Free Republic

Am I stupid for my optimism? A Nevada hospital is now prescribing Trump Med (easier to write than "hydroxychloroquine"). South Dakota is FINALLY doing a clinical trial on Trump Med. There are loud governmental mumbles here and there about a "rolling reopening"; even cautious once-forbidden talk of reopening schools in May (FL). Here's my controversial proposition: Youngsters may actually learn to love breathing the smell of capitalism when they can return to Starbucks and the movies and dinner dates and bright lights and the malls and beach trips and night clubs, etc. -- we have a president who's not afraid...

A teenager part of one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon has died after testing positive for COVID-19, according to Brazilian health officials. There are fears the coronavirus, which has already devastated much of the world, could wipe out remote indigenous tribes in South America. Alvanei Xirizana, 15, died on Thursday in a hospital in the state of Roraima, Reuters reported, citing local health authorities. He belonged to the relatively isolated Yanomami tribe, whose more than 38,000 members occupy rainforests and mountains in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, according to human rights group Survival International. Advocates say deforestation...

The former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (Drug Czar) under late President George H.W. Bush had some pretty explosive things to say about how data models and the reaction to COVID-19 have affected Americans and the economy. Bennett summarized: “[I]f you look at those numbers, and see the comparable, we're going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu. For this, we scared the hell out of the American people, we lost 17 million jobs, we put a major dent in the economy, we closed down the schools — you heard Dr. Oz say...

What Is the Octave of Easter? ...The period from Easter Sunday through Divine Mercy Sunday (the Sunday after Easter Sunday) is an especially joyful time. The Catholic Church refers to these eight days (counting both Easter Sunday and Divine Mercy Sunday) as the Octave of Easter. (Octave is also sometimes used to indicate the eighth day, that is, Divine Mercy Sunday, rather than the entire eight-day period.) Every day in the Octave of Easter is so important that it is treated as a continuation of Easter Sunday itself. For that reason, no fasting is allowed during the Octave of Easter...

Napoleon had also raised alarm throughout the Christian church all over Europe by his broad appeal to the followers of the dominant religions of the world. It has been believed by the church throughout the centuries that the antichrist would be “all things to all people”, and Napoleon’s use of religion for political purposes seemed to eerily resemble that. In his 1798 Egyptian campaign, Napoleon attempted to win over the Muslims throughout the middle east by announcing his faith in the religion of Islam: “People of Egypt! You will be told by our enemies that I am come to destroy...

Law enforcement authorities in Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, are kept in the dark on the identities of the hundreds of inmates the county has released from its jails during the coronavirus crisis. The story: The cases are held in special coronavirus court hearings but prosecutors have refused to share information on the released prisoners both with The Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, and Chicago Police Department, according to The Washington Times. “The greatest fear people have is the fear of the unknown,” said, Kevin Graham, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, in a...

The COVID-19 death tallies we’re seeing are really DEATH CERTIFICATE tallies and we’ve no reason to trust them. But we’ve every reason to think they’ve got to be significantly exaggerating the real number of people the virus is killing. And there are enough hospital deaths from other causes every day that the directives and financial incentives encouraging false diagnoses only have to cause the virus to appear on a small percentage of ordinarily occurring death certificates to account for most of the deaths currently attributed to COVID-19. In fact, as hard as it may be to fathom, it would be...

On March 9, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the country it was perfectly safe for healthy Americans to take a cruise and to hold campaign rallies. Speaking at a White House briefing on March 9, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told the world - on March 9! - that “if you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, to not go on a cruise ship.” He went on to say that “if you have … an individual who has an underlying condition, particularly an...

The political world would be a much better place if all public officials knew how to apologize for mistakes the way Louisiana Lt. Gov. Bill Nungesser did on Easter Day. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Nungesser about Louisiana’s unusually high incidence of the coronavirus, part of which probably was exacerbated by Mardi Gras celebrations in February. Nungesser was saying there was only one known case in the whole state by the time of Mardi Gras, but that had federal or medical guidance come sooner, officials certainly would have considered canceling Mardi Gras.

