Free Republic

A country learns about itself in a crisis, and one revelation in the coronavirus emergency is that we can’t make our own penicillin. The first patient successfully treated with the antibiotic was a woman suffering from sepsis in a Connecticut hospital in 1942. Her treatment took up half the country’s supply. Yet in short order we figured out how to mass produce the medicine, saving the lives of countless soldiers in World War II. Once, factories throughout the country made the stuff. But that was a long time ago. The last US plant to make penicillin, a Bristol-Myers Squibb operation...

Alyssa Milano is defending her decision to stay silent in the wake of a recently surfaced allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden by former Senate staffer Tara Reade, who claims he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Milano, 47, spoke with radio host Andy Cohen on Monday during his SiriusXM broadcast and when Cohen brought up the fact that, once again, Milano had been a trending topic on Twitter. He gave the actress the floor to speak on the matter and she did so, choosing her words gingerly. “So it's actually quite a serious reason, I think. So I've been...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper made a questionable retweet Monday night of a post saying that President Trump was "100 percent insane." First spotted by Media Research Center news analyst Nicholas Fondacaro, the tweet was made by vocal Trump critic George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who was responding to tweet slamming the president during the coronavirus task force press briefing. The tweet essentially said that nobody in the Trump administration had the guts to tell Trump that he is "100% insane."

April 07 2020 Tuesday of Holy Week Reading 1 Is 49:1-6 Hear me, O islands, listen, O distant peoples. The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me. You are my servant, he said to me, Israel, through whom I show my glory.Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, Yet my reward is with the LORD, my...

Local woman says she still hasn't received unemployment and has reached out to a local lawmaker, Representative Peggy Bennett. The Albert Lea woman sits down with Ross Becker to voice her frustration and fear of "living off nothing". The Representative Bennett goes in-depth with Betsy Singer on the issue.

The White House trade adviser Peter Navarro blew up at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US's top infectious-disease expert, during a fraught coronavirus task force meeting in the Situation Room on Saturday, Axios reported. The argument stemmed from a disagreement over how much the White House should back hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment. Navarro reportedly touted the drug's "clear therapeutic efficacy," while Fauci said there was only anecdotal evidence about its effectiveness. Fauci's comments "just set Peter off," a source told Axios, and Navarro went on to accuse Fauci of opposing President Donald Trump's travel restrictions for China. Fauci, who has...

MEDINA, WA—Well, this is disappointing: Bill Gates had discovered a cure for coronavirus, but the hard drive he had it saved on was wiped out by a Windows virus. Not good! "I've got it!" he'd cried in the early morning hours on Sunday. "Hey Melinda -- I've figured out how to eradicate this nasty virus! Everyone mocked me for commenting on the virus while not even being a medical expert, but ha! I'll show them yet!" But just then, his monitor suddenly displayed a blue screen. A virus had infected his Windows 10 machine and crashed the whole thing, wiping...

Authorities in Rwanda have discovered a mass grave containing about 30,000 bodies of victims of the 1994 genocide that claimed an estimated one million people. The mass grave, which was found in a valley dam located in Kigali, was discovered following a tip off by people who had been jailed over genocide and have now completed their sentences. Naphtal Ahishakiye, the executive secretary of genocide survivor organization Ibuka, said that they have now embarked on exhuming the bodies for a decent burial. However, the exhuming of bodies is now a challenge as the country is in lockdown over coronavirus. Ahishakiye...

Here’s an easy recipe to the deep fried squiggly pastry one can do at homeThe funnel cake — served under a mountain of powdered sugar and any of a number of toppings — is the stuff of fried food legend, and a trip to the fair, carnival or theme park isn’t complete without one. Or the stack of napkins you’ll need to go with it. For the uninitiated, a funnel cake is a thin cake or pastry batter, traditionally poured through a funnel into a pot of hot oil. As the batter hits the oil, it seemingly takes on a...

For those who claim Japan is locked down... Does this look like a lock down to you.. Shibuya Scramble Crossing Live Camera Or this?

A Log-Log plot of new New York cases of Covid-19 versus total New York cases of Covid 19 appears to show how "stay at home" and "stay a safe distance from others" has affected the numbers of new cases in New York. I plotted the cases for all of New York (i.e., upstate, NYC, Long Island, etc., combined). Here is the plot (I can't seem to show the plot, but clicking on the link below will show it): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KxT_FdfxrYNpWw4l2qs4rG3oZ0q-YnIU Initially, the Log-Log plot shows an exponential increase in cases, as shown by the blue line. Once the order was given...

Knew this would come out.

An Illinois man shot and killed his partner and himself over fears that they'd contracted the coronavirus, according to law enforcement. Patrick Jesernik, 54, and Cheryl Schriefer, 59, were both found dead in a residence last Thursday when police responded to the residence for a welfare check. Patrick Jesernik’s parents had not heard from their son and they’d called on the cops to check on him. At the home in Will County (the county surrounding Joliet, Illinois), sheriff's deputies found that the door was locked from the inside and that both people were dead in separate rooms from gunshot wounds...

On Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a temporary emergency measure in New York’s battle against the new coronavirus pandemic. The state would borrow unused ventilators from upstate, which has seen far fewer cases of the virus per capita than downstate, and lend them to overwhelmed hospitals in the New York City region, where the life support devices are in short supply. “I’m not going to let people die because we didn’t redistribute ventilators,” the governor said. As Cuomo has repeatedly noted, the virus is expected to travel across the state like a wave. Today, New York City is short of...

Spain saw a fourth consecutive daily drop in the number of coronavirus-related deaths with 637 fatalities recorded over the past 24 hours, official figures showed on Monday. The health ministry said the number, the lowest in 13 days, brought the total number of deaths to 13,055, second only to Italy. The number of new infections also slowed, rising 3.3 percent to 135,032, down from a rise of 4.8 percent the day before. The downward trend, and the flattening of the curve seen in the chart above, is apparent when comparing the data from the last four days. Sunday had seen...

Erik Pedersen Managing Editor James King, whose story was told in a 2017 episode of the TLC docuseries My 600-lb. Life, has died. He was 49. King died April 3 at Saint Thomas Midtown in Nashville. No cause of death was revealed, but King had numerous health issues. King was profiled in a Season 5 episode of My 600-lb. Life, that aired in March 2017. With King weighing in at nearly 800 pounds, the episode focused on his attempts to get down to 600 so he could have potentially life-saving gastric bypass surgery. He made some return visits to the...

Just reported a few minutes ago on China’s daily coronavirus figures, including that all infections were from abroad. But the bigger point that I think should be pointed out is that for the first time since the  National Health Commission began publishing daily updates on 25 January, the country has recorded no deaths. Over the past two weeks, the death toll has hovered between one and seven. Over the past two weeks, of the 55 deaths reported in China, 51 were in the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began.

Of all characters, it figures these two hoseheads would have trouble with two-metre social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. But after years in the making, life-sized bronze statues of SCTV’s inseparable Bob and Doug McKenzie appeared on 103 Street and 103 Avenue Tuesday night under a gentle snow, wearing tuques and jeans and clutching open stubbies — what we Canucks used to call short beer bottles back in the day, eh. The lively and beautiful colour-patina statue is a collaborative effort between accomplished Edmonton sculptor Ritchie Velthuis, the non-profit SCTV Monument Committee, Calgary’s Bronzart Casting and actors Rick Moranis and...

Dated Jan. 29, it came during a period when Mr. Trump was playing down the risks to the United States, and he would later go on to say that no one could have predicted such a devastating outcome. Mr. Navarro said in the memo that the administration faced a choice about how aggressive to be in containing an outbreak, saying the human and economic costs would be relatively low if it turned out to be a problem along the lines of a seasonal flu. But he went on to emphasize that the “risk of a worst-case pandemic scenario should not...

U.S.—The stay-at-home orders most states have issued have caused a big change in family dynamics, as now many men who were out of the house and unavailable to help with daily chores are now home and available to carefully supervise. “I didn’t realize how much my wife did each day,” said David Lloyd, an accountant. “And she did it all without my input and helpful criticisms. Well, that’s changed now.” Evan Norman, a computer programmer, agreed. “Now is a time for me to finally help at home, by making sure everything gets done right,” said Norman. “Since the quarantine started,...