Tag Archive for: COVID 19

With 700,000 “Excess Deaths,” What’s Next for America?

There has been a lot of speculation, much of it backed up by evidence, that over the past year, America’s “cause of death” statistics have been skewed. For reasons alleged to be both political and financial, people who did not have a fatal case of COVID were reported as dying from the disease. The classic example is the young man who died in a horrific motorcycle accident, who tested positive for COVID in the post-mortem and was listed as a COVID victim.

Less likely, however, is the possibility that “deaths from all causes” have been misrepresented. Assuming these are CDC statistics that we can rely on, the data tells a grim story. During the 12 month period between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, the number of people dying in the United States exceeded the recent historical average for that same April through March period by 701,680. If anything, this number is understated, because CDC data can take up to eight weeks to fill in completely and our dataset is only updated through May 12.

This is an astonishing increase, representing a 25 percent increase over total deaths in previous years, even when adjusting for population growth. The average deaths for the same 12 month period over the last six years, prior to the most recent twelve months, were 2,845,200. That compares to 3,546,880 in the twelve month period through March 31, 2021. COVID may have mostly targeted the old and the weak, but target them it did. Based on reporting trends observed over the past year, it may be that so-called “excess deaths” in the U.S. for April 2021 may have finally fallen back to normal. The graph depicted below shows the shape of these excess deaths.

On the above graph, the horizontal axis starts at the first week of October, which is typically the beginning of flu season. As can be seen on this 18 month continuum, the flu season starts again around two-thirds of the way across, as October repeats. The cluster of tightly packed lines show total deaths rising starting in October, peaking in January, then falling sharply until the end of March. After that there is a shallow valley, as total deaths reach minimums in August before slowly rising again. The only outlier, apart from the COVID line in dark blue, is the light blue line signifying the particularly bad 2017-18 flu season. But even in that bad year, total deaths did not exceed 70,000 in any given week, and the counts dropped sharply back into the cluster by the end of March. This year of COVID, however, was completely different.

As can be seen on the dark blue line on the graph, total deaths rose almost vertically in April 2020, peaking at 78,937 for the week of April 15. Total deaths then dropped significantly, but never came near the averages for previous years. The first trough was on the week of June 24 when “only” 57,878 people died; this was still 14 percent over normal for that month. And then came the second wave in July, an increase that didn’t rise as high as the one in April, but was spread out over more weeks. But the most remarkable wave was yet to come.

It’s worth wondering why the third wave, by far the deadliest, didn’t get as much media hype. To be fair, anyone who watched television news reports in December and January where they dramatized what it would be like to take your last breath in an ICU, bright lights and a breathing tube descending, would not accuse the networks of inaction. But neither did the hype match the panic of April, or the “second wave” crisis of July. For whatever reason, the third wave, by far the biggest, came and went. At it’s peak during the week ending January 6, 85,684 Americans died, nearly sixty percent more than average for that time of year.

The COVID Wave Recedes in America, For Now

The only thing anyone trying to make sense out of what’s happened can be certain of is that America’s legacy media, the online communication monopolies, and the medical establishment cannot be trusted. Their betrayal is proven by the censorship and suppression of early stage therapies, the ongoing emphasis on vaccines instead of treatment, and the inability for any dissenting voices to be heard and debated. This betrayal is particularly gruesome because COVID is not a hoax. It is a deadly killer, possibly set to get worse.

When vaccine specialist Geert Vanden Bossche, or virologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, can still be found in podcast backwaters that have escaped the censors, their testimony cannot be refuted. They are denied the light of day, and so their arguments – that the vaccines being deployed will breed more potent variants of COVID at the same time as they compromise human immune systems – gain credibility. Lies, like mold and fungus, grow and fester in the dark, but only truth can survive the light of day. Sunshine is the disinfectant, open debate is the cure. But we’ll never know if these men are prophets or charlatans, because their words are suppressed.

As the more pessimistically inclined among us confront the specter of vaccine passports, mandatory booster shots every year to cope with an endless procession of increasingly virulent strains of COVID, likely medical history implants, travel restrictions, contact tracing, and everything else associated with “the great reset” including supply chain disruptions, rationing, riots, and a supermajority of voters utterly dependent on government, they must wonder: Who runs the world? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask that question, only if you think you know the answer. But it’s an intriguing question. Is the world merely a chaotic ecosystem of individual egos, tribal communities, and fitfully coexisting nations? Or is something else happening?

A fascinating video, suppressed repeatedly by the major platforms, but surviving on the obscure website EarthHeroesTV.com, is an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts. About halfway through the 48 minute segment, Fitts asks the question: “Who runs the world?” Wisely, she doesn’t try to answer it. But she does quite a dance around the theme. Fitts, a former high ranking official with HUD, then a financial entrepreneur, leads off by explaining that the world is moving into a new era of economic totalitarianism. She observes that the wealth of the world is becoming more and more concentrated into nations with advanced technology, and within those nations, disproportionately to a small elite. She claims the COVID pandemic is providing an excuse to institute controls necessary to convert the planet from democratic processes to technocracy.

Fitts says the COVID virus is being used as the means to compel mass vaccine injections that will eventually make it possible to digitally identify and track every person. These biometric markers will then be used to connect people to a new cyber currency, allowing complete control. She believes there are five sectors working in tandem to create this new world order:

(1) Technology industry building clouds.

(2) Military doing space development.

(3) Big pharma developing injections to modify human DNA.

(4) Media providing propaganda.

(5) Central bankers engineering a new crypto system of global currency.

Fitts is describing is a dark version of futurism. Her perspective is negative, but lucid. Technology makes it much easier for a small group of people to get together and become very powerful. But why? Fitts offers a logical answer:

“If technology can make it possible for people to live 150 years, and it isn’t possible to keep this a secret, then why not downsize the population, integrate robots, and you can have a very wealthy and luxurious life without the management headaches?” In one particularly chilling quote, Fitts says “I was having a conversation with a venture capitalist, billionaire type, and he looked at me with these amazingly dead eyes and said ‘I can take every company and completely automate it with software and robotics and fire all the humans. We don’t need them any more.'”

