Patrick Hampton on Medical Tyranny

 

Whether you decide to get the COVID jab or not, the vaxx-passport - - or some other proof of vaccination, is yet another wedge that tyrants use to divide their subjects (that would be us).  And it’s happening here and now.  Patrick Hampton at Patriot Post adds to the discussion:

With mask mandates lifted in most states, many Americans are enjoying their return to what they believe is normal. But we are also seeing the true faces of those in power who seek to use sensitive medical information — like vaccination status — to oppress others.

Private companies, organizations, and educational institutions announce their plans as people return to the office and classrooms — some requiring proof of full COVID-19 vaccination before walking through their doors. Some businesses plan to even segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

Not getting the “jab” is the new Scarlet Letter. Once worn as a punitive mark to label someone as an adulterer based on the American novel bearing the same name, those who are open about their non-vaccinated status will be forced to exist on the fringes of society.

. . .

It’s not even about science anymore. It’s about control and an allegiance to certain ideas — possibly totalitarianism.

. . .

Read the rest of Mr. Hampton's article here.  Previously posted and related CTP posts are here and here.

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COVID-19 lockdowns are the “biggest public health mistake”

 

Meme via Patriot Post

This report is from Matthew Impalli at Newsweek:

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, recently said that COVID-19 lockdowns are the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made...The harm to people is catastrophic."

Several U.S. states have started to ease their COVID-19 restrictions over the past few weeks.

Bhattacharya, who made the comments during an interview with the Daily Clout, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition that calls for the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, claiming that they are "producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health."

As of Monday, the Great Barrington Declaration has received signatures from over 13,000 medical and public health scientists, more than 41,000 medical practitioners and at least 754,399 "concerned citizens."

During the interview last month, Bhattacharya said that the declaration comes from "two basic facts."

"One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger...and that's a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it's people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let's protect the vulnerable," Bhattacharya said. "The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live."

He continued, "it's also not very equal. People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich."

More of the report is here.  

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A.F. Branco: Dr Fauci’s magic goalposts

 

A.F. Branco cartoon credits: Townhall and Legal Insurrection 

Related headlines:  

At RedState:  New York Legislature -- Dominated by Dems -- Strips Gov. Cuomo of his Pandemic Emergency Powers

At The Federalist:  Texas Governor Announces 100% Reopening, No More Mask Mandate After Months Of Closures (to take effect on March 10)

# # #

COVID Hyperbole Syndrome

Cartoon credit: Cartoonstock

Lionel Shriver’s column at The Spectator is titled “Never Has  Virus Been so oversold:  I’d like to sign on with COVID’s agent. What a publicity budget.” She sets forth the grotesque trade-offs we are seeing in both the US and the UK – with no end in sight.  An extract:

The more relentless these micro-managing policies of ‘social distancing’ (an expression I’ve come to loathe), mandatory masks, continued closures and capriciously restored regional lockdowns apparently on the basis of a miserable uptick of 14 extra cases, the more we relocate what had lurked far at the back of our minds to the front: other people are sources of contagion. We used to live with that fact. But this on-going risk of mixing with other human beings we’re now, apparently, to find intolerable.

I’m currently in New York, where the medical paranoia is sustained, and social life is nearly nonexistent. This week, a rarity, a couple came inside our house. They didn’t sit down, didn’t stay long, and were careful not to touch anything. When they left they were clearly relieved, and immediately doused themselves in hand sanitizer. I don’t think it’s going to be any different next summer. Google, for example, has already advised its employees to work from home for the next 12 months.

The graph of new cases in the UK roughly leveled off throughout July — but it has not plateaued at zero. The PM gives every indication that only zero will do. Thus as long as the coronavirus persists, the fearful prophylactic measures will continue. In trade for this valiant vigilance on our behalf, we merely have to sacrifice: our friends. Any new friends. All live performance — music, plays. Restaurants. All occasions, like proper weddings, funerals, birthdays and extended-family celebrations. Travel. Colleagues. Any search for love. Any moving communal experience, like festivals. Dentistry. A functional National Health Service. Oh, and the economy — and in case you need translation, that means the country, full stop.

