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March 28 – very early in the pandemic – an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a...

<p>Decision will become final in 10 days unless Newsom’s attorneys can raise new challenge..</p> <p>A judge on Monday preliminarily ordered California Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop issuing directives related to the coronavirus that might interfere with state law.</p> <p>Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and was “an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power.”</p>

While Dr. Anthony Fauci continues to urge caution in opening up bars and restaurants in his role as national coronavirus czar, another Anthony Fauci — his Staten Island cousin — slings sauce in his popular Italian restaurant and laments what his relative has done to the dining industry. “They shouldn’t do the lockdowns. Especially now. If you don’t abide by the rules … shut that area down, but don’t shut down the whole industry,” said the 84-year-old founder of La Fontana, Anthony Fauci. His son, Joe Fauci, 57, who runs the now-iconic eatery in Oakwood, echoed his dad’s concerns, while...

BERLIN - Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germans to expect a “difficult winter” as the number of newly reported coronavirus cases in the country hit a new high. Merkel spoke Thursday in Parliament a day after she and the governors of Germany’s 16 states agreed upon far-reaching restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, including the closure of bars and restaurants, limits on social contacts and bans on concerts and other public events. Merkel told lawmakers that Germany is in a “dramatic situation” as it goes into winter, which she said would be “four long, difficult months. But it will...

Both Germany and France announced new nationwide lockdowns on Wednesday as Europe enters a deadly new phase of the coronavirus pandemic. Chancellor Angela Merkel says German officials have agreed to a four-week shutdown of restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters and other leisure facilities in a bid to curb a sharp rise in coronavirus infections. Merkel and the country's 16 state governors, who are responsible for imposing and easing restrictions, agreed on the partial lockdown in a videoconference Wednesday. It is set to take effect Monday and last until the end of November. Merkel said, "We must act, and now, to avoid...

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the stay-at-home measures and disruptions to daily life that aimed to slow the spread of the virus and save lives led many public health specialists to worry that the nation also could see an uptick in suicides, drug overdoses and domestic violence. Nine months later, those grim predictions look like they're coming true. "There is a mental health wave to this pandemic," Dr. Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, told ABC News. "We as a species don't do well with uncertainty." The pandemic, for many Americans, has exacerbated already-stressful...

My cousin who is a head nurse at a local hospital in Chicago suburbs gave me this info on covid. These are the text messages from her. Take her information as you wish. From what I've seen, there are very high false positive And negative rates. Also, if you test positive, then test again 3 days later and are all positive, that counts as 2 positives. What we can't dispute are the number of actual hospitalizations, which are definitely up in my area, but I'm very specious of anyone who has zero symptoms but comes up positive. The good news...

A recent uptick in violent crime in South Los Angeles and in other parts of the city could be related to the pandemic and the increased stress placed on community members, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said Friday. “I have a 14-year-old aspiring football player who was gunned down and lost his life,” said Deputy Chief Regina Scott. “Just this week, I had a 19-year-old kid that had graduated from high school who has done everything we had asked him to do, and he lost his life…I reach out to the community that the Police Department can’t do this alone..." Some...

Clashes were reported in several major cities - including Turin, where petrol bombs were thrown at officers. In Milan tear gas was used to disperse protesters, while violence was also reported in Naples. The demonstrations began soon after the national government's order to close restaurants, bars, gyms and cinemas came into effect at 18:00 local time. Many regions have also imposed night-time curfews - including Lombardy, where Milan is, and Piedmont, where Turin is. Protests took place in about a dozen other cities, including Rome, Genoa, Palermo and Trieste. While an initial national lockdown earlier this year was complied with...

German Medical Association president Klaus Reinhardt has been forced to clarify his position on mask-wearing after his claim that there was no “scientific evidence they are actually helpful” sparked an outcry from politicians and doctors. Reinhardt told a TV talk show on public broadcaster ZDF that he had doubts wearing simple non-medical masks outdoors was effective against the coronavirus. Such face coverings, he said, offered “no protection at all” to those wearing them, and only “very little protection against infecting others.” A sharp rise in coronavirus cases across Germany in recent weeks has led to stricter rules in many cities,...

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed Wednesday that young adults aged 25-44 years saw the largest increase in “excess” deaths from previous years, a stunning 26.5% jump. The notable increase even surpassed the jump in excess deaths of older Americans, who are at much higher risk of COVID-19 fatality. Moreover, according to the CDC, 100,947 excess deaths were not linked to COVID-19 at all. Since such young people are at very low risk for COVID-19 fatality — 20-49-year-olds have a 99.98% chance of surviving the virus, per CDC data — it has been suggested that the shocking...

