March 30, 2020

USA: Man Dies From Fish Tank Cleaner. Media Interviews Man's Wife. She Blamed President Trump For Promoting Chloroquine. Turns Out She's A Democrat Who Actually MURDERED HER HUSBAND.

National Review
written by Charles C.W. Cooke
Tuesday March 24, 2020

From NBC News comes one of the most irresponsible pieces of “journalism” I’ve seen in a long while. It revolves around an interview with a 61-year-old woman from Arizona who is currently in the ICU, and who, tragically, just saw her husband die in front of her. In tone, it is cast as a public-service announcement of sorts, aimed at Americans who do not want to end up in her position. “My advice,” the woman explains, is “don’t believe anything that the President says and his people because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The promulgation of that narrative — that her predicament is the fault of the president, and that people should stop listening to him and to his “people” — is the purpose of the piece. Here is a representative excerpt:
NBC: Did you see the President’s press conference? Where did you hear about–

Patient: Yeah. Yeah, we saw his press conference. It was on a lot, actually.

NBC: And then did you did you seek out Chloroquine?
Throughout, the woman tells NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard that she hopes to share her “advice” with the public. “Educate the people!” she implores him at one point. And he has. Last night, NBC pushed the story out enthusiastically on its website, on Twitter, and beyond, and it was shared widely by journalists and celebrities who were only too keen to employ it as partisan ammunition.

There is a problem with the story, however: It’s nonsense. Sad as their predicament is, the only “advice” to be gleaned from the couple’s behavior is “don’t be a unimaginable moron.” The headline of NBC’s story is “Arizona man dies after ingesting chloroquine in an attempt to prevent coronavirus.” But this is not correct. He did not “ingest chloroquine,” and neither did his wife. Rather, he ingested chloroquine phosphate, which his wife found in her back pantry the form of fish tank cleaner.

From the interview:
“I was in the pantry stacking dog food and I just saw it sitting in the back shelf and thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that the stuff they’re talking about on TV?’ And it was.”
It wasn’t.

I’m afraid that this is the stuff of idiocracy — the equivalent of a person seeing a bucket of chlorine next to her swimming pool and drinking it because the letters on the outside are arranged in a similar order to the word “chloroquine.” And the idea that the president is to blame for this is . . . well, it’s simply incomprehensible to me. It is possible, certainly, that Donald Trump (along with Andrew Cuomo) has been too bullish on the prospects for chloroquine as a tool in the fight against coronavirus. But that, if true, is a dramatically different sin. We simply cannot run our country on the assumption that “I have high hopes for this drug currently in clinical trials and hope it will eventually be fast-tracked by the FDA and prescribed by a doctor” will be heard by reasonable people as “go into your pantry right now and eat fish tank cleaner if the ingredients look similar to you to a word you heard on television.” Insofar as there is any advice to be disseminated here, it’s “don’t eat industrial cleaning products,” which one would hope is a lesson that most people have already internalized.

Not to be outdone, Forbes got into the action, too. Here is the lead paragraph from a piece on the affair by Tara Haelle, who offers “straight talk on science, medicine, health and vaccines”:
When President Trump incorrectly announced that the FDA had fast-tracked approval of the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19, he added, “The nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it—if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.”

Except it just did.
No, it didn’t. And one can learn that it didn’t by simply reading the next paragraph, which confirms that, “Instead of the drug form of chloroquine phosphate, the couple ingested a chloroquine phosphate product that’s used to treat parasites in fish. ”

This being so, one wonders what the “public service” angle can be here, for if chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine do turn out to be as useful as I assume we all hope they will, they will be limited, regulated, subjected to our existing prescription regime, and delivered, to borrow a term from Tara Haelle, in “drug form.” Does NBC know this? Does Forbes? Or do they believe that, if and when a cure is found, we will see the president call a press conference at which he encourages Americans to forage around in their pantries for consumer products that contain some of the same component parts as the treatments the medical community has begun to utilize?

