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Bombshell Study Shows 80 Times More Infections Existing in March Than the Official Count

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During a Senate Homeland Security Committee remote hearing on May 6, one of the witnesses, Dr. David Katz, commenting about the lockdown in late March, said, “We may have closed the barn door after all of the horses were out.” A new study of hard data demonstrates that those horses left long before the shutdown and shows just how illogical the lockdown was when it was implemented. It also shows that this virus is much more widespread and less deadly than we thought, yet the “experts” refuse to rethink their approach in light of new information.

We didn’t start testing for COVID-19 until March, and testing didn’t ramp up in earnest until a month or two later in most parts of the country. How many cases already existed when the panic set in during mid-March? According to a peer-reviewed study by Penn State, “the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have been more than 80 times greater and doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed.”

The study, which was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, analyzed influenza-like illnesses (ILI) surveillance data over a three-week period in March 2020. Researchers calculated the likely excess cases that clearly were not the typical flu and estimate that “excess ILI corresponds to more than 8.7 million new cases during the last three weeks of March, compared to the roughly 100,000 cases that were officially reported during the same time period.”

This finding is significant for several reasons:

1) Lockdowns missed the boat: By the time we locked down, this virus was already spreading far and wide. The CDC’s own research on mitigating the spread of flu indicates that “the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population in an affected area.” According to the Penn State study, the virus had already hit 4% of the nationwide population and 9% of New York residents. That explains why 66% of those who were hospitalized in New York were people who were already staying at home. Lockdowns were never going to work. According to the study, the overwhelming majority of states were already at more than 1% prevalence.

We know from numerous reports that the virus was already here as early as December. Last week, a study from Italy’s National Institute of Health found that the virus was in the wastewater in Milan and Turin as early as December 18. Researchers discovered the virus in 40 samples of wastewater during standard checks of sewage treatment plants in northern Italy. Obviously, the U.S. has more travel to and from China than even Italy, so there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t here in December as well.

2) Testing metrics are meaningless given the enormous number of those infected with few or no symptoms: Given that there were 87 times more cases than what had been unidentified through testing in March, imagine how many tens of millions have gotten the virus since then? What this study shows is that the virus spreads like the flu, unlike SARS-CoV-1 in 2003, which was rare and deadly. This is the context the media fails to provide when trumpeting more cases in the southern states. Now that we have universal testing in hospitals and anyone can obtain a test anywhere else, we are discovering more of what already was spreading for a while. It’s not surprising, now that hospitals are back up to capacity with typical patients, that a large percentage of them are testing positive for the virus, even though they don’t have serious cases.

For example, Rhode Island health director Nicole Alexander-Scott said already in May, “We are now identifying more people who are in the hospital with COVID-19 as opposed to just people who are in the hospital because of COVID-19 or for COVID-19-related illnesses. Someone could have a sprained ankle and if they are screened for COVID-19 and their test returns positive … they may be in the hospital with COVID-19. We want to make sure we are capturing that data as well.” (Emphasis hers.)

This was not true in March or April. My wife gave birth in a Maryland hospital in early April, at the peak of the virus, and was not tested.

This new study demonstrates that had we implemented universal testing at that period, along with the regular flow of patients, we would have reported exponentially more hospitalizations.

3) It’s all about borders and quantity of initial introduction of a virus into a country: How much of the virus was actually introduced into a given region – country or state – likely played a large role in how bad the epidemic was. A new analysis of 500 regions in Europe shows that the areas that had a large spread at the beginning were the ones that fared much worse than those with little prevalence in March. The bottom line is that once a virus is brought in large numbers to a region, the effect of human mitigation is limited until it runs its course.

We see a similar dynamic from this Penn State study. States like Arkansas and Arizona had almost no prevalence in March, according to their research, while New York already had over 9%. California, Texas, and Florida also had much lower prevalence of the virus, even though they are the biggest states. This explains the ultimate death tolls diverging so widely between those states and New York and why those states are experiencing a longer, more drawn-out, yet milder curve, rather than an acute spike and then a precipitous drop as New York and New Jersey had.

