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One heck of a dishonest report from CBS’s 60 Minutes on the medical mask shortage

CBS, the network that brought us the crying nurse with mental health issues who didn’t understand hospital procedures, and the two, count ’em, two, video instances of Italian hospital mayhem to make phony claims about chaos at New York and Pennsylvania hospitals in the coronavirus pandemic, has now put out another whopper.

This time, it’s a 60 Minutes segment about mask and personal protective equipment shortages at a New York City hospital, which, its report argues, is all Trump’s fault.

Here is their tweet with the segment:

 

 

Wow. With a record like CBS’s on this crisis, you’d think they’d be extra careful about facts, particularly since their top brand, 60 Minutes, is involved. But nope, they’re still promoting the same dishonest narrative that drove those previous credibility killers – that America’s hospitals are all overwhelmed (they’re not), and President Trump is to blame (such garbage). There’s a heck of a lot of evidence out there about one hospital’s problems obtaining personal protective equipment has nothing to do with what’s going on out there.

To be sure, it’s likely that some hospitals, such as the one featured, Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, are overwhelmed, thought 60 Minutes never got around to ask the hospital bosses about this. The featured hospital is in New York City after all, where living space is tight, the Chinese New Year’s parade went forward, the schools stayed open, the packed subways remain the only practical way to get around, and the coronavirus has in fact hit hard. Jacobi was featured by 60 Minutes as a proxy for all hospitals, and probably has some real problems, even though the nurse quoted was an activist protestor, and much of the footage inside the hospital showed no social distancing efforts among supposedly terrified and underequipped medical personnel there. We can accept that there are problems.

The ‘why’ of it is where the shoddy journalism came in. As 60 Minutes painted a picture of doom and gloom, and then featured a gotcha interview with White House advisor Peter Navarro, with argumentive questions in strong contrast to the credulous softball questions thrown out to the individual Bronx doctor and nurse (they didn’t ask anyone running the actual hospital what might be going on), other stuff around the country suggested other things:  

Here’s what’s being put out by medical personnel on TikTok and Twitter, as this 60 Minutes report came out, no social distancing required:

 

 

(Here are Canadian and U.K. examples, too — unlike CBS, I checked when and where).

Fact is, not every hospital is overwhelmed. The nurses and medics doing their butt dance might well be fine doing it, given that they may not be as overwhelmed as some parts of New York, and heck, hospital work can be stressful and monotonous, so no harm in letting them have their fun and build their cameraderie. It’s obviously not in a hospital in distress owing to an absence of personal protective equipment.

The real question is why Jacobi was so seemingly lacking in personal protective equipment.

First, did the hospital have its National Institutes for Health’s recommended 10-week supply of personal protective equipment, with an even higher stockpile recommended for pandemics? That’s what the NIH cited from a Canadian study in the wake of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

The authors reported that the Ministry of Health plans for pandemic influenza called for hospitals to have a 10-week supply of PPE equipment, but they did not account for increases in the supplies that would be needed.

You’d think a place in New York, which is more vulnerable than more spread out places might have that as a consideration. 

Did the hospital have a 10-week supply? When did they run out? Why did they run out – was it an “out the door” problem, as President Trump brought up earlier with regard to a New York hospital, which is far from immune from inside criminality? 60 Minutes never asked.

How were purchasing decisions made at Jacobi? Was it a mismanagement issue, some bad planning? According to HealthLink Dimensions, a medical site, this is a typical scenario:

Physicians and administrators seem to agree that ease of use and staff requirements for training are important considerations for large scale purchases. For all hospital departments, the transition to value-based care has meant an increased emphasis on keeping costs under control and maintaining efficient operations, strategic imperatives that have a powerful impact when buying new equipment.

60 Minutes never asked. And how many COVID-19 cases did they treat? Again, 60 Minutes never asked.

Second, the hospital seemed to have had problems well before the coronavirus outbreak. This ranking from U.S. News & World Report is anything but flattering:

To help patients decide where to receive care, U.S. News generates hospital rankings by evaluating data on nearly 5,000 hospitals in 16 adult medical specialties, 9 adult medical procedures or conditions and 10 pediatric specialties. To be nationally ranked in a specialty, a hospital must excel in caring for the sickest, most medically complex patients. The ratings in procedures and conditions, by contrast, focus on typical Medicare patients. Hospitals that do well in multiple areas of adult care may be ranked in their state and metropolitan area. This hospital achieved the highest rating possible in 1 procedure or condition. Read more about how we rank best hospitals.

A highest rating in only one speciality in a big New York hospital? It appears to be “high performing” on just heart failure issues, and only based on survival rates, which is commendable. But there’s also the below-average rating it got for knee surgery, as well as the large number of average ratings it got, and the even larger number of no ratings at all, which has to be a red flag.

It also got a “fewer than average” rating for timely immunizations against seasonal flu, which might just be linked to why it sees so many contagious disease cases.

Most troubling was the rating it got for “patient experience,” displaying a rock-bottom rating of one out of five stars on all fronts, including cleanliness, with only a single exception for physician communication, for which it got two stars. U.S. News says that that atrocious detail doesn’t figure in its rankings for determining top hospitals — if it did, it’s unlikely Jacobi would be ranked among the tops. 60 Minutes didn’t ask about that and whether such patient experiences might be related to management issues with could also include bad supply management.

The doctor quoted was a general surgeon, and while he came off as generally credible until he started blaming Trump, but the CBS report didn’t clarify whether he was on the front lines of infectious disease treatment or not. The nurse came off as an activist, and a less-than-credible medical person based on her multiple ear piercings, she was the loudest Trump-blamer, but may well have had a longstanding history of union activism against the hospital and was not letting this crisis go to waste. Her claims about how all other countries (is she thinking of Italy? Spain? U.K.?) have all the personal equipment they need is probably ignorance-based, but 60 Minutes knew the truth of that one and ran with her low-information nonsense anyway.

In any case, the condition of the hospital is germane to the issue, because both medical people quoted blamed the issue on Trump instead of the mismanagement and failure to plan of their own hospital (which probably pleased their bosses), and 60 Minutes asked no questions. 

The whole thing – the hospital shortages, the hospital’s inability to get what they needed from other hospitals, and the depleted national medical stockpile, was simply blamed on Trump. 