Who runs the world? What if 700,000 dead Americans is just a preamble, and wave after wave of COVID variants rages across the nation in the years to come? Could it really get that bad? What is behind the doomsday cult that informs dialog in America today? It isn’t just a deadly virus. It’s racism, suddenly amped up to represent an existential threat to civilization. It’s the “climate emergency.” And all of this panic is curated and rained down upon us in an unending deluge of propaganda designed to render us terrified.

Is it too late to promote optimism? Was the truth about the world as expressed by Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg too potent, a bright and hopeful truth, that “air and water are getting cleaner, endangered species and forests are holding their own, and the risks associated with global warming are exaggerated.” He contends that “more people than ever before, living in all parts of the globe, are becoming healthier, richer, and better educated; that the human race is living longer and more peaceably; that we’re considerably freer to pursue our happiness.”

Were things working out? Was peace and prosperity busting out all over? And if so, why did COVID have to kill that momentum? How can that positive momentum be recovered? Why does the “great reset” have to involve perennial disease, mass control, rationing, and repression? Who is right? The optimists or the pessimists? Are we on the verge of the great cull, or the long boom? Don’t ask Joe Biden. Another certainty in these times of great uncertainty is this: Joe Biden doesn’t run anything, much less the world.

The sad truth is we can no longer rely on any of our institutions to provide answers to these questions. The events of 2020 and 2021, from a presidential election that was purchased by technology billionaires to a virus that has been mismanaged from day one, nothing should surprise us anymore. Who knows? Maybe those recently publicized green triangles that operate in restricted airspace, go 13,000 miles per hour, execute 700 G turns, travel in air, water, and probably space, have no visible means of propulsion, and defy gravity, are the emissaries of those who truly run the world.

We may hope that COVID has ran its course, and we may mourn our 700,000 dead. On the other hand, strange and terrifying times may have just begun.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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How Legislators Can Reopen California

There are smart ways to protect the vulnerable and reopen businesses and churches and schools, but California’s legislators continue to do nothing. Instead, edicts issued from the governor’s office have the state in an ongoing lockdown, despite growing evidence there are safe alternatives.

Last month an event held in the Sacramento area, “Re-Open Cal Now,” offered local elected officials from all over California access to attorneys, economists, and medical experts who presented information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how to safely cope with it. From the start, it was smeared as being a partisan “super-spreader” event. Facebook refused to allow promotional ads, claiming the agenda included “dangerous content.” Not one, but two email services, MailChimp and then MailLite, banned event organizers from using their platform. But none of these accusations were true.

The event admitted only 115 in-person attendees and was held in a 24,000 square foot covered but outdoor equestrian center. As a consequence of all this extra space, booked at significant extra cost, extreme social distancing was observed. As for partisanship, over 25,000 people have viewed the event online so far, and the only thing “partisan” about the event was its commitment to finding solutions to end the lockdown.

The most revealing, and controversial, of the panels during this three day event was the one that featured medical experts. These medical doctors and epidemiologists provided information on COVID-19 treatments that have been ignored and even suppressed by the media and the mainstream medical community. Without delving into the reasons for this, which are at best inexplicable and mystifying, public policy experts and local elected officials are invited to watch these presentations. They are invited to ask themselves: Why is COVID-19 unique among diseases that have confronted humanity, in that early stage outpatient treatments are not only ignored, but have arguably become forbidden topics?

As Dr. George Fareed described in his segment, in any pandemic there are four essential policy responses: (1) contagion control, or social distancing to slow the spread, (2) early home treatment to reduce hospitalizations and deaths, (3) late stage hospitalization, and (4) vaccinations to develop herd immunity. As anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the COVID-19 pandemic will confirm, stage two has been ignored.

It isn’t necessary to examine the merits or fallacies underlying the many early stage treatments that have been proposed to conclude something is wrong with this picture. There are many drugs and therapies that practicing doctors claim can prevent this disease from worsening, causing death or chronic disabilities. They include Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, Doxycycline, Ivermectin, Zinc Sulfate, vitamin C, vitamin D, Quercetin,  Fluvoxamine, intracellular anti-infectives, antiviral antibodies, corticosteroids, immunomodulators, antiplatelet agents and anticoagulants, and many, many more.

Are all of these drugs effective in treating early stage COVID-19? Probably not. But why has discussion regarding their efficacy been suppressed? Equally important, why has an entire early stage treatment protocol for COVID-19 been neglected?

Dr. Fareed presented a chart that adheres to a template used in medicine to treat most infectious diseases. That chart, reproduced below, shows “innovative early sequenced multidrug therapy for COVID-19 infection to reduce hospitalization and death.”

Based on the testimony of hundreds of U.S. doctors who have treated tens of thousands of patients, many early stage therapies for COVID-19 are effective. While these doctors back in mid-2020 could only rely on positive clinical results, there is now a growing body of evidence from controlled studies that confirm the efficacy of early stage treatments. In his presentation, Dr. Fareed presented evidence as well from nations that have widely employed early stage, outpatient treatments for COVID-19. Various drug protocols were used, depending on the country, but in all cases, their national death rates from COVID-19 are far lower than in the United States.

In the face of mounting evidence that early stage treatment is one of the most effective ways to cope with this pandemic, and has been almost completely ignored, why aren’t California’s elected officials demanding answers from the establishment medical community?

The Cost of Misinformation, The Benefit of a New Approach

Imagine California today if the medical community and policymakers had emphasized all four elements of pandemic response, instead of only three. Imagine how much we would have learned by now if doctors everywhere had been encouraged to prescribe early stage therapies for their COVID-19 patients, instead of just sending them home to either get well or worsen to the point where they required commitment to an ICU.

It is impossible to know how many lives and livelihoods might have been saved if early stage therapies were encouraged instead of suppressed, but Californians deserve answers. And now, with at least some official recognition that some of these early stage therapies do work, along with vaccines rolling out by the millions, it is time for a new approach.

One creative way to begin to safely unlock Californians has been proposed by Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who late last year proposed that individual counties adopt a “Healthy Communities Resolution.” The intent of the resolution (read full text) is to allow each county to “respond locally to the COVID-19 virus in accordance with our local data and circumstances,” and to allow this response to be “tailored to geographically separate areas.” So far ten counties have adopted this resolution.

