A group of Republican senators on June 25 introduced a resolution urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to end the mask mandate for fully vaccinated Americans using public transit and interstate travel.
The CDC has already lifted the mask guidance for fully vaccinated people outdoors and in most other settings. But interstate rail lines, airports, and airplanes still require masks in abeyance to one of the early executive orders issued by President Joe Biden.
“Over 150 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated and mask mandates have been lifted across the country. But the CDC inexplicably still hasn’t lifted the mask mandate for public transportation. It’s long past time for President Biden and the CDC to follow the science and end this mask mandate for fully vaccinated individuals,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement.
“Americans should be able to travel to celebrate Independence Day with their friends and loved ones without having to follow an outdated and unnecessary mandate.”
The text of the resolution says lifting the mandate would incentivize more people to get the CCP virus vaccine. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, causes COVID-19.
The Republicans also argue that ending the mandate would help with the economic recovery by safely boosting travel and tourism.
“Outside of the beltway, the country is going back to normal. Wyoming and most other states lifted their mask mandate months ago. Vaccination rates are increasing and COVID cases are decreasing. The only place most Americans are wearing masks now is in airports and on airplanes,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).
“Secretary Buttigieg even said that the mandate is not actually about the science, but instead about ‘respect.’ If there’s no science backing it up, it’s time for the mandate to go.”
On April 30, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) extended the mask requirement at airports and throughout the transportation network until September 13. The resolution urges the TSA to “update its mask requirements, to be consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, to permit fully vaccinated individuals to travel on all transportation networks throughout the United States without wearing a mask.
A group representing major airlines earlier this month urged the Department of Justice to prosecute passengers who don’t comply with the mask requirement. According to the letter, the Federal Aviation Administration has received more than 3,039 reports of unruly behavior. Many of the reports deal with passengers who refused to wear masks.
Marvel Studios television series Loki’s ratings have dropped after a progressive shift in the show’s marketing approach, in which the eponymous main character’s "bisexuality" is promoted, according to statistics.
On June 22, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law three bills to strengthen civics education in the Sunshine State.As De Santis said at the signing ceremony, “The sad reality is that only two in five Americans can correctly name the three branches of government, and more than a third of Americans cannot name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”And so, he concluded, “It is abundantly clear that we need to do a much better job of educating our students in civics to prepare them for the rest of their lives.”
Yes, in recent decades we’ve learned the hard way what happens to a country that forgets the basics of its own greatness.If American history is forgotten along with the lessons of civics and the Constitution, then it’s no surprise that young people, schooled instead in pop culture and nihilism, will fall prey to Antifa-ish ideologies.
So we most definitely need a plan for teaching people more than just the fakeries of the Marvel Comics Universe and Black Lives Matter.Americans need to know, for example, that the U.S. Constitution is not just some musty old document written by “white supremacists,” but rather, a practical and enduring guide to small “r” republican self-governance.
Of DeSantis’ three bills aimed at fixing this civics-gap problem, the first concerns the teaching of civics in grades K-12; the second concerns teaching civics in state colleges and universities; and the third—the most controversial—requires those state schools to “conduct annual assessments of viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom.”
We might pause to admire the thoroughness of DeSantis’ approach.As we have learned, it’s not good enough for Republicans to simply write a law saying that some good thing, such as civics education, is supposed to happen.Why not?Because if the bureaucrats think they think they can get away with it, they will find ways of maneuvering around—or simply ignoring—any such law.So what’s needed is constant monitoring of law-abdingness or as the bill has it, “annual assessments.”As they say, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Furthermore, we can also admire the way that DeSantis has captured and inverted the notion of “diversity.”As we know, to the left, diversity is defined as merely skin color or gender, and yet DeSantis is saying that we should most prize diversity of thought.
And so now all of a sudden the usual-suspect champions of lefty-diversity are outraged.For instance, the Miami Herald published an angry editorial accusing DeSantis of “targeting academia” (certainly true) and of being “anti-democratic” (certainly not true).
