Tag: Covid 19

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general freedom national politics & policies

The Virus Is Power

Covid, China, Democrats

Remember how fast the pandemic scare went partisan? At first Democrats downplayed the contagion … because President Trump was up-playing it. Then they switched sides when they saw that they could out-​over-​play it, it being easy to “out-​empathy” Trump.

Masks went from being officially deprecated to officially required.

The lockdowns and extreme “social distancing” were instituted on the Trump/​Fauci team’s recommendation to “flatten the curve,” but after the allotted time and many hospitals suffering a serious lack of patients, the lockdowns continued in most states.

Despite a complete change of rationale.

The working notion appeared to be: keep deaths down and panic up … and wait for a vaccine.

Which Trump promised, and, well, rushed and pushed past the regulators.

Now, there exist substantial hurdles to fast-​tracking a medicine, even in an emergency. But the Democrats’ early resistance to Trump’s talk of HCQ as a successful COVID counter-​measure turned out to serve as an excuse to push vaccination, for had treatments using HCQ and similar existing medicines been normalized, the emergency authorization would have been ruled out of bounds.

And the goal of universal vaccination scuttled. 

So where are we now? 

In America, there are two basic approaches: mRNA gene “therapy” and a modified adenovirus, both focusing on the spiked protein of the SARS-​CoV‑2 virus with the aim of jump-​starting immune response.

And after the vaccines? The mandates. J.D. Tuccille, at Reason, covers this latest development — which a year ago was called a “conspiracy theory.” The Biden administration and major corporations are now developing “vaccination passports” that would continue the lockdowns for those who have not been vaccinated. 

And China may want in on that action.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Lab Rats

lab rats, rat, lab, Covid

“Given China’s coverup of the outbreak in Wuhan, the WHO’s early praise for the country’s response and the fact that it took a full year to get a joint Chinese-​international team on the ground for a brief visit,” explained The Washington Post, “the critical but challenging search for clues faced skepticism from the start.”

“Skepticism” is a kind reaction to the just-​released World Health Organization report on the origin of COVID-19’s transmission to humans. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed CNN that “the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it.” Though “foreign scientists on the trip took pains to praise their Chinese counterparts,” The Post noted, “They also acknowledged the limits of working with data collected before they arrived that may or may not be complete.”

Reuters reported yesterday that “Data was withheld from World Health Organization investigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the coronavirus epidemic,” according to a statement from none other than WHO Director-​General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Yet, even acknowledging that the WHO report is based on highly questionable and woefully incomplete data, our major media continue to amplify the message that it is “extremely unlikely” the virus passed to humans through a Wuhan lab. 

So suggested a BBC story when international scientists went to China last month: “after visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they have closed the lid on a controversial theory.”

Why controversial? It would place further blame on China.

The possibility of a lab accident was raised a year ago, including here, but the media has seemed incurious. Now, with the newly released report, the unlikeliness of a lab breach is again a theme. 

But there has been no real investigation. 

The Post points out that the scientists who visited “got a tour of the facility, heard about the lab’s rigorous safety protocols and were told the lab was not working with viruses close to SARS-​CoV‑2.” 

Meanwhile, two new tidbits have emerged: (a) “One member of the team said in a post-​trip television interview that researchers at the [Wuhan Institute for Virology] lab were sick in the fall of 2019,” and (b) the final WHO report disclosed that a different lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, moved on Dec. 2, 2019.

“I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory,” Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist and former CDC director, said over the weekend, “you know, escaped.”

It’s almost as if COVID-19’s origin is the one thing we’re not supposed to uncover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people

No Culture, No Future

Corinne Masiero

Actress Corinne Masiero, on stage at the César Awards — France’s version of the Oscars — shocked the nation by what she wore. And didn’t wear. 

Invited to present an award for best costumes, Masiero started the night in an ultra-​significant yellow vest emblazoned with the motto “No Culture, No Future.” But she came on stage wearing a bloodied donkey costume, then doffed it for a bloodied dress, and then removed that, too. On her naked front she had scribbled: “No Cultur, No Futur.” And on her back, but in French, “Give us back art, Jean.”

“Jean” being French Prime Minister Jean Castex.

While this is in the style of typical artsy antics, this was not just gratuitous. It was a protest. She wants theaters to open.

Unique — in the sense that it was by an artist protesting the anti-​lockdown cause, in a dramatic way usually reserved for more lefty causes. But not at all unique — in being against the lockdowns. All around the world folks are protesting the shuttering of society.

But why go to such lengths on stage?

Well, I might advise against … still, I haven’t seen much previously on the news about those protests?

Major media apparently does not have time, space or desire to cover protests over harsh, extremist “mitigation” efforts that “lock down” commerce and normal human interaction.