Insofar as these outlets had a responsibility here to “educate the people,” it seems to me that they could have better achieved this by running this story beneath a glaring “DO NOT DO THIS!” sign. Not everything in this vast and populous nation is a referendum on the president.

NBC News published March 24: Arizona Man Dies After Taking Toxic Ingredient In Attempt To Prevent Coronavirus. The man and his wife ingested chloroquine phosphate, which is used to treat sick fish, believing it would protect them from the virus. His wife is now under critical care.
NBC interviewed the wife while in ICU who blamed President Trump. Watch NBC god awful irresponsible reporting. This story STOPPED many states from using the life saving anti-malaria drugs Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine because of this ONE LIE by this woman who actually murdered her husband, the media and Marxist Democrats help spread. (emphasis mine)

NowThis News published March 26: A man is dead after Pres. Trump inaccurately suggested using chloroquine to treat COVID-19.
NowThis is a Marxist news source.
The Washington Free Beacon
written by Alana Goodman
Monday March 30, 2020

The Arizona woman who said that she and her 68-year-old husband ingested a substance used to clean fish tanks after hearing President Donald Trump tout chloroquine as a cure for the coronavirus has given thousands of dollars to Democratic groups and candidates over the last two years.

The woman's most recent donations, in late February, were to a Democratic PAC, the 314 Action Fund, that bills itself as the "pro-science resistance" and has vocally criticized the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic and held up her case to slam the White House.

Although local and national media outlets withheld the couple's names, the Washington Free Beacon established their identities through descriptions in local news reports, where the pair were identified by their first names and ages: Gary, 68, and Wanda, 61. The Free Beacon is withholding their identities at Wanda's request.

Federal Election Commission records show that Wanda has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic electoral groups and candidates over the past two years, including Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and EMILY's List, a group that aims to elect pro-choice female candidates.

Wanda told the Free Beacon that she and her husband were both Democrats, not Trump supporters. They heard about the potential benefits of chloroquine, an antimalarial drug, in news reports. She decided at the "spur of the moment" to try taking it, but reached for a fish tank cleaner in her pantry that contains chloroquine phosphate, a different and deadly form of the chemical. The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for the use of chloroquine to treat coronavirus on Sunday.

"We weren't big supporters of [Trump], but we did see that they were using it in China and stuff," Wanda told the Free Beacon. "And we just made a horrible, tragic mistake," she said. "It was stupid, and it was horrible, and we should have never done it. But it's done and now I've lost my husband. And my whole life was my husband."

"We didn't think it would kill us," she added. "We thought if anything it would help us ‘cus that's what we've been hearing on the news."

In her first national news interview, Wanda told NBC News that she took the fish tank cleaner in a tragically botched attempt to follow medical advice that Trump had relayed in a press conference earlier that week.

"We saw Trump on TV—every channel—and all of his buddies and that this was safe," she said last Monday. "Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure."

During a press briefing on March 19, the president pointed to medical studies indicating that chloroquine, a medication used to treat malaria, may be a "game changer" in treating the coronavirus. Wanda warned others in the same NBC News interview not to "believe anything that the president says."

Wanda's most recent contributions to Democratic causes came on Feb. 26 and 28. They went to the 314 Action Fund, a Democratic political action committee that describes itself as "the largest pro-science advocacy organization committed to electing scientists" and aims to "promote the responsible use of data driven fact based approaches in public policy."

The group has been highly critical of Trump's coronavirus policies in recent weeks. In fact, on its Facebook page, the group slammed the Trump administration for the couple's actions, writing, "There are real consequences to the White House throwing its approval behind an experimental drug trial before it's time."

In the wake of the incident, media outlets tacitly blamed Trump for the tragedy. The New York Times noted that chloroquine "has been bandied about by President Trump during White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic as a potential ‘game changer' in the treatment of Covid-19." Others, like Axios, ran corrections noting that the couple had not ingested the chloroquine in its medical form but rather the form "used in aquariums" after initially reporting that the couple had followed the president's faulty medical advice.

