Tag Archives: #COVID19

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Will the Kentucky General Assembly stand up for our rights?

As 2020 thankfully ends, for Kentuckians that means that the General Assembly will shortly be in session. Our state legislature is a part-time one, which is just the way the people in the Bluegrass State like it. Our state representatives and senators have other lives, and the pay for legislators does not allow them to be professionals at it. Legislators earn a salary of $188.22 per day, when the legislature is in session, along with a per diem expense allowance of $163.90. In even-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 60 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond April 15. In odd-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 30 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond March 30.

If you think, hey, that’s not much, until a constitutional amendment was passed by the voters in 2000, the legislature was restricted to meeting only once every two years.

We have previously mentioned Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) dictatorial orders, and his refusal to involve the General Assembly.

Beshear was asked at Friday’s (July 10, 2020 — Editor) news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

Though the Governor is supposedly very popular, and the public supposedly approve of his handling of COVID-19, the November elections increased Republican control over both chambers of the state legislature. The GOP increased their majority in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8, but, more importantly, in the state House of Representatives from 61-37 (with 2 vacancies) to 75-25. While the state Senate held a veto-proof Republican majority prior to the election, such was not the case in the state House; now, there is a veto-proof Republican majority in both chambers.

And so we come to this, from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

The legislature wants to curb Beshear’s executive powers. What does that look like?

By Daniel Desrochers | December 31, 2020 | 11:45 AM EST

After adding to their existing supermajorities in the Kentucky General Assembly in November, Republicans in Frankfort laid out a clear mission for the 2021 legislative session: scale back the executive powers of the governor of Kentucky.

“We’re going to refine,” said Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, days after the election. “There’s no doubt that chief executives of any state or at the federal level need types of powers in an emergency. We all agree with that. What’s the extent and duration? How do you apply [it]?”

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Republican lawmakers have chafed at executive orders passed by Gov. Andy Beshear aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus. Some have attended rallies against the orders, others have spoken out in favor of lawsuits challenging them, nearly all have said there hasn’t been enough communication between the governor’s office and legislators.

In particular, they’ve decried now-expired orders that temporarily banned all gatherings, including church services, and stopped private schools from holding in-person classes.

There’s more at the original.

Technically, Mr Desrochers, the article author, is incorrect: the executive order which prohibited private schools from holding in-person classes does not expire until Sunday, January 3rd, though, as the United States Supreme Court noted, the order would expire at the normal end of the Christmas break for schools.[1]In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot. On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order … Continue reading

While I suggested that the Governor would renew his school closure order, but wait until January 2nd to do so, to give the private religious schools little time to appeal it, renewing that order would only anger the legislature. However, the Herald-Leader reported, yesterday, that “Kentucky has 7th-highest day for new COVID-19 cases. Positivity rate back above 9%.”

Wednesday’s tally of new cases is the seventh-highest single-day increase the state has reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

In a written update, Beshear noted the mid-week increase was “higher than it has been for a number of days,” adding, “The progress we have made is fragile.”

If the Governor concludes that he has no chance of avoiding the restriction of his emergency powers, he might well simply issue the edicts, hoping to get away with them for another month.

Six bills restricting the Governor’s emergency powers have been pre-filed in the General Assembly, but one commonality is that all require the calling of a special session of the General Assembly if the Governor issues an emergency decree which lasts for longer than a month.[2]Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.

Mr Desrochers again:

Beshear has indicated he would like no approach at all. He has criticized the effort to restrict his ability to issue executive orders, painting it as a potentially “catastrophic” attempt to limit his ability to deal with COVID-19, and one that would hamstring future governors if another unforeseen emergency arrives.

“I hope when they show up, making a lot of noise, let’s take a breath, let me get on through this and afterwards, have at it,” Beshear told the Herald-Leader when asked about the legislature’s effort to limit executive power. “Then we can go to court or anything else.”

“Then we can go to court,” huh? The Governor is an attorney, and he knows that going to court costs time and money. If he issues another of his decrees, appeals of those decrees could take months by the time they work their way through the courts. The state court challenge to his decrees were consolidated by the state Supreme Court, last July, when the Court issued a stay of the lower court injunctions against the Governor’s decrees, and then the Court decided it would hear oral arguments two months later. The United States Supreme Court, when it finally dismissed Daniel Christian Schools v Beshear, did so based on the practical expiration of the challenged executive order, but that Court sat on the case for two weeks, taking it to less than a week before Christmas break began.[3]Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted: (I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November … Continue reading

But the General Assembly must do more than just time limit the Governor’s emergency powers. It must also make clear that those emergency powers do not and cannot infringe on our constitutional rights. We are guaranteed, under the First Amendment, the right of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, both rights on which the Governor’s executive orders have restricted. The state does not and cannot have the power to somehow just suspend our rights, and the state legislature must make that clear, in terms that our partisan state Supreme Court cannot choose to ignore.