The left-wing Atlantic Monthly’s Olga Khazan, debunked this good a few days ago, putting out an excellent piece filled with hard facts, and credible sources on what the national medical stockpile is, how it’s supposed to be used, and why it’s depleted of personal protective equipment:

Start with this:

But the stockpile was never intended to be the nation’s great savior. It wasn’t supposed to provide all of the nation’s medical-supply needs for a multi-month pandemic. Congress never doled out enough money for it to do so. Instead, the officials who monitored the national stockpile were hopeful that hospitals were making their own stockpiles. But to save money, they largely weren’t. In that context, the skimpy mask supply in the Strategic National Stockpile is not the thing that derailed the American response to COVID-19. Rather, it’s one of a series of planning failures that created the crisis we’re in today.

Just like everything else in the government, the Strategic National Stockpile is funded through congressional appropriations. That means there’s a limited amount of money to be spent, and the people in charge of the stockpile have to decide how to spend it. Officials bought millions of N95 masks and other flu-type preparations with supplemental congressional funding that trickled in from 2005 to 2007, says Greg Burel, who was the director of the stockpile from 2007 until January 2020. But then that supplemental money dried up.

Maybe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who ultimately decides appropriations, should be answering a few questions. Not a chance of course, with 60 Minutes.

The China factor, and the fact that China had a monopoly on mask manufacture and was using it to not sell masks, was also cited, just as the hapless Peter Navarro did when he tried to explain the matter to 60 Minutes.

There’s also this:

Still, the fundamental mission of the stockpile remained the same: A stopgap, not a safety net. Jared Kushner drew opprobrium last week for appearing to say that the states were on their own when it comes to medical supplies. “The notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” he said.

Although Kushner’s wording was undeniably inartful, the former stockpile directors said he sort of has a point. “Kushner doesn’t know exactly how to phrase it, but the stockpile was never designed to be for everybody all at once, anything that you might need for as long as you need,” Levy said.

The stockpile, Burel and Levy told me, was never meant to provide masks for the entire nation for months at a time. The idea was instead that hospitals and states would create their own stockpiles, and under extenuating circumstances—when they ran out of supplies, or if they were incapacitated for some reason—they could fall back on the national stockpile.

60 Minutes has converted what’s essentially a hospital failure into a federal obligation to subsidize the hospital’s poor planning.

It was a dishonest as heck report that revolved solely around blaming Trump. How happy the hospital mismanagers and out-the-door inside crowd must have been to have read about this. Do whatever you want and blame Trump. The rest of us can only see a lot of dishonest journalism, creating quite a tapestry pattern of error, again, and again, and again.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain sources

 

CBS, the network that brought us the crying nurse with mental health issues who didn’t understand hospital procedures, and the two, count ’em, two, video instances of Italian hospital mayhem to make phony claims about chaos at New York and Pennsylvania hospitals in the coronavirus pandemic, has now put out another whopper.

This time, it’s a 60 Minutes segment about mask and personal protective equipment shortages at a New York City hospital, which, its report argues, is all Trump’s fault.

Here is their tweet with the segment:

 

 

Wow. With a record like CBS’s on this crisis, you’d think they’d be extra careful about facts, particularly since their top brand, 60 Minutes, is involved. But nope, they’re still promoting the same dishonest narrative that drove those previous credibility killers – that America’s hospitals are all overwhelmed (they’re not), and President Trump is to blame (such garbage). There’s a heck of a lot of evidence out there about one hospital’s problems obtaining personal protective equipment has nothing to do with what’s going on out there.

To be sure, it’s likely that some hospitals, such as the one featured, Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, are overwhelmed, thought 60 Minutes never got around to ask the hospital bosses about this. The featured hospital is in New York City after all, where living space is tight, the Chinese New Year’s parade went forward, the schools stayed open, the packed subways remain the only practical way to get around, and the coronavirus has in fact hit hard. Jacobi was featured by 60 Minutes as a proxy for all hospitals, and probably has some real problems, even though the nurse quoted was an activist protestor, and much of the footage inside the hospital showed no social distancing efforts among supposedly terrified and underequipped medical personnel there. We can accept that there are problems.

The ‘why’ of it is where the shoddy journalism came in. As 60 Minutes painted a picture of doom and gloom, and then featured a gotcha interview with White House advisor Peter Navarro, with argumentive questions in strong contrast to the credulous softball questions thrown out to the individual Bronx doctor and nurse (they didn’t ask anyone running the actual hospital what might be going on), other stuff around the country suggested other things:  

Here’s what’s being put out by medical personnel on TikTok and Twitter, as this 60 Minutes report came out, no social distancing required:

 

 

(Here are Canadian and U.K. examples, too — unlike CBS, I checked when and where).

Fact is, not every hospital is overwhelmed. The nurses and medics doing their butt dance might well be fine doing it, given that they may not be as overwhelmed as some parts of New York, and heck, hospital work can be stressful and monotonous, so no harm in letting them have their fun and build their cameraderie. It’s obviously not in a hospital in distress owing to an absence of personal protective equipment.

The real question is why Jacobi was so seemingly lacking in personal protective equipment.

First, did the hospital have its National Institutes for Health’s recommended 10-week supply of personal protective equipment, with an even higher stockpile recommended for pandemics? That’s what the NIH cited from a Canadian study in the wake of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

The authors reported that the Ministry of Health plans for pandemic influenza called for hospitals to have a 10-week supply of PPE equipment, but they did not account for increases in the supplies that would be needed.

You’d think a place in New York, which is more vulnerable than more spread out places might have that as a consideration. 

Did the hospital have a 10-week supply? When did they run out? Why did they run out – was it an “out the door” problem, as President Trump brought up earlier with regard to a New York hospital, which is far from immune from inside criminality? 60 Minutes never asked.

How were purchasing decisions made at Jacobi? Was it a mismanagement issue, some bad planning? According to HealthLink Dimensions, a medical site, this is a typical scenario:

Physicians and administrators seem to agree that ease of use and staff requirements for training are important considerations for large scale purchases. For all hospital departments, the transition to value-based care has meant an increased emphasis on keeping costs under control and maintaining efficient operations, strategic imperatives that have a powerful impact when buying new equipment.

