Johnson County Stayed Winning With Bass Pro, Feminized Jackson County Took An "L"

KSHB |  Two days after mailing a letter of non-compliance to Bass Pro Shops in Independence for violating the county’s stay-at-home order, Jackson County has reversed course — in part.

Bass Pro Shops will be allowed to remain open but only for the “sale of firearms, ammunition and other goods directly related to responsible firearm storage and maintenance,” Jackson County said Wednesday in a statement.

The county issued a stay-at-home order amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic March 24 and received complaints March 27 about Bass Pro Shops remaining open.

“On March 30, the Jackson County Health Department, in consultation with County officials, notified Bass Pro Shops that it was not considered an essential business,” the county said Wednesday.

But Bass Pro Shops appealed the decision, citing state law that prevents restrictions on firearms sales during an emergency.

“Based upon this information, legal counsel advised county staff that Bass Pro Shops should be allowed to stay open for the sale of firearms and ammunition,” Jackson County said Wednesday.

According to a Missouri law that went into effect in August 2007,“ the state, any political subdivision, or any person shall not prohibit or restrict the lawful possession, transfer, sale, transportation, storage, display, or use of firearms or ammunition during an emergency.”

Bass Pro Shops remains classified as a non-essential business except for firearms sales.

“All other in-person sales must cease,” Jackson County said Wednesday. “The County will allow two business days for Bass Pro Shops to rectify this issue.”

Did The "Six Ways From Sunday" Impeachment (((Coup))) Distract Trump From Controlavirus?

nationalreview |  To the extent that impeachment was consuming the finite attention of senior policymakers in the White House and on Capitol Hill, we can only be thankful that Senate Republicans wrapped up the trial by voting down additional witnesses on January 31. Had the Democrats gotten their wish, Washington would have been consumed for additional critical weeks into February looking backward at Ukraine instead of forward at the threat of the virus.

Key health agencies within the federal government — the CDC and National Institutes of Health — were not inactive during January, but aside from a ban on foreign travel from China, there was little public leadership from the president. There were early, obvious-in-retrospect missteps such as the CDC’s botching the early coronavirus-testing kits and the FDA’s dragging its feet on approval of private testing development and inspection of equipment. While FDA red tape is a problem inherent to the agency’s design and culture, it is precisely the kind of problem that can be mitigated by the hands-on leadership of a bull-in-a-china-shop figure such as Trump. If you read the timeline on the Trump campaign’s website, which is designed to cast the federal response in the most favorable possible light, you will notice that the items before February 5 are almost all agency-level actions rather than White House actions. The White House Coronavirus Task Force wasn’t formed until January 29.

On February 4, Trump included a brief mention of the outbreak in the State of the Union address: “Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases. We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.” Little of the media commentary on the speech focused on that line. As late as February 19, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd of NBC moderated a Democratic debate without asking a single question about the virus.

Some voices in politics and the media (including, as Ross Douthat notes, an odd assortment of people on the right) were beginning to sound alarms about the virus in late January and early February, but they were a distinct minority. As Zeynep Tufekci details at The Atlantic, “From the end of January through most of February, a soothing message got widespread traction, not just with Donald Trump and his audience, but among traditional media in the United States, which exhorted us to worry about the flu instead, and warned us against overreaction.” Many politicians focused more on fear of anti-Asian racism than on the risk of a real health crisis. Mayor Bill de Blasio spent much of that period giving New Yorkers disastrous health advice.

Cuomo Threatened To Sue ANYONE Trying To Quarantine Nasty NYC Superspreaders

CNN |  The struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic is opening a new front in the long-running conflict between blue cities and red states. 

Across a wide array of states with Republican governors, many of the largest cities and counties -- most of them led by Democrats -- are moving aggressively to limit economic and social activity. State officials, meanwhile, are refusing to impose the strictest statewide standards to fight the virus.

 

A growing chorus of big-city officials in red states like Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Missouri are now urging their governors to establish uniform statewide rules, arguing that refusing to do so undercuts their local initiatives by increasing the risk the disease will cluster in neighboring areas -- from which it can easily reinfect their populations.

 

On Tuesday afternoon, after weeks of complaints from local officials and medical officials, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statewide order restricting social interactions to essential activities (albeit with some conspicuous exceptions). 

 

Robyn Tannehill, the mayor of Oxford, Mississippi (home of the University of Mississippi), told me in an interview that the absence of a statewide rule was undercutting their local efforts to control social interaction.

 

"As we are a regional health care and shopping destination, we have people coming through from surrounding counties that are not [imposing] a stay at home order," she said. "When they come here, you don't know who you are passing in the Kroger or the Walmart. ... I think a statewide stay-at-home order is very necessary."

 

The Republican governors most resisting statewide action have almost all argued that smaller counties should not face the same restrictions as larger ones. "What may be right for places like the large urban areas may not be right at this particular point in time for the" smaller counties with fewer cases, Abbott said last week before relenting on Tuesday.

 

While echoing that logic, other GOP governors resisting calls for action from large cities have also cited more ideological arguments. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves last week painted extensive shut-down orders as an expression of overly intrusive government. "In times such as these, you always have experts who believe they know best for everybody," he said. "You have some folks who think that government ought to take over everything in times of crisis — that they, as government officials, know better than individual citizens." 

