Free Republic

Covid cases have dropped 77% in six weeks. Experts should level with the public about the good news. In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity. ...Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells, which develop “memory”...

If you think life is stressful today, just imagine trying to pull off a successful dinner party with your peers back in the 1940s.The diners in this 15 minute video are just so earnest and eager to please each other while doing the right thing, always. Even though they screw up multiple times. Especially that Bob. Bob has a lot to learn, as you shall see. I just want to marry every girl at that table.

Sen. Ted Cruz is under attack for flying to Mexico while Texas is facing severe winter weather and power outages. Cruz explained why he went there: With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.If true (and I’m unaware of any reason to believe it isn’t), this is a complete defense to...

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Democrats in the House of Representatives have introduced legislation that would prevent former President Donald Trump from having his name displayed on federal projects, buildings, statues, lands, or other type of commemoration. The bill, dubbed the “No Glory for Hate Act,” was introduced by California Democrat Rep. Linda Sanchez and has 13 cosponsors. “A president who has been impeached twice does not deserve the honours bestowed on a former president,” Sanchez said . The bill specifically prevents federal funds from being used to “create or display any symbol, monument, or statue commemorating any former President that has been twice impeached...

Priests Fighting BackLegal action against false abuse allegationsPriests around the country are standing up for their good names.USA Today reported Saturday on how priests who say they’re wrongly accused are fighting back with defamation suits. The article discusses the case of Fr. Roy Herberger in Buffalo. The diocese removed him from ministry in 2018, after a man claimed Herberger abused him in the 1980s.Herberger: "I couldn't say Mass, I was stuck in my apartment by myself. I couldn't even attend funerals of people in the parish where I had retired from."But the accuser’s story didn’t add up, and after a...

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday, hours after the death of Rush Limbaugh was announced, that he will not try to replace the popular radio host. “There’s a lot of people that are mentioning that and no, it’s not anything I’ve thought about. But he’d be a hard one to replace. You know, we talked to a friend of yours, Sean Hannity, he said, ‘He’s irreplaceable.’ And I view that too. I say he’s irreplaceable,” Trump said during an interview with Newsmax TV. “You wouldn’t want to follow Rush, it’s the old story, you get somebody like that, you don’t...

Coronaviruses are notorious for ADE reactions, where antibody presence potentiates the infection instead of protecting against it. Using that as a bioweapon is stupid because you will score "own goals" on your own people and there is no way to control that. As a result biological weapons generally are dumb; poison gas and such don't have this risk since it does not propagate but any disease does. The poster child for ADE in coronaviruses was an attempted vaccine for a feline coronavirus that often made cats very sick. The vaccine killed every one of them in the test when they...

In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office reported that individuals or organizations made $226 million in private donations to organizations at Newsom's request. These "behested payments" were a record-setting haul eclipsing all prior donations on record by nearly $100 million. While most donations supported COVID-19 relief efforts, a closer look suggests Newsom's fundraising was supercharged not just by the pandemic, but also by the broad emergency powers the Democratic governor has assumed because of it. Behested payments are a unique feature of California politics. State law defines a behested payment as a donation to a government program or charity made...

My father, a journalist named Boris Shcharansky, was born in 1904 in Odessa, the cultural and economic center of the Pale of Settlement, where the Russian empire stuck most Jews. He studied in the Jewish Commercial Gymnasium, because most other gymnasiums accepted very few Jews, if any. By the time he was 16, he had already lived through the Czarist Regime with its anti-Semitic restrictions, the “February” Socialist Revolution, the “October” Bolshevik Revolution, and the years of civil war when power in Odessa seesawed back and forth from faction to faction, as hunger, pogroms, and destruction decimated the population. When...

Don Pietro Leone: THE ENEMY WITHIN: PART II : A Historical Perspective PART II THE ENEMY WITHIN a Critique of Vatican II Beatissimae Vergini Mariae humillime dedicatum,Quae cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundoA. Historical Introduction The 20 Councils prior to the Second Vatican Council had all been convened in order to extinguish the chief heresy or evil of the time: through an ever deeper and clearer enunciation of Church doctrine. This Council was different on two counts: first, in that it was not occasioned by any contemporary heresy or evil, and second (as we have already noted above),...

