Free Republic

A woman who was one of the first people injected as part of human trials for a coronavirus vaccine has said she is ‘doing fine’ after fake reports of her death. An online article claimed microbiologist Elisa Granato, who took part in the UK trial in Oxford on Thursday, had died following complications when taking the vaccine. The Government later said the story is ‘completely untrue’, and warned people about sharing unsubstantiated claims online. Following the article about her ‘death’, Dr Granato tweeted about the news before making her Twitter account private. She wrote: ‘Nothing like waking up to a...

Liberal journalist Hendrik Hertzberg courted controversy Sunday by bashing President Trump and openly questioning in a tweet: “Time for a military coup?” After a request for comment, the left-wing New Yorker magazine reporter weakly attempted to defend himself in a tweet, claiming he was being “sarcastic.” Hertzberg, a longtime political commentator and staff writer at the New Yorker, was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and later served as then-President Jimmy Carter’s chief White House speechwriter. Over three hours after his initial tweet made waves, Hertzberg followed up by tweeting: “As somebody or other once said, I was being...

When Atascadero resident Fay Johnson’s neighbor called the county to file a complaint about her eight family members gathering for Easter dinner, she said the shelter-at-home order had gone too far. “If that sheriff had come down my driveway and told me to disperse my party, they would have had to arrest me because I was not going to do that. I did everything I could to keep everybody safe,” Johnson said. “It’s just gone too far.” On Sunday morning, she joined the 10 to 15 adults and children who gathered in downtown San Luis Obispo to protest the shelter-at-home...

As oil prices have plummeted to levels never before seen, a rift has opened among the companies that extract crude. Some of them say state regulators should force producers to pump less in the hopes such regulation will raise prices. Others say no, just let the market do its job. While Texas, an oil-producing behemoth, is weighing the controversial idea of imposing limits, New Mexico, now an oil powerhouse in its own right, has largely stayed out of that debate. Depending where oil prices go and what other states decide to do, there may come a point when the state...

Straight man David Janssen interviews prison warden Tim Conway. Yes, prison warden...some fugitives DID get caught and put in the pokey! The Fugitive meets McHale's Navy (February 1965). "Hollywood Palace" was ABC's answer to "The Ed Sullivan Show," with the extra gimmick of having guest hosts each week. The Spookylorre channel has original content and also preserves rarities from entertainment history. On items not in public domain, participating copyright owners are always monetized.

...he Aztecs, as is well known, practiced human sacrifice. They placed their victims on a sort of altar atop a temple, sliced open their chests, and extracted their still-beating hearts. Hard cheese on the slicees, of course, but at least they died in the knowledge that their sacrifice was in a good cause. For the Aztec priests did not perform this grisly ritual wantonly. They did it in order to appease the sun god Huitzilopochtli who was constantly at war with darkness. If they omitted the ritual, the darkness would extinguish the sun. How did they know? Simple. They performed...

Sweden's ambassador to the U.S. believes the country's controversial strategy of pursuing "herd immunity" — and not locking down the country — is bearing success, with the capital Stockholm on course to reach herd immunity in the next few weeks. "About 30% of people in Stockholm have reached a level of immunity," Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter told NPR. "We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month." Herd immunity means the majority of a given population has become immune to an infectious disease by either recovering from it or through vaccination. Some researchers have put the threshold...

...In the survey of over 8,000 swing and “persuadable” voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa provided to Secrets this morning, 63% said that they approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis. Just 21% disapproved. And they appear to support his gradual shift from focusing on fighting the virus to also reopening the economy, as well as a reliance more on businesses than Washington to lead the way. “Swing voters are concerned about the impact of the coronavirus and generally approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis. Moreover, they are more concerned with health risks than the economy —...

The doctor’s fever spiked above 103 degrees. His dry cough was getting worse. And the fatigue was advancing. Dr. Joseph Manno was deteriorating with each passing day. "I was getting progressively weaker," he said. Manno, a vascular surgeon at Holy Name Medical Center, was home self-quarantining, trying to beat a case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He called a colleague March 30 to update him on his condition. There was urgency in the response. “You need to come in now,” the doctor told Manno, 65. Holy Name was the epicenter of one of New Jersey’s early hot...

