Headlines

Judge’s faith becomes early flashpoint in Supreme Court fight

Weekly jobless claims rise unexpectedly, total 870,000

Rioters set fire to police HQ in St. Louis

Twitter: ‘Louisville will burn’ doesn’t violate our rules ... Masters of the Universe bow to the mob

2 retired 4-star officers who served under Trump endorse Biden

Protests erupt around the nation after Breonna Taylor grand jury decision

Kevin McCarthy threatens motion to remove Pelosi as speaker if she pushes for impeachment again

Leftists boo Trump paying respects to RBG

Battleground polls show Trump up in Texas, Biden ahead in Iowa

Retailers have started paying rent again but are still fighting with their landlords

Florida AG refers Bloomberg to FBI for criminal investigation

Khan’s London: 11 police injured in acid attacks

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Headlines

Trump will pay respects to Ginsburg at Supreme Court on Thursday

Johnson & Johnson enters late-stage trial testing with its coronavirus vaccine

President Trump announces ban on ‘woke’ companies working with U.S. government

Trump expands fight against Critical Race Theory to federal contractors

Poll: Biden, Trump virtually tied in Arizona, Florida

DOJ unveils Trump administration’s legislation to reform tech’s legal liability shield

Graham: Senate GOP has votes to confirm SCOTUS nominee before election

Biden 2008 : John McCain coward & ‘angry man’

‘Cindy can have Sleepy Joe’: Trump targets McCain’s widow after Biden endorsement

Coronavirus live updates: Sweden’s high death toll may be linked to mild flu season; FDA to reportedly tighten vaccine standards

Seattle City Council overrides mayor’s veto of police defunding — cuts to proceed

Study: China has forced 500,000 Tibetans into labor camps this year

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Headlines

Romney supports holding a vote on next Supreme Court nominee

Billionaire media mogul Haim Saban ramps up support for Biden and Democrats in Senate races

No cash needed: Iran says it’s willing to exchange all prisoners with U.S.

WI ruling: Ballots will be counted without definitive postmarks

Poll: Biden tied withTrump in Georgia

Coronavirus live updates: Europe turns to curfews, army to slow spread; Lowe’s unveils contactless lockers

Florida Governor unveils legislation making rioting a third-degree felony

CNN Lemon: ‘We’re gonna have to blow up the entire system’

Bloomberg, others rack up $20 million to register Florida felon after time served

Existing home sales jump to 14-year high, as prices set another record

NYPD officer and Army reservist charged with acting as illegal agent[s] of China

Collins proposes Const. Amendment to prohibit ‘threat of the moment’ SCOTUS packing

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Headlines

Schumer call on Azar to resign over political meddling in virus response

Pelosi blasts GOP ‘skinny’ deals, doubles down on call for large coronavirus relief deal

Biden visits Florida after court requires ex-felons to payoff fines before voting

Jerry Brown mocks people who want to leave California: ‘Where are you going to go?’

Turkish ship’s return home raises hopes of Greece-Turkey tensions cooling

The Federal Reserve will stay on hold until 2023, according to CNBC survey

President Trump’s says coronavirus vaccine could be approve ‘in a matter of weeks’

Junk Science: Biden climate speech ‘one falsehood after another’

Justice Department watchdog is probing handling of Roger Stone case

Coronavirus live updates: Global deaths rising, Bill Gates calls for equitable distribution of any vaccine

Freudian slip? Kamala talks plans ‘during a Harris administration’

LASD sheriff challenges LeBron James to match reward money in manhunt

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Headlines

Biden ahead in Minnesota and Arizona, CBS poll indicates

At least 33 dead as wildfires scorch millions of acres across Western U.S. — ‘it is apocalyptic’

Bombshell report: Half of Biden’s $400 million raised last year on ActBlue came from ‘unemployed’ untraceable donors

Newsom quietly signs bill reducing penalties for sex with minors

2 California deputies shot in apparent ambush; anger and protests follow

Public health specialists criticize Trump administration over reports it interfered with CDC studies

‘We hope they die,’ BLM protesters block ER entrance after officers shot, try to break into hospital

Garcetti: Biden *is* committed to phasing out fracking

Bloomberg to spend up to $100 million to beat Trump in Florida

Stop ‘demoralizing’ college students for coronavirus spread, mental health experts urge

U.S. Army soldier in training found dead, fourth death at Fort Jackson base this year

