Author: Papa Giorgio

Democrats Leaning Totalitarian More-and-More Every Day

Published by Papa Giorgio

What a great post by PJ-MEDIA!

The Left’s taste for totalitarianism is increasingly obvious. There have been calls from Leftists for the opponents of the still-unapproved vaccines to be shot (with a gun, not a hypodermic needle), or at the very least arrested and imprisoned, and on Thursday AP reported that Biden handlers had discussed “mandating vaccines for interstate travel,” but decided against doing so because “the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.” For the moment. That means we should watch for this particular trial balloon to be floated again after the establishment media has pounded the American people with fear propaganda for a few more months.

Even the fact that this idea has been broached should send chills down the spine of everyone who is aware of how totalitarian regimes work. Internal passports are one of their hallmarks, as they enable easy, centralized data collection about the population and its political leanings, along with ready knowledge of each individual’s whereabouts, which is always handy when the time comes for that knock on the door at 3 a.m. At a time when the Democratic leadership is doing everything it can to stir up hysteria about a fictional “insurrection” and talking about acting against a largely chimerical “white supremacist terrorism,” the idea of internal passports should be a matter of serious concern.

On December 27, 1932, the Soviet Union established the “Unified Passport System within the USSR,” severely restricting travel within the country and requiring Soviet citizens to carry passports for travel inside the workers’ paradise, so as to aid in “the removal of persons not engaged in industrial or other socially-useful work from towns and cleansing of towns from hiding kulaks, criminals and other antisocial elements.” “Kulaks” was the Stalin regime’s word for peasants they didn’t find sufficiently enthusiastic for the arrival of Communism; the internal passports were designed to aid in identifying and rooting out such undesirable elements and enemies of the regime.

Victor Davis Hanson recently pointed out that “once the delta variant arrived in force in early summer, earlier government assurances that the vaccinated were now free to resume a normal life lost credibility. Confused and mixed messages followed — simultaneously downplaying and exaggerating the efficacy of the vaccinations.” Yet in the face of this loss of credibility, Biden’s handlers have not eased off on their vaccination push, but have only intensified it. AP noted: “When the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. first began to slow, President Joe Biden backed incentives like million-dollar cash lotteries if that’s what it took to get shots in arms.” Yes, it’s a vaccine so safe, so effective, so widely trusted, that Biden’s handlers were willing to bribe Americans to get it.

The cash lotteries were the carrot; now comes the stick. “In just the past two weeks,” says AP: “Biden has forced millions of federal workers to attest to their vaccination status or face onerous new requirements. He’s met with business leaders at the White House to press them to do the same.” And that’s not remotely all. Biden’s handlers have also “taken steps toward mandating shots for people traveling into the U.S. from overseas.” Much more is coming, “including potential support for school districts imposing rules to prevent spread of the virus over the objection of Republican leaders.”

Yet again employing the Leftist tactic of accusing his enemies of what he is guilty of, Old Joe on Thursday politicized his vaccine push while claiming his foes were the ones doing so: “To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids: thank you. Thank God that we have heroes like you, and I stand with you all, and America should as well.”

AP’s Zeke Miller then gives us a paragraph about Old Joe’s strict constitutionalism and magnanimity, saying that “he has refrained from using all his powers to pressure Americans to get vaccinated. He’s held off, for instance, on proposals to require vaccinations for all air travelers or, for that matter, the federal workforce. The result is a precarious balancing act as Biden works to make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated without spurring a backlash in a deeply polarized country that would only undermine his public health goals…. Still, while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”

Wait a minute. He has “refrained from using all his powers”? What powers exactly has he declined to use? What section of the Constitution allows the president of the United States to require vaccinations for all air travelers or internal passports? What part of the Bill of Rights allows the president to take any measures whatsoever to “make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated”? If a pandemic justifies this level of federal overreach, what on earth would or could possibly prevent a tyrant from creating one in order to arrogate emergency powers to himself? Is the pandemic now the Left’s Reichstag fire excuse to destroy Americans’ freedom and crush dissent?……….

(READ IT ALL)

 

MORE Media Retractions… and Fact-Checks by NPR??