60 Minutes never asked. And how many COVID-19 cases did they treat? Again, 60 Minutes never asked.

Second, the hospital seemed to have had problems well before the coronavirus outbreak. This ranking from U.S. News & World Report is anything but flattering:

To help patients decide where to receive care, U.S. News generates hospital rankings by evaluating data on nearly 5,000 hospitals in 16 adult medical specialties, 9 adult medical procedures or conditions and 10 pediatric specialties. To be nationally ranked in a specialty, a hospital must excel in caring for the sickest, most medically complex patients. The ratings in procedures and conditions, by contrast, focus on typical Medicare patients. Hospitals that do well in multiple areas of adult care may be ranked in their state and metropolitan area. This hospital achieved the highest rating possible in 1 procedure or condition. Read more about how we rank best hospitals.

A highest rating in only one speciality in a big New York hospital? It appears to be “high performing” on just heart failure issues, and only based on survival rates, which is commendable. But there’s also the below-average rating it got for knee surgery, as well as the large number of average ratings it got, and the even larger number of no ratings at all, which has to be a red flag.

It also got a “fewer than average” rating for timely immunizations against seasonal flu, which might just be linked to why it sees so many contagious disease cases.

Most troubling was the rating it got for “patient experience,” displaying a rock-bottom rating of one out of five stars on all fronts, including cleanliness, with only a single exception for physician communication, for which it got two stars. U.S. News says that that atrocious detail doesn’t figure in its rankings for determining top hospitals — if it did, it’s unlikely Jacobi would be ranked among the tops. 60 Minutes didn’t ask about that and whether such patient experiences might be related to management issues with could also include bad supply management.

The doctor quoted was a general surgeon, and while he came off as generally credible until he started blaming Trump, but the CBS report didn’t clarify whether he was on the front lines of infectious disease treatment or not. The nurse came off as an activist, and a less-than-credible medical person based on her multiple ear piercings, she was the loudest Trump-blamer, but may well have had a longstanding history of union activism against the hospital and was not letting this crisis go to waste. Her claims about how all other countries (is she thinking of Italy? Spain? U.K.?) have all the personal equipment they need is probably ignorance-based, but 60 Minutes knew the truth of that one and ran with her low-information nonsense anyway.

In any case, the condition of the hospital is germane to the issue, because both medical people quoted blamed the issue on Trump instead of the mismanagement and failure to plan of their own hospital (which probably pleased their bosses), and 60 Minutes asked no questions. 

The whole thing – the hospital shortages, the hospital’s inability to get what they needed from other hospitals, and the depleted national medical stockpile, was simply blamed on Trump. 

The left-wing Atlantic Monthly’s Olga Khazan, debunked this good a few days ago, putting out an excellent piece filled with hard facts, and credible sources on what the national medical stockpile is, how it’s supposed to be used, and why it’s depleted of personal protective equipment:

Start with this:

But the stockpile was never intended to be the nation’s great savior. It wasn’t supposed to provide all of the nation’s medical-supply needs for a multi-month pandemic. Congress never doled out enough money for it to do so. Instead, the officials who monitored the national stockpile were hopeful that hospitals were making their own stockpiles. But to save money, they largely weren’t. In that context, the skimpy mask supply in the Strategic National Stockpile is not the thing that derailed the American response to COVID-19. Rather, it’s one of a series of planning failures that created the crisis we’re in today.

Just like everything else in the government, the Strategic National Stockpile is funded through congressional appropriations. That means there’s a limited amount of money to be spent, and the people in charge of the stockpile have to decide how to spend it. Officials bought millions of N95 masks and other flu-type preparations with supplemental congressional funding that trickled in from 2005 to 2007, says Greg Burel, who was the director of the stockpile from 2007 until January 2020. But then that supplemental money dried up.

Maybe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who ultimately decides appropriations, should be answering a few questions. Not a chance of course, with 60 Minutes.

The China factor, and the fact that China had a monopoly on mask manufacture and was using it to not sell masks, was also cited, just as the hapless Peter Navarro did when he tried to explain the matter to 60 Minutes.

There’s also this:

Still, the fundamental mission of the stockpile remained the same: A stopgap, not a safety net. Jared Kushner drew opprobrium last week for appearing to say that the states were on their own when it comes to medical supplies. “The notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” he said.

Although Kushner’s wording was undeniably inartful, the former stockpile directors said he sort of has a point. “Kushner doesn’t know exactly how to phrase it, but the stockpile was never designed to be for everybody all at once, anything that you might need for as long as you need,” Levy said.

The stockpile, Burel and Levy told me, was never meant to provide masks for the entire nation for months at a time. The idea was instead that hospitals and states would create their own stockpiles, and under extenuating circumstances—when they ran out of supplies, or if they were incapacitated for some reason—they could fall back on the national stockpile.

60 Minutes has converted what’s essentially a hospital failure into a federal obligation to subsidize the hospital’s poor planning.

It was a dishonest as heck report that revolved solely around blaming Trump. How happy the hospital mismanagers and out-the-door inside crowd must have been to have read about this. Do whatever you want and blame Trump. The rest of us can only see a lot of dishonest journalism, creating quite a tapestry pattern of error, again, and again, and again.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain sources

 

via American Thinker Blog

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THE LIST: Fauci’s Many Mistakes and Lies: NIH Director Said One Thing Weeks-Months Ago but Today Tries to Blame President Trump (Video)

NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci went on CNN on Easter Sunday and suggested that President Trump should have shut down the country in February!

Dr. Fauci later went on with Al Sharpton on MSNBC and and told Al Sharpton that he warned President Trump that “we were in real trouble” from the coronavirus.

It is clear at this point that Dr. Anthony Fauci has a problem with the truth.
Here is a list of several contradictory statements by the good doctor.

1.)  Dr. Fauci says he warned Trump in January that the US was in real trouble but that is not what he said publicly.

In January Dr. Anthony Fauci told Newsmax TV that the United States “did not have to worry” about the coronavirus and that it was “not a major threat.”

2.)  Dr. Fauci warned of an apocalyptic coronavirus pandemic — then just weeks later he later compared the coronavirus to a bad flu.