Arizona has only become a hot spot after it reintroduced the virus from Mexico with a surge of medical tourism across the border. (For more from the author of “Bombshell Study Shows 80 Times More Infections Existing in March Than the Official Count” please click HERE)

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County Issues Face Mask Order That Exempts Non-White People

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Lincoln County, Oregon, has exempted non-white people from a new order requiring that face coverings be worn in public — to prevent racial profiling.

Health officials announced last week residents must wear face coverings in public settings where they may come within six feet of another individual who is not from the same household.

But people of color do not have to follow the new rule if they have “heightened concerns about racial profiling and harassment” over wearing the masks, officials said. . .

With mask requirements becoming more common, activists have raised concerns that the directives could put non-white people in danger.

“For many black people, deciding whether or not to wear a bandanna in public to protect themselves and others from contracting coronavirus is a lose-lose situation that can result in life-threatening consequences either way,” ReNika Moore, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, told CNN. (Read more from “County Issues Face Mask Order That Exempts Non-White People” HERE)

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Most Serious Surge in Virus Cases? Coming Across the Mexican Border

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We were told that the governmental interest in ensuring that hospitals aren’t overrun with too many COVID-19 patients was so strong that it superseded the Bill of Rights. All businesses had to be shut, masks must be worn, church services had to be canceled. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in upholding California’s ban on church services, “When those officials ‘undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ their latitude ‘must be especially broad.’”

The very first action one would expect a government to undertake to stem the tide of a virus is to not purposely admit people sick with acute cases of the virus from countries with substandard health care. Cross-border travel is not a fundamental right like free movement within the country and from state to state or the right to earn a living, assemble, and worship. Plus, cross-border travel is the ultimate super-spreader.

Amazingly, at a time when politicians and media figures are pushing more lockdowns because of a rise in cases in some states, they fail to inform you that the biggest factor driving the most serious rise is coming from Mexico and is taking place in our southwest border counties. Thus, they are using the malfeasance of our government, which did not fully lock down the border, as a pretext to lock us all down within our own states.

As I’ve noted in recent days, most of the spike in cases is coming from the discovery of more cases through mass testing, antibody tests, multiple positives for one individual, reporting anomalies, universal testing of non-COVID-19 hospital patients and a new way of reporting “probable” cases. This is why, across the country, we are still seeing a decline in ICU admissions and fatalities. Most of the new cases are among younger and healthier people who are largely asymptomatic. However, there is one place where we have been seeing a spike in serious cases and even deaths since May: the border counties of California, Arizona, and Texas.

In Hidalgo County, Texas, last Monday, there were three deaths, more than at any time during the peak.

Mayor Ambrosio Hernandez, the mayor of Mission, Texas, has already instituted a nighttime curfew on the residents of his city thanks to the surge. “Mexico is under reporting by three to five times and when you look at that and the infrastructure among the Rio Grande Valley, meaning doctors nurses, hospitals and ICU beds and if we have to take care of our population here and then uncontrolled infections coming across, because they’re going to seek help, you’re going to totally overwhelm the system and that could be devastating,” Hernandez said.

KRGV reported that there is a shortage of remdesivir in the Rio Grande Valley because of the increase in sicker patients, which has doubled over the last month. Remdesivir has been distributed by the federal government for hospitals to use on patients with serious cases.

What is causing this surge of clearly sicker patients in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, which is the opposite of we are seeing in the rest of the country? Likely, the same thing we are seeing in the border counties of California and Arizona. In Imperial County, California, the San Diego Times reported last month that two hospitals had to shut the doors to more patients “after admitting scores believed stricken with the virus from Mexico’s nearby border town of Mexicali.”

Imperial County is one of California’s least densely populated counties, yet at 40.1 hospitalizations per 100,00 residents, it had the highest rate of coronavirus hospitalizations in the state. That is more than twice the rate of Los Angeles County, which is the largest county in the country and is 57 times more populous than Imperial County.

