Tale of 2 States: New York’s COVID-19 Death Toll Far Greater Than Florida’s

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Florida and New York are states with similar population sizes, but dramatically different approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic.

New York has almost 30 times as many coronavirus-related deaths as Florida, with a heavy concentration among senior citizens, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, gained praise in the media for his performance in press conferences if nothing else, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has been heavily criticized in media reports.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

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New York has had about 348,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths as of May 17, according to the CDC. Florida, meanwhile, had about 46,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.

The population of New York state is 19.5 million, while Florida is home to 21.5 million.

“Gov. DeSantis understands Florida and knows how to interpret data and use science to guide the state during this health care pandemic,” the governor’s communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told The Daily Signal in an email. “He worked quickly to protect the vulnerable, increase testing, promote social distancing, support hospitals and protect health care workers, and prevent introduction [of the virus] from outside of the state.”

Ferre added:

When the media was howling because there were folks on the beach, Gov. DeSantis prohibited visitations to assisted living facilities and nursing homes. In addition, Gov. DeSantis prohibited nursing homes and long-term care facilities to [allow] COVID-19 patients who were discharged from hospitals to be returned to their facilities.

He established COVID-19 dedicated nursing homes. In addition, he required comprehensive screening of staff and vendors entering these long-term care facilities. Testing and contact tracing was a priority for all Florida residents in addition to providing precious PPE [personal protective equipment]. Impeding those who were fleeing from other states where there was community spread of this virus was also important.

In New York, senior Cuomo administration officials contend that the federal government was too slow to ban European flights that primarily stop at major airports in New York or New Jersey.

From January through March, about 13,000 flights came through these airports from European locations carrying about 2 million passengers, the officials told The Daily Signal on background.

New York also does more testing for the coronavirus than other states, which is one reason the recorded rates are higher, they said. Add to that, New York City has the most dense population in the United States.

New York and Florida have a similar percentage of total COVID-19 deaths among those 65 and older. Seniors made up 83% of deaths in Florida, 77% in New York.

“In general, on a statewide basis, Florida is doing much better than New York,” Norbert Michel, director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Florida has much fewer deaths and deaths per capita and per 100,000 than New York; this fact holds even if you remove New York City from the state data, though the differences are much smaller.”

The high fatality rate in New York City from the coronavirus skews the statewide numbers, he said.

Florida also is doing better during the pandemic across every category of those 45 and older, as the New York death toll is 15 to 20 times higher than Florida across every category, Michel said.

“Regardless, the death rates by age are worse in New York. If New York City is the primary driver of high death totals and high death rates, then the same comparison still applies; the only thing that would change is that we would have to say New York City is doing much worse than Florida,” Michel said.

Cuomo also has faced criticism for a March decision, later reversed, to send patients back to nursing homes after they tested positive for COVID-19.

“Florida and New York had very different protections for nursing home patients,” Michel said. “The nursing home policy [in New York] was insane. The state was basically sending someone to an early grave. … If it is the case that the infection was already widespread before anyone knew about it, the state was still literally sending people back into it.”

To help free up beds in hospitals in late March, the New York state Health Department issued an order to nursing homes: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

The Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York opposed the Cuomo policy of sending COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes.

Similarly, the American Medical Directors Association, in a March 26 statement, said: “Unsafe transfers will increase the risk of transmission in post-acute and long-term care facilities, which will ultimately only serve to increase the return flow back to hospitals, overwhelming capacity, endangering more healthcare personnel, and escalating the death rate.”

Cuomo administration officials said residents returning to nursing homes after testing positive for the virus were quarantined from other residents, following federal guidelines for them to be kept in separate facilities with different caretakers from the rest of the population. A total of 12% of the state’s fatalities were from nursing homes, a Cuomo administration official said. 

“It was one of the giant red herrings of all time,” the official told The Daily Signal. “I would take our state law over any state law that says you can discriminate [against] potentially the most feeble, at-risk, vulnerable people in our society.”

In early May, The New York Times reported that 1,600 previously undisclosed deaths occurred in New York nursing homes, bringing the total number of deaths at nursing homes to almost 5,000.

One more factor: Cuomo didn’t order the New York City subway to be sterilized on a nightly basis until early May, even though the first COVID-19 cases were reported March 1.

Another Cuomo administration official contended that new cleaning policies were in place March 3, two days after the state’s first confirmed coronavirus case.

New York is unique among U.S. cities in having a subway that operates around the clock; closing it was not an option. As more people stayed home more often, however, it was feasible to close down for nightly sterilization beginning May 5, the official said.

COVID-19 deaths in New York City total 1,403.72 per 100,000 for those ages 75 and older, according to the city’s data. The death rate drops to 560.85 per 100,000 for those 65 to 74; 171.49 for ages 45 to 64; and 18.4 for ages 18 to 44. The rate is 0 for those under 18.

Although New York City has more people living in close proximity than any other American city, specific policies played a role in the death toll for both the city and state, said Arpit Gupta, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute who co-authored a report with recommendations for reopening New York City.

“I would point to large, dense cities in Asia such as Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, and in Hong Kong,” Gupta told The Daily Signal. “Density is not destiny. Those cities made policy decisions that New York didn’t that have contributed to the death toll we’ve seen.”

As of May 13 in Florida, COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 53 people ages 45 to 54, or 0.24 per 100,000; 138 ages 55 to 64, or 0.64 per 100,000;  296 ages 65 to 74, or 1.4; 391 ages 75 to 84, or 1.82; and 378 ages 85 and older, or 1.8.

In New York state as of May 13,  COVID-19 had killed 1,267 people ages 45 to 54, or 6.5 per 100,000; 3,039 ages 55 to 64, or 15.6 per 100,000; 4,818 ages  65 to 74, or 24.7; 5,603 ages 75 to 84, or 29; and 5,881 ages 85 and older, or 30.2.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

YouTube bans content that contradicts WHO on Covid-19, despite its track record of misinformation

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The policy represents a betrayal of the pioneering platform’s founding principles.

YouTubers are being silenced if they don’t agree with the United Nations on public health. As The Verdict reports:

YouTube will ban any content containing medical advice that contradicts World Health Organisation (WHO) coronavirus recommendations, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Wojcicki announced the policy on CNN on Sunday. WHO is an agency of the UN, charged with overseeing global public health. The Verdict report continues:

Wojcicki said that the Google-owned video streaming platform would be “removing information that is problematic”. She told host Brian Stelter that this would include “anything that is medically unsubstantiated”.

“So people saying ‘take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you’, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy,” she said. “Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”

While the decision has been welcomed by many, some have accused the streaming giant of censorship.

To be clear, for American YouTubers, this kind of censorship is not a violation of their constitutional right of free speech. The First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship, and YouTube is a private platform. Were the US government to force the private owners of YouTube to continue broadcasting certain videos against their will, that would be much more a violation of the First Amendment.

