Free Republic

Imagine if in September of 2019, a government official had told you that America was going to launch a new database, into which you would be required to enter your vaccine status and other personal health history, and that this would be used to determine whether you have freedom to leave your home, go to work, open your business, travel, or be in public places. The American patriots' response would have been "Are you out of your mind? That will never happen. Maybe in China, but not in America." Yet this is exactly where we are headed today. Dr. Anthony...

During this time of COVID-19 the real British monarchy is quiet and isolated. Queen Elizabeth II is in lockdown in Windsor Castle with the Duke of Edinburgh and a reduced household. Prince Charles, 71 years old, who had tested positive for the virus and experienced mild symptoms, is in semi-isolation in his home in Birkhall on the Balmoral estate in Scotland. The bells of Westminster Abbey are silent, and there were no 21-gun salutes on the Queen’s birthday on April 21. Meanwhile, Prince Harry, still formally Duke of Sussex, who officially left royal life on March 31 together with wife...

NEW YORK - Ulises García went from being a waiter to working at a laundromat. Yelitza Esteva used to do manicures and now delivers groceries. Maribel Torres swapped cleaning homes for sewing masks. The coronavirus pandemic has devastated sectors of the economy dominated by immigrant labor: Restaurants, hotels, office cleaning services, in-home childcare and hair and nail salons, among others, have seen businesses shuttered as nonessential. The Migration Policy Institute found that 20% of the U.S. workers in vulnerable industries facing layoffs are immigrants, even though they only make up 17% of the civilian workforce. And some of those immigrants,...

Lysol and Dettol maker Reckitt Benckiser warned people against using disinfectants to treat the coronavirus, after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested researchers try putting disinfectants into patients’ bodies. "Under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)," the company said. Trump said researchers should try to apply their findings to coronavirus patients by inserting light or disinfectant into their bodies. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?” he said. “It would be interesting to check that.” Reckitt said due...

Tucker Carlson spent the first 15 minutes of his show last night decrying the loss of so much of our manufacturing base to China. That concern has spread from the already devastated Rust Belt to the coastal habitats of the elites, now that the pandemic has exposed our reliance for survival on an increasingly threatening China for pharmaceuticals, protective gear, and many other critical strategic goods, such as the rare earths necessary for the manufacture of advanced electronic components. With the dangers of such dependence obvious to all, Tucker took an original angle and followed Saul Alinsky’s Rule # 13:...

Trump derangement syndrome (TDS), according to Urban Dictionary, is a “Contagious, debilitating psychiatric disorder manifesting in a precipitous decline in intellectual and emotional stability and resilience.” The contagious and debilitating bits sound much like the Wuhan flu. TDS, also known in infectious disease circles as Covfefe-45, not to be confused with Covid-19, has mutated into another form, namely hydroxychloroquine derangement syndrome, referring to the abject media hysteria over the innocuous prescription medication. Attorney General William Barr even noticed and, “Claimed that the Washington press corps is on a ‘jihad’ against President Trump over his promotion of an anti-malaria drug to...

Waves of people are trying to leave New York for the suburbs and smaller cities amid growing fears that the city may never return to its former glory or that it will take years to get there. Among those fleeing are parents with young children who had already been eyeing moves to suburbs and were give a push when the pandemic hit, and frustrated singletons who no longer see the point in paying exorbitant rent prices for small apartments when there is no city beyond their homes for them to enjoy. It has sparked questions of whether New York will...

At the culmination of a national health or societal crisis in the United States, it has become de rigueur for the media and innumerable pundits ensconced within the professional class to perform a post-mortem on how the citizenry handled the crisis and what lessons the rubes in fly-over country should have learned. But in the current pandemic, the top levels of professional class that populates the ruling class and runs the media and the major institutional bureaucracies has irretrievably unmasked itself. And the in the postmortems that will come, they will be found deficient. Credulous Cowards An immutable tenet of...

When the nongovernmental National Coronavirus Recovery Commission was first formed in early April, commissioners requested that citizens submit comments and ideas to help it formulate recommendations that governments, businesses, and civil society could use to combat both the health and economic effects of COVID-19. Those comments have provided some critical insights into how Americans feel about America’s response to the coronavirus. Within 10 days, the commission received hundreds of submissions, most expressing frustration with the heavy-handed actions by states to halt everyday life, shut down businesses, and prevent people from earning a living. People also remain concerned about the intrusions...

The billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates have purchased an exquisite beach house outside San Diego-splashing out on $43 million for an oceanfront mansion in the coastal town of Del Mar, CA. The prodigious purchase price makes it one of the largest sales in the area's history. The luxurious six-bedroom, four-bathroom, 5,800-square-foot home was sold to the Gates family by Madeleine Pickens, a former wife of the billionaire oil baron T. Boone Pickens, according to the Wall Street Journal. The home originally landed on the market for $48 million in January 2019. The oceanfront property was built by the architect...

It is interesting, if nothing else. – One interesting aspect of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s decision to bring the Chief of the violent crimes and narcotics trafficking section for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., Anthony Scarpelli, onto his investigation team is that Scarpelli has been a specialist in RICO-type investigations over the last decade. His job has been to identify domestic and international drug trafficking networks and bring the major players to justice, as he and his team did in the example described at this link. In response to the piece on this that I posted last night,...

There have been a number of disturbing reactions in the press when it comes to the coverage of the coronavirus outbreak. From the distortion of the administration's actions to the contradictions in the critiques to the focus on only negative outcomes, the media complex has been notably obnoxious. One of the other truly disturbing actions has been the coverage of China and its role in all of this global pandemic strife. The press has ranged from excusing responsibility to spearheading the Chi-Com insistence that the term ‘’Wuhan virus’’ be deemed racist, in order to skirt blame for the outbreak’s origins....

Small business owners say some employees don't want to return to payroll Potentially thousands of workers who were laid off from small businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic are declining to return to work because the combined income they are receiving from federal stimulus benefits and New York's unemployment system is more than they made at their jobs. The fallout also has hindered the ability of small business owners to meet the conditions attached to federal Payment Protection Plan loans, which may be forgiven if the money is used to maintain employee payrolls. Business owners "have to spend that money...

As you read this, the State of Georgia has become the embodiment of the mantra that has been bubbling-up for weeks among quarantined Americans from coast to coast: “THIS MADNESS MUST END.” So-called “average” citizens—whose wisdom and common sense far exceed that of robotic, agenda-driven media hysterics—cheered the news that Georgia governor Brian Kemp had signed an executive order to allow barber shops, hair salons, movie theaters and bowling alleys to reopen on Friday, April 24th. (Note the word allow. Kemp did not order businesses to reopen. Weird concept: he simple eased restrictions imposed which helped bend the curve of...

COVID-19 is so new and information is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction and truth from partial truth. Like everyone else, I'm just trying to make sense of the evolving information. Many of us have been monitoring the daily reports measuring the number of deaths relative to the number of cases. We've been treated to crash courses in lay epidemiology via daily press briefings and voluminous articles. We understand that the administration and state governments have been trying to "flatten the curve" of the coronavirus by slowing its spread. The main purpose, as has...

It’s just the flu, bro. This is turning more and more into a freedom issue. This state of emergency is exactly what the far left wants - disrupt and destroy capitalism and replace with socialist utopia. Quarantining sick people is a legitimate thing to do to sick and contagious people. It has been done in the past in the USA and in other countries. Quarantining healthy people is a new concept that destroys freedom. To those with health conditions and who have a legitimate fear of CV (or any flu) - it is your responsibility to protect yourself. The misery...

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown. Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not...

Everyone who has been paying attention knows that the epidemiological models on which the current shutdown mania is based have been proved to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet, zombie-like, they continue to influence our ill-informed policymakers. A reader who prefers to remain anonymous despite her apparent qualifications writes: I just want to follow up yet again on how extraordinarily wrong the projections for hospital demand have been, along with some detail about what’s going on in hospitals. In a number of states they’re about to reopen for nonemergency procedures. But over the past month they’ve been so empty that they’ve...

State Rep. Karen Whitsett has repeatedly expressed gratitude toward President Trump Michigan Democratic state Rep. Karen Whitsett, publicly expressed her gratitude toward President Trump for her coronavirus recovery, and now she is facing possible censure from her fellow Democrats. Whitsett has indicated that the president may have helped save her life by publicly discussing the drug hydroxychloroquine, which she says helped her to recover. The Detroit Free Press reported that when questioned about "whether she thinks Trump may have saved her life, Whitsett said: 'Yes, I do,' and 'I do thank him for that.'" Whitsett earlier this month met with...

Is anyone surprised that the path out of our COVID-19 nightmare is littered with political land mines? We have been good soldiers for weeks. But it is time to take steps to reclaim the lives we have willingly surrendered to protect fellow citizens from the spread of coronavirus. Elected officials of every political stripe agree that we can make plans to manage a path forward, permitting businesses to open, commerce to resume, lives to reset. The differences arise over how soon. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is allowing some businesses to gradually reopen with specific guidelines for caution. One would think...