Headlines

America’s told-you-so moment: Woe we botched the reopening

Record job gain of 4.8 million in June smashes expectation: unemployment rate falls to 11.1%

House passes $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill

GOP Senators lobby to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth

Supreme Court to rule on House access to Mueller grand jury secrets

Coronavirus live updates: U.S. reports a record 50,000 new cases in a day

2.4 million guns sold last month

At least 23 arrested as Seattle police clear out CHOP

Fauci: Avoid gatherings like Trump’s Rushmore fireworks show

Jeffrrey Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell arrested on child sex abuse conspiracy, perjury charges

Boom: CNN’s best ratings in 40 years ...

Molten, Virginia Dems seek to reduce assault on cops to misdemeanor

Correction

A while back I made a foray into the COVID-19 death statistics in the United States and suggested that they were being fudged to imply a surge in our deaths to match our surge in new cases ... see: Fake Stats.

Well, if you return to that Washington Post “Covid Deaths” graph of deaths in that link, you will now see why this “spike” in these numbers occurred. It seems that, in a footnote, WaPo now indicates that on June 25th over 1,800 deaths were added to this daily total by New Jersey ... and it looks like Delaware also slipped some extras in too. Anyway, this spike was obviously an outlier and only briefly interrupted the visible downward path of US COvID deaths.

However, we are not out of the woods yet as new virus deaths are supposed to lag new cases by two or three weeks ... so we still have a little time to wait to see if the opening of our economy might need to be slowed or reversed. I say this because a new case surge without a new death surge is not a huge problem ... something like the common cold ... not worthy of a new shutdown.

Sometime next week we should know for sure.

Headlines

Trump exults in rocket launch as chaos unfolds around the country

SpaceX launches two NASA astronauts in space for the first time in historic US mission

As Minneapolis burns, mayor takes heat for response ...

Report: Majority of arrested Minneapolis rioters have Minnesota addresses

European trade chief mulls bid for WTO top job

Coronavirus updates: EU asks U.S. to reconsider WHO exit as India extends lockdown in ‘containment zones’

Cities brace for increasing unrest ... Spiraling out of control ...

Bill Barr: Violence appears planned by far-left groups

De Blasio, Cuomo target June 8 for first phase of New York City reopening

University of Michigan is taking steps to bring students back on campus this fall

Security officers gunned down in Oakland ...

Bernie Kerik: FBI must investigate funding of ANTIFA terrorism

Headlines

Across the country, local officials defy state leaders on reopening

Coronavirus live updates: CDC releases guidelines to reopen, swing-state voters divided on risk

US virus deaths projected to top 113,000 by mid-June ...

UK bans menthol cigarettes under EU directive

Trump misstates Michigan mail-in ballot policy, threatens federal funding

New York City mayor says number of kids getting vaccinated down more than 60%

New outbreak: Churches forced to reclose ...

New Black Panther party launches boycott of ‘Chinese merchants’

Oregon high court keeps state virus restrictions in place

Pompeo abruptly ends press briefing after questions about State Department IG firing

ACLU warns against fever-screening tools ...

California offers $500 each in coronavirus relief to illegal aliens

Headlines

Coronavirus drives health insurers back to Obamacare

Coronavirus updates: Trump says military will distribute vaccine, CVS to offer drive-thru tests

Resentment builds as reopening rules apply to some, but not to others ...

Gretchen Whitmer lashes out at Michigander protesters,: lockdown ‘not optional’

Appeals court green lights emoluments suit against Trump

Dismal jobs report offered a sign that some people may be returning to work

Jobless claims total 36.5 million ...

Mayor Eric Garcetti: L.A. won’t completely reopen without virus ‘cure’

New Jersey may face $10B budget shortfall through FY 2021

Delta to retire Boeing 777’s as pandemic dims outlook for international travel

Judge asks whether Flynn should be held in contempt for perjury ...

Powell warns of a possible sustained recession from pandemic

Today”s Poser

Our Witchdoctor

Dr. Tony Fauci testified yesterday in the Senate that he was chary about reopening our economy and we should not reopen our schools in the fall until we had a vaccine or an effective treatment for COVID-19. Such strictures would result in likely serious societal and economic damage. This policy “suggestion” forces the following poser for all you dear readers over the age of 60:

Assume that cautiously reopening our economy now ...  and sending our children back to school in September ... meant that YOU would have about a 20% chance of contracting this virus and then a 5% chance of dying from it ... would you go along with our this strategy ... in order to avoid the clear and lasting country upheaval? (In other words around 1% of our seniors would die ... maybe one million.)

I am not trying to virtue grandstand on this issue, kind reader, but I think I would agree to this gamble ...

Headlines

Trump touted reopening. Privately, his team sounded alarms.

Coronavirus live updates: Record private payrolls lost in April,  Friday’s jobs report may be ‘worst ever’

United States of Infection ... 71,130 dead

U.S. sheds record 20.2 M jobs in April

Zoom taps former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster for board

Uber to lay off 3,700 employees, about 14% of workforce

Germany eyes accelerated return to normality ...

W.H.O. continues to follow China’s instructions, ignores Taiwan

Hungary no longer a democracy Freedom House says

Oil turns lower, snapping 5-day winning streak as oversupply fears weigh

New model predicts 350,000 deaths by end of June if all states fully open ...

Pulitzer Prize to New York Times essay with fake history

Politics Infects Medicine

There is increasing evidence that politics are infecting the science of medicine. Let me cite just a few incidences:

- A few weeks back four antibody studies (Santa Clara, LA, New York State and Miami/Dade) suggested that coronavirus infections were far higher than previously thought. This meant that death rates were close to those of the seasonal flu ... and we were approaching herd immunity in our hot spots ... not good news for those wishing to keep us locked down. So, why have more such studies disappeared from our news cycles? They must be being performed.

- That famous YouTube video of the two California doctors urging us to rethink our lockdown polices has all but been wiped off the Internet.

- Reported COVID-19 death statistics and resultant model projections are starting to go back up ... after plummeting for three months. Even though hospital and ICU coronavirus admissions are generally going down, many doctors are saying they are being pressured to list COVID as a cause of death in unrelated mortalities. Is this politically or monetarily motivated ?

- There is surprising negative media coverage against seemingly positive developments in the battle against this virus:  Trial results from therapeutics like  remesivir, hydroxychlorquine and other new treatments ... and their pooh-pooling of the Swedish herd-immunity strategy.

- There is a clear red-State, blue-State divide in how to reopen our economy. Libs are clearly more draconian in their ukases and have an extended timetable. Is this medically motivated or just to display hostility to the Orangeman?

Headlines

Schumer to introduce legislation to prevent Trump from signing stimulus checks

Supreme Court declines to rule on its first Second Amendment case in over a decade

Update: 1 in 4 NYC residents test positive for [coronavirus] antibodies ...

Nancy Pelosi endorses Joe Biden: ‘The personification of integrity’

5G arsonists turn up in continental Europe

Coronavirus live updates: Poll finds outsized impact in New Jersey, governor warns of ‘Armageddon’

Carnival Cruise bailout draws fire ...

Thousands of Californians flock to beaches despite stay-at-home order

Cuomo eyes construction, manufacturing for regional reopen in New York

Supreme Court suggests it is looking for a way out of Trump financial records case

Tyson: ‘The food supply chain is breaking’ ...

Murder, burglary and theft soar in NYC during coronavirus