Free Republic

Texas has seen a surge of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, prompting the White House’s coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, to call the state one of “three New Yorks.” Some have even blamed the state’s early attempt to reopen as the cause of surge. While the surge needs to be taken seriously, there are reasons to be optimistic. For instance, in Texas, testing has increased, the rate of positive cases are trending down, and hospitalizations are plateauing. Texas’ death rate of 20 deaths per 100,000 is much lower than rates in most other states. In a renewed effort...

This week’s gross domestic product report painted a stark picture; namely, a historic plunge in the production of goods, provision of services, and private investment. The nation’s economy shrank at a 32.9% annualized rate. That marks an actual decline of 9.5% from earlier this year. Meanwhile, massive government transfer payments funded by borrowing and printing of money caused disposable personal income to soar at a 42.1% annual clip despite the loss of more than 24 million jobs accompanying this economic contraction. The data bear out the everyday experience of millions of Americans. Government-mandated closures and people responding to what they...

California Teachers Association (CTA), the most powerful public-sector union in the Golden State, issued a statement asserting that, due to coronavirus concerns, state schools should not open .. The following day, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a 17-page “research paper” in which concerns about coronavirus were secondary to sweeping political demands — including Medicare for All, guaranteed housing, a wealth tax, a millionaire’s tax, defunding the police, financial support for illegal immigrants, and a moratorium on charter schools. ... The Los Angeles Unified School District fell into line ... The circle was completed on July 17, when...

There will be “intergenerational consequences for child growth and development.” ... lockdowns and school closures are doing more harm to children than the coronavirus itself, with many more deaths expected to come from the reaction to the outbreak, rather than the pandemic itself. ... UNICEF director Henrietta H Fore said Monday, “The repercussions of the pandemic are causing more harm to children than the disease itself.” UNICEF nutrition program chief Victor Aguayo noted that the most harm is being done “by having schools closed, by having primary health care services disrupted, by having nutritional programs dysfunctional.” The officials pointed to...

I’m disgusted. I’m embarrassed. My heart is broken for the America that we’ve lost. This morning, I woke up at 3am. I proudly announced on Fox and Friends First that Law Enforcement Today was proudly joining a number of other groups in taking part in the largest Back the Blue event in America. Acclaimed keynote speaker Paul Butler and I were going to be the joint Masters of Ceremonies. We had rock and roll legend Ted Nugent flying in for the National Anthem – accompanied by Congressman Clay Higgins, the keynote speaker. The first wave in the attack came from...

Locking down civilians will not eradicate the coronavirus -- despite several governors' claims and actions to the contrary, Hoover Institution fellow Dr. Scott Atlas said Thursday. And the U.S. is also not handling the virus as badly as some have claimed, Atlas said on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle." "I'm cautiously optimistic because we actually know a lot now. We know the fatality rate is much lower and we know who to protect, we are doubling down on the protection of the high-risk group. We are doing better with patients in the hospital. I think we have to tell the...

Lockdowns have not had a big impact on coronavirus death rates around the world, scientists have claimed. Dozens of countries have been forced to tell people to stay home and close shops in a bid to stop the Covid-19 pandemic since it broke out in January. But now a study has claimed the drastic measures don't even work. They found whether a country was locked down or not was 'not associated' with death rate.

Health professionals nationwide released statements in a Tea Party Patriots Action Second Opinion Project email on Thursday that they believe schools should reopen and that it is the safest option for kids. The consensus among the physicians, that kids would benefit academically, socially, and health-wise from schools reopening this fall, echoes a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released on July 10 addressing the issue of schools reopening in the fall. “We recognize that children learn best when physically present in the classroom. But children get much more than academics at school. They also learn social and emotional...

My question is, where did Newsom get the idea for lock downs? He was the first to do it then it seemed to spread to NY and soon we had the regional plans lead by Newsom and Cuomo that every nearby rat governor blindly mimicked.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Sweden has drawn international attention for its unorthodox approach to managing the virus' spread. The Nordic state didn't impose strict lockdown measures, instead asking citizens to stay home if they were sick and to practice social distancing in public. Bars, restaurants, and shops stayed open, even when cases peaked in the country. Its relaxed coronavirus strategy, relying on personal responsibility and willful obedience, has been both praised and criticized. And while the jury is still out on the effectiveness of the country's public-health approach, there is growing evidence that, economically speaking, the loose rules seem to...

