Free Republic

I’m wondering where we are on the Churchill scale: with some indications that the curve is in fact bending down, are we now at the beginning of the end [of quarantine shutdown], or the end of the beginning? Well, either way, several more weeks of MWiP is near certain.

On Tuesday morning, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced the happy news that he has recovered from the coronavirus. He's not resting on his laurels, however. The senator decided to jump right back into work, getting his hands dirty — but not in the Senate. "I appreciate all the best wishes I have received. I have been retested and I am negative," Paul tweeted. "I have started volunteering at a local hospital to assist those in my community who are in need of medical help, including Coronavirus patients. Together we will overcome this!" Paul is not just a senator — he's...

In the ever-changing contradictory nature of information during the pandemic age, the head of the CDC, Robert Redfield, told listeners of Arizona's 1030 KVOI radio he believes there's good news ahead. Redfield said the death toll from the Chinese COVID-19 will be "much, much, much lower" than the models have predicted. “If we just social distance, we will see this virus and this outbreak basically decline, decline, decline. And I think that's what you're seeing,” he said.The models the White House is using projected the deaths of between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. Redfield says models aren't the end of...

When this pandemic is over, the rest of the world should continue to hold the CCP accountable for its deception. But a reckoning with the CCP is not the same as punishing all Chinese people. As the confirmed number of coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million worldwide, and there is no end in sight for the prolonged lockdown in many countries, the call for holding communist China accountable for the coronavirus pandemic is getting louder. It’s important that in our quest for justice, we distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese people. At fault for the spread of...

Well, that didn't take long.CNN host John Berman had hoped to talk about the – reading now from the lower third on the screen –"HEATED DISAGREEMENT IN WH SITUATION ROOM OVER UNPROVEN DRUG"! QUICK, AN ARGUMENT! SOMEONE DO SOMETHING! TRUMP WILL KILL US ALL! ORANGE MAN BAD!Instead what he got from Trade Representative Peter Navarro, who's on the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, was an education.As Real Clear Politics helpfully transcribed, Berman was trying to talk up the reported argument Navarro had with Dr. Anthony Fauci over trying the FDA approved malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine on coronavirus patients. Fauci says...

Lawyers and a Silicon Valley start-up have found ways to flood the system with claims, so companies are looking to thwart a process they created. Teel Lidow couldn’t quite believe the numbers. Over the past few years, the nation’s largest telecom companies, like Comcast and AT&T, have had a combined 330 million customers. Yet annually an average of just 30 people took the companies to arbitration, the forum where millions of Americans are forced to hash out legal disputes with corporations.Mr. Lidow, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a law degree, figured there had to be more people upset with their...

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle has just revised down its COVID-19 worst-case scenarios for the country.One of the projected next hotspots, California, is projected to need only half the ICU beds, ventilators and critical hospital equipment than originally predicted because there will be many fewer COVID-19 cases, according to IMHE. All of the state's supplies are on hand, according to the survey. Twitter IMHE has revised down the number of expected COVID-19 deaths from 6,100 to 1,783 in California.The state's peak for the worst number of deaths originally was expected to...

The State Department’s temporary suspension of visa processing has stopped the inflow of H-1B foreign visa workers into American white-collar jobs while the Chinese coronavirus crisis drives up United States jobless claims to more than ten million. In a given year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News....

The South Korean solution to the COVID-19 virus (widespread testing and the hydroxychloroquine-zinc cure) is beginning to work in the United States. Americans, like South Koreans, will soon be back at work and school. But at Monday's Coronavirus Task Force press briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci ignored the success. Instead, he pretended that the only way the U.S. could get back to normal was through vaccines and new therapies. He was responding to a question directed to him, and him only, by reporter Jonathan Karl at the 37:37 mark of this video: YouTube screen grab (croppped) Karl: Will we truly get back to normal before there’s a vaccine...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden argued that Wisconsin should not have had in-person voting in their primary and the election should have been conducted entirely with voting by mail. Biden reiterated that the 2020 election shouldn’t be postponed.

The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn't going to work for a large number of small business owners after all. Remember the deal the president signed to save America’s small businesses from ruin during the government’s coronavirus shutdown? The one hammered out by the Senate and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin over weeks of tense negotiation while Americans worriedly watched, hoping good news might come before a depression does? The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn’t going to work for a large number of small business owners...

Controversy swirls around whether hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin ("H&A") should be used to treat people who have the Wuhan virus. Setting aside for now all the qualifications that for good reason are used whenever discussing the question (qualifications like "after consultation between the patient and the doctor" and "administered according to a well established protocol"), the core issue is whether or not to use a treatment that has shown positive results for some and has not shown obviously negative results for any. Given the standard medical diktat that the first obligation of a health care worker is to do no harm,...

Critics worry about a Patriot Act for health care, raising concerns about patient privacy and civil liberties. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions. The proposed national network could help determine which areas of the country can safely relax social-distancing rules and which should remain vigilant. But it would also...

"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). Gentleness is power under control. The Greek word translated "gentle" in Matthew 5:5 speaks of humility, meekness, and non-retaliation—traits that in our proud society are often equated with weakness or cowardice. But in reality they are virtues that identify kingdom citizens. The same word was used by the Greeks to describe a gentle breeze, a soothing medicine, or a domesticated colt. Those are examples of power under control: a gentle breeze brings pleasure, but a hurricane brings destruction; a soothing medicine brings healing, but an overdose can kill;...

Seven people were killed and 14 more were wounded Tuesday in shootings across Chicago, making it the most violent day of 2020 so far as temperatures reached summer-like levels for the first time this year. A man was killed Tuesday evening in a shooting that left a 5-year-old girl and two other people wounded in Gresham. About 7:35 p.m., a group of people were sitting on the front porch of a home in the 8600 block of South Damen Avenue when someone in a black sedan fired shots, Chicago police said.

It was not unusual in ancient times for individuals to sell themselves into servitude -- as “bondservants” -- which was often described as a form of slavery. Usually this was due to excessive debt, but sometimes it was done simply to have a roof over one’s head and food in one’s belly. In other words, for millennia, in order to satisfy their most basic needs, human beings have often been willing to suffer under many a heavy yoke. As C.S. Lewis put it, “A hungry man thinks about food, not freedom.” In today’s Wuhan virus-driven hysteria, a corollary to Lewis’s...

Responding to President Donald Trump’s comment that she’s privately happy with the federal government, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday acknowledged telling Vice President Michael Pence that the Army Corps of Engineers did good work turning McCormick Place into an alternative care facility but denied being “one way publicly and another way privately with the administration.” At a press briefing on Monday, Trump said, "The mayor of Chicago, at least on the phone, is extremely happy with what we’re doing — thanking us. I just wish the politicians would say to you what they say to us.”

Today we feature Ernest Tubb and his 1957 tune Mississippi Gal. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot is on the defensive Tuesday after a Chicago hair stylist revealed on social media that she’d given the mayor a haircut in violation of Lightfoot’s own stay-at-home orders. Illinois was one of the first states to institute a full shelter-in-place program to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, and has been warning its residents to stay home at all costs unless they need necessary items like food or prescrition medication. The state had some of the first cases of coronavirus in the nation and, so far, around 11,000 Illinois residents are infected with the...

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates appeared on Fox News Sunday in which he reiterated his 2018 statement that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic in the same serious way it prepares for war.” Gates, whose foundation -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- has invested heavily in global health, suggested staging simulations, war games, and preparedness exercises to simulate how diseases could spread and to identify the best response. The concluding analysis, as per the mainstream media (and certain social/online communications), is that the Trump administration has done exactly the opposite. Among the evidence to prove...