 

Similarly, Missouri's GOP governor, Mike Parson, argued that rather than government action "it is going to be personal responsibility" that wins the struggle against the virus.

 

Valodya Will Tax The Rich To Pay For Russia's Controlavirus Response

unz  |  Vladimir Putin has decided how Russia is going to pay for the corona-virus.

He’s going to tax the rich.

It’s a remedy that most Americans would support if they were given the choice, but they weren’t asked. Instead, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package for which the American taxpayer will be held entirely responsible. Even worse, the new legislation contains a $500 billion allocation (another corporate giveaway) that the Federal Reserve will use as a capital base for borrowing $4.5 trillion. That massive sum of money will be used to buy toxic bonds in the corporate bond market. 

Just as Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) were used to fleece millions of investors out of their hard-earned savings in the run-up to the 2008 Financial Crisis, so too, “toxic” corporate bonds were the weapon of choice that was used to pilfer trillions of dollars from investors in the run-up to today’s crisis. (Same scam, different instrument) The virus was merely the proximate cause that tipped the sector into meltdown. The problem had been festering for years and everyone in the financial community (Including the Fed, the BIS and the IMF) knew that it was only a matter of time before the market would blow sky-high. Which it did.

What every American needs to know is that our crooked bought-and-paid-for Congress just passed a bill that transfers the credit risk for $4.5 trillion of corporate sludge onto the National Debt. A bailout of this magnitude could impact the nation’s credit rating (Fitch has already issued a warning), send interest rates to the moon, dampen economic activity for years to come, and pave the way for a long and painful slump. The much ballyhooed $1,200 checks for unemployed workers are merely a tactical diversion that’s being used to conceal the giant ripoff that is taking place right under our noses.

 

In contrast, Putin has settled on a more rational and compassionate plan. He’s going to launch a relief program that actually focuses on the people who need it the most. Then, he’s going to cover the costs by taxing the people who are most capable of shouldering the burden. His intention is not to “soak the rich” or to redistribute wealth. He simply wants to find the most equitable way to share the costs for this completely unexpected crisis.

Dual-Citizen Anti-Russian Parasites Squeal Like Pigs Under A Gate

RT | Russophobic pundits and red-baiting blue-checkmarks are gasping in horror and floating bizarre theories as Moscow sends a planeload of much-needed medical supplies to the US amid its worsening coronavirus epidemic.

News that a Russian cargo plane laden with medical supplies and personal protection equipment would soon depart for the US, a gift from the Kremlin to its coronavirus-stricken rival, has the usual suspects running around in circles screeching about ulterior motives.

While President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that “Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was nice” took many by surprise, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the shipment on Tuesday, explaining that President Vladimir Putin had asked Trump if the US needed help and he had accepted. Peskov added that he hoped the US would be able to return the favor if it became necessary.

In the minds of the reds-under-beds crowd, this was an unacceptable “propaganda ploy.” How dare Trump allow Russia to supply Americans with lifesaving medical equipment?!

The Wall Street Journal accused Russia of “Viruspolitik,” changing the headline of an earlier story about the “political shift” caused by Moscow’s delivery of medical aid to hard-hit Italy.

No scenario was too outlandish for Russiagaters. Newsweek contributor Olga Lautman hinted that Putin might have slipped in something nasty among the face masks and testing kits, which she assured everyone were defective.

Valodya And Russia: A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

Reuters |  A Russian military transport plane was headed to the United States on Wednesday carrying tons of medical equipment and masks to help Washington fight coronavirus, Russian state TV reported and a U.S. official said. 

President Vladimir Putin offered Russian help in a phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, when the two leaders discussed how best to respond to the virus. 

The flight, which was organized by the Russian Defence Ministry, took off early Wednesday from an airfield outside of Moscow. 

The shipment was likely to be unpopular with some critics of Trump who have urged him to keep his distance from Putin and who argue that Moscow uses such aid as a geopolitical and propaganda tool to advance its influence, something the Kremlin denies. 

“Trump gratefully accepted this humanitarian aid,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying by the Interfax news agency on Tuesday night. Trump himself spoke enthusiastically about the Russian help after his call with Putin. 

A U.S. official in Washington confirmed the shipment was a direct result of the phone conversation between Trump and Putin on Monday. The official said it carried 60 tons of ventilators, masks, respirators and other items.

Stones Like Bowling Balls To Even Pretend Russian Interference In American Politics...,

unz |  A particularly egregious and also unique example of a state’s economic policies being manipulated by a dedicated Israeli fifth column in government is the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. Grant Smith, long a critic of the VIAB, heads the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP). He has written a new book entitled The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, which documents in considerable detail how the conspiracy by powerful Jews in Virginia to benefit Israel has actually operated, much of it secretly through special arrangements and deals. He has also had a long interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar.com regarding the book which is well worth listening to.