Interstate transfers to Melbourne blocked due to corona lockdown restrictions. Four newborn babies in Adelaide, Australia have died after being denied life-saving heart surgery due to coronavirus travel restrictions. Adelaide is the only mainland Australian capital that doesn’t provide paediatric cardiac surgery, therefore around 100 babies a year have to be sent interstate to receive treatment. However, due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed by the Australian government, transfers to Melbourne have stopped and the babies have to make a longer journey to Sydney instead. “Obsetrician Professor John Svigos said four babies who had died in Adelaide in the past month...

Gov. Gavin Newsom just gave Californians more regulations for an early Christmas present — and anyone hoping to celebrate the holidays with family better hope there’s a gift receipt. Just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, when most families gather with loved ones, California’s Democrat governor has issued a new set of regulations that bans gatherings of more than three households. Additionally, no indoor gatherings are permitted, so don’t plan on eating around the dining room table unless you lug it out into your backyard.

This case is not about one particular law, but the rule of law. California Assemblymen Kevin Kiley and James Gallagher are suing to stop California Governor Gavin Newsom’s “one man rule.” Kiley and Gallagher filed their most recent Trial Brief, and Gov. Gavin Newsom filed his. The trial will take place Wednesday, October 21, 2020 in Sutter County. The Michigan Supreme Court recently struck down the 1945 law that Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been using to keep the state in lockdown since April. And in September, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Governor Tom Wolf’s lockdown orders were unconstitutional,...

With cases of covid-19 rising in most parts of the UK, there is fierce debate over the best way to respond. While some people argue for a “let the virus rip” strategy, others want increasing social restrictions, up to and including full lockdown, as happened in the pandemic’s first wave. But is there another way? One idea gaining ground is that countries should hold regular pre-emptive lockdowns, each lasting about two weeks. They could be timed to coincide with school holidays, minimising disruption to education. In the UK, this would mean having these shut downs around every two months. The...

It’s more than fair to say that we are experiencing a pandemic, but not the one you hear about ad nauseum. No, the pandemic is not a virus, it is a pandemic outbreak of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy which focuses its obsessions on the virus. Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy is a mental illness in which the sufferer fantasizes that others–usually people in their charge, such as children–are suffering from serious illness and require drastic medical intervention. Observe what has happened over the last 7 months, and what if anything is increasing in intensity today. The obsession with Covid-19. The monomaniacal...

Freaking out about ‘herd immunity’ looks like a smear campaign designed to prevent Americans, including the president, from hearing the scientific case against the lockdowns. Why is the press and officialdom suddenly shrieking about “herd immunity”? On Oct. 12, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said pursuing herd immunity is “unethical.” Within hours, most of the media broadcast the same message. It’s as though someone sent out a list of talking points. “Sweden’s experiment with herd immunity is unethical and undemocratic,” Australia’s ABC intoned, “and reveals an underlying political pathology.” According to Fortune, herd immunity against SARS-CoV2 is a...

Instead of rebuking Sweden and states such as South Dakota who exposed the failure of lockdowns, we should be thanking them. ... Sweden’s decision to take a “lighter touch” to the coronavirus pandemic—foregoing strict lockdowns and relying primarily on social responsibility to encourage social distancing—has made it a lighting rod for criticism. Many commentators claimed Sweden was behaving recklessly and selfishly by refusing to enforce an economic lockdown ... Though its per capita death rate remained well below European neighbors such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain—each of which enforced strict lockdowns—Sweden became, as one CBS report claimed, “an...

Lockdown measures, such as closing schools, likely prolonged the epidemic by preventing the virus from naturally moving through low-risk populations and building herd immunity. A recent study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that the closing of schools in response to the novel coronavirus could actually increase overall deaths resulting from the disease. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh reevaluated a model produced by the Imperial College London earlier this year that prompted the extensive government lockdown measures, including the closing of schools, implemented in the U.K., ... school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the...

"In March we panicked," said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. "Not just in America, the world panicked and threw out the old plan." Dr. Bhattacharya teaches medicine at Stanford University, where he researches the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. With 135 articles published in top peer-reviewed journals, his credentials are impeccable. "The old plan" relied on the time-tested public health measures that successfully eradicated diseases like polio and smallpox, not the total lockdowns implemented in 2020. In response, Dr. Bhattacharya and colleagues from Harvard and Oxford authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which expresses "grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental...