Free Republic

They were once the giants of American retail, strong enough to survive wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the rise of online shopping. But Sears, JCPenney, and others may not be able to survive the CCP virus crisis. “The retailers who were wandering around aimlessly pre-pandemic are going to be substantially less likely to muddle through than they were before,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at the Columbia Business School. During the pandemic, stores have been shuttered. Retailers have furloughed hundreds of thousands of employees and are losing most of their sales. And shoppers have cut...

Year-to-date statistics show excess mortality lower than previous years he official figures for 24 countries across Europe show, not only that overall mortality is not increasing, but – so far – it is actually well below recent averages. The statistics were gathered by the European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action (EuroMOMO), an international partnership of agencies from 24 European nations aiming to promote preparedness for public health emergencies. They track “excess mortality”, meaning the number of officially recorded deaths vs the average death rate. We recommend you check their website, where each country is broken down by...

According to data obtained from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System website, total U.S. deaths for the first three weeks of March are DOWN 10% from the average of the prior four years for the same three week period. The average for weeks 9 through 11 for the four prior years was a total of 170,555 deaths. For weeks 9 through 11 this year, the total is 153,015, meaning 17,540 fewer people died in America during the first three weeks of March than could be reasonably expected. And the gap between historic deaths and weekly deaths...

PAGE, Ariz. (AP) - Authorities in northern Arizona have arrested a man for writing a racist social media post accusing Navajo people of carrying the coronavirus and calling for their deaths. The Page Police Department announced Tuesday that 34-year-old Daniel Franzen was taken into custody on suspicion of attempting to incite an act of terrorism. Police say they received reports Monday of a Facebook post that urged people to use “lethal force” against the Navajo community because they were “100% infected” with COVID-19.

Since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, we have seen various versions of face masks people use to protect themselves against the virus, be it store-bought or homemade. But just how effective are these masks? To find out, a Japanese chemistry professor compared three different types of face masks in a science experiment: a surgical mask, a homemade paper towel mask and a homemade cloth mask. Dr Tomoaki Okuda, an associate professor of applied chemistry at Keio University, measured how well the three masks could block airborne particles using a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS). To put it simply, the hose...

Of the 217 people tested aboard the Greg Mortimer cruise ship, 128 came back positive for COVID-19, while 89 tested negative, the Aurora Expeditions cruise line confirmed. The Australia-based company said all passengers and crew that have tested positive did not have fevers, and were asymptomatic as of Tuesday. The Greg Mortimer, which is currently off the coast of Uruguay, departed on March 15 for a voyage to Antarctica and the island of South Georgia, but has been anchored off the coast near Montevideo since late March, after authorities in Uruguay blocked the ship from disembarking over coronavirus concerns, the...

Press conference just announced that Stay at Home order for Minnesota will continue to May 4th. News conference is being live streamed on Youtube-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMCy4goH3Do

Finally, belatedly, the NY Times has published an article which takes a hard look at the coronavirus response by Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio. The article concludes that neither elected official did a great job responding to the virus:

RUSH: Now, President Trump, it says here, “is looking into reopening parts of the U.S. economy, according to Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. Mnuchin said yesterday that Trump’s looking into reopening parts of the economy.” He was being interviewed by Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Network. Question: “Do you think this shutdown’s gonna go longer than eight weeks?” Mnuchin said, “Maria, I hope not. I hope we get back to the point… Everything I hear from the medical professionals and many places, we’re close. We’re close to the worst point. They’re beginning to peak, and I think then things...

Anthony Fauci, America’s most-listened-to medical professional on the coronavirus, and apparently on all the political, economic, cultural and social precautions every man, woman and child in the nation should take on the coronavirus, has just warned what cooler-head coronavirus watchers have suspected all along: that this country may never, no never, go back to normal. Never, that is, Fauci suggested, until a vaccine is developed. And by logical extension, that’s to say — never, until a vaccine is developed that must then be included on the required list of shots for all children to attend school. What great news for...

LOUISVILLE, Ky - LMPD detectives are reviewing video of a confrontation that took place at Norton Commons over the weekend. Officers were called out to Norton Commons on Friday night on a report that a man had shoved several young females and tried to strangle another. Video of the incident surfaced on Reddit over the weekend. The short clip shows the man shoving several young females, then going to the ground and strangling one of their friends. The video was posted under the headline “Man strangles teenage girl for failing to social distance.” No arrests have been made, but a...

