STUDY: Anxiety From Reactions to COVID-19 Will Destroy at Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than Can Be Saved by Lockdowns

One of the most important principles of epidemiology is weighing benefits and harms. A failure to do this can make virtually any medical treatment seem helpful or destructive. In the words of Ronald C. Kessler of the Harvard Medical School and healthcare economist Paul E. Greenberg, “medical interventions are appropriate only if their expected benefits clearly exceed the sum of their direct costs and their expected risks.”

Likewise, a 2020 paper about quarantines published in The Lancet states: “Separation from loved ones, the loss of freedom, uncertainty over disease status, and boredom can, on occasion, create dramatic effects. Suicide has been reported, substantial anger generated, and lawsuits brought following the imposition of quarantine in previous outbreaks. The potential benefits of mandatory mass quarantine need to be weighed carefully against the possible psychological costs.”

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Davidson County Officials Still Can’t Back up Claim that Surrounding Counties Had More Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

As of press time Monday, Davidson County officials still would not demonstrate precisely how “surrounding counties” had more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Davidson itself did, as they attested last Friday.

Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir said at a press conference Friday that Davidson County had 2,832 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Jahangir also said there were an additional 3,227 cases in the surrounding counties — an increase of 955 in one day. Now, for the first time – Jahangir went on to say – the surrounding counties had more cases than Davidson County.

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Commentary: Mayor Cooper’s Tax Increase Would Torpedo an Already Reeling Nashville

Mayor John Cooper’s proposed 32 percent property tax increase is a terrible idea and would be detrimental to the city of Nashville, potentially creating a chilling effect across Middle Tennessee. An increase of such magnitude would bring additional pain and suffering to untold thousands of Nashvillians already harmed by the government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown and the tornado that preceded it.

Decisions about tax increases should be delayed until next spring. After the Mayor has made significant cuts and structural changes in Metro government. It also must come after Mayor Cooper has hosted townhall meetings in every Nashville neighborhood. At such times he can educate voters about what he will have done to cut spending and exactly how he will operate the city in a fiscally conservative manner.

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Commentary: Will Biden Be the Media’s Downfall or Salvation?

If we lived in a fair and just world, most of the current media would simply go away and try something else.

The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err. The rub is not even that they are poorly educated or rarely write well.

We also expect officials to leak one-sided stories and then the media to print them without edits. These are all things baked into the media cake and the public understands, even if it does not quite accept them.

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‘You Truly Deserve It’: Trump Endorses Ilhan Omar’s GOP Challenger

President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Lacy Johnson, a GOP congressional candidate running to unseat Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

“And I’m Endorsing you also Lacy, you truly deserve it. You are doing a great job, and Omar is a disaster who wants much higher taxes, hates our Military & our Vets, demands Open Borders, and is fighting to take away our great 2nd Amendment,” Trump tweeted on Monday.

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Top White House Economic Adviser Won’t Rule Out Blocking Coronavirus Relief to Sanctuary Cities

Larry Kudlow, the director of the U.S. National Economic Council, won’t rule out the possibility of prohibiting bailout funds to states that have sanctuary cities.

Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kudlow spoke about a possible “Phase Four” of a coronavirus stimulus bill to help Americans struggling economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. The top White House economic adviser also was asked if a Phase Four would include funds for state and local governments.

“There may be additional legislation,” Kudlow began, noting the federal government has already green-lighted more than $3 trillion in “direct federal assistance” for individuals and struggling businesses in the country. “We probably will have some ideas.”

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Jahangir: COVID-19 Didn’t Hit Nashville as Hard as Some Originally Feared

Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir said Monday that COVID-19 didn’t hit Nashville as hard as computer models originally predicted.

“Just a few weeks ago we were planning for a 1,000-bed auxiliary hospital because models had shown that our hospitals would be overrun,” Jahangir said, without saying how many people in Davidson County were to have supposedly caught COVID-19, per those models.

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The Beacon Center’s Mark Cunningham: People Need to Look at City Leadership Over These Past 10 Years

Towards the end of the third hour of Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, The Beacon Center’s Marks Cunningham weighed in on Mayor Cooper’s proposed 32% property tax increase stating that it was the wrong time to be doing this to the citizens of Nashville in lieu of the government-mandated shutdown and recent tornado destruction. He suggested that government cuts and freezes need to be put on the table if they are going to hinder small businesses while corporate businesses receive tax breaks and incentives.

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Daily Caller News Foundation Sues for Documents Regarding China and the WHO

The Daily Caller News Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on Monday through government watchdog group Judicial Watch against the Department of Health and Human Services for communications regarding the World Health Organization, the Chinese government, and the novel coronavirus. 

