VENTILATORS ARE NOT MAGIC LIFESAVERS: “Most coronavirus patients who end up on ventilators go on to die, according to several small studies from the U.S., China and Europe. And many of the patients who continue to live can’t be taken off the mechanical breathing machines.”

Coronavirus aside, people who get put on ventilators are already sick, and ventilators carry their own, serious risks. Plus, “weaning” people off of them is non-trivial. Not getting a ventilator at a crucial time will kill you, but getting one is no guarantee of survival. If you put totally healthy people on ventilators for a week, a nontrivial number of them would wind up dying, and we don’t put totally healthy people on ventilators.

‘VENTILATORS’ DONATED BY ELON MUSK CAN’T BE USED ON CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS, HEALTH OFFICIALS SAY:

But hospitals are far more desperate for ventilators more invasive than BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are usually used to treat sleep apnea — many doctors don’t even call them “ventilators,” the Los Angeles Times‘ Russ Mitchell reports. In fact, CPAP machines may have only helped spread COVID-19 through the nursing home outside Seattle that was the center of the U.S.’s initial coronavirus outbreak, NPR reports. These machines can “possibly increase the spread of infectious disease by aerosolizing the virus,” NPR writes. Health officials in King County, Washington, have since warned against using CPAP machines on coronavirus patients, as did the American Society of Anesthesiologists back in February.

Read the whole thing.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: San Francisco reverses ban on plastic bags, now bars reusable totes.

Who could have seen this coming?

ROBERT KRAFT USING PATRIOTS PLANE TO AIRLIFT CORONAVIRUS MASKS, SUPPLIES FROM CHINA TO MASSACHUSETTS: “Over one million masks are on their way from China to Massachusetts aboard a Patriots jet after owner Robert Kraft coordinated with Gov. Charlie Baker and federal officials to purchase the much-needed protective equipment.”

THIS WILL END WELL: Pelosi: We’re launching a “bipartisan” select committee to oversee coronavirus response — not investigate it. “Even if Pelosi is sincere at the moment, Schiff and Jerrold Nadler among others in her caucus will demand that this select committee expand its scope at some point. The only way to prevent that from happening would be to have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on the select committee. Chances of that happening range somewhere between slim and none.”

WHO ON JANUARY 14:

And yet Joe Scarborough says “everybody saw this coming” in early January. But he’s a hack. Just not a good one.

SEAN LENNON RIPS THE MEDIA FOR ‘WUHAN VIRUS’ DOUBLE STANDARD, SPREADING CHINESE COMMUNIST DATA.

We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which the son of John and Yoko is a voice of sanity, and Sweden is a font of libertarianism.

SANITY ATTACKS UVA LAW; NATIONAL GUARD STUDENT MAY REMAIN AT SCHOOL: Looks like UVA went with Glenn’s “less losing rather than more” option.

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Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

JUDGES DO GET IT WRONG: No matter how you feel about these particular media defendants, the judge here committed reversible error in holding that saying in good faith but erroneously that a man convicted of a misdemeanor is a “felon” is a substantial enough falsity for a libel case to stand. Mind you, the complaining party makes a valid observation:

In his complaint, Blankenship explains, “We live in an age of weaponized defamation where lies can be repeated in more ways at more times in more places with more speed than anyone could possibly have imagined even five years ago.”

But that isn’t enough. The degree of harm is not relevant to the question of scienter or fault. If publishers are required to be 100% accurate in describing legal pleadings or face bankrupting libel suits, then who would risk reporting any legal news? That, my friends, is the genius of our Founding Fathers’ design of the First Amendment.

“Sometimes false speech must be protected in order to provide breathing space for other expression.”

NO LOCKDOWN, PLEASE, WE’RE SWEDISH: “Who would have thought that Sweden would end up being the last place in Europe where you could go for a beer?… Managing the virus is a long game, and while herd immunity is not the Swedish strategy, it may well be where we all end up. The theory of lockdown, after all, is pretty niche, deeply illiberal — and, until now, untested. It’s not Sweden that’s conducting a mass experiment. It’s everyone else.”

ELI LAKE: The FBI Can’t Be Trusted With the Surveillance of Americans.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a new report that found systematic errors of fact in the FBI’s applications for warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The memo does not speak to the materiality or significance of those errors — but they are startling nonetheless.

Out of 42 applications, the report says, 39 included major defects. All told, the inspector general uncovered 390 deficiencies, including “unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors.”

