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As Many as 25,000 U.S. Stores Could Shut Down This Year, Crippling Malls, and Obliterating Last Year’s Record

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As many as 25,000 stores could close in the US this year, according to a new report from Coresight Research.

Coresight, which had previously forecasted around 15,000 closings for the year, updated its estimate on Tuesday in light of the “escalating impact of the coronavirus pandemic,” it said.

Of the 20,000 to 25,000 closings it anticipates, around 55% to 60% of these stores will be located in malls, and “apparel retail and department stores look set to feature prominently,” it said.

Retailers across the US have been reeling from the impact of the pandemic, which has kept many stores closed since mid-March. So far, nearly 4,000 stores have closed in 2020 as legacy names such as Victoria’s Secret, Gap, and JCPenney have been forced to trim their store fleets. . .

Its 20,000 to 25,000 estimate would smash last year’s record number of store closings where more than 9,300 locations closed and many retailers filed for bankruptcy. (Read more from “As Many as 25,000 U.S. Stores Could Shut Down This Year, Crippling Malls, and Obliterating Last Year’s Record” HERE)

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Recent Study Suggests COVID-19 Was Spreading in August

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Coronavirus may have been present and spreading in Wuhan as early as August last year, according to a study that analysed satellite imagery of car parks outside major hospitals and search engine data.

The study, by researchers from Harvard medical school, Boston University of Public Health and Boston children’s hospital, looked at images captured between January 2018 and April 2020 and found a “steep increase” in vehicle counts starting in August 2019 and peaking in December 2019. Between September and October, five of the six hospitals observed had their highest daily volume of cars in the period analysed.

China’s foreign ministry rejected the study, calling it “extremely absurd”.

According to the study, the increase in vehicle volume coincided with a rise in queries on the Chinese search engine Baidu for “cough” and “diarrhoea”, about three weeks before the confirmed rise in coronavirus cases in early 2020. The researchers noted that while queries for cough coincided with the influenza season, diarrhoea is a symptom specific to Covid-19. . .

The origins of Covid-19, which was first detected in a cluster of cases associated with the Huanan seafood market in late December, has become an increasingly sensitive question as China fights off accusations that it should be blamed for the pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 people around the world. (Read more from “Recent Study Suggests COVID-19 Was Spreading in August” HERE)

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The Social Distancing Double Standard Is Real and Absurd; Conservatives Charge Liberals With Social-Distancing Hypocrisy

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By Washington Examiner. People of faith in the United States have been told since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic that they cannot congregate in their churches, mosques, or synagogues until the threat of the virus has passed.

It is simply too dangerous, our leaders say, for people of faith to meet as a body for worship and praise. Yet many of these same leaders also support the massive, crowded protests that have sprung up in response to the wrongful death of George Floyd.

It is impossible to miss the double standard, especially because these elected officials told us specifically that it is a matter of life and death that we socially distance ourselves.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, for example, joined a recent Floyd protest in his city, participating proudly in a demonstration that saw attendees doing very little to adhere to those social distancing guidelines we were told would save lives. But it was not so long ago that Garcetti, whose public appearance last week saw him forgo the all-important face mask, said that it was essential that churches, synagogues, and mosques remain closed. For public health reasons.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, whose restrictions on places of worship are still in place, has similarly marched with large crowds in the nation’s capital. (Read more from “The Social Distancing Double Standard Is Real and Absurd” HERE)

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Conservatives Charge Liberals With Social-Distancing Hypocrisy

By Politico. Conservatives have found their latest example of liberal hypocrisy: Disappearing outrage over protesters refusing to social distance.

The charge has spread through conservative Twitter and is invoked frequently on conservative media outlets, from Red State to Fox News. They note that when lockdown protesters flooded state capitol buildings, politicians and pundits alike expressed horror that gatherings would accelerate the coronavirus pandemic. But now, with thousands of people gathering to protest police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of the Minneapolis police, conservatives are asking: Where did that concern go?

