Free Republic

Ottawa's chief of police suggested Wednesday that the Canadian Armed Forces might have to be called in to handle the lingering protesters in the Canadian capital. "This is a national issue, not an Ottawa issue," Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly said in a briefing to city councilors. "I am increasingly concerned there is no policing solution to this."

Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization drops, CDC says The COVID-19 vaccines' ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.

Abstract Background Immune protection following either vaccination or infection with SARS-CoV-2 decreases over time. Objective To determine the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies following administration of two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine, or SARS-CoV-2 infection in unvaccinated individuals. Methods Antibody titers were measured between January 31, 2021, and July 31, 2021 in two mutually exclusive groups: i) vaccinated individuals who received two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine and had no history of previous infection with COVID-19 and ii) SARS-CoV-2 convalescents who had not received the vaccine. Results A total of 2,653 individuals fully vaccinated by two doses of vaccine during the study...

The most common cholesterol-lowering drugs may improve hospitalized COVID-19 patients’ chances of survival and reduce their risks of progressing to more severe disease, a new study suggests. An analysis of more than 10,000 people admitted to more than a 140 hospitals across the nation found that a class of medications called statins, together with blood pressure drugs, reduced in-hospital COVID-19 death by 40% among those who took them prior to being admitted. The same held true of COVID-19 patients’ odds of severe disease: those only taking statins benefited from a 25% lower risk of developing severe disease and those taking...

SANTIAGO, June 10 (Reuters) - Chilean health authorities announced a blanket lockdown across the capital Santiago on Thursday following some of the worst COVID-19 case numbers since the pandemic began, despite having fully vaccinated more than half its population. The development, which will alarm authorities elsewhere who are debating how fast to reopen as vaccination campaigns gather steam, comes as Chile's confirmed daily caseload surged 17% in the past two weeks nationwide and 25% in the Metropolitan region that includes Santiago and is home to half the country's population. Intensive care beds in the capital region are now at 98%...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has unanimously approved a major new working group to focus on ballot security measures and support for candidates facing election challenges, following accusations of voting irregularities in key races in Florida, North Carolina, California, and elsewhere. A federal court consent decree, ended last year, had prohibited the RNC from engaging in ballot security activities for nearly 40 years. The aggressive new step, Fox News is told, is meant to level the playing field with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as close elections increasingly become litigious and, in turn, bring discord, division and fiery talking points....

Put Not Your Trust in Princes 146 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! 2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the...

Grace and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Your letter, sent to me at Wittenberg, was received some time ago. You wish to know whether it is proper for a Christian to run away from a deadly plague. I should have answered long ago, but God has for some time disciplined and scourged me so severely that I have been unable to do much reading or writing.1 Furthermore, it occurred to me that God, the merciful Father, has endowed you so richly with wisdom and truth in Christ that you yourself should be well qualified to...

We can’t flee from it. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world without sign of stopping. Global markets are shaking. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank over 3,000 points in the last week. The media coverage vacillates between issuing public warnings and scoring political hits. The disease might affect the upcoming presidential election; we might be reeling from the effects of COVID-19 for years to come. From all appearances, we can’t escape the disease or its consequences. To be clear, most of us will not die from COVID-19; it is not a new bubonic plague. Of 100 infected...

the 36-year-old Omaha woman who has tested positive for COVID-19 visited Fremont on Feb. 29 according to a release from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. State and local officials are requesting basketball players, coaches and team staff who participated in the Special Olympics event at the Fremont Family YMCA on February 29, 2020, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. to self-quarantine to limit exposure to others and monitor themselves for development of COVID-19 symptoms as listed below until Saturday, March 14, 2020. “We’re asking for basketball players, coaches, and team staff who participated this event on February...

146 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! 2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in...

DAVENPORT, Ia. (KWQC) - Monday night, the superintendent for Davenport Community School District introduced additional options of school closures for Vision 2020. Vision 2020 is a five-year plan outlining what the district hopes to accomplish; but with budget problems, the plan includes the possibility of closing schools. Now, more options are on the table. Here are the three additional options provided by the school district: 1. Close one of the District’s three large high schools, leaving 2 high schools with 10th, 11th, and 12th grades; 5 intermediate schools with grades 7, 8, and 9; and 18 elementary K-6 schools with...

Donald Trump’s ability to remain the undisputed GOP frontrunner in December even though he has hardly spent any money on traditional television advertising that enriches consultants in the permanent political class is why he represents an “existential threat” to the established political order. In the newest CNN/ORC poll that was released Friday, Trump has a commanding 20-point lead, which reportedly marks “Trump’s highest support and widest lead since he first announced his candidacy.”

My bride has just found out that a niece of one of her coworkers has PPROM. In layman's terms, her water broke early. She is at the University of Iowa Children's hospital on bed rest. The baby is at 25 weeks, so there is great hope that the child will make it to viability. In January 2014, this happened to my wife at 15 weeks. She spent four months on bed rest, and our little miracle was born at 35 weeks gestation. We understand what this young family is going through. Please pray for her, her husband, her child, and...

Fr. Timothy Lannon, President of Creighton University, my former employer, has announced that starting in 2015 the school will provide benefits to legally married same-sex spouses. Most Jesuit universities already do so, as will Notre Dame, which recently announced its new policy that also will take effect in 2015. These are unforced capitulations. They don’t involve legal coercion. In Creighton’s case, the action was taken over the objection George Lucas, archbishop of Omaha. Which is why I read them as the beginning of what will be a fairly widespread capitulation on gay marriage and homosexuality by leaders of Catholic universities...

FRISCO (CSBDFW.COM) - An afternoon news conference has been called in Frisco, a suburb of Dallas, to discuss a possible second case of Ebola. The patient claims to have had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, referred to as Dallas ‘patient zero.’ It is not clear how the patient had contact with Duncan or if the patient was one of the about 50 people being monitored by federal, state and local health officials.

New York (AFP) - US corn and soybean crops could break records this year, but for farmers the bounty has a dark side: falling prices and a logistics nightmare getting crops to market. "It is not an exact science but when we look at the fields, it looks like it is going to be a big crop," said John Reifsteck, a corn and soybean farmer in Champaign, Illinois, a Midwest farm belt state.

My child was born today. She is in the ICU at Iowa City. We made it 34 weeks. So far baby's lungs are the main issue, but she is progressing ok

Just an update on our unborn child. She is at 29 weeks gestation today, and holding steady! Our Doc (a wonderful Catholic woman) has been great. She is very positive that Dani will be viable, and that every indication is that the child will make it close to term. Dani is growing well, if a bit small. The current size is just at two pounds, and that is within the normal range. My bride is getting sick of bed rest, but a lot of people from my church have been coming by bringing food and support. She now gets my...

My bride's water broke at 15 weeks. Baby's heart beat is still strong. We need prayers please.