Free Republic

In a call with Trump campaign staff Monday, President Trump tore into the nation's leading infectious diseases expert and coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying people have become tired of "Fauci and all these idiots" warning about the risks of COVID-19. "People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, these people, these people that have gotten it wrong," the president told his staff Monday during a call on the state-of-play of the race. "Fauci's a nice guy. He's been here for 500 years. He called every one of them wrong. And he's like this wonderful guy,...

According to an Asharq TV report, Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat has been pronounced dead after receiving treatment for coronavirus at Hadassah Medical Center. No official confirmation has been released by the medical center. .....

A group of doctors from around the country known as America’s Frontline Doctors gathered in Washington to speak out against some of the extreme measures taken against COVID-19 thus far. One America’s Christina Bobb has more.

Freaking out about ‘herd immunity’ looks like a smear campaign designed to prevent Americans, including the president, from hearing the scientific case against the lockdowns. Why is the press and officialdom suddenly shrieking about “herd immunity”? On Oct. 12, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said pursuing herd immunity is “unethical.” Within hours, most of the media broadcast the same message. It’s as though someone sent out a list of talking points. “Sweden’s experiment with herd immunity is unethical and undemocratic,” Australia’s ABC intoned, “and reveals an underlying political pathology.” According to Fortune, herd immunity against SARS-CoV2 is a...

CHICAGO -- Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday that President Donald Trump and his allies in Illinois are partly to blame for the coronavirus spike in the state. Pritzker spoke to CNN's "State of the Union" the same day health officials announced 4,245 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 22 additional deaths. "He's modeling bad behavior. He doesn't wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don't encourage people to wear masks in public," Pritzker said. "But it is the president's allies in our state, all across the state, who are simply saying to people, 'Don't pay any attention...

A leading infectious disease expert in the US has warned that the coming weeks “are going to be the darkest” of the entire coronavirus pandemic. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says the US is seeing a fresh surge in cases while awaiting a vaccine. “We do have vaccines and therapeutics coming down the pike, but when you actually look at the time period for that, the next six to 12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the entire pandemic,” he warned Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the...

A silver casket was wheeled to the front of a Brooklyn nursing home Sunday — and 6,500 copies of the cover of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new book were dumped into it in protest of his COVID-19 policies. The number of covers was equal to the roughly 6,500 people who have been reported killed by the coronavirus in nursing homes in the state — although the ralliers said they believe the figure is much higher. “My mother-in-law got COVID in an elder-care facility but died in a hospital, [so] her number does not count’’ in New York’s nursing-home tally, said Janice...

Is liberal democracy going to be the biggest Covid victim? Russia and China have shunned safety to surge ahead in the search for a vaccine, reigniting old battles between East and West. (Article continues below)

Pfizer has released footage of a potential coronavirus vaccine rolling off the production line — as the drug giant aims to have 100 million doses ready by the end of the year. The Manhattan-based company told the Mail on Sunday that it has already made “several hundred thousand doses” of the drug as it prepares to seek emergency use in the US by November.

With cases surging to new highs and hospital capacity running low, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum teared up describing a state “caught in the middle of a covid storm.”... many Republican governors are resisting new measures to stop the spread. Some are even loosening rules already on the books. Instead, they preach the mantra of “personal responsibility,” insisting that government interventions such as mask mandates or business restrictions are either unnecessary or harmful, and that people should be trusted to make their own decisions about how to keep themselves — and each other — healthy.... Republican governors have mimicked aspects...

The Hasidic synagogue barred from holding a public wedding in Brooklyn over fears it would attract 10,000 people says the “unwarranted attacks” forced it to scrap the planned celebration to avoid a “paparazzi” event. The Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar was served an order Friday night from New York state barring Monday’s planned public wedding in Williamsburg of a grandson of its grand rabbi, Zalman Leib Teitelbaum. But the synagogue hit out at the order, saying it had taken special steps to ensure the wedding complied with coronavirus guidelines but “nobody verified our plans before attacking us.” “The unwarranted attacks on...

CHICAGO — When the coronavirus began sweeping around the globe this spring, people from Seattle to Rome to London canceled weddings and vacations, cut off visits with grandparents and hunkered down in their homes for what they thought would be a brief but essential period of isolation. But summer did not extinguish the virus. And with fall has come another dangerous, uncontrolled surge of infections that in parts of the world is the worst of the pandemic so far. The United States surpassed eight million known cases this past week, and reported more than 70,000 new infections on Friday, the...

