WOW!! This is one powerful advertisement. The gloves have certainly come off . President Trump is on the attack! We’ve never seen an election campaign ad like this one! Love it, and I’m certain many of you will as well. Watch and enjoy. Wonder how many of the MSM will run it? What’s amazing he does not attack any of his current opponents — no Bernie or Sleepy Joe.
Originally posted 2020-04-23 10:56:30.
The doctors make a good case for opening America sooner better than later, but are they right? I wonder what the docs on the task force think of of this? If I was waiting for a life saving operation right now, I would be concerned. Would you?
Four Reasons it is Safe to Open America
The curve of new infections is declining and we do not need to wait for additional testing or a surveillance apparatus to be in place to reopen America.
In response to warnings that millions of Americans could die and the carnage COVID-19 created in Italy, state and local governments instituted drastic social distancing in America. In the meantime, the epidemiological curve in the US has followed the trend seen in Europe and is well past its peak.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model estimates that the peak of deaths in the U.S. occurred on April 13, 2020. This would seem to indicate the time to loosen social distancing and allow a return-to-work has arrived.
Despite this new information, several public health officials have said that May 1 may be too soon to reopen. They claim that we don’t know enough about the virus, and it won’t be safe to reopen America until we have improved testing and surveillance.
The healthcare system is not overwhelmed, it is underwhelmed and being damaged.
The purpose of “Flatten the Curve” was to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed with patients suffering from COVID-19. The reality is that the healthcare system is now underwhelmed and healthcare workers are being laid off and furloughed in droves as a result of healthcare centers having neglected patient care not related to COVID-19 in fear of a COVID-19 surge that failed to materialize on a nationwide basis. This means tens of millions of patients are failing to receive the medical care they need in a timely manner. Almost every hospital outside of the hot spots is empty.
The dramatic reduction in healthcare utilization and capacity is by no means limited to small, country hospitals. Mayo Clinic is empty: 65% of the hospital beds at Mayo Clinic are empty, as are 75% of the operating rooms. This is the world’s premier medical center. If Mayo Clinic is empty, imagine how dire the situation is at smaller, community-based healthcare centers. Given the complexity of the patients referred to Mayo Clinic, its emptiness alone will have a significant negative impact on healthcare outcomes.
Healthcare under utilization leads not only to patient care being delayed, which will likely result in deaths from delayed cancer diagnoses; it also leads to the loss of countless jobs in the healthcare industry, many of which will never return. Even if the patients that are not being seen at this time are seen several months in the future, many will still suffer negative health outcomes. In Medicine, timing is of the essence and diagnosing and treating a patient today is more beneficial than diagnosing and treating the same patient for the same condition in the future.
If the goal of the shutdown was to flatten the curve and prevent healthcare system utilization, why are we still under a shutdown when the healthcare system is significantly underutilized and tens of thousands of healthcare workers are being terminated or furloughed? Why are we still denying non-COVID-19 patients the care they need when hospitals are sitting idle and laying off staff in droves? The only surge we’ve seen thus far is with respect to initial weekly jobless claims; tragically, there’s a good chance we will see a surge in suicides later this year as well.
The evidence that the true mortality is much lower than early estimates continues to mount.
In order to calculate the true risk of dying of COVID-19, we have to separate case fatality rate (CFR) from infection fatality rate (IFR). Case fatality rate is the chance someone will die after testing positive for a disease. In many studies, the case fatality rate has fallen from 3–4% to around 1%. However, the CFR is not what we think of intuitively as the true mortality of the disease. The true mortality rate, or infection fatality rate (IFR), is the proportion of those who died of the disease among those who were infected, whether or not they were tested.
For example, the CDC states that 247,785 people tested positive for the flu this winter and about 24,000 died. This makes the CFR for the flu 10%; nine in ten people who get the flu don’t die of it! While only 247,785 people tested positive, the CDC estimates that 39 million people were actually infected with influenza this winter. Hence, the IFR for the flu is around 0.1%.
