Category: Health & Medicine

One thing to keep in mind about the last Nuremberg Tribunal, it was after a world war that turned Nazi Germany -and a lot of Europe- into a heap of rubble. We can agree that the Chinese Communist leaders need justice done upon them, but to pay to get to that point?

Gordon Chang: ‘There Needs to Be a Nuremberg Trial for Chinese Leaders’ over Coronavirus

China’s leaders should face something akin to the Nuremberg Trials for “crimes against humanity” regarding the global coronavirus outbreak, said Gordon Chang, Daily Beast columnist and author of The Great U.S.-China Tech War. He offered his comments on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Ed Martin.

Mansour said, “I kind of feel as if we need to have an international reckoning.” She added, “We need like a Nuremberg trial to look at the atrocity that was committed here to get to the bottom of it.”

Chang concurred, “I absolutely agree with you. There does need to be a Nuremberg Trial for Chinese leaders because they have committed a crime against humanity, because if this is not a crime against humanity, then what is?”

“The world needs to get justice,” continued Chang. “We need justice for the Americans that we’ve lost and will lose, and we need justice for other people around the world. It’s a Nuremberg Trial. It’s Guantanamo. It’s a visit forever to Florence Colorado Supermax. I don’t care what it is, but we’ve got to take the Chinese leaders off the streets and make sure that they do face justice of one sort or another.”

Dr. Praises Hydroxychloroquine For Coronavirus: ‘Very Ill’ To ‘Basically Symptom Free’ In Hours

A Los Angeles doctor praised using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 during an interview with a local news station on Sunday, claiming that it has a dramatic effect on patients who are seriously ill when combined with zinc.

Dr. Anthony Cardillo, CEO of Mend Urgent Care, made the remarks during an interview with ABC 7 news anchor Jory Rand.

“What we’re finding clinically with our patients is that it really only works in conjunction with zinc. So the hydroxychloroquine opens the zinc channel, zinc goes into the cell, it then blocks the replication of the cellular machinery,” Cardillo said. “So, it has to be used in conjunction with zinc. We are seeing some clinical responses in that regard. There are people that take it regularly for other disease processes, we have to be cautious and mindful that we don’t prescribe for patients who have COVID that are well. It really should be reserved for people that are really sick, in the hospital, or at home very sick that need that medication, otherwise we’re going to blow through our supply for the patients that take it regularly for other disease processes.”

“Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8-12 hours they were basically symptom free and so, clinically I am seeing a resolution that mirrors what we saw in the French study and some of the other studies worldwide,” Cardillo continued. “But what I am seeing is that people that are taking it alone, by itself, it’s not having efficacy.”

Top Experts Used by CDC Move Total US Coronavirus Deaths From 2.2 Million to 200,000 to 81,766 in Only 8 Days!

Last TUESDAY Coronavirus Task Force Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx pushed the talking point that by completely locking down the US economy and American public, the US government and Coronavirus task force “experts” were able to cut the total coronavirus deaths in the United States from 1 to 2.2 million deaths to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths.

This is based on “models” by her chosen scientific “experts” — Chris Murray and the IMHE.

Here is the chart Dr. Birx discussed during the daily coronavirus press conference at the White House.

It shows an estimated 2.2 million US deaths.
Again — this was at the press conference 6 days ago!

There is not a single country in the world today with over 16,000 total coronavirus deaths.

On Sunday night the IMHE cut their numbers in half.

Today the IMHE model used by the CDC and Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci estimate the total US coronavirus deaths to be 81,766 by August 4th.
And 81,000 by May 21st.

The actual numbers are already below their current models.

If you live in the southwest part of Baltimore, I guess you’re on your own.

Southwest District Baltimore Police Officers To Self Quarantine After Officer Tests Positive For COVID-19

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Baltimore Police Department announced Saturday that an officer has tested positive for COVID-19 at the Southwest Police District.

The Southwest Police District is located in the 400 block of Font Hill Avenue.

As a precaution, Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison has ordered all officers assigned to the station to self-quarantine to limit any potential spread.

The Southwest District and all vehicles assigned to the district are being sanitized. Units from other districts will be used to help maintain police coverage within the Southwest District, according to officials.

Mayor Jack Young released a statement Saturday about Commissioner Harrison’s decision:

“I commend Police Commissioner Harrison’s decision to adjust operations at Southwest Police District at this time. Doing so protects the health of our officers, while continuing to provide essential public safety services.”

Commissioner Harrison released the following statement Saturday:

“Out of an abundance of caution, the department is temporarily adjusting operations as a precautionary measure for the agency. The safety our members and residents continues to be my top priority during this critical time and we continue to take the necessary steps to protect our members and the community.”

Members of the station who were potential exposed are self-quarantining.

I said earlier that the 2nd & 3rd order effects of this bug could end up being more serious than the bug itself. The disruption in the ‘Supply Chain’-Logistics– the business of moving things to where they need to be, can and is causing things like this to happen.

Wisconsin farmers forced to dump milk as coronavirus slams a fragile dairy economy.

About 7 o’clock Tuesday night, Golden E Dairy got the call that any dairy farmer would dread. They were being asked to dump 25,000 gallons of fresh milk a day because there was no place for it to go as the marketplace for dairy products has been gutted by the closure of restaurants, schools, hotels and food-service businesses.