Lightfoot’s Chicago: At least 50 shot, 11 fatally, over weekend

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Headlines

China watcher: Death of trade deal with China could be ‘October surprise’

Coronavirus live updates: Scientists question Russian vaccine data, WHO says world must ramp up trials

Bob Woodward: General Mattis plotted overthrow of U.S. government

U.S. weekly jobless claims stall at 884,000

Woodward IDs Florida county targeted by Russians, a claim countered by local officials

Most voters don’t see Trump and Biden mentally fit to be president, new poll shows

DHS revokes visas for 1,000 Chinese nationals considered security risks

De Blasio’s NYC, 14 shot, 2 killed, in 24 hours

Pompeo: ‘Substantial chance’ senior Russian officials behind Navalny poisoning

Trump adds 20 names to Supreme Court shortlist, including Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton

Afghan VP survives targeted bomb attack — at least 10 civilians injured, 3 dead

Dan Rather on Atlantic [article]: ‘Whether he said it or not, it’s believable’

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Headlines

‘The President was not really encouraging’: What Obama really thought about Biden

Americans keep buying stuff despite pandemic — retail sales rise for third straight month

Oman supports UAE-Israel peace agreement

Watch: Rioters tear down George Washington statue at L.A. city hall

Trump requests mail-in ballot for Florida primary

Uber and Lyft’s threats to suspend service in California over workers may backfire

Minneapolis tells business owners they can’t rebuild until paying 2020 property taxes in full

Retail sales rise to pre-pandemic level

Trump assails, misrepresents Biden on mask mandate in partisan White House briefing

Coronavirus updates: Consumer spending cools off, California tops 600,000 cases

President Trump to deliver RNC speech from White House lawn

Gov. Cuomo: Trump’s executive orders ‘laughable’

Headlines

Biden picks Kamala Harris for VP

Sumner Redstone, billionaire media tycoon, dies at 97

Awkwardly worded email says Kamala best to lead U.S.

Kamala #1 liberal in Senate

Growing number of voters oppose Trump demand to fully reopen schools

Coronavirus live updates: Florida sheriff bans masks for deputies, Russia vaccine could be out in November

President Trump slams Kamala’s record — “Big tax raiser, big slasher of funds for our military”

Coronavirus: Growth in daily U.S. deaths plateaus

British economy plunged record 20 percent in second quarter

Another record low mortgage rate juiced weekly demand, but rates are suddenly rising now

FLASHBACK: Biden VP pick Harris says she believes his accusers

Consumer prices jump higher, double expectations

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Headlines

Russia registers virus vaccine, Putin’s daughter given it

Lucid challenges Tesla with a luxury EV sedan that has a record 517 miles of range per charge

New York’s nursing home death tolls worse than we’ll ever know

DHS Chief: 12 riots in 10 days since Feds left Portland

Trump: G-7 summit will likely take place after election

BP worker gets $200,000 payout after being fired for Hitler meme

Soros backed district attorneys implement soft on crime policies

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot criticized for focusing on beach parties

In Florida, a coronavirus showdown as DeSantis rejects Tampa-area school plan

Half of U.S. elementary and high school students will study virtually only this fall, study shows

Seattle police chief to resign after budget cuts

Paper: Chicago Prosecutor Kim Foxx has dropped 25,183 felony cases

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Headlines

Thousands protest against coronavirus measures in Berlin

Apple surpasses Saudi Aramco to become world’s most valuable company

‘What a fraud this guy is,’ Tucker Carlson rips Dr. Fauci’s dodging of questions about protests

Karen Bass’s long march from Communist fringe to Biden’s VP short list

Trump says he plans to ban TIKTOK in the U.S.

Hurricane Isaias lashes the Bahamas as it bears down on Florida

U.S. Supreme Court rejects request to halt construction of the border wall

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred warns 2020 season could be shut down

Florida teen, 2 others arrested over massive Twitter breach

Big tech spends over $20 million in lobbying in first half of 2020, including on coronavirus bills

Court overturns death sentence of Boston’s Marathon bomber

Exclusive: [Sen.] Cotton presses Google on election interference revelations

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Herd Immunity

Is herd immunity the only real solution to the increasing infection rate of the COVID-19 pandemic? Well many epideniologists think so ... and I am beginning to agree. The current hot spots in the USA are Florida, Texas and California ... replacing New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, all three of which might be approaching some sort of plateau in daily new cases ... each generating only a few hundred cases per day while the hot spots are in the thousands. (There are other states that could be placed in each group ... only to complicate things ... so we will ignore them here.)