Wanda does not appear to have a long history of political donations, according to FEC reports. Her contributions to Democrats rose sharply over the past few years. Her first recorded political donation was $150 to Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to FEC records. The next year she gave $550 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Since 2018, she has contributed approximately $6,000 to Democratic electoral groups.

She said she and her husband had decided to stay in their home to avoid catching the virus. They were spending much of their time watching media coverage.

"We were watching the news because we were self-isolating and getting pretty nervous. We were scared. I'm still scared," Wanda told the Free Beacon.

She said she and her husband are not active on social media and don't read much online news, but they get a lot of their information from television.

"I didn't know, and I didn't understand how serious it was," she added. "It was the worst situation I could ever, ever, ever imagine anybody being in."

Wanda told NBC News that her experience was a cautionary tale about taking the president's words at face value. "Oh my God, don't take anything. Don't believe anything that the president says and his people," she said. She told a local news outlet that she was still "pretty much in shock" over her husband's death.

"We were just having the best day before this happened. I made him his favorite lunch, grilled steak and asparagus and red potatoes, and we were just having the best Sunday," she said.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 10:48 PM 0 comments

INDIA: PM Modi Ordered Nationwide Lockdown For India's 1.3 Billion People Last Tuesday That Will Last Until April 14th. Migrant Workers Scrambling To Return Home Far Away. Many Died Forced To Walk.

CNN News
written by Manveena Suri, Swati Gupta and Ivana Kottasovรก
Tuesday March 23, 2020

New Delhi (CNN)Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a "complete" lockdown for India's 1.3 billion people on Tuesday, warning that "many families will be destroyed forever" if the country didn't get to grips with its coronavirus outbreak in the next three weeks.

Modi said the lockdown would start at midnight local time, would last for a minimum of 21 days, and would apply to all of India's 36 states and territories.

"You have seen the worldwide situations arising from the coronavirus pandemic in the news. You have also seen how the most powerful nations have become helpless in the face of this pandemic," Modi said in a live televised address to the nation on Tuesday evening ahead of the deadline.

India is the world's second most populous country and the fifth biggest economy, but so far, it has appeared to avoid the full hit of the pandemic. The country has confirmed 519 coronavirus cases, including 10 deaths and 39 patients who have been cured, according to the Ministry of Health.

A number of Indian states have ordered lockdowns in the past few days, in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading. International borders have been shut to most travelers coming from the Europe.

A protest against the country's Citizenship Amendment Act at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh was cleared by the police on Tuesday after the government prohibited all public gatherings in the city. Hundreds of women have been protesting at the site for months, expressing their solidarity with protesters who have been allegedly assaulted by police.

Modi said that the measures are necessary to protect the population, and referred to experience from other countries.

"What the experts are saying is that social distancing is the only option to combat coronavirus. That is to remain apart from each other and stay confined to within your homes. There is no other way to remain safe from coronavirus. If we have to stop the spread, we have to break the cycle of infection," he said.

"From 12 midnight today, the entire country will go under a complete lockdown to save India and for every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes. Therefore, I request you to remain wherever you are in this country," Modi added.

Only essential services will be operational. These include water, electricity, health services, fire services, groceries and municipal services.

All shops, commercial establishments, factories, workshops, offices, markets and places of worship will be closed and interstate buses and metros will be suspended. Construction activity will also be on a halt during this period.

Modi said if the outbreak was not dealt with properly it could set the country back decades.

"According to health experts, a minimum of 21 days is most crucial to break the cycle of infection. If we are not able to manage this pandemic in the next 21 days, the country and your family will be setback by 21 years.
If we are not able to manage the next 21 days, then many families will be destroyed forever," Modi said.

To soften the economic blow from the shutdown, the Indian government announced a number of measures on Tuesday.

Deadlines to file tax returns have been extended by three months, charges on minimum bank balances have been waived and no fees will be charged for using other banks' ATMs.