An hour later, the family-run farm near West Bend opened the spigot and started flushing its milk into a wastewater lagoon — 220,000 pounds a day through next Monday.

It was surreal, said Ryan Elbe, whose parents, Chris and Tracey Elbe, started the farm in 1991 with about 80 cows and grew it into an operation that today milks 2,400.

“We thought this would never happen,” Elbe said. “Everybody’s rushing to the grocery store to get food, and we have food that’s literally being dumped down the drain.”

But the Wisconsin dairy industry has been dealt a harsh blow from the economy that’s been slammed by coronavirus shutdowns. About one-third of the state’s dairy products, mostly cheese, are sold in the food-service trade.

Dairy farmers, whose product is highly perishable, are seeing processing plants close or curb production, forcing them to flush their milk down the drain if there’s no other buyer.

“I think that a lot of milk will all of a sudden be dumped. Everyone across the industry is feeling distressed now,” said Julie Sweney, spokeswoman for FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in Madison.

“Over the last several hours I have heard this is unfolding. There is definitely a strain on markets now. The whole consumption rate for milk is so much different than it was before COVID-19,” Sweney said.

“We need to figure this out now, not in the next couple of weeks,” Elbe said.

“I know many industries are experiencing hardship now. This is just the story of ours,” he added.

Normally, his family’s milk goes to a Kemp’s processing plant owned by Dairy Farmers of America. But that plant is full to the brim, as are many others across Wisconsin.

Some of the larger DFA members were asked to dump their milk this week because, as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, it could be monitored in their regulated wastewater lagoons.

“You can’t just dump milk in a field,” Elbe said.

There’s simply too much of it now, according to DFA based in Kansas City.

“This, in combination with the perishable nature of our product, has resulted in a need to dispose of raw milk on farms in some circumstances,” Kristen Coady, a DFA vice president, said in a statement provided to the Journal Sentinel.

They used to say an anti-gun liberal was merely a conservative who hadn’t been mugged yet. Now it seems to be one who hadn’t had the cluebat of being their own First Responder upside their head.

I’m One of Those Anti-Gun People Who Just Bought His First Firearm

Ilya from Michigan writes . . .

If you’d have met me three weeks ago, you’d unequivocally know my stance on guns. I was not only against the ownership of AR-15s, I was in the minority of folks who thought all private gun ownership should be illegal.

I’m still in a bit of disbelief that there is a dangerous weapon in my house: one that more frequently contributes to accidental deaths, violent homicides, and suicides, rather than the romanticized personal protection experiences.

What happened? The world changed overnight and my opinion…evolved.

I’ve always been a strongly opinionated person, but I pride myself on the idea that my beliefs are loosely held. Strong opinions are great, but what you don’t want is to be egotistically blinded by them. I don’t want to be held hostage by a belief that is no longer valid, given new information.

My views before

I live a pretty privileged existence. My family lives in one of the most affluent communities in Michigan. Everyone in the neighborhood leaves their doors open with bikes on the front lawn. Rarely do we worry about anything being stolen, let alone violent crime. I wasn’t born with this privilege, but worked really hard to get where I am.

Circumstances shape people’s understanding of the world, and my situation highly influenced my views on gun ownership. There was no argument, be it constitutional, personal protection, safety, hunting, or anything else that would change my mind and stop me from logically deconstructing your argument.

Guns are used in more than 20,000 suicides, 10,000 homicides, and just under 1,000 accidental deaths in the US each year. Yes, one can argue that people kill people, not guns. But I’d argue that access to firearms makes it much easier to accomplish the act. I believed that at the national scale, guns were a danger to our society. I wanted no part of this.

How my views have changed

For months, I heard the news of a novel virus spreading in China, which had the potential to turn into a global pandemic. This happens regularly, with Cov-2, H1N1, Ebola, MERS, etc.

We read about it in the newspapers, hear about people dying in other countries, watch coverage of civil unrest, and then we hit the off button and get back to our 21st century privileged American lives. It’s not that we aren’t worried or believe that this can’t happen to us; rather, we’ve never experienced anything similar to this. Our imagination can only take us so far. We think it’s “them”. This will just go away.

Then [it] got real. Countries started shutting down. Stay-home orders were being issued. Supply chains were disrupted and people were hoarding daily necessities.

Cracks in our supply chain became evident and we started experiencing shortages reminiscent of the former Soviet bloc. Companies were going out of business or downsizing. People were losing their jobs at an unprecedented rate.

I’m not a prepper. I’ve never left a store with more food or supplies than what’d I’d typically consume in a few days. I don’t overreact. But the supply disruptions, along with economic uncertainty, started to worry me.

Are we, as a country, prepared? Am I prepared?

We model our future preparedness based on past worst-case scenarios. My grandmother, who lived through WWII in Eastern Europe, stashed every penny away for what she called “the dark days.” The worst days she can recall in her life’s experience.

But as one of the best minds in risk assessment, Nassim Taleb, notes, you can’t prepare for the worst-case scenario based on past events, because the worst-case scenario hasn’t happened yet.

At about the same time, I was chatting with friends who are gun owners and they mentioned the long lines at gun shops. People were buying out all of the guns and ammo. But instead of my typical reaction of “guns are bad and those people are crazy,” my mind started wondering about all of the tail risk possibilities during this event.

