CDC Announces COVID-19 May No Longer Be an Epidemic; Coronavirus Expert Says Americans Will Be Wearing Masks for ‘Several Years’; Cities Acknowledge Riots Likely Caused New COVID-19 Cases

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By The Federalist. The United States now has so few deaths due to COVID-19 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday it is approaching the threshold for dipping below the level of an epidemic.

The CDC defines an epidemic as an outbreak from which the number of deaths per week exceeds a given percentage of total deaths within the nation. The number of deaths from COVID-19 has steadily declined since hitting its peak in early May after it began spiking in the second week in March.

That threshold death rate for COVID-19 and other diseases such as influenza and pneumonia fluctuates, ranging typically from 5 to 7 percent at the height of flu season. The CDC said the Wuhan flu death rate had, during the last week in June, become equal to the epidemic threshold of 5.9 percent, reaching its lowest point since the end of last year.

The agency warned this is likely to change as more death certificates from recent weeks are processed, but it could mean hopeful news for the upcoming weeks. The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 has been declining for 10 straight weeks, concluding with week 26 that ended June 27. This suggests the United States could be on the verge of not being considered in an epidemic.

“Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC,” according to the CDC’s website. (Read more from “CDC Announces COVID-19 May No Longer Be an Epidemic” HERE)

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Anti-Police Demonstrations May Have Sparked New Coronavirus Cases, Some Cities Now Acknowledge

By Fox News. Several big-city mayors and top officials are acknowledging that weeks of anti-police protests and riots may have contributed to surging coronavirus rates, weeks after Democrats and even some epidemiologists openly encouraged Black Lives Matter allies to demonstrate in the streets.

In public statements and interviews with Fox News this weekend, officials in Los Angeles, Seattle and Miami-Dade County, Fla., have indicated that some link between protests and new cases was at least possible. Still, many officials declined to comment when contacted by Fox News this weekend, and others – including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office – disputed that the protests had caused any issue.

“Based on our health indicators, which measure hospital admissions, number of people in ICU and percentage of New Yorkers testing positive, we have seen no indication of an uptick in cases,” Avery Cohen, de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, told Fox News. . .

New York officials were previously less tolerant of mass gatherings — at least, for certain religious groups. In April, de Blasio told the Jewish community that “the time for warnings has passed” after he said a funeral gathering had violated social distancing guidelines.

New York’s current position differs markedly from assessments by officials in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Last Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti acknowledged that public protests likely were causing a coronavirus spike, just two days after claiming there wasn’t “any conclusive evidence” showing a connection between the two. De Blasio, like Garcetti, has defended demonstrators, saying they were participating in a “historical moment.”

(Read more from “Anti-Police Demonstrations May Have Sparked New Coronavirus Cases, Some Cities Now Acknowledge” HERE)

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Coronavirus Expert Says Americans Will Be Wearing Masks for ‘Several Years’

By Fox News. Health experts won’t ask Americans to take off their masks any time soon.

That’s the take of Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He has been preparing for an outbreak like the novel coronavirus as part of his work for years.

Johns Hopkins practices virus simulations as part of is preparedness protocol, with the goal of offering public health experts and policymakers a blueprint of what to do in a pandemic. One of those simulations took place in October 2019, when Toner and a team of researchers launched a coronavirus pandemic simulation in New York, running through various scenarios on how residents, governments and private businesses would hypothetically react to the threat.

One thing that stood out to him: Face coverings are a vital defense to stop the spread of the virus. He believes COVID-19 won’t slow down in the U.S. even as states start to slowly reopen. . .

“I think that mask wearing and some degree of social distancing, we will be living with — hopefully living with happily — for several years,” he said. “It’s actually pretty straightforward. If we cover our faces, and both you and anyone you’re interacting with are wearing a mask, the risk of transmission goes way down.” (Read more from “Coronavirus Expert Says Americans Will Be Wearing Masks for ‘Several Years’” HERE)

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Grieving Father of Slain 8-Year-Old Blasts Killers: ‘They Say Black Lives Matter. You Killed Your Own’

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The father of a young girl who was killed near a protest zone in Atlanta denounced the protesters whose violent conflict took his daughter’s life over the weekend, WSB-TV reported.

“They say black lives matter,” Secoriya Williamson, the father of Secoriea Turner, said. “You killed your own this time. … You killed a child. She didn’t do nothing to nobody.”

Secoriea’s mother, Chamaine Turner, broke down as she attempted to speak about her daughter during a press conference.

“She was only 8 years old,” Turner said, WSB reported. “She would have been on Tik Tok dancing on her phone, just got done eating. We understand the frustration of Rayshard Brooks. We didn’t have anything to do with that. We’re innocent. My baby didn’t mean no harm.” (Read more from “Grieving Father of Slain 8-Year-Old Blasts Killers: ‘They Say Black Lives Matter. You Killed Your Own'” HERE)

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Suspect in Murder of Vanessa Guillen Appears in Court

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A suspect accused of assisting in hiding the body of murdered Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen appeared in court on Monday, amid increasing calls for an independent investigation into the disappearance of the solider who went missing more than two months ago. . .