Yet interestingly, even the Herald conceded, “There’s no denying that many universities have traditionally been hotbeds of liberalism.”And the newspaper further conceded, “It’s also likely that in any environment where one point of view is predominant those who think differently might feel shunned, as conservatives say they are on college campuses.”
In other words, even seen through the liberal eyes of this establishment media outlet, there’s a logic to what DeSantis is doing. These are after all state-supported schools. So yes, the interests of the people of Florida—who elected not only DeSantis, but also the Republican state legislature—should be fairly represented.To put that another way, the taxpayers who foot the bill for public schools ought not to be insulted by the schooling.
Meanwhile, other establishment media organs were less measured in their response to DeSantis, accusing him of being an enemy of “free thought.”And the hard left went even further, calling Florida’s 46th governor “a stupid wanking fascist.”
Yet of everything that DeSantis has accomplished in his less than three years in Tallahassee, it’s hard to think of a greater accomplishment than his reform of civics education — because such reform goes right to the heart of who we are and who we should be as Americans.
Remembering Where Our Greatness Comes From
In his wonderful 2002 book,Making Patriots, the late Walter Berns, a longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explained that the exceptional nature of U.S. history imposes a double duty on good citizens. We must understand that we are a people sharing a common language and a common culture, and we must also understand that we are blessed by a great guiding idea in the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Hence, Berns wrote, “the unique character of American patriotism: the devotion not only to country but also to its principles.”These principles have often been called simply Americanism.
Indeed, all through American history, our best leaders and thinkers have emphasized the importance of civic instruction to advance Americanism.Yes, of course, we should be free and enjoy freedom of conscience, and yet at the same time, we have to live together in harmony, and such arrangements requirestatecraft as well as soulcraft. As our second president, John Adams, wrote in 1808,“Our Obligations to our Country never cease but with our lives.”
And so wise leaders saw the value in education to remind each generation of its obligations as well as its rights.Such thinking led our fourth president, James Madison, to write in 1822 in praise of public education in the new state of Kentucky:
The liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of Kentucky for a general system of Education cannot be too much applauded.A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Yet it was during wartime that we were most reminded of the importance of a common civic culture.Speaking to the 166th regiment of Ohio during the Civil War, our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, reminded the troops why they were fighting: “It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright. . . . The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.”
To be sure, the proper goal is not blind loyalty—at least not to any politician or party.As Mark Twain wrote in 1889, “My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders.”That is, the nation is held to be permanent, while the bureaucracies and politicians might come and go.As Twain continued:
The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
So yes, we should be ready to change politicians and even governing structures as needed, and yet as President Andrew Jackson said in 1830: “Our Federal Union!It must be preserved!”
And so from time to time, the mechanism of preservation need to be upgraded and modernized.For instance, in 1892, at a time of unprecedented immigration to the U.S., Francis Bellamy, recognizing the need for a new catechism of national unity,composed the Pledge of Allegiance.
In fact, in those days, public officials were at pains to make sure that the nation’s symbols were respected and revered.And that’s why in 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Nebraska ban on the use of the American flag in commercial advertising. In the words of the high court, “A State may exert its power to strengthen the bonds of the Union and therefore, to that end, may encourage patriotism and love of country among its people.”
As we all have seen, the prohibitions on the commercial use of Old Glory have eroded over the decades.And yet it was still startling, as well as disappointing, to see that in 1989, the Supreme Court reversed its ruling in defense of the flag, crazily declaring that actual flag-burning was allowable “free speech.”
Yet notwithstanding the mutantly liberal Supreme Court of the late 20th century, most Americans have clung to patriotism and associated sentiments of duty and honor.
One is reminded of a scene toward the end of the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan—the film which most accurately depicts what the Greatest Generation actually went through in World War Two combat—in which the Captain Miller character, dying from his wounds, can manage only a gurgled whisper as he tells Private Ryan, “James, earn this . . . earn it.”That is, the younger man is injuncted by Miller’s blood sacrifice to go home and live a full life as a good citizen of the United States.
