Free Republic

Altogether, the authority found 80 workplaces in the state with active outbreaks, and dozens more with resolved outbreaks. The various businesses include several other fast-food eateries, retail stores, manufacturers, a U.S. Postal Service facility and a Portland strip club...Eight deaths were associated with the workplace outbreaks...

A 17-year-old employee at Sesame Place in Bucks County was punched in the face and required surgery for his injury after a dispute with a park visitor over wearing a mask, police said Monday. Shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday, the employee was working at Captain Cookie’s High C’s Adventure ride when he was attacked by a male patron who was accompanied by a female, said Detective Lt. Steve Forman of the Middletown Township Police Department. The employee had encountered the pair earlier and had reminded them that they were required to wear masks while in the park. When the male...

To her, some of the most compelling evidence in favor of face masks comes from laboratory tests. A Florida team used mannequin heads to simulate coughing and sneezing and lasers to illuminate the tiny respiratory droplets believed to the main route of transmission. Without masks, the droplets traveled more than 8 feet. A stitched, double-layer cotton mask limited the spread to 2.5 inches...Another lab study...Yet another team used a bird flu virus as a stand in for the novel coronavirus and showed that even homemade paper and cloth masks could block penetration of more than 95 percent of virus-laden aerosols.

White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday that the chances of scientists creating a highly effective vaccine — one that provides 98% or more guaranteed protection — for the virus are slim. Scientists are hoping for a coronavirus vaccine that is at least 75% effective, but 50% or 60% effective would be acceptable, too, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a Q&A with the Brown University School of Public Health. “The chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.” “You’ve...

The COVID-19 virus is testing our resolve, and the numbers here in Florida tell an extremely concerning story. By every key metric, our state has recently been reaching record levels on an almost daily basis. These include the number of new COVID-19 cases....

The study, "Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States," assessed the working memory, personality, mood and fluid intelligence of test subjects; the researchers surveyed 850 U.S. residents between March 13 and March 25..."The decision of whether or not to follow social distancing guidelines is a difficult one,...This decision critically relies on our mental capacity in retaining multiple pieces of potentially conflicting information in our head, which is referred to as working memory capacity," study author Weizhen Xie (Zane) told PsyPost.

By now you’ve probably heard about or even seen the video “Plandemic” that’s been spreading like wildfire through social media networks. This article is not the one you should give to your friend or relative or coworker who shared the video. This is an article for those who recognized the video as rife with conspiracy theories, misinformation and false claims, those who are frustrated and unsettled and disappointed in who they see sharing it, and those who want to know what to say when they see it. It explains why the video is successful, how to recognize propaganda like this...

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell's announcement this week that businesses reopening when coronavirus restrictions are eased May 16 will be required to keep track of their customers has prompted questions from businesses and customers alike. How will the new protocol be enforced? How will customers be logged? And most important: Will the businesses and their customers play ball? Cantrell said Tuesday the goal is for companies to help "box in" coronavirus by providing data to health officials, but she offered few details about the plan. And there is little evidence of a similar mandate in the U.S. Efforts closest to...

Take one celebrity chef with a paranoid streak. Sprinkle in a host who encourages people to believe the absolute worst about President Trump. And you've got yourself the perfect recipe for a conspiracy theory regarding the coronavirus. Joy Reid had celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern as a guest on her MSNBC show today. Back in February, our Brad Wilmouth caught Zimmern engaging in the worst kind of warmist fear-mongering regarding food supply and production. Today, Zimmern was discussing the alleged lack of anti-virus protective gear on US farms, and said: "is it ineptitude, or is it a cabal of conspiracy? And...

The goal of this campaign was to downplay health risks across the American public, and to cast doubt on the critical warnings and directions given by the U.S. Government, state and local officials, public health agencies, and experts in the field.”...“This malicious content was seeded into public media in China, and within hours it was rapidly distributed by social media users who believed these narratives and then amplified them...Notably, many of those conspiracy sites are home-grown U.S. disinformation sites that were created for their creators’ own political agendas.