The threshold for invoking insolvency has been raised to $131,000 from $1,300, India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at a news conference earlier on Tuesday.

Separately, India's Labor Ministry has advised all territories to to help construction workers who are out of work because of the outbreak. The vast majority of the country's construction workers are considered as informal labor and earn their livelihood through daily wages. Around 35 million construction workers across the country are registered with construction welfare boards.
The Wire
written by Staff
Monday March 30, 2020

New Delhi: At least 17 migrant labourers and their family members – including five children – have lost their lives so far in the course of their desperate efforts to return home since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on March 24 that a 21-day lockdown would kick off within four hours. The total number of lockdown-related deaths stands at 22.

Aside from these deaths, and those of two others who were not migrant workers, an 11-year-old boy also reportedly died of hunger on March 27 in Bhojpur area of Bihar as the family could not arrange for food due to the strict implementation of the lockdown. The total number of deaths due to the lockdown is now 20.

On March 23, Modi announced the three-week national lockdown at 8 pm. Since stores and vendors selling essentials typically bring their shutters down in many parts of the country by that hour, particularly in small towns and villages, Modi’s sudden announcement triggered considerable panic among the public countrywide, forcing people to step out of their homes to procure food and other necessary items that night itself – thus overturning the very principle of social distancing the prime minister had advocated.

The Central and state governments also had not devised any arrangement for those who survive on daily wages. This led daily wage earners to take to the roads and walk hundreds of kilometres to reach the safety of their homes in different states. Instructed to implement the lockdown strictly, the police in several areas also lathi-charged them. They also meted out other forms of ‘punishment’ to those found walking on the roads by themselves, an act which may have broken the strict lockdown norm even if there was not necessarily any violation of the principle of social distancing.

A Twitter thread of published news reports collated till March 29 morning by @_kanikas_, a postgraduate student of Emory University in Georgia, highlighted the horror of the march of migrant workers back home by foot or hopping on to any available vehicle.

According to the latest news reports, a 39-year-old man, employed by a restaurant in Delhi as a home delivery worker, died in Agra on March 28 while on his way to the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. By the time he arrived exhausted in Agra, he had covered around 200 km by foot. A resident of Badfa village of the district, the man has been identified as Ranveer Singh, a father of three children. He was employed in a restaurant in Tughlakabad area of Delhi for the last three years.

A Times of India report said, after his death, the police took his body for post mortem. Saurabh Dixit, the commanding officer Hariparvat area of Agra, was quoted in the report as having said, “The autopsy revealed heart attack as the cause of death, but considering his travel history, we assume that exhaustion of long walk might have triggered his existing heart condition.”

On March 29 morning, a tweet posted by Sonu Yadav, a senior correspondent of Navbharat Times reporting from Gurgaon, had it that a fast moving canter hit as many as five persons belonging to migrant labour families while they were walking home in the Bilaspur area of Haryana, leaving all of them dead. He said the dead included women and two children. Yadav’s tweet said the Bilaspur Police “is trying to identify the dead. None of the dead had any identity cards with them.”

However, reports by ANI and India TV later said the number of dead was four and four others were injured. Both the news reports said the accident occurred on the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway on March 29 early morning. The India TV report said, “The incident took place when eight people were walking on the expressway, heading towards their hometown amid coronavirus lockdown.”

On March 27 night, in Telangana too, eight persons belonging to a group of migrant labourers returning to their homes in Raichur district in neighbouring Karnataka were killed in a road accident. Those dead included an 18-month-old baby, a boy and a nine-year-old girl.

An Indian Express report said the accident, which happened on the outskirts of Hyderabad, also left four women and two men with severe injuries.

“In view of the nationwide lockdown, 31 migrant labourers employed by a construction firm in Suryapet district of Telangana were travelling in a Bolero max open truck when their vehicle was hit by a truck loaded with mangoes from the rear,” it said.