What happens when food supply chains fail? What if my area becomes unsafe? Do I need to learn how to hunt? With what? Will civil unrest break out?

People will do anything they can to ensure the survival of themselves and their families. Our preparedness models are based on past assumptions of stability and civil obedience. But we’re in an uncharted territory.

The question I asked myself: What do I need to do to feel safe and protect my family?

I called my friend, who advised me that for personal protection, I should get a handgun. The next day, I walked into a store I never thought I’d set foot in. The line was long. I patiently waited while periodically watching the Fox News station on TV.

The store employees were all armed — very stern, but also very nice. I’ve never felt as safe around so many firearms. That’s when I filled out the background check form and I bought my first gun.

‘unbelievable‘? No, it’s SOP for demoncraps to be corrupt hypocrites.

Nevada Governor Found Hoarding Hydroxychloroquine After Banning Drug

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak, Democrat, had a kneejerk reaction to President Trump’s optimism about a malaria drug that might be an effective treatment for the Wuhan coronavirus. Trump was hopeful about the drug, so anti-Trump Democrats like Sisolak were against it. Gov. Sisolak banned (hydroxy)chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, ostensibly over concern of hoarders stockpiling the medicine and causing shortages for patients who use the drug for other ailments like Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis. But while the governor restricted the public from receiving the potentially life-saving drug, Nevada’s Department of Corrections began stockpiling the drug for prisoners.

(Via 360 News Las Vegas)

According to sources at the drug maker, Concordia Pharmaceuticals Inc, Nevada prisons ordered a large number of their anti-malaria Hydroxychloroquine drug under the name, Plaquenli. Nevada prisons has literally ZERO cases of prisoners infected with the COVID 19 virus to date. The Nevada Board of Pharmacies and the Governor claimed the rule barring doctors from prescribing the drug outside of hospitals was to stop hoarding. After Sisolak’s ban went into effect, the State Prison hoarded the drug in a mass just in case they had break out.

Gov. Sisolak refused to reverse his order even after the FDA issued an emergency order earlier this week approving the drug for use against COVID 19.

Unbelievable……..

 

China was lying? *Gasp*! Cue the meme.

Wuhan cover-up: Evidence suggests real death toll “16 times the official number” reported by China
Remember, Dr. Deborah Birx said U.S. health officials didn’t anticipate this pandemic because of incomplete data from China. Now WaPo says evidence points to “a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number”

Day by day, the extent of the Chinese government’s crime against the world grows.

Whether the coronavirus ravaging the world started in a wet market or a Wuhan lab, the Chinese government early on deceived the world, silenced Chinese citizens who tried to warn the world, and have lied ever since.

Remember, Dr. Deborah Birx explained that one of the reasons U.S. health experts did not expect this pandemic is that we were not given complete data by China:

You know who did see the emerging threat? Tucker Carlson and Sen. Tom Cotton, two people maliciously attacked by the media and Democrats:

Tucker Carlson: “Why am I watching impeachment coverage all day?”

Sen. Tom Cotton: “I suspect that months from now or perhaps even years from now when people look back at this time, coronavirus will be considered the bigger story than impeachment.”

Now the mainstream media finally is being forced to acknowledge the massive Chinese deception, and the implications. The Washington Post reports:

The coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe officially claimed 2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it began in a market that sold exotic animals for consumption. But evidence emerging from the city as it stirs from its two-month hibernation suggests the real death toll is exponentially higher.

Long lines have been forming at funeral homes in Wuhan over the past two weeks, as family members have been informed they may collect their loved ones’ remains ahead of Tomb-Sweeping Day. Some waited six hours to collect an urn, then the ashes.
The Hankou Funeral Parlor’s crematorium was operating 19 hours a day, with male staff enlisted to help carry bodies. In just two days, the home received 5,000 urns, the respected magazine Caixin reported.

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

With this deception in mind, Trump’s decision on January 31 to shut down travel from China was prophetic, and against general advice…………..

 

This is due to the diplomatic policy of using liberal Port Visits & Liberty Calls to ‘show the flag’ as well as provide economic support to foreign nations; Our ships don’t just sit in a port for a few days, a lot of ‘supply’ business is conducted and the sailors on Liberty go out on the town to spend their pay. QED, they pick up the local ‘flavor’.

Now we have the core of a whole Carrier Strike Group –1 of only 8 currently fully operational – out of action. Pretty good military attrition for a bug that more than few say was let loose from a Chinese gubbermint biolab.

Aircraft carrier captain pleads for help after more than 100 crew are infected with coronavirus.

WASHINGTON — The captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier that has more than 100 cases of coronavirus wrote a stunning plea for help to senior military officials.

In a four-page letter, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Capt. Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt described a disastrous situation unfolding aboard the warship, a temporary home to more than 4,000 crew members.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors,” Crozier wrote. “The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.”

He proposed offloading the majority of the crew, quarantining those infected, testing others for the virus and professionally cleaning the ship. He explained in his letter that by keeping the crew on the vessel the Pentagon was taking “an unnecessary risk” that “breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Just an aside. If you’ll watch yesterday’s Whitehouse briefing, you’ll notice that the modeling graphics used by both Drs. Fauci & Brix only used historical data from Italy. None – not any – from China.