3.) Dr. Fauci based all of his predictions on garbage IHME models that were OFF BY MILLIONS and then told reporters this past week, “You can’t really rely on models.”

4.) On March 20th Dr. Fauci jumped in and “corrected” the president during a press briefing on hydroxychloroquine treatment for coronavirus saying, “You got to be careful when you say ‘fairly effective.’ It was never done in a clinical trial… It was given to individuals and felt that maybe it worked.”

Exactly two weeks later hydroxychloroquine was deemed the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus in an international poll of more than 6,000 doctors.

5.)  Dr. Fauci pushed these garbage models every step of the way.

Three weeks ago Dr. Fauci claimed 1 million to 2 million Americans would die from coronavirus. Then he said 100,000 to 200,000 Americans will die from the virus. Then last week he agreed 81,766 Americans would die from the coronavirus. Then by Wednesday the experts cut the number of deaths to 60,415 projected deaths.

6.)  On Sunday Dr. Fauci said President Trump should have shut down the economy in February.

The president was a bit pre-occupied in February with the Democrat impeachment sham.

That’s not what Dr. Fauci said ON FEBRUARY 29th!!

But in late February  Fauci told the TODAY Show on February 29 that you don’t need to “change anything you’re doing.”:

It should be clear that Dr. Fauci has bad judgement.

Dr. Fauci  guy needs to go.

The post THE LIST: Fauci’s Many Mistakes and Lies: NIH Director Said One Thing Weeks-Months Ago but Today Tries to Blame President Trump (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

via The Gateway Pundit

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After Fauci Says Government Could Have Moved Faster, Trump Retweets Call To Fire Him

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper, in which Tapper repeatedly questioned Fauci about the Trump administration’s decision-making in February. Fauci responded by stating that lives could have been saved if different measures had been taken, but that decision-making on matters of such magnitude is not purely a public health process.

That led to Trump retweeting a tweet that included a call to fire Fauci, which must have come as music to the ears of Trump-critics who have consistently tried to create distance between Fauci and the president.

The relevant part of the conversation between Tapper and Fauci went like this:

Tapper: South Korea and the U.S. announced their first confirmed coronavirus cases at virtually the same time in late January. If you take a look at where we are right now in the U.S.; the U.S. now has 50 times for cases and almost 100 times more fatalities than South Korea. Meanwhile, while the U.S. makes up only about 4.25% of the world’s populations the U.S. has 30% of the world’s coronavirus cases and almost 20% of the world’s reported deaths. Sanjay Gupta said this is all because we got started too late in the U.S. Is that right? Do you agree?

Fauci: You know, it isn’t as simple as that, Jake, I’m sorry. I disagree. To say this is all happening because we got started too late, obviously, if you look, could we have done something a little bit earlier that would have had an impact? Obviously. But where we are right now is the result of a number of factors: the size of the country; the homogeneity of the country. I think it’s a little bit unfair to compare us to South Korea, where they had an outbreak in Daegu and they had the capability of immediately essentially shutting it off completely in a way that we may not have ben able to do in this country. So obviously it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don’t think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor. It’s very complicated, Jake.

Tapper: The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn’t announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16th, almost a month later. Why?

Fauci: You know, Jake, as I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation, often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not but it is what it is we are where we are right now.

Tapper: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures, had started the third week of February instead of mid-March?

Fauci: You know, Jake, again, it’s the “what would have, what could have.” It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different but there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

A California GOP candidate who ran and lost in the GOP primary for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat in March responded to the Tapper-Fauci interview by tweeting, “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci.”

Trump retweeted the tweet, adding, “Sorry Fake news, it’s all on tape. I banned China long ago before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN.”

In an exchange in late February, Fauci was asked, “Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with real concerns about this; they want to go to malls and movies, maybe the gym as well. Should we be changing our habits, and if so, how?”

Fauci responded, “No. Right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now the risk is still low, but this could change; I’ve said that many times, even on this program. You’ve gotta watch out because although the risk is low now, you don’t need to change anything that you’re doing. When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”

In mid-March, Fauci was given the chance to blame Trump for the slow pace of coronavirus testing in the United States and refused, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt, “It was a complicated series of multiple things that conflated that just, you know, went the wrong way. One of them was a technical glitch that slowed things down in the beginning. Nobody’s fault. There wasn’t any bad guys there. It just happened”

Hewitt asked, “Was the glitch or anything about the production of the test President Trump’s fault? Or actually, let me put it more broadly, would every president have run into the same problem?”

Fauci answered, “Oh, absolutely. This has nothing to do with anybody’s fault, certainly not the president’s fault.”

via The Daily Wire

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Someone Spreads Nails At Entrances To Parking Lot Of Church Holding Easter Services

At a Kentucky church that defied Gov. Andy Beshear’s order against mass gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic and held an Easter service Sunday morning, someone spread nails at the church entrances to the parking lot.

As The Courier-Journal reported, roughly 50 worshipers attended the service at Maryville Baptist Church in Louisville; a notice was left on their windshields informing them that they should quarantined themselves for 14 days or face “further enforcement measures.” Beshear stated that recipients of the notices will receive a letter “asking them to self-quarantine,” adding, “No one is being charged with anything.”

Beshear stated, “Those that want to have mass gatherings send out a signal all around the country to those that don’t think this virus is serious, that don’t follow the rules and then want to come to a place to make their point.” He was echoed by Kentucky Health Commissioner Steven Stack, who asserted, “At what point do our rights to gather entitle us to have other people die as a result?” On Saturday, Beshear stated, “To our knowledge, 99.89% of all churches and all synagogues and all mosques in Kentucky have chosen to do the right thing. I’m just doing my best to save lives. And there aren’t easy answers.”

On April 4 Beshear issued a statement partially directed at Maryville’s pastor, the Rev. Jack Roberts, saying, “If you’re still holding mass gatherings, church or otherwise, you are spreading the coronavirus. And you are likely causing the death of Kentuckians. It’s that clear.”

The Courier Journal reported on April 8 that Roberts informed them he had received the state order to stop holding services but added he had spoken a national Christian organization whose attorneys “are in the process shortly of filing a lawsuit” against the Beshear administration. He stated, “If you read the Constitution of the United States, if you read the constitution of the state of the Kentucky, they both say that (Beshear) is infringing on the church’s rights.”