Boris’s ‘nuclear option’ of another total national lockdown remains on the table. Why on earth? The one constructive conclusion to draw from this debacle is that long, indiscriminate national lockdowns to suppress infectious disease are a catastrophe. Yet the most horrifying consequence of COVID-19 could be that lockdown — which once applied only to prisons — becomes officialdom’s established knee-jerk response to any new contagion.

There will be a new contagion, too, and a new one after that. How many times can you send the national debt soaring, devastate small business, paralyze government services — including healthcare — and cancel for months on end the civil liberties of an erstwhile ‘free people’? In preference to this repeated carpet-bombing, a literal nuclear option might at least get the agony over with fast.

Read the full column here (h/t Instapundit).

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Action Alert for Ohio

image credit: Professional Adviser 

The good news headline:

Ohio pharmacy board backs off hydroxychloroquine ban
at Gov. Mike DeWine’s urging

The bad news headline:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine proposes banning liquor sales
after 10 p.m. to stop coronavirus spread in bars

This is one smart virus that knows how to spread itself around more after 10pm.

In our neighborhood, at least half the restaurants have not re-opened since the lock-downs and the riots, and those that have opened are under onerous orders to enforce masks, distancing, etc.;  three citations and they get closed down for good.  And now comes this latest regulation to further cripple the restaurant and bar businesses.

The Ohio Liquor Control Commission is slated to hold a hearing on the rule 9 a.m. Friday. If approved, DeWine said he would sign an order that would go into effect Friday night.

Contact Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email

Please share with your friends.

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The true cost of the Wuhan flu scam

A reader (signing on as Nordic Prince) posted the comment below at Legal Insurrection’s William Jacobson’s posting about Prof. Mike Adams untimely death:

nordic_prince | July 27, 2020 at 6:36 pm

THIS is the true cost of the Wuhan flu scam… broken, devastated lives in the wake of the shutdown nonsense and subsequent economic destruction.

Then we have all these ninnies running around parroting claptrap like “we’re all in this together,” “if it saves just one life,” “you can rebuild an economy but you can’t rebuild a life.” Yeah, tell that to the guy who lost his job, lost his business, lost his life savings, and now has nothing to leave for his kids except ever mounting piles of debt. Ever try to get a new career or even a new job when you’re middle aged, let alone closer to what should be retirement? You’re not only competing against all the young bucks who look down at you because they think you’re a dinosaur, you’re also competing with all the other middle-aged guys who got pink slipped as well. Is it any wonder that suicide and substance abuse are on the rise?

These people who have brought this about are pure evil. They hate not only Trump, but they hate us as well. They don’t give a damn about “the little guy,” and instead treat us worse than the dog**** you’d scrape off your shoe. They fiddle while America burns, content to gorge themselves on premium ice cream from a well-stocked commercial grade freezer while “the little guy” goes to food banks to try and get by.

Prof. Mike Adams was one of the good guys.  A tragic end.  In case you didn’t follow this one, Mark Steyn’s column sums it up.  And Steyn would know about the silent majority. 

# # #

Capricious Governors

According to cleveland.com, "Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday during an interview on "Meet the Press" that he would not rule out a statewide mandate to wear masks in public."  Cuyahoga County already has a mandate.  Theaters, sports venues, and other large gathering places are still closed.  

# # #

Mask Mandates are a Public Health Menace

image credit: insidepulse.com

At BizPacReview, Michelle Malkin has a good common sense take on the face mask mandates, such as the one issued by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine:

Contracting COVID can be fatal or debilitating for the elderly, immune-compromised and physically challenged. But there is no catastrophic public health emergency justifying sweeping government orders and ordinances that would force healthy citizens to wear masks in an increasingly oppressive climate of manufactured fear — completely untethered from pragmatic realities and risk assessments.

. . .

Watching young, healthy people jogging or hiking on isolated trails in mid-July around Colorado Springs in cloth and surgical masks drives me nuts. They’re not protecting anyone else and are likely making themselves sick. In what sane world is breathing through moist bacteria traps and cutting yourself off from vitally needed oxygen a public health virtue? Vulnerable kids especially are being lied to by panic-mongers and exploited as human shields.  . . .