New data supports the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is much more widespread than previously believed. Researchers have tried an indirect approach to approximate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 by comparing the incidence of excess influenza-like infections that are correlated to areas of COVID-19 infection. “This corresponds to at least 28 million presumed symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 patients across the U.S. during the three weeks from March 8 to March 28.” They go on to note, “[T]hese results suggest a conceptual model for the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S. in which rapid spread across the U.S. is combined with a large population of infected patients with presumably mild-to-moderate clinical symptoms.” This is a dramatic change from earlier projections and drops the projected IFR down to around 0.1% — or basically the same as this year’s flu.
Now, I know many people will say, “But look at New York. Look at how the hospitals were full and we almost ran out of ICU beds and ventilators. COVID-19 is nothing like the flu.” To these objections I must point out that COVID-19 kills people through a prolonged process that generally keeps people in an ICU on a ventilator for two weeks before they die. Most people who die of the flu have a much faster disease process.
A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine supports the claim that COVID-19 is much more common and mild than first believed. Researchers from Columbia University in Manhattan tested every woman who presented in labor for COVID-19 from March 22 until April 4. Fifteen percent of the women tested positive for COVID-19, but, of these, eighty eight percent were totally asymptomatic. Also interesting, none of the women who tested positive were even sick enough to seek COVID-19 care; they simply came to the hospital to have a baby.
Given the age of child-bearing women, these results provide further evidence of COVID-19’s generally mild course in young people with limited co-morbidities.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt has been in the news for an outbreak aboard the ship. The US Navy is testing every sailor on board. Of the 4,800 sailors, 600 tested positive and 60 percent of those were entirely asymptomatic. Much like the diamond princess, as time passes the fates of those onboard should give us a much better knowledge of the true risk of hospitalization, intensive care and death from the disease. However, unlike the Diamond Princess, this is a much younger group.
Edit:4/18/20: The first prevalence antibody study from Stanford was released on 4/17/20. After sampling the blood from 3,300 people, researchers found that 48,000 to 81,000 people in Santa Clara county had been previously infected. Only 1000 people tested positive in the county. They estimated the IFR from 0.12 to 0.2.
Many people are actually claiming that the large number of asymptomatic people with the disease requires prolongation of the shutdowns. The large asymptomatic group does quite the opposite. It demonstrates that the number of people who have already had the disease is very high and the actual infection mortality rate is much lower than we previously believed.
If there is a second wave, it will most likely be this fall which will give us plenty of time to prepare
The biggest concern voiced by public officials is that opening the economy is unsafe because it could, “Pour gasoline on the fire.” These officials don’t understand that most people who recovered from the infection are now immune and, thus, contribute to the development of “herd immunity”. If the next wave comes, the peak will be lower or, like in South Korea, where social distancing was only voluntary, it may be just a period of a low rate of new cases until herd immunity is build.
If the current level of herd immunity is so low that a second wave builds, it will take at least several months. The CDC estimated that it will likely be at least 150 days before a possible second wave. This would push it back to the fall at the earliest. A study published in The Lancet also states it would be several months before a possible second wave.
Personal protection equipment (PPE), testing, and surveillance may not be optimized today, but all should be in place by this fall. At that time, politicians and scientists can determine how the elderly and vulnerable can be protected without needing to interrupt the economy.
In addition, the shutdowns are slowing if not preventing the development of herd immunity. This increases the chance and possible severity of a second wave of COVID-19 several months after the shutdowns are lifted.
A recent study from South Korea states that about 100 people who previously had COVID-19 and tested negative have now tested positive again. This has led to rampant media speculation that there may not be lasting immunity from COVID-19.
Dr. Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist from Harvard University, wrote an editorial on this subject in the NY Times. He shows how similar viruses in the past have given long-term immunity. The SARS virus in 2002 gave two years of immunity on average. The MERS virus from 2012 gave approximately three years. He believes that COVID-19 will confer at least a year of immunity.
Regarding the South Korean concern about a lack of immunity. Dr. Lipsitch states that likely “these patients had a false negative test in the middle of an ongoing infection, or that the infection had temporarily subsided and then re-emerged.” One small study should not keep us from opening the economy over a mostly theoretical concern.