I need your input....!! It remains a mystery to me… Why are we allowing this to happen! I ask all of you to help me understand this… Here is the simple number… The United States of America has approximately 330 million people. As of this date, there have been approximately 230,000 deaths having to do with anything COVID-19 related. The CDC says that only approximately 7% of these people who unfortunately died… Actually died "FROM" COVID-19. The remainder of the people who have died have died "WITH" COVID-19. Be that what it may… Let's just do the numbers. Let's divide...

Twitter on Sunday removed a tweet from one of President Donald Trump's top Covid-19 advisers falsely claiming masks don't work to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The tweet no longer appeared on the site as of Sunday morning, replaced with a note saying "This Tweet is no longer available" and a link to Twitter's rules and policies explaining why the company removes or limits certain posts. The tweet in question, posted on Saturday by Dr. Scott Atlas, read, "Masks work? NO: LA, Miami, Hawaii, Alabama, France, Phlippnes, UK, Spain, Israel. WHO:"widesprd use not supported" + many harms; Heneghan/Oxf CEBM:"despite decades,...

Instead of rebuking Sweden and states such as South Dakota who exposed the failure of lockdowns, we should be thanking them. ... Sweden’s decision to take a “lighter touch” to the coronavirus pandemic—foregoing strict lockdowns and relying primarily on social responsibility to encourage social distancing—has made it a lighting rod for criticism. Many commentators claimed Sweden was behaving recklessly and selfishly by refusing to enforce an economic lockdown ... Though its per capita death rate remained well below European neighbors such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain—each of which enforced strict lockdowns—Sweden became, as one CBS report claimed, “an...

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. Russia’s coronavirus vaccine dubbed Sputnik V could be launched in Russia by late October-early November, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said Monday. "We believe that the vaccine can start being widely used in Russia by late October or early November," he said. Dmitriev underlined that the vaccine production will be primarily targeted at covering domestic demand. At the same time, the RDIF chief is hopeful that the Russian vaccine will be greenlighted in the Middle East already in November. "Undeniably, we also hope that the Russian vaccine could be approved and...

It had been a long ride back from Sturgis, S.D., so when he first felt an ache at the back of his throat, Kenny Cervantes figured he was just tired. He’d traveled the 400-some miles on his Harley, rumbling through wide-open farm and prairie land on his way home to Riverdale, Neb., where his girlfriend was waiting.... Back home, Cervantes took Tylenol for his throat and went to bed early. But he woke up the next morning coughing so hard he struggled to catch his breath. Over the next few days, the pain in his chest made him fear that...

JERICHO, West Bank - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Israel on Sunday for treatment of a worsening case of COVID-19, the Palestine Liberation Organization said. Witnesses said Erekat, 65, was on a stretcher when he was placed inside an Israeli ambulance outside his home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the PLO, disclosed on Oct. 8 that he had contracted coronavirus. There is heightened concern over Erekat’s vulnerability to the illness because he underwent a lung transplant in the United States in 2017. “Following his...

On Sept. 22, CNN triumphantly announced that 200,000 people had died from COVID-19 in the United States. CNN tried various ways of rubbing in the 200,000 figure. Their best effort was an infographic blaring, “US COVID-19 deaths are equal to having the 9/11 attacks every day for 66 days.” Here’s a less biased, but less catchy, comparison: 2020’s attributed COVID-19 deaths were equivalent to having another 2017-2018 flu and pneumonia season boosted by 13 percent. The CDC estimated that about 177,000 Americans died during the 2017-2018 flu season, from either the flu itself or by complications of pneumonia. (The CDC...

Jealous of all the attention Joe Biden is getting for being the most mentally unfit presidential candidate ever, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) went on a tirade while being interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, accusing him and his network colleagues of "always being an apologists for the Republican position." The blow-up occurred after Blitzer asked her "to look Americans in the eye and explain why you don't want to accept the president's latest stimulus offer. Other Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif) and former presidential candidate Anrew Yang, are saying that given the harm inflicted by the shutdowns many of...