While it’s likely that illegal aliens are still coming over the border to use our hospital system, we know for sure that green card holders and dual citizens are definitely coming for the purpose of using the hospitals. Already in May, the Washington Post reported that border hospitals were “flooded” with dual citizens and “Americans working in Mexico or visiting family there.”

According to the Post, “approximately half of the coronavirus patients in several California border hospitals, including El Centro Regional Medical Center, are recent arrivals from Mexico.” That figure jumped to 60 percent for Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista, which is located 10 miles away from the San Ysidro port of entry, between May 31 and June 2.

There is a similar dynamic in Arizona. Yuma Regional Medical Center saw a tripling of its cases in late May along with 13 deaths. As border reporter Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies commented:

I’ve been to Yuma many times. It’s a tiny community on the Mexican border where any entirely local outbreak generating 13 deaths is simply implausible on its face. Not a single word addresses who the patients are and from where they came. The June 7 [New York] Times story finally noted that many of these patients had come in from Mexico, albeit with the questionable assertion that all were green card holders and American citizens.

So border towns have now gone back into lockdown and have even instituted a curfew, infringing upon rights of Americans, all because of an outsized obsession with the phantom “right” to travel across our border. After suffering through the initial deadly wave of the virus, America has now re-imported the original deadly version from Mexico.

Once the spread starts at the border, who’s to say it won’t travel? Kyle Lamb, a data analyst who joined me on my podcast Friday, noted that 24 border counties accounted for 3.6% of the total positive cases over the past 21 days. Prior to May 29, they accounted for just 0.7%.

But not all of them will stay at the border. Lamb also observed that Hispanics now account for 33.7% of all positive cases and 30 percent of hospitalizations.

Clearly, it’s the cross-border travel that has brought it back in. Yes, it’s true that the border counties rely heavily on cross-travel of dual citizens and green card holders. But the Bill of Rights for Americans living in America was deemed nonessential and had to yield to the lockdown. Why wasn’t the international border locked down as strongly, especially with people coming across for the express purpose of getting treatment for the virus we were supposed to keep out?

Remember, while the virus peaked in Europe in March and in America in April, it didn’t peak in Latin America until well into May. Any dual citizen who wanted to come home should have done so in March. Once the border was closed, it should have remained closed, because we were importing more serious cases from Mexico after we had already gone through the peak.

Then there are the illegal aliens who come across to work in the fields. The media went berserk when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that the spread in Florida was mainly among Hispanic migrant workers, as if he was singling out Hispanics. But the operative point wasn’t about race but rather geography. Migrant workers clearly brought in the virus to many southern states later in the cycle, thanks to the work season. We need to focus on where the problem is coming from instead of pushing lockdown for all Americans.

What has become clear in recent weeks is that racial warfare and rioting were able to trump even the new cult of social distancing. Now we know that cross-border travel is on the same superseding level. The media can have their cake and eat it too – keep the border open and then use the fallout to push more lockdowns on us. (For more from the author of “Most Serious Surge in Virus Cases? Coming Across the Mexican Border” please click HERE)

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Tyson Foods Plants Report 95% of Coronavirus Positives Were Asymptomatic

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Rather than focus on the number of cases of coronavirus, why won’t the media spend more time focusing on the fact that so few of them are serious and that we have overreacted to the virus since March? We are seeing a lot of cases, but very few hospitalizations, as shown in the latest test results from a meatpacking plant.

“Hundreds test positive at Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas” was the headline of an AP article on Sunday. That will naturally alarm the public. However, the real headline is that although 13% of all Tyson Foods employees in Benton and Washington counties tested positive, 95% of them had no symptoms. Twenty-six of the 481 who tested positive did present some symptoms. In the Berry Street facility, which had the largest number of cases out of the six facilities, 223 of 227 who tested positive were asymptomatic.

