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As Covid-19 cases continue to jump during the fall surge, Dr. Anthony Fauci says there's little chance of normalcy on the horizon. The US will have a vaccine in the next few months, but there's a chance a "substantial proportion of the people" won't be vaccinated until the second or third quarter of 2021, Fauci said. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reiterated caution on the nation's outlook. "I think it will be easily by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year, before we start having some semblances of normality," Fauci...

When California public health officials announced guidelines for reopening theme parks that essentially guarantee that parks in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties won’t be able to open until perhaps mid-2021, heads of the respective theme parks rightfully blasted Gavin Newsom, citing their successes in reopening in other states and countries and alleging that his guidelines have no scientific basis. The next day, the Executive Director of the California Attractions and Parks Association, of which Disney is a member, said “that a lawsuit was under consideration and ‘all options are open at this point.'”By Thursday, sources within the industry...

The U.S. Postal Service has faced scrutiny for making major operational changes in an election year when many more Americans are mailing their ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. But new statistics show the USPS is doing a worse job of delivering the mail on time, raising concerns that some ballots may be delayed. The Postal Service said Friday that its on-time delivery rate for first-class mail slipped to 85.6% for the week ended October 16. That’s down from nearly 91% over a three-month period ending in June, noted Paul Steidler, senior fellow with the Lexington Institute, a public policy...

With regard to COVID, we are awash in unreliable or even intentionally misleading empirical claims. A neurosurgeon from D.C. who understands statistics analyzes a popular claim that is being made on behalf of mask mandates. I encountered a Washington Post figure making its way through social media, suggesting that not wearing masks is conclusively the reason for COVID spread:

Get Ready for the Pre-Election ‘Casedemic’ President Trump recently tweeted: “The Fake News is talking about CASES, CASES, CASES. This includes many low risk people. Media is doing everything possible to create fear prior to November 3rd. The Cases are up because TESTING is way up, by far the most, and best, in the world. Mortality rate is DOWN 85% plus!”The president is right. On any objective measure, the pandemic is waning. We are now in what many call a “casedemic” — a swell of positive tests due largely to enormous surges in testing. And the media is, for the...

Europeans are in open rebellion over the reimposition of harsh anti-Coronavirus lockdown measures. Severe limits on personal freedoms have failed to arrest the spread of the China virus in Italy and Spain, as positive tests for the virus have surged in both nations after relaxing the measures imposed last spring. The Financial Times reports: The governments of Italy and Spain, the European countries hardest hit by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, announced sweeping measures on Sunday to combat a surge in the number of new cases. Italy said it would introduce the harshest public health restrictions since...

Public health officials in Southern California are warning that celebrations for the city’s two new championship sports teams are spreading the coronavirus in several counties. The Los Angeles Dodgers captured their first World Series title since 1988 on Tuesday night, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays, four games to two. That victory came just weeks after the Los Angeles Lakers won their first NBA championship in a decade.

During the course of the COVID-19 crisis, an ongoing, and very legitimate, national debate has continued about the wisdom of lockdowns. The decision to shut down social and commercial activity in the name of health is itself arbitrary. Then, the decision to decide what to shut down and what not to shut down, what activities are more essential than others, adds more arbitrariness. These decisions reflect the values and priorities of those with power who are making them. In our increasingly secular society, this is posing enormous problems and challenges for religious freedom. Earlier this year, Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley...

It’s just the flu, bro. http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3898675/posts A Freeper posted this yesterday - New Mexico will spot check restaurant employees with Coronavirus tests. The Coronacrat infrastructure is only at 50% capacity. There is so much more that lefty states can, and will, do to make us all safe from the Coronavirus. The unemployed service workers can officially leave the private sector and become enforcers in the coronacrat army.

Source: Official White House Photo by Shealah CraigheadUntil COVID-19 hit, President Donald Trump was on a glide path to reelection. On domestic policy, Trump's tax and regulatory cuts spurred the economy to heights unseen in 50 years; his Department of Education cracked down on the star-chamber courts applied on college campuses in cases of alleged sexual misconduct; he has appointed scores of well-qualified constitutionalist judges, including three Supreme Court justices. On foreign policy, Trump is the first president of my lifetime not to enter any foreign wars; he has brokered historic peace deals in the Middle East between Israel and...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) criticized the media in a Tuesday tweet for what he said was it not reporting a drop in the COVID-19 mortality rate in Spain, which is experiencing a surge in new coronavirus cases. “New COVID infections up 33% in Spain but mortality down 82%,” Paul tweeted while sharing a link to Spain's coronavirus totals. “The Leftwing media reports the new cases but refuses to let anyone hear the good news — mortality rates are plummeting!” According to Worldometers, Spain recorded 17,396 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, along with 93 deaths. The country recently declared a state...