The VIAB is unique because it is actually part of the Virginia state government. It is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is able to access funds from other government agencies to support Israeli businesses. It is staffed by Israelis and American Jews drawn from what has been described as the “Israel advocacy ecosystem” and is self-administered, appointing its own members and officers. While there are many Israel business promotion entities active in the United States, only Virginia has such a group actually sitting within the government itself, ready to make secret preferential agreements, to arrange special concessions on taxes and to establish start-up subsidies for Israeli businesses. Israeli business projects have been, as a result, regularly funded using Virginia state resources with little accountability. Bear in mind that this agency exists not to promote Virginia businesses but rather to give an advantage to Israeli businesses, some of which might even be competing with existing Virginia companies and putting local people out of work.

Virginia already runs an estimated $500 million trade deficit with Israel due to the federal Free Trade Agreement and the promotion of Israeli businesses in the state, which repatriate their profits to Israel, adds considerably to that sum. Smith reports how VIAB is not just an economic mechanism. Its charter states that it was “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.” Smith also has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.”

Stop Delaying, Navel-Gazing, and Excuse-Making and Refund 50% of the Room and Board I Paid For!!!

insidehighered |  Wood doesn’t believe colleges are making any decisions about closures and remote learning with finances at front of mind.

“While financial considerations are always important, I do think … their decisions are first and foremost being made around their communities', students', staff and faculties' safety,” she said.

Two-year colleges are somewhat shielded from this particular revenue hit. According to the College Board’s 2019 trends in college pricing report, in 2015-16, 96 percent of full-time undergraduate students at public two-year colleges lived off campus or with their parents.

Still, today most colleges are scrambling to scale up their online learning resources and put precautionary plans in place. Few have disclosed whether they will offer room and board refunds to students who leave campus.​

Room and board is a sizable chunk of what students pay each semester, and the fees are often excluded from scholarship calculations. The College Board report states that students at a public four-year universities paying in-state tuition spend on average 43 percent of their budgets on room and board fees. For out-of-state students, room and board makes up 27 percent of budgets, and for students at private four-year colleges, 24 percent of budgets are room and board fees.

Requests for room and board rebates aren't the only way colleges could lose money as a result of the coronavirus. Many have canceled admitted student days and student tours, and closing campus could affect enrollments in the fall. Institutions that rely heavily on endowment payouts could see them dip in a falling market.

The virus will "certainly roil the admission market" just as student deposits and commitments are due, said Brian Mitchell, King's co-author on How to Run a College and the founder of Brian Mitchell & Associates, a higher education consulting firm, in an email.

"Effectively, the crisis has the potential to create a double whammy -- unexpected [costs] and highly unpredictable future revenue at tuition-driven institutions," he said.​

Cain't B'Lee Dis Fool Din't Douche Up With The Cow Urine Like Swami Told Him To...,

Swami tried to tell y'all...,

gulfnews |  At least 15,000 people who may have caught the coronavirus from a 'super-spreader' guru are under strict quarantine in northern India after the Sikh religious leader died of COVID-19.

The 70-year-old guru, Baldev Singh, had returned from a trip to Europe's virus epicentre Italy and Germany when he went preaching in more than a dozen villages in Punjab state.

It has sparked one of India's most serious alerts related to the pandemic and special food deliveries are being made to each household under even tighter restrictions than the 21-day nationwide stay-at-home order imposed by the government.

"The first of these 15 villages was sealed on March 18, and we think there are 15,000 to 20,000 people in the sealed villages," said Gaurav Jain, a senior magistrate for the district of Banga, where Singh lived.

"There are medical teams on standby and regular monitoring," he told AFP on Friday.

Nineteen people who were in contact with the preacher have already tested positive for the new virus, said Vinay Bublani, a local deputy police commissioner.

Results are being awaited from more than 200 others.

The guru and his two associates - who have also tested positive - ignored self-isolation orders on their return from Europe, and were on their preaching tour until Singh fell ill and died.

N-1 Controlavirus Eschatology -THAT'S Entertainment!!!

TruNews |  Today on TruNews we detail the coronavirus solution being put forward by billionaire eugenist Bill Gates, to fund the deployment of implanted microchips and vaccines with digital capsules inside every American to track the tested and infected. We also address the threat of blood tests and transfusions, as the Red Cross admits donors are not being tested. Lastly, we react to the shocking announcement by President Trump that up to 1 million reservists are being called up to active military duty for up to 2 years. Rick Wiles, Edward Szall, Doc Burkhart. Airdate: 03/27/20.

When Ya Pimp-Hand TRULY Strong You Protect Deeze Heaux' Cash Flow

greenvilleonline |  The worshipers filed in row by row, sedans in front, trucks in back. It was Friday night after a long week of news centered around the novel coronavirus and this congregation came to sing, to dance, to laugh and to connect – and to do it all from their cars.

In a new uncertain era, American ingenuity notched another victory at Relentless Church in Greenville Friday evening as Pastors John and Aventer Gray led worship drive-in style for hundreds of people who each sat isolated yet not alone – cars running, windows rolled up, listening along on the radio – as Gray danced his way to the microphone and welcomed them to an innovative service before a pre-recorded video of an hour-long church service played on a giant projection screen.

“We are in the middle of a global pandemic, but we are still the church and we are not going to allow anything to stop us from doing two things: worshiping God and honoring our elected officials who have told us to maintain social distancing,” Gray said as he opened the service. “And so even though the enemy doesn't want us to gather, he can't stop us from worshiping in our cars.”