Cecily Aguilar, 22, has been charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence in connection with Guillen’s death.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Texas, “20-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Aaron Robinson told Aguilar that he killed a female soldier by striking her in the head with a hammer while on Ft. Hood on April 22, 2020,” and “subsequently, Robinson enlisted the help of Aguilar in disposing of the dead female’s body.” . . .

Guillen’s family has called for a Congressional investigation into her death, claiming the Army has not been forthright in providing details since her disappearance from the base. The soldier’s loved ones also said Guillen had told them she was sexually harassed by a superior prior to her disappearance, and that she refused to report the alleged misconduct out of fear of retaliation. (Read more from “Suspect in Murder of Vanessa Guillen Appears in Court” HERE)

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Pentagon Draft Policy Would Ban Confederate Flag Displays

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A draft policy being circulated by Pentagon leaders would ban the display of the Confederate flag in Defense Department workplaces or public areas by service members and civilian personnel.

The policy, which has not yet been finalized or signed by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, comes as President Donald Trump earlier in the day criticized NASCAR’s decision to ban the flag at its races and venues. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft.

If approved, the draft Pentagon policy would bring the other military services in line with the Marine Corps, which banned Confederate displays on its bases in early June. Other military services had been poised to make similar decisions, but they were stalled when Esper said he wanted a review of the matter that would come up with a consistent department policy. (Read more from “Pentagon Draft Policy Would Ban Confederate Flag Displays” HERE)

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GOP Senator: ‘The Deep State Is So Deep Its People Get Away With Political Crimes’

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In a series of tweets today, Sen.Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) described the depth of the “Deep State” as so great that its members “get away with political crimes.” In one tweet, Grassley referred to recent remarks by Attorney General Bill Barr asserting that President Donald Trump was indeed the target of an “organized effort” to remove him from office. . .

Grassley was referring to comments Attorney General Bill Barr made in an interview aired yesterday on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo:

Maria Bartiromo: A source said to me a couple of years ago, speaking of the Russia collusion story, that this was the closest the United States ever came to a coup to take down a president since the assassination of Lincoln. Is that an appropriate statement?

Barr: In this sense I think it is the closest we have come to an organized effort to push a president out of office, but I’m not reaching a judgment as to what the motivations there were.

(Read more from “GOP Senator: ‘The Deep State Is So Deep Its People Get Away With Political Crimes’” HERE)

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NYC Councilwoman Freaks Out Over White Man Holding Black Child: ‘It Hurts People’

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Members of New York City’s Community Education Council District 2 (CEC D2) behaved like the children they are meant to represent in last week’s meeting, when discussions of a joke from a past meeting devolved into screaming, personal attacks, and slanders.

During the council’s June meeting, the group was tackling school integration. Council member Thomas Wrocklage had brought his toddler daughter and a friend’s nephew. The nephew spent much of the meeting climbing on and off Wrocklage’s lap.

This innocent image of a man holding a child was the target of scorn by his fellow council members. Rachel Broshi told Wrocklage, “It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap and they don’t know the context. That is harmful.”

Broshi, and several other council members, argued that the image of a white man holding a black child was inherently racist. When Wrocklage asked Broshi to explain why holding a friend’s nephew was racist merely due to their differing races, Broshi refused, yelling at Wrocklage, “Read a book. Read Ibram Kendi. Read ‘White Fragility.’ Read ‘How to Talk to White People.’” . . .

In the aftermath of the meeting, Wrocklage faced an onslaught of allegations of racism on social media. Around 100 parents in District 2 signed a letter to Maud Maron, the president of the school board, complaining about Wrocklage, who claims the letter slanders him with false allegations. (Read more from “NYC Councilwoman Freaks Out Over White Man Holding Black Child: ‘It Hurts People’” HERE)

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Yet Another Stunning Revelation About the True Origin of COVID-19

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In 2013, Zheng-Li Shi, the “bat woman,” and her team from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were asked to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan Province after six miners contracted pneumonia with symptoms similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

After sampling the mine shaft for a year, the researchers identified a diverse group of bat coronaviruses, one of which was designated RaBtCoV/4991 (GenBank KP876546) and partially sequenced as a 440-base pair fragment targeting the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene (RdRp).

Despite being unique enough to be considered a new strain and associated with a human SARS-like outbreak as a Potential Pandemic Pathogen, thereafter, RaBtCoV/4991 disappeared from the scientific literature.

That is, until 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an intensive search for the origin of the coronavirus responsible, SARS-CoV-2.

In the February 3, 2020 Nature article, scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by Zheng-Li Shi, stated that the coronavirus RaTG13, isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, China, showed a 96.2% sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, “RaTG13 is the closest relative” forming a distinct lineage from other coronaviruses and supporting China’s claim that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally-occurring.

A month later, on March 17, 2020, the article “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” widely-cited by scientists and the media, supported the conclusion that RaTG13 is SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative, which likely “jumped” from animals to humans in the Wuhan Seafood Market.