China, Russia and Iran are flooding the global information space with false claims about the new coronavirus, according to U.S. officials, who say one of the biggest lies — that the virus that causes COVID-19 is a U.S. bioweapon and was brought to China by U.S. Army personnel — is just the latest in a “surge of propaganda” aimed at undermining America’s image on the world stage. Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are using a vast web of social media accounts, fake news outlets and state-controlled global satellite media to promote false claims by academics and, at times, government officials to...

Websites and social media users claim that the new coronavirus discovered in the city of Wuhan may have been created in Canada and stolen by Chinese spies. This is false; Canadian health and federal police officials say it has no factual basis. “Corona virus developed in Canada and stolen by China?” reads the headline of this article from January 22, 2020. It appears to be the first of a series of such claims about the novel coronavirus, which caused an outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading elsewhere in the country and around the world. Screenshot of...

Russia's state TV Channel One has broadcast conspiracy theories blaming U.S. President Donald Trump or "international corporations" for the coronavirus. The report was broadcast on the main evening news show watched by millions on February 5.

In the last few days, media talking heads have been saying the word "CrowdStrike" a lot, defining it as a wild conspiracy theory originating in Moscow. They were joined by Chris Wallace at Fox News, who informed us that president Trump and his ill-informed fans believe in a crazy idea that the DNC wasn't hacked by the Russians but by some Ukrainian group named CrowdStrike that stole the DNC server and brought it to Ukraine , and that it was Ukraine that meddled in our 2016 election and not Russia. A crazy idea indeed. Except that neither Trump nor his...

Well she’s impressive but she’s not that impressive. Conspiracy theorists are at it again over a 120-year-old photo depicting a girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg. The photo, unearthed from archives at the University of Washington, shows three children working at a gold mine in Canada, including a girl wearing Thunberg’s signature braid and stoic expression. Historians believe it was taken around 1898. Thunberg, 16, took the world by storm when she arrived to the UN Climate Action Summit from her native Sweden this year via sailboat — having sworn off airplanes because of...

Evangelical Christianity remains one of the few topics about which it remains permissible, and possibly even praiseworthy, for a Jewish liberal to know nothing. Take evangelical attitudes toward Israel. Almost every time the subject comes up, someone will explain that Christian Zionism conceals, under a cloak of philo-Semitism, a nefarious agenda. Christian Zionists support Israel, supposedly, to hasten the end-times, when, as Bible professor Candida Moss writes, “Jews must convert or die.” Political scientist Elizabeth Oldmixon explains that evangelicals are part of “movement in Christianity that’s as old as Christianity itself,” and want to hasten “a millennium in the future,”...

[snip] Willie Geist led off, calling it "unfathomable" that the two guards responsible for Epstein had fallen asleep. Mike Barnicle picked up the thread, saying it was "inexplicable" that the jail warden had removed Epstein's cellmate. That teed up the BBC's Katty Kay to point the conspiracy finger: "It's one thing if people are really tired and they do their job shoddily. Another if it's made at a senior level the decision that you leave this prisoner alone and that the cellmate was moved out, I understand it, just the night before. That’s what’s leading people to think: this is...

The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.) The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs. The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy...

This could be the biggest display of chutzpah since the guy convicted of offing his parents pleaded for mercy on the basis of being an orphan. MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough had the gall Monday morning to condemn President Trump over an Epstein conspiracy theory, despite having floated a bizarre one himself. Shortly after the news of Epstein's death became public on Saturday morning, Scarborough took to Twitter: "A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably ... Russian. He reportedly tried to kill himself...

The number two Republican in the Senate is lambasting a media “shield law” proposed by New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, potentially imperiling its shot at passage. “This is a bad idea and one whose time has not come,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate minority whip, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview. “Believe me, we will not be rolled over.” Schumer’s “Free Flow of Information Act” passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, and he recently said he already has the 60 votes needed to pass the bill on the floor. “We’ll get a few more Republicans, not...