On Easter Sunday, constituents who remained in their cars did not receive quarantine notices.

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley said on Facebook he knew of 10 churches in Harlan County that scheduled in-person Easter services. He cautioned, “Just know you are putting your members in harm’s way, unlike the hundreds of churches in our county that are doing it the right way and having virtual or drive-up services.”

Beshear has ordered police to record license plates of those attending in-person services; that drew a blast from Senator Rand Paul, who tweeted:

Rep. Thomas Massie echoed:

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on Sunday:

Gov. Andy Beshear announced 134 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and three new coronavirus related deaths on Easter Sunday, bringing Kentucky’s official totals to 1,963 cases and 97 deaths. “We’re getting very close to that 2,000 mark, but here in Kentucky, we’re still not seeing the type of increases that we’re seeing in other states and we are very grateful for that,” Beshear said. …

Beshear said there are now 289 people hospitalized with the coronavirus in Kentucky, including 136 people currently hospitalized in the ICU. At least 607 people have recovered from the virus.

via The Daily Wire

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White House Accuses Voice Of America Of Spreading Chinese Propaganda

On Friday, an events summary produced by the White House digital team fired criticism at Voice of America for spreading propaganda on behalf of Communist China. The statement read:

VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries—not its citizens. The Coronavirus pandemic is no exception. Secrecy from the Communist Party of China allowed the deadly virus to spread across the world. Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing’s propaganda. This week, VOA called China’s Wuhan lockdown a successful “model” copied by much of the world—and then tweeted out video of the Communist government’s celebratory light show marking the quarantine’s alleged end.

Even worse,while much of the U.S. media takes its lead from China, VOA went one step further: It created graphics with Communist government statistics to compare China’s Coronavirus death toll to America’s. As intelligence experts point out, there is simply no way to verify the accuracy of China’s numbers.

The statement noted, “The Coronavirus story is just one example of this pattern. Last year, VOA helped highlight the Twitter feed of Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif while he was issuing threats against the U.S. and sharing Russian anti-U.S. propaganda videos.”

Amanda Bennett, who leads Voice of America and is the wife of Donald Graham, whose family used to own The Washington Post, responded, “We are thoroughly covering China’s disinformation and misinformation in English and Mandarin and at the same time reporting factually. V.O.A. has thoroughly debunked much of the information coming from the Chinese government and government-controlled media,” according to The New York Times.

VOA is run by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

The Heritage Foundation has said of the U.S. Agency for Global Media:

The U.S. Agency for Global Media is the government’s primary public diplomacy tool and is funded to the tune of $685 million by U.S. taxpayers. It dwarfs any other expenditure by the government on international outreach, including educational and cultural exchanges, embassy outreach, and American centers at foreign universities. In the hands of left-leaning producers and directors, much of the broadcasting paid for by U.S. taxpayers resembles that of CNN more than anything else, both in its story selection and its anti-Trump bias.

Additionally, a number of scandals have erupted in recent years, calling into question management and professionalism. One example was the report in December by the House Foreign Affairs Committee detailing abuses by broadcasting staff in political postings on their social media pages.

A Stanford University report in 2018 from the Hoover Institution stated:

VOA officials sought to scale back what were perceived to be sensitive reports. After running two years of a radio series on aspects of modern Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution and other events post-1949, VOA cut the program in 2009 despite several of those shows garnering well over three million hits each on the web …

In 2012, a Chinese immigrant, who was also a former Chinese dissident and a specialist on the US political system, became the first female Chinese head of the service. She was later fired over a controversial interview that drew the official ire of the PRC, which threatened repercussions. Since her dismissal, VOA’s Mandarin service has resumed a pattern of avoiding stories that could be perceived to be too tough on China, according to several staffers.

via The Daily Wire

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Reader’s Suggestion for Voting in the USA – Use the Same Technology as Used Across America Every Day

Guest post by Doc Farmer

One solution to address voter fraud is to use the same technology as used by the lotteries.

Ever since Bush won the election in 2000, people have complained about voting. Systems that worked for decades were decried by the Mainstream Media and the DNC (two peas in a pod) for a simple reason. They lost. Their guy didn’t get into office (thank God!) and so we were stuck with hanging chads and more recently ballot-box stuffers, and demands that we go away from our Representative Constitutional Republic and move to a “pure” Democracy. Well, there’s nothing “pure” about Democracy, which is a fancy Greek word for “mob rule”. We have an Electoral College that protects the States, as it is the STATES who elect a President, NOT the national total of voters.

But the Democrats try to make you think that’s evil. Except when THEY win via the Electoral College, then it’s okay, of course. Some say Leftists have double standards, which is not true. They have NO standards. Zero, zip, nada. Their only goal is power. To achieve it, to amass it, and to steal it from you at every turn.

Don’t believe me? Look at our current situation. Rep. Nancy Pelosi delayed a much-needed relief package for nearly a week to throw in every leftist wish and wet dream in their arsenal. Green New Deal, millions for the Kennedy Center (which Trump should never write them a check for, in my opinion), billions for her cronies, and then “voting reform”. A “Vote By Mail” scenario across the entirety of the United States, which in itself would violate the Constitution as it is the STATES who have to come up with their own election laws and processes. And as we all know, their vote by mail system is rife with corruption. Look at California in the ’18 elections and how they STOLE seats won by Republicans after counting a bunch of “mail-in” (see also: bogus, unproven, illegal, DNC-written) votes.

Of course, the States themselves are often hornswoggled into thinking that they can “fix” their old paper systems with new, sleek, nifty electronic voting machines. Mostly made by ATM manufacturers, mostly financially backed by individuals like George Soros, mostly insecure with hackable systems, Internet connections, “back doors” and frankly crappy coding that FORCE a vote recorded for the Democrat instead of the Republican. This has been proved again and again, and yet these devices are still marketed and sold. Mostly to corrupt (i.e. leftist) voting boards across many cities and states.

Besides, many of these devices are difficult to work with. They are designed by ATM companies, so they often LOOK like an ATM. The elderly can at times think they’re going to get $40 from their bank account while trying to vote for a President, Senator, Representative, Governor or Mayor. They’re hardly “intuitive” and usually too complex.