COVID-19 is serious, but the violation of our constitutional rights, by Governors across the country, is far, far worse.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot.

On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order that effectively closes K–12 schools for in-person instruction until and through the upcoming holiday break, which starts Friday, December 18, for many Kentucky schools. All schools in Kentucky may reopen after the holiday break, on January 4. . . . .

The Governor’s school-closing Order effectively expires this week or shortly thereafter, and there is no indication that it will be renewed.

Uhhh, yes, there is! Governor Beshear has already ‘recommended’ that schools delay opening another week, until January 11th, and while he did not make that an order, quite possibly because he knew it would impact the case and it contradicted his own Court filing, he is now free to make it an order.

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

In other words, the Court would entertain a new case, should the Governor issue another executive order, but all of that takes time, and money. With Christmas break about to start, the Governor could easily wait until Saturday, January 2nd, to issue another executive order.

↑2 Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.
↑3 Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted:

(I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November 20, 2020, just two days after the issuance of the Governor’s executive order. And when, on November 29, the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of the order that would have allowed classes to resume, the applicants sought relief in this Court just two days later, on December 1. It is hard to see how they could have proceeded more expeditiously.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented:

Nor should a Governor be able to evade judicial review by issuing short-term edicts and then urging us to overlook their problems only because one edict is about to expire while the next has yet to arrive. Come January 4, a new school semester will be about to start, and the Governor has expressly told us that he reserves the right to issue more decrees like these if and when religious schools try to resume holding classes. Rather than telling the parties to renew their fight in a month, asking the Sixth Circuit to resolve the case now, under accurate legal rules, would be better for everyone—from the parents who might have to miss work and stay home should decrees like these be upheld, to the state public health officials who might have to plan for school if they are not.

Courts have a broader equity at stake here too. In their struggle to respond to the current pandemic, executive officials have sometimes treated constitutional rights with suspicion. In Kentucky, state troopers seeking to enforce gubernatorial orders even reprimanded and recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers who attended an Easter church service, some of whom were merely sitting in their cars listening to the service over a loudspeaker.

Recently, this Court made clear it would no longer tolerate such departures from the Constitution. We did so in a case where the challenged edict had arguably expired, explaining that our action remained appropriate given the Governor’s claim that he could revive his unconstitutional decree anytime. That was the proper course there, as I believe it is here. I would not leave in place yet another potentially unconstitutional decree, even for the next few weeks.
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Big Brother is watching you, and the left think you need to be watched more closely

In George Orwell’s 1984, every home was fitted with a Telescreen.

The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. . . . .

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

After nine months now of increasingly draconian controls of our society and our economy in the huge governmental response to COVID-19, we are now being told that the one place into which government cannot reach, our homes, is the place in which our leaders need to exert the most control.

Where COVID-19 spreads most easily, according to experts

The most likely place to contract the virus is not at work or at school.

By Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey | December 24, 2020 | 6:08 AM

COVID-19 is a highly transmissible disease, but evidence shows that small indoor gatherings and households are where the novel coronavirus is spreading the fastest.

For nearly a year, public health officials across the globe have grappled with how to reduce the spread of COVID-19. At times, travel has been restricted, schools and gyms have closed, and some cities, such as San Francisco, are under lockdown. But despite these restrictions, the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to reach record highs.

“I think we want to be careful about blaming one particular environment and scapegoating one particular setting for generating transmission,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

However, there are some settings where COVID-19 is more easily spread. In New York, for example, contact tracing has shown that 70% of new cases come from small gatherings and households.

“Informal gatherings may have played even the biggest role,” Brownstein said, “because they are harder to police, they’re harder to enforce, and people are probably more lax when it comes to recommendations of mask wearing and social distancing.”

I will admit to some amusement at Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey’s, the author’s, choice of language, that informal gatherings, meetings between friends and family, “are harder to police, (are) harder to enforce” restrictions. In the end, of course, policing things, enforcing rules, is precisely what Our Betters want to do.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, Dr Richard Levine[1]Dr Levine is a mentally ill male who thinks he’s somehow a woman, calling himself ‘Rachel.’ The First Street Journal does not go along with such foolishness, and always refers to … Continue reading issued orders that individuals must wear masks and practice social distancing inside their own homes if guests are present. The credentialed media were also full of similar recommendations.

When people gather in small groups with friends and family, they are more likely to let their guard down, not wear their masks and stay together indoors for longer periods of time, which makes it easier to transmit the virus.

In a recent study at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, researchers found that for children and adolescents who tested positive for COVID-19, it was small social gatherings — not school — that was the most likely place they were exposed to the virus.

The children who tested positive in the study were more likely to have attended social gatherings outside of their homes, had playdates or had visitors at their home where mask wearing and social distancing precautions were not taken.