When Ya Pimp-Hand Strong But Ya IQ-75...,

LATimes |  Pentecostal preacher Tony Spell didn’t just stand before his congregation on Sunday in defiance of the governor’s order to stay home: He leaped into the pews, paraded, hugged and laid hands on worshipers’ foreheads in prayer.

“We’re free people. We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to cower,” the Rev. Spell said from the pulpit of Life Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Baton Rouge. “We’re not breaking any laws.”

Across Louisiana, the coronavirus has infected more than 3,500 people and led to 151 deaths as of Sunday, with one of the highest per-capita death rates in the country down the interstate in New Orleans. To limit its spread, Gov. John Bel Edwards banned gatherings of more than 50 people earlier this month and on March 22 issued a stay-at-home order. 

To comply, Catholic churches canceled Mass and switched to virtual services. Many Protestant churches did too. But some have continued to gather, with none drawing more attention than Life Tabernacle.

 The 60-year-old church has continued to use its fleet of two dozen buses to bring hundreds of congregants to services three times a week from five surrounding parishes, including congregants from mobile home parks and public housing in low-income neighborhoods. More than 1,100 people of various races worship by age group at seven sanctuaries on the property. In addition to spiritual guidance, the church offers free breakfast. Only about 10% have stayed away, said Spell’s father, the Rev. Tim Spell, 66, including his own 90-year-old father who has been sheltering at home.

This Fool Here KNOW He's Soon For The "Pleasing White Light (And The Cleansing Blue Fire)"

japantimes |  When the elderly leader of a South Korean religious sect knelt before the nation on Monday (March 2), he had hoped to defuse public anger over his church's role in spreading the coronavirus.

Yet Lee Man-hee's apology for the national "calamity" instead whipped up more outrage - due to a watch he was wearing.

The gold-coloured watch, visible on his left wrist, was apparently given by disgraced former President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached and jailed in 2017 for corruption and abuse of power.

Images of the watch quickly trended on Twitter, while "Lee Man-hee watch" was the most searched phrase on South Korea's biggest search portal Naver.

"He is bragging about Park's gift," fumed one Twitter user. "His watch was shiny and crystal clear, like his loyalty and ties with Park Geun-hye," jibed another.

There was no comment on the controversy from Lee. But a leader at his Shincheonji Church of Jesus said there was nothing untoward about the watch, which was given as a merit award.

"It has nothing to do with politics," the official told Reuters, noting that Lee was a veteran of the Korean War. "He wears it because he doesn't have anything else."

These Jokers KNOW They Shoulda Called The Institute In The First Place!

MIT |  One of the most pressing shortages facing hospitals during the Covid-19 emergency is a lack of ventilators. These machines can keep patients breathing when they no longer can on their own, and they can cost around $30,000 each. Now, a rapidly assembled volunteer team of engineers, physicians, computer scientists, and others, centered at MIT, is working to implement a safe, inexpensive alternative for emergency use, which could be built quickly around the world.

The team, called MIT E-Vent (for emergency ventilator), was formed on March 12 in response to the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Its members were brought together by the exhortations of doctors, friends, and a sudden flood of mail referencing a project done a decade ago in the MIT class 2.75 (Medical Device Design). Students and faculty working in consultation with local physicians designed a simple ventilator device that could be built with about $100 worth of parts, although in the years since prices have gone up and the device would now cost $400 to $500 in materials. They published a paper detailing their design and testing, but the work ended at that point. Now, with a significant global need looming, a new team, linked to that course, has resumed the project at a highly accelerated pace.

The key to the simple, inexpensive ventilator alternative is a hand-operated plastic pouch called a bag-valve resuscitator, or Ambu bag, which hospitals already have on hand in large quantities. These are designed to be operated by hand, by a medical professional or emergency technician, to provide breaths to a patient in situations like cardiac arrest, until an intervention such as a ventilator becomes available. A tube is inserted into the patient’s airway, as with a hospital ventilator, but then the pumping of air into the lungs is done by squeezing and releasing the flexible pouch. This is a task for skilled personnel, trained in how to evaluate the patient and adjust the timing and pressure of the pumping accordingly.

The innovation begun by the earlier MIT class, and now being rapidly refined and tested by the new team, was to devise a mechanical system to do the squeezing and releasing of the Ambu bag, since this is not something that a person could be expected to do for any extended period. But it is crucial for such a system to not damage the bag and to be controllable, so that the amount of air and pressures being delivered can be tailored to the particular patient. The device must be very reliable, since an unexpected failure of the device could be fatal, but as designed by the MIT team, the bag can be immediately operated manually.

Whatever Became of the U.S. Strategic Stockpile of Ventilators?

NYTimes |  In 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services established a new division, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, with a mandate to prepare medical responses to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks, as well as infectious diseases.

In its first year in operation, the research agency considered how to expand the number of ventilators. It estimated that an additional 70,000 machines would be required in a moderate influenza pandemic.

The ventilators in the national stockpile were not ideal. In addition to being big and expensive, they required a lot of training to use. The research agency convened a panel of experts in November 2007 to devise a set of requirements for a new generation of mobile, easy-to-use ventilators.