The media and political elites refuse to report the good news that the models were off, the virus was always more prevalent then we thought, and therefore, it’s much less deadly than we thought. They continue to use the discovery of more cases as a pretext for more draconian shutdowns and restrictions, as if this is still the virus with a 3.4% fatality rate that the World Health Organization predicted.

When the CDC estimated that the infection fatality rate was 0.26%, that was factoring in a 35% asymptomatic rate. But what if the virus is even more prevalent than that because the share of asymptomatics is even higher? Some estimate the number to be at 80%. An Italian study found that 70% of those under the age of 60 were asymptomatic.

Given that the majority of people who get the virus are asymptomatic, we can no longer assume that even the serology tests are capturing anywhere near the full number of people who already got the virus, because many who had the virus test negative for antibodies. Earlier this month, a study from the University of California found, “Growing evidence suggests that asymptomatic and mild SARS-CoV-2 infections, together comprising >95% of all infections, may be associated with lower antibody titers than severe infections.” They estimate that only 40% of asymptomatic patients would retain antibodies for 180 days, 60% of mildly symptomatic, and 95% of severe cases.

Another study from China published at Nature Medicine estimates that “40% of asymptomatic individuals became seronegative and 12.9% of the symptomatic group became negative for IgG in the early convalescent phase.” A study from the University of Zurich found a close relationship between the severity of the viral infection and the number of antibodies produced during the convalescent period of that patient. The level of antibodies seemed to correlate nearly perfectly commensurately to the severity of symptoms prior to recovery.

Thus, an unknown percentage of those who show up negative in serology tests likely had the virus but no longer present with antibodies. This is aside from the theory that some people who don’t present with symptoms never produced antibodies because T cells and B cells from the immune system warded off the virus. A brand-new study from Strasbourg University Hospital in France found that a majority of mildly symptomatic patients studied warded off the virus with T cells and did not produce antibodies. The researchers therefore conclude that “epidemiological data relying only on the detection of SARS-Cov2 antibodies may lead to substantial underestimation of prior exposure to the virus.”

While it is unclear whether these individuals remain immune to a secondary infection if they don’t have antibodies, what is clear is that exponentially more people likely had the infection. Which in turn means that the fatality rate is even lower than we think. Thus, the next time you see the media reporting on discovery of more cases without accompanying data on ICUs and fatalities, just know that their report is proving the opposite of their panic-driven headlines. (For more from the author of “Tyson Foods Plants Report 95% of Coronavirus Positives Were Asymptomatic” please click HERE)

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WATCH: Cuomo Is Now Blaming Trump for Nursing Home Deaths

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After three months, this is the best this guy can do to explain away his apocalyptic error of sending infected patients back into nursing homes? Watch two minutes here, then read on.

He made the same point about supposedly being blindsided by infection in Europe in a press briefing on May 8. Pro Publica nailed him for it in a scathing piece published a week later:

“Nobody was saying, ‘Beware of people coming from Europe.’ We weren’t testing people coming from Europe,” Cuomo said. “We weren’t telling anyone at the time if you have a European visitor or European guest, make sure they get tested. They walked right through the airport.”

The narrative, of course, fails to note people were not just flying from Europe to New York, but to California and other cities and states. And it seems to portray New York, its health departments and government officials, as somehow innocent bystanders, incapable of having themselves seen the threat from Europe and factored that in their response. That Italy and Spain were being overwhelmed by the virus was hardly a secret.

(Read more from “Cuomo Is Now Blaming Trump for Nursing Home Deaths” HERE)

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Quirky Alaska Tourist Town Struggles for Survival Amid Virus

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. . .It’s almost “ghost town-esque,” said Fernando Salvador, a hotel manager in Talkeetna, which lies about halfway between Anchorage and Denali National Park.

By late May, Main Street should be jammed with meandering tourists slurping ice cream cones and stopping at gift shops alongside original cabins built in this community of about 800. But the coronavirus has upended everything.