The evidence does not support broad mask mandates. Yet, now we free-thinkers and free-breathers face jail time and witch hunts for dissenting. It’s all about politics, power, and control.

Read Ms. Malkin's article here.  As for me, I’ve been wearing my mask around my chin. 

# # #

The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation

Literally Thousands of Doctors and Scientists 

Have Come Out Against Fauci’s Lockdowns 

Including a Nobel Prize-Winning Biophysicist. 

The Media Just Doesn’t Want You to Know

The headline says it all, but the report by Michael Thau at Red State starts off:

As RedState’s very own Sister Toldjah reported earlier today, the doubts President Trump recently expressed about the wisdom of Dr. Fauci’s advice on COVID-19 have elicited a chorus of smug accusation from the usual suspects that he’s “ignoring the experts.”

Sister Toldjah pointed out that it’s hard to know what their complaint even means given how often Fauci and other media-anointed authorities have done total 180s.

But, even putting aside how their advice seems to change with the political winds, the idea that there’s some scientific consensus in favor of the extreme measures inflicted on us in response to COVID-19 couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though you don’t hear their perspectives on CNN, countless scientists and doctors have tried to warn us not only that COVID-19 isn’t nearly as deadly as we’ve been led to believe; they’re also certain that the real threat to public health we’re facing is from the lockdowns.

Full report is here.

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Scheduling meetings during the COVID-19 panic

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Weaponizing the virus

The Wuhan virus, a/k/a COVID-19, has been weaponized by the Progressive left. More masks, more lockdowns – all driven by politics.  And telling the truth can be hazardous to your health.  Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media reports: 

Minnesota State Sen. Scott Jensen (R-Carver County), a doctor who was named the Family Physician of the Year in 2016, now faces an investigation for alleged “misinformation” and “recklessness” in his public statements about the coronavirus pandemic. The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice is investigating him for warning that coronavirus deaths may be inflated due to financial incentives to put “COVID-19” on death certificates and for comparing COVID-19 to the common flu.

“Less than a week ago, I was notified by the Board of Medical Practice in Minnesota that I was being investigated because of public statements I’ve made,” Jensen announced in a video posted Sunday. He said the complaints were anonymous, so he will not be able to face his accusers.

. . .

. . . “Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it’s a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they’re Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000,” Jensen wrote on Facebook. “But if it’s COVID-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.”

On April 21, FactCheck.org concluded, “The figures cited by Jensen generally square with estimated Medicare payments for COVID-19 hospitalizations, based on average Medicare payments for patients with similar diagnoses.”

Later that month, New York funeral directors told Project Veritas that they had seen “COVID-19” marked as a cause of death on death certificates even when the patient had not tested positive for coronavirus. The funeral directors said there was a financial incentive to twist the facts. When The New York Times named 1,000 coronavirus victims on its front page in May, it included a man whose death police are investigating as a homicide.

. . .

In his video, Dr. Jensen claims, “I’ve got the Department of Health in Illinois where one of the directors says, ‘Just because we put COVID-19 on the death certificate as the cause of death, that doesn’t mean the patient died of COVID-19.'”

As for the claim that Jensen engaged in “recklessness” by comparing COVID-19 to the common flu, the doctor and state senator quoted Dr. Anthony Fauci in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases [for COVID-19] is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%),” Fauci wrote.

The rest of the report is here.  And I do not trust Gov. DeWine's "orders."