We might also call that late in his presidency, Donald Trump made his own effort to advance civics.In September 2020, he declared, “Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their souls.” And so he directed the formation of a “national commission to support patriotic education,” to be called the 1776 Commission.
The Commission held hearings even after the 2020 election, featuring witnesses such as then-housing secretary Dr. Ben Carson, and released its final report in January, including these ringing words:
To be an American means something noble and good.It means treasuring freedom and embracing the vitality of self-government.We are shaped by the beauty, bounty and wildness of our continent. We are united by the glory of our history.And we are distinguished by the American virtues of openness, honesty, optimism, determination, generosity, confidence, kindness, hard work, courage and hope.Our principles did not create these virtues, but they laid the groundwork for them to grow and spread and forge America into the most just and glorious country in all of history.
It was revealing that within a week of taking office, President Joe Biden felt the need to abolish the 1776 Commission.Announcing his new push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he dismissed the commission’s work as “ignorance and lies.”
In other words, whether he knew it or not, Biden was putting himself squarely against centuries of accumulated wisdom about the importance of positive civic education.In fact, the Biden administration has spent its first six months aligning itself with the anti-civics of critical race theory (CRT).
Indeed, Biden is fully in league with the education establishment—and we know that means.It means that our civic future is being hijacked by CRT zealots in the professoriate, reaping exorbitant salaries to teach young people, in the mordant words of Donald Trump, Jr., to hate their country.
Fortunately, we are now in the midst of a substantial public backlash against CRT. We won’t know the effectiveness of anti-CRT activism until we see some election results—including in Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin is helping to rally aggrieved parents in CRT-afflicted Loudon County.
Yet as of now, Ron DeSantis is the tip of the spear.As governor of a state which is just 53 percent non-Hispanic white, he made the bet that color-blind Americanism—including law and order and good civics—would be a winner.And he’s been proven right; recent polls show him leading his possible Democratic opponents by double digits.
Yes, DeSantis has the benefit of a Republican legislature, and yet so do most states.The better explanation for DeSantis’ success is that he has been more alert to governmental necessity (and, of course, political opportunity as well).
And yet there’s still time for other Republicans to try and catch up as they eye 2022 and 2024.
Former President Donald Trump slammed the ongoing Biden border crisis, critical race theory, and woke generals at the first post-presidential rally sponsored by Save America held in Wellington, Ohio, on Saturday evening.
On December 31st of last year, an 80 year-old Buffalo-area woman named Judith Smentkiewicz fell ill with Covid-19. She was rushed by ambulance to Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Williamsville, New York, where she was put on a ventilator. Her son Michael and his wife flew up from Georgia, and were given grim news. Judith, doctors said, had a 20% chance at survival, and even if she made it, she’d be on a ventilator for a month.
As December passed into the New Year, Judith’s health declined. Her family members, increasingly desperate, had been doing what people in the Internet age do, Googling in search of potential treatments. They saw stories about the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, learning among other things that a pulmonologist named Pierre Kory had just testified before the Senate that the drug had a “miraculous” impact on Covid-19 patients. The family pressured doctors at the hospital to give Judith the drug. The hospital initially complied, administering one dose on January 2nd. According to her family’s court testimony, a dramatic change in her condition ensued.
“In less than 48 hours, my mother was taken off the ventilator, transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit, sitting up on her own and communicating,” the patient’s daughter Michelle Kulbacki told a court.
After the reported change in Judith’s condition, the hospital backtracked and refused to administer more. Frustrated, the family turned on January 7th to a local lawyer named Ralph Lorigo. A commercial litigator and head of what he calls a “typical suburban practice,” with seven lawyers engaged in everything from matrimonial to estate work, Lorigo assigned one of his attorneys to review materials given to them by the family, which included Kory’s Senate testimony. The associate showed Lorigo himself the the material next morning.