Published by Papa Giorgio

This first story deals with a story run by CNN via RED STATE… hold for the hilarity of DDS (DeSantis Derangement Syndrome):

I wrote earlier about a story that spread far and wide, helped by a CNN report, that four teachers died from COVID within 24 hours in Broward County.

CNN then tried to hook it up to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his ban on mandating masks, leaving it up to the parents to decide for their own children.

But as I noted, school hasn’t even started in Broward County, and doesn’t start until August 18. So any teachers who got sick did so while on vacation, on summer break, and it had nothing at all to do with mask mandates, no mask mandates, or the schools.

[….]

The story originally claimed three teachers and a teacher’s assistant had died within 24 hours of COVID.

Now the media is walking back that statement.

Even now, even with this correction, they’re still only citing the teacher’s union president. How do they even know this correction is accurate? How do they know that whole 24 hours thing was accurate? Or that it was “from COVID” and not “with” COVID?….

And in this story from REASON, they note NPR getting in on a correction of the CDC (hat-tip RIGHT SCOOP):

Another CDC data flub distorts delta variant contagiousness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed the delta variant of COVID-19 is “as transmissible as” chickenpox. It’s not true.

Chickenpox, caused by the varicella-zoster virus, is one of the most contagious diseases we know of. “If one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected,” states the CDC website.

One person infected with chickenpox will infect an average of 10 people when everyone in a population is vulnerable to catching it. (This transmissibility number—referred to as R0—goes down when people have immunity to the disease.)

“The initial COVID-19 strain had an R0 between two and three,” computational biologist Karthik Gangavarapu told NPR. The delta variant has an R0 between six and seven. For chickenpox, the R0 is nine or 10.

How did the CDC conclude that these were equivalent?

For one, the leaked document underestimated the R0 for chickenpox and overestimated the R0 for the delta variant. “The R0 values for delta were preliminary and calculated from data taken from a rather small sample size,” a federal official told NPR. The value for the chickenpox (and other R0s in the slideshow) came from a graphic from The New York Times, which wasn’t completely accurate.

Apparently, the federal agency charged with disseminating COVID-19 data and setting public health policy is taking its cues from a newspaper infographic. Oh my…..

The Texas Tribune Makes Glaring Hospitalization Mistake

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via INDEPENDENT CHRONICLE:

The Texas Tribune published an article on Thursday attributing the total number of children hospitalized since the beginning of the pandemic to a period of the last 7 days, and then quickly backtracking when the fallacy was brought to light – a reporting error of over 5,000 cases.

“That’s one heck of a correction,” reporter Steven Dennis tweeted.

[….]

The Tribune stated that the number of children hospitalized during the past week in Texas was over 5,800, when in fact that is the total number of children hospitalized with Covid since the onset of the pandemic.

“And yet that’s still misleading! He first said 5800 in a 7-day period, then said, sorry, it was 783 in a *40 day* period! But he didn’t actually say 40, so it’s easy to skim and think he’s talking about the same length of time,” tweeted one person.

[….]

The Tribune article discusses how more children are flooding into Texas hospitals than ever before, originally saying that Texas had seen over 5,800 children hospitalized with Covid in the past week. 

It turns out that the actual number of children admitted with Covid between July 1 and August 9 – a 40-day period, not a 7-day period as originally stated in the article – in Texas is 783. That gives us about 137 hospitalizations per week if divided evenly between the 40 days. So the number that the Tribune originally reported is 4,100% higher than the correct statistic.  

UPDATE

NEWSBUSTERS notes how wide the lie made it:

….So over five weeks there were 783 children, not 5,800 over one week. Brent Scher, executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon, tweeted on the bad math: “I did the math here. The claim: 828 hospitalizations a day Reality: 19 a day. Only off by about 43x.” No wonder Jen Rubin deleted her tweet!

Skeptics pointed out the slippery language of the Tribune correction. Not “hospitalized with COVID,” but “admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID.” So they was no measurement of how serious their admissions were, for how many days they stayed.