The injured are at present being treated at Osmania General Hospital while the rest of the migrants have been put up at a camp in Shamshabad town in Ranga Reddy district.

“He fell unconscious on the road near his house in Pandesara and was taken back to the hospital where he was declared brought dead,” the report said

In yet another case of road accident faced by migrant labourers walking home due to non-availability of any other means of communication due to the lockdown, four persons were run over by a truck at Virar on the Mumbai-Gujarat highway on March 28. According to news reports, the incident occurred at around 3 am.

Reports said the migrant labourers, who were originally from Rajasthan, had tried to return home. They were a group of seven persons, including some who worked at tea stalls and canteens in Mumbai which had closed down due to the lockdown. However, they were turned back by police from Bhillad on the Maharashtra-Gujarat border and were returning to Virar when the accident took place. The four deceased were identified as Ramesh Bhatt (55), Nikhil Pandey (32), Naresh Kalusuva (18) and Lauram Bhagora (18), all from Baswada in Rajasthan, the report added.

On Saturday, a 26-year-old migrant worker was killed in the Pakwarha area of Moradabad while walking from Sonipat, Haryana to his village in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. Nitin Kumar, a shoe factory employee, had decided to walk home after the lockdown was announced and was hit by a private bus on the road.

Nitin’s younger brother Pankaj was also walking with him. Police have seized the bus and are reportedly probing how it was running despite the lockdown.

The first deaths due to the lockdown occurred in Tamil Nadu. Four people – including a one-year-old baby– died in a forest fire in Theni district while taking the forest path home from the estate they worked at, due to the lack of motorised transport. “This path was frequented around 15 years ago. After motorised transport came in, most of the workers took jeeps sent by the estate into Kerala, thus rendering the path unused. Ever since the borders between Tamil Nadu and Kerala have closed due to COVID-19, there has been a spike in the number of illegal paths used,” the district forest officer told The Hindu.

Another death due to the lockdown – though of a migrant worker – occurred in West Bengal on March 26. A 32-year-old man, identified as Lal Swami, had stepped out of his house in Howrah to buy milk when he was reportedly beaten by police. A heart patient, he died soon after.

Another Indian Express report on March 28, from Surat, had it that a 62-year-old man died after walking about eight km from the hospital to his house due to non-availability of any vehicles to take him home. Gangaram Yelenge was accompanied by his son, a helper in a plastic shop, from Surat’s New Civil Hospital to Mujuragate area.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 5:11 PM 0 comments

USA: The Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus Being Spread Around By The Democrats, Media, And Never-Trumpers.

PJ Media
written by Matt Margolis
Sunday March 22, 2020

It’s troubling to see how quickly disinformation about the government’s response to the coronavirus has spread. Democrats and the mainstream media have willingly spread false information in the hopes of damaging Trump politically before the election in November. Many of these lies were quickly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped the false information from being repeated over and over. The left hopes these lies will continue to spread, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working since Trump’s approval numbers for his handling of the pandemic have gone up. But that doesn’t mean the left will give up their disinformation campaign. To help set the record straight, I’ve compiled the top ten lies that have been spread about Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. There are certainly plenty more, and you are welcome to mention them in the comments.

10. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus

In early March, the World Health Organization said that 3.4 percent of coronavirus patients had died from the disease. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 (the disease spread by the virus) cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”

Trump said this number was false, as the mortality rate was actually much less because their number didn’t take into account unreported cases. In an interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump challenged WHO’s number. “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” Trump said, asserting that the actual mortality rate is “way under 1 percent.”

And Trump was right. He wasn’t downplaying the mortality rate, as has been suggested. As testing in the United States has increased, the mortality rate has decreased. The same is true worldwide.

Yet, there were so-called experts who greatly overestimated the mortality rate in order to spark fear and panic. MSNBC contributor Dr. Joseph Fair told a panel that up to 20 percent of the U.S. population might die from the coronavirus.