“I was so convinced by what Dr. Kory was saying,” Lorigo says. “I saw the passion and the belief.”
Lorigo immediately sued the hospital, filing to State Supreme Court to force the facility to treat according to the family’s wishes. Judge Henry J. Nowak sided with the Smentkiewiczes, signing an order that Lorigo and one of his attorneys served themselves, and after a series of quasi-absurd dramas that included the hospital refusing to let the Smentkiewicz family physician phone in the prescription — “the doctor actually had to drive to the hospital,” Lorigo says — Judith went back on ivermectin.
“She was out of that hospital in six days,” Lorigo says. After a month of rehab, his octogenarian client went back to her life, which involved working five days a week (she still cleans houses). Her story, complete with photo, was told in the Buffalo News, causing Lorigo’s phone to begin ringing off the hook. Doppleganger cases soon began dotting the map all over the country.
One of the first was in nearby Rochester, New York, where the family of Glenna Dickinson went through an almost exactly similar narrative to the Smentkiewiczes: they read about ivermectin, got a family doctor to prescribe it, saw improvement, only to later have the hospital refuse treatment. Again Lorigo intervened, again a judge ordered the hospital to treat, again the patient recovered and was discharged.
Hospitals fought hard, hiring expensive law firms, at times going to extraordinary lengths to refuse treatment even with dying patients who’d exhausted all other options. At Edward-Elmhurst hospital in Chicago, a 68 year-old named Nurije Fype was admitted, put on a ventilator, and again, as all other treatments failed, her family got a judge to order the use of ivermectin. Lorigo claims the hospital initially refused to obey the court order, which led to the filing of a contempt motion, which in turn led to a pair of counter-motions and another confrontation before another befuddled Judge named James Orel.
“Why wouldn’t this be tried if she’s not improving?” the Chicago Tribune quoted Orel as saying. “Why does the hospital object to providing this medication?”
“He basically said, ‘What do you have left?’” Lorigo recounts. “No one would administer the ivermectin. It’s as safe as aspirin, for Christ’s sake. It’s been given out 3.7 billion times. I couldn’t understand it.”
Stories like these aren’t proof the drug works. They don’t even really rise to the level of evidence. People recover from diseases all the time, and it doesn’t mean any particular treatment was responsible. Short of the gold standard of randomized controlled trials, there’s no proof.
However, anecdotes have a power all their own, and in the Internet age, ones like these spread quickly. Lorigo estimates he now gets “10, 15, 20” calls and emails a day. At this level, at the bedside of a single Covid-19 patient who’s already received the full official treatment protocol and is failing anyway, the decision to administer a drug like ivermectin, or fluvoxamine, or hydroxychloroquine, or any of a dozen other experimental treatments, seems like a no-brainer. Nothing else has worked, the patient is dying, why not?
Telescope out a little further, however, and the ivermectin debate becomes more complicated, reaching into a series of thorny controversies, some ridiculous, some quite serious.
The ridiculous side involves the front end of Lorigo’s story, the same story detailed on this site last week: the censorship of ivermectin news that, no matter what one thinks about the evidence for or against, is clearly in the public interest.
Anyone running a basic internet search on the topic will get a jumble of confusing results. YouTube’s policies are beyond uneven. It’s been aggressive in taking down videos containing interviews with people like Kory and doling out strikes to independent media figures like Bret Weinstein, but an interview with Lorigo on TrialSite Newscontaining basically all of the same information is still up, as are clips from a just-taped episode of the Joe Rogan Experiencethat feature both Weinstein and Kory. Moreover, all sorts of statements at least as provocative as Kory’s “miraculous” formulation in the Senate still litter the Internet, many in reputable research journals. Take, for instance, this passage from the March issue of the Japanese Journal of Antibiotics:
When the effectiveness of ivermectin for the COVID-19 pandemic is confirmed with the cooperation of researchers around the world and its clinical use is achieved on a global scale, it could prove to be of great benefit to humanity. It may even turn out to be comparable to the benefits achieved from the discovery of penicillin…
There clearly is not evidence that ivermectin is the next penicillin, at least as far as its effects on Covid-19. As is noted in nearly every mainstream story about the subject, the WHO has advised against its use pending further study, there have been randomized studies showing it to be ineffective in speeding recovery, and the drug’s original manufacturer, Merck, has said there’s no “meaningful evidence” of efficacy for Covid-19 patients. However, it’s also patently untrue, as is frequently asserted, that there’s no evidence that the drug might be effective.