To normalize things between these states we will look at new daily cases per million of population ... see: World Meters. Here they are today:

                                Total

                     Cases per 1 million

New York               22,843

New Jersey             21,128

Massachusetts       17,064

Florida                    22,350

Texas                      15,315

California               12,799

Total USA              14,351

As been demonstrated in various blood tests for this virus’ antibodies, the number of asymptomatic cases can be as much as twenty or more times diagnoses cases. Therefore we can see from the above that New York, New Jersey and Florida might really have as many as 400,000 cases per million (40%) of population. Now, herd immunity is estimated to be achieved at 50-60% ... so, we might be getting close to herd immunity in these three states. (Maybe why these states, excepting the special case Florida might be slowing down.) And Texas, California and Massachusetts still have a way to go ... as does the overall USA. (Caveat: our much more extensive testing now might have reduced this multiplier between asymptomatic and diagnosed cases to well below 20.)

(We are not dealing with coronavirus death rates here because therapeutics have gotten a whole lot better ... and we have also learned to concentrate mitigation efforts on nursing homes. Texas, California and Florida are still doing worlds better than the other three on this count.)

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Headlines

How Covid-19 could give Kim Jong Un a doomsday weapon

Most swing-state voters back extending $600 weekly unemployment benefit, CNBC/Change poll finds

Over 100 police agencies pull out of agreements to guard Democrat National Convention

Twitter censors videos of doctors’ presser, locks Breitbart account

EU to limit export of ‘sensitive’ tech in response to Hong Kong security law

Coronavirus live updates: California, Florida, Texas report record-high average daily deaths

Politico publishes then scrubs article saying Biden picked Kamala as VP

Election interference: Google purges Breitbart from search results

Trump administration rejects new DACA applications as it works to end program

Kodak shares soar 200%, halted repeatedly on Trump deal to make drug ingredients

Some local U.S. law enforcement using Chinese drones cited for espionage concerns

Pelosi: ‘Despicable’ Barr was not forthcoming in his testimony

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Headlines

Black Americans arming themselves in response to pandemic, protests

Kudlow says coronavirus relief will include $1,200 checks and extension of  eviction moratorium

Seattle has moved from “Defund the police” to “Abolish prisons”

Mike Ditka on anthem protests: ‘Get the hell out of the country’

Bass: Supporters will rally to Biden despite ‘94 crime bill

Florida has more coronavirus cases than New York and California leads the nation

Armed protester shot dead after confrontation at BLM rally in Texas

McCarthy: Dems have a China problem

Poll: Support of Trump’s handling of coronavirus pandemic hits new low

Regis Philbin, longtime television personality, dies at 88

Seattle police chief to local businesses: You’re on your own

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti denies that Portland protests are violent

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Short Note

I recently wrote about how new national coronavirus deaths,  not new cases was the metric to follow how we were progressing against this virus ... see: Scaredy Cats. Now, new deaths are starting to creep up ... primarily because of new cases spikes in Florida, California and Texas are causing new deaths to follow. (Not so much in Arizona.) I think the issue in the Southwest is all driven by what is happening in border leakage from Mexico. But the Florida numbers well might be the result of some number funny business.

Bottom line: Overall new deaths are still the metric to use ... but until new cases in California and Texas level out and decline I have gotten less optimistic and, as President Trump has said, things are likely to get worse before they get better.


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Headlines

Kanye West holds his first event as candidate

NY Gov. Cuomo says young people at bars are ‘a threat’ to the state’s reopening

Allen West named new chairman of the Texas GOP

Bernie Sanders delegates from California reject Kamala Harris as VP

Trump says his relationship with ‘alarmist’ Fauci is ‘very good’

Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine  shows positive immune response in trial

Chinese state media fawns over anti-Trump Lincoln Project

Son of federal judge Ester Salas shot dead, husband wounded

Battle over Covid aid consumes Congress’ final sprint to recess

‘We need to close down’ — Florida reports more than 10,000 new virus cases for fifth day

Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly believes Epstein was murdered

Everything is fine: Boris govt REJECTS  petition to protect statues

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Headlines

America’s hidden economic crisis: salaries are being sliced

White House seeks to block funds for testing and tracing in coronavirus relief bill

