ACTION ALERT: Senate looking at slipping in another immigration INCREASE. UPDATED

image credit: Insights.dice.com

UPDATE 5:08 on Thurs by Neil Munro on Breitbart:

Sen. Lindsey Graham is using the coronavirus recovery bills to dramatically expand the award of EB-5 green cards to wealthy Chinese if they lend money to U.S. real estate investors and other companies, according to several activists and Politico magazine.

“How can people pushing this not see how politically explosive this is?” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “An EB-5 increase would almost exclusively benefit Chinese: It is hard to imagine what they are thinking.”

The plan by Graham, (R-S.C.) was provided to Politico, which said it would “boost the number of [EB-5] visas offered to wealthy immigrants who invest money in the United States as it tries to boost a faltering economy amid the escalating coronavirus outbreak, according to four people familiar with the situation.” [Full update is here.]

[resuming from yesterday's blog] This just in from NumbersUSA:

Senators mulling immigration increases in emergency spending bills.

Tell your Senators to OPPOSE!

Our Capitol Hill team is learning of some troubling news. There are a handful of Senators, along with some in the White House, who are looking to slip an INCREASE of legal immigration into the emergency spending bills currently being drafted to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

The provision being discussed would increase the number of EB-5 visas from 10,000 to 75,000. The EB-5 visa program provides foreign nationals with a green card in return for an investment in an American business that leads to the creation of at least 10 jobs for American workers. Currently, investors have to invest at least $900,000, but the provision could reduce that amount to $450,000.

Quite simply, the EB-5 visa program is the selling of U.S. citizenship. It's ridiculous to think that while Americans are concerned about their jobs and their health, that some Senators are looking for ways to benefit foreign nationals instead.

Please call your two U.S. Senators and urge them to oppose any efforts to slip an EB-5 increase into the economic stimulus package. Congress should not be burying bad immigration policy into emergency bills.

The talking point: tell your Senators to oppose an increase in EB-5 visas in the emergency bills.

Sen. Rob Portman:  202-224-3353 or by email here

Sen. Sherrod Brown: (202) 224-2315 (DC) or (216)  522 7272 (Cleveland)

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Overlooked stats in the coronavirus reportage

Overlooked math and stats in the coronavirus reportage

From CTP’s roving photographer and in-house statistician:

Since most people recover from Coronavirus. shouldn't we be looking at currently infected (CI) as opposed to all infections to date (AI)? At this stage most people in the US are still infected, so CI won't be much larger than AI. But, over time, say, with a three week lag to account for disease duration, wouldn't the CI increase rate grow more slowly than the AI rate? After all, it is the CI people who transmit the disease, not the AI people who have recovered or died (R+D). In other words, we should look at the growth rate of CI, not AI.

In the US, total cases are 4,667 (AI) and 74 + 81 (R+D) have totally recovered or died leaving 4,512 still infected (CI).

In China, total cases are 80,881 (AI) and 68,688 + 3226 (R+D) have totally recovered or died leaving 8,967 still infected (CI).

I think this may explain why the disease appears to be tapering off in China. 

Numbers from here, but this site (Worldometers) updates frequently.

So maybe we are not all doomed.

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Coronavirus and the CDC

Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) had this blurb with link:

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THE CDC SUCKS. Sick People Across the U.S. Say They Are Being Denied the Coronavirus Test. It sucked with swine flu, it sucked with Ebola, and it’s sucking now.

The link is to a New York Times article, which is behind a paywall. So for a bit of background, you can go instead to Michelle Malkin’s fearless take on the history of the CDC.  A sampling:

I think I’m where most sane people are on the coronavirus outbreak:

—Concerned but not panicked.

—Calm but not apathetic.

—Taking reasonable precautions but remaining skeptical of what all the purportedly “best experts” here in the United States are telling us about every aspect of their belated crisis management and response (especially on their pimping of vaccine development to prevent the disease).

