How Obama’s failure to resupply respirators in federal stockpile created a 2020 crisis The stockpile’s 100 million supply of N95 respirator masks was never fully replenished after 2009 swine flu pandemic, experts say.By Christine Dolan

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/how-obamas-failure-resupply-respirators-federal-stockpile-created-2020

The Strategic National Stockpile, America’s giant medical storage closet for a terrorist or biological crisis, once boasted more than 100 million respirator masks to protect doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers in case of a contagion.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic started a few months ago, the supply had dwindled down to just 12 million fitted masks, known as N95 respirators, and 30 million surgical masks, a supply deemed to be less than 2 percent of what the nation would need for full-blown pandemic.

The tale of how such a critical supply lapsed, leading the Trump administration to scramble for 500 million new masks in the midst of pandemic, is one of government neglect and competing priorities that began in 2009.

That’s when the Obama administration drew down nearly 97 million of the masks to deal with the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, effectively protecting frontline medical workers from a virus that infected more than 60 million Americans.

But when it was over, the administration decided not to fully restock the respirators, choosing to spend its $600 million annual budget for the stockpile on other priorities such as key drugs and vaccines to deal with smallpox, anthrax and the like, experts said.

Hockey Sticks, Changing Goal Posts, and Hysteria by Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/31/hockey-sticks-changing-goal-posts-and-hysteria/

There’s still time to find a balance between public health and the economy: Trump must find it before April 30.

Last year, Glacier National Park in Montana began removing signs that warned visitors the park’s gigantic glaciers would start melting away by 2020 due to global warming. Park officials altered other climate change flair such as brochures and displays to postpone the threat to sometime in “future generations.”

Like so many claims about the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic global warming, predictions about disappearing glaciers were quickly memory-holed. And, as usual, the experts behind the flawed science that misled millions of people to believe their actions would cause the destruction of one of nature’s most awesome sights didn’t apologize. No scientist or government official even had the guts to stand up and say, “Oops, my bad.”

Quite to the contrary—prophets of nonexistent doom are often cheered as heroes no matter how many times they’ve been wrong.

Take Dr. Michael Mann, for example. The Pennsylvania State University author of the infamous “hockey stick” graph is still considered a god among the international climate change set; his graph launched the modern-day climate movement even though his work has been widely refuted by scientists and hacked emails showed how he and his fellow researchers manipulated data to “prove” their theory.

Now, we have the latest version of the hockey stick graph and it is related to COVID-19. The alarming visual indicates a huge spike in estimated deaths and hospitalizations in the United States from coronavirus infections over the next few weeks. Last week, a researcher at the University of Washington released a study that appears to serve as the scientific justification to extend the CDCs social distancing guidelines until at least April 30.

Mike Lindell, Not Yamiche Alcindor, Is the Hero By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/mike-lindell-hero-not-yamiche-alcindor/

Why is a grandstanding journalist seen as more virtuous than a self-sacrificing business owner?

MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, a self-made former crack addict, is going to transform 75 percent of his manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 cotton face masks per day by the end of the week, ramping up production to 50,000 a day in a month. That sounds like a patriotic act to me, especially given that Lindell is undertaking the effort without being forced to do so by a federal agency. I hope the guy becomes a billionaire after this is all over.

NBC? Not so much. The headline on its “analysis” of Lindell’s remarks was “Trump fluffs MyPillow in Rose Garden.” This matched the basic tone taken by a large faction within the political press. Why? Presumably because, at the end of his remarks, Lindell claimed that the Lord Almighty had helped elect Donald Trump president to save our once-beleaguered nation from its alleged depravations. Listen, if there is a God, I hope He refrains from tipping the scales of presidential contests. But it’s not surprising to hear an evangelical Christian talking about the world this way — unless, that is, you’ve never met one.

Of course, anyone who shows anything less than hostility toward the president is immediately cast as a reactionary, and their actions dismissed as questionable and self-serving. Many of the CEOs who have stood with Trump at his press conferences — this week, or in weeks prior — hold varying religious and partisan beliefs. The press didn’t have similar qualms about the CEOs of CVS or Walgreens, because they kept their views to themselves.

The Virus Crisis: No Good Choices, Just Bad and Worse What about the lives damaged or lost because of a policy to save other lives? Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/virus-crisis-no-good-choices-just-bad-and-worse-bruce-thornton/

President Trump’s suggestions about getting some regions of the country back to work has provoked the usual hysterical hyperbole from the Trump-hating media. One assumes by now that squeals like Chuck Todd’s “blood on his hands” have become white noise for half the country, and so aren’t damaging Trump, whose handling of the virus 60% of Americans approve.