PING LIST - Please contact me as needed... COVID-19 Update # 223 As of 10/26/2020 23:15 PDST     United States CDC - Provisional NumbersAs of 00/00/2020 23:45 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Capture Nations InformatonAs of 00/00/2020 23:45 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Capture Counties InformationAs of 00/00/2020 23:46 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Process JHU DataAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Document Core NumbersAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Capture Nations InformationAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Capture States InformationAs of 00/00/2020 00:00...

The Hill published an extremely partisan, anti-Trump opinion column, “Science Seeks Truth, Trump Denies It,” by outside contributors. Once again they beat the drum that Trump denies "the science," but in fact it is Trump critics doing so. (Note that The Hill declined to publish this rebuttal to its anti-Trump screed.) Our antennae should go up when we hear vague, foggy slogans. They say Trump should follow the science. Yet they do not identify anything that a Joe Biden or anyone else could do as president that President Trump hasn't already done. The only example in the fog is wearing masks, but...

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday urged Germans to “stick to what we know” about the coronavirus as the country battles a second wave of infections. “We know how we can protect ourselves. We can proceed with a more targeted response,” she said in Berlin. “But we also see with the rising numbers that if we do not stick to what we know about the virus, we get ourselves back into situations are that are decidedly difficult.” Merkel was speaking ahead of a key meeting with state leaders, brought forward to Wednesday, at which she is expected to push for tougher...

Nearly half a million people in the United States have contracted the novel coronavirus in the last seven days, according to a Reuters tally, as cases and hospitalizations set fresh records in hot spots in the Midwest. More than 5,600 people died from the virus nationwide in the last week, with hospitalizations shooting up 13%, a Reuters analysis showed.

1. Joe Biden says everyone should wear a mask. But what he does not say is that the only reason we have enough masks for everyone to wear is due to the efforts of the Trump administration.— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 27, 2020 2. Early on, Fauci told the American public NOT to wear masks. He intentionally lied to us because the Obama-Biden administration had not produced enough PPEs to go around. There was no proper planning for a pandemic.— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 27, 2020 3. And Fauci held his current position back them as well....

It was a blockbuster story. A respected Chinese virologist appeared on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News in mid-September to share the results of her just-completed report. The conclusion: The novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was likely engineered in a Chinese lab. On Carlson's show, she claimed it was intentionally released into the world. Then, its validity began to unravel. The publication of the paper by lead author Li-Meng Yan -- an expatriate from China seeking asylum in the US -- was quickly linked to former White House adviser Steve Bannon, long a strident critic of China's government. The Johns...

Sick Joe Scarborough's pitiful public disintegration continues. Yesterday, we caught him, his face contorted in an ugly snarl, screaming at Trump voters that they were "stupid" for continuing to support the president. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough took things a disgusting step further, saying of President Trump that: "Nobody's ever done so much to kill so many people. That is correct. Nobody." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Dr Anthony Fauci has cautioned that early COVID-19 vaccines will be focused on preventing symptoms of the virus, not blocking it altogether. Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, made the point on Monday as at least four vaccine candidates near the end of clinical trials and the US reported a record number of new cases in the last week. While the end goal of the vaccines will be to eradicate the virus, Fauci noted that developers are aiming for a simpler goal in the first round of jabs. 'The primary thing you want to do is that if...

Joe Biden claims that President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been a failure and that he would have done better, saving countless lives. The polls suggest that many Americans agree with that assessment. However, Biden’s actual track record shows that the opposite is true. When a pandemic arrived, he failed repeatedly. In April 2009, the H1N1 virus (aka Swine flu) came to America from China. The following year, it infected roughly 20%, or 1/5, of the entire U.S. population. Although it was a new, unknown disease, there were no shutdowns, no mask mandates, and minimal noticeable disruption to daily life....