It is important to note that, Ian Lipkin, one of the authors of “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” the article supporting China’s claim that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally occurring, received a medal from the Chinese government in January, 2020.

It did not take long for doubts to appear about the validity of the RaTG13 argument or even its existence . We have now learned that RaTG13 existed only on paper. RaTG13 and RaBtCoV/4991 are the same virus.

The entire RaTG13 genome was first uploaded to the National Institutes of Health GenBank on January 27, 2020 and updated on March 24, 2020. In those filings, there is no mention of RaBtCoV/4991.

Yet, in a Chinese virus database, dated March 7, 2020 in the source code, RaTG13 and RaBtCoV/4991 are listed as being the same virus. It means that China knew early on that RaTG13 was not a unique coronavirus, but merely a duplicate of RaBtCoV/4991 and kept that important fact secret.

China has long implied that RaTG13 was only discovered in 2020 after the onset of the pandemic via a search of its coronavirus database.

That claim was echoed by Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance and long-time collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

“We found the closest relative to the current SARS-CoV-2 in a bat in China in 2013. We sequenced a bit of the genome, and then it went in the freezer; because it didn’t look like SARS.”

Now comes yet another stunning revelation. It was not in the freezer.

According to new information, Chinese scientists experimented with RaTG13 during 2017 and 2018.

The evidence clearly shows that, not only did China lie in a major way about the origin of COVID-19, but that it is, without question, due to a man-made virus.

China lied, people died. (For more from the author of “Yet Another Stunning Revelation About the True Origin of COVID-19” please click HERE)

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Lawrence Sellin is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel with branch qualifications and assignments in Special Forces, Infantry and Medical Services. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq and participated in a humanitarian mission to West Africa. Sellin holds a Master’s Degree in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College and received training in Arabic, Kurdish and French from the Defense Language Institute. He had a distinguished civilian career in medical research after completing a Ph.D. in physiology, followed by an international business career in information technology, where he was a manager and subject matter expert in telecommunications, business process management, and command and control systems. He is also the author of numerous articles on military and national security issues.

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50% of Americans Say Violent Bid to Overthrow U.S. Government at Least ‘Somewhat Likely’ Within Decade

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Fifty percent of U.S. voters think it’s at least somewhat likely there will be a violent attempt to overthrow the United States government within the next decade. That total includes 18% who think it’s very likely, according to Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

“This was a surprise!” Rasmussen said. “Upon reflection, though, it probably shouldn’t have been. Clearly, President Trump’s remarks indicates that he thinks this could become a good campaign issue.”

Rasmussen noted that Republicans are a bit more likely to expect such violence, but the gap is fairly modest. That may be due to a perception among some that the current civil unrest is heading in that direction.

“There is also likely a solid partisan distrust fueling such concerns,” Rasmussen said. “Many Republicans fear the left will respond with violence if President Trump is re-elected. Many Democrats fear the same from the right if President Trump is defeated.” (Read more from “50% of Americans Say Violent Bid to Overthrow U.S. Government at Least ‘Somewhat Likely’ Within Decade” HERE)

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Fauci Feeds Fear With Warning of 100,000 Coronavirus Infections a Day

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Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate this week that the United States could soon see as many as 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day, feeding alarmist narratives that have spread rapidly through the media: Surging COVID-19 infections, hospital systems under strain, and the prospect of a “second wave” of the virus potentially throwing much of the nation back into open-ended lockdowns.

Yet estimates cited by other U.S. public health authorities and academic researchers indicate we may have already far surpassed 100,000 new infections per day, the vast majority of them mild and/or asymptomatic. If so, the U.S. would now be significantly closer to herd immunity — and the end of the pandemic — than widely assumed.

A representative of Fauci’s office this week told Just the News that the public health expert’s estimate this week was not “a hard prediction that we’d reach 100,000 cases per day”; rather, the doctor was indicating that “if we do not act quickly and decisively, the cases could surge to that level as a matter of exponential growth.” . . .

Whatever the explanation, health officials have been bracing for an even bigger surge in the weeks ahead, fearing that a scenario as envisioned by Fauci could very well be in the near future. (Read more from “Fauci Feeds Fear With Warning of 100,000 Coronavirus Infections a Day” HERE)

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Cop Charged George Floyd’s Death Released on $750K Bond

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A former Minneapolis police officer charged in the killing of George Floyd has been released from jail, according to Hennepin County jail records.

Tou Thao, age 34, is the third former officer accused in Floyd’s death to be released on bond. He posted $750,000 bond on Saturday, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. All four officers on the scene of Floyd’s death have been fired and face criminal charges.

Floyd, who was Black and handcuffed, died May 25 while being arrested. A white police officer used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes as Floyd begged for air and eventually stopped moving. Besides the charges against the officers, Floyd’s death led to worldwide protests over police brutality and racial injustice. (Read more from “Cop Charged George Floyd’s Death Released on $750K Bond” HERE)

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