But what if there were an alternative that could be used on a state-by-state level, AND a national level?

One that was easy to use, ubiquitous, incredibly secure, and would offer a safe and secure paper trail as well as multiply-redundant electronic records? One that would have CAMERA coverage to ensure that the paper “receipts” couldn’t be palmed or thrown away or otherwise “ballot stuffed”? One that virtually EVERY adult could understand with only a one-page pamphlet on how to vote on the machine? One that would give voting results in a matter of minutes, not days, with a fully redundant cross-matching verification process, both internally and against the paper trail?

Well, believe it or not, we already have such a voting infrastructure in place, at this very moment. I first wrote about it right after the ’04 election, when after all that effort and expense in new voting machines and techniques, STILL screwed things up massively. Considering what Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, and even our benighted previous president Obama, are trying to shove down our throats, a corrupt cheating system guaranteed to destroy any hope of a fair and free election, I think its time has come again to be discussed, debated, and possibly adopted.

What’s this magical system that will revolutionize and secure our individual votes, and guarantee that each State’s voice is heard in the Presidential elections, as well as nearly eliminate the ability to defraud every other election at every other level?

Lottery machines.

No, I am NOT making a joke here. This is not sarcasm nor satire nor the result of a Wuhan Virus induced high-fever. I’ve thought about this deeply for over 15 years, ever since my first article on it in Computerworld Magazine. Considering what has happened to our elections in the intervening years, maybe it’s time to look at this again, make some improvements, and propose it as an option to both the States and the Lottery Companies.

Lottery Machines are basically optical readers. We’ve almost all played the Lottery (well, except in Utah) so we all know how to fill out a ticket to join in on our 14-sqillion-to-one opportunity for untold riches. Goobers and Grannies, the technically astute and the dendritically-challenged, the Rich, Middle-Class, and even we smelly Wal-Mart Shoppers, ALL of us have at one time or another used this system.

Lottery machines, as well as their back-end computer equipment, not to mention their communication networks, are highly secured and encrypted. After all, they’re dealing with millions upon millions of dollars of revenue. Since lottery companies as well as each state’s taxation department have a vested interest in ensuring a secure collection system, security MUST be foremost.

As to the lottery companies, they would have a very easy time adjusting to this. All that would be required, for two days every election year (primary and general), would be a separate adjustment of programming for the devices to record votes. Those votes would be by location (for local/state/House seats) with adjustments for each precinct the voter belonged to. The vote tallying would come down to the voter’s ID card (driver’s license or other free State-issued card), which are almost all now part of the “REAL ID” system. This eliminates “same day registration” which is a foolish (and easily corrupted) system, rife with fraud and almost always used to allow for multiple voting by those who are bused from polling place to polling place in order to cheat the system.

Try this as an example. Each voter would bring their state-issued ID to any nearby convenience store, grocery store, anywhere that had a lottery machine. Yes, no more precincts, no new equipment. Since each ID has the photo and age of the person, as well as their Voter ID status in state records, as well as a machine-readable code block on the back (I call it “mushcode” but I’m sure there’s a better name for it), the risk of fake IDs is significantly reduced. As to the voting slips, those can be sent by the state to each voter’s precinct, or shops within a precinct area could have a supply of extra slips under lock and key, handing them out one at a time to ensure somebody doesn’t lift the entire stash. You could even have a standard state slip and ensure the voter fill out their zip code and precinct number if you wish.

The slips could either have an instruction sheet (for Candidate A, fill in number 01, for Candidate B, fill in number 02, etc.) or the slips themselves could include names on the one side and the numbers/choices on the other for the voter to fill out. The voting slip would be the same size and spacing as a regular lottery ticket (so the optical readers don’t need realignment). If multiple slips are required for a particular voting cycle, that could also be handled quite easily. The voter fills out the slip and hands it in for processing. If the voting slip is filled out incorrectly, the machine prints a ticket explaining where the voter goofed, and the slip can be handed back to the voter to fix.

Once the voting slip is correct, the lottery machine would beep, but not record the vote until the voter hands over their ID. The back of the ID would be scanned by the machine (or a hand-held laser reader). If the voter ID card is valid, and the person with the ID is actually registered, the vote itself would be recorded in one file, and the ID card would be acknowledged in a separate file. This is vital, because you must verify the voter is valid and eligible before you accept the vote. By keeping the two files separate, and by not including a time/date/location stamp on the file entries for the ID card, you preserve the secret ballot (since the vote can’t be tracked back to the user).

Also, by checking the identity with the card, the system will also be able to record when/if people tried to vote more than once. If they do try to vote multiple times, only the FIRST recorded vote would be accepted as valid. And if a person tried to vote four or five times, well, then you’d have evidence of potential voter fraud which could be investigated by State Police and (hopefully) punished harshly in the courts.

By keeping the two files separate, and by securing the time/date/location stamp on the file entries for the ID card, you preserve the secret ballot (since the vote itself can’t be tracked back to the user).

Once the system accepts the vote, the voting slip (the one the voter filled out) would be placed into a locked box. Also, the machine would print out a voting receipt with all the vote data stored at the bottom (in machine readable code) which would go into a separate locked box. As a further safety measure, a separate printer in the room where the communications equipment goes could create a hard copy and a machine-readable form to counter-check the slips stored at the lottery machines themselves. This would be a handy verification, especially in the event of recounts or system problems.

As to a visible way of keeping voters down to a single vote, folks would dip their right index finger into a small bottle of permanent ink (with a couple chemicals added it to fluoresce even if they tried to wash it off). It’s a bit of an homage to the folks in Iraq who, after finally being freed from oppression, used this method as a mark of honor.

Oh, one thing. Under no circumstances would voters be allowed to use the “quick pick” option. Although, sometimes I think that might be a safer way to elect our political representation. No scratch-off Presidents or Governors either…

At the end of the day, when the polls close, there would be almost no delay in getting the results. The numbers would have been centrally tabulated throughout the voting day. Since the lottery systems are highly secured and multiply redundant, there would be a high degree of confidence in the results.