Once again, the people who think they represent Science have bungled the actual numbers and massively exaggerated the problem. Creating a viral tweet seems to get ahead of doing basic math.

PS: Rubin wrote an editorial hammering on the same point on the same day that the “MAGA governors” are endangering lives:

The worst perpetrators of this avoidable tragedy are not a few stray crackpots such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.); they are, in fact, among the top contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Not all Republicans are prohibiting mask or vaccine mandates, but all governors who do so — in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Utah — are Republican.

This is certainly not a “pro-life” party. Around the country, Americans in large numbers have figured out what these political hacks are up to: sacrificing the health and lives of Americans at the altar of their political ambition.

The CDC’s/Rochelle Walensky’s Power Grab[s]

Published by Papa Giorgio

Tucker Carlson speaks to the CDC creating laws – whole cloth.

Hat-tip to and more from, ACE OF SPADES:

It’s a pretty righteous rant about the CDC director’s decision to extend the eviction moratorium, and who gave the CDC authority over landlords and the houing market? I agree with Tucker that this is an outrageous overreach, but I have a beef or two with how he’s arguing his case.. The first is that Tucker is presnting it his audience as if it were a new thing, some new form of tyranny that the Biden Administration thought up just now. But this is misleading. What Tucker is describing actually has a name, administrative law, and it’s been going on over a century, informally since the end of the 1900s, and formally with the passage of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) in 1946.

I don’t think this country’s founders ever envisioned regulations with the force of law being written (enacted) by unelected bureaucrats, but that’s the country we’re living in. This applies to any federal agency, but my favorite whipping boy is the EPA who can come in and designate all or part of your property as a “protected wetland” and too bad about your development plans you were counting on to bring in income for your retirement, but they’re now illegal. Or, worse, you need to spend many thousands of dollars to bring your “wetland” up to EPA specs, otherwise you’ll be subject to heavy fines.

Often with no appeal.

So what about due process? Congress enacted the APA specifically to establish fair administrative law procedures to comply with the constitutional requirements of due process. But I’ve heard enough horror stories to wonder how effective these protections are.

Second, despite Tucker’s protestations of the illegality of this, I’m not sure it will hold up in the long run. We’ve been living with administrative law for decades. Some Republicans have grumbled about it on and off, but, like any other federal program or agency, once it’s in place, it will never go away. It’s now a feature of the landscape. There is, for lack of a better word, “precedence” for this power grab. It’s outrageous that SCOTUS has already ruled against this but they’re going ahead with it anyway, but what the CDC director wants to do is only different in degree, not in kind, from what has gone before. The Biden administration is doing what it can get away with. As Tucker said, who is going to stop them? Mitch McConnell?

There’s a scene in the underappreciated science fiction movie Outland where the beleaguered Federal Marshall O’Neil (Sean Connery) appeals to the people he is trying to protect for help. “What about your men?” one of them asks. “My men?” responds O’Neil. “My men are shit.”

That’s pretty much how I feel about the Republican Party right now.

Banned from Facebook for True Story (Facebook Jail Again)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some raw thoughts… I think the Russians already had info on Hunter to blackmail the White House with and that may have been the behind the scenes actions that got Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline running again.

So… I was banned from Facebook for 24 hours for a link to this story at the DAILY MAIL (click link to go to DM story):

The NEW YORK POST also has a story with a FOX NEWS video regarding it:

Natural Immunity Better than Vaccinations (#Science)

Published by Papa Giorgio

TEASER

FYI, the following Tweets lead back to this [published] August 12th, 2021 study, “Neutralization Of VOCS Including Delta One Year Post Covid-19 Or Vaccine“ (here is the PDF). Before posting the graphics, what this means to me is that [especially] young people should be allowed to make the choice to become immune naturally. By forcing vaccinations through private sector jobs, state government and federal government jobs, they (those imposing forced vaccinations) are prolonging this virus… all by thinking they are curing it.

SHORT VERSION:

LONGER VERSION:

(Click to Enlarge)

BONUS

Democrats Bring Us Back To Segregation | Civil War 2.0

Published by Papa Giorgio

If you don’t know about this, there is a bit more at THE DAILY WIRE. But let me say, this is exactly what the Left/Democrats want: division and non-unity. More on this in a sec.

