President Biden, in a prime-time address on Thursday night, exaggerated elements of the coronavirus pandemic along with his, and his predecessor’s, response to it. Here’s a fact-check.
What Mr. Biden Said
“A year ago we were hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked, denials for days, weeks, then months.”
This is exaggerated. It is true that President Donald J. Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic for months. But he was not exactly silent and did not fail to respond completely. One year ago, on March 12, 2020, Mr. Trump delivered an address from the Oval Office acknowledging the threat and announced new travel restrictions on much of Europe.
What Mr. Biden Said
“As of now, total deaths in America, 527,726. That’s more deaths than in World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War and 9/11 combined.”
This is exaggerated. According to estimates from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a total of 392,393 died in combat in those three wars. Combined with the 2,977 people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that figure would be indeed smaller than the coronavirus death toll Mr. Biden cited. It would also be lower than the 529,000 death figure tracked by The New York Times. But factoring in deaths that occurred in service but outside of combat, the toll from the three wars (more than 610,000) would be higher than the current total number of virus-related deaths Mr. Biden cited.
What Mr. Biden Said
“Two months ago this country didn’t have nearly enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all or anywhere near all of the American public. But soon we will.”
This is misleading. By the end of last year, the Trump administration had ordered at least 800 million vaccine doses that were expected for delivery by July 31, 2021, the Government Accountability Office reported. That included vaccines undergoing clinical trials as well as those not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. According to Kaiser Health News, that would have been enough to vaccinate 200 million people with authorized vaccines, and more than enough for 400 million once all the vaccines were cleared for use. The current U.S. population is roughly 330 million. And, contrary to Mr. Biden’s suggestions, both administrations deserve credit for the current state of the vaccine supply.
What Mr. Biden Said
“When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans after months, only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination. Today, that number is 65 percent.”
This is misleading. When Mr. Biden took office on Jan. 20, the vaccination effort had just begun, after the F.D.A. authorized Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in mid-December.
Government used them as an excuse for new spending, growth of welfare state and increasing federal power
It’s been a year since federal and state governments together with the nation’s health care bureaucracy locked down America.
With it we caught a glimpse of authoritarianism in the land of the free. The popular narrative is that the pandemic changed America forever. It’s a fundamentally dangerous notion since those changes would mean limits on constitutional freedoms.
At first, we took it all in stride. The vast majority of us wore masks, bought hand sanitizer by the gallon and accepted that for a short time we might have to sacrifice for the greater good.
There were triumphs like Operation Warp Speed, unprecedented inter-governmental coordination and adaptations by the private sector to meet critical needs. The courage of health care workers and first responders was a source of strength in the face of great uncertainty.
But the failures were wretched and presented themselves early. They exposed dangers inherent in the argument that government has the competency to manage society to the extent the left imagines it should.
First, we were woefully unprepared. National stockpiles of medical supplies that were depleted during the Obama administration had not been replenished. States like New York, though warned they were ill-equipped, had virtually no resources. Local officials across the country had few protocols to handle a major public health crisis, despite calls to prepare by the Bush administration after the H1N1 scare.
Then the pandemic turned political. The medical science that should have informed decision-making and public information was willfully manipulated by partisans in government and the press in a naked attempt to frustrate President Trump’s reelection chances.
Left-wing media downplayed the more than 99.7% survival rate, heaped praise on feckless liberal governors and turned the flipflopping Dr. Anthony Fauci into a demigod. Questioning Dr. Fauci got you canceled, fired and ridiculed despite his record of ever-changing assertions, irresponsible prognostications and reliance on dubious data.
Mr. Trump for his part didn’t help matters, turning COVID-19 task force briefings into rambling assaults on the media rather than opportunities for compassion and reassuring the public.
We watched the power of misinformation and propaganda in the public imagination. Public health orders which led to the deaths of tens of thousands in nursing homes didn’t stop the government from tightening its grip. New surveillance regimes sprung up like weeds.
Government told us kids couldn’t enter a classroom yet going to the supermarket, Walmart, even the mall was just fine. States called liquor stores and abortion clinics essential businesses, but churches were deemed dangerous. Restaurants remained locked down even after the data showed they were not vectors for mass infection.