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COVID-19 panic: the agenda

There’s a political agenda with the never-ending coronavirus hype.  Sundance at Conservative Treehouse reports:

In order to support the most important political objectives of the DNC writ large in the 2020 election, COVID-19 hype is essential:

• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot easily achieve ‘mail-in’ voting; which they desperately need in key battleground states in order to control the outcome.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot shut down rallies and political campaigning efforts of President Trump; which they desperate need to do in key battleground states.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot block the campaign contrast between an energetic President Trump and a physically tenuous, mentally compromised, challenger.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats do not have an excuse for cancelling the DNC convention in Milwaukee; thereby protecting candidate gibberish from himself.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats do not have a mechanism to keep voters isolated from each-other; limiting communication and national debate adverse to their interests.  COVID-19 panic pushes the national conversation into the digital space where Big Tech controls every element of the conversation.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot keep their Blue state economies easily shut-down and continue to block U.S. economic growth.  All thriving economies are against the political interests of Democrats.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot easily keep club candidate Joe Biden sealed in the basement; where the electorate is not exposed to visible signs of his dementia.
• Without COVID-19 panic it becomes more difficult for Big Tech to censor voices that would outline the fraud and scheme.  With COVID-19 panic they have a better method and an excuse.
• Without COVID-19 panic Democrats cannot advance, influence, or organize their preferred presidential debate format, a ‘virtual presidential debate’ series.
• [Comrade Gretchen Whitmer knows this plan, hence she cancelled the Michigan venue]
• All of these, and more, strategic outcomes are based on the manufactured weaponization of the COVID-19 virus to achieve a larger political objective.  There is ZERO benefit to anyone other than Democrats for the overwhelming hype surrounding COVID-19.

Read the full report here.

# # #

Face masks and indoctrination

art credit: shutterstock.com

Why is anyone still wearing a face mask? 

The title: “Another day, another bogus report from CDC seeking to entice the public to continue wearing masks”. Jack Hellner reports at American Thinker:

The CDC now says they have proof that wearing face-masks reduced COVID 19 cases in NYC by 66,000 from April 17th to May 9th.

. . .

There is no way they would know this, and it is as made up as the modeling numbers that CDC put out in March that showed that hundreds of millions would get the disease and millions would die. That is the study that destroyed the economy and caused governors throughout the country to require us to wear masks, social distance and avoid large groups for the first time in our lives. 

If they wanted a legitimate story, they would have looked at cases in states without the face mask requirement to see how many cases they had from April 17th to May 9th. Instead of doing that they just made numbers up and the media, like puppets, repeat the bogus numbers to indoctrinate people into wearing masks.

The full article with more stats is here.  This is all about power and control. 

# # #

Ending the lockdowns now

Ohio is starting to re-open.  Not soon enough, but Ohio is faring better than New York.  New York Post (and Federalist) contributor David Marcus was on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson program yesterday evening to expand on his NY Post op-ed.  He wants New York to get back to work.  He’s right.  Here’s some of his editorial:

By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

It needs to end. Now.

In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ­dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ­Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

. . .

Read the rest here.  

We also know that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice has been wrong every time.  For a listing of his continuing mistakes, here’s a column by Mark Simone posted earlier this month at the 710 WOR website.  Not to beat the dead horse, but today we are reading that “Mastermind of LOCKDOWN Dr. Anthony Fauci NOW says staying closed for too long could cause ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’! (headline quote via Pamela Geller here.)  

# # #

Judge rules Ohio lockdown arbitrary and unreasonable

Many in Ohio have observed that Gov. Mike DeWine’s lockdown and imposed regulations were and are arbitrary and unconstitutional.  We know that Health Director Amy Acton based her recommendations on wildly inaccurate models and projections.  An Ohio judge agrees.  Jacob Sullum at Reason reports (h/t Instapundit):

The headline:  Ohio Judge Deems the State's COVID-19 

Lockdown 'Arbitrary, Unreasonable, and Oppressive'

The ruling says the state's top health official exceeded her statutory authority by ordering "nonessential" businesses to close.

Ohio's COVID-19 lockdown is illegal, a state judge ruled today, because it exceeds the powers granted by the statute under which it was imposed. Responding to a May 8 lawsuit filed by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law on behalf of 35 gyms, Lake County Court of Common Pleas Judge Eugene Lucci enjoined Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton from penalizing the plaintiffs or similar businesses for violating the lockdown, provided "they operate in compliance with all applicable safety regulations."

. . .