In Sacramento County, however, just to illustrate what Kiley and others are up against, Supervisor Susan Frost’s attempt to introduce the Healthy Communities Resolution was opposed 4-1. She couldn’t even get someone to second the motion so they could debate the topic and vote on it. Her opponents claimed that to selectively open portions of the county based on neighborhood conditions was “racist.” And with that magic word, end of discussion.

Kiley’s resolution also calls for school districts to “safely open all schools as soon as possible and provide in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible without further delay.” And it isn’t just classroom instruction, but sports, where pressure is building to reopen. Just a few days ago, San Diego high school athletes filed a lawsuit that aims to force California to join 47 other states that have already resumed active high school sports. Support for this lawsuit has grown overnight into a grassroots movement. On Facebook, the “Let Them Play CA” group has acquired over 50,000 members in less than a month and continues to rapidly add participants.

The Teachers Union Has a Chance to Do the Right Thing

To call the California Teachers Association one of the most influential special interests in California politics is something most informed observers would consider beyond serious debate. But why aren’t the leaders and the members of the all-powerful CTA trying harder to reopen California’s public schools?

From their website, some of the primary elements of the mission of the CTA are to “improve the conditions of teaching and learning; to advance the cause of free, universal, and quality public education for all students.”

Surely everyone can agree, including the members of the CTA and their leadership, that what has happened over the past year has been a disaster for California’s K-12 students. They might also agree this disaster has had a disproportionately negative impact on students living in low income zip codes. So why isn’t the CTA pushing harder to reopen schools? Why isn’t this powerful organization demanding answers regarding the incomplete pandemic response? Why aren’t they adding their voice to the growing calls to roll out early stage COVID-19 therapies, so Californians do not have to live in deathly fear of infection, and so herd immunity can be quickly achieved?

Why isn’t the CTA, for that matter, observing the experiences of charter schools such as the Orange County Classical Academy, where creative measures to reduce the chances of contagion have been effective, and in-person classes were never interrupted? Why is the CTA condoning the ongoing, disastrous deficiencies in instruction, whereby, for example, in Los Angeles Unified School District, the school day only runs from 9 a.m. till 2:15 p.m.? It is to be expected that the CTA will look out for the concerns of their members, but in recognition of the hardships facing everyone, why aren’t they urging their members to work harder during this pandemic, instead of cutting their hours?

Back in the summer of 2020, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, affiliated with the CTA, demanded $250 million to reopen schools in LAUSD. And instead of sticking to the basics of pandemic safety, they used the pandemic as a springboard to demand an end to all the structural disadvantages they have identified as facing low income students. But is this the time for that? Or shouldn’t we just get those kids back to school, and then get back to worrying about these issues of social justice?

Since the summer, not much has changed. According to a scathing report published in the California Globe in January, Governor Newsom’s latest attempt to reopen schools goes something like this: “If a school district promises to re-open schools by mid-February, it will get an additional $450 to $750 per student in funding.”

If there ever was a time for Californians to come together to share the risks and challenges presented by a crisis, this is it. The CTA should take Newsom’s deal, they should open the schools up immediately, they should permit sports to resume, and they should accept that perfect is the enemy of good enough. And as self-proclaimed advocates for the underprivileged, they might also join those of us who want to know why medical experts denied all of us access to information on early stage COVID-19 treatments, abetted in that denial by some of the biggest corporations in the world.

By allowing individual counties to manage reopening, and by demanding that health officials support for better early stage therapies, California’s legislators can ease the state out of lockdown. It cannot come a moment too soon.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Yes, Total Deaths in U.S. ARE Up in 2020

Making the rounds on social media and alternative news websites is the story about a Johns Hopkins study that claimed COVID-19 deaths are overstated. The work in question can still be found on the Wayback Web Archive here. It measured total U.S. deaths from all causes during 2020 and concluded that these deaths – from all causes – were not greater than deaths in previous years.

Skeptics were quick to pounce. For example, in this report, an alternative content provider led with the headline “Study: Absolutely NO excess deaths from COVID-19.” Then when Johns Hopkins pulled down the study, the plot thickened. Here is a typical reaction to that, “Johns Hopkins Publishes Study Saying COVID-19 Deaths Overblown, Then Deletes It.”

When Johns Hopkins took the study down, they published an explanation which only clarified some of the issues raised by the study. To the main point, which was that deaths from all causes in the U.S. are not higher in 2020 than in previous years, Johns Hopkins wrote “This claim is incorrect… according to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19.”

But Johns Hopkins did not explain, or even speculate, as to where the author of the retracted study (which really was just an article in their newsletter, not a study) got their figures. But there’s a fairly likely explanation, because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened this year.

Back in July, a meme went viral claiming, ironically, that “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia.” As noted in an article investigating this meme, the data used by the author of the meme was “CDC Reported U.S. Pneumonia Deaths 2019-20” through March 25, 2020. They showed these deaths on a graph where the line representing current year pneumonia deaths was clearly way below the lines showing prior year pneumonia deaths. Ergo, the CDC was reclassifying pneumonia deaths as COVID deaths to inflate the COVID death statistics.

Except they probably weren’t, or if they were, it was not nearly to the extent this meme inferred. What the author of that meme did, and apparently what the author of the article published by Johns Hopkins did, was fail to take into account the 10 week lag between when deaths are reported first reported for a given week, and when all the deaths in that week are finally collected and tabulated. Typically, only about 25-30 percent of deaths in any given week are logged and reported by the CDC in the immediate following week. Only after 8-10 weeks, after that many weekly updates, are 95+ percent of deaths in any given week reported and known.

This means that for any point in time, a graph where the CDC’s current year data is superimposed against their prior year data will only show an accurate comparison if you ignore the most recent ten weeks of current year data. Those weeks will always show a downward curve because all the data for those recent weeks is not yet received by the CDC.

The author of the article published by Johns Hopkins did have a useful insight, however, by focusing only on “deaths from all causes.” This eliminates the question of misclassification and merely asks the question: are more people dying this year than in previous years, or not?  The CDC issues reports weekly, and each time they arrive in spreadsheet format, showing how many people died, per week, for every week preceding the week of the report. Here, for example, is a link to the CDC’s weekly report for the week ended 11/24.