Leftist groups like the nation’s teachers’ unions used the pandemic to squeeze taxpayers and drive a far-left agenda that had nothing to do with educating kids.
The lockdown damage has been extraordinary. Estimates place lost wages at more than $1.3 trillion and the highest month-to-month increase in long-term unemployment in history. More than 110,000 restaurants and bars have permanently closed.
People died in isolation. Millions of families were cruelly forced to mourn alone.
Lockdowns gave us the highest number of drug overdose fatalities in history. More than half of Americans reported adverse impacts to mental health in the last year, with over 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds contemplating suicide. Deferred cancer treatments and other health care disruptions have had an incalculably high cost on human life.
Government used the lockdowns as an excuse for approximately $6 trillion in new spending, explosive growth of the welfare state and a launchpad for increasing federal power. As a result, our debt to GDP ratio is the highest since World War II.
We will indeed win the battle against the virus, but the war to prevent it from changing this country is raging. If we live paralyzed by media-driven hysteria masquerading as medical advice and Twitter science, we will lose that war. The left will steamroll freedom and China will laugh all the way to global hegemony.
Freedom is fragile. Government lacks the competency or in many cases the desire to protect it. If we’ve learned nothing in the last year, let it be that.
• Tom Basile, host of Newsmax Television’s “America Right Now,” is an author and adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches earned media strategy.
TX GOP comes out against Governor Greg Abbott and GOP Vice-Chair Cat Parks who demanded censorship.
In a striking blow to Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas Republican Party has officially come out in support of the First Amendment and Free Speech, disagreeing with the demanded censorship by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The Texas Republican Party created a Gab account in January of 2021.
“The [Republican Party of Texas] will always fight censorship,” the party said in a statement. “We support the 1st Amendment, including free speech platforms.” They added, “TexasGOP has no plan to deplatform from any of our social media accounts. The 1st Amendment still shines brightly in the Lone Star State.”
The RPT will always fight censorship. We support the 1st Amendment, including free speech platforms & VC @CatParksTX's right to criticize such. TexasGOP has no plan to deplatform from any of our social media accounts. The 1st Amendment still shines brightly in the Lone Star State pic.twitter.com/mDsEb5hCYa
This comes after Greg Abbott claimed Gab was “anti-Semetic” and has “no place in Texas” while sitting in front of the American, Israeli, and Texas flags. Texas GOP Vice Chair, Cat Parks also came out against the first amendment and demanding the GOP delete it’s Gab Account in a public statement.
We wonder where Greg Abbott and Cat Park’s priorities lie while they’re hyper focused on promoting anti-first amendment bills and calling for censorship. Greg Abbott claimed Gab did not represent Texas values.Meanwhile, Abbot had said nothing about drag queen story hours in Austin and elsewhere in Texas, refusing to remark on whether grown men wearing dresses reading to young children as they sit on their laps are also “free speech” and “our values.”
National File contacted Parks for a statement at the number she provided on Facebook. Parks promised to send us the contact information for her communications director, who would then provide a comment. National File never received said contact information. National File also repeatedly attempted to contact Abbott’s press office and never received a response.
The American people may regret getting the coronavirus stimulus checks down the line, Fox News contributor Karl Rove argued on “Varney & Co.” Friday, doubling down on his Wall Street Journal opinion article.
Karl Rove:“Well, we’re a practical people. Seventy-five percent of Americans are going to get these checks, and how many of those people are going to say, why am I getting the check? I’ve got a couple of friends in South Carolina; Two retired ladies: A mother in law, an aunt of a friend of mine. They got their $600 checks last year. Their first response was, why did they send them to us?” And think about this, the United States Senate turned down an amendment to deny checks to felons. People who’ve been in jail for a year. So they got in there before covid started. They’re going to get checks. College students are going to get checks. They refused to go on record and say we’re going to deny checks to illegal aliens.”
So I think people are going to say, OK, fine, thanks for sending out the money. But did I really need it? And what’s going to really bring this to a boil is the fact that this bill is so expensive and people are going to say, did we really need to spend 1.8 to $1.9 trillion in order to deal with an issue? Think about this, Stuart, in the bill. Vaccines have between 14 and 20 billion dollars worth of spending. If you take all of the health-related Covid-19 issues in here, it’s between $100 to $160 billion total–everything. $1.8 trillion dollars total; 8.5 % or less of the bill is actually devoted to Covid. And think about this. This is an emergency, right? We spend 1.23 to $2.3 trillion this fiscal year, that is to say, by the end of September. But we spend $692 billion under this emergency bill over the next 10 years.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday designated five Chinese companies as posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law aimed at protecting U.S. communications networks.
