Free Republic

Doctors are hoarding medications touted as possible coronavirus treatments by writing prescriptions for themselves and family members, according to pharmacy boards in states across the country. The stockpiling has become so worrisome in Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas that the boards in those states have issued emergency restrictions or guidelines on how the drugs can be dispensed at pharmacies. More states are expected to follow suit. “This is a real issue, and it is not some product of a few isolated bad apples,” said Jay Campbell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy. The...

President Donald Trump Tuesday said he was the person who canceled the deal to pass coronavirus legislation in excess of $2 trillion after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi included "a lot of things" that had nothing to do with people who have been put out of work because of closures over the spreading coronavirus epidemic. "I canceled the deal," he said in a Fox News virtual town hall. "I said, 'I'm not going to send that deal.' Nancy Pelosi came and put a lot of things in the deal that had nothing to do with the workers, that has to do...

Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that “the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] is approving off-label use for the [anti-malarial drug] hydroxychloroquine right now" to help coronavirus patients. Pence made the comment during Fox News’ virtual coronavirus town hall in response to a question from Dr. Mehmet Oz about the drug, which has shown encouraging signs in small, early tests. A similar drug, Chloroquine has also showed positive signs. Dr. Oz noted that “the FDA appropriately desires randomized critical trials for proof to guide the medical community,” but asked the vice president how the clinical trials can be accelerated “while...

A representative from the WV Governor Jim Justice's office says that abortion is healthcare and not elective. However, science and statistics show that termination of a living viable human child in the womb is NOT a "medical necessity" nor "essential" to preserve the patient's life, but most often done simply because the mother desires it. Notice also what priority they place on abortion in the image below. It is listed first. So much for the importance of their "other services," which they are largely postponing at this time, but state are such a necessity for the "clinic" to stay open....

Tiny Tim or Rachael Levine?HARRISBURG Pa, (WHTM) — Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine confirmed 207 additional positive cases of COVID-19 and four new deaths. This brings the statewide total to 851 in 40 counties. All positive cases are either in isolation at home or being treated at the hospital. According to Dr. Levine, the department is not monitoring the number of cases that have recovered from COVID-19. Dr. Levine says they are testing more than 100 specimens a day. She also confirmed there have been cases reported from nursing homes. There are 8,643 patients who have tested negative. The...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday announced that the electric car company had bought hundreds of ventilators, a medical device crucial to combating severe cases of the coronavirus, from China and shipped them to the U.S. "China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA," Musk tweeted late Monday night.

Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested Tuesday that he is keeping a running list of potential vice presidential picks that includes more than a dozen women. "There is a short list meaning somewhere between — there's about 12 and 15 women who I think would be qualified to be president tomorrow," Biden said during an appearance on ABC's "The View." "I think we're going to narrow to 11," he added. "We're going to start vetting soon." "We are going to start vetting soon and there is a shortlist," Joe Biden tells @TheView on female VP picks, adding they plan to...

President Trump’s job approval rating has jumped by 5 points in the latest Gallup survey, matching the high-point of his presidency, as a majority of voters say they have a positive view of how the president has handled the coronavirus pandemic. The new poll finds Trump’s job approval rating at 49 percent, up from 44 percent in the same survey earlier this month. The 49 percent job approval rating is the high mark for Trump since he came into office. He first hit that mark in late January, shortly before he was acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial....

While many state governors are stepping up to meet the continuing challenges of coronavirus in unprecedented ways, our federal government continues to let us down.At the White House, we know the president took too long to act, dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic in the earliest days, spread misleading information about test availability and drug treatments at press briefings, and used those briefings to blame everyone from former President Obama to the media for his own leadership failures. He has publicly contradicted and diminished his own medical experts, belittled governors for demanding more assistance, smirked at the hardship of political...

BioMedomics, Inc. (Morrisville, NC, USA) has developed and launched one of the world’s first rapid point-of-care lateral flow immunoassays for the diagnosis of coronavirus infection. The new rapid IgM-IgG combined antibody test for COVID-19 is used to qualitatively detect IgG and IgM antibodies of the novel coronavirus in human serum, plasma or whole blood in vitro. These proteins indicate that a person’s immune system has responded to infection with the COVID-19 virus. It is one of the world’s first rapid tests for coronavirus utilizing this technology. Recent studies suggest that a high percentage of patients show no clinical symptoms of...