Presented below is CDC data on U.S. deaths from all causes for this year. It graphically depicts the data from 23 weekly reports from the CDC, starting on week 25 (the week ending 6/24), through week 47 (the week ending 11/24). Each report is one line on the graph. The vertical axis represents the number of deaths, the horizontal axis represents weeks in 2020.

Note how each week of data plummets towards zero as it plots the more recent weekly total deaths. Note as well how the earlier weeks, where all data has been collected, show these lines all converging. This shows graphically how the CDC’s weekly reports do not provide complete totals for the weeks immediately preceding each of their reports. Only the data 8-10 weeks behind any CDC weekly report can be relied on to show how many people actually died.

With this knowledge, we can now reliably compare weekly deaths from all causes in the U.S. in 2020 and compare it to the averages for those same weeks in previous years. The next graph, below, does this, but uses a two year horizontal axis to allow a clear visual representation of the historic cycle in previous years, where deaths go up in the winter and down in the summer. To make this clear, the horizontal axis starts on October 1, which is the beginning of flu season, then tracks 104 weekly data points, representing two flu seasons over two full years. The choice of two years is also helpful to track COVID’s impact, since it did not follow the typical trajectory where deaths peaked in winter.

As can be seen, there are six years of prior year data that track in close formation. The 2017-2018 flu season stands out as the most severe, with deaths peaking in January at nearly 70,000 per week. Overall, during the peak weeks of flu season over the past six years prior to 2020, total deaths in the U.S. rose to not quite 60,000 per week, then dropped in mid summer to around 50,000 per week. That is the normal progression.

Against that backdrop, the dark blue line, which represents total deaths from all causes in 2020, offers a very different curve. Flu season was normal, with deaths plateaued around 60,000 per week for several weeks in January and February. But then deaths spiked dramatically in March and April of 2020, during a time when typically deaths from all causes start to cycle slightly downwards. The sharp peak in April clearly shows that something very alarming was happening, with the week of April 15 peaking at 78,821 deaths, around 15,000 deaths higher, or 46 percent higher, than what should have been typical for that week.

Further review of this graph shows what was referred to as the 2nd wave of the COVID pandemic, when total deaths peaked again at 63,867 on the week of July 29, roughly 12,000 deaths higher, or 23 percent higher, than what should have been typical in the middle of the summer. But here is where it gets interesting. Based on the CDC’s time lag in getting information, the accuracy of the 2020 curve is only available through mid-September. The numbers already reported show deaths from all causes still well above the previous six years, but it is too soon to know if they will continue to rise or not. That is where we stand right now.

To dispense with these graphs, and return to just numbers, the question remains: If the author of the article published with Johns Hopkins was mistaken, and they were, then exactly how many excess deaths are there really in 2020, from all causes, compared to prior years? We can know this with relative precision for 2020 through the CDC report for the week ended September 16.

For the calendar years 2014-2019, through September 16, the number of deaths from all causes (adjusted for population growth) was 1,991,648. For 2020 through September 16, the number of deaths from all causes is 2,302,633. This means that over the 37 weeks of 2020 through September 16, there were 310,985 more deaths in the United States than should be expected based on the averages from the six preceding years.

This fact, that during 2020, 310,000 people in the United States are dead who, if this were a normal year, would still be alive, means that at the very least we are not dealing with a hoax. And while the pandemic shutdown may be killing jobs and robbing thousands of people of their will to live, suicides alone cannot begin to explain the spike in deaths back in April, when these lockdowns had barely begun, and total deaths were 46 percent above the average for a normal week in April.

The point of this analysis is not to suggest the measures that government officials – federal, state and local – have taken are the correct measures. Some states have done better than others at managing this crisis, and most everyone has had to deal with unknowns and uncertainties in a situation where the stakes could hardly be any higher. And for those who are conspiracy minded enough to think this disease is not all that serious, based on the fact that most of its victims are older people with serious preexisting health conditions, then they ought to be conspiracy minded enough to realize that if this pandemic doesn’t get everyone into line, then the next one will be engineered to be deadlier. How much of a skeptic do you have to be these days to consider the chance that COVID-19 spontaneously arose in a Chinese “wet market” vs the chance that it was engineered and spread deliberately to be an even bet?

Ultimately, however, in an age when you can’t trust anything coming from the media, and less than ever from the government, maybe this analysis is a useful way to remind us all that even if we’re dealing with official misinformation on almost everything that matters, that doesn’t mean that everything we’re fed, every single time, is false.

It is probably a reasonably safe bet that the data presented by the CDC on weekly deaths from all causes in America is accurate, once you take into account the lag in getting all the data compiled. And it is also reasonable to question alternative media as diligently as we question official media. We live in an age of information war, and as in any war, both sides have their inevitable share of charlatans, hacks, and just plain careless players.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Why Don’t Alternative COVID Therapies Get More Trials in America?

In case anyone still thinks so, the COVID-19 pandemic is not a hoax. How and why it originated may never be known for certain. How societies ought to respond to it, and who are most vulnerable to the disease, are both topics of intense debate. But deaths in America from all causes are up year-to-date by over 200,000 compared to recent years, and while we may hope the worst is behind us, this is not over.

The single most authoritative source for statistics on deaths in the U.S. is the CDC website, and a way to eliminate any doubt about cause of death is to simply bypass the categories and look at deaths from all causes. If that number is only marginally up this year, then you can argue that COVID-19 is overhyped. If that number is up significantly, then something terrible is going on, and COVID-19 probably accounts for most of that. As it is, for 2020 through the end of June, deaths from all causes are up by 15 percent over the average for the past six years, even adjusting for population growth.

The following chart shows deaths from all causes by week, starting when flu season starts in October, with data displayed through September for the six most recent previous years, and through August 26 for the 2019-20 flu season. The pattern of deaths from all causes tracks pretty evenly across the years, roughly 50,000 people per week die in America, except during flu season, when that number increases to somewhere between 55,000 and 60,000. Before this year, one outlier is the particularly bad 2017-18 flu season, when weekly deaths spiked up to 67,495 during the first week of January 2018. But it is clear that 2019-20 is much worse.