9. Trump lied when he said Google was developing a national coronavirus website

When President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, he announced that Google was developing a website to direct people to coronavirus testing locations nationwide.

"I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said during a press conference.

Google confirmed this in a tweet after Trump’s remarks, but the media seemed intent on calling Trump’s claim false. HuffPost literally called Trump’s claim a lie because the site was actually being developed by a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This ultimately forced Google to confirm, again, that they were partnering with the federal government to develop a national coronavirus website. “Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information,” Google said on Twitter.

After Google backed up Trump, he thanked them and ripped the media for spreading fake news. "I want to thank the people at Google and Google communications because as you know they substantiated what I said on Friday," Trump said. "The head of Google, who is a great gentleman, called us and he apologized. I don't know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace. As you know, this is from Google. They put out a release and you guys can figure it out yourselves and how that got out. And I'm sure you guys will apologize, but it would be great if we could get really give the news correctly. It'd be so, so wonderful."
8. Trump "dissolved" the WH pandemic response office

Two days after Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece by Elizabeth Cameron, who ran the White House pandemic office under Obama, alleging that Trump had dissolved the office in 2018. She claimed because of this, “the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus isn’t a surprise.”

This claim spread like wildfire, even though it was completely false. Days after WaPo ran the piece, they published another article by Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council, who debunked the allegation made by Cameron and other former Obama administration officials.
What good is there in spreading false information, as Elizabeth Cameron did? “This is Washington. It’s an election year,” Morrison laments. “Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.”

7. Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic

The Washington Post again was the source of another bogus claim when they reported that intelligence agencies warned about a possible pandemic back in January and February and that Trump “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.”

It was fake news. The Trump administration had begun aggressively addressing the coronavirus threat immediately after China reported the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization. In addition to implementing various precautionary travel restrictions, the administration fast-tracked the use of testing kits, set up a Coronavirus Task Force, and implemented a travel ban with China, several weeks before WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic.

In actuality, it was Trump’s critics who weren’t taking the coronavirus situation seriously. Joe Biden even accused Trump of “fearmongering” and “xenophobia” for his travel ban. Even now, the Washington Post is suggesting the travel ban wasn’t enough.

6. Trump cut funding to the CDC & NIH

Back in February both Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg (who hadn’t dropped out of the Democratic primary yet) accused President Trump of cutting funding to critical health agencies during a primary debate. “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing," Bloomberg claimed.

The Obama-Biden administration "increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort," Biden claimed.

They were both wrong.

According to an Associated Press fact-check, proposed budget cuts never happened, and funding increased. They acknowledged that some public health experts believe that a bigger concern than White House budgets “is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness,” but, they note, “that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”

The AP also noted that “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”

5. Trump "muzzled" Dr. Fauci

In late February, the New York Times claimed that the Trump administration had “muzzled” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), by preventing him from speaking publicly about the coronavirus without approval from the administration.

It wasn’t true. But, the claim was echoed throughout the mainstream media, and ultimately was brought up in a press briefing, and Trump was asked directly about it, and he let Dr. Fauci clear it up.

“I’ve never been muzzled, ever, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan,” he said. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration.”

Despite the fact this claim was debunked, Joe Biden kept repeating it as if it were true. “And, look, right now you have this president, hasn’t allowed his scientists to speak, number one,” Biden said on ABC's This Week a couple days after Fauci said unequivocally he wasn’t being muzzled. “He has the vice president speaking, not the scientists who know what they're talking about, like Fauci."
4. Trump didn’t act quickly and isn’t doing enough

If you listen to Democrats, Trump didn’t act quickly enough and is botching the government response. Joe Biden has tried to perpetuate this falsehood by giving press briefings telling Trump what he should be doing.

The big problem with that is that when Biden has offered his own plan, he simply took things that Trump had already done, said he should do those things, and pretended they were his own ideas.

In addition to this, one of the most significant actions taken by Trump, the travel ban with China, was actually opposed by Joe Biden, and Trump’s critics on the left. Unfortunately for them, WHO experts admitted Trump’s actions saved lives in the United States.