Herd immunity is exactly what the spike in cases indicates is developing, and we need it to continue. Politicians have been reimposing and maintaining lockdowns and mask mandates due to media furor over “spikes” in coronavirus cases. This has happened in 21 states and many more localities, says The New York Times. One of the many problems with this is that the nation needs people to keep getting coronavirus.That’s because coronavirus spread is a natural vaccine that protects those who survive — which is the vast majority — and even those who don’t catch it, through herd immunity. This natural...

They're 'protected by the First Amendment and Texas law,' A.G. says. The attorney general of Texas yesterday ordered local authorities to cease any attempts to shut down churches and private religious schools, stating that those institutions are protected by both the U.S. Constitution and Texas statute. .. A.G. Ken Paxton said that "the robust constitutional and statutory protections unique to religious individuals and communities at all times" prohibit local governments from closing them down, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. ... local public health officials have [recently] begun to issue orders restricting or limiting in-person instruction" in private schools. In the...

If you had any doubts that power has gone to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s head, his order that everyone has to eat when drinking at a New York bar should resolve the issue. He theoretically has the power, since the Legislature basically made him a dictator for the duration of the pandemic with its grant of emergency powers before it fled Albany in early March. But it’s one thing to issue an order — another to make it stick. Nonetheless, His Royal Highness Andrew I insists that New Yorkers at a restaurant or bar must order food, not just drink. The...

Children are left to surf the Internet, often without proper (or any!) supervision. Pedophiles, often jobless, are also stuck at home with computers. A couple of weeks ago, Utah authorities arrested a 43-year-old man named Danny Steven Hardman in Salt Lake City, not far from where I live with my wife and children. The charge: four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. Authorities allege Hardman was grooming two six-year-old girls via Facebook and through playing online video games with them. He managed to convince the children to send him sexually explicit images of themselves. Child sexual exploitation and trafficking...

Every person I know in his 70s says kids should go back to school. Behind ensuring Americans have food, ensuring our children are well educated is a very close second in societal priorities. For those who don’t get the outrage, let me try to put it in simple terms. Yes, COVID-19 is dangerous, especially to our elderly population and those who are high-risk. Yes, there will be some young, healthy people who die from COVID, as is true with the 38,000 people who die from car accidents each year, or the 2,000 children who died last year from cancer. As...

The governors of Texas and California, the nation’s two most populous states, recently reimposed coronavirus lockdowns despite falling death rates and health-care capacity far beyond hospitalization rates. Numerous other governors have delayed reopenings or reversed them in similar situations.Lockdowns are not necessary to prevent coronavirus deaths, since the current capacity for treating cases is far above what is needed and people are going to get this disease until there’s a cure. Further, lockdowns accelerate systemic weaknesses such as our national debt, poor education, large numbers of working-age men who do not work, failure to pay for decades of overspending at...

Measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus – such as DMV closures, stay-at-home orders and restrictions on large gatherings – have taken a big bite out of new voter registration efforts...declines for the Democrats in the key general election battleground states of Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as well as in Maine..."If these college campuses are vacant in the fall, it really changes some of these battleground states if the students aren’t there," McDaniel explained. "For example, in New Hampshire, you’re not going to be able to do same-day registration and turn out all these college kids..."

For months, Governor Jared Polis and other state officials have been accused of picking winners and losers through public-health orders announced to stop the spread of COVID-19. Polis's decision to shut down bars and clubs statewide mere weeks after their limited reopenings has renewed that criticism — and it's likely to continue with news that he's now extended Colorado's emergency order to thirty days from July 6 ... Now comes more fuel for the fire: a just-released study that found Colorado has the second-most restrictive COVID-19 rules among the fifty states and the District of Columbia. ... Colorado's current overall...

A doctor at Stanford University said the spike in hospital patients in Texas has "nothing to do with COVID-19.” Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at the university’s medical center, joined Fox News’s The Story on Monday and said the public should not panic about the spike in hospitalizations. When I looked at every single hospital area in Texas today, 15-20% of people in the hospital as inpatients are COVID-positive patients. That means 80-85% have nothing to do with COVID-19. And the same thing goes with some of these...

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, just defied the liberal media to speak out and say that people are “mistaken” if they actually think coronavirus lockdown policies are keeping people safe from COVID-19. Bhattacharya, who recently led the largest COVID-19 antibody study in the U.S., carried out tests on staff members of 27 Major League Baseball teams to figure out how much coronavirus has already spread. Based on the results of this and prior research of his, Bhattacharya has concluded that lockdowns are not a good thing and may even be causing further harm. “I think...