LifeSiteNews, a “non-​profit Internet service dedicated to issues of culture, life, and family,” had the best I found. 

“The world demands its freedom back: Anti-​lockdown protests sweep the globe,” runs its March 22 headline. 

“I don’t think I’ll be invited next year,” Masiero said, walking off stage. “We’ll see.”

What we need to see is more coverage … in the news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

HCQ Blackout

Donald Trump, Covid, pandemic

“The race to find vaccines for COVID-​19 has dominated the headlines,” runs the opening of a CBS News story, “but there’s been less news about how to keep people with COVID out of the hospital.”

Accurate, so far as it goes, but something is missing.

The story that follows is about an anti-​depressant developed decades ago, and “a small but ingenious clinical trial and a series of coincidences [that] have led scientists to look closely at fluvoxamine as a possible tool to keep newly diagnosed COVID-​19 patients from becoming severely ill.”

The drug, the story tells, may do what has been claimed for a number of treatments (vitamins, minerals, and the infamous hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ): that is, prevent patients from developing COVID’s severe, deadly respiratory distress.

Yet, in a time of crisis, discussion of such treatments were regarded as “fake news” by social media; doctors and researchers who discussed them online had their videos removed and their posts suppressed. Neil Cavuto and others raised alarms. But now the American Journal of Medicine recommends HCQ, along with “Azithromycin, and Zinc for the treatment of Covid 19 outpatients.” 

So when CBS tells us that there has “been great caution about recommending repurposed drugs for COVID after the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was promoted as a potential ‘game-​changer’ by former President Trump — before it was tested in a large clinical trial on COVID patients,” let’s not forget what they are still hiding: that major media along with several governors and many “influencers” suppressed information about drugs that saved some lives and could have saved more.

All while seeking to eradicate the disease they feared most, Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs

Now Safe to Blame?

Joe Biden, China

Is it safe yet for big media to tell the truth about China’s virus? 

“Beijing’s efforts from the very start of the crisis to hide information, silence whistleblowers, put out false data and thwart any real outside investigation are too extensive to fully recount,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote over the weekend, pointedly adding, “the Chinese government’s actions were both reckless and deliberate.”

Leading to many more deaths — the official tally being 2.6 million souls worldwide. So far. 

Yes, the Chinese Communist Party leaders are actually “bad folks.” 

Last year, though, the media treated candidate Trump’s attacks on China as just so much posturing and blame-​shifting. The Post, for example complained of “too much political heat” regarding the pandemic — “some generated by China” and “some by Donald Trump in his attempt to distract attention from his catastrophic pandemic response as president.”

A month ago, a World Health Organization team traveled to China to finally look for the source of the contagion. “International experts investigating the origins of Covid-​19,” the BBC reported at the time, “have all but dismissed a theory that the virus came from a laboratory in China.” 

It turns out, as the Post explained, “the team lacked the training and forensic skills required to investigate this possibility” and “were under strong pressure from China to steer clear of the subject altogether.” The editorial urged the WHO to renew their investigation and “forcefully insist that China not stand in its way.”

“Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 shattered a fragile understanding between Washington and Beijing,” Rogin had informed readers at the outset of his essay, “and put the most important relationship of the 21st century in the hands of a novice.”

I call that a reprieve.

But the fact that our current prez is an old political pro? 

Worrisome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* There is “no going back to the stance that the Obama administration had taken toward China in 2016,” Rogin argued, “when … most uncomfortable issues were swept under the rug.”

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More on the Wuhan Lab angle: “Twelve Monkeys in Charge”

Categories
general freedom too much government

The $165,000 Question

How far will the enemies of liberty go?

Well, almost all the way to armed robbery, for the latest outrage by foes of individual rights looks an awful lot like just that, plain armed robbery. 

The victims? 

The owners and staff of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey.

On January 13, at the behest of Governor Phil Murphy, state officials seized the assets of the gym. These assets included $165,000 in the business’s bank account, all of which, says co-​owner Ian Smith, had come from donations and online sales of T‑shirts and other apparel.

For months, the owners of Atilis have been involved in a pitched battle with the state of New Jersey over orders to shut down the gym, which they have kept open despite those orders (for which disobedience they were arrested in July). Atilis has been pursuing litigation to overturn the order, revocation of its license, and fines ($15,000+ per day) that the state has imposed to punish the defiance.

Smith is asking for our help as he and his business partner confront Leviathan.

“This was never about protection, it was always about control,” he says. “Please continue to support us in any way possible. Please share as much as you possibly can this story and help us continue our fight.”

Visit the Atilis Gym website to buy merchandise, and visit the gym’s GoFundMe page to “support the efforts to reopen and stay open” and to help staff and members cope with the financial hardships imposed by the shutdown order.

And subsequent armed robbery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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