Gladys Kravitz

As we have noted previously, various officials know that they can’t just send the gendarmerie into your house, so they want your neighbors to peer into your windows and snitch on you. Of course, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City) does seem to think that he can send the sheriff’s deputies to your home, so perhaps other of our government officials will try to make my statement that they can’t send the police to your homes a false one. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that Dr Smalls-Mantey’s article is just something to condition the public into thinking that such is regrettably necessary, so that the sheeple will simply accept it, at least if it only happens to their neighbors and not themselves.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) issued executive orders limiting gatherings in your home of more than eight people, from more than two separate households. I am happy to say that we didn’t obey the Governor’s restrictions any heed on either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Three households, no masks.

If only the government had those telescreens, they wouldn’t have to depend on those Gladys Kravitzes to peer into your windows![2]I had to put a descriptive link to Gladys Kravitz in the article, because my good friend Donald Douglas pointed out that you have to be older than dirt to get the reference.

If we allow authoritarianism to continue for this emergency, in what other emer-gencies will it be used?

Am I just being paranoid here? In 1984, sexual activity is regulated by the government, and Winston Smith’s and Julia’s sexual life is a form of rebellion. And in 2020, Dr Levine issued ‘guidance’ about your sex life, ‘suggesting’ that you must ‘limit’ your number of sex partners, and always ‘discuss’ COVID-19 with any new potential inamorata. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-Washington, DC) did the same.[3]The left had always claimed that it was evil reich-wing conservatives who wanted to regulate sex, even referencing 1984, but it doesn’t seem to have been conservatives doing this now, does it?

People with actual governing authority have been telling us how we must live our lives, interfering in our jobs, our businesses and trying to impose their authority even in our homes, justifying it as an emergency, of course. But if they are allowed to get away with this for the COVID emergency, just what other ’emergencies’ can they use to justify restricting our rights? The September 11th attacks wound up justifying the PATRIOT Act, and, sadly, that was done by Republican congressmen and senators, and signed into law by a Republican president.

Benjamin Franklin put it best, saying, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We have surrendered some of our essential liberty, and far too many of our people have agreed with this, because it’s just so necessary, or, as the law would put it, “a compelling government interest.”

This is where we must say, nay, scream, that government cannot do this, and the people will not allow it. More than just scream, we must protest, we must take political action, to unseat the would-be tyrants and petty dictators. If we do not do this, now, we insure that it will happen again, and again, as those who believe they should run our lives for us can always find something to justify it.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Dr Levine is a mentally ill male who thinks he’s somehow a woman, calling himself ‘Rachel.’ The First Street Journal does not go along with such foolishness, and always refers to ‘transgender’ individuals by their birth names and sex.
↑2 I had to put a descriptive link to Gladys Kravitz in the article, because my good friend Donald Douglas pointed out that you have to be older than dirt to get the reference.
↑3 The left had always claimed that it was evil reich-wing conservatives who wanted to regulate sex, even referencing 1984, but it doesn’t seem to have been conservatives doing this now, does it?
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Dr Fauci: “You can’t handle the truth!”

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the over-hyped Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the government’s COVID-19 taskforce, has been lying to us. No, this isn’t from some conservative blog, but The New York Times:

How Much Herd Immunity Is Enough?

Scientists initially estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the population needed to acquire resistance to the coronavirus to banish it. Now Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are quietly shifting that number upward.

By Donald G. McNeil Jr. | December 24, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

At what point does a country achieve herd immunity? What portion of the population must acquire resistance to the coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, in order for the disease to fade away and life to return to normal?

Since the start of the pandemic, the figure that many epidemiologists have offered has been 60 to 70 percent. That range is still cited by the World Health Organization and is often repeated during discussions of the future course of the disease.

Although it is impossible to know with certainty what the limit will be until we reach it and transmission stops, having a good estimate is important: It gives Americans a sense of when we can hope to breathe freely again.

Recently, a figure to whom millions of Americans look for guidance — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, an adviser to both the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration — has begun incrementally raising his herd-immunity estimate.

In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”

In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

Translation: the guy who has been all over CNN and MSNBC, giving us an air of quiet confidence, had been lying to us, and doing so deliberately. Perhaps he was channeling Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men:

Dr Fauci admitted to trying to sell us a bill of goods:

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

The good doctor wanted to sell us something, but the Times reported that roughly 20% of Americans are unwilling to accept the vaccine.

Think about that: if the incoming President is going to keep Dr Fauci as his COVID guru, and Dr Fauci tells him that 90% compliance is required, but the willingness to take the vaccine tops out somewhere around 80%, then we’ll have a government which will try to force people to take the vaccine, and, if the government can’t, then the government will want to keep the economic and social restrictions in place for who knows how long.

So, why would anybody accept the word of an admitted liar?