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan famously says “the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”. Satan is in Hell while he makes this rousing speech to his fellow fallen angels. Surrounded by darkness and pain, he is urging himself and those listening to ignore their reality. Satan would have it that you and I were that blind as well. And we have been. For years, Americans have lived in a country that has grown stagnate. We are often told that innovation is growing “exponentially” while “Moore’s Law” is touted...

Now that the governor and attorney general of the state of Texas have issued orders mandating that abortions can’t be done during the next month while all elective surgical procedures are paused due to the coronavirus crisis, the question now becomes whether or not Texas abortion businesses will follow the order. As LifeNews.com reported, pro-life Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton yesterday essentially closed down abortion businesses in the state and warned them that they are subject to a new executive order pro-life Governor Greg Abbott issued Sunday to end all non-essential surgical procedures. Since no abortions are essential, abortion centers...

For over a year scientists have been refuting the Chicago Tribune’s assertions that emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO), from a medical equipment plant, Sterigenics in Willowbrook, presented a danger to the public.  Last October, Sterigenics, overwhelmed by public pressure, closed the Willowbrook operation for good. . . . Much of the medical equipment needed in the fight against the coronavirus can only be sterilized with EtO, and that equipment is in dangerously short supply.

Media outlets and journalists on social media heavily pushed a story about a woman and her husband drinking fish tank cleaner because it contained chloroquine phosphate after President Trump had mentioned the medicinal version of chloroquine could be used to help treat COVID-19. After drinking the cleaner, the couple began to feel sick and were rushed to the hospital, where her husband later died and she was put in intensive care. She told NBC News they drank it out of fear of contracting the coronavirus and had heard Trump talking about chloroquine to treat patients.However, some of the reports and...

People’s refusal to panic has been a great source of frustration for the establishment in recent years. ‘The planet is burning’, they lie, in relation to climate change, and yet we do not weep or wail or even pay very much attention. ‘I want you to panic’, instructs the newest mouthpiece of green apocalypticism, Greta Thunberg, and yet most of us refuse to do so. A No Deal Brexit would unleash economic mayhem, racist pogroms and even a pandemic of super-gonorrhoea, they squealed, incessantly, like millenarian preachers balking at the imminent arrival of the lightning bolt of final judgement, and...

… One clear message that [Sheriff] Villanueva is sending, is on gun stores. “We will be closing them, they are not an essential function,” Villanueva said. “I’m a supporter of the 2nd amendment, I’m a gun owner myself, but now you have the mixture of people that are not formerly gun owners and you have a lot more people at home and anytime you introduce a firearm in a home, from what I understand from CDC studies, it increases fourfold the chance that someone is gonna get shot.”

US doctors are hoarding two rumored “anti-coronavirus” drugs for themselves and their families, helping to drive a nationwide shortage, a report said Tuesday. The doctors are prescribing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for themselves and their loved ones even though there is no scientific proof that the pharmaceuticals combat the contagion — and as lupus and arthritis sufferers who use the medicine go without, according to pharmacists and state regulators who talked to ProPublica. “It’s disgraceful, is what it is,” said Garth Reynolds, head of the Illinois Pharmacists Association, which was alerted to the situation through calls and emails from concerned members.

President Vladimir Putin donned a hazmat suit and respirator on Tuesday during a visit to a hospital treating coronavirus patients and the mayor of Moscow said the outbreak in the Russian capital was much worse than official figures showed.

The opacity of the Chinese Communist government obliges responsible outside observers to look for clues to the truth of the coronavirus epidemic, instead of merely repeating official information without question. The official count from China is 3,277 fatalities from 81,171 infections as of Tuesday, but the Epoch Times noted the troubling disappearance of some 21 million cell phone accounts in China over the past three months – an unprecedented decline that hints at more fatalities than Beijing is prepared to admit. It should be stated at the outset that we should not be forced to read tea leaves to figure...

As Senate Republicans were reeling late Monday following two unsuccessful procedural votes on their version of a coronavirus response bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., released her chamber's version of legislation to fight the disease and its economic effects -- and it includes a raft of provisions with questionable relevance to the pandemic that has killed more than 17,000 worldwide and sickened more than 390,000. The $2.5 trillion package includes many of the same elements as the Senate bill, which is still being negotiated as of Tuesday morning -- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he expects to vote on...