The FCC said the companies included Huawei Technologies Co, ZTE Corp, Hytera Communications Corp, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co and Dahua Technology Co.
A 2019 law requires the FCC to identify companies producing telecommunications equipment and services “that have been found to pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
FILE PHOTO: Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during an oversight hearing held by the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to examine the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in Washington, U.S. June 24, 2020. Alex Wong/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement: “This list provides meaningful guidance that will ensure that as next-generation networks are built across the country, they do not repeat the mistakes of the past or use equipment or services that will pose a threat to U.S. national security or the security and safety of Americans.”
The 2019 law used criteria from a defense authorization bill that previously identified the five Chinese companies. In August 2020, the U.S. government issued regulations barring agencies from buying goods or services from any of the five Chinese companies.
In 2019, the United States placed Huawei, Hikvision and other firms on its economic blacklist.
Last year, the FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as a national security threat to communications networks – a declaration barring U.S. firms from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies.
In February, Huawei challenged the declaration in a petition filed with the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Huawei declined to comment on Friday on the new FCC designation. The other four companies did not comment or could not be reached for comment.
The FCC in December finalized rules requiring carriers with ZTE or Huawei equipment to “rip and replace” that equipment. It created a reimbursement program for that effort, and U.S. lawmakers in December approved $1.9 billion to fund the program.
There’s a reason no government has done a cost-benefit analysis: The policy would surely fail.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced last week that his state is ending its mask mandate and business capacity limits. While Democrats and many public-health officials denounced the move, ample data now exist to demonstrate that the benefits of stringent measures aren’t worth the costs.
This wasn’t always the case. A year ago I publicly advocated lockdowns because they seemed prudent given how little was known at the time about the virus and its effects. But locking society down has become the default option of governments all over the world, regardless of cost.
More than a year after the pandemic began, vaccination is under way in both Europe and the U.S. Yet stringent restrictions are still in place on both sides of the Atlantic. Germany, Ireland and the U.K. are still in lockdown, while France is two months into a 6 p.m. curfew that the French government says will last for at least four more weeks. In many U.S. states, in-person schooling is still rare.
This time last year we had no idea how difficult it would be to control the virus. Given how fast it had been spreading, people made the reasonable assumption that most of the population would be infected in a few weeks unless we somehow reduced transmission. Projections by the Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team in London projected that more than two million Americans could die in a few months. A lockdown would cut transmission, and while it couldn’t prevent all infections, it would keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. It would “flatten the curve.”
We have since learned that the virus never spreads exponentially for very long, even without stringent restrictions. The epidemic always recedes well before herd immunity has been reached. As I argue in a report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, people get scared and change their behavior as hospitalizations and deaths increase. This, in turn, reduces transmission.
I’ve looked at more than 100 regions and countries. None have seen exponential growth of the pandemic continue until herd immunity was reached, regardless of whether a government lockdown or other stringent measure was imposed. People eventually revert to more-relaxed behavior. When they do, the virus starts spreading again. That’s why we see the “inverted U-shape” of cases and deaths everywhere.
Sweden was the first to learn this lesson, but many other countries have confirmed it. Initially held up as a disaster by many in the pro-lockdown crowd, Sweden has ended up with a per capita death rate indistinguishable from that of the European Union. In the U.S., Georgia’s hands-off policies were once called an “experiment in human sacrifice” by the Atlantic. But like Sweden, Georgia today has a per capita death rate that is effectively the same as the rest of the country.
That isn’t to say that restrictions have no effect. Had Sweden adopted more-stringent restrictions, it’s likely the epidemic would have started receding a bit earlier and incidence would have fallen a bit faster. But policy may not matter as much as people assumed it did. Lockdowns can destroy the economy, but it’s starting to look as if they have minimal effect on the spread of Covid-19.