"Constitutions are written to prevent governments from arbitrarily interfering in citizens' lives and businesses," 1851 Center Executive Director Maurice Thompson said in response to the ruling. "On that front, the call to action is clear: The governor and health director may no longer impose their own closures and regulations and write their own criminal penalties to enforce those regulations and closures. We remain available to serve those who are caught in the state's tangled web of unlawful orders."

Most of the damage is already done, but it’s good to know there may be potential remedies for small businesses.  And Ohio's Governor won't be able to pull this again.  Mr. Sullum's full report is here.   

# # #

Why shutdowns are useless

Over at Power Line, John Hinderaker links to an interview (not quite an hour long) with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medical School for Uncommon Knowledge.  Mr. Hinderaker's closing comments, based on the interview:

The conventionally posed choice between fighting the disease and salvaging our economy is entirely wrong. The choice is not disease vs. economy. The disease is here, and there is nothing governments can do to stop it. (They can, of course, close down access to nursing homes, a mixed blessing if you are elderly.) The real choice is between the disease with a flourishing economy, and the disease with a devastated economy. The disease is a constant.

Read the full column here, with interview link at the bottom.

# # #

Lockdowns vs the Constitution

Here’s a glimmer of sanity during our months of house arrest. Thomas Lifson at American Thinker reports:

Two state supreme courts have stepped up to constrain abuse of civil rights in the name of fighting an epidemic.  The concept of a "state of emergency" can be used to suspend constitutional limitations on the powers of government, as has been the case with the response to the Wuhan virus pandemic.  But under our system of justice, there has to be a reckoning, and finally we are beginning to see state supreme courts acknowledging what Barack Obama notoriously called "negative liberties," also known as limits on governmental powers, also known as protections against tyranny.

Using their respective state constitutions (which generally mirror the U.S. Constitution when it comes to fundamental rights), the supreme courts of Wisconsin and Texas have spoken up for liberty in the face of two months of "state of emergency" punishing restrictions on liberty.

. . .

In Texas, Justice James D. Blacklock, the majority [opinion held that] the default position must always be to protect rights, and any contravention of thise rights must be minimal and justified.  This is what our revolution was fought to protect.

. . .

These judicial actions — and there will be more later — will help solidify the growing public revulsion against loss of liberties in the name of fighting an epidemic that, while concerning, has not lived up the scary estimates driven by computer models that have not proved out as remotely realistic.  Politically, Democrats have wagered that the public will remain frightened enough to accept a new Great Depression in the name of avoiding a phantom catastrophe . . .

Read the article here; it includes extracts from the judicial rulings.  

# # #

'The Great Mistake'

image credit: EndTimesProphecyReport.com

Deborah Georgatos’s article at American Thinker about the “Great Mistake” provides an excellent summary of the lockdown; she is outraged:

America’s Great Shutdown started with The Great Mistake.  Vital lessons must emerge from both, and propel the reopening of America, rooted in the “only normal” for America, the promise of liberty.

Ms. Georgatos goes through many of the topics that have been posted on this blog to question the lockdown:  faulty models, inflated projections, inadequate and misreported statistics, medical “experts” with an agenda, and so on. The consequent policies have been catastrophic:

This Great Shutdown at the hands of governors and elected and non-elected officials has destroyed the economy, large and small businesses, and the economic security of individuals and families. It has launched an unprecedented avalanche of unemployment claims and unsustainable federal “bailout” spending. It has emboldened petty tyrants with dubious authority but mountain-sized swagger to issue ‘orders’ that control the lives and movements of American citizens.

. . .

. . .the most devastating consequence of the Great Shutdown caused by the Great Mistake is the loss of liberty.

Or more precisely, the loss of the presumption that as Americans we have the right to live in liberty. If we concede liberty can be taken away for an unspecified and unlimited period of time in order to “keep us safe” from any future virus or other threats, we will never have liberty again. There will always be another virus, another threat, another expert advocating shut down.

. . .

It is beyond ironic that the miserable economy, massive unemployment, and devastating loss of freedom is happening only two months after the best economy, record-setting employment, and the palpable, energized sense of American freedom and greatness that marked the first three years of the Trump presidency. That booming economy grew out of returning to our roots in freedom.