There are several advantages to this process, not the least of which are speed and accuracy. There’s also convenience and familiarity. Being tied down to a single location for all voting in a precinct, or even a city, can be difficult, so this would cut down on lines or long waits. Familiarity, because as previously stated, virtually everyone is accustomed to the lottery process. No more butterfly ballots, chads, confusing screen interfaces, etc. It could even count as an intelligence test – if you’re too dumb to fill out a lottery slip, then you’re probably too dumb to vote (see also: Joe Biden). Even better, after you’ve voted, you can get a Snickers and a Slim Jim (something redneck voters like me have dreamed of).

As an addition, there would be a way to tack on a “voting incentive program” for each state. Since the system will record all those who successfully voted (only once, mind you) a state could randomly select 1,000 voters for a $1,000 prize, 100 voters for a $10,000 prize, 10 voters for a $100,000 prize, and one lucky voter for a cool million. A total outlay of $4 million in state funds would certainly INCREASE voter participation by a significant rate.

Is this a “radical” idea? Probably. But I believe it is also a secure, safe, and verifiable process to strictly limit and drastically reduce the potential for vote fraud. And in these uncertain and dangerous times, with all the Democrats are trying to do to dismantle our republic and restrict or eliminate our freedoms, I think it’s worth consideration and discussion.

Think about it – this makes sense.

The post Reader’s Suggestion for Voting in the USA – Use the Same Technology as Used Across America Every Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Is President Trump finally getting ready to fire Dr. Fauci?

For the first time in the 2020 coronavirus crisis, President Trump has appeared to publicly put some major distance between himself and the Coronavirus Task Force’s principal medical advisor and spokesman, Anthony Fauci, M.D. For 36 years, Dr. Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, where he has directed the federal    government’s decades-long, unprecedentedly well-funded campaign against HIV/AIDS.

Indications of President Trump’s mounting unhappiness with Fauci came in a tweet by the president yesterday at 6:51 PM EDT in which he retweeted a tweet by DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the California primary last month, that included the line “Time to #FireFauci:”

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN

Quote Tweet

DeAnna Lorraine @DeAnna4Congress

Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives.

Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.

Time to #FireFauci…

Lorraine’s tweet referred to what Fauci said during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning – comments that quickly went straight to the top of the daily news cycle on Easter Sunday, including a banner red headline for most of the day at the top of the Drudge Report, and trended on social media.

In his live interview with Tapper, Fauci appeared to throw cold water on the president’s intention to reopen the country to normal activity as quickly as possible. From CNN’s program transcript:

TAPPER: Based on what you know right now, when do you think the country will be ready to take some of these steps to reopen, based on the availability of testing? When do you see that happening?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, that’s a great question.

And that’s really what I was inferring when I said a rolling reentry. It is not going to be a light switch that we say, OK, it is now June, July or whatever, click, the light switch goes back on.

As the interview progressed, Fauci continued to dismiss a fast-track return to pre-Covid-19 “normal.”

The real news making quotes occurred a bit later on in the conversation.

TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it’s the what would have, what could have.

It’s – it’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.

But what goes into those kinds of decisions is – is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different.

But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. [emphasis added.]

And there it was. The first on the record assertion by someone at Fauci’s level that the administration’s, if not the president’s, alleged inaction, or “pushback,” at a critical time resulted in the loss of American lives.

Fauci’s comments, which occasioned the dramatic Drudge Report headline among many others in the media, came fast on the heels of the New York Times’ lead story about President Trump, also on Sunday:

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

The Times article, attributed to CNN contributor and Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and five other reporters, cites purported internal emails to buttress its case that:

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The Times story includes dozens of dramatic photos, many of them credited to the WHO. The article can be read in its entirety here at msn dot com without having to navigate the newspaper’s restrictive pay wall. Suffice it to say that it attempts to break major new ground in the dominant media’s and the left’s largely evidence-free contention that Trump fumbled the federal government’s response to Covid-19 since day one and that as a result Americans died.

Among the considerable evidence to the contrary, of course, is the series of highly public “no problem here” statements about the coronavirus rather late in the game by administrative state medical bureaucrats like Fauci. For example, in a series of interviews during the last week of January, Fauci, as The Hill headlined its article on January 26, said the coronavirus “isn’t something the American public need to worry about.” Five days later, President Trump famously decided, as CNN reported, “to ban foreign nationals who had been in China within the previous 14 days from entering the United States.” At the time, the president’s bold actions to prevent the introduction of Covid-19 into the country by travelers from infected areas were criticized by former Vice President Joe Biden and most other Democrats and the media as “xenophobic” and “racist.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci on NBC Today Saturday February 29, 2020

Even later, on February 29, Fauci was interviewed live on NBC’s Saturday Today. The URL at NBC News that hosts the video is “dr-fauci-on-coronavirus-fears-no-need-to-change-lifestyle-yet.”

PETER ALEXANDER, TODAY SHOW CO-HOST: Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up with real concerns about this. They want to go to malls, to movies, and maybe the gym. Should we be changing our habits, and if so, how?

FAUCI: Right now at this moment there is no need to change anything you’re doing on a day by day basis.

Making the most of the story, the New York Times late Sunday evening published a follow-up article, “Trump Lashes Out at Fauci Amid Criticism of Slow Virus Response,” taking note of the president’s tweets, including the one referenced at the start of this article.  A copy of the article for free reading is here at msn dot com. The Sunday evening Times article, which is being published in today’s editions of the paper in print and online, attempted to place the current brouhaha into context:

Dr. Fauci’s comments, and the president’s pushback, come at a critical time as Mr. Trump wrestles with how fast to begin reopening the country. Public health experts like Dr. Fauci have urged caution about resuming normal life too soon for fear of instigating another wave of illness and death, while the president’s economic advisers and others are anxious to restart businesses at a time when more than 16 million Americans have been put out of work.

Dr. Fauci and the president have publicly disagreed on several issues, including how long it will take to develop a vaccine and the president’s aggressive promotion of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, whose effects are unproven against the coronavirus. At a coronavirus task force briefing last week, Mr. Trump stopped Dr. Fauci from answering a question on the drug.

Peter Baker, the author of this latest Times article, took some pains to defend the paper’s reporting which the president had consistently and strenuously objected to including in his series of tweets on Sunday – and in so doing, Baker kept the Times at the center of the MSM’s “breaking news.”

