Free Republic

This is an RFK letter in response to a critic who did not address RFK's supporting information. (...) Similarly, in 1977, Boston University epidemiologists (and husband and wife) John and Sonja McKinlay published their seminal work in the Millbank Memorial Fund Quarterly on the role that vaccines (and other medical interventions) played in the massive 74% decline in mortality seen in the twentieth century: “The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century.” In this article, which was formerly required reading in U.S. medical schools, the McKinlays pointed out that...

We need a full, thorough, and independent investigation with subpoenas to Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, the governor’s staff, and the governor himself.A few weeks ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, without a hint of self-awareness, said, “Incompetent government kills people. More people died than needed to die in COVID.” Sadly, I couldn’t agree more. While many in corporate media glorified Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, helping create a cult of personality for him among Democrats across the country, an examination of his decision-making reveals that he failed New Yorkers on many fronts. Cuomo was given near-unilateral emergency...

America welcomed a new president last week. As predicted, the theme of Joe Biden’s inaugural address was unity. That’s not surprising after five years of toxic political discourse, in which families splintered and relationships were broken off by the mere admission that somebody supported Donald Trump. But just talking about unity isn’t enough. President Biden needs actions to match those lofty words, and he needs to make sure others in his administration and party do the same. He can start by calling for an end to the lockdowns that governments have ordered since last March in response to COVID-19.As I...

Normalcy doesn’t proceed naturally from the moral universe we’ve generated over the past several months. We much change our minds to change our circumstances.Amid the latest wave of COVID-19, those who believe in the necessity of lockdowns and masks are insisting the non-compliant minority is “the reason we can’t get back to normal.” That makes sense as long as you don’t take into account the history of COVID restrictions and their loose relationship with both the science and the metrics of the pandemic. Most of the statewide mask mandates went into effect in the summer, for instance, when cases were...

From Jan. 8, 2018 (Bandy's made a career of this) In a bid to have President Donald Trump removed from office, the left is pushing the “diagnosis” of a Yale psychiatrist who has ruled him “unfit” to be president. However, Dr. Bandy X Lee’s own dirty little secret has just been exposed — and it’s bad news for her career. Yale Psychiatrist who 'Diagnosed' Trump Unfit Has Dirty Secret That's Just Been Exposed After giving her professional psychiatric diagnosis of President Donald Trump, rendering him mentally unfit for office, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X Lee’s prestigious career is in hot...

Professional discussion of the harms and benefits of masks and mask mandates cannot even happen privately among doctors without vitriol. This kind of atmosphere kills science.My 18-year-old son, who has Down Syndrome, had a dental procedure last week. We were supposed to have it done in March, but due to the cancellation of outpatient procedures, it was postponed until then. His teeth needed major cleaning, and since he has a ton of oral sensory issues, sedation has become necessary. All went well, thankfully. However, that night the dentist called and talked with my husband, who is an urgent care physician,...

Power-hungry elites seek to destroy Scott Atlas because he and the scientific coalition he represents makes it clear that these public health emperors may have plenty of masks, but no clothes.The evidence continues to accrue that the dominant policies sold to mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak were catastrophically wrong, yet those who pointed this out early on continue to be reputationally crucified by media and Democrat elites. A premiere case in point is White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Scott Atlas, who has been making science-based arguments against locking down healthy people since the earliest months of the pandemic. Because...

Mainstream media outlets are all too happy to interview Dr. Anthony Fauci as an “infectious disease specialist.” They find his big government solutions that cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas most pleasing. He wants us to wear masks forever, even though he once said they weren’t any good back in the spring. It’s true that Fauci plays a doctor on these TV shows. But we have good reasons to believe that he is only acting rather than actually being a responsible physician. And it is only a low-information public that allows the MSM to get away with pushing his advice. To set...

Democrats are bitterly clinging to a myth that if only someone else had been president, the pandemic would have passed over the United States as if by some divine mark of virtue. On Sunday, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes accused the president of perpetuating an “extended mass slaughter” of the American people in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that 2020 has been “the deadliest year in American history.” Republican staffers “all worked together on a project that just let our people be led to the slaughter for months and months. Dying alone with no one around. Day after day,” he...