Let’s change course, correct the Great Mistake, and move past the Great Shutdown.  Let’s re-open a Great Economy based on trust in American liberty. Let’s restore liberty as the “Only Normal” for America.

Read the full article here.

It would be difficult to fault President Trump for calling on well-known medical experts to advise him at the ouset.  Few would expect a President to have medical expertise himself.  But where I would fault President Trump is sticking with policies when it became obvious they were based on bad advice.  Perhaps he has a strategy that I cannot see, but it is difficult to imagine that he would knowingly put the country through such agony.  

At this point, if you are concerned about the slow-walking of the Ohio lockdowns “ordered” by Comrade DeWine, then let your concerns be known:

Contact Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email here

https://governor.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/governor/contact

# # #

Continue the lockdown or re-open?

photo credit: Times of India

Once again, Heather Mac Donald is a voice of reason during the destructive lockdown. Her article appeared in The Hill the other day, and here’s part of it:

Who has the burden of proof regarding the economic lockdowns: Those who argue for continuing them or those who want to lift them?  

. . .

. . .both sides of the lockdown debate are motivated by public health concerns. Pace [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo, his ornately complicated reopening plan does have a trade-off. Lives are being lost to the lockdown, a toll that will mount the longer the economy remains shuttered. Some doctors estimate that the closure of hospitals to non-coronavirus cases and the reluctance of patients to burden 911 have increased mortality as much as the virus. The global depression will devastate life expectancies in the less-developed world. Overdose deaths and suicides brought on by joblessness and loss of hope will rise, as more and more businesses fold permanently.  

The rhetoric of lockdown proponents is growing more apocalyptic. “A Virus Tightens Its Deadly Grip” announced the lead print headline in Wednesday’s New York Times — even as the data keep reinforcing the case against universal shutdown. Infection outbreaks are occurring in highly specific locales, not universally: nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons. Deaths are tragically concentrated in the former.   

. . .

The demographics of COVID-19 allow for a targeted response. Nursing homes and all congregate facilities must be kept immaculately clean and protected. Over the long term, Americans will need to rethink how they care for elderly parents and how much they are willing to pay for such care. But if the proponents of universal lockdowns had to prove the case for continuing to destroy the complex web of transactions by which human beings flourish, the economy would reopen and millions of livelihoods would be saved. 

Ms. Mac Donald’s full analysis is here.  Highly recommended.

# # #

Mike DeWine "plans" for Ohio

Paula Bolyard at PJ Media doesn’t think much of Governor Comrade Mike DeWine’s power-grab:

The Ohio House on Wednesday passed a bill stripping the state health director of some emergency powers and limiting stay-at-home orders to 14 days, requiring the approval of the legislature for an extension. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who’s been basking in the praise of Democrats and the MSM for his heavy-handed approach to containing the coronavirus pandemic, has vowed to veto the bill.

. . . 

DeWine’s office told reporters on Wednesday that should the bill make it to his desk he will veto it. It does not appear at present that the House would have enough vote to override a veto. The Senate has yet to take up the measure.

“My administration is focused on the important things we need to do to help businesses responsibly reopen while protecting Ohioans’ health and safety,” DeWine said in a statement. “This week alone, this included increasing coronavirus testing and tracing, balancing Ohio’s budget, and working on plans to move Ohio’s economy forward. Ohioans need their legislators focused on these important issues. Creating more uncertainty regarding public health and employee safety is the last thing we need as we work to restore consumer confidence in Ohio’s economy.”

In other words, the governor has no intention of relinquishing the power he and the unelected health director have amassed. If that power is taken away, what will he and Acton have to talk about at their incessant, mind-numbing “Wine with DeWine” daily press briefings?

How does he plan to "restore consumer confidence in Ohio’s economy" by keeping everybody under house arrest?  Ms. Bolyard's column is here.

Meanwhile, Seth A. Richardson at cleveland.com reports:

Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday that barbershops, hair salons, nail salons, tanning salons and day spas can reopen starting May 15, nearly two months after they were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses will have to abide by certain health guidelines, including social distancing and strict sanitization regimens.

May 15?  Why May 15?  What is wrong with yesterday?  

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