I wonder if it’s finally dawning on people that trusting anything Chinese Communist goes past uncritical, straight to stupidly gullible.

As for America’s lame stream media, just consider them nothing more than propaganda organs for their political masters.

Birx: Initial Western COVID-19 response handicapped by “missing a significant amount of the data” from China.

Perhaps the most important moment of Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus crisis briefing yesterday came not from Trump but from Dr. Deborah Birx. As in other briefings, reporters asked why the administration initially downplayed the potential severity of COVID-19. Birx made it very clear, albeit in a diplomatic fashion, that the official reports from China about the numbers and the spread in Wuhan and Hubei painted a picture of a very different disease.

“I think the medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as this was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” Birx explained, “because probably we were missing a significant amount of the data” from China

What data were we missing? The much-larger numbers on COVID-19 spread, for one. China insisted as late as mid-January (if not later) that they were not seeing any signs of “asymptomatic spread,” meaning that casual contact would not propagate the disease. This turned out to be spectacularly wrong, and China knew it. In fact, they were suppressing doctors who tried to warn the outside world of the wildfire spread of this coronavirus, and their initial success in tamping that information down led other countries — including the US — to assume this was a SARS variant with low risk for pandemic, as Birx explains.

When did China finally start being honest about asymptomatic spread? Today, and only maybe:

A top Chinese health official said Wednesday that the government will begin counting coronavirus patients without symptoms in its official tally of cases of the virus, in what is a tacit acknowledgement that Beijing has underreported data on the pandemic.

China’s National Health Commission disclosed that the government is monitoring 1,541 people who have tested positive for coronavirus but have no symptoms.

Chang Jile, the head of the health agency, said at a press conference in Wuhan that the government will start reporting asymptomatic patient numbers Wednesday.

“From April 1, we will publish reports, outcomes and management of asymptomatic people in daily epidemic notifications, and respond to social concerns in a timely manner,” Jile said, according to CCTV.

Jile’s statement is the first time that the government has officially acknowledged that it has undercounted patients.

Yes, you read that correctly. Three months or more after China knew asymptomatic carriers were a problem, and at least a month since other countries learned that the hard way, Beijing now says they’ll start providing that data. It’s a little too late for that to do any good in terms of public policy, even if they start reporting that data honestly, which is far from certain even now. Had we known that data when China knew it and suppressed it, we might have been able to arrest the spread early and save thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands of lives.

And yet, as my friend Jeryl Bier points out at The Dispatch, the American media keep treating China’s data as both reliable and remarkable:

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rises quickly in the United States and in many other countries around the world, the official number of new cases in China, the source of the pandemic, has fallen dramatically. Given the record of secrecy, duplicity, and coverup by the Communist government of China, there is little cause to take those official figures at anything close to face value. Nevertheless, Western media organizations, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations have taken to referring to China’s numbers as “confirmed cases” comparable to cases in other countries with more open societies and transparent governments, giving the impression that China has largely conquered the virus. …

Various media organizations have similarly relied on China’s numbers for some pretty dramatic headlines. On March 18, the New York Times declared: “China Hits a Coronavirus Milestone: No New Local Infections.” While the article notes in passing that Chinese “officials initially concealed and mismanaged the outbreak,” it goes on to flatly assert that “Beijing’s sledgehammer approach … worked to quickly lower the number of infections[.]” Axios headlined a similar report “No new coronavirus cases in Wuhan, China, where global pandemic began,” while NPR went with ”China Reports No New Domestic Cases, But Battles Coronavirus Imported From Abroad.”

Eight days later, the Times, again based on China’s “confirmed” numbers, told the world that, “The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases.” While the article says that “The Times is engaged in a comprehensive effort to track the details of every confirmed case in the United States, collecting information from federal, state and local officials,” apparently the Times applied considerably less rigor to acquire information on China.

On Monday, however, came news that China’s numbers have indeed been incomplete. The Wall Street Journal reported that “China said more than 1,500 people who were infected with the virus but haven’t shown symptoms weren’t included in its national tally of confirmed cases.”

That report finally prompted China’s rethink on reporting asymptomatic cases. Their track record right up to today should have everyone highly skeptical that they will suddenly discover honesty and transparency.

So, anyone tell me when the demoncraps haven’t been a bunch of clowns running amok?

Democrat Clownshow: Sisolak, Whitmer Reverse Course on Hydroxychloroquine

Send in the clowns. There ought to be clowns. – Last week, two craven political hack governors – Steve Sisolak in Nevada and the detestable Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan – made the indefensible decision to deny their citizens the right to be treated with hydroxychloroquine for the Wuhan Virus. On Sunday, the FDA issued an emergency authorization to doctors to use that cheap, highly-effective drug across the United States.

Today, the two circus clown Governors reversed their stupid edicts, now allowing those who contract the Virus in their states to be treated with the drugs. Better late than never.

From a report on Sisolak from JustTheNews.com:

Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak has now decided to allow malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquin to be prescribed for the impatient treatment coronavirus patients, a spokesperson on Tuesday.

Sisolak previously endorsed restrictions on the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquin as the Trump administration touted its potential effectiveness in treating coronavirus.

Influential Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have criticized Sisolak for his state’s handling of the drugs, which on Monday received emergency Food and Drug Administration approval for treating coronavirus patients.