While YouTube’s decision is not unconstitutional, it is unwise, exhibiting far too much deference to central authority in general and to WHO especially.

The World Health Organization is far from infallible. Its handling of information throughout the coronavirus emergency has been a long string of failures. As policy analyst Ross Marchand has recounted here on FEE last week, WHO failed to raise the alarm as the coronavirus rapidly spread through China during the crucial early period of the global crisis in January of this year. Then, as Marchand wrote:

The global bureaucracy uncritically reported that Chinese authorities had seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus” on January 14, just one day after acknowledging the first case outside of China (in Thailand). WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his “political commitment” and “political leadership” despite these repeated, reprehensible attempts to keep the world in the dark about the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump recently announced that the US would cease its funding of WHO over its many coronavirus-related failures.

And it is not just American conservatives who have been critical. As FEE’s Jon Miltimore wrote:

Our World in Data, an online publication based at the University of Oxford, announced on Tuesday that it had stopped relying on World Health Organization (WHO) data for its models, citing errors and other factors.

This raises an interesting question: would YouTube censor Oxford if it posted a video on the coronavirus issue with recommendations based on data that contradicts WHO’s?

As Miltimore wrote, “Recent reports suggest US intelligence agencies relied heavily on WHO in its national assessment of the COVID-19 threat.”

This is gravely concerning because bad information leads to bad policies. This is true not only for government policy (like mayors, governors, and heads of state deciding to largely shut down the economy in their jurisdiction), but for the policies of private decision-makers like doctors, business-owners, and individuals making decisions about the health and overall lives of themselves and their families.

Indeed, WHO’s misinformation early in the crisis squandered the most precious part of the world’s prep time, which likely crippled the public’s responses and may have cost many lives.

YouTube risks compounding that tragedy by now insisting that the public’s response to the coronavirus emergency conforms even more strictly with WHO’s dubious pronouncements. Wojcicki wants to protect WHO’s recommendations from contradiction. But WHO’s recommendations are necessarily informed by WHO’s information, which has proven to be extremely suspect. Sheltering untrustworthy pronouncements risks amplifying their dangerous influence.

So, it is ironic that YouTube justifies this policy in the name of protecting the public from dangerous misinformation.

It is true that many videos contradicting official pronouncements are themselves full of medical quackery and other misleading falsehoods. But, censorship is the worst way to combat them.

For one, censorship can actually boost the perceived credibility of an untruth. Believers interpret it as validation: evidence that they are onto a truth that is feared by the powers-that-be. And they use that interpretation as a powerful selling point in their underground evangelism.

Censorship also insulates falsehoods from debunking, allowing them to circulate largely uncriticized in the dark corners of public discourse.

This makes censorship especially counterproductive because it is open-air debunking that is one of the most effective ways to counter misinformation and bad ideas. As Justice Louis Brandeis expressed in a US Supreme Court opinion, the ideal remedy for bad speech, “is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Again, YouTube has a right to set the terms of service of its own website. But the general principle applies here as well: the truth has a much better fighting chance with a proliferation of competing voices than with inquisitorial efforts to circumscribe discourse within a narrow orthodoxy.

Moreover, WHO’s track record of misinformation is not exceptional among government organizations in neither its degree of error nor in its disastrous impact. Governments and the experts they employ not only get things wrong but have frequently proven to be fundamentally wrong-headed on big questions.

To take another example in the realm of public health, it is increasingly widely recognized that the high-carb, low-fat diet recommendations, as depicted by the the USDA’s “Food Pyramid,” and successfully promoted for decades to the population by the US government and the most respected authorities on dietary science and epidemiology, was basically backward. Science journalist Gary Taub tells the whole story of bad science, corrupt influence, and obtuse orthodoxy in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Again, bad information leads to bad advice which leads to bad choices. So how much illness and even death was caused by generations of Americans uncritically swallowing “official” diet advice and by Americans largely only having one choice on the “menu” of diet advice?

The more we centralize decision-making and the management of actionable information, the wider the scope of the damage caused by any single error. But if we let a thousand errors bloom along with a thousand truths, any single error will be circumscribed in its damage and more likely to be corrected through experience and counter-argument.

Champions of policies like YouTube’s like to cast the issue in simplistic terms: as a black-and-white battle between respectable experts and wild-eyed crackpots. But the issue is more complex than that.

It is just as often a matter of overweening technocrats making pronouncements on matters that are way beyond them in complexity, that involve factors that fall way outside their domain of expertise, and that drastically impact the lives of millions or even billions. For example: a few dozen epidemiologists, with limited understanding of economics and a great many other relevant disciplines, holding sway over whole economies.

It is also a matter of dissenting experts being silenced along with the actual crackpots.

And, perhaps most fundamentally, it is a matter of weakening the individual’s ability to discern between truth and falsehood, good advice and bad, by denying them the responsibility and practice of doing so in the first place—of turning self-reliant, free men and women into irresponsible wards to be led by the nose like dumb, deferential livestock by their “expert” caretakers.

That is not where we are, but that is the direction that the rigid enforcement of centralized orthodoxies tends toward.

Let’s choose a different direction. YouTube, do better. Trust your users more. Treat them like human beings with all the capacities for learning, growth, discourse, and cooperation that are the distinctive glories of being human.

After all, that is what made you great in the first place. Your very name is derived from your original faith in the individual. YouTube (a crowd-sourced, individual-driven, pluralistic platform) is what made the boob tube (centralized, institutionalized, and homogenizing broadcast television) largely obsolete. As such, you had a starring role in the internet’s democratization of information and learning.

Don’t betray that legacy. Not now. Not when we need open platforms for the free flow of information and discourse more than ever.

COLUMN BY

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in-chief of FEE.org. He co-hosts the weekly web show FEEcast, serving as the resident “explainer.” … More by Dan Sanchez.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Rigid Lockdowns vs. Relative Freedom: A Tale of Two Southern Governors

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How do you explain the vastly different approach to the pandemic from two red states with similarly low coronavirus impact?

In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper has adopted the policy premise that anything done in the name of safety from the coronavirus trumps all other interests, including economic, religious, or other health considerations. Despite comparatively low numbers in the Tar Heel state, the ninth most populous state in the United States, and with no evidence of the healthcare system being overwhelmed, North Carolina has been in full lockdown for over a month.

It matters not if you live in the mountains or on the coast—rural or urban—all residents are required to shelter in place. Despite the crippling effect COVID-19 has had on the $25 billion tourism industry, the devastation to the small business community, and over a million job losses, “thou shalt not work” unless the good governor has deemed you “essential.”