Here's my prediction once again: Bernie has withdrawn as ordered by whoever paid him off. Biden will have some sort of "issue" that will prevent or deter the delegates from nominating him. They will feel compelled (by whom?) to call upon (or even beg) either Hildabeast or Mooch (or pick a dem favorite female)to come out of hiding to "save the day" for them. Or! Biden will choose his VP as directed by whomever and will be unable to fulfill his duties as President IF he were to win.

There came a point in the Chinese Wuhan Virus “pandemic” when President Trump spotted the game of the Leftists. So he played along. At first President Trump rightfully downplayed the severity of the Chinese Wuhan Virus. He equated it to various flu bugs. He then cautioned people to stay away from sick people, wash their own hands and if sick, cough into their elbows. If Trump were Obama, this advice would have been deemed yogiesque. Then you can bet some Leftist organization would have given Obama an award for potentially saving millions of lives. But since we live in the...

The COVID Tracking Project obtains, organizes, and publishes high-quality data required to understand and respond to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. We will do this work until official national sources take over and publish comprehensive testing and outcomes data. In early March, two journalists at The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, built a tracker for their COVID-19 testing investigation. Separately, Jeff Hammerbacher, Founder and General Partner at Related Sciences, built a tracking spreadsheet. The two efforts came together March 7, and made a call for volunteers, and the COVID Tracking Project was born. Alexis Madrigal now leads...

RUSH: We have more model movement today, ladies and gentlemen. “Projected coronavirus deaths in the United States were lowered by 25% from 81,766 to 60,415 early Wednesday morning.” This is the Washington state model, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Chris Murray model, IHME. This has been the lead model from the get-go. This model is why we’ve done what we’ve done, plus the model from the U.K., the Neil Ferguson model. I forget the name of it off the top of my head. That’s the model that predicted 2.2 million if we didn’t do anything, and then they...

Two hundred and fifty years after his birth, he remains a poet “of blessed consolations in distress” IN THIS SEASON of cancelled parties, the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth’s birth will also go unmarked in public. Celebrations of the English poet, born on April 7th 1770, should have bloomed like his beloved daffodils all over the Lakeland region (pictured), and beyond. He taught not only his compatriots but devotees around the world to be, like him, “a lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains; and of all that we behold / From this green earth”. Now the...

Let's play a thought game. If you wanted to bring the United States to its knees, what might you do? You might build a hazardous lab near a wet market to study Corona viruses. You might know where a cave is in which a particularly virulent Corona virus is carried by bats and keep its location a closely guarded secret. In 2004, deep in the wilderness of China’s Yunnan province, a group of scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology discovered a cave full of wild bats carrying hundreds of SARS-related viruses. Their work, published in a draft paper in...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an architect of Obamacare and special adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization, told MSNBC’s The Last Word that the United States cannot return to normal until a Chinese coronavirus vaccine is available, which he speculated could take between 12-18 months.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP3-hE-DrSc&feature=emb_titleDR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL: No one is immune to the COVID-19 virus. It threatens all of us. But while we are all experiencing the same pandemic, we are not experiencing it in the same way. The first dividing line is whether you or someone you love has gotten sick. Many Americans have not yet seen firsthand what devastation a positive...

From the comments: Step 1 - stop airing the briefings that share all this information Step 2- Ask questions answered in said briefings and pretend they are being ignored Step 3 - Blame Trump for not sharing information and not taking action Step 4 - Re-insert head in (yon netherzones) Green critter: Bonus art Schumer in a face mask: Bonus bonus

President Donald Trump is hinting at a second task force responsible for getting Americans back to work. Appoint it now, Mr. President. Don't wait until the virus peaks. This second task force should prepare the country to reopen, with new tools to fight the virus. The president's top epidemiologist, the esteemed Anthony Fauci, insists "the best tool we have" is "physical separation." But mandating that people stay home is costing Americans their jobs and will force businesses into bankruptcy. The nation needs an alternative strategy. A chorus of government health officials and academics, like Harvard's Marc Lipsitch, want the shutdown...