While comorbidity is a factor that can trigger legitimate and urgent debate regarding who is dying, how they are dying, and why they are dying, overall death statistics defy manipulation. Dead is dead. And starting around January 2020, weekly deaths in America hit around 60,000 per week, which is within the normal range but on the high side, then spiked all the way up to an unheard of 78,641 during a horrible week in mid-April, before apparently dropping to a low of 57,154 during the week of June 25, then trending slightly up after that.

Anyone viewing the above graph needs to avoid concluding that the downward slope of the blue line representing the 2019-20 deaths trend is indicative of reality. CDC data, for whatever reason, lags up to eight weeks behind. This means that any 2019-20 weekly totals showing on this graph after the first week in June are inaccurate and going to rise significantly.

The next chart, below, can provide an idea of what this means. It compares CDC data for 2019-20 as reported through June 24 (week 25) to more recent CDC data as reported through September 7 (week 35). The only reasonable conclusion is that the death rate in America in 2020 is set to remain significantly above average for at least several more weeks.

As can be seen on the above chart, shown on the blue line, on June 25, the CDC reported deaths so far for that week at 16,283. But by August 26, with most of the data for that week now submitted, the CDC reported deaths for that same week of June 25, shown on the red line, had risen to 57,154. This is an invariably consistent pattern. Weekly deaths are initially reported at a level one-half to one-third of what will become their eventual total once most of the data comes in. This process takes at least eight weeks.

This chart graphically depicts the implications of this delay in reporting. A new peak is forming on the week of July 29 (the red line), with total deaths reported so far at 60,159. But this is only five weeks ago, which means the eventual total will be higher still. Subsequent weeks, where the reported numbers plummet, have diminishing predictive value. But what is beyond doubt right now is that while the unprecedented levels of death seen back in April may not be repeated, for now they are settling at a plateau around 60,000 per week which is well above levels in previous years.

Why Aren’t All Therapy Options Granted Open Debate?

Another unknown surrounding COVID-19 is whether or not a vaccine can ever be sufficiently effective to wipe it out. The disease clearly has various mutations, some more virulent than others, and flu vaccines are typically only 40%-60% effective. Equally to the point, before a vaccine is available, and certainly afterwards as well, without effective therapies to treat COVID-19, more people die.

Back on July 21 in an article published on American Greatness, I described the shameful, organized suppression of public debate or even access to information about the drug Hydroxychloroquine. Ongoing trials around the world continue to indicate this drug, taken in conjunction with Zinc and Azithromycin, has therapeutic value in treating COVID-19, although more information and study is required. But as detailed in the article, the CDC, WHO, and reputable medical journals have all dismissed this therapy as useless, even dangerous.

Just a few days later on July 25, a group of doctors held a press conference to challenge the anti-HCQ narrative, claiming it was an effective therapy for their COVID-19 patients. That video, after getting nearly 20 million views in only a few hours, was removed by Facebook and YouTube, and their website was also shut down by its ISP. Versions of that video still survive on BitChute.

The next graphic isn’t included because it’s accurate. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t It was found online on a Twitter account with the handle @MisaAlvo. In the discussion accompanying this graphic there are comments that appear to question some of the data. But showing this graphic isn’t to attest to its veracity. It’s to ask a very simple question:

Why isn’t the WHO or the CDC compiling this data, and presenting this chart? Why do we have to go to “Misa Alvo,” an unknown entity existing somewhere in the vast Twittersphere, to see a report that uses such an informative layout?

Now there is another alternative therapy that shows promise, Ivermectin.

Will information about this drug also be discredited and suppressed?

An early expose on One America News, aired August 13, discussed the potential of Ivermectin. Searches currently show information from multiple sources about Ivermectin. In BioSpectrum Asia, “Australian develops effective Triple Therapy to treat COVID-19.” Additional favorable (or at least balanced) reports come from TrialSite News, ScienceDirect, Medpage Today, Medscape, and the Journal of Antibiotics.

Why aren’t we hearing more about this drug? Why isn’t this drug being tested all over America?

We may never know what caused the COVID-19 outbreak. We won’t know if it was engineered or arose spontaneously. We won’t know if it was released deliberately or by accident. If it was deliberately released, we will probably never know who was behind it. We may never even know what precautions we took as a society were most effective, and which ones were unnecessary or even counterproductive.

Amidst this profound uncertainty, however, we can be sure of one thing. The systematic denial of information on cheap and possibly effective therapies undermines trust in America’s institutions. Big tech, big pharma, and the so-called deep state are all implicated. With people dying in numbers that are significantly and indisputably greater than normal in America, it is hard to think there are not sinister motivations behind the denial of information and access to various inexpensive and possibly life-saving treatments.

People should be free to try, they should be free to decide for themselves, they should be free to be wrong. Trial and error. Hypothesis and experimentation. Debate over the efficacy of HCQ should welcome all sides, advocates and detractors. Instead only HCQ’s detractors have the mic, and they sprinkle their arguments with obvious, discrediting lies, such as the lie that HCQ constitutes a serious danger to the health of anyone who takes it as prescribed.

What sort of hidden agenda could be behind all this, one might ask? Is it greed? Kill small businesses and let mega corporations take full control of the economy? Develop new drugs that are fabulously expensive, and restrict COVID-19 therapies to these highly profitable choices? Mandate vaccinations and make trillions by injecting literally everyone?

On the other hand, maybe there’s a shared consensus among elites that now is the time to screw down the freedoms Americans have taken for granted. Or maybe the political chaos and economic misery largely caused by the pandemic can be pinned on the president, which could then result in his defeat this November.

Or maybe all of the above. Meanwhile, people continue to die.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Why Are Potentially Viable COVID-19 Treatments Being Suppressed?

The only thing we know for certain about COVID-19 is that more people are dying this year than in previous years. A lot more. CDC data on deaths from all causes show an increase through May 20 of 11 percent above the average through that same date for the previous six years. That’s over 127,000 Americans, dead before their time. Because of the CDC’s eight week lag in compiling complete data, this is the most reliable comparison possible so far. The number undoubtedly will increase significantly.

You can’t fake death. You can decide which “co-morbidity” to list as the primary cause of death, but “alive” vs. “dead” is a binary choice. So something horrible is happening in America this year. This disease, whether it was engineered or not, overblown or not, handled properly or not, is nonetheless a mass killer.