This past week, for instance, Oxford University announced it was launching a large-scale clinical trial. The study has already recruited more than 5,000 volunteers, and its announcement says what little is known to be true: that “small pilot studies show that early administration with ivermectin can reduce viral load and the duration of symptoms in some patients with mild COVID-19,” that it’s “a well-known medicine with a good safety profile,” and “because of the early promising results in some studies, it is already being widely used to treat COVID-19 in several countries.”
The Oxford text also says “there is little evidence from large-scale randomized controlled trials to demonstrate that it can speed up recovery from the illness or reduce hospital admission.” But to a person who might have a family member suffering from the disease, just the information about “early promising results” would probably be enough to inspire demands for a prescription, which might be the problem, of course. Unless someone was looking for that information, they likely wouldn’t find it, as mainstream news even of the Oxford study has been effectively limited to a pair of Bloombergand Forbesstories.
Ivermectin has suffered the same fate as thousands of other news topics since Donald Trump first announced his run for the presidency nearly six years ago, cleaved in two to inhabit separate factual universes for left and right audiences. Repurposed drugs generally have had a hard time being taken seriously since Trump announced he was on hydroxychloroquine last year, and ivermectin clearly also suffers from its association with Republican Senators like Ron Johnson. Still, the drug’s publicity issues go beyond the taint of “conservative” news.
The drug has become a test case for a controversy that’s long been building in health care, about how much input patients should have in their own treatment. Well before Covid-19, the medical profession was thrust into a revolution in patient information, inspired by a combination of Google and new patients’ rights laws.
Should people on their deathbeds be allowed to try anything to save themselves? That seems like an easy question to answer. Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That’s a different issue. Some would say absolutely not, while others would say the corruption of pharmaceutical companies and the medical system unfortunately make it a necessity. The world is increasingly divided along this trust/untrust axis.
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Former President Donald Trump twice called for a ban on Critical Race Theory in American schools, the military, and federal agencies at a rally on Saturday.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Wellington, Ohio, Trump said, “When you take a look at schools and you look at all of the things that happen, left-wing indoctrination camps, Critical Race Theory is being forced on our military,” as attendees responded with boos.
Later, Trump hit the theme again.
“Earlier this year, the Biden administration issued new rules pushing twisted Critical Race Theory into classrooms across the nation and also into our military. Our generals and our admirals are now focused more on this nonsense than they are on our enemies,” he said.
“You seen these generals lately on television?” he asked, apparently referring to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who recently defended CRT teachings and expressed his desire to learn about what he called “white rage.”
“They are woke,” Trump ridiculed.
“Our military will be incapable of fighting and incapable of taking orders,” the former commander in chief continued.
“You’re going to tell some private, ‘Private, stand up. You stand up. Right now,’” he said.
“‘I’m not standing up,’” the “private” responded. “‘You can’t talk to me that way, general.’”
“We’re going to have a whole different ballgame here,” Trump concluded. He said some of the military leaders “went right over to the other (ideological) side” after he left office.
“The military brass have become weak and ineffective leaders and our enemies are watching and they’re laughing,” Trump said.
He called on Republicans in Congress to ban Critical Race Theory.
“We had it banned through executive order,” Trump said, but Biden “immediately reinstituted it.”
“They have to get it out of our schools and they have to ban it in our workplaces and ban it in our states and ban it in federal agencies and ban it in our military,” he told the Ohio crowd.
