Free Republic

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is expanding monkeypox testing to commercial laboratories amid fears that the country is undercounting monkeypox cases because of insufficient testing. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it began shipping moneypox tests this week to five private testing companies: Aegis Science, Labcorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and Sonic Healthcare. The testing through these companies will begin in early July, HHS said. “These commercial laboratories will dramatically expand testing capacity nationwide and make testing more convenient and accessible for patients and health care providers,” the department said. Some public health experts...

In early May, 27-year-old Hayley Furmaniuk felt tired and a bit congested, but after rapid-testing negative for the coronavirus two days in a row, she dined indoors with friends. The next morning, her symptoms worsened. Knowing her parents were driving in for Mother’s Day, she tested again—and saw a very bright positive. Which meant three not-so-great things: She needed to cancel with her parents; she had likely exposed her friends; a test had apparently taken three days to register what her vaccinated body had already figured out. Tests are not and never have been perfect, but since around the rise...

The Biden administration will drop pre-departure COVID-19 international air testing requirements effective Sunday (Jun 12) at 12.01am after heavy lobbying from airlines and the travel industry. The Biden administration will announce on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will no longer require pre-departure COVID-19 testing for travellers coming to the United States after it determined based on the science and data that this requirement is no longer necessary. The CDC will do a reassessment of this decision in 90 days, the official said.

The National Football League (NFL) announced on Thursday that it would no longer test players for the virus regardless of their vaccination status. The decision, handed down by the NFL’s Management Council, was reported by NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero:

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– Before electronic chronographs became common, or ballistic gelatin was thought of, a standard for bullet penetration was the number of 7/8″ soft pine boards, spaced an inch or so apart, which the bullets would penetrate. In Pistols & Revolvers, Volume One of the N.R.A. Book of Small Arms, published in 1946, penetration of pistol and revolver cartridges are given in the number of 7/8″ pine boards the specific round would penetrate. Soft pine is not an easy standard to replicate. Trees grown in different areas have different densities, as do different species. The age of the wood can...

In a direct appeal to the Silicon Valley tech giants to censor "misinformation" on social media, former President Obama on Thursday unwittingly affirmed the contention of critics of the COVID-19 vaccines that the fact that clinical trials have not been completed makes the people who have received the shots part of an experiment."Despite the fact that we have now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk, and put their families at risk, rather than get vaccinated," he said in a speech at Stanford University."People...

Federal grant recipients broke the law while spending an estimated $246 million in taxpayer dollars for cannabis and e-cigarette animal experiments, a new report by a group opposing publicly-funded animal testing finds. White Coat Waste Project’s report, published Wednesday, highlights 10 instances of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funneling money to researchers experimenting with getting animals high on THC or making them consume nicotine. “The blunt truth is that tens of millions of tax dollars are going up in smoke for half-baked marijuana and vaping experiments on animals and NIH-funded white coats are breaking federal law by not disclosing...

Lockdown restrictions in China’s most populous city will soon be lifted in areas that go two weeks without reporting new cases of COVID-19, authorities confirmed Saturday. Large swaths of Shanghai have been under lockdown since March 28, and nearly all of its 26 million residents are confined at home, leading to complaints about shortages of food and other basic necessities.

What are you giving up for Lent? California State University is giving up academics — at least where standardized testing for admission is concerned.The school’s Board of Trustees issued the decision Wednesday.Due to the pandemic, CSU had temporarily axed ACT and SAT considerations. Now it’s been made permanent.Why would a school terminate tests which determine how good a student is at school in order to decide whether they should be let into a school that doesn’t let everyone in? Well, maybe the school lets everyone in. But according to CSU acting Chancellor Steve Relyea, it’s about leveling the playing field....

Soon, most travellers entering Canada will not have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test, CTV News has learned. As of April 1, the federal government will be lifting the pre-arrival COVID-19 testing requirement at the border for fully vaccinated travellers. Passengers may still be subjected to random PCR testing at the airport, and travellers will still have to use the ArriveCAN app to enter their proof of vaccination and other required information, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault will be announcing the latest easing of pandemic travel restrictions on Thursday. As...

As the mainstream narrative about the origin of COVID-19 falls apart, it’s time to put other widely accepted facts about the virus—and the devastating measures they were used to justify—under the same scrutiny. On March 13, 2020, the public school district where I teach announced that all classrooms and buildings would be closed for two weeks. Then two weeks turned into two months, and two months turned into over a full year without in-person instruction. My school serves a diverse population of low-income students in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is impossible to overstate the severity of this disruption...