The idea of herd immunity is simple: Once enough people in society are immune to a disease, if one person becomes infected, the chance they give it to someone else is less than one. It is estimated that 80% of the population would need to be immune to have true herd immunity. However, if we have even half that, we would slow the increase of the virus dramatically. This would make surveillance easier and decrease the chance that a second wave could overwhelm our health care system this fall.
Continued shutdowns threaten our economy, our health and even our healthcare system.
The state of our economy is not just a monetary risk, it is a health risk. When people lose their jobs, they typically lose their health insurance. The British Journal of Psychiatry found that there were more than 10,000 “economic suicides” as a result of the 2008 recession. Similarly, a 2016 study from The Lancet found that there were an excess 260,000 cancer deaths as a result of the recession. These statistics also fail to mention the increased domestic violence, increased child abuse and home loss when schools and businesses are closed.
In spite of the changing goalposts: The number of new cases is declining. The mortality is likely much lower than early estimates. Those who have been infected by the disease will most likely be immune for at least a year. Finally, the lives saved by starting the economy sooner vastly outnumber those that could be saved by extended shutdowns.
Jonathan Geach, M.D.
Ankur J. Patel, M.D.
Knut M. Wittkowski, PhD, ScD
Lacy Windham, M.D.
Ashkan Attaran, M.D.
Jason Friday, M.D.
Originally posted 2020-04-19 11:05:01.
Copied from Trump Train News (TTN) to which I subscribe. Don’t always agree with some of the wild things they post, and some of their writers need to go back to school and take a grammar course. But sometimes they post something I fully agrees with and consider sharing, such as the one I posted below. I know not the author, but it’s well written. Enjoy.
Donald Trump has a spectacular opportunity right now to put his opponents in the Fake News Media right where he wants them – but he’ll want to strike while the iron is hot.
My son is 3 years old, and he loves dinosaurs – he’s absolutely obsessed with them. Dinosaur books, dinosaur toys, and every dinosaur documentary Disney+ and Amazon Prime have to offer. Inevitably, we end up watching a lot of shows that weren’t really made for kids – full of all the cheap poetic metaphors you expect from the made-for-TV documentary film writers who couldn’t get a writing gig for the next Summer blockbuster. My favorite is at the end of the BBC Walking with Dinosaurs series, where Kenneth Branaugh reminds the viewer that as death rained from the heavens, the dinosaurs could not look to the sky and contemplate their demise.
Extinction-level events are hard for the creatures living through them to process. We’re in the middle of an extinction-level event right now. No, not COVID-19. What we’re seeing is the death of the major media cartels – especially on the information side. News media has, since Donald Trump’s historic 2016 run, been contracting quickly and thousands of would-be Walter Cronkites are being turned out to prepare iced vanilla lattes for decidedly less interesting people than they think they are. The best they can do is thrash about while it happens, oblivious to why it is happening; frankly, they seem almost dedicated to hastening their own end.
Take the pandemic coverage: COVID-19 has been treated like a godsend for these people – with major sports leagues shutdown and businesses closing, they’re quickly becoming the only entertainment game in town. It also gives them a convenient bludgeon to use against their bogeyman-of-choice, President Trump. They accuse him of being malicious, incompetent, both, neither… whatever allows them to continue justifying their hatred of him. COVID-19 has led to a lot of them piling blame on him for problems that truly stem from problems in healthcare, labor laws, and immigration control – problems that he has as President worked tirelessly to address only to be blocked at every turn.
People aren’t blind to this, though, and eventually, the fallout from the Wuhan Comet is going to settle. The novel coronavirus is a bad disease, but it’s not Smallpox or the Bubonic Plague. Media hysterics have put millions of people on the ropes – and criticism of Trump trying to help the folks on Main Street only hastens the extinction of the dinosaurs here. When the American citizens who have been made to suffer by this panic realize just how exaggerated the threat of COVID-19 is, President Trump is going to have a fantastic opportunity to reach anyone who still thinks CNN or MSNBC is on their side. They tried to get him with lies about Russia, then lies about Ukraine, and now all of their crying wolf has almost tanked the economy.