Trump said if “government-run schools are going to teach children to hate our country,” then they should be given school choice opportunities.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
Kari Lake (left) Receives a Tour of The Arizona Audit from Ken Bennett (right) Photo by Justin Boerman
Arizona Gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake has announced that she will secure Arizona’s border when she is elected Governor.
This was a message for Kamala Harris, who is only exacerbating the border crisis while refusing to take responsibility for their America Last policy.
As a top news anchor in Arizona for 22 years, Kari Lake publicly left the news industry due to the biased coverage and flat-out lies that divide America.
Now, she is running for Governor of Arizona fighting for conservative policies including election integrity, low taxes, individual liberties and securing Arizona’s BORDER.
Kari Lake also toured the Arizona audit today. Where is Doug Ducey?
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Scottsdale, Arizona is home to an illegal migrant sanctuary at the Homewood Suites.
Recently Kari Lake stood in this area in Scottsdale and shared a message for VP Kamala Harris
Kari Lake: Theborder crisis is in our neighborhoods now so if you’re gonna go to El Paso and act like you’re addressing the issues, that’s where the wall is working.
If you really want to handle this situation, you’ll finish the wall that President Trump started.
This hotel behind me is full of people who came here because they heard Joe Biden tell them to rush the border, and now neighborhoods like this one in Scottsdale, Arizona are feeling the effects of Joe Biden’s bad policy.
When I’m Governor, I’ll finish the wall, and I’ll make sure that we don’t have the criminal cartels in Mexico controlling our border policy.
To learn more about how Kari Lake will fight against failing progressive policies, cancel culture and big government visit KariLake.com
Kari Lake is fighting for Arizona against the radical left’s Arizona Last policy. Visit her website, DONATE, sign up, volunteer. Kari Lake is fighting for Americans with secure borders and America First policy!
What happens when a population of introverts, hypochondriacs, and obsessive-compulsives is continuously bombarded with messages to seclude and disinfect themselves, for fear that COVID-19 prickle-balls lurk everywhere, waiting to attack?
What happens is that emotionally damaged people start driving bad politics and bad policy.
"Fifteen days to flatten the curve."
That phrase is surely now banned by corporate media, for it reminds us how the supposedly acute health threat of March 2020 was repeatedly re-packaged to keep populations off-balance and out of business not for 15 days, but for 15 months.
Never in modern times has a health issue been so flagrantly politicized, nor wielded as a club, as the Wuhan virus has been. Outside a few rational locales, almost every nation drank the COVID Kool-Aid, competing to see who could enforce the stupidest rules.
Naturally, academia would lead the way:
Among Americans aged 15–24, a total of 587 died of COVID in 2020, according to the CDC, representing about 0.16%, or about 1 in 642, of COVID deaths.
If you are young, you have essentially no chance of dying of COVID. The low youth mortality impact from COVID was known by April 2020.
Yet many universities now require these low-risk young people to inject the experimental vaccine or be banished from campus.
Did you already catch the WuFlu and have antibodies?
Too bad. The great pulsating brains of academia cannot differentiate.
Young people who want to serve their country are also targets: the passive-aggressive command at West Point compels the unvaccinated to sacrifice a week’s vacation to quarantine and then to wear masks in the most ridiculous circumstances imaginable — to harass them and make them look like fools. Military leaders do not care whether the experimental vaccines might do more harm than good, especially on a previously COVID-exposed youth. Take the jab and shut up, cadet; Colonel Suckup needs to PowerPoint his 100% compliance success.
Famed baseball pitcher Anthony Fauci claims that he is Science personified, yet anyone can make simple deductions that have eluded the doctor: there is effectively no difference in COVID rates between regions that went full Stalin on COVID rules and those areas that took a more holistic or decentralized approach to the virus.