What is inexcusable is the ongoing and blatant suppression of valid debate over how to treat COVID-19. We’re not talking here about an irresponsible meme that recommends somebody drink bleach. We’re talking about distinguished, credentialed doctors and scientists, with decades of front line experience in virology, infectious diseases, pandemics, microbiology, pharmacology, emergency medicine, and a host of related fields, whose opinions are being banned.

When it comes to treating COVID-19, not only are dissident opinions by medical experts either ignored by the media or only featured in the context of being “debunked,” but their postings on YouTube and Facebook are routinely taken down. Alternative websites that attract far less viewership are the only recourse.

The most notorious example of this bias and suppression is with respect to the treatment alternative that relies on hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc as an outpatient therapy. There is growing evidence that this treatment is effective in the early and mid-stages of a COVID-19 infection, before the patients end up in the hospital.

Most of the studies and reports that claimed hydroxycholoroquine is dangerous were referencing end-stage treatment, when the patients are already half-dead, coping with blood clotting and heart failure. So in these end-stage cases, perhaps hydroxycholoquine is not indicated. But it is misleading to pretend this drug, which has been in widespread use for over 70 years, is dangerous to otherwise healthy COVID-19 patients.

To learn more about this alternative treatment, here are just a few of the recent studies that acknowledge the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine: Henry Ford Health System; Infectious Diseases Unit, Central Defense Hospital, MadridNYU Grossman School of MedicineSo Ahn Public Health Center, Republic of Korea; American Journal of EpidemiologyTravel Medicine and Infectious Disease, France. These studies find that hydroxycholorquine is an effective treatment.

To further investigate both sides of the debate over hydroxychloroquine, read the online postings of Dr. James Todaro, virologist Didier RaoultDr. Victor Zelenko, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, or even Dr. Judy Mikovits. Read “A Tale of Two Drugs: Money vs. Medical Wisdom,” by Dr. Elizabeth Vliet, published by the American Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Even if you disagree with the conclusions ventured by these dissident doctors, you will come away with far more information.

Growing Evidence, Growing Suppression

Just as new studies from around the world reinvigorated legitimate debate over the potential for hydroxychloroquine to treat early and mid-state COVID-19, several things happened: On June 15, the FDA revoked the “Emergency Use Authorization for Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine,” leaving Americans unable to access nearly 70 million doses of Hydroxychloroquine that the FDA had stockpiled. On June 20 the National Institute of Health halted its clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine. On July 4 the World Health Organization halted “hydroxychloroquine and combination of HIV drug trials among hospitalised COVID-19 patients.”

This is a coordinated shutdown of hydroxychloroquine research by major institutions around the world. And the timing is uncanny. On June 1, Gilead Sciences announced favorable results for Remdesivir, treating COVID-19, for which a course of treatment costs $3,100. Meanwhile, the cost for a hydroxychloroquine oral tablet of 200 mg is around $37 for a supply of 100 tablets. At the same time, the study most cited by opponents of hydroxychloroquine, issued by the online medical journal The Lancet, was retracted by that publication on June 4.

Here is where, with tragic consequences, political and economic priorities appear to have distorted the public health debate over how to handle COVID-19. It’s not just the choice of therapies, or the push for an effective vaccine which may never be forthcoming. From the start, the priority has been to lock down the healthy, instead of quarantining the vulnerable.

Here is a partial list of issues that ought to be central in any open debate over how to handle COVID-19:

  • The number of pre-adolescent children who have become sick with COVID-19 is statistically negligible.
  • Children also do not appear to spread COVID-19.
  • Older children can catch COVID-19 but the rate of cases that either are fatal or leave serious long-term damage is statistically negligible.
  • Healthy people, including classroom teachers, can take several measures to protect themselves from possible exposure to infection, including the approved methods – face shields, masks, frequent hand washing, social distancing.
  • Anyone with a serious health condition or in an at-risk age groups may consider taking a leave of absence or retire from working in public spaces in order to minimize their potential exposure to infection.
  • Preventive steps can be taken by healthy people include getting an updated Rubella vaccine, taking 400 mg per week of hydroxychloroquine, taking zinc lozenges, getting at least 8 minutes per day of exposure to full sun or taking vitamin D3, taking Pepcid, and taking chewable vitamin C.

These various measures may not all be valid. But there is strong evidence that some of them are valid. They have been unfairly dismissed.

How many of these Americans would not be dead today, if their doctors had prescribed hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc as an early outpatient therapy or even as a preventive measure, before they ended up in the hospital? COVID-19 is killing Americans by the tens of thousands, and yet the “experts” and the people who quote them are willing to brand hydroxychloroquine as harmful based only on the experience with morbidly ill patients in the end-stages of the disease. This is patently misleading. It is journalistic malpractice and medical negligence. It is propaganda. Why?

The American Left, as its adherents would almost certainly claim, supposedly stands up to rapacious corporations, certainly including “big pharma.” So why aren’t any of the journalists and activists and donors who support the American Left also supporting open debate about inexpensive and possibly game changing COVID-19 therapies?

Could it be they are more interested in seeing nothing get better in America until after the November 3 election?

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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L.A. Teachers Union: Give us $250 Million, Or Keep Schools Closed

The second largest public school district in the United States is in turmoil. Los Angeles Unified School District, with over 600,000 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade at over 1,000 schools, may not be open for the business of teaching on August 18. How to handle the COVID-19 pandemic is the issue, and there is nowhere near a consensus on how to handle it.

The union representing LAUSD teachers is the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), which has recently put out a lengthy document outlining what they believe are “Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21.” It’s a doozy.

Laced throughout the document are references to the disproportionate effect COVID-19 has on “people of color.” The document leads off with a section entitled “The Same Storm, But Different Boats,” making the case that LAUSD’s student population is disadvantaged compared to the general population. They are more likely to live in higher density housing, more likely to live in multi-generational households, more likely to live further away from medical care, more likely to use mass transit, etc., etc. Their point: All of this “structural racism” means that compared to other school districts in California, more will have to be done before LAUSD can open.

The problem with this litany is it predates COVID-19 and ignores a crucial question: Are disadvantaged communities going to be better off or worse off if schools don’t reopen? If it is impossible to meet all of the conditions that might be necessary to ensure that schools in low income communities eliminate all these extra risks and disadvantages, then what?

