Free Republic

Here's British Shorthair kitten "Artist" and his human mom snuggling and cuddling. Video, 3 minutes, 56 seconds

It seemed clear several weeks ago this was going to happen. East coast blue state governors and West coast blue state governors are uniting to begin the economic civil war planning to block any White House effort to re-open the U.S. economy. The three step plan seems predictable: (1) Get out ahead of President Trump. (2) Defy the ‘all clear’ and shape economic benefit to their political allies. (3) Then use Fauci’s upcoming dossier to hit the administration for heartlessly opening the economy too early. ♦ On the East Coast the governors of New York (Cuomo), New Jersey (Murphy), Connecticut...

They are culturally meaningful—and not at all worth the health risks they pose.A few weeks ago, before the coronavirus pandemic upended our daily lives, my Facebook feed surfaced a photo from 2018, in which I was cooking a chicken that had been slaughtered in front of me at a wet market in Essaouira, Morocco. Anthony Fauci may call wet markets an “unusual human-animal interaction,” but it wasn’t that long ago in America that chilled, mass-produced, and nationally distributed meats were regarded as unusual and inferior to backyard chickens. Wherever I am in the world, I make it a point to...

The former press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-Vt.) presidential campaign said Monday that she would not endorse former Vice President Joe Biden, shortly after Sanders appeared in an online video to announce support for his former rival in the general election against President Trump. Briahna Joy Gray, who was Sanders's national spokeswoman until the campaign was suspended last week, has become a Twitter sensation in recent days for her searing attacks against Biden. On Monday, just minutes after Sanders and Biden held a joint press conference to talk about how they would work together to defeat Trump, Gray responded...

Missed it, too bad, find it and view

A quick 5-minute coronavirus test made by Abbott Laboratories and introduced with considerable fanfare by President Donald Trump in a Rose Garden news conference this week is giving state and local health officials very little added capacity to perform speedy tests needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic. “That’s a whole new ballgame,” Trump said. “I want to thank Abbott Labs for the incredible work they’ve done. They’ve been working around-the-clock.” Yet a document circulated among officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week shows that state and local public health labs...

Does a pandemic that has killed thousands of people around the globe, shuttered the American economy and resulted in a nearly 20 percent unemployment rate qualify as an "emergency?" Not in the mind of Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. As he explained to the press on Monday, the House of Representatives would not be meeting again before May 4, "absent an emergency." They had initially planned to reconvene on April 20. Jennifer Bendery ✔@jbendery "Absent an emergency, the House is not expected to meet prior to Monday, May 4, 2020." -- Steny Hoyer email 195 1:06 PM - Apr 13,...

This might be the most powerful press slapping ass kicking Fauci groveling press conference I've seen in my life. I know they have gotten boring, but today's is BEAUTIFUL! It's also very very positive.

Gov. Ralph Northam, D-Va., signed a bill Saturday allowing individual localities to remove, relocate or contextualize Confederate statues and monuments within their communities. Localities can begin using these powers starting July 1. In 2016, first-year College student Zyahna Bryant — then a student at Charlottesville High School — petitioned Charlottesville City Council to remove the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and to rename Lee Park in Downtown Charlottesville. The following year, Charlottesville City Council voted to remove two statues — one of Robert E. Lee and one of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson — both Confederate generals. The decision was...

Beaumont Health announced it was launching the country's largest study on COVID-19 antibodies which will help identify plasma donors and better understand the disease. The Beaumont Health Research Institute is hoping the serological study will answer many questions surrounding the spread of coronavirus and help treat patients who have it. Serological blood testing detects antibodies that the body creates to help fight an infection. In the case of COVID-19, antibodies may develop as soon as 3-6 days after infection. Even after the recovery, the antibodies remain and offer immunity. The CDC reports that as many as 25-50% of patients may...