But beneath the usual partisan desperation and bitterness lies a common fallacy: That every political and social problem has a right solution known to “experts,” and only the willful ignorance and superstitions of “anti-science” conservatives prevents them from making the correct choice. The solution, as Barack Obama said, is “science-based policies” created by “experts.”

Take the policy of “self-quarantining” or extreme “social distancing,” which has shut down the American economy and put 3.8 million workers on unemployment. This policy gained traction when epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Oxford said as many as 2.2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons would die because of the virus. In all fairness, he also said such an outcome was “unlikely.” But the sensationalist media, eager for bad news with which to tar the president, reported the number as though it were a scientific fact rather than an educated estimate thick with caveats. As U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams has complained, the media are too eager to publicize estimates “based on worst-case scenarios.”

Lying China Why China’s official data on the coronavirus and its death numbers cannot be trusted. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/lying-china-joseph-klein/

If we are to believe China’s figures, the number of Covid-19 coronavirus cases in China as of March 31 was 82,240, with 3,309 deaths. The United States has now just under 165,000 cases and has surpassed 3000 deaths attributed to the virus – about double the official number of China’s cases and fast approaching China’s official death total. China claims that it has largely defeated the coronavirus and is opening public transportation, schools, and factories. The Chinese Communist Party has promoted itself as the global role model for how to lead a “people’s war” against COVID-19 and save many lives. “Party officials have tried to spin the crisis as a testament to the strength of China’s authoritarian system and its hard-line leader, Xi Jinping,” the New York Times reported, “even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays him as a ‘major power leader’ with ‘care for the people.’”

China’s officially reported case and death totals to date just happen to be remarkably close to a prediction last February by Stanford University biology professor Michael Levitt. Dr. Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, predicted that China would peak with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths. Dr. Levitt  has spent a couple of months a year in China. “I became much more interested in China, and seeing the country through the eyes of somebody who has lived there made it very different,” he said. Dr. Levitt was appalled by the travel restrictions imposed by the United States. “It’s crazy,” he said, as quoted by China Daily. “Travel bans don’t help at all. I think all this punishment just leads to under-reporting, and it’s not a good idea.” Although he is not an epidemiologist, the Chinese government featured him with appearances on the Chinese State broadcaster China Global Television Network.

Dr. Levitt is now claiming that the growth of new cases worldwide should slow much faster than many health experts predict, just as he claims happened in China. We hope Dr. Levitt is right but have good reason to be skeptical regarding the validity of China’s official data. Dr. Levitt’s predictions more likely were used by Chinese authorities to lend credibility to the range of numbers that China is willing to report as the peak, rather than constituting validated forecasts of what actually happened.

Jew-Hate in France When Jewish students avoid going to public schools. Stephen Brown

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/jew-hate-france-stephen-brown/

Last December, vandals desecrated 107 Jewish graves with anti-Semitic inscriptions in Westerhoffen in eastern France. Anti-Jewish graffiti was also found in the nearby town of Schafhouse-sur-Zorn. No suspects were arrested. Earlier in 2019, in February in Alsace, also in eastern France, 100 Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols.

The desecration occurred just hours before the French government’s lower legislative house was to adopt a motion modeled on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism which states that denying Jews their right to self-determination is anti-Semitic.

In the same month, an Israeli student was attacked by two strangers on the subway for speaking Hebrew into a cell phone. His nose was broken. A 17-year-old, arrested with a stolen phone and known to police, was taken into custody. His ethnic origin was not given.

And perhaps most frightening, U.K.’s leading freedom fighter Katie Hopkins stated in a recent Glazov Gang video that 18 Jewish families in Paris had received letters telling them to “get out” or be killed.

Perhaps to indicate the senders of these poisonous letters meant business, Hopkins also cited the case of the 82-year-old Jewish woman last year who lived in one of the poorer suburbs surrounding Paris. She was stabbed to death and thrown off her balcony by her Muslim neighbor.

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase in France. According to Wikepedia, in 2018, they rose by 69 per cent amounting to about 500 assaults. Anti-Semitism surged during the Second Intifada from 2002-2004 to disturbing levels.

Coronavirus: Why Palestinian Leaders Are Not Helping Gaza to Combat It by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15805/coronavirus-palestinians-gaza

The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has done virtually nothing to help the Gaza Strip confront the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, the only country that has been helping the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks is Israel.

The question is, why is the PA ignoring calls to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip in their effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus? One explanation — that accords with history — is that if a large number of Palestinians living in Gaza there are infected… the PA leadership wants the world to blame Israel.

It is important to emphasize that there is no Israeli “siege” on the Gaza Strip. First, the Gaza Strip shares borders not only with Israel, but also with Egypt. It is Egypt, not Israel… that is effectively blockading Gaza.