Great Britain, with its multiple draconian lockdowns, has a COVID case rate of 6.76% of the population, while Sweden, which mostly left schools and businesses open and went soft-touch on mask mandates, has a case rate of 10.7%. But Sweden’s death rate is 20% lower than the U.K.’s, so what was the point of Britain’s lockdown hysteria?
Similarly, some U.S. schools were closed for up to a year, and kids as young as two were required to wear masks in a sickening display of fear-psychosis. Yet in Switzerland, schools reopened permanently about 4–5 weeks after the initial virus panic in the spring of 2020, and children under 12 were never required to wear masks at any time. Switzerland’s COVID case and death rates are both lower than the U.S.’s. On the other hand, in Washington, D.C., where self-righteous residents wear masks even while jogging in the woods, restaurants were already open in March 2021, while in Switzerland, restaurants were closed from December until late May, in the apparent hope of destroying every last small eatery. There’s no science in any of this posturing.
And none of this jumping through hoops made any difference in the progression of the virus: lockdown-crazy Michigan has a higher COVID death rate than libertarian Florida (despite its large elderly population).
Lost in all of this seems to be the simple fact that the COVID virus is not that deadly. True, about 12% of the 4.7-million total U.S. deaths recorded between January 2020 and June 2021 were credited to COVID. About 1.7% of positive cases end in death. But 80% of COVID deaths occurred in the over-65 population, which always has a much higher death rate from infectious diseases, such as pneumonia. If you are under 65 and test positive for COVID, you have a 0.25% chance of death (1/400), which is probably about the same as if you caught a bad flu and suffered complications from it. It’s also logical that we will see periods of below-average death rates in the next year or two, in the same way that there are bad flu years and not-bad flu years.
Self-serving politicians locked down free citizens (and, ironically, released prisoners), destroyed businesses, marred kids’ psyches, and harassed people with mask and testing mandates, all for a coronavirus that in the end was not that novel. And they did it with the connivance of corporate media, which censored and slandered anyone who asked the most basic questions about the virus’ origins and treatments.
In a future sane world, people will view the orchestrated panic of the COVID era with the same bemused condescension we might view the supposed War of the Worlds radio invasion scare of 1938, or the bygone use of leeches for seemingly every ailment.
Yes, grandson, back in 2020, the whole world went batty.
Former President Donald Trump returned to the rally stage in Ohio on Saturday, urging his supporters to vote for “America First” Republicans in the congressional midterms, not RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
“We’re going to elect an amazing slate of America First Republicans next year,” Trump said.
The former president’s rally speech had a level of renewed urgency, as he outlined a long list of Biden’s failures in office.
“The number one priority for everyone who wants to save America is to put every ounce of energy into winning a victory in midterms and in 2024,” he said.
Trump campaigned for Max Miller, a primary challenger to Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzales (R-OH), who voted to impeach Trump.
“Every single Republican needs to vote him out of office,” Trump said, calling Gonzales a “grandstanding RINO.”
“He’s not the candidate you want representing the Republican party. He’s the candidate of Liz Cheney, another beauty,” he added.
After criticizing at length the policies of Biden and Congressional Democrats, Trump called for a massive political reset in the 2022 midterms.
“You have to deliver massive majorities for Republicans in Congress next year, have to do it,” he said.
The former president thrilled supporters with some of his greatest hits — including a dramatic reading of the poem “The Snake” to describe the threat of illegal immigration.
“In the Republican party we do not believe that we should welcome criminals with open arms,” he said.
Trump said that Democrats had used the coronavirus pandemic to “steal the election” and called for his supporters to rally in the midterms.
“With the help of everyone here tonight and patriots across the country, we will do all that we are supposed to be doing and much more when we win giant republican majorities next year,” he promised.
Trump did not endorse a Republican candidate for the 2022 Ohio Senate election but took a “poll” by asking his supporters to cheer for either Jane Timken, Josh Mandel, or Mike Gibbons.
“They’re great people, they’re working hard,” Trump said, noting his rally “polls” turned out to be “very accurate.”