In the end, the government’s response has been at least as much about control of citizens as it has been about fighting the virus. Of course, the editors of The New York Times, though they ran the story, will never make that connection for you.

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A cure worse than the disease

My good friend Donald Douglas has, Alas! cut back on his posting, but he did have this one important pass-it-on post!

Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children

Posted by AmPowerBlog 10:33 AM

At Reason.

But see this, from L.A.T, a couple of weeks ago, “L.A. Unified will not give Fs this semester and instead give students a second chance to pass.”

And this passage especially is killing me, about the push-back against the “no fail” policy:

In April, L.A. Unified prohibited failing grades for the spring semester and also determined that no student’s grade would be lower than it was on March 13, the final day of on-campus instruction. At the time, many teachers and some principals complained that the policy undermined student motivation and some reported a subsequent drop-off in student effort. 

Stocks surge. Retail rises. Unemployment continues to decline. Post-election markets set record highs while online shopping contributed to recovery. How did this month fare overall? 

Such concerns resurfaced Monday during a faculty meeting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, according to an English teacher who did not wish to be identified because she was not authorized to speak.

“Yes, it’s COVID time,” the teacher said. “But this soft bigotry of low expectations — including us being banned from demanding students ever comment with their voices or actually show themselves on camera during Zoom — will indeed help our low-income students stay on the bottom of the pile of learning.”

A high school principal from a different campus was more supportive. Given the unprecedented crisis, the principal said, students who earn A’s and B’s should get to keep them but that the only other grade handed out should be a pass. This principal — who also was not authorized to comment — requested anonymity…

Astonishing, really.

Notice how everybody speaks off the record, obviously so they won’t face the guillotine.

There have been plenty of stories about students falling behind during the ‘remote instruction’ pushed by COVID-19:

Schools confront ‘off the rails’ numbers of failing grades

by Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press | December 6, 2020

The first report cards of the school year are arriving with many more Fs than usual in a dismal sign of the struggles students are experiencing with distance learning.

School districts from coast to coast have reported the number of students failing classes has risen by as many as two or three times — with English language learners and disabled and disadvantaged students suffering the most.

“It was completely off the rails from what is normal for us, and that was obviously very alarming,” said Erik Jespersen, principal of Oregon’s McNary High School, where 38% of grades in late October were failing, compared with 8% in normal times.

Educators see a number of factors at play: Students learning from home skip assignments — or school altogether. Internet access is limited or inconsistent, making it difficult to complete and upload assignments. And teachers who don’t see their students in person have fewer ways to pick up on who is falling behind, especially with many keeping their cameras off during Zoom sessions.

Well, color me shocked! Many students are keeping their cameras off during Zoom sessions? When a 9-year-old Louisiana student was suspended after a teacher reported seeing a gun in the boy’s bedroom during a virtual class, yeah, I can see why some families might choose not to have the cameras on. The school board refused to remove the idiotic suspension from his record.

There could be other reasons as well. Perhaps a student is still in his pajamas, or his hair is all funky looking because he hadn’t showered that morning. Given that the students seeing increased failing grades have been ‘disproportionately’ poor, maybe, just maybe, the students are living in homes where their rooms don’t look very good. Would a fourth or seventh grader be embarrassed if his bedroom had peeling paint or wallpaper? Yeah, I’d guess so.

So, what do we have? Students receiving twice and thrice as many failing grades, in schools that haven’t banned failure:

The increase in failing grades has been seen in districts of all sizes around the country.

At Jespersen’s school in the Salem-Keizer Public School district, hundreds of students initially had not just Fs, but grade scores of 0.0%, indicating they simply were not participating in school at all. In New Mexico, more than 40 percent of middle and high school students were failing at least one class as of late October. In Houston, 42% of students received at least one F in the first grading period of the year. Nearly 40% of grades for high school students in St. Paul, Minnesota, were Fs, double the amount in a typical year.

Yet teachers, and their unions, have been protesting plans to return to in-classroom instruction.

We have, of course, noted Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) forcing both public and private schools to close to in-class instruction through at least January 4, 2021, and possibly beyond.

Let me be clear about this: students are losing an entire year of education due to the government’s response to COVID-19. In Kentucky, Governor Beshear has prioritized vaccine for teachers, which would “give the school district ‘a path’ to return to in-person learning for the first time since the pandemic began in March,” but even that depends upon when the teachers could get the immunizations. The Centers for Disease Control noted that:

All but one of the COVID-19 vaccines that are currently in Phase 3 clinical trials in the United States use two shots. The first shot starts building protection. A second shot a few weeks later is needed to get the most protection the vaccine has to offer.

And that:

It typically takes a few weeks for the body to produce T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes after vaccination. Therefore, it is possible that a person could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 just before or just after vaccination and then get sick because the vaccine did not have enough time to provide protection.

How long between the initial shot and the booster?