Fox News contributor Liz Peek noted back in February, “Even before a single case of the virus erupted organically in our country [...] and even as the administration had acted preemptively and effectively to keep virus carriers out of our country, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others were eager to stoke fear and blame Donald Trump.”

Dr. Ronny Jackson, who served as White House physician from 2013 to 2018, also credited Trump for his decisive response to the coronavirus epidemic. "The president has done everything he needed to do in this case," he said. "He’s acted quickly and decisively. He did what he always has done ... he went with his instincts."

Jackson added, "What’s going on in Italy and Iran is not going to happen here I think, because of the president's quick and decisive actions. I think we are going to be more in line with what’s going on in South Korea and things of that nature.”

3. Trump told governors they were “on their own”

In a tweet sent last week, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed that during a conference call with governors about the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump told them they were “on their own” in getting the equipment they need. “‘Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,’ Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.”

She lied. Ms. Gay deliberately misrepresented Trump’s words. Trump actually told governors on the call: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

The false narrative that Trump had told governors they were on their own, essentially to expect no help from the federal government, spread like wildfire.

2. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO

A Politico hit piece from early March claimed that the World Health Organization offered the United States coronavirus testing kits, but Trump refused to accept them. This claim spread quickly, and Joe Biden even alluded to it during his March 15 debate with Bernie Sanders, claiming, “The World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them.”

It wasn’t true. "No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris explained. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity." According to WHO, its priority was to send testing kits to "countries with the weakest health systems."

So, why did testing get off to a slow start in the United States? Ellie Bufkin at our sister site Townhall noted that “Testing in the United States was fraught with difficulty in large part due to the slow approval by the Food and Drug Administration to allow testing kits developed by private companies outside of the government-controlled CDC to be used at a local or national level. Those FDA policies are consistent with the Obama Administration's response to H1N1 and Ebola in 2009 and 2014 respectively.”

1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”

To this day the left (and the media) claim Trump called the coronavirus a hoax. He said no such thing. While the country was distracted by impeachment, the Trump administration was busy addressing the coronavirus outbreak, taking various measures to limit the spread of the virus in the United States. Impeachment quickly faded, so they decided to aggressively politicize his response to the coronavirus outbreak. Joe Biden even called Trump’s travel ban with China an overreaction, and accused him of trying to scare the public. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia ± hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”

President Trump responded to these allegations during a rally in South Carolina, calling the Democrats’ politicization of the coronavirus "the new hoax." The media jumped on this line, claiming that Trump called the virus, not the Democrats' reactions to it, a hoax. The lie spread like wildfire and Joe Biden even used the lie as a talking point on the stump. There was quite a stir when Politico’s story repeating the false claim that Trump called the virus a hoax was flagged by Facebook fact-checkers as fake news, but other fact-checkers couldn’t deny that the claim was false either.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:09 PM 0 comments

USA: CEO Mike Lindell Says Shifting 75% Of MyPillow’s Production To Now Be Making Cotton Face Masks For Health Care Workers. Yay! ๐Ÿ˜Š๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ’–


The DC Patriot
written by Matt Couch
Friday March 27, 2020

Minnesota-based company MyPillow is joining the effort to supply health care workers with the protective gear they need amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

CEO Mike Lindell says about 75% of MyPillow’s production will now be making cotton face masks for health care workers. He says about 90% of the company’s sewers will be working on the masks.

“We have capacity to make a lot of things at big rates and we’re going to be going hopefully from 10,000 units a day to 50,000 units a day in a very short period of time,” said Lindell.

Lindell says it took about three weeks to shift production as it was difficult at first to get a supply of elastics needed to create the masks. At this time, he says components are not available to make other types of masks, so his company focused on making the 100% cotton masks. He says MyPillow worked with a coalition from President Donald Trump’s administration to get the proper design.

“Something is better than nothing to get [health care workers] through,” he said.