UTLA Conditions to Reopen Go Well Beyond Medical Concerns

According to the UTLA, the “total additional expenses to restart physical schools could be nearly $250 million.” Moreover, this sum of money, monstrous as it is, will “not take into account measures to address the increased need for mental health and social services, the educational needs of children who may have fallen behind in the shift to crisis distance learning, regular testing of students and staff, or the long-term effects on students that will need to be addressed over multiple years. Finally, these costs do not include investments into distance learning, which will continue to be provided, either to all students under a full distance learning.”

So UTLA is looking for somewhere between a quarter-billion and a half-billion dollars before they’ll agree to reopening schools. And to be clear – LAUSD was in serious financial trouble before COVID-19 came along. To recap:

  • In exchange for 180 days of classroom instruction per year, the average LAUSD teacher makes over $100K per year in pay and benefits (grossly understated estimate because it doesn’t take into account paying down their unfunded pension and retirement health care liabilities).
  • The “modest” strike settlement negotiated between LAUSD and UTLA in early 2019 left LAUSD in worse financial shape than before.
  • Taking all expenditures into account, California spends, on average, over $20,000 per K-12 pupil per year. There is not a revenue problem, there is a spending problem.
  • An under-reported reason the teachers unions want to unionize – or abolish – charter schools is because they need to fold more pupil counts, and hence more revenue, into their annual budgets. Only in this way can they hope to spread their existing pension debt over a larger revenue base.

So where will $250 million (or more) come from?

At the federal level, the UTLA is calling for federal assistance including an emergency bailout, along with increased Title I funding, increased Individuals With Disabilities Education funding, and “Medicare for All.”

At the state level, UTLA is calling for passage of the proposed property tax increase that is already on the November ballot, along with a “Wealth Tax” of 1 percent a year, and a “Millionaire Tax” of up to 3 percent surtax on high income Californians.

And at the local level, UTLA wants to “Defund Police,” provide free housing to anyone, ten additional sick days for all private employees, a moratorium on charter schools, and “financial support for undocumented students and families.”

None of this political agenda is new, apart perhaps from “defund the police.” Even UTLA admits this in their conclusion, which leads off with “Normal Wasn’t Working For Us Before.” Perhaps on that, everyone can agree. LAUSD was failing to deliver educational outcomes for its students that they deserve. LAUSD was in financial trouble. And the student population of LAUSD had a higher than average percentage of students from low income families. But we didn’t shut down the schools.

The Medical Debate is All That Matters Right Now

Almost lost in UTLA’s position on reopening the LAUSD schools, given their ongoing fixation on race, class, and every other perceptible category of disadvantage, is the medical debate. But here again, just as with the political and financial conditions they’ve set for reopening schools, what they’re asking for is impossible to achieve. Some are tougher than others.

For example, UTLA is asking for “drastically reduced class sizes to no more than 12 per classroom.” They are asking for personal protective equipment for all staff and students, presumably to mandate that everyone including students wear masks. If you read the entire list of steps UTLA considers necessary in order to open schools (pages 7, 8, and half of page 9), it is clear that what they are asking for cannot be achieved without – and they’re being forthright about this – an infusion of over $250 million for this school year, with no end in sight. Is this necessary?

Here is where, with tragic and ongoing consequences, political priorities have distorted the public health debate over how to handle COVID-19. From the start, the priority has been to lock down the healthy, instead of quarantining the vulnerable. And from the start, any information that might point to inexpensive therapies has been suppressed.

Here is a partial list of mitigating factors that ought to be included in the discussion of school openings:

  • The number of pre-adolescent children who have become sick with COVID-19 is statistically negligible.
  • Children also do not appear to spread COVID-19.
  • Older children can catch COVID-19 but the rate of cases that either are fatal or leave serious long-term damage is statistically negligible.
  • Healthy teachers can take several measures to protect themselves from possible exposure to infection, including the approved methods – face shields, masks, frequent hand washing, social distancing.
  • Teachers with health conditions or in at-risk age groups should consider taking a leave of absence or retiring.
  • Preventive steps can be taken including getting an updated Rubella vaccine, taking 400 mg per week of hydroxychloroquine, taking zinc lozenges, getting at least 8 minutes per day of exposure to full sun or taking vitamin D3, taking Pepcid, and taking chewable vitamin C;

These preventative measures may not all be valid. But there is strong evidence that some of them are valid. They have been unfairly dismissed.

Why?

To learn more about alternative therapies and preventative measures, local policymakers ought to do their own research. Review the most recent studies that acknowledge the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine: Henry Ford Health System; Infectious Diseases Unit, Central Defense Hospital, MadridNYU Grossman School of MedicineSo Ahn Public Health Center, Republic of Korea; American Journal of EpidemiologyTravel Medicine and Infectious Disease, France.

To further investigate both sides of the debate over hydroxychloroquine, read the online postings of Dr. James Todaro, virologist Didier RaoultDr. Victor Zelenko, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, or even Dr. Judy Mikovits. Read “A Tale of Two Drugs: Money vs. Medical Wisdom,” by Dr. Elizabeth Vliet, published by the American Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Even if you disagree with the conclusions ventured by these dissident doctors, you will come away with far more information.

UTLA, as its supporters would almost certainly claim, has an illustrious record of standing up to the supposed establishment, including, on must surmise, “big pharma.” So why doesn’t UTLA apply their formidable resources to looking into these inexpensive and possibly game changing COVID-19 therapies?

It is probably fair to say that behind their chronic need to call for more staff and more pay and benefits, UTLA nonetheless will support any preventative and therapeutic treatments for COVID-19, even if (especially if?) these treatments don’t pour billions into the bank accounts of big pharma.

Could it be that UTLA, along with virtually everyone else associated with the Democratic party, is more interested in seeing nothing get better in America until after the November 3 election?

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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COVID-19 Did NOT “Cure Pneumonia”

When it comes to memes, “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia” is a good one. Its obvious implausibility immediately directs the reader to consider the underlying allegation, which is that pneumonia deaths are being deliberately understated in order for the CDC to reclassify them as COVD-19 deaths, thus fanning public panic.

When there’s a meme, there’s an image, and to support the phrase “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia,” there is a graphic representation of CDC data that appears to show a precipitous drop in pneumonia cases at precisely the time when COVID-19 cases were precipitously rising.