Both the Moderna and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines require two shots: a priming dose, followed by a booster shot. The interval between Moderna doses is 28 days; for the Pfizer vaccine, it’s 21 days.

So, if teachers get the initial shot on January 4th, they wouldn’t receive the booster shot until January 25th with the Pfizer vaccine, and February 1st for the Moderna. But there’s more:

The Pfizer vaccine showed efficacy of 95% at preventing symptomatic Covid infection, measured starting from seven days after the second dose was administered. The vaccine appeared to be more or less equally protective across age groups and racial and ethnic groups.

The Moderna vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19, measured starting from 14 days after the second dose. The vaccine’s efficacy appeared to be slightly lower in people 65 and older, but during a presentation to the Food and Drug Administration’s advisory committee the company explained that the numbers could have been influenced by the fact there were few cases in that age group in the trial. The vaccine appeared to be equally effective across different ethnic and racial groups.

So, now we’re up to February 1st before those receiving the Phizer vaccine are protected, and February 15th with the Moderna. That’s another entire month of in-person classes missed. Will Governor Beshear, or other state Governors around the country keep schools closed until then?

You can count on one thing: that’s what the teachers’ unions will want!

Both vaccines seemed to reduce the risk of severe Covid disease. It’s not yet known if either prevents asymptomatic infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Nor is it known if vaccinated people can transmit the virus if they do become infected but don’t show symptoms.

There is a double-edged sword here. Teachers who are immunized might still carry the virus, and be able to transmit it; no one knows if this is the case yet. The Herald-Leader story noted that:

According to information from the state, (Fayette district spokeswoman Lisa) Deffendall said, “all district employees will be eligible for vaccination; contractors who don’t have direct contact with students are not eligible. Only those on the roster will be eligible for vaccination during the educator distribution period due to the limited availability of the vaccine.”

That means that district employees could pass on the virus to contractors, even if those contractors do not have contact with students.

An important point: none of the vaccines have finished testing on, and been approved for, children. The vaccines might protect the teachers and other school employees, but they aren’t going to protect the students, and that means they won’t stop the virus from being transmitted from home to home.

If you believe that the various Governors have been right, and that the virus is so serious that the schools must be closed to in person instruction, there’s no way we can expect Governors not to keep the schools closed.

Anthony Fauci, the grossly overhyped director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claimed that even with the vaccines, if the coming vaccination campaign goes well, we could approach herd immunity by summer’s end and “normality that is close to where we were before” by the end of 2021.

(He) said on Wednesday (December 9, 2020) that that estimate is dependent on significant numbers of Americans being willing to be inoculated with one of several vaccines in various stages of development. If 75 percent to 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated in broad-based campaigns likely to start in the second quarter of next year, then the U.S. should reach the herd immunity threshold months later. If vaccination levels are significantly lower, 40 percent to 50 percent, Fauci said, it could take a very long time to reach that level of protection.

“Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated,” Fauci said. “If we do that, if we do it efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021, we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.”

We’re talking well over a year since this started, well after the end of the 2020-21 school year. The end of the 2019-20 school year was ruined, and the guy to whom so many decision-takers listen is warning that this entire school year might be shot as well.

At some point it needs to be asked: is the cure worse than the disease? At least a year of real education will have been lost, and possibly more, to go along with the millions and millions of people thrown out of work and hundreds of businesses which have been bankrupted by our reaction to this virus.

Our constitutional rights to freedom of peaceable assembly have been trashed, our right to freely exercise our religious beliefs have been trampled upon, our people have been prohibited from attending weddings and funerals and some Governors have even tried to ban Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners.

Human beings are social animals; we need social contact, we need to interact with other people; that’s why solitary confinement in prisons is such an effective, and awful, punishment. But Our Betters have decided that isolation, that solitary confinement — remember: many people do live alone — is part of the solution to COVID-19. In essence, state Governors have decided that the way to save human lives is to not let us be human beings.

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Well, wahhh!

A few articles in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer caught my eye. In the first, it seems that college professors in the Keystone State are having a tough time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘Educators hurt when their students are hurting’: College faculty experience rising rates of stress, burnout due to COVID-19

by Bethany Ao | December 16, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Donald Wargo, an associate professor of economics at Temple University, in his home office in Radnor. Photo by Jessica Griffin, Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer. Click to enlarge.

When Temple University transitioned from in-person classes to virtual in the spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Wargo knew immediately that he had to reassess his goals for what he wanted his students to accomplish.

As virtual classes continued into the fall, Wargo, an associate professor of economics, tried to capture the atmosphere of an in-person classroom to the best of his ability — using icebreaker questions at the beginning of the semester to engage freshmen and assigning students to Zoom breakout rooms for small discussions. But it has been difficult to recreate that learning environment, he said.