For many on the right — even conservatives who are harsh Trump critics — the situation plays into a broader narrative of liberal elite double standards.

Conservatives “are upset at the political leaders who think protesting and mass gatherings are more important suddenly than being able to feed your family or keep your business open,” said Stephen L. Miller, a conservative media critic and contributor to The Spectator. (Read more from “Conservatives Charge Liberals With Social-Distancing Hypocrisy” HERE)

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U.S. School District Plans to Surveil Students With Bluetooth Tracking Devices to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 ​

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A school district in New Albany, Ohio, is planning to combat the spread of COVID-19 when school returns in August by surveilling its students, according to a report by Wired.

According to the tech magazine, students will be required to wear bluetooth tracking devices developed by Volan that will monitor them wherever they go throughout the school day and send alerts in emergency situations.

Here’s more from the report:

The school district, with five schools and 4,800 students, plans to test a system that would require each student to wear an electronic beacon to track their location to within a few feet throughout the day. It will record where students sit in each classroom, show who they meet and talk to, and reveal how they gather in groups. The hope is such technology could prevent or minimize an outbreak of Covid-19, the deadly respiratory disease at the center of a global pandemic.

“We are very much interested in the automated tracking of students,” Michael Sawyers, the district superintendent for New Albany-Plain Schools, told Wired. Sawyers reportedly believes that the technology will enable school officials to determine if social distancing practices are being followed and pinpoint at-risk individuals should someone in the district test positive for the virus. (Read more from “U.S. School District Plans to Surveil Students With Bluetooth Tracking Devices to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19” HERE)

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The WHO Throws a Wrench in What We All Thought About the Coronavirus

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For months we have heard about how asymptomatic people, particularly the young, are unknowingly spreading the Wuhan coronavirus to vulnerable people, including the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. The World Health Organization on Monday said asymptomatic people spreading the disease is actually “very rare.”

“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said during a press conference. “It’s very rare.”

Originally, the WHO and the White House Coronavirus Task Force said that otherwise healthy people could contract the Wuhan coronavirus and pass it on to others without knowing it because they lack any symptoms, CNBC reported. The asymptomatic spread was the very reason most of the nation went on lockdown and social distancing was heavily emphasized.

According to Van Kerkhove, government officials are better off spending their time finding those who are infected and conducting contact tracing.

“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing,” she explained. “They’re following asymptomatic cases. They’re following contacts. And they’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare.” (Read more from “The WHO Throws a Wrench in What We All Thought About the Coronavirus” HERE)

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Influential Study on Hydroxychloroquine Withdrawn

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An influential article that found hydroxychloroquine increases the risk of death in coronavirus patients has been retracted over data concerns.

Three of the study’s authors said they could not longer vouch for its veracity because Surgisphere, a healthcare firm behind the data, would not allow an independent review of its dataset. . .

Research for the article, published last month in medical journal The Lancet, involved 96,000 coronavirus patients across 671 hospitals worldwide. Nearly 15,000 were given hydroxychloroquine – or a related form, chloroquine – either alone or with an antibiotic.

It concluded that the drug showed no benefits against coronavirus and increased the risk patients developing irregular heart rhythms and dying.

Mandeep Mehra, a Harvard University professor who led the study, together with Frank Ruschitzka of the University Hospital Zurich and Amit Patel of the University of Utah, said in a statement that they had tried to arrange for a third-party peer review of the data, but Surgisphere had refused to co-operate. (Read more from “Influential Study on Hydroxychloroquine Withdrawn” HERE)

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Coronavirus Scam: Our Kids Can’t Go to Summer Camp, but Rioters Can Rampage by the Thousands

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Shutting schools for a virus that killed one-eighth the number of children who die from the flu every season will turn out to be one of the most devastating decisions ever made by government. At least our kids will be able to enjoy the fun and companionship of camp this summer, with the virus burning out in the summer heat. As thousands are encouraged to rampage through the streets every day, surely our kids can get together in bunks of 10-15, right?

