Free Republic

We are now three months in. The CDC is recommending "wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission." They're not talking about the "N-95" or surgical masks; those are in "short supply," and "must continue to be reserved for healthcare workers and medical first responsers." Just the ordinary, non-surgical, cloth (or heavy paper) masks covering mouth and nose, the ones that cost maybe $0.25 each at wholesale. As it happens, these are also in short supply. So the CDC has...

Legendary rocker Alice Cooper, who has lived in Arizona for decades, spoke to Forbes about how he is holding up during the coronavirus pandemic. He said: "The great thing in Arizona is that the golf courses are open. They say it's an outdoor event, you're not touching anything but your own equipment. And they want people out doing something — walking, outdoor activities and they said that is the one sport that is not a contact sport. There are 200 golf courses here. So we go out every morning, first off there's nobody out there. We have the whole place...

Let's start keeping a running thread where we cite examples of elites who demonstrate extreme hypocrisy in the areas of national lockdown and social distancing. I'll start us off with these. - PA Governor Tom Wolf who has arbitrarily closed thousands of small businesses as "non-essential" with the stroke of a pen, but has granted an exemption to his own small business (a cabinet shop). Because that kitchen remodel that you've been procrastinating on since 2007 simply can't wait! For extra credit Tommy the Commie has closed the state office which administers the Freedom of Information Act so that none...

Shower thoughts: Shouldn't congress and staff take a 50% pay cut? And the White House. In fact, shouldn't *most* of the government take a pay cut?? If that is a bridge too far, perhaps every government employee making more than $150,000 take a 10% pay cut.

General George Washington on Faith and Perseverance From his General Orders dated July 2,1776 "Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions..."

He's on-the-air. One of America's very best Talk Radio Show Hosts, IMO: Chris Plante from WMAL in DC. His show is the "prep work" for many other shows. And, unlike the others, he pulls no punches, tells it like it is and doesn't take any guff from liberal, leftist or commie/socialist/fascist callers. He's the guy we'd all like to sit down with and have a cheeseburger and a cold one, while talking about the state of America, and the crazies who are pulling the strings, behind-the-scenes. Get a fresh refill of your favorite coffee, a warm croissant, the Hoppe's Cleaning...

BREAKING: Someone hacked Twitter and posted the questions to be asked at today's White House Coronavirus Press Conference. Video at link.

Blog/Disease Posted Apr 5, 2020 by Martin Armstrong We are living not just in interesting times, we are living in UNPRECEDENTED TIMES, which has raised the stakes profoundly toward civil war. You have to wonder if someone like Bill Gates is really stupid with respect to economics, or is he deliberately trying to further the same agenda he supported for Climate Change – reduce population and shut down the industry? You may have been laid off, struggling and hoping your employer will not fold, or you may be working from home and wondering if your employer will not cut jobs...

How ironic that Bill DeBlasio, New York City’s mayor, who designated his city a sanctuary city, and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who designated New York a sanctuary state, both in defiance of federal orders, have blamed the federal government for not supplying all of their hospital and other state needs. These two, among other prominent Democrat mayors and governors who for many years virtue-signaled and put the rest of the country in jeopardy --- claiming it is not the fed's business what they do in their states --- suddenly have relinquished city and state responsibility for the conditions in their jurisdictions....

In the Times’ latest attempt to “talk down” chloroquine, the journalists' ill-will to President Trump is on steroids. The article, entitled “Trump’s Aggressive Advocacy of Malaria Drug for Treating Coronavirus Divides Medical Community,” hauls out all of the usual critiques, including Dr. Fauci’s urging caution, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s being “a hit on conservative media,” the fact that Zelenko was born in Ukraine, and the Zelenko-Giuliani connection (cue the ominous music). Those criticisms, though, are getting stale, so this time around, the Times threw in something new: It hinted that Trump and his cronies are about to get rich off of...

Colleges across the nation are scrambling to close deep budget holes and some have been pushed to the brink of collapse after the coronavirus outbreak triggered financial losses that could total more than $100 million at some institutions. Scores of colleges say they're taking heavy hits as they refund money to students for housing, dining and parking after campuses closed last month. Many schools are losing millions more in ticket sales after athletic seasons were cut short, and some say huge shares of their reserves have been wiped out amid wild swings in the stock market. Yet college leaders say...