Ever since the Kennedy-Nixon Debate, every Conservative candidate has had to run against two opponents: the Democrat and the Media Cartels. Trump is the first in a long while to defeat both in his campaigns, and COVID-19 has given him another opportunity to keep the Media Cartels on their back foot. Even if the leading Democrat candidate was someone who could string together a coherent sentence, the Media hysteria has given Trump such an upper hand that he’ll win handily. By running around screaming that the sky is falling, they’re bringing the roof down on their own heads.
I often enjoy the comments as much as the article itself. I especially enjoyed this one:
Originally posted 2020-04-11 10:34:05.
As late as March 11, Mayor Bill de Blasio was still telling New York City residents to carry on life as normal: “If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life.” Two days earlier, Italy had announced a national lock down to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and cases were already beginning to appear in New York, but de Blasio did not close the city’s schools until March 15.
Now that New York City has become the epicenter of this pandemic — more than 32,000 cases as of Sunday, with nearly 700 deaths — Mayor de Blasio’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak appears astonishingly irresponsible. Jim Geraghty of National Review has compiled a timeline of how New York City officials dealt with the crisis, and their recklessness seems mind boggling in hindsight. Early on, their main concern was that the virus might discourage city residents from attending Chinese New Year celebrations. “I want to remind everyone to enjoy the parade and not change any plans due to misinformation spreading about #coronavirus,” the city’s health commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a Feb. 9 tweet, promoting festivities in Chinatown.
As idiotic as such declarations seem now, we must note that hindsight is always 20/20, and very few Americans in early February believed that we faced any great danger of this disease becoming rampant here. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have spent recent weeks blaming President Trump for this crisis, but it is important to point out that the same people were downplaying the coronavirus threat just a few weeks ago. Trump’s critics want us to forget, for example, that when the president announced a ban on travel from China on Jan. 31, many of them condemned this measure as a racist overreaction. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science,” Joe Biden said the day after the China travel ban was announced, while falsely claiming that Trump had made “draconian cuts” to federal health agencies.
At that time, the known worldwide death toll from the Wuhan virus was still less than 200, and, because the Chinese government had sought to suppress facts about the disease, the scope of the danger was not apparent. The liberal media weren’t sounding the alarm, but quite the opposite. The headline on a Jan. 28 BuzzFeed article advised Americans, “Don’t Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu.” On Jan. 29, Farhad Manjoo published a column in the New York Times with the headline “Beware the Pandemic Panic.” Manjoo downplayed the danger of the virus and instead cautioned, “What worries me more than the new disease is that fear of a vague and terrifying new illness might spiral into panic, and that it might be used to justify unnecessarily severe limits on movement and on civil liberties, especially of racial and religious minorities around the world.” One thing we can never expect from elite journalists is accountability. Rather than admitting his own errors, Manjoo simply pivoted to blaming Trump: “Coronavirus Is What You Get When You Ignore Science” was the headline on his March 4 column, in which he asserted that the president had “gut the United States’ pandemic-response infrastructure.”
This is the “Orange Man Bad” theory of causation, where everything bad is ultimately Trump’s fault, and the proponents of this theory evidently can’t understand why it has cost them their credibility. When journalists insist on interpreting every event from a partisan perspective — “How can we spin this to hurt Trump?” — their errors follow a predictable pattern. Thus, at one point, the danger of coronavirus was Trump’s “xenophobia,” which threatened “racial and religious minorities.” Now, we are told, the problem is that Trump is “anti-science.” Last week, one New York Times columnist blamed “the science denialism of [Trump’s] ultraconservative religious allies” for the coronavirus pandemic. The “evidence” cited in such tendentious arguments is irrelevant; what matters to liberals is the conclusion, i.e., Trump is always wrong.
