Free Republic

University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross directed campuses Thursday to quickly identify signature programs worthy of preservation and brace for layoffs as the coronavirus pandemic deepens the system's financial losses. Cross said he wants campuses to evaluate their programs by January with an eye toward cost, whether they are duplicated at another campus and student demand. System officials will decide which courses stay and which will vanish, Cross told reporters during a video conference Wednesday afternoon. Campuses should be ready to move forward with scaled-down course catalogs by fall 2021, Cross said. The only guarantee he could offer was...

In a 2015 speech, Bill Gates warned that the greatest risk to humanity was not nuclear war but an infectious virus that could threaten the lives of millions of people. That speech has resurfaced in recent weeks with 25 million new views on YouTube — but not in the way that Mr. Gates probably intended. Anti-vaccinators, members of the group QAnon and right-wing pundits have instead seized on the video as evidence that one of the world’s richest men planned to use a pandemic to wrest control of the global health system. It seems that (R-SC) Lindsey Graham has a...

An additional 65 inmates at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc have tested positive for the coronavirus. Since the prison's first case was announced on March 31, a total of 172 inmates have been confirmed for the virus, one of whom has died. On Tuesday, prison administrators announced plans to test all low-security inmates.  " A significant rise in the number of confirmed cases, primarily due to the mass testing that began at the federal prison earlier this week," said Van Do-Reynoso, Public Health Department Director. Do Reynoso added that while some inmates who tested positive have not been outwardly symptomatic or have only mild...

We neednÂ’t peer too deeply into the way-back machine for Throwback Thursday posts anymore. A couple months is all we need.Remember life before the Wuhan Cootie Flu? Of course you do, itÂ’s just no longer available.If you needed to go shopping you simply went, without so much as a second thought let alone a face mask. And if you forgot the toilet paper you just went back to pick some up.If youÂ’d been working hard all day and didnÂ’t feel like cooking you went out to eat, without a second thought.If you needed to have a dental procedure you called...

Harvard University is preparing to cut more expenses as revenue losses deepen due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The university reported a $415 million revenue loss in fiscal year 2020, and it projects a $750 million shortfall from original budget plans in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Those projected losses are causing university officials to consider furloughs and layoffs, Harvard said in a Tuesday letter to its community. The university announced initial cost cutting measures last month, including salary freezes for all faculty and exempt staff, a university-wide hiring freeze, deferring or canceling all discretionary spending, a review...

NEW YORK - President Donald Trump put hydroxychloroquine on the map by cheerleading for the drug before researchers could determine its effectiveness. Now, it is all but disappearing as a treatment for COVID-19. "We know now it probably doesn’t help much," said Dr. Thomas McGinn, Deputy Physician-In-Chief at Northwell Health. "We’re not recommending it as a baseline therapy anymore. It is only in a treatment protocol in a study that we’re recommending it." Hospitals began using the drug early on in hopes it could calm the overactive immune response to COVID-19. But now that little proven benefit has been found,...

I just created this meme. It says, “Sweden did not have a lockdown. Experts predicted that it would have 40,000 COVID-19 deaths by May 1. The actual number was 2,769.” Please feel free to share it. I just created this meme.It says, “Sweden did not have a lockdown. Experts predicted that it would have 40,000 COVID-19 deaths by May 1. The actual number was 2,769.”Please feel free to share it.You can see a bigger version of it at this link: https://imgflip.com/i/40hdj9I got the numbers from this link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/sweden-suppressed-infection-rates-without-lockdown/

VOHRUJZ OH D JTWTKRWTHH LDHRTJ. OR VDH KU BJTHTKR, UKWZ RVT BDHR JAHVOKE OKRU RVT MARAJT. —IUVK M. XTKKTYZ

Most Americans say they doubt the U.S. death count — but whether they think it's actually higher or lower depends on whether they're Democrats or Republicans, according to the latest installment of the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.Why it matters: This may be the most jarring evidence to date about just how deeply partisanship has infected our collective ability to trust institutional sources and agree on science and facts. Trust in government is abstract, but death counts are real. People whose primary news source is the Fox News channel are most likely to say that U.S. deaths attributed to coronavirus are inflated....

President Donald Trump still wants to paint the U.S.-Mexico border wall black to make the barrier look more menacing and hot to the touch during the summer months, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. During a White House meeting in April about the border wall, Trump told senior aide Jared Kushner and others to move forward with plans to paint the wall black and to gather the cost estimates of such a project, according to several administration officials who spoke with the Washington Post. Government contracting estimates obtained by the Post project that the endeavor would cost at least $500 million.