“It’s our job to get students to learn,” said Wargo, who also serves on the executive board of Temple’s American Association of University Professors chapter. “And when our students are stressed from other things like social isolation or living at home that interfere with their learning, we are stressed.”

While the early days of the pandemic were undoubtedly hard for college faculty members as they dealt with campus closings and uncertainty about the fall semester, research shows that burnout rates and anxiety are still increasing 10 months later due to worsening student mental health and increasing fears of job loss.

There’s more at the original.

I do not know Professor Wargo’s salary, but, according to Glassdoor:

The typical Temple University Professor salary is $156,901. Professor salaries at Temple University can range from $137,463 – $175,610. This estimate is based upon 5 Temple University Professor salary report(s) provided by employees or estimated based upon statistical methods. When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a Professor at Temple University can expect to make an average total pay of $156,901.

While I normally don’t include photos from the Inquirer, because I try to minimize content to avoid plagiarism concerns, I did in this article. The photo shows Dr Wargo, in his home office in Radnor, a ‘Mail Line’ suburb of Philadelphia. The photo, taken from the outside, shows Dr Wargo in what appears to be a nice, glassed in sunroom, working remotely from his home. While I don’t know his address, and would not publish it if I did, and do not know what the estimated value of his home is, according to realtor.com, there are currently 160 homes for sale there, with a median listing price of $797,500. Radnor has a recent median average sale price of $916,500.

The area isn’t exactly poor.

Professors aren’t exactly underpaid, and are normally considered among the elites of our society, and, yes, there have been some job losses:

In addition to student mental health issues, a number of colleges and universities around the country have announced staff cuts and layoffs as a result of COVID-19. In October, five universities in Pennsylvania’s state system announced that they would lay off more than 100 full-time faculty. In September, Rutgers University eliminated dozens of adjunct positions, citing “unprecedented pandemic-related economic pressures.”

But, try as I might, my sympathy for the elites is somewhat limited by other news:

Retail sales fell 1.1% in November, biggest drop in seven months

by Joseph Pisani, Associated Press | December 16, 2020 | 11:20 AM EST

NEW YORK — Americans held back on spending during the start of the holiday shopping season, a troubling sign for retailers and the state of the U.S. economy.

U.S. retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in November, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. It was the biggest drop in seven months, and a steeper decline than Wall Street analysts had expected.

The report points to a weak start to the all-important holiday shopping season, which can usually account for a quarter or more of a retailer’s annual sales. It is also another sign that the pandemic is slowing the U.S. economy as retailers face tighter restrictions and people stay away from stores.

The Commerce Department on Wednesday also revised October’s report, saying that retail sales fell 0.1% that month, instead of rising 0.3% as it previously reported. Retailers had tried to get people to shop early, with Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and others offering holiday deals in October.

There’s more at the original. But, imagine that: with a high unemployment rate, and all of the economic restrictions that governors like Tom Wolf (D-PA) have instituted to fight COVID-19, can anyone really be surprised? People living from paycheck-to-paycheck, in an economy in which government officials can simply order their jobs shut down, might be a little more conservative in their spending habits. And the people who have lost their jobs don’t have money to spend for Christmas, not when they are worried about putting food on the table and keeping the heat on during the winter.

Black Friday was also a bust. Typically one of the busiest shopping days of the season, shoppers mostly stayed home after health officials warned people not to shop in person, and retailers followed suit by putting their best deals online. Half as many people shopped inside stores this Black Friday than last year, according to retail data company Sensormatic Solutions.

I’m shocked, shocked! that people stayed home after the government told them it wasn’t safe to go to stores.

Gov. Wolf’s COVID-19 restrictions will decimate small businesses across the state | Opinion

Jennifer Stefano, For The Inquirer | December 16, 2020 | 9:15 AM EST

At Vecchia Osteria in Newtown, Bucks County, oversized Christmas balls hang from the ceiling and lighted garland frames each entry way. Dozens of tables sit empty, waiting for customers who won’t be coming. The only signs that the business is still open are three large, brown takeout bags under a framed portrait of actress Sophia Loren.

Owners Pasquale and Anna Palino and their young children immigrated from Italy in 1999. After a decade working the kitchens of Italian restaurants around Philadelphia, Pasquale opened Vecchia. Today, all five children, along with their two sons-in-law, work the business seven days a week. Earlier this year, they managed to survive the first round of Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID-19 lockdowns. But the governor’s latest litany of restrictions — including a three-week indoor dining ban during the industry’s busiest time of year — threatens to destroy the American dream they spent a lifetime building.

“We are losing money every single day,” says Anna, a breast cancer survivor. The eatery, she points out, has lost not only regular, dine-in customers, but also income from holiday parties, catering, and gift cards sales that make the holiday season especially important for restaurants. The Palinos want to stop the virus from spreading, and say they follow every health rule. But they, like many, believe it is individuals taking personal responsibility, not government mandates, that will be required to stop the spread.

