HE’S NOT WRONG: Gen. Michael Flynn: If we don’t act, 2% of the people are about to control the other 98%.
To be fair, that’s always been the Left’s goal.
Archive for 2020
July 2, 2020
THERE MAY BE MORE TO IT THAN THIS. Trump did fire the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District just before charges were brought against Ghislaine Maxwell. This suggests he’s more active than that.
GENUINE ANTI-FASCISTS WOULD BE TARGETING THIS GUY FOR A NAZI-PUNCHING: Democrat Congressional Candidate: Report Trump Supporters!
LIFE IN THE FEUDAL STATE OF CALIFORNIA: CA Gov Newsom Shuts Down Majority of State’s Wineries for 4th of July – But Not His Own.
WHEN YOU THINK CONSEQUENCES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE, AND THEN LEARN THAT YOU’RE ONE OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE. And get no more sympathy than this:
Harvard girl is now having a mental breakdown because she lost her job pic.twitter.com/96UJQxZggO
— Ashley StClair 🇺🇸 (@stclairashley) July 2, 2020
RIP: Hugh Downs, longtime TV personality, dead at 99. “In 1985, Downs was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as holding the record for the most hours on network commercial television (over 15,000) — a record that stood until it was broken by Regis Philbin in 2004.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I was on the National Space Society board with him in the nineties. Terrific guy.
OPEN THREAD: You ought to know not to stand by the window.
SCIENCE: Hydroxychloroquine lowers COVID-19 death rate, Henry Ford Health study finds.
A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.
Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.
The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.
I can’t tell whether they administered zinc as well, but these are impressive results either way. Note that they administered the drug early, rather than waiting until people were very sick.
SCIENCE: Mask Wars: While facemasks can’t hurt in the fight against Covid-19, the outrage directed at skeptics is excessive. “Understanding of the mask issue has been considerably clouded by unreliable and badly presented evidence—especially a paper by Renyi Zhang for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contributed to PNAS by Mario Molina, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of the effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer. Molina and Zhang are atmospheric scientists with no background in epidemiology, virology, or the propagation of infectious diseases. Within the wider epidemiological community, their paper, which makes wild assertions about the effectiveness of masks while almost completely discounting the effect of other non-pharmacological interventions—and does so based on an unfounded comparison of Wuhan, Italy, and the United States—has drawn largely critical responses, with several noted epidemiologists calling for PNAS to withdraw it. The paper fails not only in its scientific methodology but also in its fundamental grasp of facts and evidence.”
HAPPILY, I ALREADY OWN A LOT OF GUNS, THOUGH THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS HAVING TOO MANY: Record-Setting Gun Sales Could Leave Stores Dry.
An analysis of background check numbers by industry analyst Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting released on Wednesday indicates that more than 2.3 million guns were sold in the United States during June. That’s an increase of more than 145.3 percent over June 2019. It’s also up from the 1.7 million estimated to have been sold in May, the 1.8 million in April, and just shy of the all-time monthly record of 2.5 million set back in March.
There have now been an estimated 8.3 million firearms sold in the United States since March—a record-setting pace likely to make 2020 the greatest year for gun sales in American history if the trend continues.
Gun and ammunition retailers are having trouble keeping up with the demand as Americans flood stores.
“Obama was the best gun sales in the country they claimed,” Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks in Delray Beach, Fla., told the Washington Free Beacon. “No, Covid19 is.”
Well, and Black Lives Matter rioters.
I have a lot of ammo, too, but it’s definitely flying off the shelves.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Jonathan Turley: Was the University of Massachusetts Nursing Dean Fired After Saying “Everyone’s Life Matters?” The response from the university “suggests that there were other reasons for the termination but, if the letter posted from Dr. Neal-Boylan is accurate, she was not aware of what those reasons might be. If she is unaware of those allegations, this would be a rather Orwellian position where the university protects her privacy by refusing to confirm the basis for her termination even to herself. I was hoping that the University would at least say that she was given those reasons and an opportunity to defend herself. Instead, the university did not deny the allegation that Dr. Neal-Boylan was denied the opportunity to respond and contest any allegations. The problem with the response is it leaves even more questions.”
Read the whole thing.
DON’T BELIEVE MEDIA CLAIMING GROUNDSWELL FOR REPARATIONS: In fact, the “reparations” bill they’re pushing doesn’t require reparations, it just studies the possibilities.
BOY, FLORIDA STATE HAS BEEN A REAL DUMPSTER FIRE THIS YEAR: FSU To Bar Employees Working From Home To Care For Kids At The Same Time. “Many companies scrambled to adjust their policies around remote work and child care when the coronavirus pandemic hit. With schools and daycares closed, and their employees working from home, employers realized they had to be flexible when it came to work and child care. As the school gears up to reopen in the fall, Florida State said many employees will have to come up with an alternative child care arrangements.”
WE GOT NOWHERE TO WORK, NOTHING TO DRINK. WE JUST LOST OUR SHIRTS, I’M ON THE DOLE, WE AIN’T FOR HIRE. SAY WHAT THE HELL, HANG FIRE: #LetTheMusicPlay: Over 1,500 artists come together to call on UK government to stop “catastrophic damage” to live music. Radiohead, The Cure, Dua Lipa, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Johnny Marr, Dizzee Rascal, Primal Scream, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Coldplay are among the names demanding immediate action to save live music in the UK.
DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: A Long Talk With Anthony Fauci’s Boss About the Pandemic, Vaccines, and Faith.
I am guardedly optimistic that by the end of 2020 we will have at least one vaccine that has been proven safe and effective in a large-scale trial. Nobody should accept it as safe and effective without that large-scale trial. There are at least four vaccines that will be getting into such large trials this summer beginning as early as July. Each one of those trials will involve roughly 30,000 volunteers, half of whom will get the vaccine, half of whom will get a dummy placebo. You have to have that control or you will never know if the vaccine worked or not.
Those trials will have to be conducted in areas where the virus is actively spreading because that’s the only way you’re going to know whether it was protective. With four different vaccines with four different approaches, we’ve kind of hedged our bets against putting too much emphasis on one particular strategy. That’s good — because vaccines are really interesting science, but every new virus presents surprises in terms of how the vaccine turns out to work. So I’d be very worried right now if we had one platform that everybody was counting on. Having four makes me feel a lot better.
Maybe all four of them will work. As long as one of them works, we’ll be in a far better position by the end of the year to see our way out of this global pandemic mess. But there will be, then, a time of having to do the scale-up to have billions of doses, which might be what the world needs. So there will still be some time involved, even though we are doing everything possible to prepare for that by manufacturing millions of doses of each of those vaccines even before we know if they would work, so that the highest-risk people can get access right away. So I’m guardedly optimistic that we will see all that happen.
I’d add a “Faster, please,” except that they’ve been making remarkably fast progress already.
ROGER SIMON: New York, New York, It Was a Wonderful Town.
Flashback: Longing for the Bad Old Days. “There is a mayoral election this November when we’ll get the opinion of all New Yorkers on the city’s current alchemists. But perhaps we should regard the famous Times’ commentators yearning for the 1970s as canaries in the gold-plated mine shaft.”
BUT HOW MANY WILL SHOW UP? Parents Everywhere Agree: Reopen Schools — IMMEDIATELY!
REVIEW: SIG Sauer P320 XCompact Pistol.