Free Republic

The Wuhan epidemic has exposed a rift between the academic medicine types who dominate the Centers for Disease Control and similar agencies in the states and practicing physicians who are actually treating COVID patients. The former have generally been unhelpful; CDC in particular has performed poorly. Meanwhile, doctors on the front line have developed effective treatment regimens for the virus–regimens which apparently would save many lives if they were broadly publicized and implemented. [I]t is the severe inflammation sparked by the Coronavirus, not the virus itself, that kills patients. Inflammation causes a new variety of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS),...

Tara Reade’s allegations that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her back in 1993 continue to heat up to a slow boil, despite the major media’s best attempts ( to suppress or ignore them.) No doubt the media are trying to “flatten the curve” of news stories to prevent them from becoming a pandemic that fatally infects the Biden campaign. But Biden’s weak pre-existing conditions mean that it might not take much exposure to put his campaign on life support. A few liberal writers are actually trying to maintain some basic consistency and honesty in their coverage, such as Peter Beinart, who...

Will our elected officials ever have the courage to talk honestly about COVID-19? That is the question asked by a reader who despairs over the countless millions of lives being devastated by governments’ shutdown orders: Here’s one of the crazier features of “expert guidance” as governors try to lay out criteria for reopening their states. With the exception of the Deep South governors (who are taking variable stances), it seems that most governors want to see declining counts of positive cases in the state. But everywhere we have tested a whole population (a ship at sea, all the women coming...

Will our elected officials ever have the courage to talk honestly about COVID-19? That is the question asked by a reader who despairs over the countless millions of lives being devastated by governments’ shutdown orders: Here’s one of the crazier features of “expert guidance” as governors try to lay out criteria for reopening their states. With the exception of the Deep South governors (who are taking variable stances), it seems that most governors want to see declining counts of positive cases in the state. What this means is that confirmed cases is hugely problematic as an indicator – it just...

Everyone who has been paying attention knows that the epidemiological models on which the current shutdown mania is based have been proved to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet, zombie-like, they continue to influence our ill-informed policymakers. A reader who prefers to remain anonymous despite her apparent qualifications writes: I just want to follow up yet again on how extraordinarily wrong the projections for hospital demand have been, along with some detail about what’s going on in hospitals. In a number of states they’re about to reopen for nonemergency procedures. But over the past month they’ve been so empty that they’ve...

Superficially, one would say: of course it did. New York is by far the worst center of Wuhan virus infection in the U.S. The extent to which the New York metropolitan area drives U.S. COVID-19 statistics was documented by Matt Margolis at PJ Media. Currently the U.S. ranks eighth among countries in COVID fatalities per capita. But if we treat New York and its environs as a country, it is easily the world’s hottest COVID hot spot, with per capita fatalities double those in Spain and more than double those in Italy, while the rest of the U.S.–everything except New...

The theory behind curve-flattening is not that the virus will mysteriously disappear while we are all hunkered down, and we will emerge when it is safe to come out. That won’t happen. The point of curve-flattening is to prolong the epidemic, making it last longer than it otherwise would, as you can see in the curve-flattening diagrams. That way, more or less the same number will get sick and the same percentage will die, with one exception: our hospitals will not be overwhelmed by a crush of COVID-19 cases, and so ICU rooms and so on will be available for...

That is how I read his remarks in the interview with Laura Ingraham earlier this week. RCP’s Ian Schwartz has posted video and transcript at RealClearPolitics under the headline “Barr: Russian Collusion Probe Into Trump “One Of The Greatest Travesties In American History.” I have posted the video below. This must be a preview of coming attractions. Quotable quote: “My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and...

That is the theme of this article in the Spectator by Dr. Matt Strauss, a critical care physician. He begins: ‘More ventilators!’ cried the journalists on Twitter. ‘Yes, more ventilators!’ replied the politicians. ‘Where are the ventilators?’ demanded the journalists, now screaming on television. ‘Yes, even more!’ replied the government, somewhat nonsensically. That sums up a lot of the current discourse succinctly. I am a critical care physician, specializing in the use of such machines. I’m flattered by all the attention our tools are receiving. But I fear the current clamor reminds me of nothing so much as the panic...

Today the Star Tribune finally gets around to taking a look — an extremely clouded look — at Walz’s in Jeremy Olson’s story “Disease data modeling, in Minnesota and elsewhere, varies greatly.” Subhead: “Modeling by the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota directly informed Gov. Tim Walz and guided his stay-at-home order.” What is Walz’s model? How many lives will the current, extremely destructive shutdown save, if any? Let us extract the references to Walz’s model: Modeling by the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota persuaded Gov. Tim Walz to announce the current stay-at-home...