In this next example from JAMES LINDSEY — and I could offer hundreds — is a jaw dropper (click it to expand the graphic):

Yipes!

It is disturbingly common for American colleges,

public and private, to offer segregated dorms,

graduation ceremonies, and events.

(NATIONAL REVIEW)

This is unbelievable. Leftist students (and white supremacists) think segregation is just great. Meanwhile, in the decent and civilized world, the rest of us know it isn’t. Thanks for enlightening us, Ami Horowitz.

I think the end of this FIRST THINGS article captures a good portion of the root of the issue….

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.

Blaise Pascal (Pensees 10.148)

…mans yearning to fill a God shaped vacuum:

…This is, indeed, the collapse of liberalism in race relations, but to understand it we have to dig deeper than racial reasons. Yes, the students spotlight the persistence of racism, they envision a society free of discrimination, and they want more people of color in the professional ranks, all of which are consistent with the liberal outlook of Martin Luther King, Jr. But that only begs the question of why the students’ dissatisfaction now takes a separatist path.

The answer lies in plain sight, but it’s hard to absorb because it gainsays everything higher education has been doing to support historically disadvantaged students. In the hundreds of demand lists, open letters, and petitions that groups have issued since the upheaval at the University of Missouri in fall 2014, the students always single out a heritage of their own that should be passed on by teachers like them. (You can find 80 of these lists here.) College officials take this as a plea for more multiculturalism, more diversity, but that’s not what the students are saying. They’ve seen how multiculturalism works in practice: a token here, a smattering there, this culture and that one, none in a sustained way.

They want something stronger and deeper than that, a more meaningful relationship to the past that will strengthen their identities. Colleges now have “diversity” course requirements that are presumed to evince the respect and “inclusivity” that the officials promised students of color during recruitment times, but the students aren’t impressed. They don’t want to share space with other heritages. They want antecedents that are uniquely theirs, events and art that they can claim as special to them, nobody else. They want their own stories, their own roots. No Melting Pot for them and no Rainbow Coalition, either. Re-segregation is an escape from the old white supremacy and the new diversity as well.

That this apparent regression should be led by the very figures diversity policies were supposed to support must be a shock to college leaders. I’m sure they believe they’re doing all they can, that nobody has more sympathy for the historically disadvantaged than they do. They don’t know what they’ve done wrong, what more they could do to advance diversity and display racial awareness.

In this way, they only reveal the limits of the liberal-diversity outlook. For we should see the motives behind the protests and the calls for re-segregation in universal terms—not racial terms. These students want grounds and foundations, reassuring origins and forebears. They need a solid world and a momentous history and an enchanted reality. This is nothing new, but the need has become acute in the twenty-first century, in good part because liberalism has managed to expel conservatism so thoroughly from the lives of American adolescents. Put yourself in the psyche of the 19-year-old just arrived at college and ask, “What do I have to solidify my fledgling life?”

Chances are that you don’t have religion. You don’t have much patriotism, either, the kind of love that lets you say with pride, “I’m an American!” and gain strength from that loyalty. Moreover, you don’t have an assuring sense of neighborhood, not with the Internet having made so many of your social interactions virtual. Needless to say, the pop culture you enjoy doesn’t align you with any venerable traditions, and the consumerism flooding your iPhone turns you into just that, a consumer.

You have a rootless, floating existence, the only Big Picture being Achievement, Success, Health, Safety. No Gods, no glorious past, no community, no voices of the dead, no thirst for greatness, only a soulless pursuit of degrees and jobs—that’s all college offers.

But “the soul has needs that must be satisfied,” Tocqueville said, and diversity isn’t enough. Students of color in a separatist mindset are but the most overt example of the plight of Generation Z, young Americans entering the world without the support systems they need, urged to be free and independent and self-creating, but in truth, yearning for home and faith and belonging and an inheritance.