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has operated under an alternative premise: that medical safety is a major consideration, but so is allowing people to protest, or to fish, or to earn a living. The governor in the Magnolia State has taken a lot of heat for being slow to slam the economy shut and quick to discuss reopening it. He has also caught a lot of flak for allowing counties and cities to determine what works best in their own communities and for refusing to tell Mississippi churches how to conduct their affairs. Like North Carolina, Mississippi has relatively low numbers of COVID-19 deaths and no apparent strain on the healthcare system, despite having a very high rate of citizens with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

Small businesses are on life support across both states. Jobless claims have risen to historic levels in the state of the Dogwood and in the state of the Magnolia—now higher than during the financial crisis. Medical advisers in both states are giving warnings and covering all their bases at daily briefings as they stand beside their respective governors. There is no question that both governors have taken this disease seriously and offered intelligent advice about how we should protect ourselves. So, how do you explain the vastly different approach to the pandemic from two red states with similarly low coronavirus impact?

The difference is in the tone, in the language, and in the viewpoint of how best to mitigate risks and protect citizens. Cooper’s instincts are to restrict the personal freedoms of his citizens; Reeves’ instincts are to protect the personal freedoms of his. Cooper believes shutting down businesses won’t lead to shortages of food and paper products and that denying the constitutional rights of his residents won’t lead to a citizen uprising. (Note citizens are staging weekly protests at the state capital and the governor’s mansion in Raleigh.) By contrast, Reeves has moved to open retail shops, acknowledged the rights of protestors to peacefully assemble at the Capitol, and refused to accept the premise that we must choose between prudent healthcare measures and protecting our economy.

In the state of Michael Jordan, hospitals are losing revenue and laying off personnel because the governor won’t allow the treatment of non-coronavirus patients. In the state of Archie Manning, elective procedures have begun again because the governor recognizes cancer surgeries are pretty “essential” to the patient.

History will judge how these two governors, and the other 48, managed this pandemic. But as data comes in, it’s looking like the quarantines will not prevent us from getting sick. It appears we’re basically delaying the inevitable infection rate. As these long days go by, the models continue to indicate initial predictions were vastly overstated. However, the data on the destruction of our economies and on the hopes and dreams of our citizens may be far worse than ever imagined.

The American economy is the greatest in the world because of all of the interconnected and voluntary exchanges that take place every day, in every community. It remains to be seen if this economic miracle of free enterprise can survive the kind of body blows delivered by the heavy hand of government—especially by the kind of authoritarian governors who seem hellbent on taking a sledgehammer to our economies when a scalpel would have been more useful.

COLUMN BY

Jon L. Pritchett

Jon L. Pritchett is president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the state’s non-partisan, free-market think tank. Prior to his work in public policy, he worked as an investment banker, executive, and entrepreneur over a 28-year career in private business.

Ed Tiryakian

Ed Tiryakian is the chief strategist and managing director of Argentum Group; a former first vice president at UBS/Paine Webber, serving on the President’s Council. Ed is starting his 10th year at Duke University as a visiting associate professor, teaching corporate finance and business economics at Duke University and is a Contributing Fellow at the Publius Institute.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White House Challenges Left’s Pandemic Playbook Narrative

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The White House pushed back on the media narrative that the Obama administration left behind a pandemic “playbook” for the Trump administration.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the playbook from the Obama administration was an insufficient packet of paper, and that the Trump administration’s own pandemic response exercise in 2019 exposed its shortcomings.

On Thursday, Dr. Rick Bright, a senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health that the administration should have known more about the coronavirus.

As a result, Bright said, “we were not as prepared as we should have been.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

“We missed early warning signals and we forgot important pages from our pandemic playbook,” Bright said. “There will be plenty of time to identify gaps for improvement.”

Much of the mainstream media, including CNN, Politico, and PBS, ran with the narrative that the Obama administration left a pathway for the Trump administration to better handle the coronavirus.

That wasn’t the case., McEnany said during the Friday press briefing.

“Some have erroneously suggested that the Trump administration threw out the pandemic response playbook left by the Obama-Biden administration,” McEnany said, holding up documents from the podium. “What the critics fail to note, however, is that this thin packet of paper was replaced by two detailed, robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration.”

“In 2018, the Trump administration issued our pandemic crisis action plan,” she said, adding:

Further, from August 13th to the 16th, the Trump administration conducted the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise. This was a pandemic simulation to test the nation’s ability to respond to a large-scale outbreak.

In January of 2020, [the Department of Health and Human Services] issued the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise after-action report. This exercise exposed the shortcomings in legacy planning documents, which informed President Trump’s coronavirus response.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive: Local Businesses Keep Doctors Safe

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Our small business success story this week comes from Arizona. A doctor who, after seeing his colleagues contract COVID-19 while providing care to COVID patients, became sick and tired of the risks and decided to act. He designed an intubation box to protect medical professionals during the intubation process and went to local businesses for help in creating it.

They stepped up. Via AZ Central:

Reeser first took his design to Phoenix-based mattress company, Tuft & Needle, which has built and donated dozens of intubation boxes to hospitals across the Valley using his plans. Hundreds more have been sent across the country with the help of additional partners. 

While Tuft & Needle didn’t have the resources on hand to make these boxes for Dr. Reeser, they did know who to call. Soon, they were on their way to building the boxes for Reeser and his colleagues.

However, Reeser wasn’t finished. He approached Urban Plough Furniture, which normally serves hospitality and office space firms, to make the same safety devices. Founder Matthew Moore, who had seen six months worth of business dry up, jumped on the chance to help his community and his company:

“And magically, Dr. Reeser shows up at our doorstep,” Moore said. 

Like Tuft & Needle, Moore’s company has been producing the intubation boxes at cost and donating them to doctors in need — they’re not making up for lost profits. But he says the work has given him purpose. 

This is what it means to “buy,” or in this case “ask,” local. Small businesses are always going to fight – and often lose – to faceless corporations that have lower per-product costs and thus can sell everything at a lower price. However, your local small business sees purpose in helping you and your family – whether it’s during the pandemic or during more normal economic times.

Serving communities takes all kinds of shapes. Buying local means that when times are tough, you have allies and friends to get you, your family, and your neighbors through tough times. Reeser and Moore are just a single example of the amazing community teamwork that is taking place across America.

How can you be a part of supporting local?

This post is part of 2ndVote’s coverage of business charity during the COVID-19 public health, social, and economic crises. We are highlighting companies large and small which are doing their part to help their communities.

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EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

See what Nancy Pelosi stuffed in her partisan ‘Coronavirus’ bill

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Nancy Pelosi’s left-wing wish list

If House Democrats are focused on helping Americans get through this global pandemic safely, they sure have a funny way of showing it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest extravagant, $3 trillion spending proposal is Washington at its worst—and most predictable. While President Trump, governors of both parties, and frontline workers band together to fight this virus as one country, House Democrats see an opportunity to exploit this crisis to pass their partisan agenda.