Perhaps the best thing that could come out of this entire debacle and turning America into a police state — where people are arrested for going somewhere in their cars and never leaving their cars — should be a total disdain for and disbelief in computer models. The Imperial College of London model that terrified our largely scientifically illiterate politicos and therefore killed the world economy, like every other model that tries to model human behavior, assumed a spherical cow of uniform density in a frictionless vacuum. Computer modeling can be incredibly useful, particularly when you’re modeling physics: an object...

"On January 21st, right in the middle of when the New York Times says that Trump was asleep at the wheel, Dr. Fauci said, "Coronavirus is not a major threat for the people in the United States, and this is not something the citizens should be worried about." Five days later on The Cats Roundtable hosted by John Catsimatidis, Dr. Fauci said, "The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It’s a very, very low risk to the United States."

Every single one in this photo will get what is coming to them," read the ominous Instagram message sent to several students of color at the University of La Verne, east of Los Angeles, in March 2019. The accompanying black-and-white photo was of a group of outspoken students who were well-known on campus for organizing anti-racism protests. Seen in the photo: Anayeli Dominguez Peña, a Mexican-American graduate student and vocal social-justice campaigner. She had been instrumental in organizing numerous protests in the Decolonize ULV group she co-led. "That wet back bitch Anayeli and that n---r Jasmine need to SHUT THEIR...

RUSH: Dr. Fauci can’t guarantee the physical vote in November will be safe. Dr. Fauci said in an interview on Sunday, that he can’t guarantee that it will be safe to physically vote at the polls in November due to coronavirus. (summarized) “I hope so, Jake. I really hope so, but I can’t really guarantee…” When did we turn to the National Institutes of Health to guarantee that the election’s gonna be safe or that November will be safe? No, I’m… No. This is not nitpicking. It’s quite the opposite of nitpicking. The United States media is turning to the...

Today, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced an agreement on a shared vision for reopening their economies and controlling COVID-19 into the future. Joint statement from the governors: COVID-19 has preyed upon our interconnectedness. In the coming weeks, the West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19 – with our states acting in close coordination and collaboration to ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities. We are announcing that California, Oregon and Washington have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies – one that...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks at City Hall on April 8, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.(Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order will extend into May, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot predicted Monday. Lightfoot was asked at an unrelated news conference whether April 30 looks like the last day of the stay-at-home order in Chicago. “I think that’s going to be difficult for us to say, April 30, everything comes up, I don’t expect that to happen,” Lightfoot said. “I think it will extend beyond that.

Cruise lines started 2020 expecting a banner year. Demand for cruises in the Caribbean, Alaska, and around the world was huge; fares were high. COVID-19 has, of course, changed all that, and cruise companies have been battered by an unprecedented drop in demand, sparked in part by CDC and U.S. Department of State warnings against travel by ship. Now, the whole industry is on pause. Summer seasons in Alaska and Europe are questionable, according to industry analysts and cruise insiders. Entire countries — including Australia, Canada, Italy, and Mexico — are closed to cruise ship traffic. All of which raises...

CHICAGO/WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - At a Wayne Farms chicken processing plant in Alabama, workers recently had to pay the company 10 cents a day to buy masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, according to a meat inspector. In Colorado, nearly a third of the workers at a JBS USA beef plant stayed home amid safety concerns for the last two weeks as a 30-year employee of the facility died following complications from the virus. And since an Olymel pork plant in Quebec shut on March 29, the number of workers who tested positive for the coronavirus quintupled to...

There is nothing out there about COVID-19 like this. You need to take a few minutes to watch, your jaw will drop, I promise.

As late as February 29, Dr. Anthony Fauci was telling America it was safe to go to the mall, the movies, and the gym. During a Saturday, February 29 appearance on the NBC’s far-left Today Show, Fauci was asked point blank if Americans should stop enjoying their daily routines. Fauci answered point blank, “No.” Here’s a transcript of the pertinent part: TODAY SHOW: So Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America, people are waking up right now with real concerns about this; they want to go to malls, and movies, maybe the gym, as well. Should we be changing our...

Hello, lost generation. The Millennials entered the workforce during the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Saddled with debt, unable to accumulate wealth, and stuck in low-benefit, dead-end jobs, they never gained the financial security that their parents, grandparents, or even older siblings enjoyed. They are now entering their peak earning years in the midst of an economic cataclysm more severe than the Great Recession, near guaranteeing that they will be the first generation in modern American history to end up poorer than their parents.