The lawsuit seeks the communications of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, the director and deputy director, respectively, of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci is the top scientist on the White House coronavirus task force. Lane was the U.S. government’s top official on a WHO-sponsored fact-finding mission to China in February. World health officials investigated the origins of the coronavirus outbreak and monitored the Chinese government’s response to the pandemic.

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Groups Sue to Expand Absentee Voting in Tennessee

Two legal organizations have filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Tre Hargett in an effort to overturn Tennessee’s “unconstitutional” restrictions on absentee voting.

The lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Campaign Legal Center. The two groups filed the complaint on behalf of several Tennessee organizations “whose many members are not eligible for vote by mail under current law.”

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‘I Am Antifa’ Professor Receives Sizeable Payout After Suing Iowa College

The professor who resigned in 2019 after telling a local news outlet, “I am Antifa” just got a sizeable payout from the college that let him go.

As Campus Reform reported in August, Kirkwood Community College professor Jeff Klinzman posted on his personal social media messages in support of the far-left extremist group Antifa, which President Donald Trump was considering at the time labeling a domestic terror organization. When a local television station contacted Klinzman, he replied, “I affirm I am Antifa,” unleashing nationwide backlash eventually leading to the college making the “decision to remove” him from the classroom.

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Internal Chinese Report Warns Beijing to Prepare for Armed Conflict with US Over COVID-19 Backlash, Sources Say

An internal Chinese report warns Beijing officials that backlash from the coronavirus pandemic risks tilting China into a full bore armed conflict with the United States, Reuters reported Monday.

Anti-China sentiment hasn’t been this white-hot since the Tiananmen Square crackdown more than three decades ago, sources familiar with the paper told Reuters. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report, which the sources say was presented to Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in April.

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Commentary: Liberals Seek to Use Coronavirus to Bail Out Reckless Spending for State and Local Governments

Americans have come together in the fight against the invisible enemy, but this situation has been made worse by some politicians who seek to take advantage of this pandemic and our recovery while so many are suffering. President Trump has been working around the clock to slow the spread of the Wuhan virus and get the economy going again, but Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have used this crisis to push their radical socialist agenda and grow the size of government. Twice now, Nancy Pelosi held American families, workers, and businesses hostage for days by delaying relief funding in the name of securing tens of millions of dollars for the Kennedy Center, pushing her Green New Deal, changing voting laws, and growing government to advance her radical socialist agenda.

Even more recently, there have been calls to give handouts to failing state and local governments, not because of the coronavirus, but because these states have been mismanaged and run irresponsibly. The American taxpayer should not bail out state and local governments for the reckless fiscal decisions made before the coronavirus.

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Dozen Members of DeWine, Husted’s Ohio Economic Advisory Board Are Campaign Donors

Up until now, you mostly had to be connected to big business — and to Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov Jon Husted — to have a say in how businesses of all sizes are considered in Ohio’s snails-pace reopening.

On Friday, DeWine said the state would begin a phased reopening from the Chinese coronavirus shutdown, The Ohio Star reported. The governor said he is forming a pair of advisory groups tasked with developing best practices for reopening dine-in restaurants, barbershops and salons.

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Whitmer Creates COVID-19 Spending Oversight Office, Approves $150 Million in Coronavirus Spending

Whitmer MI Capitol overcast

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created the Michigan COVID-19 Office of Accountability on Monday to provide a check over spending during the coronavirus pandemic.

The office, which resides in the State Budget Office, provides oversight to all spending to fight the coronavirus and will report to the governor and the state budget director.

The Department of Technology, Management and Budget will designate a chief for the office.

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Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services Asks Employers To Report Employees Who Refuse to Come to Work

The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services has set up a page on their website where employers can report employees who refuse to return to work as businesses set to reopen in the state.

Under the latest “Stay Safe Ohio” order, medical care such as a dentist or doctor visit that does not require an overnight stay reopened on May 1. Manufacturing, construction and distribution, as well as “general office environments,” reopened on May 4. Retail and service businesses are set to reopen on May 12, with social distancing practices.

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Commentary: The Tyrannical Soul of Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer

When Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation he was criticized by abolitionists for not issuing a more sweeping order. He refused to do so, asking “If I take the step, must I not do so . . . without any argument, except the one that I think the measure politically expedient, and morally right? Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the boundless field of absolutism? Could this pass unnoticed, or unresisted?”

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Minnesota Business Owners Call for Reopening Economy During Press Conference at the Capitol

Several small business owners called for reopening the economy during a Monday press conference at the Minnesota Capitol.

“We desire to honor our God, and our government and governor. We think we can do both. But we have no idea how to get a plan approved, to whom to submit it, or if anyone needs to or will consider it. The church needs to gather, we are more the church when we gather than at any other time. Please, Gov. Walz, help us by providing clear ways for plans to be approved and for us to meet,” said Rory Martin, pastor of the Liberty Baptist Church in Eden Prairie.

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