From a report on Whitmer by the Detroit Metro Times:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer drew fire from some on the right after the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) sent a letter last week threatening “administrative action” against doctors who prescribed two experimental drugs that could potentially help coronavirus patients.

The Whitmer administration has since removed the language threatening doctors from the letter and is now asking the federal government to send shipments of the drugs, Bridge magazine reports. The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate on Saturday.

Conservatives including Charlie Kirk and Rudy Guiliani accused Whitmer of risking lives to oppose President Donald Trump. In recent weeks, Whitmer and Trump have been sparring on national television over federal aid for Michigan, while Trump has touted the drugs’ potential in treating COVID-19.

Note that the despicable Whitmer is not only reversing her ban, but now begging the federal government to ship her quantities of the drug. Hey, maybe she tested positive herself – that would par for the course for this insufferable clown.

These people make me sick. They are among the worst people in our entire society.

That is all.

Italy and France are now prescribing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for coronavirus patients.

We’ve been talking about anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for about three weeks now. However, U.S. health agencies like FDA and CDA, are still very cautious about the effectiveness and safety of the two drugs due to small trial size and lack of sufficient data.

In France, the government caved to pressure from renowned Dr. Didier Raoult, who led the new additional study on 80 patients, results show a combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin to be effective in treating COVID-19. Dr Didier Raoult, a professor of infectious diseases who works at La Timone hospital in Marseille, then declared in a video on YouTube that chloroquine was a cure for Covid-19 and should be used immediately.

Dr. Raoult reportedly walked out of the scientific advisory committee advising the government after allegations that the government was being influenced by the big pharmaceutical companies which wanted to block hydroxychloroquine because it was cheap, being out of patent.

In another report, France now allows drug chloroquine to be given to coronavirus patients with extreme case of the disease. Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Monday, “The anti-malarial drug chloroquine can be administered in France to patients suffering from the severest forms of the coronavirus but only under strict supervision.” Veran also cautioned: “The high council recommends not to use this treatment… with the exception of grave cases, hospitalized, on the basis of a decision taken by doctors and under strict surveillance.”

Italian government also announced on Friday that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine could be used to treat all coronavirus patients. Italian government also said the payment will be paid for entirely by the Italian national healthcare system. Yesterday, we also reported that Hungary, the United Kingdom and India, have all banned export of the anti-malarial drugs to explore the usage in treating coronavirus patients in their respective countries.

HHS accepts donations of medicine to Strategic National Stockpile as possible treatments for COVID-19 patients
FDA issues emergency use authorization for donated hydroxychloroquine sulfate, chloroquine phosphate

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today accepted 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate donated by Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, and one million doses of chloroquine phosphate donated by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, for possible use in treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or for use in clinical trials. These and other companies may donate additional doses, and companies have ramped up production to provide additional supplies of the medication to the commercial market.

“President Trump is taking every possible step to protect Americans from the coronavirus and provide them with hope,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “Scientists in America and around the world have identified multiple potential therapeutics for COVID-19, including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. The President’s bold leadership and the hard work of FDA and HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response have succeeded in securing this large donation of medicine. We’ll continue working around the clock to get American patients access to therapeutics that may help them battle COVID-19, while building the evidence to evaluate which options are effective.”

HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) worked with colleagues within HHS, the companies, the Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security to secure the donated shipments. Given the importance of understanding the efficacy of these medications for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), are working together to plan clinical trials.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to BARDA to allow hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate products donated to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.

The EUA requires that fact sheets that provide important information about using chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate in treating COVID-19 be made available to health care providers and patients, including the known risks and drug interactions.

The SNS, managed by ASPR, will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ship donated doses to states. The SNS does not regularly stock either drug.

Hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate are oral prescription drugs approved to treat malaria and other diseases. Although there are no currently approved treatments for COVID-19, both drugs have shown activity in laboratory studies against coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Clinical trials are needed to provide scientific evidence that these treatments are effective……….

 

All that Agenda 21, high density population, mass transit, sustainable development stuff looks downright suicidal now.

The End of New York: Will the pandemic push America’s greatest city over the edge?

For over two centuries, New York has been the predominant urban center in North America. It remains the primary locale for the arts, culture, finance, and media, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. It has also served as the incubator of the many Americas—including Jewish, Italian, African American, Irish, and, increasingly, Middle Eastern, North African, and Asian cultures—and nurtured their contributions to the arts, business, and intellectual life.

Yet today, New York faces a looming existential crisis brought on by the coronavirus. It suffers the largest outbreak of infection by far, accounting for the largest numbers of both cases and deaths outside of Wuhan and Milan. New York is home to nearly half of the coronavirus cases in the United States, and a majority of deaths.

What’s particularly ominous for New York’s future is that the best way to slow the spread of the virus—social distancing—works against the very things that make Gotham so appealing. The very pleasures and crowded realities of urban life, such as mass transit, are particularly susceptible to pandemics. As New Yorkers are told to avoid crowded subways, subway traffic is down 60% and commuter train traffic by as much as 90%.