In 2008, the government requested proposals from companies that were interested in designing and building the ventilators.

The goal was for the machines to be approved by regulators for mass development by 2010 or 2011, according to budget documents that the Department of Health and Human Services submitted to Congress in 2008. After that, the government would buy as many as 40,000 new ventilators and add them to the national stockpile.

The ventilators were to cost less than $3,000 each. The lower the price, the more machines the government would be able to buy.

Companies submitted bids for the Project Aura job. The research agency opted not to go with a large, established device maker. Instead it chose Newport Medical Instruments, a small outfit in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Newport, which was owned by a Japanese medical device company, only made ventilators. Being a small, nimble company, Newport executives said, would help it efficiently fulfill the government’s needs.

White Collar Controlavirus "Recession"

WaPo | “I didn’t think it was going to happen to me just because of where I worked,” Kerr, 29, said of his first substantial job as a civilian. “We’re going to have a ton of bills, and I have no idea how they’re going to get paid.”

The coronavirus pandemic has sent the United States hurtling toward recession with startling haste, as dozens of states and cities have taken drastic measures to battle the fast-spreading disease that has claimed more than 27,000 lives worldwide. People are sequestering themselves and nonessential businesses have shuttered as communities adapt to social distancing, the best defense against infection. But as last week’s record-shattering 3.3 million jobless claims indicate, the near-shutdown is taking a toll in almost every corner of the U.S. economy.

White-collar workers, who make up a greater share of the economy than ever before, are increasingly getting caught in the fallout.

“When I was talking to my parents at first, my dad said, ‘This is going to be a really big impact for service industry workers,” said Erica Newell, who was laid off this week from her job in client success at a Salt Lake City start-up. “But I’m seeing people that are not in the service industry, like people in tech and whatever, and those people are being hit really, really hard. So I think it’s safe to assume it’s everybody.”

Blue-collar jobs, which generally involve trade, manufacturing and labor, had once been the backbone of the nation’s economy. But the shift toward automation and a more service-based economy in recent years has caused many of those jobs to disappear while professional, or white-collar, jobs in tech, business management and consulting have grown.

White-collar workers in sales, business management, technology, professional and administrative jobs make up about 54 percent of the U.S. economy — about 80 million positions, according to a Washington Post analysis of Census Bureau data from 2018, the most recent year available.

This Is "Ahem" A White-Collar Quarantine...,

NYTimes |  For about $80,000, an individual can purchase a six-month plan with Private Health Management, which helps people with serious medical issues navigate the health care system.

Such a plan proved to be a literal lifesaver as the coronavirus pandemic descended. The firm has helped clients arrange tests in Los Angeles for the coronavirus and obtained oxygen concentrators for high-risk patients.

“We know the top lab people and the doctors and nurses and can make the process efficient,” said Leslie Michelson, the firm’s executive chairman.

In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the virus is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged — in access to health care, child care, education, living space, even internet bandwidth.

In New York, well-off city dwellers have abandoned cramped apartments for spacious second homes. In Texas, the rich are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to build safe rooms and bunkers.

And across the country, there is a creeping consciousness that despite talk of national unity, not everyone is equal in times of emergency.

“This is a white-collar quarantine,” said Howard Barbanel, a Miami-based entrepreneur who owns a wine company. “Average working people are bagging and delivering goods, driving trucks, working for local government.”

3% Of Restaurants Have Closed Forever Due To Coronavirus Clampdown

restaurantdive |  Three percent of restaurants have already permanently closed due to the coronavirus crisis, according to research from the National Restaurant Association. Forty-four percent of operators have temporarily closed their restaurants, and 11% anticipate they will permanently close within 30 days. 

Restaurant sales dropped 47% across the U.S. from March 1 to March 22, and 54% of operators now offer off-premise services only, according to an NRA survey of more than 4,000 restaurant operators.

Seventy percent of restaurants surveyed have had to lay off employees and reduce workers' hours, and about half of restaurants expect further layoffs and hourly reductions in the next 30 days. More than 60% of restaurants have had to reduce their operating hours.

Controlavirus Has Pushed American Civil War Into Its Pre-Shooting Acrimonious Divorce Phase

Guardian |  Hundreds of US counties and all 50 states now have confirmed coronavirus cases – despite a widespread lack of testing – underscoring the indifference of the virus to the familiar political boundaries separating red states, dominated by Republicans, and blue ones, dominated by Democrats.

But while the virus does not select for party affiliation, contrasting emergency responses at the state and local levels have split dramatically along partisan lines.

States with Democratic governors have been quicker to declare emergencies, close schools, shutter non-essential businesses and impose limits on bars and restaurants, according to data collected by the Kaiser Foundation. Fifteen of 21 states to have issued stay-at-home orders have Democratic governors.

States with Republican governors, meanwhile, have been less eager to ask businesses to close, and more likely to downplay the threat. “Go to the grocery stores. For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores,” Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia told residents on 16 March. “If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.”

The night before, Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt tweeted a picture of himself and his two sons at a restaurant, boasting: “It’s packed tonight.” The tweet was later deleted.