Millions of Americans are out of work. President Trump is trying to get them back on the job by safely reopening our country. Instead of helping him do it, here is what Democrats in Congress have decided is worth holding Coronavirus relief hostage for:

  • A BAN on information about low-cost health insurance. That’s right—House Democrats want to forbid the government from sharing any information with you about lower-cost health options such as association plans or short-term plans. Even as families try to cope with job and wage losses, Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want them to learn about options that are up to 60 percent cheaper than Obamacare.
  • Mass voting by mail. A “Coronavirus relief” bill might seem like the wrong time and place to dictate how states run their elections. Democrats disagree.
  • Stimulus checks for illegal aliens. Rather than protect American citizens by requiring a Social Security Number for taxpayer-funded stimulus, Pelosi’s bill would give illegal immigrants the ability to receive up to $1,200 in direct payouts.
  • Bailouts… for government. Democrats want more than $1 trillion in cash for state and local governments, mostly in the form of unrestricted aid that doesn’t need to be used to offset Coronavirus costs. They also threw in a $25 billion bailout for the Post Office.

The list goes on. At a moment when Americans most need Washington to look out for them and cut the partisan drama, Democrat leaders once again chose to put their far-left base first.

MORE: “Democrats’ new $3 trillion Coronavirus spending wishlist is another embarrassing farce”

President Trump is protecting our national stockpile

When the Coronavirus struck, President Trump knew that America needed to act quickly. He worked with Congress to secure $16 billion to build up our national stockpile with ventilators, masks, respirators, pharmaceuticals, and other critical supplies.

As a result, America today has an abundant supply of ventilators, N95 respirators, and resources for testing—a crucial area where we now lead the world.

But that’s only the start. President Trump knows that America’s long-term self-reliance depends on our supply chain. “Our goal for the future must be to have American medicine for American patients, American supplies for American hospitals, and American equipment for our great American heroes,” he says.

“Now, both parties must unite to ensure the United States is truly an independent nation in every sense of the word.”

Today, the President traveled to Pennsylvania, visiting a distribution center that’s played a key role in helping to restock America.

Just since February, the Owens & Minor Distribution Center in Upper Macungie has deployed 1.75 million N95 respirators, 3.4 million gowns, 80 million gloves, and much more across our country. “You’re making America proud,” President Trump told them.

President Trump: “We are reclaiming our heritage as a nation of manufacturers!”

WATCH: Our supply chains need to be HERE, not overseas

1% of Counties Home to Half of COVID-19 Cases, Over Half of Deaths

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As Heritage Foundation researchers have demonstrated throughout the pandemic, the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. has been extremely concentrated in a small number of states—and among a small number of counties within all states.

As of May 11, for example, 10 states accounted for almost 70% of all U.S. cases and nearly 75% of all deaths (but only 52% of the population). Together, New York and New Jersey alone account for 35% of all cases and 44% of total COVID-19 deaths, though only 9% of the U.S. population.

These state-level figures do not, however, adequately describe the concentrated nature of the spread of COVID-19.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

The 30 counties with the most COVID-19 cases, for example, account for 48% of all the cases in the U.S. and 55% of all deaths, three to four times greater than their 15% share of the U.S. population.

That is, just 1% of all counties, representing 15% of the U.S. population, are responsible for almost half of the country’s COVID-19 cases and more than half of the deaths.

Of those 30 counties, 24 are in the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Boston, the passageway served by a commuter railway system that runs through Manhattan.

Overall, only about 10% of all counties contain 95% of all the COVID-19 deaths, even though they account for 64% of the population.

Just as important, 50% of all counties (with 10% of the U.S. population) have zero COVID-19 deaths as of May 11. In fact, 63% of all counties (with 15% of the population) have no more than one COVID-19 death each.

So, while 1% of counties (mostly in the Northeast) have more than half of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., 63% of counties have no more than one COVID-19 death each—and both groups represent the same share of the U.S. population.

With many state and local governments starting to relax stay-at-home orders, it’s instructive to examine just how concentrated the spread of COVID-19 has been in the U.S.

The Heritage Foundation’s interactive COVID-19 tracker helps put these levels of concentrated cases in perspective. It provides county-level data that includes total cases, total cases as a percentage of the population, where that percentage ranks among all 3,145 counties, and a population density measure.

The tracker also describes whether the trend of cases is increasing or decreasing over the prior 14 days, and provides a visual depiction of new cases during this time period.

The information shows just how difficult it can be to use only one metric to gauge whether a county is doing well.

For instance, Jersey County, Illinois, on the state’s border with Missouri, has had an increasing case trend during the past 14 days. As the chart shows, however, the county has not had more than one new case per day since April 26.

Furthermore, the fact that Jersey County ranks almost squarely in the middle of all U.S. counties with a case total of just 0.08% of its population affirms that most counties have a relatively small number of COVID-19 cases.

Readers are invited to explore the information in the tracker and check back frequently for updates.

COLUMN BY

Norbert Michel

Norbert Michel studies and writes about housing finance, including the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow in financial regulations. Read his research. Twitter: @norbertjmichel.

Drew Gonshorowski

Drew Gonshorowski focuses his research and writing on the nation’s new health care law, including the repercussions for Medicare and Medicaid, as a policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. He also studies economic mobility and the Austrian school of economics. Twitter: @Gonshorowskd.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

I’m an ER Physician. Here’s Why Abortion Isn’t an ‘Essential Health Service.’

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Although we appear to be “flattening the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic, with governors slowly lifting stay-at-home orders and hospitals beginning to schedule surgeries again, infection spikes in certain regions remain a possibility.

Throughout the coming months, we need to focus as a society on medical care that will not only help us survive but thrive.

Working in emergency rooms as an emergency medicine physician of more than 20 years, I’m particularly concerned that abortion activists have been promoting and advocating abortion as an “essential health service.”

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

An essential health service is a health care action or medical procedure that is essential to protecting the life of a human. But the truth is that rather than helping women through this pandemic, abortion is more likely to worsen the toll of illness.

Any decision about a medical procedure as serious as terminating a pregnancy must be made with facts and an assessment of risks. When medical equipment is scarce and many resources must be directed toward treating victims of COVID-19, continuing to perform abortions is medically irresponsible.

Here are three key facts:

1. The stress of COVID-19 adds to abortion’s emotional toll.

Abortion is known to result in mental health issues, and COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate those negative effects. Anxiety and fear have exploded during this time as many Americans suffer from prolonged isolation and economic challenges.

Calls to the federal mental health crisis hotline are nearly 900% greater than this time last year. According to Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half (45%) of adults in the United States reported that their mental health has been affected negatively due to worry and stress over the coronavirus.

Combined with the emotional toll of abortion, the impact of this stress is amplified. Abortion long has been associated with serious, adverse mental health outcomes such as depression, grief, persistent sadness, and elevated stress—many of the same mental health challenges we are seeing from COVID-19.

>>> Brian Fisher, president of Human Coalition, is among guests set to participate in “Preserving Life in a Global Pandemic,” a Heritage Foundation webinar, at 11 a.m. May 13.

