Free Republic

After Donald Trump won the presidency again, Rebecca Carlson was counting on this being the year things turned around for her 1,300-acre farm in northern Michigan. The farm has been in her family for generations but has struggled over the past several years amid the rising cost of fuel, fertilizer and other operating expenses. Then, last year, bad weather wiped out much of her crop. But the return of Trump, she thought, would help reverse things. Her farm had been awarded a grant worth $400,000 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help pay for the costs associated with hiring...

By the time his family arrived at OHSU’s intensive-care unit on Feb. 13, Dominique Ware was unresponsive. The 35-year-old was suffering from organ failure, and he would die the following evening, two days after being rushed to the hospital from downtown Portland’s jail. No one could tell Ware’s parents and siblings what had happened. A month later, the family remains in the dark – not just about his shocking death but also about his arrest the day before he died. U.S. Marshals took Ware into custody on Wednesday, Feb. 12, and he landed at the Multnomah County Detention Center. But...

Since scientists first began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers. Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials...

A new Covid variant is causing thousands of infections with experts warning it has the potential to spread rapidly - and the number of cases it has caused in the UK has doubled in the last few weeks. The World Health Organisation says the new variant - LP.8.1 - is one of two designated a Variant Under Monitoring, the other being XEC. It has already been detected in 23 countries. XEC accounts for around half of all infections with Covid, and the recently detected LP.8.1 is already responsible for around 10 per cent of infections in some places - and...

Chancellors Merkel and Scholz are said to have kept secret an explosive intelligence assessment of how the pandemic beganGerman spies were almost certain that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory, only for successive chancellors to bury the potentially explosive intelligence assessment, according to reports. Investigations by the newspapers Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung found that the chancellery of Angela Merkel commissioned the foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), to assess the origins of the virus in 2020. The BND analysed public data and material obtained as part of an intelligence operation codenamed Saaremaa. This included scientific data...

The hollowing out of U.S. cities’ office and commercial cores is a national trend with serious consequences for millions of Americans. As more people have stayed home following the COVID-19 pandemic, foot traffic has fallen. Major retail chains are closing stores, and even prestigious properties are having a hard time retaining tenants. The shuttering of a Whole Foods market after only a year in downtown San Francisco in May 2023 received widespread coverage. Even more telling was the high-end department store Nordstrom’s decision to close its flagship store there in August after a 35-year run. In New York City, office...

US intelligence agencies remain divided on the origin of COVID, but at this point we're all aware that, at a minimum, there's a real possibility the virus that killed millions around the world escaped from a Wuhan lab. China has of course denied that possibility but two US epidemiologists have written an opinion piece today warning that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is still involved in potentially dangerous research with bat coronaviruses. In fact, the lab has discovered a new virus which it says could infect humans and could be even more deadly than COVID-19. It's research was just published...

When a new Yale University study identified a debilitating syndrome linked to Covid vaccines, Lindy Ayers breathed a sigh of relief. The 31-year-old Army veteran, from Arkansas, has been wheelchair-bound since she took her second Pfizer shot in 2021 as part of the government's military mandate. For years she was told her extreme fatigue, sickness and heart palpitations were anxiety. Then doctors said it was long Covid. She was branded an antivaxxer for suggesting it could have been the vaccine. Thousands of Americans have reported similar stories. After the study news dropped, DailyMail.com spoke to dozens of Americans, including those...

Chinese scientists have found a new bat coronavirus, HKU5-CoV-2, that can infect humans, raising concerns about another potential pandemic. This virus can attach to the same human cell receptor (ACE2) that Covid-19 used to spread, making experts pay close attention. The discovery was made by a team led by Shi Zhengli, famously known as "batwoman" for her work on bat viruses. The study, published in the journal Cell, involved scientists from top research institutes, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. HKU5-CoV-2 is part of the merbecovirus family, which also includes the MERS virus. It was first found in bats in...

A monument honoring those impacted by COVID-19 and those who worked to limit its spread is coming to the Illinois Medical District on Chicago’s Near West Side this year, five years after the pandemic outbreak. The 25-foot, stainless steel monument, titled “COVID-19 Memorial Monument of Honor, Remembrance & Resilience,” will be built at 2023 W. Ogden Ave., on the one-acre triangle at West Polk Street, South Damen Avenue and West Ogden Avenue and nestled between Stroger Hospital and Jesse Brown VA Medical Center . Its unveiling is planned for this fall. “Now Chicago will be the physical place where the...