Because they imagine themselves infinitely superior to the rest of us, the journalistic elite think we don’t notice the methods by which they dishonestly manipulate the narrative. They believe we won’t notice, for example, how they ignore the bungling of Democrats like Mayor de Blasio. Nor are we expected to contrast the media’s alarmism over COVID-19 with the way they treated the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009–10. According to CDC estimates, about 60 million Americans were infected with swine flu, which caused more than a quarter-million hospitalizations and more than 12,000 deaths. Yet cable-news networks didn’t provide 24/7 coverage of the swine flu outbreak or blame President Obama for the spread of the disease, so why is the Chinese coronavirus such an emergency? Obvious answer: “Orange Man Bad!”
We might not resent this belated effort to blame this plague on Trump so much if Democrats and the media (again, I repeat myself) had spent January and February spreading the alarm about COVID-19. But for much of that period, Democrats and their media allies were consumed with impeaching the president over Ukraine, and when that anti-Trump crusade failed, their attention next turned to trying to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It was not until early March — after Biden’s wins on Super Tuesday stopped the Sanders threat — that the coronavirus pandemic became the media’s obsession. It was March 6 that an MSNBC panel discussion hosted by Nicolle Wallace turned into a sort of pep rally for coronavirus, with the guests expressing the enthusiastic hope that the pandemic would become “Trump’s Katrina.”
Having made clear their intention of scapegoating the president for this virus from China, the media are now astonished that Americans aren’t buying their blame game. After polls showed Trump’s approval ratings had risen during this crisis, the networks decided to stop carrying live broadcasts of Trump’s coronavirus briefings. This is more evidence of media bias that we’re supposedly too stupid to notice, in the same way we’re not supposed to notice either (a) Joe Biden’s rapid descent into senility or (b) the media’s effort to promote New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a substitute presidential nominee for the Democrats.
So far, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 are still only a single-digit percentage of the more than 30,000 Americans who die annually from ordinary flu infections. As bad as the coronavirus outbreak is — and it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — we must keep it in perspective. We must be able to distinguish between real risks from this disease and the politically motivated fear campaign being hyped by the media. Eventually, the coronavirus pandemic will end, but the media’s liberal bias is incurable. From now until November, the blame game will continue, and if Trump gets reelected, we’ll have another four years of the same shrieking journalistic hysteria: “Orange Man Bad!”
Epilogue. I have not posted anything on the virus attacking our country as I am sure you are getting enough from other areas since we are all at home doing our duty to help. But I just had to post this well written article from the American Spectator. In doing so I had to throw in some Bathurst thoughts. This virus has brought out the best AND THE WORST In my fellow Americans. New Orleans holds their Mardi Gras, NYC Mayor tells everyone to go about thei business, Trump is called a racist for shutting off China flights, students defy logic and go on Spring Break, Pelosi accuses Trump for lack of action, Sleepy Joe tells the Trump he needs to create a task force and put somone in charge of it, etc., etc., etc. It has been a lesson we didn’t need because we already knew it all. Now the MSM thinks Trump is getting too much air time so some are not covering the Daily briefings at all, while others are simply showing sound bites of their choosing. As far as I know, FOX is the only one who still covers the entire briefing.
GM had to be forced into stepping up, while 3M is (was) selling much needed medical supplies overseas – they were afraid it would hurt their reputation. WHAT? Meanwhile 100’s and 100’s of American companies have voluntarily stepped up to do their share. It’s a shame it takes something like a National Emergency to see who’s who and where their priorities lie. Some companies have been caught hoarding medical supplies, which were confiscated by the Government. Let us remember companies like GM and 3M when it comes to buying their products!
We shall prevail and get through this, but let’s not forget what it has told us about some of our so-called Americans!
Originally posted 2020-04-04 10:01:14.
Once again, I am remiss in posting anything. My only excuse is age-related – I guess having turned 83, I’m just slowing down. Otherwise, my health is good. I find this latest from my friend and fellow Marine Greg earth-shattering as well. I cannot believe the Supreme Court can find anything in the Moore case to go along with the government. Absolutely crazy and could change everything about a capitalistic economy.