Losing a baby, whether from abortion or a spontaneous miscarriage, causes emotional pain. Women who have abortions face higher rates of depression.

Data shows an increase in the number of suicide attempts by women who previously had an abortion. In fact, women who get abortions are at a 154% increased risk of suicide, according to the Southern Medical Journal.

What’s more, we know that women sometimes are coerced into abortion as a result of domestic abuse. Claiming that abortion is an “essential health service” only will minimize the emotional risks, fueling this cycle of violence and pressure.

At a time when domestic abuse afflicts more women than ever before, we need to respect and support women, not encourage them to get abortions.

2. Complications from abortion are more dangerous during a pandemic.

Complications from an abortion are a significant risk—even more so during a pandemic with an over-stressed health care system. I’ve seen firsthand the life-threatening medical complications that stem from an abortion procedure.

This type of crisis is often the result of abortion clinics not being equipped to provide the necessary emergency care. Instead, they send women to the ER.

Abortion itself carries risks of infection and increases the likelihood of women needing additional medical supervision and treatment. Also, blood loss, inflammatory stress, and other adverse outcomes from abortion can compromise a woman’s health and immune system, which makes her more susceptible to contracting a virus.

Chemical abortions, such as by the brand-name drug Mifeprex, are no safer. Typically 5% to 7% of women who undergo a chemical abortion require surgical follow-up procedures. Experimenting with an abortion at home—especially right now—is very dangerous.

3.  COVID-19 doesn’t affect pregnancies.

I have heard from pregnant women who are worried that continuing a pregnancy during COVID-19 could be harmful. I understand their concerns, but the available data suggests that pregnant women do not suffer from coronavirus infections.

And as yet there is no evidence of vertical transmission of the coronavirus from mother to baby; the virus hasn’t been found in breast milk or amniotic fluid after birth. To date, the research shows that women infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy don’t have a higher incidence of compromised health or unhealthy babies.

Some women may be considering abortion because they fear that increased doctor visits and a hospital birth might expose them and their family at home to COVID-19. In actuality, abortion puts women at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 than their pregnancy does.

Abortion has long-term detrimental effects on a woman, the data shows. Our nation desperately needs more love and hope, and less death and despair.

The reality is that if women who face unplanned pregnancies view abortion as the “healthy” option, we know that it is in fact a fatal deception.

As a physician who deals with death daily in the ER, I can say that death of any kind is horrific. I believe we can and must protect the lives of both the young and the old, and this includes protecting preborn human life.

COMMENTARY BY

Dr. Scott French

Dr. Scott French oversees clinical operations for Human Coalition, a pro-life health care organization. He is a practicing board-certified emergency physician in Indiana and teaches emergency medicine.

RELATED ARTICLE: Judge in Transgender Athlete Case Dictates Use of Politically Correct Language

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

6 Big Points From the Senate’s COVID-19 Hearing With Fauci

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In one of the most unusual Senate hearings in U.S. history, top Trump administration health officials testified remotely Tuesday from their homes and offices to senators who also mostly were at home.

Here are six big moments from the three-and-a-half-hour hearing on the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic held via video by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

1. States Aren’t Following Guidelines

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned senators that if the U.S. economy is not reopened with proper precautions, the new coronavirus could come roaring back in the fall.

“If we do not respond in an adequate way when the fall comes, given that it is without a doubt that there will be infections that will be in the community, then we run the risk of having a resurgence,” Fauci testified.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

“I would hope that by that time, in the fall, that we would have more than enough to respond adequately,” he said, “but if we don’t, there will be problems.”

States should not be flouting the Trump administration’s guidelines for a phased reopening across the nation, Fauci said.

“What I’ve expressed then and again is my concern that if some areas, cities, states, or what have you jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently—my concern is that we will start to see little spikes [of COVID-19 cases] that might turn into outbreaks,” Fauci told the Senate committee.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

Fauci did not call out specific states or governors.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, are among the least restrictive, allowing the reopening of salons and other businesses that might be more prone to spread germs. Both states opened up again before April 30, the earliest suggested by the Trump administration.

Trump has publicly criticized Kemp at least twice.

2. ‘Little Bit of Humility’

Sen. Rand Paul, one of the senators actually present in the hearing room, got into a respectful verbal tussle with Fauci as the Kentucky Republican referred to studies suggesting that patients who recovered from COVID-19 had built up immunity.

Paul himself recovered.

“I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy,” Paul said, adding:

And as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge [of COVID-19 cases] and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.

Fauci responded that he was aware of the limits to his expertise.

“I have never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice in this,” Fauci said. “I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice [based] on the best scientific evidence.”

3. Death Toll Likely Higher

The official U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is almost 82,000.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., however, suggested it is much higher.

“The official statistic, Dr. Fauci, is that 80,000 Americans have died from the pandemic,” Sanders said. “There are some epidemiologists who suggest the number may be 50% higher than that. What do you think?”

Fauci said the number likely isn’t that much higher, but guessed it’s higher than the official estimate.

“I’m not sure, Senator Sanders, if it’s going to be 50% higher,” Fauci said. “But most of us feel that the number of deaths are likely higher than that number, because given the situation, particularly in New York City, when they were really strapped with a very serious challenge to their health care system, that there may have been people who died at home who did have COVID who are not counted as COVID because they never really got to the hospital.”

“So, in direct answer to your question,” he told Sanders, “I think you are correct that the number is likely higher. I don’t know what percent higher, but almost certainly it’s higher.”

4. ‘Criminally Vague’

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pressed Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about when the CDC would release specific guidelines for schools to open in the fall.

The CDC guidelines are supposed to be far more detailed than what was released by the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“Guidances that you’ve talked about have gone through that interagency review,” Redfield said. “Their comments have come back to CDC, and I anticipate they’ll go back up into the task force for final review.”

He added: “I do anticipate this broader guidance, though, [will] be posted on the CDC website soon.”

This answer wasn’t good enough for Murphy, who went on to attack President Donald Trump.

“‘Soon’ isn’t terribly helpful,” Murphy said, complaining that the coronavirus task force’s guidelines are “criminally vague.”

“I worry that you’re trying to have it both ways,” the Connecticut Democrat added. “You say that states should not open too early, but then you don’t give us the resources to succeed. You work for a president who is, frankly, undermining our efforts to comply with the guidelines that you have given us.”

5. Reopening Colleges in the Fall

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a former president of the University of Tennessee, talked about the need not only for Americans to return to work, but for colleges to reopen in the fall.

“There is not enough money available to help all those hurt by a closed economy,” Alexander said. “All roads back to work, back to school, lead through testing, tracking, isolation, treatment, and vaccines. This requires widespread testing—millions more testing created mostly by new technologies to identify those who are sick, who have been exposed, so they can be quarantined [and] by containing the disease in this way, give the rest of America enough confidence to go back to work and school.”