Welcome to Sodom and Gomorrah, otherwise known as Baltimore, Maryland, and many other liberal bastions.

Last week, we received an email from the camp my cooped-up son was planning to attend in Baltimore saying that it can no longer open – even at the end of the summer, even in a modified way, because the restrictions are too prohibitive. Mayor Jack Young placed even greater restrictions on the city than were being observed in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak. He also canceled all outdoor events for the remainder of the summer.

Or at least we thought so.

Last week, thousands of protesters began marching in downtown Baltimore every day, with packed crowds. The mayor must have had a heart attack imagining all of the microbiological matter of SARS-CoV-2 in the air creating mass infections, right?

Wrong!

“In Baltimore yesterday, we were a national example of what it looks like to engage in passionate protesting without widespread breaking of the law,” said the mayor, praising the protesters last week.

Nobody in the media held him accountable for his glaring hypocrisy about the virus. So what if they were peaceful? Why was he praising them and not condemning them for spreading the virus the way he would July 4 parades, anti-lockdown protests of small business owners, or even summer camps?

Camps are full of children who, even at the peak of the outbreak, suffered one-eighth of the fatalities as from the seasonal flu and one-tenth of the hospitalizations. We never shut schools or camps for the flu.

At this point, liberals are engaging in national child abuse against America’s children for a nonexistent threat that they themselves suddenly overlook when it comes to mass protests against a nonexistent race problem.

Study after study has shown that kids play no meaningful role in community spread of the virus. And contrary to what the doomsayers warned, asymptomatic individuals of any age are very unlikely to transmit the disease. Consider that one serology study done by Tribeca Pediatrics found that 20 percent of children tested in New York City have antibodies. Thus, the reason we are not seeing child-to-adult transmission is not because children do not get the disease, but likely because almost none of them present meaningful enough symptoms to transmit.

This is true of adults too. A study of 455 “contacts” in China, including 35 asymptomatic patients, 196 family members, and 224 hospital staff, failed to find a single transmission. Dr. Donald Yealy, the chair of emergency medicine at UPMC, who’s been responsible for 30,000 tests in Pennsylvania, concluded based on his observations that “the risk of catching COVID-19 … from someone who doesn’t even know they have the infection, in our communities, is very small.”

And indeed, this is why we are finding that there is no measurable outbreak in mass gatherings – from the much-scorned swimming pool party on Memorial Day in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks to the endless riots and protests.

Clearly, the politicians recognize the truth that this virus, especially at the current stage, is not nearly as transmissible as they made it out to be. So why are they continuing to treat summer camps like the plague, while genuflecting to protests that are as packed as the one in Philadelphia over the weekend?

Take a look at this crowd in Philadelphia, where people can’t have more than 30 mourners at a family funeral.

Based on everything we’ve been told, this protest in Philly should set off a greater wave of infections that what happened in Philadelphia in 1918 when a war bond parade was held in middle of the Spanish Flu epidemic. But nothing will happen, the same way nothing happened in the countries and states that set their people free (not just criminals and rioters) weeks ago. . .

So why are American liberals continuing to leave draconian restrictions in place when they are permitting larger crowds for racial protests than even the Swiss?

The answer is very simple. This was never about science or public safety. It was a pretext to beat down the forgotten Americans who have no voice in our government while promoting anarchists at the same time. That is why the decisions were consistently designed to benefit favored classes of citizens or businesses rather than reflecting the best science. After all, under a scientific approach, subways would have been the first thing to close, yet they never were closed, even as five-person small businesses were shut.

Last week, whistleblowers who identify themselves as members of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s Pandemic Response Team wrote in a letter to state legislators that rather than using real science and data, top state officials are just “making things up as they proceed or making decisions and justifying them on the back end.”