A segregated dormitory will give these youths a common experience, a tradition that surrounds them and heartens them. Or at least that’s what they assume. I don’t believe it will work out that way. The ensuing culture of the color-dorm will be just as historically shallow and artistically vulgar as most other youth communities, but it’s the thought that counts. Students of color are telling college leaders, “We don’t want your commiseration—we don’t want your liberalism—we want to be alone.” If this desire is not answered soon, and with something very different than diversity initiatives, the hostility is going to get worse.

CDC Dir. Rochelle Walensky Admits Truth About Death Numbers

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATED TODAY! (Originally posted May 16th, 2021)

        Hit My Head On Keyboard! (HMHOK)

(The following is Via RED STATE!)

If you’ve been paying attention to the Biden administration’s and the CDC’s handling of COVID the last week, you’ve probably gotten a bad case of whiplash. The same people who just weeks ago were insisting masks were still needed after vaccination are now patting themselves on the back for reversing course, making clearly false claims that the science has somehow changed in that short period. It hasn’t, but what has changed is the politics surrounding all this.

Today, CDC Dir. Rochelle Walensky, in an attempt to bolster her agencies failing credibly, made the Sunday show rounds. While speaking to CNN, she made an astonishing admission.

All I can do is shake my head at this. What Walensky is doing is trying to draw a distinction between those who died directly because they got COVID and those who may have tested positive, but ultimately died of another comorbidity or condition. Now, to most people, that would seem like common sense. After all, why would you count someone with terminal cancer or an already failing heart as a COVID death — just because they had the virus when they died?

But what’s so astonishing about this is that what Walensky is saying has previously been declared to be completely off-limits for over a year by the powers that be. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that has often gotten right-leaning sites in trouble with the social media censors. Yet, here is the Biden administration saying what was previously labeled as taboo, just because it fits their narrative. Meanwhile, the media don’t question it, and the social media overlords just shrug.

Obviously, what Walensky is saying is true, though. What we know about COVID — and who is hit the hardest — says that co-morbidities, including heart problems, lung problems, and morbid obesity, are the top factor. If someone is otherwise terminally sick, even a mild case of COVID could expedite matters…..

Most important in this post is this, WHERE CAN I GET Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin? AMERICA’S FRONTLINE DOCTORS has a consultation sign up HERE! See also FLCCC ALLIANCE (Click Pic)

YouTube Shuts Down Rand Paul’s Channel Over Science

Published by Papa Giorgio

(This is the video that YouTube shut down Rand Paul’s channel over.)

Dr. Paul Addresses Dr. Fauci’s Mishandling of the COVID-19 Pandemic with Newsmax

Bongino Comments:

Hospitals Overwhelmed (Bonus: Florida Follies)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the TWITER THREAD: (it is “UNROLLED” HERE)