Cities like New York pay a price for being both dense and cosmopolitan. As a new study from Heartland Forward reveals, the prime determinants of high rates of infection include such things as density, percentage of foreign residents, age, presence of global supply chains, and reliance on tourism and hospitality. Globally, the vast majority of cases occur in places that are both densely populated and connected to the global economy. Half of all COVID-19 cases in Spain, for example, have occurred in Madrid, while the Lombardy region in Italy, which includes the city of Milan, accounts for roughly half of all cases in the country and over 60% of the deaths.

In contrast, suburban, exurban, and small-town residents get around in the sanctuary of their private cars and have far more room inside their houses. They do not usually get lots of visitors from outside, particularly from abroad. Overall, most rural areas around the world have been largely spared, at least for now, due to much less crowding and casual human contact, which abound in cities.

Pandemics naturally thrive most in big cities, where people live cheek by jowl and are regularly exposed to people from other regions and countries. Like COVID-19, the bubonic plague came to Europe on ships from the Orient, where the disease originated. As historian William McNeill noted, the plague devastated the cosmopolitan centers of Renaissance Italy far more than the backward reaches of Poland or other parts of central Europe.

Being away from people, driving around in your own car, and having neighbors you know, all have clear advantages when it comes to avoiding and surviving contagion. Even the urban cognoscenti have figured this out. Like their Renaissance predecessors during typhus and bubonic plague outbreaks, contemporary wealthy New Yorkers are retreating to their country homes where they struggle with the local townies over occasional short supplies of essentials.

In the long run, the extraordinary concentration of COVID-19 cases in New York threatens an economy and a social fabric that were already unraveling before the outbreak began………..

Chicago joins New York, Los Angeles with drops in crime as coronavirus and shelter order take hold

Like other major U.S. cities, Chicago has seen a dip in crime with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting virtually every aspect of the country’s way of life.

Despite beginning 2020 with crime spikes, particularly related to gun violence, Chicago saw a sudden single-week drop of nearly 20% in major crimes in mid-March, records show. That was just as much activity in Chicago was slowing.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker closed schools across Illinois, Chicago bars and restaurants shuttered, and a statewide stay-at-home directive went into effect Saturday.

Since March 18, Chicago has only had two homicides, a fatal shooting on the South Side and another on the West Side.

From March 16 through March 22, the latest compiled period available, Chicago police saw a 17% overall drop from the prior seven days in its seven major crime categories, among them robberies, burglaries and aggravated batteries. That same period also was down from the same stretch in 2019, official city data shows — a 19% decrease.

Second French Study Confirms Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin Effective

Translated: Our two articles published tonight help to demonstrate:
1. The effectiveness of our protocol, on 80 patients.
2. The relevance of the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, thanks to research carried out in our P3 containment laboratory.

By the numbers: How coronavirus compares with the flu, opioid overdoses

Coronavirus comparison to the flu

Amid ever-changing models, it’s hard to put a finger on just how dangerous the coronavirus is.

We know at this point that COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — has led to more than 85,356 illnesses and more than 1,246 deaths in U.S.

For comparison, the flu has caused an estimated 38 million illnesses, 30,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…………

Coronavirus is still a moving target for researchers because it is new.  In comparison, scientists have studied seasonal flu for decades and opioid overdoses for years.

The CDC says certain people have a higher risk for severe illness from coronavirus. These people include those 65 and older, those who live in a care facility, patients with chronic lung disease, people with moderate to severe asthma, those with heart diseases or complications, immunocompromised people, and those with severe obesity (body mass index equal to or greater than 40).

Also at higher risk are patients with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, renal failure, or liver disease, according to the CDC.

More comparisons will be available after the coronavirus pandemic ends, and can more accurately be analyzed.

A stupid little political stunt to Get Trump goes awry in Nevada

Steve Sisolak, the leftist governor of Nevada, decided to play doctor by banning the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, two drugs that are being used elsewhere to treat COVID-19.

“While these drugs serve necessary medical purposes, this regulation protects the Nevadans who need them and prevents unnecessary hoarding,” Sisolak wrote on Twitter.

Unneccessary hoarding? The hoarding thing is a smokescreen, his real reason was to slap at President Trump who touted these medications as showing promise, and even mistakenly said they had been approved for use by the FDA. That’s his real reason for the limit on the unproven drug, which goes against the ‘right to try’ and the current national mobilization effort to get everyone well by suspending burdensome regulations in the medical community to encourage experimentation and swift solutions. What Nevada needs, see, is more administrative-state regulation, which is is showing all signs of going badly for him.

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, here was Sisolak’s originally stated reason, which has a clear reference to President Trump:

Sisolak announced an emergency regulation prohibiting the drugs’ use in a statement that said there was “no consensus among COVID-19 experts or Nevada’s own medical health advisory team” that the medications  were an effective treatment for the virus.

Tellingly, this semi-prohibition comes right on the heels of the death of an Arizona man who tried to self-medicate, fatally taking a fish tank cleaning additive with a similar name, and killing himself as well as sickening his wife. She has since blamed President Trump.

Sen. Ted Cruz could tell what Sisolak’s ban was really about — Getting Trump — and he said something. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal:

On Wednesday, Cruz wrote on Twitter: “During this crisis, we should listen to the science & the medical professionals,” Cruz tweeted on Wednesday. “The opposite approach: the Governor of Nevada, practicing medicine w/o a license—trying to score political points against Trump—& prohibiting NV doctors from prescribing medicines to treat COVID19.”