Taxing Tremors By: Greg Maresca
A 7.6 earthquake and its resulting tsunami on New Year’s Day that shook Japan set the stage as the faultless metaphor that will reverberate throughout 2024 and beyond. With the impending presidential election aside, the tremors of improbability arrived a month earlier when the Supreme Court decided to hear a case with profound implications for the federal income tax.
Moore v. U.S. will decide if the federal government can tax unrealized capital gains not yet received under the 16th Amendment. The justices agreed to hear the Moore’s appeal as the couple wanted their $14,729 refund that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against. The Ninth Circuit, known in legal circles as the “Ninth Circus,” has the worst record of any appeals court before the Supreme Court.
Like Roe v. Wade did last year, this case will have a huge and lasting ripple effect regarding future taxation that should concern everyone.
It is no secret that the nation is accruing debt that is unsustainable. The day of reckoning approaches. The irony is the case is named Moore – indeed “more” income through taxation.
Over a century of income tax laws has resulted in thousands of pages of decrees that carve out craters of exemptions in a labyrinth of directives. The tax code is a bloated, crony orchestrated, lobbyist measured disaster for those unable to manipulate it by hiring all those cunning accountants and attorneys who are paid handsomely to circumvent it.
When was the last time a member of Congress did their own taxes?
A fundamental reckoning from the ground up is long overdue to bury the income tax along with the IRS and replace them with a consumption tax or flat tax.
To tax unrealized capital gains not yet received is extreme. The power to regulate and tax is the power to destroy. Congress’s authority to tax does not include reinvested capital and personal property as income.
Income is money received.
Assets may increase in value, but until they are collected as interest, dividends or sold, there is no income. If you cannot spend it, it is not income.
You can’t pay the rent or fill your gas tank with paper gains or the appreciation of your home. When you gain on any financial instrument but do not sell you earn a “paper profit.” If unrealized gains are taxed, and the taxpayer has no cash to pay, a forced liquidation would be necessary for payment.
Are you prepared to pay a tax because your assets go up in value? House, car, pets, trading cards, comic books, Auntie Estelle’s antique coffee table – where does it end? Provided market values decline would monies be refunded? Stop laughing, that was no joke.
Uncle Sam wants all the golden eggs without having to buy the hens, the henhouse, and the chicken feed. The power brokers in Washington believe everything is subject to taxation real or imagined.
It is pitiful that this case is even necessary.
A tax in bad faith resulted in a revolution nearly 250 years ago. Such taxation realizes the socialist dream of equal outcomes regardless of effort, ingenuity, innovation, or lack thereof. Ayn Rand’s nightmare is finally realized.
The Supreme Court’s job is not about maximizing taxable income for Uncle Sam but to interpret if this tax is constitutional.
A ruling in favor of Uncle Sam will unleash Congress’ taxing power and devastate our economic system as we know it. Going forward, all unrealized income will become whatever the government says it is.
The Supreme Court’s decision is expected in June right in the middle of the presidential campaign. Provided the government loses and refusing to allow what they perceive as a crisis; Democrats will condemn the decision as a political red herring.
A Moore victory would also challenge other sections of the tax code that stands at nearly 7,000 pages. Provided they are unconstitutional; they must fall, too.
The income tax has been around since 1913 and its ability to produce revenue has never been assuaged by politics. The hardcore issue is the United States does not have a taxing problem, but a spending problem. Revenue is up but it can’t compete with current spending levels.
A ruling in favor of the government would only exacerbate such spending.
Postscript: I have given up on all the latest coming out of the military and especially our Corps. Absolutely sad! I am simply too old to even bother with it anymore. My stress level is more important to me.
In case you have not read your copy of the latest “Semper Fidelis, or if not retired and don’t get it, I always look at the “Taps” column looking for friends with whom I served. I saw MajGen Dennis Murphy listed this month. Sad, I considered him another Ernie Cheatham – a warrior. He gave me Huxley’s Whores.
Well, this is election year. Do we really believe the liberals are going to allow a legal, valid election? I don’t!