The Experts’ Council for Church Art, Architecture and Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church considers that the leaders of the state and Joseph Stalin will be included in the mosaics that will decorate the walls of the church dedicated to the Armed Forces of Russia. The statement was made by the Chair of the experts’ council, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, in the TASS Russian News Agency. According to Leonid Kalinin, Joseph Stalin as the supreme military commander of the Soviet army in the period 1941-1945 will be included in the mosaic entitled “The Victory Parade,” which was created based on photographs....

Perugia, Italy, Apr 24, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- The president of the Italian bishops’ conference has written a letter calling for Sunday Mass to resume in Italy as the country begins to ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions. “The time has come to resume the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist and church funerals, baptisms and all the other sacraments, naturally following those measures necessary to guarantee security in the presence of more people in public places,” Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti of Perugia wrote in a letter to his diocese April 23. Public Masses throughout Italy have been suspended for nearly seven weeks...

More than 300 individuals showed up in about 150 cars to Friday’s noon “Freedom Drive” at the Ventura County Government Center asking, pleading and even demanding that Ventura County Re-Open for business, social, education and religious life. 70 cars started off from the County Govt center at noon on 4-24-20 at the VC Drive for Freedom. Many were already driving the streets in the area and were joined by more, totaling about 150 cars. The cars which at one point stretched nearly half-a-mile on Victoria Avenue, then onto Telephone Road, Thille St,. and south past Ralston, had American flags waving...

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 22, 2020 / 04:30 pm MT (CNA).- Two Catholic dioceses have filed suit against the Small Business Administration (SBA), claiming they were wrongfully denied access to emergency loans during the pandemic because of their bankruptcy status. The New York dioceses of Rochester and Buffalo said they “will suffer immediate and irreparable harm” from being disqualified from emergency loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), in a lawsuit filed in federal court on April 15. The $349 billion in emergency loans were part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by...

As of Wednesday night, the state had the fifth-most confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the fifth-most deaths from the virus in the U.S. The economic toll has been even more striking. Since March 14, about 1.3 million Pennsylvanians (or nearly 1 in 5 workers in the state) have lost their jobs — the second-highest number during that period in the country, behind only California. ...the political fallout for Trump in Pennsylvania is already significant — and is likely to remain stark unless the public health and economic situations improve dramatically before Nov. 3. Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based GOP strategist...warned that...

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Veterans advocates say they are frustrated at the lack of transparency around the Department of Veterans Affairs' use of the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus. After the release of a preliminary study of veterans hospitalized with COVID-19 last week that showed that hydroxychloroquine — an anti-malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump — had no benefit and caused a greater rate of deaths, the groups want answers and are worried that they may have been misled by the agency on its recent purchase of the drug. Jeremy Butler, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America,...

Every study of asymptomatic carriers is bugged by the same question. How many are asymptomatic and how many are pre-symptomatic? How many ended up never developing symptoms during the course of their illness and how many happened to not be experiencing symptoms on the day they were tested but did so later?A prison study would be a perfect candidate for that sort of retrospective analysis since the sample isn’t going anywhere. A month from now, go back to all the asymptomatic prisoners and find out how many never had a fever, a cough, trouble breathing, and so on after...

...As mass coronavirus testing expands in prisons, large numbers of inmates are showing no symptoms. In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, according to interviews with officials and records reviewed by Reuters. That’s out of 4,693 tests that included results on symptoms...

As bars and restaurants remain shuttered in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Boston Beer is turning millions of dollars of expired beer into ethanol to recoup some of its lost sales. Beer sales rose 11.6% in the week ended April 11, according to Nielsen data, as consumers drink more at home. But the spike doesn’t benefit craft brewers as much because they rely on sales in restaurants and bars. The shift in consumption trends is leading to expired kegs for many craft beer manufacturers. **SNIP** The company’s founder and chairman Jim Koch said on CNBC’s “The Exchange” Friday that it...