Free Republic

As I suggested a few days ago when writing about this topic, I think people on both sides are sounding a bit too confident. Jon Stewart and others are claiming victory over what is, ultimately, a pretty mild endorsement by one government agency based on evidence that is still classified. Maybe that evidence is really convincing but I don’t personally know that yet.Just to frame where I’m coming from here I’ve written more posts about the lab leak theory than anyone else at Hot Air and I think I was the first to do so back in April 2020. So...

The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the National Institutes for Health, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers. “It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.” That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency....

With the global pandemic causing the huge demand for vaccines, innovations could not only eliminate the prick we feel but also improve reliability, says a researcher.The past 20 months has seen an explosion of vaccine development, with COVID-19 vaccine testing and rollout happening at an unprecedented pace in the face of a global pandemic. There have been absolute triumphs – the fact we have multiple safe, effective vaccines is remarkable – but there have also been challenges. We’ve seen storage and delivery issues, vaccine hesitancy, breakthrough infections and the beginnings of waning immunity.

Fact checks on the United States' COVID vaccine timeline expose how outlets like NBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post are willing to attack American aspirations to score political points.Long gone are the days of Snopes assuring readers there isn’t a million dollars waiting in a Nigerian bank account for them. Distant are the happier times when fact-checks assured us there was no hook-handed hitchhiker killing our grandparents on the local highway. Today, we see an alliance between corporate media and corporate tech titans to squelch debate, silence conservatives, and literally censor regular Americans, dissenting scientists, newspaper competitors,...

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield told a colleague Friday “Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data” about COVID-19, claimed NBC News political reporter Monica Alba in a Monday article.Within hours of NBC posting its story, numerous ideologically allied outlets had amplified it. Here are some screenshots of the Google News results for the story just a few hours later:“Everything he says is false,” NBC News quoted Redfield as saying of Atlas’s coronavirus recommendations. That’s just not true, top epidemiologists told The Federalist.“Dr. Redfield is a prominent and respected scientist, so I respect his opinion,...

The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have yet to comment after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday dropped its recommendation for travelers to quarantine for 14 days upon returning from trips overseas or out of state during the coronavirus pandemic. "You may feel well and not have any symptoms, but you can still spread COVID-19 to others," the agency warns. "You and your travel companions (including children) may spread COVID-19 to other people including your family, friends, and community for 14 days after you were exposed to the virus."

As Coronavirus Deniers Katherine Stewart couldn’t be bothered to find out, as a good journalist would, what the Cornwall Alliance or plenty of other conservative, evangelical Christians think about the coronavirus. Slander sufficed. “Stop denying science!! … There is a special place in hell for you folks!! If any of your ilk get COVID-19 I hope you stick to your ‘non-science’ beliefs and let someone else have a ventilator.” These are examples of messages the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation received recently. What could stir up such anger?These and similar messages were prompted by Katherine Stewart’s March 27...

The incident suggests the Michigan governor’s office is either over its head in handling the pandemic, purposefully playing politics during the crisis, or both. Last week, a lawyer reportedly serving as a special counsel to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer published a leaked letter that falsely indicated a shortage of ventilators and intensive-care beds at the Henry Ford Health System had forced staff to leave some Wuhan virus patients to die. While the hospital has since made clear that it has ventilators and beds at all of its Michigan locations, the incident suggests the governor’s office is either over its head...