Legislative Democrats on Tuesday blocked an audit of COVID-19 testing failures that occurred during a spike of 1,100 nursing home deaths in Colorado during the 2020 Christmas season — the worst nursing home death rate in the nation. Democrats on the Legislative Audit Committee unanimously torpedoed the audit request by Republicans on a party line vote. PeakNation™ will remember the no-bid contract and $90 million awarded to Curative to provide the questionable testing, which reportedly produced false negatives on the most vulnerable of patients and could have led to the rapid spread of the virus. Now Coloradans will never know...

The Biden administration has ramped up COVID-19 testing and the plan was announced when typically more than 100 million Americans were about to begin holiday travel. Low or no-cost testing was available at local health centers and pharmacies nationwide throughout the fall. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Washington already had a free at-home test program in place by December. However, rapid tests cost $25 and were in short supply. Then, on December 21, as public health officials issued more dire warnings about the new Omicron variant, the White House announced it would start delivering up to 500 million free,...

After Joe Biden’s first year in office, NOT ONE participant in Face the Nation’s focus group believes America is in a better place. CBS host Margaret Brennan was stunned when the entire panel of six participants, including Biden voters, said America is on the wrong path. “During the course of the pandemic, “Face the Nation” has been listening to Americans, through Zoom, to get their thoughts on COVID, the economy and how the government is handling it all. On Friday, we checked back in with six of them,” host Margaret Brennan said. “Who feels like we are in a better...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Saturday searched the Illinois headquarters of a national COVID-19 testing company that is under federal and state investigation. "The FBI was conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity in Rolling Meadows yesterday," Siobhan Johnson, a spokesperson for the FBI's Chicago office, said to USA Today on Sunday. The test company, known as the Center for COVID Control, has received over $124 million from the federal government as reimbursement for COVID-19 testing. The company once operated over 300 locations in 26 states and gathered over 80,000 COVID-19 tests daily.

Yesterday, I covered how one city in the United Arab Emirates announced that booster shots would be required for travelers intending to visit. Several other countries require proof of vaccination or other documentation before granting entrance to travelers. But, one European country announced this week that a negative COVID-19 test will no longer be required for travelers entering the country. Travelers visiting Sweden will no longer be required to show a negative Wuhan coronavirus test to enter the country, Reuters reported Tuesday. In a statement, the Swedish government said "travelers are no longer considered to pose a particular risk of...

[H/T ExTexasRedhead and Jane Long]In January 2019, the WHO defined the growing number of vaccination critics as one of the top ten threats to global health, and since the unprecedented Corona vaccination fiasco, the number of vaccination refusers has truly multiplied.Meanwhile, resistance is forming even within the orthodox medical establishment. But the masterminds of the WHO continue to insist on an unrealistic vaccination coverage rate of at least 70 percent.In this article, Jan Walter describes, with extensive source citations, which techniques are possible to still vaccinate the population, when people are becoming increasingly critical of vaccinations. This is only fueled...

She wrote that she received her result within a couple of hours and was suspicious about how workers were handling the tests: ...... The younger worker who seemed clueless was told to write down on a blank sheet of paper what each persons’s name is, what their rapid test result was, and to tell us that we would hear from them via email. The same blue bin was there for hours, yet my PCR lab test results were back to me via email in just a couple of hours.” She wrote that she returned to the site, asked for them...

Assistant Secretary Dawn O’Connell from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday revealed 50 million coronavirus tests are sitting in warehouses. As the Biden administration purchases $190 million worth of testing kits in January, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) asked O’Connell during a Senate committee hearing if she could assure him that Biden’s testing kit purchases are not originating from Communist China. O’Connell responded by admitting HHS has millions of unused tests in warehouses, which are in addition to the outstanding tests out for delivery to the warehouses. “So is what you’re telling me they’ve got 50 million...

Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo issued new guidance for COVID-19 tests on Jan. 4 in a bid to reduce the strain on the state’s testing centers.So many people are using the centers the availability of tests is under pressure.“We are going to scale back,” Ladapo told reporters at a press conference.“We’re coming back to something sensible.”People have been flooding Florida testing sites, leading to long lines, he said.Instead of restricting testing, however, Ladapo said he would place a new emphasis on “high-value” testing against those of “low-value” in order to give priority to tests that would “likely change outcomes”...