Communities across Alaska are feeling the financial squeeze, from cruise ship ports where major lines have canceled summer sailings, to Talkeetna, which bills itself as the Gateway to Denali and where the ship passengers arrive on buses for inland excursions. Nearly half of the state’s 2.2. million annual visitors usually arrive on those vessels. (Read more from “Quirky Alaska Tourist Town Struggles for Survival Amid Virus” HERE)

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Widespread Panic for No Reason? White House Expert Says a Second Wave of Coronavirus Cases ‘Isn’t Coming’

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By NBC News. White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow told CNBC on Monday that a “second wave” of coronavirus cases isn’t coming and that lawmakers will likely develop another stimulus package by the end of next month.

Asked by “Squawk Box” co-host Becky Quick how he’s thinking about resurgences of Covid-19 cases in several states, Kudlow said he isn’t too concerned.

“There is no second wave coming. It’s just hot spots. They send in CDC teams, we’ve got the testing procedures, we’ve got the diagnostics, we’ve got the PPE. And so I really think it’s a pretty good situation,” said Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council and chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump.

“Actually, I think nationwide the positivity rate is still quite low, well under 10%.”

His comments came after the U.S. reported more than 30,000 new infections on Friday and Saturday, the highest daily totals since May 1, according to Johns Hopkins University data. New cases are rising in states in the South, West and Midwest, including Florida and South Carolina, which last week broke their single-day totals three days in a row. (Read more from “Widespread Panic for No Reason? White House Expert Says a Second Wave of Coronavirus Cases ‘Isn’t Coming’” HERE)

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Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Dems Pushing Strict Lockdowns Run Most States With Highest Jobless Rates

By Fox News. . .The national jobless rate was 13.3 percent in May, but 10 states still have unemployment rates above 15 percent. From highest down, they are: Nevada (25.3 percent), Hawaii (22.6 percent), Michigan (21.2 percent), California, Rhode Island and Massachusetts (16.3 percent), Delaware (15.8 percent), Illinois and New Jersey (15.2 percent), and Washington state (15.1 percent).

. . .Nine of the 10 states with the highest jobless rate are run by Democrats, who have tended to demand that the economy should stay locked down and in some cases are still resisting opening. One exception is Colorado, where Democratic Gov. Jared Polis was one of the first to reopen. His decision is paying off as Colorado’s jobless rate in May fell to 10.2 percent from 12.2 percent in April. (Read more from “Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Dems Pushing Strict Lockdowns Run Most States With Highest Jobless Rates” HERE)

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WATCH: Trump Opens Door to Another Round of Stimulus Checks

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President Donald Trump indicated Monday he’s open to a second round of stimulus payments as the U.S. economy continues to reel from the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked in an interview with Scripps local TV news whether he’s going to give Americans another round of checks, Trump responded: “Yeah, we are. We are.”

“We will be doing another stimulus package. It’ll be very good. It’ll be very generous,” Trump said.

When asked how much money it will be, he said: “You’ll find out about it. You’ll find out.”

A White House official told NBC News a new round of direct payments is “part of something the economic team is studying,” but added, “No decisions made yet.” (Read more from “WATCH: Trump Opens Door to Another Round of Stimulus Checks” HERE)

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Time’s Up: Trump Doesn’t Need Permission of Cities Participating in Insurrection to Send in Military (VIDEO)

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How is it that we are two weeks into an armed insurrection in Seattle, where local politicians let terrorists take over a police precinct and several city blocks and prevent all city services from entering? How is it that Americans continue to get beaten out of their cars by lynch mobs, and it appears there are no police in sight? Every Republican tells us that re-election of Trump is the most important outcome we can strive for, but he is president right now. He holds the power of the federal government. Are we really at the mercy of local governments ignoring or downright participating in the insurrection?

This question was settled long ago. State governments never had the power to violate life, liberty, or property, pursuant to Art. IV, §2, cl. 1 of the Constitution, which prohibited states from violating core natural rights from the very first day of the republic. In 1867, however, the 14th Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause gave the federal government enforcement power over states that violate those natural rights, which were specified at the federal level in the Bill of Rights after states had already adopted the original Constitution.