The divergence in state responses to coronavirus does not cleanly split along the red-blue line, with Republican governors in states such as Ohio and Maryland among the most proactive in responding to the threat, said University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor.

All partisan disagreements in the United States in 2020 seem to emanate from or end with Donald Trump. But the president has encouraged a partisan divide on the coronavirus threat, analysts said, pitting state governors against each other and setting off bidding wars for medical equipment.

While states and localities have primary responsibilities for public health under the American system of federalism, the president has an important role in focusing the national attention on the emergency and channeling the massive resources of the federal government to the states most in need, said Lawrence O Gostin, a professor of public health at the Johns Hopkins University.

“This is something that’s really unprecedented and clearly American federalism is not well equipped to do it. You need every oar to work together. We have fragmentation, name-calling and wildly different responses,” Gostin said.

American Political Media Can't Stop Slapping At Trump And Trump Can't Stop Slapping Back

forward |  If you’re not part of the political or chattering classes, you might have missed two recent tempests that erupted in tiny teacups on the devil’s banquet of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, the President insisted on calling the virus that causes COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.” And this week, he’s insulted a number of reporters at his press conferences. For days, the media couldn’t stop talking about the incidents (yours truly was not exempt). But while the media obsessed over the President’s nomenclature and attacks against themselves, no one else seemed to care. As of this writing, 60% of Americans approve of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new Gallup poll. His approval rating is the highest of his entire presidency.

It was a stark reminder of how little the media’s concerns reflect those of the nation more widely. It’s a gap that’s only growing, reflected in the incredulous and disgusted tweets of major media figures when they come across the president’s polling numbers. In fact, the true polarization in American life is not between Republican and Democratic voters, but between the American electorate and its representatives in government and in the media, who exist in a radically polarizing feedback loop that has disconnected them from the American people like two moons orbiting each other that have lost the centripetal pull to the planet they once circled.

Of course, this is hard to see if you’re on one of those moons. So it’s no surprise that media personalities think that the polarization that’s happening in their class is representative of how Americans feel. Thus, Ezra Klein’s new book “Why We’re Polarized.” The “we” in the title is presumably America, though the question in Klein’s title is not the one he ultimately answers. “This is not a book about people,” Klein admits in the introduction. Instead, he focuses on braiding together the insights of two other sources of information — “politicians, activists, government officials” and “political scientists, sociologists, historians” – to make the case that politics has become more polarized to appeal to a more polarized public, effectively polarizing the public further in a feedback loop.

The book explores the history of American politics, showing how the two parties used to be a lot more similar to each other, resulting in a large percentage of Americans splitting their votes between Republicans and Democrats. This essentially kept politics from being too polarized because people’s identities weren’t bound up in it; the parties were just too similar to allow for that kind of investment. Klein argues that as the parties differentiated themselves, different kinds of Americans began sorting themselves into the parties, merging racial, religious, geographic and cultural identities with political ones and making politics more personal, more urgent, and crucially more defined against the other side.

Corona is a Black Light and America is a Cum-Stained Hotel Room

medium |  The corporate cronyism of America’s political system has been highlighted with a massive kleptocratic multitrillion-dollar corporate bailout of which actual Americans are only receiving a tiny fraction. Instead of putting that money toward paying people a living wage to stay home during a global pandemic, the overwhelming majority of the money is going to corporations while actual human beings receive a paltry $1,200 (which they won’t even be getting until May at the earliest) at a time of record-smashing unemployment.

America’s capitalism worship has been highlighted with Wall Street Journal headline “Dow Soars More Than 11% In Biggest One-Day Jump Since 1933” running at the exact same time as “Record Rise in Unemployment Claims Halts Historic Run of Job Growth — More than 3 million workers file for jobless benefits as coronavirus hits the economy”. Stocks are booming, Amazon is surging, and mountains of wealth are being transferred to sprawling megacorporations, while actual human beings are terrified of what the future holds.

America’s joke of a healthcare system is being highlighted as uninsured COVID-19 patients are racking up $35,000 medical bills and even insured COVID-19 patients are looking at out-of-pocket expenses in excess of $1,300. Combine this with the millions of Americans getting thrown off of employer-provided health insurance and you’re looking at a huge number of people who will avoid getting tested and avoid treatment as much as possible. Both heads of America’s two-headed one-party system have spent decades forcefully creating this dynamic.

America’s income and wealth inequality is being highlighted in a nation suffering from all of the above problems while most Americans were already unable to afford a mere $1,000 emergency expense. A one-time $1,200 payment to a population already stretched that thin guarantees that millions will be plunged into crushing debt and destitution in a nation with a historically unprecedented billionaire class raking in even more unearned wealth.

Bout To Be Showtime In Kansas City

guardian |  In Kansas City’s poorest neighbourhoods, they wait and they watch.

The city’s most vulnerable residents wait for coronavirus to reveal itself as they watch its daily progression from the edges of the country to the heartland. But they face another wait too. For the money to run out, uncertain which of these two potential calamities will arrive first but dreading the day the two collide.

