tune today is Old Fashioned Meeting by Bill & Earl Bolick who were known as the Blue Sky Boys (1938). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Yesterday's thread here: http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3829269/posts?page=1

One police officer in Newburgh, N.Y. was shot when trying to arrest an armed man wanted for questioning in a shooting. Bodycam footage clearly shows the man armed with a silver handgun violently resisting arrest, drawing his gun, and shooting the officer before getting shot to death by the police. Cut and dried case of police defending themselves? Not if you're an activist wanting to stoke the fires of racial hatred. Newburgh residents rioted that evening after a councilman-at-large, Omari Shakur, bitterly complained about police targeting blacks.

US government officials are using cellphone location data from the mobile ad industry —not data from the carriers themselves— to track Americans’ movements during the coronavirus outbreak, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with state and local governments have received cell phone data about people in areas of “geographic interest,” the WSJ reports. The goal is to create a government portal with geolocation information from some 500 cities across the country, to help ascertain how well people are complying with stay-at-home orders, according to the WSJ. One example of how the anonymized data...