  1. These are actual quotes from pieces I’ve just read. I don’t know why I’ve been ignoring this. Let me say that I’m serious about my respect for frontline workers. I’m confident THEY are NOT the ones calling for us to lose our jobs so they can do theirs. Politicians did that. 2/
  2. “Tallia says his hospital is ‘managing, but just barely,’ at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital’s urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.” 3/
  3. “Dr. Bernard Camins, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that UAB Hospital cancelled elective surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday of last week to make more beds available” 4/
  4. “We had to treat patients in places where we normally wouldn’t, like in recovery rooms,” says Camins. “The emergency room was very crowded, both with sick patients who needed to be admitted” 5/
  5. “In CA… several hospitals have set up large ‘surge tents’ outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat … patients. Even then, the LA Times reported this week, emergency departments had standing-room only, and some patients had to be treated in hallways.” 6/
  6. “In Fenton, Missouri, SSM Health St. Clare Hospital has opened its emergency overflow wing, as well as all outpatient centers and surgical holding centers, to make more beds available to patients who need them. Nurses are being “pulled from all floors to care for them,” 7/
  7. “it’s making their pre-existing conditions worse,” she says. “More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure” 8/
  8. “From Laguna Beach to Long Beach, emergency rooms were struggling to cope with the overwhelming cases… and had gone into ‘diversion mode,’ during which ambulances are sent to other hospitals.” 9/
  9. “Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread… Others are canceling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots to triage the hordes of… patients.” 10/
  10. “There’s a little bit of a feeling of being in the trenches. We’re really battling these infections to try to get them under control,” McKinnell said. “We’re still not sure if this is going to continue … “ 11/
  11. “At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, waiting rooms turned into exam areas as a medical tent was built in order to deal with the surge of patients. A Houston doctor said local hospital beds were at capacity” 12/
  12. “Dr. Anthony Marinelli says they’ve seen a major spike in… cases. It’s so overwhelmed the community hospital that they’ve gone on bypass at times — that means they tell ambulances to bypass this ER and find another.” 13/
  13. “Dr. Atallah, the chief of emergency medicine at Grady, says the hospital called on a mobile emergency department based nearly 250 miles away to help tackle the increasing patient demand. “At 500-plus patients a day you physically just need the space to put a patient in. “ 14/
  14. “We’ve never had so many patients,” said Adrian Cotton, chief of medical operations at Loma Linda University Health in San Bernardino County.” 15/
  15. “…at least one hospital has set up an outdoor triage tent to handle the overflow of people” “In Long Beach, hospitals have started visitor restrictions. In the South Bay, a conference center has been transformed into an ambulatory clinic.” 16/
  16. We have signage set up all over the hospital to inform patients that, if they have any family members with even signs of symptoms, not to visit” “Loma Linda emergency physicians are seeing about 60 more patients a day than usual, Cotton said.” 17/
  17. “About 150 patients have so far been treated in the tent, which is staffed according to the number of people inside. It’s expected to be up [for months].” 18/
  18. “As the main emergency room gets full, patients are moved to the tent. For example, a patient who comes in with a broken arm is likely to be treated inside the tent, he said. Visitor restrictions have also been implemented.” “The county saw a 300-percent increase” 19/
  19. “Overflow tents also have emerged in San Diego County hospitals. Though they haven’t pitched tents, most hospitals across Southern California have set up overflow areas inside their facilities.” 20/
  20. Our workers are incredible and I know they’ve been trained to deal with this. But maybe the lockdown folks are correct. Maybe we opened up too quickly. Maybe we should stay in shutdown mode. I mean nothing like this has ever happened to our hospitals before?!

I recently discussed this flu outbreak on my site’s Facebook page:

(OP – Original Post) Good presentation. This rant is not related to the video, but I was thinking about this today. Whenever there is a bad flu year, we always deal with the variants in years to come, and, typically they aren’t as deadly. Like Delta. So deaths, and hospitalization are typically lower than the Alpha strain. So tent triages and the like were set up for the 2017-2018 flu season — (the CDC estimates that between 46,000 and 95,000 Americans died due to influenza during the 2017-18 flu season. This resulted in an estimated 959,000 hospitalizations and a middle-ground of 61,099 deaths) and the subsequent variants were less deadly, but they are still floating around. But this seasons Delta Variant is less of a bugger than 2017-18, maybe even the 2012-2013 flu season — (56,000 deaths is the CDC estimate. 571,000 influenza-related hospitalizations). But people still want to live in fear, rather than live. Its sad.

(KRIS W. — a thoughtfully minded conservative) This doctor was great! I hope you are right about the numbers. I refuse to live in fear.

(ME) Kris W., So, the Alpha Covid strain was here in September of 2019. So the Covid season “A” was 2019-2020. We are now in a 2020-2021 season. The numbers from this season need to be separated from the previous. I bet we are closer to bad seasons from previous years. And next year will be better. But like other flu strains, we will have Covid with us forever. (Flu shots are a hodgepodge mixture of various strains, and people who get it hope one of the many strains in the shot get close to the actual, and so lessons the symptoms if they get the flu. Same here. These Covid strains may be in a cocktail mix in the future.)

What follows is some #FANEWS via the CDC and others regrading Florida.

FLORIDA FOLLIES

NATIONAL REVIEW starts us out:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is misrepresenting Florida’s coronavirus case counts from this past weekend, according to the state’s Department of Health (DOH).

On Monday, the CDC announced that Florida had reported new 28,317 cases for Sunday, August 8 — a figure that would have set a new record in the Sunshine State. It also reported 28,316 new cases for the day prior, and 23,903 for last Friday.