JERUSALEM—Authorities are investigating after witnesses accused a local religious nut named Simon Peter and several others of hosting an unauthorized super spreader event in an enclosed room in Jerusalem. Experts say the event, which was not authorized by the local Jewish or Roman authorities, may put everyone in the area at risk for infectious diseases such as leprosy. "This is completely inexcusable," said local magistrate Biggus Tookus. "We have found that there were at least 11 people at this event. No one's address was recorded at the door and we don't know where they are now." One medical expert named...

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...

You can judge for yourself the snickering delight of the chattering media, and some Democrats, at his positive test, and those of other GOP politicians. This is perhaps understandable, although those who are actively pulling for their death are behaving in a very ugly manner. But rather than dwelling on that, I am writing about how versions of what we have seen with the President, his staff, and others around them are being re-enacted across the country in schools and in businesses.

Public health authorities in California have unveiled a “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” that requires counties to meet new “health equity metrics” in order to emerge from the current Covid-19 lockdowns. It’s a broad experiment in social justice. Under the plan, counties must reduce “disparities in levels of transmission” in “low-income, Black, Latino, [and] Pacific Islander” communities before they can move forward with reopening. In effect, local businesses must remain closed until local bureaucrats are satisfied that ill-defined racial quotas have been met. The underlying assumption of the blueprint is that race-based coronavirus disparities are the result of “systemic racism,”...

The Covid-19 pandemic in the West has disproportionately harmed racial minorities, especially those of African descent. According to a United Nations report from June, African-Americans in the United States had twice the death rate from Covid-19 as other races, as did black and South Asian ethnic groups in the U.K. Death rates among black minority groups in France and Brazil were also markedly elevated. Many have taken it for granted that these differences stem from poverty and racism, which force nonwhites into crowded housing and jobs with high disease exposure. For Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human...

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,...

With the summer drawing to a close, the big question for nearly 60 million U.S. school-age children is whether they can return to school for in-person learning, or must remain at home limited to virtual education. States and municipalities differ widely on whether and how to re-open schools based on differing assessments of the risks of COVID-19 to children if they are in direct contact with each other and with teachers. Teachers’ unions are resisting school re-opening with political demands that have nothing to do with teaching, such as defunding the police, passage of Medicare-for-All, and elimination of competing charter...

Dr. Sonia Angell's resignation comes as California contends with an enormous data glitch in its infectious disease recording system. Dr. Sonia Angell, California's director of the Department of Public Health, abruptly resigned on Sunday. Angell, who had been in the position for less than a year, reportedly resigned via an email sent to the California Health and Human Services Agency. Angell has, among others, been leading the state's battle against the novel coronavirus. More than 10,000 Californians have died of the illness, and most of the state remains on shutdown following a brief reopening period in early summer. "Our department...

The Supreme Court has no excuse for allowing Nevada officials to use a public health crisis to fill poker tables while emptying pews. All four gospels record that the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus cast lots for his clothing. This was not the last time government agents were more interested in gambling than God. The latest instance is in Nevada, where the state government has granted casinos special privileges denied to churches. Casinos are allowed to operate at half-capacity, while churches are restricted to a hard cap of 50 people, no matter their capacity.When this double standard was challenged in...

People who resist COVID-19 restrictions are often accused of being selfish and caring only about their own freedom. While that might explain the actions of some, moral arguments can be made against many of the restrictions. Although simple appeals to “freedom” are indeed less popular today than in the past, we should not disregard them. Nearly all our responses to COVID-19 require balancing one concern against another, and individuals and institutions will come to different conclusions as they try to strike that balance.

A stark difference between the approach of President Trump and the newly radicalized Democratic Party is revealed by the issue of mandatory face masks. The “mask police” mentality of the Dems is inciting an Orwellian society of snitches and bullies. Democrats are now insisting that everyone be required to wear masks and that anyone seen not wearing a mask be reported to the authorities. This is despite leading liberal television commentators, including Chris Cuomo of CNN, being spotted outside without masks while they were being quarantined for COVID-19. The wearing of masks in public places causes harm beyond COVID, which...