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| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #11 1) Re-Opening Will Save Lives California’s Tom McClintock — a true champion of pro-growth policies and a CTUP favorite — explodes the smears from the left that reopening puts money ahead of lives after last night’s reopening plan was released. McClintock’s latest column points out that we cannot forget that as we save lives from COVID-19, we are losing other lives through an overzealous lockdown. His column – headlined “The Unseen Death Toll of COVID-19 Measures” – asks a series of compelling questions: “How many of the 1.8 million cases of new cancers each year in the United States will go undetected for months because routine screenings and appointments have been postponed? How many heart, kidney, liver, and pulmonary illnesses will fester while people’s lives are on hold? How many suicides or domestic homicides will occur as families watch their livelihoods evaporate before their eyes? How many drug and alcohol deaths can we expect as Americans stew in their homes under police-enforced indefinite home detention orders? How many new cases of obesity-related diabetes and heart disease will emerge as Americans are banished from outdoor recreation?” https://mcclintock.house.gov/newsroom/columns/the-unseen-death-toll-of-covid-19-measures 2) DeBlasio: “Light At The End Of The Tunnel” Is… July or August? New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday he would continue the state’s shutdown through May 15. But Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor, says that’s not nearly PESSIMISTIC enough. During an interview with Fox News, the mayor said he didn’t want to give “false hope” to his city’s sequestered masses. “The light at the end of the tunnel is later on in the summer, as we go into the fall, we can get it right. But [it will take] a lot of discipline.” Bill Hemmer of Fox News then said, “I’m hearing July in that answer. Is that what I hear?” “July, August are the months where we have to begin to get back to normal,” de Blasio said. At that speed, tumbleweeds might be careening across Times Square by then. We’ve said before that recovery will be conducted at two speeds, one set by red states and one by blue states. If New York isn’t opening we know a lot of governors from South Dakota to Texas who will be happy to welcome New York businesses. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-nyc-when-lockdown-end-new-york-mayor-bill-de-blasio-july-august-a9469626.html 3) Lock down the nursing homes, not the country A paper from the International Long Term Care Policy Network finds that nursing homes account for 57% of all COVID-19 deaths in Spain, 53% in Italy, and 45% in France.  https://ltccovid.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Mortality-associated-with-COVID-12-April-3.pdf We looked up some of the state data and found a few reporting the nursing home total including: Massachusetts has 530 nursing home deaths, 48% of the state’s total. Pennsylvania has 365 nursing home deaths, 52% of the state’s total. New York’s most recent report shows 3,060 nursing home deaths through April 14, which was 28% of state death total through that date. It will be interesting to see how many of the +3700 death revision were in nursing homes in the next data release. 4) When It’s Snowing, Civil Liberties Can Be Suspended Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is the nation’s “Mother May I” of arbitrary lockdown restrictions. Her state’s residents can’t buy seeds, paint, or gardening supplies but are allowed to purchase alcohol, marijuana and, state lottery tickets. People who have both a primary residence and an upstate cabin aren’t allowed to travel between them. Faced with thousands of citizens clogging the streets around the state Capitol building in Lansing on Wednesday, Governor Whitmer went on television to explain that people shouldn’t be upset. “The fact that we’re cracking down on people traveling between homes, or planting or landscaping or golfing really for a couple more weeks isn’t going to meaningfully impact people’s ability to do it cause the snow will do that in and of itself.” https://twitter.com/mjoyce317/status/1250434248776888321 Her breathtaking obfuscation was torn apart on many levels. One vegetable garden owner schooled her as follows: “Governor, here in rural Michigan, where it does get warm later, we use seeds to plant indoors and get an early start. If we wait until it’s warm we won’t have any home grown vegetables.” Another wrote “You are taking food off the tables of Michiganders.” Not to mention taking common sense off the table in policy discussions on the lockdown. 5) Game changing drug for severe COVID?Early data has leaked (via a video conference call, a sign of the times) from one site of the Phase 3 trial of Gilead’s antiviral remdesivir.The daily injection was given to 113 severely ill patients at the University of Chicago and only two died. The majority have already been discharged and the average recovery took only six days of treatment.If the official results are as good as this leak, this would be the first highly effective treatment for severe cases – which would make a big dent in the death rate and in public fears of returning to work.https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/early-peek-at-data-on-gilead-coronavirus-drug-suggests-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/ 6) The Empty Skies of United Yesterday, United Airlines sent its employees a memo bracing them to expect massive layoffs on October 1. Why then? The government bailout and loan money given to airlines requires them to maintain their full employment levels until that date. Despite the cynicism of United’s move, no one can dispute that it and other airlines are suffering cataclysmic losses. United CEO Oscar Munoz told employees that passenger traffic is down 97 percent from a year ago: “We expect to fly fewer people during the entire month of May than we did on a single day in May 2019.” Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1250592723817684993 7) Anti-Hero Of The Day “That’s above my pay grade, Tucker. I didn’t consider the Bill of Rights when I issued this order.” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy when asked by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson about whether he weighed the Bill of Rights before issuing executive orders that resulted in the arrest of 15 people attending the funeral of a prominent rabbi in Lakewood, New Jersey. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/03/funeral-coronavirus-violations/ 8) Headline of the Day Where are our freedoms going??? Have we become North Korea?  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/15/coronavirus-police-maryland-town-urge-residents-wear-pants/5140750002/ |
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