New research from the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Public Health shows that death rates for early adults, or adults aged 25-44, rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic and remain higher than expected post-pandemic.Heightened death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic intensified an already negative trend for early adults, which began around 2010. As a result, early adult death rates in 2023 were about 70 percent higher than they might have been if death rates had not begun to rise about a decade before the pandemic.

President Donald Trump is following through on his promise to reinstate service members who were kicked out of the military for refusing to comply with Covid-19 mandates. Trump is signing an executive order directing the Department of Defense to bring back the affected service members and restore them to their prior rank.

Donald Trump's announcement last month of Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as his nominee to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health further intensified the controversy—and alarm—about what the second Trump administration will mean for American science and medicine. Bhattacharya is an actual physician. He also has a Ph.D. in economics, and a track record of reputable scholarship focusing on policy questions related to public health. But there is no question that Bhattacharya owes his nomination to one thing: his emergence early in the COVID pandemic as a vocal critic of the public health consensus that favored...

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to “Make America Healthy Again” as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services — petitioned the government to stop use of all Covid-19 vaccines in the heart of the pandemic. Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in May 2021, asking that the agency revoke authorization for Covid vaccines, The New York Times reported Friday. Kennedy has a long history of spreading vaccine conspiracy theories, and was a vocal opponent of preventative measures during the pandemic. In 2022, at a rally organized by his group Children’s Health Defense, he compared measures around Covid...

WASHINGTON — Today, after an eight-month investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. (EcoHealth) and its former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, for five years based on evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In a new letter, HHS states “that a period of debarment for Dr. Daszak is necessary to protect the Federal Government’s business interests.” This letter also confirms that EcoHealth terminated Dr. Daszak’s employment effective January 6, 2025. EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight and...

"Today’s decision is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide," House Oversight Chairman James Comer said in a statement. The House Oversight Committee on Friday announced that the Department of Health and Human Services officially cut all federal funding and disbarred EcoHealth Alliance and its former President Peter Daszak for five years. The company and Daszak allegedly facilitated and passed taxpayer money for to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which is a suspected source of COVID-19, and did so without proper government oversight, according to...

Susan Scarbro stares down a bowling lane at the distant pins. She hears a sound that breaks her focus. Was that a cough? Will her mask protect her? COVID-19 remains a very present threat for the 55-year-old. Scarbro has multiple immune disorders, making her vulnerable to infection. “Any minute anybody could cough, just incidentally,” said Scarbro, who lives in Sunset Beach, North Carolina. “And that cough could be the one thing that could make me sick.” This month marks the fifth anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. The virus would go on to kill 1.2...

Four viruses are currently circulating in the United States, which some have referred to as a "quad-demic." Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed an increase in three respiratory viruses—COVID-19, flu and RSV—and the gastrointestinal disease norovirus. Emergency department visits are "high" and "very high" for flu and RSV, respectively, and "elevated" for COVID-19 across the U.S., according to the CDC. As of the week ending Jan. 4, 18.6% of tests for influenza are returning positive, as are 11.6% of RSV tests and 6.9% of COVID tests. Meanwhile, for norovirus, 27.91% of weekly tests have come back...

Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV) is a virus that lives in the respiratory tract. This virus was first discovered in 2001, and has since become one of the causes of upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs). HMPV is very similar to the RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) virus, which often infects children and can cause lung disease. ... the elderly, and those with lung or heart disease, are more susceptible to more serious infections.[...] The following are symptoms commonly experienced by HMPV sufferers: Dry or phlegmy cough Cough is the main symptom of HMPV, it can be a dry or phlegmy cough. This condition...

A Florida grand jury investigation ordered by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reveals a "pattern of deceptive and obfuscatory behavior" by pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of Florida's 22nd Statewide Grand Jury and their forward-looking recommendations highlight concerns about vaccine safety data, the effectiveness of lockdown measures, and captured regulatory oversight. This morning, the Twenty-Second Statewide Grand Jury released its final report. This Grand Jury was tasked with investigating vaccine manufacturers and their production process for vaccines following the COVID-19 pandemic. While we are still reading through the report and its… — Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis)...