The masks will be going to hospitals in Minnesota and throughout the country.

“This has been a great unifier of everybody private sector, government, everybody getting involving and uniting as a country and as a people and we show what we can do when the chips are down,” said Lindell.

Masks will not be available to public to purchase.

UPDATE 3/30/20 at 4:11pm: Added info below.
UPDATE 3/30/20 at 11:03pm: Added tweet below.
UPDATE 3/31/20 at 2:22am: Added info below.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:38 PM 0 comments

USA: On Saturday Morning, A Lone Manhattan Beach Surfer Issued Possible $1,000 Citation For Violating Beach Closure Order. Meanwhile Unsanitary Homeless Camps Cover Public Sidewalks, Beaches

EasyReaderNews.com
written by Kevin Cody
Saturday March 28, 2020

A Manhattan Beach surfer was issued a citation that carries a fine of up to $1,000 Saturday morning, after ignoring a Los Angeles County Lifeguard’s order that he not go in the water.

“Go ahead and arrest me,” the surfer told the lifeguard before launching into what the lifeguard described as “colorful language.” The surfer then went in the water, prompting the lifeguard to call his supervisor Captain Jeff Horn, who called Manhattan police, who were patrolling the beach.

A Manhattan Beach code enforcement officer arrived with a police officer and issued the surfer the citation. Lifeguards do not have citation issuing authority.

All Los Angeles County beaches were ordered closed on Saturday, for an indefinite duration, to deter the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Los Angeles County code defines beaches to include the ocean within 1,000 feet of the shoreline, effectively banning not only surfers who cross the beach to reach the surf, but also those who arrive by boat, Horn said.

“Lifeguards are just as disappointed as everyone else to see the beaches closed. The beach is our home, where we play and where we work. But it’s for the common good and it’s temporary,” Horn said.

Despite the closure order, when Horn arrived at work at 7 a.m. he estimated there were 150 surfers in the water between the Manhattan Beach pier and the El Segundo Jetty. He said the bike path and The Strand were similarly crowded, with joggers, bicyclists and families pushing strollers.

“Local surfers know lifeguards can’t issue citations. So when we told them not to go in the water they ignored us. When we told people on The Strand to leave, they pointed to the surfers and they ignored us,” Horn said.

“People didn’t comply until the police arrived and ordered the water, beach and The Strand cleared over their bullhorns. Then, everyone, including the surfers left.”

The surfer who was cited came to the beach, shortly before 11 a.m., after the water and beach had been cleared.

Manhattan Beach Police Sergeant Steve Kitsios said Saturday afternoon that no other beach closure violators had been cited and that his department is relying on voluntary compliance.

Hermosa Beach Police Chief Michael McCrary said Thursday, that his officers also are counting on voluntary compliance with the beach closure order, but will issue misdemeanor citations to people who ignore the order.

Surfers on social media expressed general disapproval of the Manhattan Beach surfer’s response to being ordered not to surf. But most also expressed disapproval of the beach closure order.

Longtime South Bay surfer Chris Bredesen, who abided by the beach closure order and has not surfed since its passage, expressed his view in a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post: “I support social distancing (for a certain amount of time) and we are all going to get through this. But (and don’t even think about responding if you’re not a surfer, because remember, we have to rely on the experts) to put a ban on surfing or long-distance swimming or paddling is wrong. If you’re looking for an expert, you found him. When I am surfing, stay away from me. No one is ever near me, I am so greedy. Stay off my waves, get out of the way, and don’t even think of talking to me because I know you’re trying to get me off my game and miss the next set …. In all seriousness, social distancing is 100 percent better surfing than going to the market, running, etc … These are facts. From an expert.” ER
๐Ÿ‘‡ ICING ON THE CAKE ๐Ÿ‘‡
๐Ÿ‘‡ RELATED INFO ON MINDSET ๐Ÿ‘‡
UPDATE 3/30/20 at 10:11pm: Added info below.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:27 PM 0 comments

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