State officials dispute those numbers. On Monday night, the DOH’s official Twitter account stated that the number of newly recorded cases for all three days was substantially lower than what the CDC is claiming, coming in at 21,500 on Friday, 19,567 on Saturday, and 15,319 on Sunday.

CNS NEWS chimes in with this:

The 28,317 Sunday cases originally claimed by the CDC is 12,998 higher than, and 184.5% of, the 15,319 new cases reported by Florida.

On Tuesday, CDC lowered its Sunday count for Florida by 8,733, from 28,317 to 19,584 – a number that’s still 4,265 higher than the number reported by the state’s health department. CDC’s new number is 69.2% of its original claim.

“Accurate data was provided to the CDC, but the incorrect number for Friday, Saturday and Sunday was displayed on the website,” Florida Deputy Secretary for Health Dr. Shamarial Roberson told National Review.

UPDATE!

  • Today, the CDC basically admitted that the numbers they put up were wrong by quietly adjusting the numbers down. They updated Florida’s new cases to 23,958 for Friday, 21,487 on Saturday, and 19,584 on Sunday. But the numbers still were more than Florida’s numbers. According to the Florida Department of Health, the numbers were 21,500 on Friday, 19,567 on Saturday, and 15,319 on Sunday. The numbers were actually decreasing over the three days. (Via RED STATE)

And there was an excellent article by THE DAILY SIGNAL that goes over four of the medias FLORIDA FOLLIES and EXAGERATIONS (Hat-tip to Shannon H. for this) Here they are:

1. Florida Is Experiencing a Spike in Cases: True.

Florida is experiencing a surge in new confirmed cases. The seven-day rolling average of new infections topped 18,000 on Aug. 5, more than the state logged in January.

Florida accounts for roughly 6% of the U.S. population but 18% of the seven-day moving average of daily new cases nationwide.

Those are concerning figures, but they should be understood in context. Most states are experiencing increases in cases, although Florida is unique in exceeding previous highs. 

Florida’s increase resembles the U.K.’s, which only recently has begun to subside. The country’s mask mandates and other restrictions didn’t prevent a spike in cases, any more than such restrictions prevented recent or ongoing surges in Spain, Israel, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands

Florida’s spike in cases is consistent with a broader global pattern and isn’t easily attributable to the state’s refusal to implement mask mandates or adopt vaccine passports. Nor does a spike in cases necessarily produce a surge of severe illness or death, but more on that below.

2. Florida’s Increase in New Cases Is Due to Low Vaccination Rates: False.

“Seven states with the lowest vaccination rates represent just about 8.5% of the U.S. population, but account for more than 17% of cases,” Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said earlier this week. “And 1 in 3 cases nationwide occurred in Florida and Texas.”

Florida is not one of the seven states with the lowest vaccination rates. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data available on Aug. 5, 49.8% of Americans were fully vaccinated. That compares with 49.2% of Floridians. The vaccination rates among the elderly also are comparable—80.3% of Floridians over age 65 are fully vaccinated, compared with 80.2% of all Americans in that age group.

And while Florida’s vaccination rates vary by county, those rates don’t correlate with newly confirmed cases per 100,000 residents.

The data come from the most recent weekly report prepared by the Florida Department of Health. They show that even counties with high vaccination rates reported high new case rates for the week ending July 29.

Nearly 80% of the residents over the age of 12 living in Dade County (home to Miami), the state’s most populous, were fully vaccinated. But the county reported 532 new cases per 100,000 residents, exceeding the state’s elevated average of 503 new cases per 100,000.

Ten of the 17 counties that reported vaccination rates of 40% or less had lower rates of new infections than did Dade County. A similar pattern held in other populous counties with high vaccination rates, including St. Johns County (Jacksonville/St. Augustine) and Orange County (Orlando).

It is, of course, possible that most or all these new cases are occurring among the unvaccinated, but there may be a significant number of breakthrough cases. Unfortunately, neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Florida Department of Health provides that information.