Depicted below is the graph behind the assertion that “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia.” On the surface, it’s awfully convincing. It references an official government source – https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData12.csv – and the data on the downloadable Excel spreadsheet is faithfully rendered in the graph. And wow, compared to the previous six years, this year far fewer people are dying from pneumonia.

The problem with this graph, and the accompanying meme, is that, as the CDC discloses on their Daily Updates of Totals by Week and State, “it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated.” The first chart used data as reported to the CDC through March 25. The next chart, below, uses data gathered for an additional three months, through June 24. The differences are striking.

As can be seen, what appears to have happened around week 10 of 2020, in mid-March, is completely different on the earlier chart compared to the more current one. On the chart that went viral, which purported to indicate what might even be deceit on the part of the CDC, deaths from pneumonia plummeted, dropping from around 3,100 during week 9 to only around 2,400 during week 10. On the later chart, using complete data, weekly deaths from pneumonia were averaging around 4,000 per week in mid-March, and by early April had surged to nearly 12,000 in a single week.

Further comparisons between the earlier chart and the later chart show that pneumonia deaths were not reported based on complete data on the earlier chart after around the beginning of the year. On the earlier chart, weekly deaths peaked in early January at around 4,000 and then began to fall. But on the later chart, using complete data, it is clear that pneumonia deaths remained at around 4,000 per week right up until mid-March, when they skyrocketed.

For this reason, it is premature to assume that much if any of the drop showing in pneumonia deaths later in April and onward is real. We don’t know yet.

Subjective Data, Subjective Conclusions

The COVID-19 pandemic is impossible to accurate dissect and analyze. Obviously the differing policy responses and differing media interpretations are evidence of differing political ideologies and agenda. But what happened with the “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia” meme should remind everyone, regardless of their perspective, to dig beneath the surface. “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia” is false both on its humorous surface but also in its clever insinuation. No matter how far you dig into the labyrinth of data surrounding COVID-19, it remains false.

When data is inherently difficult to parse, and the consequences of misinterpreting the data are so serious, it is imperative to dig beneath the surface of clever phrases and charts. It is imperative to rebuke what is clearly misleading, no matter how much it reinforces our preexisting opinions.

As it is, it appears even the CDC is unsure of how to characterize COVID-19. There have been allegations that deaths around the country are being reclassified as COVID-19 deaths, and that co-morbidities are present in almost all deaths. This however is why isolating and reporting just deaths from pneumonia is indicative. Clearly this year there are far more people dying from pneumonia than in previous years. In April 2020, pneumonia deaths were more than triple what they had been any of the previous six years.

Another way to get at the lethality of COVID-19 is to look at total deaths from all causes, a statistic that is rather difficult to cook. Here also, using CDC data, there is a definite trend. In the five weeks encompassing April 2020, there were 355,399 deaths from all causes in the United States. By contrast, in 2019 there were 276,887, in 2018 there were 273,205, in 2017 there were 272,089, in 2016 there were 265,612, in 2015 there were 261,623, and in 2014 there were 251,622. Deaths from all causes.

This is unambiguous data. Prior to 2020, the six year average deaths from all causes in the United States during the five week period encompassing the month of April was 266,839, with the largest deviation from that average in any year topping out at only 6 percent. This year, during the same period, deaths are up by 88,560 over the average, a 33 percent increase. Something horrible is going on.

It is important to debate the efficacy of masks, social distancing, hand washing, the whole shutdown. It is important to point out the rampant hypocrisy of encouraging riotous protests over social justice while condemning any crowd formed in favor of a conservative cause. It’s important to wonder why we’re locking down the healthy instead of just protecting the vulnerable. And it’s probably true that COVID-19 is reasonably easy for a healthy young person to beat. But this disease is a mass murderer, and all debates ought to acknowledge that context.

COVID-19 Exposes Inadequacy of Ideological Rigidity

When President Trump calls COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus,” he’s right. COVID-19 was spawned in the Wuhan “wet market,” a horrific public slaughterhouse where virtually any living cellular organism is for sale, ready on demand to be dismembered while still alive. The Wuhan wet market is a fetid, barbaric throwback that disappeared from developed Western nations well over a century ago.

But who can say so? Who can, with abundant justification, condemn these “wet markets,” in all their filth, squalor, and hideous brutality? Racists? Nationalists? Western chauvinists? White supremacists? Trump’s deplorable minions? Why is it appropriate to throw the U.S. Constitutional Bill of Rights out the window in the name of a health emergency, yet it is stigmatized as racist, and subject to online censorship, to unequivocally identify and condemn the source of this virus?

COVID-19 not only exposes some of America’s cultural absurdities. It challenges both the pieties of the globalist left, and the principles of the libertarian right. Because COVID-19, for all the havoc it is inflicting on this nation and around the world, could well be just a prelude.

For all we know, only a distant microbial ancestor of COVID-19 was spawned in the Wuhan wet market. There is evidence it was designed in a Chinese lab, ostensibly in an effort to experiment with vaccines and treatments. If so, was it released from this lab accidentally or on purpose? Mao used to boast that his nation could absorb hundreds of millions of casualties in war, and emerge relatively unscathed. So why not? And the Chinese, for their part, have accused the Americans of creating and spreading the virus.

One thing is certain. Viruses exist today that are capable of making COVID-19 look like a mild cold. Far more infectious, far more persistent on surfaces and in the air, and far more deadly, these designer diseases are stored in labs and military depots all over the world. Should any of them ever be unleashed, Americans will be glad they had a dry run, coping with COVID-19.

This fact should make everyone wonder as objectively as possible about how Americans respond to COVID-19. Maybe we shouldn’t have shut down the economy, this time. Maybe we’re going to be paying for that for many years. But what are we going to do when the big one comes? What sort of collective skills will we need to have as a nation?

To that question, libertarians, as is common, have no answer, because “collective” anything is anathema to them. Nationalists should recognize that next time could be different, much worse, and that what they perceive as an unconstitutional overreaction this time might be a condition of survival next time. And globalists, liberals, the whole woke mob, God bless ’em, will need to shut up when we have to shut the borders, and they will need to stop apologizing for our enemies.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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