According to an estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were approximately 45 million cases of the flu in the United States during the 2017-2018 influenza season, resulting in an estimated 810,000 flu-associated hospitalizations and an estimated 61,000 flu-associated deaths. It also killed more children than in any non-pandemic year on record, 172. In the 2016-17 season, there were an estimated 29 million flu cases in the United States; and estimated 497,000 flu-related hospitalizations and 38,000 flu-related deaths. (For comparison, 36,560 people died in car accidents in 2018 in the United States.) The CDC reports that...

WARNING! This thread contains spoilers for: Better Call SaulBreaking Badand El CaminoProceed at your own risk. .

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday sought to squash any notion of a fissure between he and President Trump, saying at the opening of a coronavirus task force briefing that the president repeatedly and immediately backed social distancing recommendation from he and other public health officials despite the economic pain. “The president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation,” Fauci told reporters in the White House briefing room on Monday evening. Fauci was seeking to clarify remarks he made a day prior in an interview with CNN when he acknowledged that more lives could have been saved if the...

* Public health officials are saying a large number of antibody tests could be available “within a period of a week or so.” * Instead of detecting the virus itself, the tests identify antibodies the immune system generates to fight COVID-19. * Data from antibody tests would show how many people have contracted the disease and recovered and also whether previously infected people would be vulnerable to reinfection. As some Americans are coming up on a month under stay-at-home orders, many are wondering when life will go back to normal. And while things may never fully go back to how...

Michigan Democratic state Rep. Karen Whitsett praised President Trump for mentioning hydroxychloroquine. "It saved my life," she said. "If he hadn't talked about it on TV I never would have known to ask my doctor to prescribe it for me." Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer expressed extreme displeasure "with Ms. Whitsett's selfish behavior. The Democratic Party is battling to save the country from this monster getting reelected. The last thing we need is for one of our own to break ranks and praise him for anything." "First of all, there is no proof that this drug saved Ms. Whitsett's life,"...

After President Donald Trump mentioned during a recent press conference the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine for treating the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), Anthony Fauci from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) quickly piped in that the remedy supposedly isn’t proven, and that people shouldn’t think of it as a “knockout drug.” So why, then, did he praise this very same drug back in 2013 as a treatment for the MERS coronavirus, a relative of COVID-19? At the time, Barack Obama was occupying the White House, and an NAIAD study conducted by a guy named Darryl Falzarano found that...

Alberta will investigate the effectiveness of a drug touted by U.S. President Donald Trump in preventing hospitalization for people at the highest risk of developing severe symptoms of COVID-19. The Alberta Hope COVID-19 study will recruit 1,600 Albertans to determine whether a prescribed five-day treatment of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) can prevent hospitalization for those at highest risk of developing a severe illness. Health Minister Tyler Shandro says the goal is to reduce the risk of severe disease experienced by individuals and reduce the burden on the health-care system by helping people recover from the effects of the virus at home. “As...

Arcata Police Department press release: On Sunday, April 12, 2020, The Arcata Police Department received a fraud report from the Valley Azteca Restaurant, located in the Valley West Shopping Center. The scam consisted of a fake, online ordering webpage for the restaurant, through a website named “Order Hero.” The webpage contained accurate restaurant information including phone number, address and actual menu items. Customers accessed this false website through Google.com which appeared as “Aztecavalley.site” Customers provided credit card information through the website at the time of ordering and when they arrived at the restaurant, to pick up their food, they learned...

Sanford Health is undergoing a clinical trial into hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria and some rheumatoid conditions. The drug has gained recent attention for its potential use against the coronavirus, something President Donald Trump has advocated. Sanford's systemwide, randomized, placebo-controlled study initially will include 2,000 outpatients who have been exposed to COVID-19, including health care workers and high-risk patients, according to a Sanford release. The study could go out to five years, said Sanford Health spokesman Shawn Neisteadt. "Obviously, they're hoping to have preliminary results much,...

On Saturday the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of two antimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and a related medication, chloroquine, for emergency use to treat COVID-19. The drugs were touted by President Trump as a “game changer” for COVID-19. However, a study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body. The study comes on the heels of two others - one in France and one in China - that reported some benefits in the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19 patients...