On the heels of Trump’s announcing that testing for COVID-19 would reach 300,000 per day in May, with about 10 million tested by the end of the week, the Tennessee Republican said there still is not enough testing.

“In the near term, to help make sure those 31,000 UT students and faculty members show up in August, we need widespread testing,” he said.

In a question to Fauci, Alexander noted a conversation he had with a chancellor for a Tennessee university about reopening in the fall. In response, Fauci didn’t sound optimistic. 

“Well, I would be very realistic with the chancellor and tell … her that in this case that the idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” Fauci said.

Also testifying remotely at the unprecedented hearing were Stephen Hahn, who heads the Food and Drug Administration, and Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services.

All four health officials testified remotely because they came into contact with a White House aide who tested positive last week for COVID-19.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the Trump administration has “nothing to celebrate whatsoever” in the expansion of coronavirus testing.

“Yesterday, you celebrated that we had done more tests and more tests per capita even than South Korea,” Romney told the officials. “But you ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March.”

6. Optimism for Vaccine

The hearing’s high note perhaps came when Fauci, in a response to Romney, predicted that a vaccine could be ready within the next one or two years.

“Given our history with vaccine creation for other coronaviruses, how likely is it?” Romney asked, adding: “Is it extremely likely we are going to get a vaccine within a year or two? Is it more likely than not? Or, is it kind of a long shot?”

Fauci picked the middle answer, but explained in a scientific manner that nevertheless presented hope.

“It’s definitely not a long shot, Sen. Romney. I would think that it’s more likely than not that we will,” Fauci said. “This is a virus that uses an immune response and people recover.”

The immunologist went on to explain:

The overwhelming majority of people recover from this virus. Although there is a morbidity and mortality at a level in certain populations, the very fact that the body is capable of spontaneously clearing the virus tells me that, at least from a conceptual standpoint, we can stimulate the body with a vaccine that would induce a similar response.

Although there is no guarantee, I think it clearly is more likely than not that sometime within that time frame, we will get a vaccine for this virus.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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RELATED VIDEO: The Gloating of the Mask-Wearers.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Stop Forcing People to Wear Masks Over COVID-19 Fears

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Whether masks actually prevent the spread of respiratory infection remains a subject of debate. As recently as March, the US Surgeon General was saying face coverings could actually increase one’s risk of infection.

There’s a famous scene in the movie Fight Club where Tyler Durden is on an airplane thumbing through one of those safety manuals in emergency exit rows.

“An exit door procedure at 30,000 feet,” says Durden (Brad Pitt). “The illusion of safety.”

It’s a memorable scene because it touches on the strange things humans do to make ourselves feel secure in frightening situations. Which brings me to America’s latest fad: wearing masks in public.

Polls show that more than half of Americans are now choosing to wear masks when they go out, presumably to prevent catching or spreading the COVID-19 virus. What one chooses to wear is up to them, of course, but the trend is a bit surprising considering government officials spent months telling Americans not to wear protective face coverings.

“We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said on January 31. “And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”

Throughout February and into March, similar statements were made by numerous other top government officials and agencies.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said “the average American does not need a N95 mask. These are really more for health care providers.” He was echoed by Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that there “is no role for these masks in the community.” In February, the US Surgeon General chimed in on Twitter, “STOP BUYING MASKS.”

Despite these warnings, the popularity of masks grew. “Maskies”—selfies of people wearing masks—are the latest trend on Instagram, Fast Company reports. They’ve become a symbol and form of expression, a way to show social solidarity and empowerment.

“When everyone is wearing masks, I feel respected,” one woman recently told National Geographic. “The message is: I’m protecting you, you’re protecting me, I can feel safe.”

Feel safe. That’s the key word. Whether masks actually prevent the spread of respiratory infection remains a subject of debate.

There’s a reason public officials made the statements above. An abundance of research shows masks offer little or no protection against infection from respiratory viruses, and some masks can actually increase one’s risk of infection.

A 2011 randomized clinical trial found that medical masks offered no protection at all. A 2015 study concluded rates of infection were especially high in cloth masks, finding particle penetration in nearly 97 percent of them. A 2016 paper that analyzed six clinical studies found that N95 respirator masks fared no better than medical masks in preventing respiratory infection.

As recently as April 7, a paper analyzing data from 15 randomized trials concluded that “compared to no masks there was no reduction of influenza-like illness cases for influenza for masks in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.” Despite the lack of hard empirical evidence, however, the study’s authors recommended the use of masks based on “observational evidence from the previous SARS epidemic.”

Perhaps similar reasoning guided the CDC’s about-face in April when it issued guidance recommending the use of cloth face coverings for healthy individuals (though the World Health Organization still advises against them).

Recommended is the key word here. We’re now in May, a mere two months after federal authorities were imploring Americans to not wear or buy masks, and many people are finding themselves forced to wear masks to do their shopping or even go for a walk.

This month the megastore Costco began demanding that customers wear masks to do their shopping. As a private company, Costco has such a right. But many states in mid April began taking things further, demanding that citizens wear masks to leave their homes. The latest state to join the bandwagon is Massachusetts. The new order requires anyone over the age of two to wear a mask or face covering in public places, even if they are outdoors.

In the span of just two months, we’ve gone from urging people to not buy or wear masks (and warning face coverings could increase the risk of infection) to threatening to fine and jail those who don’t wear them. Americans, understandably, are confused. And it’s not helping.

This week in Michigan, a Family Dollar security guard was killed after refusing to allow a woman’s daughter into the store because she wasn’t wearing a mask. The guard was enforcing an executive order Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed two weeks earlier.

While only those people directly involved in the guard’s death are responsible, such confrontations could be avoided if state governors exercised a little humility and acknowledged that CDC recommendations are not gospel and the department’s conclusions (clearly) are not infallible.

Good ideas generally don’t require force. And the truth is, based on an abundance of medical research and the federal government’s own statements and reports, it’s unclear how effective masks are as a preventive measure against COVID-19 transmission.

Public health aside, there’s no disputing the psychological impact masks have.

“The coronavirus is coming, and we feel rather helpless,” Dr. William Schaffner, Professor of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University, told CNN in March. “By getting masks and wearing them, we move the locus of control somewhat to ourselves.”

In a sense, the mask craze is largely about managing our fears. As my colleague Sean Malone recently observed, when people are afraid they’re much more willing to accept anything they believe might make them a little safer. Even really bad policies and ideas.

The illusion of safety. It’s a powerful thing. For both humans and governments, it would seem.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, and Fox News.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved

VIDEO: CBS News and Cherry Health Issue Conflicting Statements on FAKE COVID Testing Line

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Earlier today, we sent you our latest video reporting the CBS News segment featuring a FAKE COVID-19 testing line at Cherry Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that later appeared on “CBS This Morning.”