Here are some plain, non-hysterical facts: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is a bloated federal government agency with a long history of incompetence, fraud, secrecy, mission creep and shady alliances with both social justice causes on the left and private corporations on the big business right. The “deep state” of entrenched bureaucrats embedded in the Beltway bowels is alive and thriving at the CDC. The un-elected elites who’ve occupied top offices at the public health-industrial complex are hostile to public scrutiny while clamoring for ever-ballooning budgets. Their recommendations have often been detrimental to citizens’ well-being and freedom.

Lots more here.

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Coronavirus update from Cleveland Clinic

From a Facebook friend: 

Statement from Cleveland Clinic onTesting for COVID-19 – March 12 2020, Updated at 5:00 PM:

We want to clarify misinformation that has been trending on social media related to Cleveland Clinic testing for COVID-19. Cleveland Clinic has not developed a new test for COVID-19. We have purchased the necessary CDC components and validated the test in our own lab. This means we can now conduct on-site testing for the virus, allowing us to test patients and receive the results more rapidly – in most cases, within one day. We expect other hospitals and academic medical centers across the country will also have this capability.

More here.

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No rallies this evening

Yesterday, I blogged about Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA), who complained that President Donald Trump was putting “his most ardent supporters at risk” by not canceling his upcoming political rallies in light of the current coronavirus outbreak. No mention of Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders cancelling their campaign rallies.  But both of them just did. Breitbart reports:

Bernie Sanders Cancels Cleveland Rally Over Coronavirus Concerns

And over at cleveland.com:

A rally by Sanders’ rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, also scheduled for Tuesday night in Cleveland, was also called off.

Is the Coronavirus the reason?  If so, will future rallies also be cancelled?

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Hypocrisy on display: Coronavirus and rallies

photo credit: The Nation 

Pam Key at Breitbart reports:

Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) complained Sunday on MSNBC that President Donald Trump was putting “his most ardent supporters at risk” by not canceling his upcoming political rallies in light of the current coronavirus outbreak.

Speier said, “I don’t think the president is capable of telling us the truth about the coronavirus. And I regret saying that. I think we have to rely on the scientists who are attempting to tell the truth even when they have to contradict the president.”

She added, “The fact that he is not willing to cancel his various rallies suggests that he is willing to place even his most ardent supporters at risk because we’re supposed to stay six feet away from other persons in order to mitigate the exchange of those viruses. I think that he is showing, unfortunately, why he is so ill-prepared to guide our country during this time of the crisis.”

Uh huh.  But as we read at cleveland.com, both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are holding rallies in Cleveland on Tuesday, at the Huntington Convention Center and at Tri-C at East 30th.  See here and here.  No comment from Rep. Jackie Speier.

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Reasons to Stop Freaking Out About Coronavirus

image credit: ora.tv 

Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart has some public service comments on the media hysteria over the Coronavirus. Here’s the beginning:

Coronavirus is an “info-demic,” a panic caused by the spread of partial and often misleading information about a health risk, sometimes deliberately.

The virus is real, and a small number of people have been infected. But it is going to pass.

It is an unpleasant respiratory illness, but it is not an organ-destroying horror like Ebola. Precautions are being taken, a vaccine will emerge, and life will continue as usual.

Here are five specific reasons to chill out.

1. Coronavirus is a familiar illness, and not as bad as others. It is from the SARS family — and less deadly. As Ha’aretz noted, “the mortality rate from the current disease ranges from 0.5 to 2 percent, and is significantly lower than the mortality rate from the 2002 SARS outbreak (9.5 percent) and much lower than the 2012 SARS outbreak (34.4 percent). It may even be close to the mortality rate from an ordinary flu outbreak in the United States.”

2. The U.S. response has been exceptionally good. There have only been 16 cases thus far, none deadly. . . .

Pollak’s additional 3 reasons are here.

UPDATE From Conservative Treehouse:

If you are following the tiered and strategic deployment of COVID-19 hype, you’ll note the next round of heavy artillery (the WHO/CDC have been saving) is the announcement of an official global “pandemic status” being reached.  That will be worth a week of panic media and perhaps another thousand point drop for U.S. stock market.

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