Chris Brown lost his job as a waiter as soon as Kansas City’s mayor ordered the closure of restaurants and bars. “I was lucky that I had a little money in my pocket when this happened. Not a lot. Maybe $100. But that’s more than a lot of people, especially in my industry. I know a lot of my comrades out there only had $20 in their pocket when the restaurant closed. I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

Until the end of last week, Brown and his wife, Alex Smith, still had a lifeline. Smith worked as a bartender at a hotel which remained open in a neighbouring county. But that closed on Friday and now the couple, both in their mid-40s, are down to the cash in their pockets with no savings and no health insurance.

“We took the little money we have and came down to get groceries so we at least had some food for the next few weeks,” said Brown outside the Save A Lot discount food store on Kansas City’s east side, one of the poorest parts of the city.

Coronavirus has been relatively slow to reach the sprawling plains of Missouri and Kansas, although deaths have been creeping up. But its impact is already felt among the hardest-up residents of Kansas City, which straddles the Missouri River dividing the two states. Both are reporting a spike in unemployment claims and they’re likely to go on rising with the Kansas City metro area under a stay-at-home order from Tuesday and more businesses closing.

Even when they were working, Brown and Smith earned only $2.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage for servers, plus tips.

Preznit Trump - Puh-leeze Lockdown Andrew Cuomo and His Infectious Battery Hen Constituents

dailymail |  President Trump is considering quarantining New York, Connecticut and New Jersey in desperate efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move will restrict travel to and from the three states, which are some of the hardest-hit by the outbreak. 

'Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it's a hotspot — New York, New Jersey maybe one or two other places, certain parts of Connecticut quarantined. I'm thinking about that right now,' he said Saturday.

'We might not have to do it but there's a possibility that sometime today we'll do a quarantine - short term - two weeks for New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut.'

The move would help tackle the issue other states are facing where New Yorkers are fleeing the city and traveling to other states and areas, where they are potentially risking more lives and spreading the disease further afield.

'Restrict travel, because they're having problems down in Florida, a lot of New Yorkers going down. We don't want that,' he said. 

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo hit back at the president's plans in a press conference Saturday.

'I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that could be legally enforceable,' said Cuomo. 

'And from a medical point view, I don't know what you would be accomplishing.

'But I can tell you, I don't even like the sound of it.'

Mama Raimondo - Protect Your People From These Nasty-Assed Selfish New Yorkers

bloomberg |  Rhode Island police began stopping cars with New York plates Friday. On Saturday, the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine.

“Right now we have a pinpointed risk,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “That risk is called New York City.”

New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., on Friday reporting a total of 44,000 cases.

Rhode Island has just over 200, and it has begun an aggressive campaign to keep the virus out and New Yorkers contained, over objections from civil liberties advocates.

Raimondo, a Democrat, said she had consulted lawyers and said while she couldn’t close the border, she felt confident she could enforce a quarantine.

Many New Yorkers have summer houses in Rhode Island, especially in tony Newport, and the governor said the authorities would be checking there.

“Yesterday I announced and today I reiterated: Anyone coming to Rhode Island in any way from New York must be quarantined,” the governor said. “By order. Will be enforced. Enforceable by law.”

Raimondo signed an executive order Thursday that applies to anyone who has been in New York during the past two weeks and through at least April 25. It doesn’t apply to public health, public safety, or health-care workers.

White House Calls For 14-Day Quarantine For All Leaving New York

Dr. Heather Heying And Bandit Bret Saying A Bunch More Words About Controlavirus...,

What Is Going On With Chloroquine In the U.S.?

CTH |  Governor Gretchen Whitmer from the Michigan Directorate has threatened to turn the eye of the state upon any doctor or pharmacist who would attempt to prescribe chloroquine to treat their patients suffering from coronavirus.  Medical licenses may need to be revoked.

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, the letter includes threats of “administrative action” against the licenses of doctors that prescribe hydroxychloroquine.

MICHIGAN – Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs warns that prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 ‘without further proof of efficacy’ may be investigated for administrative action; reaction from Dr. Jeff Colyer, former Kansas governor. (video)

It should be remembered that comrade Whitmer was selected by the party apparatchik to deliver the State of the Union rebuttal on behalf of the DNC’s totalitarian interests.  Heir Whitmer’s foreboding warnings are in the interest of the State comrades.

However, in defiance of the dictates from governing officials intent on increasing the body count to retain narrative favorable to the state, several independent medical communities have gone rogue.

Studies have shown significant reduction in viral loads and symptom improvement when combining these medications in COVID-19 patients. Though these studies do not prove efficacy, the results were so promising the authors of the most famous study concluded:

“We therefore recommend that COVID-19 patients be treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to cure their infection and to limit the transmission of the virus to other people in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the world.”

Additionally, it is certainly interesting that Bayer gave the US Government 3,000,000 Chloroquine tablets.  According to the reports at the time 750,000 doses went to NY, the rest were never discussed (whereabouts unknown).  [LINK]

Why would Bayer provide U.S. authorities 3 million tablets of a medication if there was no curative value to the distribution?  Think about it…

It Appears The Perpetrators Of The French Chloroquine Heist Were Very Well Informed

asiatimes |  What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it.

My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government.