The president seemed particularly upset about a New York Times article documenting the administration’s slow response to the virus. “The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the ‘paper’ itself,” he wrote Sunday night, denying that Mr. [Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex] Azar warned him “until later” and dismissing an early memo by another adviser, Peter Navarro, who warned of the prospect of 500,000 deaths. “Fake News!” [emphasis added.]

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  Peter’s website is http://peter.media. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.

For the first time in the 2020 coronavirus crisis, President Trump has appeared to publicly put some major distance between himself and the Coronavirus Task Force’s principal medical advisor and spokesman, Anthony Fauci, M.D. For 36 years, Dr. Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, where he has directed the federal    government’s decades-long, unprecedentedly well-funded campaign against HIV/AIDS.

Indications of President Trump’s mounting unhappiness with Fauci came in a tweet by the president yesterday at 6:51 PM EDT in which he retweeted a tweet by DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the California primary last month, that included the line “Time to #FireFauci:”

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN

Quote Tweet

DeAnna Lorraine @DeAnna4Congress

Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives.

Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.

Time to #FireFauci…

Lorraine’s tweet referred to what Fauci said during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning – comments that quickly went straight to the top of the daily news cycle on Easter Sunday, including a banner red headline for most of the day at the top of the Drudge Report, and trended on social media.

In his live interview with Tapper, Fauci appeared to throw cold water on the president’s intention to reopen the country to normal activity as quickly as possible. From CNN’s program transcript:

TAPPER: Based on what you know right now, when do you think the country will be ready to take some of these steps to reopen, based on the availability of testing? When do you see that happening?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, that’s a great question.

And that’s really what I was inferring when I said a rolling reentry. It is not going to be a light switch that we say, OK, it is now June, July or whatever, click, the light switch goes back on.

As the interview progressed, Fauci continued to dismiss a fast-track return to pre-Covid-19 “normal.”

The real news making quotes occurred a bit later on in the conversation.

TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it’s the what would have, what could have.

It’s – it’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.

But what goes into those kinds of decisions is – is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different.

But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. [emphasis added.]

And there it was. The first on the record assertion by someone at Fauci’s level that the administration’s, if not the president’s, alleged inaction, or “pushback,” at a critical time resulted in the loss of American lives.

Fauci’s comments, which occasioned the dramatic Drudge Report headline among many others in the media, came fast on the heels of the New York Times’ lead story about President Trump, also on Sunday:

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

The Times article, attributed to CNN contributor and Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and five other reporters, cites purported internal emails to buttress its case that:

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The Times story includes dozens of dramatic photos, many of them credited to the WHO. The article can be read in its entirety here at msn dot com without having to navigate the newspaper’s restrictive pay wall. Suffice it to say that it attempts to break major new ground in the dominant media’s and the left’s largely evidence-free contention that Trump fumbled the federal government’s response to Covid-19 since day one and that as a result Americans died.

Among the considerable evidence to the contrary, of course, is the series of highly public “no problem here” statements about the coronavirus rather late in the game by administrative state medical bureaucrats like Fauci. For example, in a series of interviews during the last week of January, Fauci, as The Hill headlined its article on January 26, said the coronavirus “isn’t something the American public need to worry about.” Five days later, President Trump famously decided, as CNN reported, “to ban foreign nationals who had been in China within the previous 14 days from entering the United States.” At the time, the president’s bold actions to prevent the introduction of Covid-19 into the country by travelers from infected areas were criticized by former Vice President Joe Biden and most other Democrats and the media as “xenophobic” and “racist.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci on NBC Today Saturday February 29, 2020

Even later, on February 29, Fauci was interviewed live on NBC’s Saturday Today. The URL at NBC News that hosts the video is “dr-fauci-on-coronavirus-fears-no-need-to-change-lifestyle-yet.”

PETER ALEXANDER, TODAY SHOW CO-HOST: Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up with real concerns about this. They want to go to malls, to movies, and maybe the gym. Should we be changing our habits, and if so, how?

FAUCI: Right now at this moment there is no need to change anything you’re doing on a day by day basis.

Making the most of the story, the New York Times late Sunday evening published a follow-up article, “Trump Lashes Out at Fauci Amid Criticism of Slow Virus Response,” taking note of the president’s tweets, including the one referenced at the start of this article.  A copy of the article for free reading is here at msn dot com. The Sunday evening Times article, which is being published in today’s editions of the paper in print and online, attempted to place the current brouhaha into context:

Dr. Fauci’s comments, and the president’s pushback, come at a critical time as Mr. Trump wrestles with how fast to begin reopening the country. Public health experts like Dr. Fauci have urged caution about resuming normal life too soon for fear of instigating another wave of illness and death, while the president’s economic advisers and others are anxious to restart businesses at a time when more than 16 million Americans have been put out of work.

Dr. Fauci and the president have publicly disagreed on several issues, including how long it will take to develop a vaccine and the president’s aggressive promotion of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, whose effects are unproven against the coronavirus. At a coronavirus task force briefing last week, Mr. Trump stopped Dr. Fauci from answering a question on the drug.

Peter Baker, the author of this latest Times article, took some pains to defend the paper’s reporting which the president had consistently and strenuously objected to including in his series of tweets on Sunday – and in so doing, Baker kept the Times at the center of the MSM’s “breaking news.”

The president seemed particularly upset about a New York Times article documenting the administration’s slow response to the virus. “The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the ‘paper’ itself,” he wrote Sunday night, denying that Mr. [Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex] Azar warned him “until later” and dismissing an early memo by another adviser, Peter Navarro, who warned of the prospect of 500,000 deaths. “Fake News!” [emphasis added.]

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  Peter’s website is http://peter.media. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.

via American Thinker Blog

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Wait, What? NY Times on Biden: No Misconduct ‘Beyond Hugs, Kisses and Touching’

The New York Times finally got around to a story (page 20-21) on sexual assault allegations made against Joe Biden by former staffer Tara Reade. The trappings were comprehensive, with many interviews about the alleged incident, but this particular #meToo tale got a cool reception, as reporters Lisa Lerer and Sydney Ember emphasized doubts, scrupulousness the paper manifestly failed to show regarding charges made against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And there was one paragraph (encapsulated in an already notorious deleted tweet) so jaw-dropping that it was swiftly edited out….

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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