Free Republic

ORINDA, Calif. — They waved signs that read “Defeat the mandates” and “No vaccines.” They chanted “Protect our kids” and “Our kids, our choice.” Almost everyone in the crowd of more than three dozen was a parent. And as they protested on a recent Friday in the Bay Area suburb of Orinda, Calif., they had the same refrain: They were there for their children. Most had never been to a political rally before. But after seeing their children isolated and despondent early in the coronavirus pandemic, they despaired, they said. On Facebook, they found other worried parents who sympathized with...

Bots supported Sierra Leone’s unprecedented lockdowns in 2014 and 2015 with millions of posts specifically using the word “lockdown.”

In an interview Monday on The HillTV's Rising, Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that he "didn't recommend locking anything down" through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci is, of course, free to claim what he wants and spin history however he pleases, but he's not entitled to his own facts.

The two teams of researchers, from London and Glasgow, say infants exposed later than normal - because of Covid restrictions - missed out on some early immunity to: adenovirus, which normally causes colds and stomach upsets adeno-associated virus two, which normally causes no illness and requires a coinfecting "helper" virus - such as adenovirus - to replicate That could explain why some developed the unusual and worrying liver complications.

Canadian pastor Artur Pawlowski won his appeals case against the Alberta Health Services (AHS) for being fined, arrested, and jailed during Canada’s Covid-19 lockdown. The Alberta Court of Appeal granted Artur Pawlowski and his brother, Dawid Pawlowski, appeals, striking down the contempt and sanction orders against the brothers and requiring the AHS to refund the fines paid by the brothers, Rebel News reported Friday. “The chambers judge awarded costs to AHS payable by the Pawlowskis jointly in the amount of $15,733.50,” the Canadian Court’s decision stated. “That costs award is set aside and the Pawlowskis are awarded their costs payable...

Joe Biden repeatedly promised on the campaign trail that he would “shut down the virus,” yet, despite inheriting a few vaccines and a year’s worth of research and understanding of the virus, cases and deaths surged multiple times, and more Americans died on his watch than under Trump. For most people, the pandemic is essentially over, and they just want things to return to normal. But the Biden administration is not ready for normal. On Sunday, Dr. Ashish Jha, Joe Biden’s COVID-19 coordinator, appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” during which he “reminded” people that the pandemic isn’t over yet and...

Many of those who opposed lockdowns for the pandemic, predicted that the policy — if normalised — could one day be taken advantage of by opportunistic political forces to deal with almost any crisis. It was, as Lord Sumption once suggested, a potential pathway to authoritarianism. “If we confer despotic powers on government to deal with perils, which are an ordinary feature of human existence, we will end up doing it most or all of the time,” he wrote in November 2021.Well, we are now facing just such a crisis. And there is a not insignificant chance that lockdowns might...

Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis. Four rural banks in China's central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers in an economy already battered by draconian Covid lockdowns. Anguished depositors have staged several demonstrations in the city of Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, over the past two months, but their demands have invariably fallen on deaf ears. On Sunday, more...

Roaring inflation is tanking Americans' confidence in the economy.. U.S. consumer confidence tanked in early June, reaching the lowest level ever recorded as soaring inflation batters Americans' budgets and fuels concerns for the economy at large. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index released Friday shows the index plunged to 50 this month, a 14.4% drop from May and the lowest reading since the survey began in the late 1970s. ... The survey indicated declines in every component, reflecting a bleak vision from respondents: The year-ahead outlook tumbled 24%, while Americans' assessments of their personal financial situations worsened by 20%....

The COVID policies promoted by Dr. Fauci, the World Health Organization, CDC and the majority of influential public health “experts” had devastating consequences, according to a new analysis published by Nature. The report suggests that over 75 million people have been thrown into poverty, defined as making less than $1.90 US per day, than were expected before the pandemic response started. This graphic shows how previous expectations were for global poverty rates to decline, only for the trends to completely reverse once lockdowns got underway: ... Income losses were also dramatic across all demographics, but especially targeted lower earning workers....

Cai Qi, the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Beijing, told state media Monday that the city would adhere to its “zero-Covid” policy of lockdowns and quarantines for the next five years.State media rapidly deleted his comment — and Chinese censors relentlessly scrubbed it from websites — after a burst of shock and outrage on social media.The original quote from Cai, as published by the state-run Beijing Daily, read as follows: “In the next five years, Beijing will unremittingly grasp the normalization of epidemic prevention and control.”The rest of the article made it clear that Cai was talking about the harsh...