3. Florida Hospitals Are Overwhelmed: Mostly False.

President Joe Biden’s chief spokesperson, Jen Psaki, recently tweeted: “23% of new COVID hospitalizations in the U.S are in Florida, and their hospitals are being overwhelmed again.”

Let’s start with the word “again.” Among the media’s favorite stories to report last summer was that a run-up in COVID-19 cases had pushed Florida hospitals beyond their limits. As I’ve written (here, here, here, and here), that was not the case then.

And it isn’t the case now. It is true that Florida hospitals are treating a more significant share of COVID-19 patients than most other states and that hospitals are facing staffing challenges. Here is the breakdown, updated Aug. 6, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

  • U.S.: 76.2% of inpatient beds are occupied, 7.9% by COVID-19 patients.
  • Florida: 84.2% of inpatient beds are occupied, 22% by COVID-19 patients.

Those figures are at once disturbing and reassuring—disturbing because nearly 13,000 Floridians are hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, but reassuring because the state’s hospital systems still have plenty of unused capacity (roughly 9,400 empty beds). More than 11% of the state’s adult ICU beds are vacant.

Psaki’s allegation that Florida hospitals are “overwhelmed” is thus false, although the situation certainly bears watching.

More encouraging is that deaths associated with COVID-19 remain far below levels reached last summer and during January. The seven-day moving average of COVID-19-related deaths stood at 72 on Aug. 5, compared with 184 on Aug. 5, 2020, and 185 in late January.

While not conclusive—deaths generally lag new cases by a few weeks, and reporting is sometimes delayed—this resembles the pattern in the U.K., where a spike in infections did not result in a comparable rise in deaths.

4. Florida’s Spike in Cases Is DeSantis’ Fault: False.

Critics of DeSantis hold him responsible for the state’s spike in cases. Biden, for example, called on DeSantis to “get out of the way,” arguing that rising case counts were the direct result of the Florida governor’s policies.

A recent news analysis piece in The Hill is among the many publications touting this theme. “Conservative Republicans—notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott—have adopted a permissive approach,” the article asserted. “The result of their purported dedication to ‘freedom’ has been an explosion of coronavirus cases in their states.”

The article goes on to quote Georgetown law professor Lawrence Gostin as saying, “If you are against masks and vaccines, you might have a short-term win with people who don’t want to mask and vaccinate, but overall the population in your state doesn’t have the freedom to safely and securely go to do the things they love.”

The argument that Florida’s case rate has risen because its governor embraces freedom and opposes masks and vaccines doesn’t hold up.

First, DeSantis isn’t “against masks and vaccines.” Although he has shunned mask mandates, his state’s health department promotes mask-wearing and social distancing. His administration lets individuals and businesses respond to this advice instead of subjecting them to government mandates.

Similarly, although opposed to vaccine passports and mandates, the DeSantis administration promotes immunizations. Florida’s immunization rate is quite close to the national average. Its rise in cases is not due to low vaccination rates.

Second, despite the current uptick in cases, Florida has done an exceptional job preserving freedom and advancing public health throughout the pandemic. Florida’s COVID-19-related deaths per 100,000 population remain below the national average.

That is more remarkable considering that more than 1 in 5 residents is over age 65, the nation’s second-highest proportion of elderly. That demographic accounts for nearly 80% of COVID-related mortality nationally. Yet, Florida has outperformed numerous states with smaller proportions of elderly people that have adopted less “permissive” policies, including New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Delaware.

Florida’s increase in COVID-19 cases is troubling and not easily explained. Its vaccination rate is nearly identical to the national rate, and counties with very high vaccination rates are among those reporting big increases in cases. Allegations that the state’s hospitals are overwhelmed are exaggerated, although future capacity strains can’t yet be ruled out. That’s also true of COVID-19-related deaths, which have so far remained far below previous highs.

The president and his allies can’t resist politicizing the Florida case increases. Demonizing a governor of a rival party deflects from the national surge in cases, the administration’s frustration with lagging demand for vaccines (particularly among young adults and racial minorities), and the CDC’s confusing and conflicting advice on whether vaccinated people should wear masks.  …………

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