Pasquale and Anna have 30 employees who rely on them to earn a living. That’s why their family decided to keep paying all their employees and not to take any income for themselves. But how long can that last, they wonder?

There’s more at the original, but remember: those thirty restaurant employees are, if they are like the vast majority of restaurant employees, making at or near the minimum wage. They aren’t like Professor Wargo, nice and comfortable in his Radnor home, with, one would hope, some decent savings from his six-figure salary.

This is a lesson for the good professor and his colleagues. Yes, some of them are worried about their jobs, though relatively few have lost them. Rather, when colleges go virtual, it’s not the professors who lose their jobs, but the custodians who keep the buildings clean, the maintenance staff not needed because the buildings aren’t being used, the cooks and other service personnel in the cafeterias, where few people are now eating. Those are the people who were making far less than the professors, and those are the nameless ones who are losing their jobs. I have no idea how Dr Wargo, or any other individual professor voted, but what we do know is that college professors donated seven times more to Joe Biden than they did to President Trump. The elites, it would seem, wanted to vote for politicians who would put other people out of work.

For their own good, of course! The displaced workers might wind up out on the streets, homeless and jobless, but hey, they’ll be less likely to catch COVID, right?

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Rights delayed are rights denied

We have thrice previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, and Danville Christian Academy’s legal actions to enjoin enforcement of that order against private religious schools. While the private religious initially won, the Governor appealed to the Sixth Circuit, and the appellate court agreed with him, leaving the religious schools closed.

That was two weeks ago. An application for a stay was filed with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday, December 1st, and several subsequent motions have been filed, but today is Monday, December 14th, and the private religious schools’ constitutional rights have been held in abeyance for two full weeks now.

Two weeks, during Advent, a highly important time of the year for Christians. Being December 14th, there’s only a week of school left this year before closure for the Christmas holidays. If the Supreme Court does not act, immediately, there will be no operative decision from the Court on whether the Governor’s orders have violated our First Amendment rights to freedom of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, because the Governor’s order expires before school would normally resume in January. However, there is nothing currently preventing Mr Beshear from extending his executive order past January 4th.

The Governor claimed that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” as though it is somehow permissible to suspend our constitutional rights for a limited period, though he continues just two sentences later to say that he could, “if necessary,” extend the order beyond the current January 4, 2021, expiration of the executive order. The appellants responded that, even now, Mr Beshear is attempting “to lift the injunction prohibiting him from closing Kentucky’s houses of worship,” so that he can order churches closed as well. We have previously noted that the Governor wants all churches to be closed down, but the four Catholic bishops in Kentucky have decided to continue public worship.

Our authoritarian Governor just hates to be defied, and he’s trying to get the injunction in Maryville Baptist Church, Inc. v Beshear lifted so that he can order churches closed, as he did last spring.

COVID-19 is serious, and has been fatal in a small percentage of cases, but the threat to our Constitution and our rights is far, far greater, and the Supreme Court needs to slap down such attempts.

As we have previously noted, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and GOP leaders have stated that they intend to rein in the Governor’s emergency powers under KRS 39A, but, while that would be welcome, and should happen to prevent future abuse, the Supreme Court needs to say, and set the precedent, that our explicitly stated constitutional rights cannot be simply set aside because the government, any government claims to have a good reason to do so.

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Irony of ironies: Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) caught the virus

Remember when President Trump tested positive for COVID-19? He was criticized and outright mocked for his resistance to wearing a face mask.

So, what will the left say if a state Governor, one who instituted mandatory face mask orders, who closed down some sections of the economy and severely restricted others, always wore a mask in public, closed public schools, ordered testing on anyone entering the state, and pretty much instituted all of the restrictions that other Governors did, tested positive himself?

As a good Catholic, I am not allowed to ever wish COVID-19 on any person, and I will deny ever having done so. But there is a certain sense of schadenfreude when one of the tinpot dictators who think that they have the right to tell us how we have to live our lives, for our own good, don’t you know, to keep from getting the virus winds up getting it himself.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf tests positive for the coronavirus

by Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA and Cynthia Fernandez | Updated: December 9, 2020 | 3:13 PM EST

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced Wednesday.

“I have no symptoms and am feeling well,” he said in a statement, adding that he and First Lady Frances Wolf, who is awaiting test results, are quarantining. The governor said he plans to continue working remotely, “as many are doing during the pandemic.”

The announcement comes as daily COVID-19 cases in the state climb higher than ever and hospitals contend with severe shortages of staff needed to care for infected patients as well as Pennsylvanians experiencing other health issues.

Wolf was last seen in public during a Monday news conference with Health Secretary Rachel (sic) Levine,[1]Richard Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, is a male who is so mentally ill that he believes he is female, and goes by the name of “Rachel.” In accordance with The First … Continue reading where they both wore face masks, even while speaking.