After a year of observation and data collection, the case for lockdowns has grown much weaker. Nobody denies overwhelmed hospitals are bad, but so is depriving people of a normal life, including kids who can’t attend school or socialize during precious years of their lives. Since everyone hasn’t been vaccinated, many wouldn’t yet be living normally even without restrictions. But government mandates can make things worse by taking away people’s ability to socialize and make a living.
The coronavirus lockdowns constitute the most extensive attacks on individual freedom in the West since World War II. Yet not a single government has published a cost-benefit analysis to justify lockdown policies—something policy makers are often required to do while making far less consequential decisions. If my arguments are wrong and lockdown policies are cost-effective, a government document should be able to demonstrate that. No government has produced such a document, perhaps because officials know what it would show.
Mr. Lemoine is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Cornell University and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.
No MSM coverage of far left protesters violently confronting federal police.
Antifa rioters attempted to destroy a federal courthouse in Portland Thursday night, in another chaotic scene of far left violence you won’t see covered by the mainstream media.
Close to 50 rioters vandalized, smashed windows and set fires outside the Mark Hatfield federal courthouse, prompting police to deploy riot squads and tear gas.
At the #antifa riot overnight where the Portland federal courthouse was attacked, officers eventually rushed out. Here, they tackle Darby Howard, who moments before was trying to break the court's windows. He had been arrested & released earlier same day. pic.twitter.com/7Sp34R8Adi
Ahead of the night’s mayhem, violent protesters also attempted to break into a Chase bank, where an armed security guard had to pull his gun to fend them off.
#Antifa and other far-left rioters in Portland tried to break into the @Chase bank. A lone security guard tried holding them back. He pulled out a pistol during the mob attack. #PortlandRiotspic.twitter.com/Sw3SU8PO0A
Freshman GOP Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah, a former NFL star safety, trashed new Democratic anti-gun legislation for eliciting memories of anti-gun laws in the Jim Crow south and for suppressing Constitutional liberties while speaking on the House floor Wednesday.
Democrats in the House passed two anti-gun bills this week — both intended to either make guns more challenging to obtain or to essentially create a non-gun registry (which is essentially a gun registry). On Wednesday, Owens opposed the anti-American and anti-gun bills in remarks on the House floor when he read letters from his constituents over both H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446.
Owens was succinct in his remarks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and he let his voters do some of the talking.
“Madame Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446. In the last week, I’ve received over 1,000 emails from constituents in strong opposition to these anti-gun bills. Here is a sample,” he stated.
Owens, who is black, read a number of letters from Americans and reminded Congress that the government once denied gun rights to black Americans.
“H.R. 8 will make it impossible to sell or loan guns to my relatives and trusted friends,” one letter read by Owens stated, while another added: “These bills appear designed to impose restrictions on natural rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.”
Another added: “Stand for our rights and oppose these measures with every tool in your grasp.”
“I absolutely will fight these measures with every tool in my grasp,” Owens said. “These rights to protect my life, liberty and property were granted to me by God and cannot be taken from me by D.C. bureaucrats.”
“I grew up in the Deep South at a time when black Americans were unable to defend themselves. After the Civil War, Black Codes and Jim Crow laws prohibited people of color from owning firearms. In the mid-1950s, Martin Luther King, Jr. kept firearms for self-protection, but his application for a concealed weapons permit was denied because of racist gun control laws in his state,” he added.Do you agree with Owens that these bills would restrict our Constitutional rights?Yes NoCompleting this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“As a child, my dad witnessed an altercation between his father and a southern white man who thought my grandfather was being disrespectful and threatened to teach him a lesson,” he continued. “Later that night, he drove up to my grandfather’s home with a bunch of his friends standing on the forerunner of a Model T Ford.”
“My grandfather was prepared — he and his brothers hid around his front porch. As these bullies and cowards approached the house, they heard the click of rifles and left just as fast as they came,” Owens said. “Without ever firing his gun on another human being, my grandfather’s right to own a firearm ensured his rights to protect his life, liberty, and property.”
STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING & listen to Rep. @BurgessOwens oppose Biden-pushed gun control.
"As bullies and cowards approached his house, they heard the click of rifles and left as fast as they came… My grandfather's right to own a firearm ensured his right to protect his life…" pic.twitter.com/rZskVHUxhw
Owens respectfully yielded his time back after the brief remarks.