As a result of this video going public, both Cherry Health and CBS News issued statements to explain what they claim really happened.

The only problem is these two statements are in conflict with each other.

Here is what Cherry Health and CBS News said:

As you can see, Cherry Health’s President and CEO Tasha Blackmon is denying having instructed her staff to participate in a fake testing line.

On the other hand, CBS News claims they did not stage the line and that one of Cherry Health’s “chief officers told at least one staffer to get in the testing line along with real patients.”

The truth still remains clouded. The public has a right to know who staged this fake COVID-19 testing line and why.

We spoke with Michigan State Representative Steve Johnson who expressed concern for the mixed messaging.

We are still awaiting feedback from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who appeared at Cherry Health just two months earlier with Presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

Project Veritas will continue to pursue this story in order to uncover what really happened in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In Truth.

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Treason: The Major Issues of the 2020 Election and The Ideological Pandemic

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A global pandemic requires a global response and solution. This time it is more than just virus—it is ideology as well. Yes, a virus is invisible, but the criminals who unleashed it are very visible and well-known. That is the reason, publishing my latest column on April 12, 2020, I titled it Covid-19: A Fascist Terror Act against Humanity. I did it deliberately to remind you the history of the global crime committed by a Socialist/Communist regime—The Project of 1955. The Soviets sent the Project to all Socialist Camp countries to study and to follow the Soviet order. The covid-19 pandemic illustrates this ominous order. Only people who read or know the Project of 1955 can objectively assess origins of China’s covid-19 pandemic and the force we are up against. The Project bared its evil nature and the agenda of Socialism/Communism to achieve global control—a total destruction of capitalism, Western civilization, and its leader, the American Constitutional Republic.

That menacing agenda drove me to warn you for the last thirty-five years to be informed and ready for a disaster ahead of us.  I have introduced you to a Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who introduced the Soviet Ideological Subversion of America in Four Stages, a plan to destabilize Western civilization and destroy the global system of capitalism. Even more, I showed the infiltration of the Dems Party by the KGB, and its transformation by the traitors who led it. I did all of that, because I knew the Project of 1955, its methods and the tricks it used to succeed. Here is the latest example:

“While watching the so-called Trump/Dossier documentary in the 2017, it did not take me even ten seconds to realize that it was Russian “fallshivka” a fraud in front of me. Everything in the Dossier exposed the KGB’s handwriting: its arrogant manner of presentation, method, character with an aggressive and salacious tone to denigrate President Trump, the Republican Party, and to influence American opinion. It was a vivid picture of the incredible dirt being dumped on Trump, a typical Stalinist legacy of demonizing and attacking the opposition leader, used by the KGB.” I wrote that in my column The Global Spy Ring, January 1, 2018.

The History of Treason

The term KGB applies to the entire Russian Security Apparatus in my column. For me, the Trump/Dossier was the first sign of the KGB’s big scheme to fight personally President Trump from the first day he had announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency. This successful capitalist had then become a very comfortable target to destroy and with him a political system designed by our Founding Fathers. In the KGB alliance with the DNC, everything that followed had been coordinated and calculated by the Obama/Putin Conspiracy. Our weaponized Intel has participated in the conspiracy. I had figured out that years ago. Look here at my column Failed American Intelligence, on August 1, 2018:

First: Anti-Trump “criminal cabal” was manufactured and organized by Russian Intel through Democrats’ leadership and the Clinton Mafia.

Second: Anti-Trump “criminal cabal” consists of two groups: the leadership of the Deep State and the leadership of the Clinton Mafia. Today, Rod J. Rosenstein of the DOJ is a connective link of the two groups.

Third: Anti-Trump “criminal cabal” is run by three individuals: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Vladimir Putin. The three are working together for decades…

Forth: Investigation of this huge case of international espionage and treason requires deep knowledge of Russia and its Intel. The current FBI Director, Christopher Wray did not read my books, he doesn’t know that it took Stalin twenty-nine years to create and establish the Chinese Communist State. The structure, agenda, and ideology were identical in Russia and China. The two National Intelligence Agencies executed the same strategy, tactics, methods, and tricks, working hand in glove. Yet, there is a difference today: a billion hardworking Chinese people have achieved substantially more than the alcoholic and drug addled Russians…

 AG Barr is not “Disrupting Justice in America”

President Trump wasn’t the only one accused by the Dems of being a Russian agent. Three other Republicans have also been accused of the analogous crime with a common narrative: collaboration, connection or helping Russia in disrupting the 2016 election. It was the second KGB stage of confronting the Republican President Trump that I noticed a familiar KGB behavior. The abuses of power, methods, and dirty tactics used against General Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos testified to that—the FBI created crime, like Stalin did in Russia…

General Michael Flynn went through hell for three years of FBI investigation. As we know now, Flynn was entrapped, which is a deliberate act of crime, not err of judgment on the part of the FBI investigators. Unprecedented corruption and abuses of power by this Law-Enforcement agency had been used against all four Republicans. Maybe the cruelest prosecution of General Flynn took place, because he knew something about Obama/Putin conspiracy??? Yet…

There was the third stage of the KGB’s scheme—the manufactured Mueller Report. I watched Robert Mueller testifying before the Congress. It was a tragic spectacle–I was ashamed for my country. The Mueller Report is a fraud perpetrated by someone, not by Robert Mueller. He didn’t know the major elements of the report and his mental capacity was at question. The KGB, as usual were using mental deficiency to its own benefit. I have an idea of who committed the fraud and fabricated the report. Read here my columns, Origin of the Washington Spy-Ring and the Swamp, March 31, 2018.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its catastrophic impact on our economy reminds us that we are still dealing with The Global Spy Ring, where the Democrat Party and DNC are a part of the ring. Don’t be surprised that the Dems and DNC are the part of the ring. During the last 3-4 decades Truman’s Democrat Party was infiltrated by the KGB and suffocated, a new Socialist Party was born with leaders hell bent on damaging the free market while building Socialism in America. This utopian ideology has become a major divide between the current Democrats and Republicans, a war you are witnessing every day…

This war is known to me, but it is not a Cold War with China. Warning you for the last two decades, I called it WWIII. It is waged by the ideology of Socialism/Communism against Western civilization and the American Republic. The current Democrats joined the war on the side of Socialism against the Republican Party. Don’t be surprised that Democrats don’t want to hold China accountable for the covid-19: they are sharing the same ideology, first with Russia and then with China in the 21st century. The Russian/Chinese Intel runs the ideology in both countries and has infiltrated all corners of our society and its elite: from Hollywood to the media, from Harvard University to the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea of the massive, deep, and ubiquitous infiltration by the KGB into American institutions in the 20th century. They do not know that two U.S. Presidents had been chosen for them by the KGB.