The memo follows the report Horowitz issued in December that reviewed four FISA warrants for Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2106 presidential campaign. The bureau suspected him of being a Russian agent, but the report found that it repeatedly relied on an opposition research dossier to persuade the secret court to renew the surveillance warrant even after agents knew the dossier was riddled with errors. Rules that have been in place for nearly 20 years to verify the accuracy of facts presented in the warrant and include exculpatory information, known as the Woods procedures, were ignored.

Read the whole thing.

WHAT A MINUTE — WHO WAS BURNING FOSSIL FUEL BACK THEN?  Lost rainforest covered ‘most of West ANTARCTICA’ 90 million years ago when South Pole was warm.

(Bumped.)

AT AMAZON, canned Boston Brown Bread. Also with raisins.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Death to ‘Dirty’ Christians, Love for ‘Pure’ Muslims During COVID-19.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS IN GENERAL HAVE AN UNDERLYING CONDITION? 73% of Americans Hospitalised With COVID-19 Had an Underlying Condition, Says CDC. No numbers, but there’s this: “The CDC noted that many of the conditions reported by patients are fairly common among Americans in general.”

So maybe this says that the disease mostly just kills people who are already sick. But if “already sick” encompasses things like “former smoker” and “high blood pressure” — under the new guidelines, it’s like 1/3 of the public having high blood pressure — then that’s not much of a comfort.

SACRAMENTO HOMELESS TRANSIENTS TAKE OVER VACANT HOME IN STUNT BY ‘TENANTS UNION.’  Sacramento transients and activists copycat the Oakland squatters stunt, in a home owned by the same investment group.

Flashback: Single Homeless Moms Get Reprieve On Eviction From Oakland Home.

BETTER DEAD THAN RUDE: Bill de Blasio to ‘Monitor’ Samaritan’s Purse Coronavirus Emergency Hospital for ‘Discrimination.’

(Classical reference in headline.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Samaritan’s Purse should hire a private investigator to “monitor” Bill de Blasio for corruption. Who do you think will find something actionable first?

I AM HERE TO HELP: With March Madness canceled, food industry is overloaded with chicken wings.

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOG AROUND A CURE FOR COVID-19.

Many news media reports have smartly highlighted the initial, flawed, results of the Raoult study, including a Los Angeles Times column and a New Yorker piece focused on the dangerous potential side effects of HCQ. A lot of reporters who, understandably, hate Trump and distrust everything he says, have clearly decided the HCQ stuff is dangerous bunk and moved on to other stories. But just because Trump likes it doesn’t make it all bad.

The French doctor has continued to update his results, and they are now based on a thousand patients. Other studies are also underway, and scientists including Fauci have cautioned that the Raoult study is not being done according to the most rigorous standards. But if you want hope along with your clickbait stories of people dying from fish tank cleaner, you could report it: as of Sunday March 29, the French study reported that of 1,003 patients treated with HCQ/AZ, only one had died.

HCQ is not the only promising treatment. Doctors from Mount Sinai in New York have begun siphoning blood from those who have recovered from COVID-19 in order to harvest their antibodies. These will be injected into hospitalized patients. Doctors should know by mid-April if it is helpful.

Stay tuned.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Cornonavirus Economic Resources: Texas and Elsewhere. “Since the Wuhan Coronavirus has delivered a quick kick to the nads of the economy, I’m sure being out of work right really now sucks.”

WOW: UPMC unveils potential COVID-19 vaccine. “Scientists say they’ve tested the vaccine in mice, and it produced antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 at quantities they believe could be enough to neutralize the coronavirus.”

ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACKS TRY TO REWRITE HISTORY ON CORONAVIRUS: “This morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed that, unlike the Trump administration, ‘Everybody saw this coming in early January.’ If Scarborough knew that a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic was about to descend on the nation in early January — I assume he considers himself part of ‘everyone’ — why on God’s earth didn’t he warn his susceptible viewers that they should begin social distancing? Why didn’t his producers book a single expert who could beseech his viewers to start wearing masks, to shutter their non-essential businesses, and to avoid church and sporting events? Why didn’t he mention coronavirus at all? Even in late January, nearly a full month after ‘everyone knew,’ Scarborough’s show was dominated by the Donald Trump impeachment trial.”

Related: Despite Impeachment and Corona, MSNBC’s Ratings Are Stagnant.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Everybody saw this coming in early January? Really?

Scarborough isn’t even a good hack.

DNC POSTPONES PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION TO AUGUST OVER CORONAVIRUS FEARS.