The United Nations, regardless, is also trying to pave the way for holding Israel responsible for the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip.

Mahmoud Abbas is undoubtedly looking forward to a day when he can hold Israel fully responsible for the outbreak of the coronavirus in the Gaza Strip. He is also likely waiting for the UN and many in the international community to join him in blaming Israel and Jews for the spread of the pandemic among his people while ignoring his own responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

After the discovery of the first coronavirus cases in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is ignoring appeals to lift a series of sanctions it imposed on the two million Palestinians living there. Actually, the PA leadership has done virtually nothing to help the Gaza Strip confront the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, the only country that has been helping the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks is Israel.

The question is, why is the PA ignoring calls to help the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip in their effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus? One explanation — that accords with history — is that if a large number of Palestinians living in Gaza there are infected with the disease and there is a huge catastrophe there, the PA leadership wants the world to blame Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has a long record of hiding its own responsibility for the suffering of its people, and instead blaming Israel for the woes of the Gaza Strip.

China Using Coronavirus for Further Deceit by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15826/china-coronavirus-deceit

Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

Worse, the wet markets, which were to have been closed, have apparently been reopening.

China is a threat to all of us. That is why it is more important than ever for the U.S. and the rest of the West to be aware of the risks involved in developing further alliances — technological or otherwise — with a country that has served up nothing but duplicity to its own people as well as to the rest of the planet.

The coronavirus may be strengthening the determination of China’s government. So far, it has been trying to guarantee absolute loyalty from its populace through surveillance technology and turning China into a spookily Orwellian society. Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

China has not only been stealing intellectual property from the West for years, as US President Donald J. Trump has long observed; it has also behaved abysmally during the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan — and maybe also before. It is still not known if this coronavirus originated in one of China’s “wet markets”, which have probably caused other diseases, or in a bio-weapons laboratory — and we may never know. What we do know is that when the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control offered to help, China ignored them.

Political Furor over Drugs that Might Help Fight against COVID-19 By John Eidson

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/political_furor_over_drugs_that_might_help_fight_against_covid19.html

Why would anyone mock a drug that shows promise?

Here’s what we’re dealing with:

“No U.S. city will be spared”
Fauci: Up to 200,000 Americans could die
NYC: Dead bodies being loaded on refrigerated trucks
Nurses die, doctors fall sick as panic rises on front lines
Trump extends social distancing through end of April

Why would anyone mock a drug that shows promise?  Chloroquine and its less toxic derivative, hydroxychloroquine, are existing antimalarial drugs thought to be effective in treating coronavirus.

Dr. Steve Kassapidis is a COVID-19 critical care physician in New York City.  During a recent interview on Fox News, Dr. Kassapidis told Tucker Carlson that he’s taking Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) as a prophylaxis.  Many other doctors in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere are taking the antimalarial drugs in hopes of protecting themselves from COVID-19 and are prescribing the off-label medications to patients infected with the disease.

In a March 21 interview on Philadelphia’s AM 990, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “Of course, I would try chloroquine on coronavirus patients.”  But despite the potential of antimalarial drugs to mitigate COVID-19, politically driven journalists are pooh-poohing them as ineffective treatments touted by a recklessly incompetent president.  Desperately hoping hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine will be a flop, mainstream journalists are ridiculing President Trump over his advocacy of their potential in the fight against the coronavirus.

How George Soros’s Marijuana Advocacy Makes the COVID-19 Panic Worse By Rachel Ehrenfeld

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/how_george_soross_marijuana_advocacy_makes_the_covid19_panic_worse.html

George Soros’s first major effort to reshape America was undertaking the legitimization of illegal drug use, especially marijuana.  Soros initially said his overarching goal was to promote informed discussion of drug policy.  But debate and discussion are not his style and were not his objects.  Instead, he used his resources to fund think-tanks, foundations, and public policy action groups that successfully muddled public opinion enough to change public laws, making illegal drug use legal.

In the early 1990s, the notion of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. was unthinkable and unacceptable.  The voices to legalize drugs were marginal and not in sync.  This changed in 1993, when Soros, who claimed that prohibitionist drug policies are wrong because they contradict his vision of the “Open Society,” launched a $15-million pro–drug legalization propaganda campaign that has made him the new darling of the media left.  Soros and his acolytes have garnered enormous press attention through a barrage of magazine articles, op-ed pieces, and television appearances.  By 1996, the slogans of “medicalization” and “compassion” joined “legalization” and “decriminalization,” as well as “nonviolent drug offender.”  All of these were shaping the vocabulary of the public dialogue.  Soros’s sponsorship provided the credibility theretofore lacking in the movement to legalize drugs.