F Is he? Mike Pompeo insists that while the US does not have conclusive evidence that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, it does have “significant evidence” pointing in that direction. China’s Foreign Ministry tried going on offense by accusing Pompeo of passing off a “lie for [his] own domestic political ends,” apparently lacking any sense of irony. Their spokesperson also stopped short of denying it altogether, just claiming that Pompeo has no evidence in hand: China lashed out again Wednesday at claims by President Donald Trump and his top diplomat that the U.S. has strong...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) addressed the sexual assault allegation faced by former Vice President Joe Biden (D) during an interview with NPR on Thursday, explaining that it was not a "clear cut" situation for Democrats. Questioned on what she wanted to see happen in response to Tara Reade's allegation of a 1993 assault, which Biden has publicly denied, the New York lawmaker noted that Reade herself had not called on Democrats to abandon their support of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. "It's very difficult because this is a hyper-politicized zone, right? Instead of focusing on her account, instead of focusing...

FARTHER POINT, C.E., Sunday, May 6. The steamship Bohemian, from Liverpool 25th. via Queenstown 26th ult., passed this point at 4 1/2 P.M., en route to Quebec. The steamship Illinois from New-York arrived at Southampton on the morning of the 23d. She would probably not leave on her return before the 28th.

Barry Farber, an original pioneer of talk radio who shared his intelligent conservatism with untold millions of listeners during a career in broadcasting that spanned 60 years, has passed away. One day after his 90th birthday on Tuesday, Farber died peacefully at home in New York City, with members of his family at his bedside. On Tuesday, a live program celebrating Farber’s birthday was on in his time slot, featuring his younger brother Jerry, his two daughters Celia and Bibi, and his producer Dahlia Weinstein. During the program, Barry Farber took the mic briefly and spoke his last words...

It's almost as if he likes it like this. California's Gov. Gavin Newsom vows to make the coronavirus emergency measures in California its "new normal" unless --- and it's a big if --- a vaccine for the virus is ready. According to Breitbart: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday warned that, while California will move into the next phase of reopening its economy this week, it is “not going back to normal” until there is a vaccine. Newsom this week announced that the state will move into the next phase of its recovery plan by Friday, May 8, allowing certain businesses — like bookstores, flower...

Many governments and academics around the world are calling for widespread or even universal testing for SARS-CoV-2, "the coronavirus."   Before endorsing, it's worthwhile becoming familiar with the clever stratagem of eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes.   It wouldn't be the first time his calculations will have come in handy: Alan Turing used Bayesian probabilities to help crack the Nazi Enigma Code. Reverend Bayes died without knowing the value his statistical speculation would bring to the world — but people, examining posthumous notebooks, realized he'd discovered a fascinating trick of statistics.   Simply put, he calculated that the likelihood of an outcome's...

On any list of medical triumphs of the 20th century, polio vaccination is sure to rate a mention. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the shot and sugar-cube vaccines offered people the first opportunities to protect themselves from a scourge as feared in its day as AIDS is in our own. Few back then grasped that these vaccines might also be a huge, inadvertent, uncontrolled experiment in interspecies viral transmission. But from 1955 to 1963, according to a 1976 US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study, 98 million Americans alone probably were exposed to polio vaccines contaminated with SV40—a monkey...

Former President Barack Obama will deliver a televised prime-time commencement address for the high school Class of 2020 during an hour-long event that will also feature LeBron James, Malala Yousafzai and Ben Platt, among others. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC will simultaneously air the special May 16 at 8 p.m. EDT along with more than 20 other broadcast and digital streaming partners, according to the announcement Tuesday from organizers. Several high school students from Chicago public schools and the Obama Youth Jobs Corps will join, as will the Jonas Brothers, Yara Shahidi, Bad Bunny, Lena Waithe, Pharrell Williams, Megan Rapinoe...

The Deep State is the “administrative state,” the federal bureaucracy; it’s the permanent government, a.k.a. “the Swamp.” And when it comes to those who make up the Deep State, the “wheels of justice turn slowly”… exceedingly slowly, if indeed they turn at all. SNIP So one waits for a little justice to be dealt to the Deep State malefactors who have abused the public trust and who have prima facie broken the law. Regularly we’ve been told that this or that new bit of evidence is “huge” and we’ve been assured that some swamp creature is soon going to be...

Loyola Marymount student said she will not back down Left-leaning students at a private Los Angeles based university are calling for the impeachment of a newly elected student government senator after discovering she supports strict policies on immigration. Stephanie Martinez was elected to the Loyola Marymount University student government as a “senator for diversity and inclusion” in early April after running an unopposed campaign, according to an independent student publication The Agency. Martinez told YAF that she had no plans to resign and “to resign would only mean that I am giving up my identity and my ideals or that...