Now that we see the powerful juxtaposition of restrictions on Americans with the permissive attitude toward the rioting, we know this was always a pretext to fundamentally transform America. So remember, those of you who plan to send your kids to camp, just tell the staff to inform the state that they are merely engaging in a riot. After all, boys will be boys. (For more from the author of “Coronavirus Scam: Our Kids Can’t Go to Summer Camp, but Rioters Can Rampage by the Thousands” please click HERE)

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Over Half of This State’s Coronavirus Death Certificates List Something Else as Primary Cause of Death

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What percentage of those who have been added to the COVID-19 death toll really died primarily or completely of other causes, especially those in nursing homes and hospices? How many would have died anyway within the day or week even without the virus? New data from the Minneapolis Department of Health obtained by CR shows the inflation of the COVID-19 death toll might be even higher than we first thought.

As noted throughout this crisis, the CDC guidance for coding a coronavirus death is so absurd that someone like George Floyd, who had an asymptomatic case of COVID-19 when he was allegedly choked to death by a Minneapolis cop, would be counted as a COVID-19 death. The only reason they are unlikely to add him to the list is because it would so obviously conflict with the narrative of police brutality that has now overtaken coronavirus panic porn as the new hotness in town. But how many others in Floyd’s situation, who clearly died of other causes but tested positive for the virus, were listed among the coronavirus death toll?

Kurt Nelson, who spent three decades in Minnesota law enforcement, paid for a public information request from the Minnesota Department of Health detailing the information on all the death certificates of those who died in the state this year through May 25. He sorted the spreadsheet officials sent him and found that of the 741 death certificates that listed COVID-19 at all as a contributing cause of death, on just 338 was the virus listed on “line A,” indicating that it was the primary cause of death. In other words, in only 44% of the cases was COVID-19 listed as the top and most immediate cause of death. In 287 of them, the virus was listed on line B, and in 116, the virus was listed on line C – with two other primary causes of death above it.

Nelson shared the spreadsheet with me, and I have independently confirmed this information. I also found another three cases where the virus was listed on line D as the 4th cause of death. The department confirmed with Nelson via email that the records are up to date as of May 25.

Now, it’s definitely likely that a certain percentage of those with COVID-19 listed in line B still can reasonably be added to the death toll. Among those 287 cases, 75 had “acute respiratory distress (ARD)” listed as the cause of death on line A. Among those with ARD on line A and COVID-19 on line B, the overwhelming majority were over 80 years old. Given the top-line data from the state, it’s likely that most of them were in nursing homes, where 22 percent of all annual deaths are due to pulmonary issues. This just underscores how difficult it is to truly determine the cause of death for those who had numerous comorbitities and were likely on their final months of life when the virus hit.

Nelson’s first observation is that he only saw a total of 741 coronavirus deaths (744 if you include the three I found all the way on line D) listed anywhere in the database of death certificates. As of May 25, Minnesota’s official tally of COVID-19 deaths was 899. There can be up to a five-day lag in reporting on the database, but that gap still cannot account for the official count being that much higher. Where those extra deaths come from, given that they are not reflected in the death certificate database, remains an open question.

Minnesota leads the nation with the highest percentage of official coronavirus deaths in senior care facilities, relative to the state’s overall death tally. At present, 83% of all deaths in Minnesota have been in senior care facilities. It’s one thing to list COVID-19 as the cause of death when it legitimately hastened their death by a few months. But in many of the cases where they died from Alzheimer’s, did the virus really contribute at all to their deaths?

Let’s not forget that while the virus is exponentially more lethal in seniors who are chronically ill, many seniors still only get an asymptomatic case of the virus – just like George Floyd. Now that they are testing everyone in nursing homes, a large percentage of the residents test positive, but a sizeable number of them are asymptomatic. To suggest that anyone who died of cancer, a heart attack, or Alzheimer’s but tested positive for the virus is a COVID-19 death is laughable.