Sisolak hollers about ‘no consensus’ as reason for his move, but now looks like Sisolak has decided the consensus, limiting the availability of the drug on the market as bad stuff, and never mind that portion of the medical community that thinks it does work.

Sisolak has since clarified that he hasn’t totally banned the use of the drug – he’s allowing it for hospital use, which is for COVID-19 patients at death’s door. It’s sad stuff because the drug reportedly shows the most promise in early-stage COVID-19 patients. But Sisolak’s the doctor now, so late-stage can have his exception.

Where he really gets into the playing-doctor thing, though, is by permitting it for prescription by doctors for outpatient use, but only with only a 30-day supply.

What happens to the guy who needs a 40-day supply to get well? People are different, and one-size-fits-all works very badly in medicine.

With the drug banned for the forty-day guy, he’s going to be looking into the black market, or in a worse-case scenario, under the kitchen sink, for what he needs. So is the uncertain guy who forgot to pay his big Obamacare insurance premium. So is the slightly sick guy who can’t get an appointment because the doctors are too busy with more urgent cases. The whole thing interferes with doctors’ ability to practice medicine, and patients’ “right to try.” Too bad if you’re sick, no hydroxychloroquine for you!

All of them — and anyone else who thinks he might get sick — have in fact just been incentivized by the Nevada governor’s stupid micromanaging move to … hoard up.

It’s ironic, because Sisolak couldn’t do anything better to incentivize hoarding than to initiate bans and conditions and prohibitions. In his current “hoarding” justification, he now admits it has some promising medical applications for COVID-19, just as Trump says, as well as for treatment of lupus and malaria so now he’s limiting availability to help non-COVID-19 patients, he says. A normal person in normal market would ramp up production to accommodate everyone who wants it. This guy likes the ‘divide it up and ration it out’ model instead, a feature, not a bug, of socialized medicine.

If you wanted to encourage hoarding, there probably isn’t a better way to do it than to cut off access. Just ask any surge of travellers after an entry ban is introduced, or pot stash house owner in the face of some new prohibition, gun and ammo buyer after gun- and ammo-buying limits are introduced, or stock market participant after the switch breakers are introduced. Prohibitions are precisely what encourage hoarding. Ramp up production to accompany higher demand is what ends the impulse for hoarding.

It’s nothing but Democrat administrative-state mentality at work here – first, the slap at Trump, and second, the move to crush the wreckers and hoarders – all coming at a time when the private sector is stepping up production of necessary things in a pandemic, the innovators are going gangbusters  with new solutions, doctors are experimenting in uncertainty as never before and the regulators in Washington are getting out of the way in a bid to hasten solutions.

What Nevada needs, he seems to be saying, is more bureaucrats, more enforcers, and more regulations, because there’s just too much freedom and in a pandemic, people are escaping “all proper control.”  He’s moving against the Zeitgeist, led by President Trump. Expect a lot more self-justification and backtracking from him, he’s not making himself popular.

 

How The Chinese Regime’s Silencing Of Whistleblowers Turned A Local Outbreak Into A Global Epidemic

It’s mind-boggling for people like us, the citizens in the free world, to imagine a government so capable of intentional evil. And yet, that is exactly how the Chinese Communist government of China operates. It’s an authoritarian regime that has historically caused the death of countless millions. Once you understand that, you will understand why we are dealing with this unprecedented global health crisis of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic today.

Recently, there have been news reports about how patient zero of the Wuhan coronavirus was traced back to as early as November 17. By December, Chinese scientists were already aware of the existence of the deadly virus and alerted Beijing about it. What was the Chinese government’s response? They received a gag order from China’s National Health Commission, with instructions to destroy the samples. Basically, the first critical month was spent covering up the crisis instead of taking preventive measures to stop the outbreak from worsening.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control Tried To Provide Help During the Early Stages of the Outbreak
In fact, back in early January, when news broke out about this new deadly virus, American representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control alerted the American government, and America offered to send a team of experts from the CDC to help with the investigation for the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. The Chinese government refused to authorize this request.

America offered to send a team of experts from the CDC to help investigate the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan but the Chinese government refused.

So, it’s almost like a bad joke now to see how the public is celebrating China’s recent offer to send mask and test kits to the European countries and America when they wouldn’t even allow America to send experts from the Center for Disease Control to help deal with the outbreak at the very beginning. Had it been tackled early on, we would have helped stop the spread of infection during its early crucial stages.

The American government kept extending this offer for almost a month, back when the total number of infected in China was under 5,000 and the number of deaths was only about 100. Today, two months later, the number of infected in China is over 80,000 and deaths from the virus are estimated at over 3,000. Honestly, no one can tell if these numbers are real because China’s lack of transparency means that these numbers are not reliable.

The very fact that China would rather let their own people die from the virus than accept help from the CDC in early January in order to help contain the outbreak should tell you everything you need to know about how this Communist regime deals with a public health crisis.

Chinese Government Putting the World in Danger
When representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited Wuhan on January 8 to assess the situation, local Wuhan health officials overseeing the CDC’s visit intentionally withheld information that hospital workers had been infected by patients. Had the representatives from the CDC been made aware of that, they would have been able to tell that this was a telltale sign of a contagious virus spreading from human to human. Officials in Wuhan insisted that only those who came into contact with infected animals could catch the coronavirus.