Ordinary vaccines we have lots of experience with, such as measles, the flu shot, mumps and similar do not carry a risk beyond that of natural infection and cannot be weaponized because they produce the exact same antibody response as a natural infection. If you have had either the measles or the shot you will have antibodies but an antibody test will not tell you which since they're not distinguishable. I suspected from the start that due to the way these mRNA shots work -- they are not actually a vaccine at all in that they do not "mimic" natural...

Satire is not meant to be taken seriously. Yet Big Tech and its tools find a way to label any humor coming from the right as disinformation or fake news. The Babylon Bee has been repeatedly victimized by this tug of war. In a public history page known as a “Talk” page on Wikipedia, editors with anonymous tags or usernames discussed whether or not the conservative satire site could “legally be considered ‘satire’?” The alleged Twitter account for Bee managing editor Joel Berry tweeted a thread about this Wikipedia incident on Feb. 18. “There has been an ongoing effort to...

rossing the I-83 South Bridge in Harrisburg could begin to cost motorists around a dollar or two in each direction, unless they choose to find another way to cross the Susquehanna River. That 61-year-old bridge, sometimes referred to as the John Harris Bridge, is on the list of nine spans that the state Department of Transportation has identified as candidates to impose new tolls. The goal is to pay for their improvements and finance other road and bridge projects. Alternative funding sources are needed since revenue from the state’s gas tax – one of the highest in the nation –...

Explanation: Taken on February 6, this snowy mountain and skyscape was captured near Melchsee-Frutt, central Switzerland, planet Earth. The reddish daylight and blue tinted glow around the afternoon Sun are colors of the Martian sky, though. Of course both worlds have the same Sun. From Mars, the Sun looks only about half as bright and 2/3 the size compared to its appearance from Earth. Lofted from the surface of Mars, fine dust particles suspended in the thin Martian atmosphere are rich in the iron oxides that make the Red Planet red. They tend to absorb blue sunlight giving a red...

President Biden is threatening to use an executive order to impinge upon the Second Amendment right to bear arms in what one Israeli politician describes as, “The first act of a dictator when he rises to power.” President Biden marked the third anniversary of the Parkland High School Shooting on Sunday by calling on Congress to enact strict gun-control legislation. “Today, I am calling on Congress to enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) responded to allegations that he flew to Cancun, Mexico, in the midst of record cold temperatures and snowfall in Texas—which has been besieged by power outages over the past several days.Cruz appeared to confirm that he went to Cancun, saying that “with school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon.”“My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in...

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., says both the GOP and the Democratic Party have white supremacists and anti-Semites.Cheney, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, made her comments on Wednesday during a meeting with the Cheyenne Rotary Club, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.“We’ve seen anti-Semitism, white supremacy, Holocaust denial, by people both on the right in the Republican Party and by people on the left in the Democratic Party,” Cheney said. “They can have no place in our in our public discourse. We have to be very clear that we stand for freedom and justice and equality and that we’re going to fight...

MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams walked off the court after her latest so-close-yet-so-far bid for a 24th Grand Slam title ended with a loss to Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open(Semifinals)...... Once again, Williams played well enough to get to the closing days of a major tournament. And once again, she couldn’t quite get the job done in order to add one more Grand Slam trophy to her collection of 23 and equal Margaret Court for the most in tennis history.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is in support of a proposed piece of legislation that would require his state's governor to pick a Republican successor for McConnell if he leaves office during his term. Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican, is a sponsor of Senate Bill 228, which was introduced in the state senate last week. The bill proposes amending existing legislation that requires a sitting governor to appoint a replacement for a departing U.S. senator to remain in office until the next election cycle. Under Senate Bill 228, the sitting governor would be required to pick a replacement...