Missouri Governor Mike Parson says pardon likely if St. Louis couple is charged

Hillary, Biden fan [of] Mary Trump: Getting uncle out life and death matter

Trump doubles down on threats to defense, coronavirus relief bills

Ohio heading in the ‘wrong way’ and ‘could become Florida’ as coronavirus surges

Coronavirus death rate in U.S. drops for twelfth straight week

Bette Midler declares ‘Donald J. Trump is a murderer’

Rep. Donna Shalala calls for Florida to shut down again

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross hospitalized

Biden would be much less critical of Communist China says his own pick for Chinese ambassador

Lightfoot’s Chicago: 50 shot, at least 6 killed, since Friday evening

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Headlines

Trump keeps fighting the Confederate flag battle many supporters have conceded

Sweden kept its country relatively open during the coronavirus pandemic, but its elderly paid a price

State Dept. cables warned of China’s Wuhan lab two years ago

Motorcycle crash victim listed as coronavirus death in Florida

Newsom orders virtual instruction in most California counties

Goldman Sachs says a coronavirus vaccine could be approved later in 2020

Oregon AG sues to prevent DHS from arresting rioters

Biden fights science: ‘Just plain dangerous to reopen schools’

The post-pandemic economic recovery will lean on private equity

Trump properties have made over $17 million from the campaign and the RNC since 2016

Democrat National Convention may have as few as 300 attendees

Fire rips through cathedral dating to 1434 in Nantes, France


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Headlines

Trump stares down a ticking economic time bomb

Twitter says 130 people were targeted in hack that hijacked accounts of Elon Musk, Joe Biden

SCOTUS declines to reinstate votes of nearly 1 million Florida felons

All-time low coronavirus approval rating hurting Trump in swing states

Georgia governor sues to stop Atlanta mask mandate

Wall Street banks are in no rush to bring employees back to the office

White House divided over next phase of stimulus

Poll: Joe Biden leading President Trump in Texas

Democrats use Inspector General’s report to renew calls for Medicare chief’s ouster

European leaders gather for crunch talks on massive coronavirus fund

Report: Lincoln Project paid $2 million to firms owned by founders

Feinstein proposes halting Covid aid for states without masks mandates

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Headlines

Drug overdoses climb to record high in 2019, reversing historic progress

Mortgage rates set another record low, but homebuyers pulled back

Kayne West drops out of presidential race

Daily coronavirus deaths in U.S. continue to plummet

Trump’s niece calls on him to resign

Moderna stock surges after company announces promising coronavirus vaccine trial data

Peter Navarro: Dr. Fauci has been wrong about everything

Donald Trump tears into Joe Biden’s entire agenda at press conference

Kansas Republican Rep. Steve Watkins charged with voter fraud

EU court says Apple doesn’t have to pay nearly $15 billion in Irish taxes

Jeff Sessions loses GOP Senate primary runoff

Fox 35 investigation reveals inflated Florida coronavirus numbers

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Garbage In

Garbage out.

The clouds may be beginning to part on the recent spike in coronavirus cases ... without the concomitant spike in virus deaths ... particularly in Florida and the Southwest. It seems that there may be some funny business in how these numbers are being collected ... at least in Florida ... and possibly elsewhere. Before we delve into this analysis, dear reader, you need to first read what crack bit of real reporting started this whole onion-peeling ... see: Florida Expose.

So, at least 36 virus-testing labs in Florida have been reporting jiggered results ... 22 of which have indicated that 100% of the tests they performed came back positive ... impossible! ... and 14 of which are highly suspicious. To say that such result are unusual and likely political is an obvious conclusion.

Let us now move into the analysis part. If one assumes that Florida’s overall positive test results would have been 10% (was 12.5%) and each lab tested on average 50 people (needs further clarification), then the labs reporting 100% positive results likely overstate virus cases by 45@ ... and 45x22 is 990 false positives. Add 280 as a rough guess from the obviously inflated results,  produces an overall false positive reading of 1,270 IN ONE DAY ... a significant overstatement.

My guess is that the real overstatement, given the visible evidence, is a whole lot higher ... one reason that new virus deaths did not follow new virus cases as would have been expected.

Are these same data collection shenanigans taking place in Texas, Arizona and California? Probably ... augmented by a cross-border flow of real cases of Mexicans and American ex-pats, since Mexico is experiencing a real surge.

I have no idea if there is a law against such data manipulation ... but there should be. And the Trump administration and the governors of all states experiencing a spike in cases should investigate this possible political malfeasance further. (And see if the virus death numbers are also now being tinkered with.)