Save up for this! The Hulu streaming channel is debuting a nine-part series called “Mrs. America” on the 1970s-era clash between Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly chiefly over the Equal Rights Amendment, and given that it’s Hollywood’s take you can be sure it is fully “nuanced.” You know you are in trouble when the very first sentence of the review of the show in the Hollywood Reporter today begins as follows: A century after female suffrage became the law of the land, there is still no federal ban on legalized discrimination against women. So, I’m guessing the writer of this...

This doesn’t mean that sheltering place won’t save lives. It will. For one thing, as John noted, lives will be saved by “flattening” the infection curve because if the same same number of infections is spread out over time, hospitals will be better able to prevent the infected from dying. Why? Because there won’t be the kinds of acute shortages of equipment, such as ventilators, that we experience during extreme peaks of infection. That’s not necessarily all. While the spread is delayed, we may find medicines that treat the infection effectively. Delaying the spread might also mean reducing the spread...

The Wuhan epidemic is bringing to light many regulations and processes that have needlessly impeded efforts to fight the virus by private industry, as well as by government. Quite a few such regulations are now being suspended, causing many to ask, why did we have them in the first place? Minnesota’s governor has ordered a draconian shutdown that is devastating the state’s economy and will bankrupt thousands of small businesses. Why? As elsewhere, to “flatten the curve.” The concern is that Minnesota doesn’t have enough hospital beds and, especially, enough ICU beds to accommodate COVID-19 patients who will need them...

In Great Britain, extraordinary measures are being taken to ensure compliance with a nationwide shutdown order. From Breitbart: Humberside Police in northern England has built a website for citizens to inform on their neighbours for violating the government’s rules on daily exercise and social distancing. You can only go for one walk a day. If you go out twice, you can be reported to the police. People’s worst instincts are coming to the fore. This is what amazed me: the Derbyshire police have sent drones out, to catch citizens going for unauthorized walks. When the current madness is behind us,...

The total number of Wuhan virus cases in the US surpassed the total in any other country yesterday. It is no surprise the media and their Democratic allies are using this data to cudgel the White House and mislead Americans. But anyone with fifth grade math (which apparently excludes most of the media) knows how irrelevant and misleading such a comparison is. As we have pointed out, the only way to compare the status of the pandemic across countries is to analyze the number of deaths and cases on a per capita basis. The number of deaths per capita is...

What can we learn from the Democrats and their media adjunct in the time of the Wuhan virus? They pose serious hazards to life and liberty. Take the remarkable case of the witless Gretchen Whitmer, governor of the great state of Michigan. Kathy Hoekstra writes in the Detroit News: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs literally threatened all doctors and pharmacists in the state who prescribe or dispense hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The agency’s March 24 letter warns physicians and pharmacists of professional consequences for the prescribing of hydroxychloroquine (and chloroquine). Beyond the rational recommendation against hoarding...

Cuomo this week again bragged about his state’s open arms, which resulted in New York’s current crisis. The reason New York now has so many more cases of coronavirus, even more than California, is “because we welcome people from across the globe,” he said on March 25. “We have people coming here, we have people who came here from China, who came here from Italy, who came here from all across the globe.” Nice going, Governor! Open borders take priority over everything, including your own constituents’ lives. New York’s hospitals are overburdened and experiencing problems, but this is not a...

The online edition of Kim Strassel’s weekly Wall Street Journal Potomac Watch column “Big-government contagion” is accompanied by a video that gives us the gist, but it omits lot of the painful details. Details such as these: Democrats used the bill to tighten every fiber of the social safety net. Put aside the $260 billion for unemployment benefits, potentially necessary in light of record jobless claims. The bill throws $25 billion more at food stamps and child nutrition; $12 billion at housing; $3.5 billion to states for child care; $32 billion at education; $900 million at low-income heating assistance; $50...

As Scott writes in this post, Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London has clarified his testimony about the number of deaths he predicts will occur in England due to the Wuhan coronvirus. I discussed Ferguson’s predictions yesterday in this post. I wrote that Ferguson had “warned that an uncontrolled spread of the virus could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain.” (Emphasis added) For the U.S., he projected 2.2 million deaths in an uncontrolled scenario. Now, Ferguson says the death total in Britain is likely to come in under 20,000. I haven’t seen an updated figure from him...

Effective midnight tomorrow, Minnesota sinks more deeply into the shutdown mode of containment under the executive order promulgated by Governor Tim Walz yesterday. Kevin Roche worked with Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm for several years “a long, long time ago.” He has copied us on his letter to Commissioner Malcolm. As it addresses questions of general interest that we have sought to raise, I am posting it below: It has been a long time since we have talked and while I hope you are doing well, I am sure it has been a very difficult time. I am...