Respected Professor Christian Perronne talked about the theft live in one of France’s 24/7 info channels: “The central pharmacy for the hospitals announced today that they were facing a total rupture of stocks, that they were pillaged.”

With input from another, anonymous source, it’s now possible to establish a timeline that puts in much-needed perspective the recent actions of the French government.

Here’s the timeline:

On January 13, Agnes Buzyn, still France’s Health Minister, classifies chloroquine as a “poisonous substance,” from now on only available by prescription. An astonishing move, considering that it has been sold off the shelf in France for half a century.

On March 16, the Macron government orders a partial lockdown. There’s not a peep about chloroquine. Police initially are not required to wear masks; most have been stolen anyway, and there are not enough masks even for health workers. In 2011 France had nearly 1.5 billion masks: 800 million surgical masks and 600 million masks for health professionals generally. 

But then, over the years, the strategic stocks were not renewed, to please the EU and to apply the Maastricht criteria, which limited membership in the Growth and Stability Pact to countries whose budget deficits did not exceed 3% of GDP. One of those in charge at the time was Jerome Salomon, now a scientific counselor to the Macron government.    

On March 17, Agnes Buzyn says she has learned the spread of Covid-19 will be a major tsunami, for which the French health system has no solution. She also says it had been her understanding that the Paris mayoral election “would not take place” and that it was, ultimately, “a masquerade.”

What she does not say is that she didn’t go public at the time she was running because the whole political focus by the Macron political machine was on winning the “masquerade.” The first round of the election meant nothing, as Covid-19 was advancing. The second round was postponed indefinitely. She had to know about the impending healthcare disaster. But as a candidate of the Macron machine she did not go public in timely fashion.

In quick succession:

The Macron government refuses to apply mass testing, as practiced with success in South Korea and Germany.

Le Monde and the French state health agency characterize Raoult’s research as fake news, before issuing a retraction.

Professor Perrone reveals on the 24/7 LCI news channel that the stock of chloroquine at the French central pharmacy has been stolen.

Thanks to a tweet by Elon Musk, President Trump says chloroquine should be available to all Americans. Sufferers of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who already have supply problems with the only drug that offers them relief, set social media afire with their panic.

US doctors and other medical professionals take to hoarding the medicine for the use of themselves and those close to them, faking prescriptions to indicate they are for patients with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

Morocco buys the stock of chloroquine from Sanofi in Casablanca.

Pakistan decides to increase its production of chloroquine to be sent to China.

Switzerland discards the total lockdown of its population; goes for mass testing and fast treatment; and accuses France of practicing  “spectacle politics.”

Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, having had himself treated with chloroquine, without any government input, directly calls Sanofi so they may deliver chloroquine to Nice hospitals.

Because of Raoult’s research, a large-scale chloroquine test finally starts in France, under the – predictable – direction of INSERM, which wants to “remake the experiments in other independent medical centers.” This will take at least an extra six weeks – as the Elysee Palace’s scientific council now mulls the extension of France’s total lockdown to … six weeks.

If joint use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin proves definitely effective among the most gravely ill, quarantines may be reduced in select clusters.

The only French company that still manufactures chloroquine is under judicial intervention. That puts the chloroquine hoarding and theft into full perspective. It will take time for these stocks to be replenished, thus allowing Big Pharma the leeway to have what it wants: a costly solution.  

It appears the perpetrators of the chloroquine theft were very well informed.

The U.K. No Longer Considers COVID-19 A High Consequence Infectious Disease

armstrongeconomics |  One of the people who has assisted in this panic over the coronavirus has been Neil Ferguson, who led the @imperialcollege authors who warned of 500,000 deaths and 2.2 million people would be infected from the coronavirus. Now, low and behold, Ferguson has himself tested positive for the virus and has suddenly announced a change of view. Ferguson has been a major contributing factor in causing the world economy to collapse. He has advocated locking down the economy which has been behind the movement around the world.

I find this very curious that he would advocate shutting down the economy when he knows the economic damage this would have. The number of people whose jobs will be lost, and small businesses destroyed around the world is incalculable. Ferguson now says both that the U.K. should have enough ICU beds and that the coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K.  and interestingly he now admits that more than half of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case because they were so old and sick. Ferguson now predicts that the epidemic in the U.K. will peak and subside within “two to three weeks” after advocating 18+ months of quarantine would be necessary.

As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK 

Dr. Heather Heying and Bandit Bret Weinstein Hold Forth On The Coronavirus Situation

nakedcapitalism |   We can make a highly suggestive correlation between globalizers and COVID-19 if we look at two simple maps. First, as is well known, one of the main distinctions between the places that are “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward” (i.e., globalizers) and the dull provincials in flyover is the possession of passports. (A passport is a likely marker for the sort of person who asks “Why don’t they just leave?”; “front-row kids,” in Chris Arnade’s parlance, as distinguished from, say, grocery workers, who he calls “back-row” kids.) Here is a map of passport ownership by state: 

The correlation is rather neat, don’t you think? It makes sense that the first case was in a globalist, passport-owning city like Seattle on the West Coast; and it makes sense that the world capital of globalization, passport-owning New York City, now has a major outbreak.

Oh, and the ability to travel by air correlates to income (a proxy for class)