Jared Polis is running for president. He'll deny it. He has denied it. ... Polis has done little to nothing to ruffle the feathers of the teachers' unions... ... standing aside and letting municipalities do your dirty work for you. Polis let Denver Mayor Michael Hancock lead on coronavirus lockdowns and masks before imposing a statewide lockdown himself. Polis also signed a bill allowing cities and counties to enact stricter (but not looser) gun regulations than the state imposes. And there's nothing particularly libertarian about opening the door to public employees' unions in a traditionally non-union state like Colorado. ......

As of February 2022, 882 children had died from the COVID virus in the US. A vast majority of those deaths were children who died WITH the virus and not FROM the virus. During this same period, in 2021, only 3 children had died from the seasonal flu, a disease that typically takes the lives of hundreds of children. The Wuhan COVID virus has next to zero chance of affecting children. This has been widely known since the disease was declared a pandemic back in 2020. But while the COVID virus spared children, Dr. Fauci did not. The evil NIAID...

Five months after breaking the story of the CEO of One America insurance company saying deaths among working people ages 18-64 were up 40% in the third quarter of 2021, I can report that a much larger life insurance company, Lincoln National, reported a 163% increase in death benefits paid out under its group life insurance policies in 2021.This is according to the annual statements filed with state insurance departments — statements that were provided exclusively to Crossroads Report in response to public records requests.The reports show a more extreme situation than the 40% increase in deaths in the third...

The ruling on Wednesday is the first win in appellate court for a restaurant seeking business interruption insurance losses.. Oceana Grill, Bourbon Street’s tourist-centric restaurant loved by New Orleans hotel concierges, has won the country’s first victory in appellate court for an insured business seeking damages related to COVID-19 shutdown losses. A split Louisiana court found the policy’s definition of “direct physical loss or damage” ambiguous, ruling in favor of the restaurant on Wednesday, June 15. Cajun Conti, the company that owns Oceana Grill, among other French Quarter tourist haunts, sued Lloyd’s of London on March 20, 2020 — the...

To them, apparently, only rich people should have school choice.. School choice has become a hot-button issue after the COVID-19 lockdowns shined a light on the scope of the government’s authority and gave parents a window into public school curricula. Many private schools stayed open while public school systems across the country closed in-person learning for entire semesters, even years, and remote learning lifted the veil on what public school kids are actually learning – and not learning. Private schools across the country reported seeing a significant uptick in enrollment over the past two years, while public school enrollment declined...

Common cold now putting people in the hospital.. Children are turning up at doctors’ clinics infected with as many as three different viruses due to their immune systems being weakened by lockdown, it has been revealed. According to Thomas Murray, an infection-control expert and associate professor of pediatrics at Yale, his team is seeing cases of children with combinations of seven common viruses, including adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza, as well as COVID-19. “That’s not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June,” said Murray. Such viruses are...

All he had to do was end the COVID-19 lockdowns and let the economy recover on its own. Instead, President Joe Biden spent trillions trying to “transform” the country, and now, everyone, especially the nation's poorest, is paying the price for his hubris. The Labor Department reported Friday that inflation rose to 8.6% in the 12 months ending in May, its highest level in more than 40 years. Virtually no sector of the economy was left untouched. Gas is up 48.7% from a year ago, electricity 12%, groceries 11.9%, and rent 5.9%. These price increases are not, as White House...

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has revealed that crippling and restrictive public health measures implemented throughout the Covid-19 pandemic were the most likely cause of a staggering 170,000+ non-Covid excess deaths among young Americans in 2020 and 2021. What’s more, the number of deaths is likely to end up being even higher, as researchers have yet to scrutinize an additional 72,000 “unmeasured Covid deaths,” which could easily turn out to have been individuals who died ‘with’ the virus instead of ‘because’ of it. The Economist, which was cited in the NBER study, found the...

Residents stuck inside a compound nearly a week after Shanghai's much vaunted reopening following a virus outbreak shouted at hazmat-clad officials on Monday (Jun 6), as fears grew that some city neighbourhoods were being locked down again. Authorities in the financial hub eased many harsh restrictions last Wednesday, after confining most of the city's 25 million inhabitants to their homes since late March, as China battled its worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. But hundreds of thousands have not yet been allowed out of their homes, while others have immediately been placed back under local lockdowns after a brief liberation...