In the Oval Office… “Mr. President?” “Hello, Mark, come on in. You’re doing a great job, by the way, a big beautiful job, the greatest job we’ve ever seen, nobody does that chief of staff thing like Mark Meadows, I was just telling the governors that on our conference call…” “Mr. President, Joe Biden’s on the phone.” “Really? He actually called?” “Yessir. He’s on line 2.” “Wow. Ok, let me pick it up…” “Sir, there’s something you need to know…” “Say it.” “Sir, he seems a little confused.” “Ok, so what else is new?” “Sir, he asked if he could...

ViacomCBS networks in the U.S. and around the world will air One World: Together At Home, a global televised and streamed special in support of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, on Saturday, April 18th from 8:00-10:00 PM, live ET.The ViacomCBS brands airing the special include broadcast networks CBS in the U.S., Channel 5 in the UK, Network 10 in Australia, and Telefe in Argentina; BET and MTV globally across 180+ countries; and CMT, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop, TV Land and VH1 in the U.S. This historic broadcast will be hosted by Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel of Jimmy Kimmel...

... Remdesivir has been recently recognized as a promising antiviral drug against a wide array of RNA viruses (including SARS/MERS-CoV5) infection in cultured cells, mice and nonhuman primate (NHP) models. ..... Chloroquine, a widely-used anti-malarial and autoimmune disease drug, has recently been reported as a potential broad-spectrum antiviral drug.8,9 Chloroquine is known to block virus infection by increasing endosomal pH required for virus/cell fusion, as well as interfering with the glycosylation of cellular receptors of SARS-CoV.10 Our time-of-addition assay demonstrated that chloroquine functioned at both entry, and at post-entry stages of the 2019-nCoV infection in Vero E6 cells (Fig. 1c,...

It’s just the flu, bro. Normally experts in the field of epidemiology remind me of experts in global warming. But there is a professor who is both an MD and PhD in economics from Stanford who is a true Flubro. See link below: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/02/dr_jay_bhattacharya_questioning_conventional_wisdom_in_the_covid-19_crisis.html There is a video at the link too.

At his coronavirus press conference on Saturday, April 4, President Donald Trump emphasized again that “we have to” restart business. But Allergy and Infectious Disease director Dr. Anthony Fauci has subtly if indirectly demurred on the possibility of such a restart. That puts Trump closer to virus checkmate than he realizes. He has moves, but they come from the misunderstood and misreported program of Swedish Voluntary Mitigation. Dr. Fauci remarkably states that America can restart as soon as there are no more deaths or even positive infections. The problem is that may never happen. The “social separation” of the CDC/NIH...

At the risk of upsetting a few folks, someone who appears to be in the know has tossed a small bucket of cold water on the notorious hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin drug cocktail: [....] First up is this study from France. It’s another very small one, and all the usual warnings apply because of that. It’s from a team at the University of Paris and Saint-Louis Hospital there, and they evaluated 11 consecutive patients admitted there with the same course of treatment as the Marseilles group first reported (hydroxychloroquine 600mg/day and azithromycin, 500mg the first day and 250 mg/day thereafter). The...

Gun Law Reform in Bolsonaro's Brazil, Homicides Drop Precipitously In December, 2018, in an article published by the Wall Street Journal, this pronouncement was made. From the wsj.com: Now, Brazil is set to embark on an experiment that will determine what happens when you loosen gun restrictions in a country battling an overpowering wave of gun crime. Homicides in Brazil were at historic highs in 2017. They dropped a bit in 2018, as candidate Bolsonaro ran on reform of the gun laws to allow self-defense, and reform of the law to get tough on crime.  The homicide numbers dropped from...

If you watch cable news, something I have assiduously avoided these past few weeks, you will be told that Barney Fife is in charge of the country, that the President lies, mismanages, exaggerates, and has totally botched America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Yet an honest observer sees much the opposite, rather than the fake news peddled by agents of doom in the media. Some say character is created in the crucible of adversity, yet the reality is that such adversity reveals character. Leaders are facing unprecedented challenges today, with lives and entire economies riding on every decision. Such battles...

It was a bloody Sunday in Trenton, as residents were supposed to be locked down in their homes because of the coronavirus outbreak. By 10 p.m., police were investigating five shootings that happened in a span of four hours throughout the city, ---SNIP--- Officials wondered if Gov. Phil Murphy's stay-at-home order may have contributed to pent-up rage among Trentonians cooped up in their houses due to the deadly coronavirus sweeping the state. "We lost our humanity," Mayor Reed Gusciora said by text message late Sunday. "May be retaliatory. And emotions have just boiled over today."