Local Wuhan health officials overseeing the CDC’s visit intentionally withheld information that hospital workers had been infected by patients.

If you want to feel sad and/or angry, read this BBC article published on January 9, the day after the CDC representatives’s visit, which states, “it is still unclear how the illness is transmitted, with health officials saying no cases of human-to-human transmission had been confirmed as yet.” China knew. China lied. China covered it up.

The Truth Will Always Emerge

It should be known that even though the Chinese Communist Party tried their best to lie and suppress the truth, many social media users in China were aware of the problems in Wuhan (as early as mid-December) because medical personnel were sharing and discussing the mystery illness on their group pages at Weibo and WeChat. Instead of treating the news of the illness seriously and taking the necessary actions, like informing the public so they’d be aware and could take precautions against infection, the Chinese authorities tried to suppress these “rumors.”

The Heroic Whistleblower
No, instead China arrested these doctors who were just discussing the problems they encountered at work with their fellow colleagues. Among these doctors was the heroically brave Dr. Li Wenliang. You may know by now how he was the whistleblower who informed the public about the Wuhan virus and how he later succumbed and died from it.

Dr. Li was a 34-year-old ophthalmologist working in Wuhan. On December 30, Dr. Li informed his fellow medical professionals in a chatroom about an alarming new mysterious illness he had observed while at work. He mentioned how the symptoms and diagnosis resembled the SARS outbreak from the early 2000s and warned other medics to wear protective clothing to avoid infection.

The Hero We Need
Since there is no such thing as freedom of speech in China, his conversation was monitored and on January 3, he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau. There they made him sign a letter, accusing him of “making false comments” and “severely disturbing the social order”. If it isn’t clear by now, this was the Chinese regime’s attempt to make him lie to the public, just like they did.

Dr. Li informed his fellow medical professionals in a chatroom about an alarming new mysterious illness he had observed while at work.

Thankfully, Dr. Li would not be intimidated into silence. He had a history of speaking up for what he believed was right. Once, he even openly defended a journalist who was investigating government ineptitude because he thought the journalist was brave enough to report on the truth. He eventually broke the news of what had happened to him to the public on January 10. He condemned the Chinese government for their inaction and for trying to silence him. He also continued to inform the public about the virus.

Symbol of Defiance and Free Speech
Perhaps the reason that finally drove him to put his life in danger by speaking out was that he had been infected by the Wuhan coronavirus himself. Dr. Li had unknowingly treated a glaucoma patient who had the illness two weeks earlier. On February 6, he succumbed to the Wuhan coronavirus and died. He left behind a 5-year-old son and a pregnant wife who is expecting in June.

Since his death, Dr. Li has become a symbol of courage in the time of adversity. The Chinese public-at-large, when they heard the news of his death, finally revolted at the lies and broke their silence just as he did. They too started to condemn the Chinese government for the cover-up. They finally saw how the regime caused the tragic death of the brave doctor who was not only unjustly silenced for trying to tell the truth, but he was also bullied for trying to help save the lives of everyone around him.

If there is one thing we can learn from this tragedy, let that lesson be about how crucial freedom of speech is. Authoritarian regimes will always try to silence dissent.  To paraphrase Edmund Burke – evil thrives in silence. And sometimes, this silencing of free speech by a tyrannical regime will lead to a global pandemic. From the silencing of Dr. Li to hiding the truth from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control, we have solid examples of how the suppression of speech and information about the Wuhan coronavirus by the Chinese government has led the world directly into the current catastrophe of a global health crisis that we, the citizens of the world, have to suffer under today.

THE MAN WHO MAY STOP COVID-19:

Lara Marlowe of the Irish Times had a terrific lead, “We could know within two weeks whether Professor Didier Raoult, the French virologist who heads the Mediterranean infectious and tropical disease institute in Marseille, will go down in history as the man who saved the world from COVID-19, or will be dismissed as an arrogant, misguided scientist who raised false hopes.”

Doctor Raoult was the one who took hydroxycloroquine off the shelf, mixed it with azithromycin (another available drug) and used it to treat 24 French COVID-19 patients.

It worked. 18 of them tested negative after 6 days.

Marlowe wrote, “President Donald Trump apparently learned of Raoult’s experiment through a Twitter post by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. On March 20th, Trump wrongly claimed in a White House press briefing that the US Food and Drug Administration had approved what he called “the very powerful” drug chloroquine to treat Covid-19.

“Trump was corrected by Dr Anthony Fauci, a top expert on infectious disease and a pillar of the fight against corona virus. But Trump persisted, tweeting the following day that ‘HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.'”

The United States began testing this in New York, which is the nation’s leader in COVID-19 patients.

He is a known figure in a relatively unknown medical community. The American Society for Microbiology interviewed him in 2018.

It said, “Dr. Didier Raoult considers himself a ‘microbe fisher,’ always ‘fishing’ to discover new microbes.  He says that in order to fish successfully, you need to first create the correct fishing pole (tools), and then fish in places where no one else is fishing.

“Dr. Raoult is the Director of the Mediterranean Infection Foundation at the Aix-Marseille University, France, and he has “caught” a number of unique microbes over the course of his career, including giant viruses.