Power grab

Cartoon by Pat Cross at Townhall:

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Doctors and Doctored Numbers

image credit: powertaylor.com

At American Greatness, Conrad Black zeroes in on why this lock-down is due to both misdiagnoses (e.g., on the projected fatality rate of COVID-19) and bureaucratic over-reach:

the number of “confirmed cases”—meaning cases that have come to the attention of the medical profession—tells us nothing about the number of people infected. Nor does that number tell us what happens to the gamut of those infected. Nor is the number of deaths “hard,” because it does not distinguish between those who die of the virus and those who die merely with it (that is, they might have died even without it).

. . .

The most important fact about COVID-19, its true mortality rate, is the number who die of the virus divided by the number infected by it. No algorithms. Simple arithmetic.

In short, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci, et al., are showing themselves to be typical of our bureaucracy: over-credentialed, entrusted with too much power, and dangerously incompetent.

Learning the true figures about precisely what danger the virus poses to whom must begin by taking into account one thing we know for sure about COVID-19: that many, if not most, of those infected by this unusually contagious virus show few or no symptoms. This suggests eventual near-universal contagion.

. . .

Fauci showed how thoroughly he and his cohorts have subordinated common sense to bureaucratic authority. Having strenuously campaigned to deny the usefulness of hydroxychloroquine, having been confronted by the fact that physicians on the front lines of the battle against the virus are using it themselves, and having been asked whether he—were he to come down with illness from the virus—would use it, he weakly conceded that he would but only as part of an approved study. He cared less about describing what the drug can do and cannot do than about affirming his agency’s and the FDA’s prerogatives.

Backed by the media, Fauci and company have contended that actions by anybody, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or physicians that do not follow proper bureaucratic procedures are illegitimate. Who the hell do they think they are? We belong to ourselves. Not to them.

Black's article is here.

But maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Headline at Breitbart:  

Donald Trump Thinking of 2nd Coronavirus Task Force 

Focused on Reopening Country

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No in-person primary voting for you

Unless you are homeless or disabled, there will be no in-person primary voting for you. (See our previous blogpost here.)  Cleveland.com reports that a judge has upheld the changes to the election timetable and method of voting – mostly by mail.  Not good news, but here it:

A federal judge on Friday declined to step in and change a plan Ohio lawmakers unanimously approved to alter the state’s primary election, which will now be held almost solely by mail through April 28 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Michael Watson ruled that a coalition of voting-rights groups that filed suit Monday over the Ohio legislature’s plan did not show that the rights of residents would be disenfranchised enough to override the law.

Even if the plan, named House Bill 197, isn’t perfect, that’s not enough to intervene, the judge wrote in his 27-page opinion.

“The Constitution does not require the best plan, just a lawful one,” wrote Watson, whose courtroom is in Columbus. “. . .

. . .

. . . He said the state is not in violation of the National Voting Rights Act.

Here’s one part I find particularly objectionable:

[Watson] said voters had many chances to vote either at boards of elections or by mail prior to the original primary date.

Voters who planned to vote on Election Day at their polling place are penalized for not voting early.

Read the rest of the report here.

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Ramirez: Rosie the Registered Nurse

Michael P. Ramirez, political cartoonist extraordinaire, published this one at Issues and Insights:

Following up on Mr. Ramirez’s theme: One of our neighborhood bistros, Lago East Bank, just announced a community support program to show appreciation for those on the front lines: e.g., healthcare providers & support medical personnel, law enforcement and safety personnel, sanitation workers, and so on.  The restaurant seeks contributions from its patrons, and then directs those contributions to underwrite meals for “essential employees” on the front lines.  So the employees receive free meals and our thanks, and the restaurant gets some much-needed business during the shut-down.  If there’s a favorite restaurant in your neighborhood that is offering take-away and carry-out during the Wuhan Virus crisis, consider sharing this idea with them.

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Alert: You can vote only by mail now

art credit: cedarhills.org

Yesterday, I went to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website; I wanted to double-check the rescheduled date when voters could go to their respective polling places to mark their ballots.  The date I marked on my calendar was June 2.  That date was not on the website, so I planned to phone the BoE today.  No need.  Susan Daniels at American Thinker is a few steps ahead of me:

The residents of Ohio are getting screwed.  They have not been informed that voting day has been moved up from June 2 to April 28.  No notice from the county to anyone and nothing in the media.

The primary election in Ohio was set for March 10, 2020.  Then someone in Columbus, without explanation, changed the date to March 17, St. Patrick's Day.  [Note: some of the comments at the link at Lucianne raise questions about the accuracy of this sequence. -D]  The cynical among us believe that the hope was that fewer voters would turn out that day, with the Cleveland parade and all, which of course was canceled for the first time in 178 years.

Except that lifelong politician and governor Mike DeWine canceled elections at 3:30 A.M. on the 17th itself.  He had gone to court earlier that day to try to stop the primary.  DeWine said he would go along with the judge's decision.  The judge said "no," and all of a sudden, the judge's decision was unimportant.

It took DeWine's cronies until 3:30 A.M. to get four Ohio Supreme Court judges to agree by phone to call off voting.  (Was that even legal?)  DeWine set the new date as June 2.  Then on March 25, the General Assembly passed H.B. 197, resetting the date to April 28, 2020.

If you have not voted early, residents are no longer allowed to go to the Geauga Board of Elections (BOE), where I live, but instead have to follow a complicated procedure, which I learned about by accident.  The county has not informed the voters; the media have never mentioned it.

You can vote only by mail now.  But before you can vote, you first have to get an application (mailed or faxed to you) to apply for a ballot.  You then fill out that application, and it must be mailed to the BOE.  Then they will mail you a ballot.  After you fill out your ballot, it then must be mailed back to the BOE.  And all this has to be done in less than a month.  What could possibly go wrong?

And where are all the votes that were already cast being securely kept?

Ms. Daniels is right to ask if any of this is even legal.  In essence, Ohio voters have been deprived of their right to vote at their polling place on Election Day. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website confirms:  “No in-person voting at polling locations.” 

To request your ballot by mail, go to your Board of Election website; click here for the Ohio directory.  

UPDATE 1:55pm:  Cleveland.com headline

Ohio Secretary of State preparing to mail 

vote-by-mail instructions for state’s delayed primary

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Time for a Second Opinion

William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn at Real Clear Politics have a better prescription (h/t Instapundit):

We are trying to stave off and arrest a pandemic. Given what is being recommended, we think we need some second or third opinions. This pandemic, now that it has reached America, has taken 3,173 lives here.  This, from a tested population of 164,359 cases. That’s a mortality rate of 1.9%.  But immediately, questions must be asked. We record every case of death from the coronavirus, but we have no idea how many people have had the coronavirus. Clearly, there are more than 164,359 cases because not everyone has been tested. That would put the mortality rate at less than 1.9%. That rate could be far, far less. 

. . .

We truly are shutting down America and harming a great many Americans, based on the worst fears that have not been true and are not on the horizon.  We are scaring the hell out of the citizenry.  A few additional statistics help counsel a lowering of our national temperature:  The vast majority of deaths from the virus are of people over the age of 70 with underlying frailties.  The focus on New York where, of course, most of the media is based, is also flooding and distorting the picture for the rest of the country. Of course we need to pay attention to ground zero, which is New York.  But what happens there is not what is happening everywhere. 

Read the rest here.

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A chuckle from BookwormRoom:

A chuckle from BookwormRoom: 

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