There’s more at the original, but as Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) and Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) have continually inflicted overbearing restrictions on people, on jobs, and on businesses, purportedly to help fight COVOD-19, the irony that Mr Wolf would contract it, with everybody around him masked up and socially distancing themselves, tells us something: the measures that have been imposed have not worked to the extent that they can justify what those restrictions have done to people economically and socially.

References

References
↑1 Richard Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, is a male who is so mentally ill that he believes he is female, and goes by the name of “Rachel.” In accordance with The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we are properly identifying him as male, use the proper, male, pronouns to refer to him, and address him by his proper, birth name where appropriate.
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Democratic Governors see 1984 not as a cautionary tale, but a blueprint for fighting COVID-19

The fat filmmaker, Michael Moore, said of Americans resisting the dictates of the oh-so-nobly-intended Democratic Governors imposing draconian COVID-19 rules on our country:

“Why do you want to die? Why — to take a stand against us liberals, to show us a thing or two?”

Americans don’t want to die, yet many Americans have willingly risked death to protect our constitutional rights as Americans. Patrick Henry said it best: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

The ‘defense’ the left claim we must undertake to save ourselves from the scourge of the virus, is to lose our freedom of peaceable assembly, to lose our right to freely practice our faith, and, of course, lose our right to keep and bear arms. We must lose our livelihoods, we must lose our careers, and, for some, that means losing their homes. We must forget seeing our families and our friends, we must eschew our holidays and our traditions, we must lock ourselves in our homes, venturing out only for milk and bread, and forget being the social beings that humans are. To save our human lives, we must stop being human beings. Not just no, but Hell no!

Orwellian society, as envisioned in 1984, was a regimented place, where friendships were discouraged, in which the public were encouraged to spy and snitch on others, where romance was forbidden and sex restricted to procreation. How much different is that from what Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo would force upon us today?

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More COVID-19 idiocy by Andy Beshear

Setting aside, for the moment, my many criticisms of Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) executive orders on COVID-19, and using the Governor’s own reasoning that they are somehow so necessary that they supersede our Constitutional rights, just how does this make sense?

Beshear to KY superintendents: Prepare rosters of teachers willing to get vaccines.

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | December 4, 2020 | 06:47 PM EST | Updated: 07:27 PM EST

Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday asked Kentucky’s superintendents to begin preparing rosters of school personnel who are willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the state Education Department.

While Beshear is unsure when educators will begin receiving the vaccine, he asked superintendents to plan for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to the state’s education community.

Although the vaccines are distributed at the federal level, states direct where they need to go.

Beshear expects the Pfizer two-dose vaccine to become available by Dec. 15 and anticipates Kentucky receiving 38,000 doses in the first round of distribution. The initial doses will go to healthcare providers and nursing home residents and staff, but there won’t be enough to vaccinate all of them, according to the state.

Full disclosure: my wife is a registered nurse working in a hospital, and has had to take care of COVID patients. She is already scheduled for the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in a couple of weeks.

Two weeks later, the state will receive the shipment of the Moderna vaccinations, which is twice as many as the first Pfizer delivery, Beshear said. After healthcare providers and residents and staff at long-term care facilities, Kentucky will prioritize emergency medical service workers and educators.

“That recognizes the exposure (to the virus) that educators have within the building,” Beshear said. “But it also recognizes the absolute, critical importance of what they do and how much better in-person classes are.”

Since the goal is to make schools as safe as possible, Beshear said all school staff who are willing to be vaccinated should be included on the rosters. Since it is unlikely that one shipment of vaccines will cover everyone within a school, districts should consider prioritizing those more likely to be exposured to the virus, Beshear said.

Why would we be prioritizing teachers, when the schools are closed? It would make more sense to prioritize people who work at Kroger!

One point hardly ever mentioned: testing the vaccines on children is just now beginning testing on children, and no vaccine has yet been approved for kids. One immunized teacher in a classroom full of unvaccinated children does virtually nothing to slow the spread of the virus, so Governor Beshear will still try to keep the schools closed.

The clinical trials conducted this year tested the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in adults, and researchers will need to conduct additional studies on how the vaccine affects younger children.

Researchers will need to examine the dosages, interval between doses, and the number of doses that work best in children.

This process could take several months, according to pediatric infectious disease experts. Kids might not see a vaccine until the summer or fall of 2021.

Translation: Using the Governor’s logic, it might not be safe to open the schools next fall!

Kentucky has the dubious honor of leading the nation in the percentage of children being reared by their grandparents rather than their parents, and the elderly are more susceptible to the virus, and more likely to become seriously ill or die from the virus than those who are younger. Thus, with unvaccinated children, if Governor Beshear allows the schools to reopen, you’ll see another surge in infections, and deaths, and if he doesn’t allow the schools to reopen, then there’s no need to prioritize teachers.