(Note: The following is an excerpt from Judge McHaney's recent ruling in the case of Mainer vs. Pritzker, a lawsuit brought by an Illinois small business owner against the Governor's stay-at-home order.)
Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred:
I won't get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.
Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family- owned business is not. Pot wasn't even legal and pot dispensaries didn't even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.
We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled.
Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.
If I go to Walmart, I won't get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.
Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few of examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.
Disney World is slated begin reopening in July, with theme parks around the U.S. seeking to welcome back visitors as states begin to lift coronavirus restrictions.
The Orlando reopening will be phased, senior vice president of operations Jim McPhee said during a presentation to an economic recovery task force, USA Today reported Wednesday.
Magic Kingdom — the most attended park — and Animal Kingdom will reopen their gates on July 11, with Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios opening for business on July 15. The massive resort system has been closed since March 15 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels defended his decision to resume in-person classes this fall absent a vaccine or treatment for the novel Wuhan coronavirus, as the risk to college students remains dismal and the nation begins to settle into its new antisocially distanced normal.
“We’ve learned the survival rate and the lethality danger to young people who make up more than 80 percent of our campus community is near zero,” Daniels said on Fox News’ “The Story With Martha McCallum.” “On the list of risks which sadly are always present on our campus, car wrecks, other accidents, cancer, heart disease and others, dramatically, statistically out-rank this new virus.”
Accoridng to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control on mortality in the United States, the virus’ death rate goes up with age. Those younger than 25 are indeed shown to be at nearly zero risk of succumbing to the widespread pathogen.
Could nearly half the population not already infected with SARS-CoV-2 be immune to it from having already contracted other forms of coronavirus in recent years?
That is one implication of a major study conducted by over a dozen researchers from several microbiology and immunology institutions in the U.S.
The purveyors of panic are warning of a second wave of the virus and that even if we are correct in asserting that the general fatality rate is extremely low for most people, it will still result in millions of deaths worldwide if we need 70 percent of the population to get the virus in order to achieve herd immunity. Putting aside the fact that their strategy of lockdown doesn't provide a solution to this hypothetical problem either, even as it kills more people from the collateral damage, there is now promising evidence that more people might already be immune to the virus...
The hypothesis is that numerous common colds are forms of coronavirus and that a significant percentage of the population that has already contracted those forms of coronavirus have cross-immunity to COVID-19. It's unclear to what degree these people are immune, but it might help explain why some people in certain areas react so violently to COVID-19, whereas so many others are asymptomatic. In other words, it's possible that people with cross-immunity could still catch the virus, but their reaction to it will either never present symptoms or present very mildly due to the pre-existing T cells working for them...
On the one hand, the virus seems to kill a lot of vulnerable people for several weeks. But then it peaks after six weeks or so and nearly disappears a month or so later. We've seen the same curve in every country, almost as if it hits a brick wall and then runs out of steam.
But why is that the case? Most antibody tests show no more than 10%-15% of the population contain antibodies in a given area – 25% in the most extreme case of New York City. Why would the virus not continue cutting through the population like butter, as it did the first number of people who contracted the virus? The theory of a more ubiquitous cross-immunity from other coronaviruses would answer those questions and explain that invisible brick wall.
Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his optimism that the United States could have a vaccine against the coronavirus ready for widespread use by the end of the year.
“I still think that we have a good chance, if all the things fall in the right place, that we might have a vaccine that would be deployable by the end of the year, by December — November-December,” Fauci said Wednesday on CNN. "What we're doing is we're proceeding what we call at risk ... that means you take the next step before you have the results of the previous step."
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, assured the public the federal government is not sacrificing safety or efficacy for speed when it comes to the development of a vaccine against the COVID-19 virus.
"There are a lot of landmines and hiccups that occur," he said. "But the kind of acceleration that we're doing, which I must emphasize, does not come at the expense of safety or scientific integrity."
The governors of all 50 states and the mayors of many large cities have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and – presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen – prosecuting the alleged offenders in court.
It is hard to believe that any judge in America would permit a criminal trial of any person for violating a standard of behavior that has not been enacted into law by a legislature.
For better or worse investors in mortgage securities, like investors in other markets, look to the past to forecast the future. In the wake of the pandemic-led market convulsions, some now worry of the history of 2008 repeating itself in mortgage credit and housing. I believe such fears are ill-founded. To be sure, higher default rates and weaker housing prices are likely in the near term. However, I view the odds of a dire 2008-like scenario as remote.
As a manager of portfolios of residential mortgage credit, I often get questions about this asset class and the housing market from investors, homeowners and prospective home buyers. Today many people are trying to sort out what the surge in unemployment means for mortgage credit and housing values. Their questions typically take one of two forms: Does the near-term horizon threaten a 2008-sized contagion of mortgage defaults and housing depreciation? Or is this time different? In fact, this time is very different from prior down cycles, especially 2008.
How our first president decided to lead the return to normal life after our first epidemic.
The plan the president proposed for venturing back out so soon after the worst of the epidemic worried his advisers. If he followed such a course, they warned, he would go against the instructions of doctors and, worse, give fellow citizens license to do the same. Nevertheless, into the city the next day rode George Washington.
In search of parallels to the coronavirus, much has been written about the yellow-fever epidemic that chased the fledgling federal government from its then-capital of Philadelphia in the summer and fall of 1793. But the courage and independence that President Washington showed by returning to the city have gone largely overlooked — perhaps because the story does not conform to the mantra that medical expertise should always override political judgment during crises.
With the death toll mounting — eventually about 10 percent of the city’s population would perish — Washington had reluctantly joined the exodus from Philadelphia on September 10. Sensitive to symbolism, he would have delayed his departure, which he knew would demoralize the city. But he realized that his wife would insist on staying for as long as he did. “I could not think of hazarding her . . . any longer by my remaining in the city,” he wrote.
As Washington set off for his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, he expected to be away for no more than 18 days, a period short enough that he carried with him, as he explained, “no public papers of any sort.” But he had underestimated the crisis facing Philadelphia. Two months would pass before he again saw the residence that served as the president’s house in the city.
The COVID-19 virus death rate is highest among residents of long-term care facilities.
Using extrapolated data, the report from the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity concludes that 43% of deaths from the coronavirus in the United States occurred in facilities that house 0.62% of the population, with 1.8% of nursing home residents have succumbed to the virus.
Data that excludes New York state increases the proportion of deaths in long-term facilities to 53.2%. The researchers say that New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 virus outbreak, reports deaths of nursing home residents who die in hospitals as hospital deaths, and New York’s higher than average death rate could also account for the lower proportion of nursing home deaths.
In New Jersey, nearly 10% of all long-term care facility residents have died from the COVID-19 virus. States such as New York, New Jersey, and Michigan ordered nursing homes to admit patients who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
Democrats demand their own slice of anti-media action
Avik Roy, Forbes’s policy editor, points to Florida’s success in battling the coronavirus, crediting Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s policies that require nursing home workers to be screened for symptoms, prioritize personal protective equipment disbursement to long-term care facilities, and bans hospitals from sending coronavirus positive patients into nursing homes.