 Stalinist Postulate in the 21st century America

Offence is the best defense—this was the slogan and policy of the Soviet apparatchiks taught by Stalin. “Never admit the crime committed, but accuse the opposition in that exact crime” Stalin’s Postulate. This policy helped the Soviet system to survive for a hundred years, and under Putin’s leadership the current apparatchiks are flourishing in Russia today. Yes, nothing substantial has changed in Russia. The KGB is still running the country with a crony capitalism instead of failed socialism. That’s it. The agenda is still the same—One World Government Under Kremlin’s Rule and for Putin to be a President of the world. This is the answer to what is happening in America in the 21st century.

The Obama/Putin conspiracy and its massive cover-up had required action to save the Democrat Party from accountability for treason. The Stalinist postulate was successfully used to blame the Republicans for collaborating with the KGB, like Stalin taught. The Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the accusation that Trump colluded with them, is the KGB’s maneuvering trick to cover-up their real collaboration with the Democrat Party for decades. It is not a coincidence that 20-30 of my latest columns had been describing the KGB and its Chairman Yuri Andropov. We are witnessing the disastrous result of failed American Intelligence in May 2020. The FBI Director is an empty suit or dupe of the enemy, he doesn’t understand Russian Security Agencies and allowed them to undermine the American Constitutional system from within. What a shame!

The situation in America is even worse than we know today. From twenty-two Democratic candidates for the U.S. presidency, six had been sponsored by the KGB and George Soros. They were preparing for you the third American Manchurian President. For your information, two from the six came to the finish line: Trojan Horse Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. They deserve each other, yet there is one difference between two of them—Trojan Horse Bernie knows that his campaign is being run by Putin’s KGB, Joe Biden doesn’t not know it, Obama didn’t tell him…

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com and at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/

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China Asked The WHO To Help Cover Up Coronavirus, German Intelligence Concludes

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Chinese Leader Xi Jinping personally asked the World Health Organization to delay the release of critical information regarding its coronavirus outbreak, German intelligence has concluded.

Xi met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on January 21 to request that he withhold information about human-to-human transition and delay the declaration of a global pandemic, according to German magazine Der Spiegel. The news comes amid rising sentiment that China should be held financially responsible for the pandemic.

“The BND’s verdict is harsh: At least four, if not six, weeks have been lost in Beijing’s information policy in the fight against the virus,” Der Spiegel reported.

The developments from German intelligence caught the attention of U.S. politicians investigating China’s handling of the coronavirus as well.

“We are still working to confirm this reporting. But if it turns out to be true, it’s further proof Director-General Tedros conspired with the Chinese Communist Party in their cover up and is not fit to lead the WHO,” Texas Republican and Chairman of the House China Task Force Michael McCaul told the Daily Caller.

BND is the native German acronym for its Federal Intelligence Service. Four to six weeks of additional preparation time could have avoided the global pandemic entirely, according to a study published in early March. Researchers at the University of Southampton found that if China had acted and gone public with its information just three weeks sooner, it could have reduced spread of the disease by as much as 95%.

COLUMN BY

ANDERS HAGSTROM

White House correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Over Half of US Counties Have Had No COVID-19 Deaths

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With many state and local governments starting to relax stay-at-home orders, it’s instructive to examine just how concentrated the spread of COVID-19 has been in the U.S.

Although all U.S. states have reported cases of COVID-19, the distribution of the cases and deaths has remained heavily concentrated in a small number of states, and among a small number of counties within all states.

For instance, as of May 4, just 10 states account for 70% of all U.S. cases and 77% of all deaths. Together, New York and New Jersey alone account for 38% of all cases and 48% of total COVID-19 deaths.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Just five states—New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California—account for 54% of all of the confirmed cases in the U.S. and 61% of all coronavirus deaths.

These state-level figures do not, however, adequately describe the concentrated nature of the spread of COVID-19.

As the first chart shows, the 30 counties with the most COVID-19 cases account for 50% of all the cases in the U.S. (and 57% of all deaths). That is, just 1% of the counties in the U.S. are responsible for half of the country’s coronavirus cases and more than half of the deaths.

Of those 30 counties, 24 are in the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Boston, the passageway served by a commuter railway system that runs through Manhattan. Overall, just 11% of the counties in the U.S. contain nearly 95% of all the COVID-19 deaths.

Just as important, as the second chart shows, 52% of all U.S. counties have had zero COVID-19 deaths as of May 4.

Also as of May 4, 13 states have deaths that remain unallocated to respective counties. At most, those allocations could reduce the number of zero-death counties by 2 percentage points.

The chart also illustrates that 66% of all U.S. counties have no more than one coronavirus death, 80% have five or fewer, 86% have 10 or fewer, and 89% have fewer than 15.

Put another way, only about 10% of the counties in the U.S. have 15 or more COVID-19 deaths, and throughout the epidemic, the spread of COVID has remained highly concentrated in a handful of geographic locations in the U.S.

COLUMN BY

Norbert Michel

Norbert Michel studies and writes about housing finance, including the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow in financial regulations. Read his research. Twitter: @norbertjmichel.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: NRA Endorses ‘Big Dan’ Rodimer for US Congress

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LAS VEGAS/PRNewswire/ — Nevada Congressional candidate “Big Dan” Rodimer is proud to announce that he has received the official endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his run for the 3rd District. The NRA officially gave Rodimer an AQ rating, the highest rating possible for a candidate who has not previously held office.

In response to the endorsement, Rodimer stated, “I am very honored and proud to have the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in my run for Congress. The NRA is America’s longest-serving civil rights organization, with tens of thousands of members right here in Nevada and in the 3rd Congressional District. The NRA knows that I will fight to defend our 2nd Amendment Rights against gun-grabbers like Dan Schwartz and Susie Lee. Thank you to the NRA and all of their members here in Nevada.”

The NRA endorsement comes as a major boost to the Rodimer campaign since his primary opponent, former Nevada Treasurer Dan Schwartz, has openly spoken out in favor of Bloomberg-style, anti-2nd Amendment proposals, including a ban on alleged “assault rifles” in Nevada.

Big Dan Rodimer has made it clear time and again that he is the pro-2nd Amendment candidate in the race for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District. Rodimer has often described gun rights as “human rights” and proudly possesses a CCW permit.

Since announcing his campaign for Congress last year, Rodimer has received endorsements from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Nevada Right to Life and National Right to Life organizations, former Nevada Attorney General and current Nevada Trump Campaign Co-Chairman Adam Laxalt and highly successful Las Vegas businessman and reality TV star from the hit show “Pawn Stars”, Rick Harrison, among many others.

In February, Rodimer was placed on National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) Young Guns “Contender” status, the highest-ranking status of any congressional candidate in Nevada, signifying continued strength and momentum of his campaign, and opening the door for continued support from across the country. Every other Republican candidate in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District has either refused to fill out the NRA survey or received an “F” rating.

You can learn more about Big Dan Rodimer click here. For regular updates on the campaign of Big Dan Rodimer for Congress, you can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.