One of those bills the former football star referred to, H.R. 8, targets gun sales and transfers which are not cleared through the flawed FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System. That bill would make any person who transfers ownership of a firearm to any person who is not an immediate family member a criminal.
While it does not outright create a gun registry, it would put more guns on the government radar by requiring friends and neighbors to go through a government channel to give and receive guns.
It’s of course not the government’s business what law-abiding and decent people do with their firearms, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed a Senate vote on the bill Thursday in a hyperbolic statement.
“The legislative graveyard is over. H.R. 8 will be on the floor of the Senate, and we will see where everybody stands,” he said.
“Certainly hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of people walking the streets today because we passed [the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act] would be dead,” Schumer said. “But when we passed the law, little did we know it had some loopholes in it that we didn’t know at the time. We didn’t know there would be an internet, so we didn’t prohibit internet sales without a background check.”
The other bill passed by House Democrats is H.R. 1446, which would prolong the amount of time the FBI can hold up background checks from three business days to 10 business days.
The three-day window currently in place protects would-be gun buyers from being put in a sort of gun-buying no-man’s land where the bureau could simply make them wait for a passed background check. For now, if the bureau cannot rightfully deny you on a background check, you pass by default after the three days.
Democrats of course stood on the bodies of nine dead Christians when pushing this bill and others previously by invoking the memory of those tragically murdered by deranged killer Dylan Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Roof fell between the cracks of the NICS system when the FBI failed to flag him and his criminal record in a timely fashion and he was cleared to buy a gun by default. Democrats call the three-day window the “Charleston Loophole.”
The FBI, nor Roof, apparently bear culpability for the massacre, so Democrats will seek retribution by burdening law-abiding gun owners instead — should that bill ultimately become law if it is passed in the Senate.
None of this is to besmirch the people working in the FBI, either. There are many wonderful rank and file personnel in the bureau who simply follow their jobs to the letter.
What happened with Roof was a rare failing in a system that is fundamentally oppressive and apparently prone to human error. But Democrats want to make that flawed system work harder against Americans.
Three business days is more than enough time for the bureau to clear or deny an individual for a gun purchase, especially in an age where the technology to find an individual’s past is right at one’s fingertips. If a private investigator such as this writer can find personal information on a subject within minutes, who knows what tools the FBI has at its disposal.
But Democrats are on a warpath to chip away act gun rights, and the American people are blessed to have a man such as Owens fighting on their behalf.
While Utahns missed the mark by electing failed former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to the Senate, they sent the right man for the job to the House with Owens last November.
The bill was passed with Republican support this week and currently awaits a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate
The Democrat Background Checks Act that was passed this week with Republican support is designed to make it harder for law-abiding American citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but actually makes it easier for segment of the population to obtain firearms: illegal immigrants.
The Background Checks Act aims to end private sales of firearms between consenting individuals, forcing the weapon to be seized by “a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer, or importer” while an extensive federal background check is conducted.
However, as House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) pointed out on Thursday, House Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would prevent firearms from falling into the hands of illegal immigrants.
🚨 BREAKING → House Democrats just REJECTED an amendment that would have required ICE to be notified if an illegal immigrant tries to buy a gun.
But they’re fine taking away the gun rights of law-abiding American citizens.
Rep. Ben Cline noted during a speech that “Instead of criminalizing the innocent actions of law-abiding gun owners – American citizens – we should be focused on stopping real crime in our local communities and enforcing the laws that are already on the books,” noting that “One way we can do that is by ensuring that ICE is notified when unlawful aliens attempt to purchase a firearm illegally.”
“Since 1998, over 28,000 illegal aliens have been denied a firearm after failing a NICS check,” Cline continued. “With over 2,700 in 2019 alone, this means over 28,000 criminals have been allowed to stay in the United States when ICE should have been alerted about their criminal acts, but were not. H.R. 8 fails to do anything to prevent crime, which is why I’m offering this motion to recommit so our nation’s laws are enforced.”
WATCH: @RepBenCline offered a motion to recommit which would ensure ICE is notified when illegal immigrants attempt to buy a firearm illegally.
17 House Democrats – who voted in favor of this common sense measure last Congress – flip-flopped and voted against it… pic.twitter.com/fTDlqaa3R8