In response to the Civil War, Congress passed a law in 1871 to authorize the president to put down any insurrection. It was the original enforcement legislation designed to put teeth into the 14th Amendment, as envisioned under Sec. 5 of that amendment, which authorizes Congress to enforce violations by states. It’s law to this day under 10 U.S. Code §253 and was amended in 2008 to apply to natural disasters and terrorism.

The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—

(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

There are no limitations on the time, methods, or place in which the president can deploy the military to put down insurrection and domestic violence. With the anarchists desiring to relive the Civil War, it’s time to use a Civil War-era law to put down this rebellion, as the law was designed to do.

What we are facing today in many cities is the worst unlawful combination of insurrection and violence that is hindering numerous state and federal laws, blocking highways and threatening motorists, and destroying businesses and property. Everyone seems to think that the president needs the permission of the state to deal with this, but the law was clearly designed for when “authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection.”

The language of “privileges and immunities” was taken from the then-recently passed 14th Amendment to ensure that states couldn’t get away with ignoring people’s inalienable rights. Trump and Senate Republicans need to up the ante and threaten to invoke this statute if states and cities continue to allow “autonomous zones” and rioters to maim, loot, burn, steal, and obstruct traffic.

Obviously, we were all reluctant to immediately deploy the military and were hoping that local police would finally come to their senses, as they always have in the past after a few days of rioting. However, three weeks into this insurrection, many of these city governments have downright joined in the insurrection, which has led to direct threats to the lives and property of all Americans indefinitely. Truckers now have to rethink where they deliver goods, as if this were Afghanistan, where you need a map to see where the government has full or partial control over the territory.

Here is the latest motorist lynching in Santa Monica, California, captured in a video posted by my BlazeTV colleague, Elijah Schaffer:

With California officials downright encouraging this behavior and preventing the police from stopping it, the president is obligated to step in. The philosophy behind the 14th Amendment and the 1871 law to implement it is that the federal government was created for situations where states are either inherently incapable of defending liberty (a foreign invasion) or when they refuse to protect liberty and downright promulgate tyrannical edicts against life and property. Slavery and Jim Crow had to be swatted down by the federal government. Now these riots and beatings need the same response.

The police have been made to be criminals while the criminals are being exalted as civil rights leaders. This cannot go on longer. We cannot wait until November. Trump is already president and already has all the authority he needs. It’s time to use it. (For more from the author of “Time’s Up: Trump Doesn’t Need Permission of Cities Participating in Insurrection to Send in Military” please click HERE)

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While Thousands Protested Freely, My Grandmother Died Alone During Lockdown

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“Don’t worry,” the mob said, “Grandma is safer than ever.”

Except my grandmother wasn’t. She died “recovering” in a skilled nursing facility a week-and-a-half after a fall at home broke her neck. From walking and talking, my 88-year-old grandmother deteriorated into a catatonic state in quarantine. Her family was instructed to socially distance for her health and safety.

. . .Perhaps the elderly are forgotten afterthoughts, pushed to the periphery of society because we believe they no longer contribute to the social fabric — they’re “non-essential.” Or perhaps it’s just easier for everyone to go about business as usual, convincing ourselves that we did our duty as sons and daughters, then wiping our hands clean.

. . .I can’t imagine the betrayal and abandonment my grandmother must have felt. It took 10 days of separation from the hospital to the nursing home to her deathbed — an eternity surrounded by unknown people trapped in an unknown place where days blended into nights. I’m fairly certain my grandmother died of a broken heart.

. . .Only 10 people were allowed at the Mass service originally, including the priest. My mother pushed for 15. We had to be judicious with which family members could attend. My grandmother had seven children, 11 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. If the funeral had occurred a week later, when Allegheny County moved to the “Yellow Phase,” the governor would have allowed 25 of us. (Read more from “While Thousands Protested Freely, My Grandmother Died Alone During Lockdown” HERE)

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