Last month, I posted results of a Spanish antibody test, which showed that even among those in their 80s, 72 percent of those who tested positive had an asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic case. This new revelation casts serious doubt on the accuracy of the top-line death toll of 118,000 nationwide. We already saw in Colorado that there was a 25 percent difference between those who died with COVID-19 and those who died from it. In states like Minnesota where so many deaths were among those receiving some form elder care or even end-of-life care, it’s likely that a significant minority of those deaths were not just comorbidities but downright unrelated to the virus altogether.

I sorted through a number of the cases where the virus was listed as the second or third cause of death, and a number of them had stroke or dementia listed as the top cause of death. Some cases listed “lung cancer,” “terminal cerebral degeneration,” “stroke,” “Acute Renal Failure” or “Abdominal Catastrophe” as the primary cause of death. I saw one case where a COVID-19 death listed on line B had “infirmities of old age-refusing to take meds or eat” as the primary cause of death.

Coding these as COVID-19 deaths is about as absurd as what they did in Washington when they coded homicides as COVID-19 deaths simply because the decedent tested positive, or in Colorado, where they coded an alcohol poisoning death as a virus death.

Dan McGraw, president of Gill Brothers Funeral and Cremation in Minnesota, recently complained about the fact that almost all the deaths he deals with are being certified as the result of COVID-19, including those who died of cancer in hospice. “What useful purpose is being served to clump together decedents that passed away with COVID-19, and not necessarily as a direct cause?” asked the Twin Cities-area funeral director in an interview with a local media outlet.

This is likely occurring in every state. In Pennsylvania, where roughly 70 percent of official deaths occurred in senior care facilities, dementia is listed as the top condition among all those who died statewide.

Perhaps, if nothing else, this data reveal the broader appalling hypocrisy on the part of our political class, which induces one crisis after another. The same people who said we would all die if we don’t lock down even small gatherings are now actively sanctifying mass gatherings of thousands of people. Well, which crisis is it – a virus or police brutality? They can’t have it both ways. (For more from the author of “Over Half of This State’s Coronavirus Death Certificates List Something Else as Primary Cause of Death” please click HERE)

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China’s Exports and Imports Fall Amid Coronavirus

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China’s exports and imports both fell in May as the coronavirus and trade tensions with the U.S. weighed on demand at home and abroad.

Exports fell 3.3 percent compared to a year earlier to $206.8 billion and imports dropped 16.7 percent to $143.9 billion, the Chinese customs agency said Sunday. . .

The fall in exports came after a surprise 3.5 percent rise the previous month. Analysts were expecting the decline, attributing April’s rise to orders placed before virus restrictions hit overseas economies and predicting that American and European customers would also cancel other orders. (Read more from “China’s Exports and Imports Fall Amid Coronavirus” HERE)

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Expert Advice: It Looks Like the 180-Degree Turn on COVID Lockdowns Just Became a Huge In-Kind Contribution to Trump’s Re-Election

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Is this the end of the “expert”? If not, we’re on that trajectory with the medical community’s transparent shift regarding the lockdowns over the coronavirus outbreak. Businesses couldn’t reopen because we needed to control the spread, flatten the curve, and ensure the hospitals were not overrun. Venturing out made you a selfish bastard. And then, a couple of weeks prior, though some of you were already poking holes through the narrative, there was a great reversal. Some were grounded in good news. . .

You have to admit, this lockdown narrative was a well-executed strategy. The liberal media keeps up the doom and gloom news, which tanks the markets. The political class seeing this chooses the “better safe than sorry” approach and enacts stay-at-home orders, and then the pinch on businesses begins. The hope was to keep fear alive and let this eat into Trump’s re-election chances. Those who deviate are shamed. Rinse and repeat until the data starts to show this was an overreaction. And now, with a new issue that can be used to attack Trump, get on out and riot.

Liberal reporter Michael Tracey, who has gone after other Lefties for their insanity over Trump-Russia collusion, has been on a tear. First, he rightfully slammed the left-wing activist-media complex for being coddled babies who are totally insane. Now, he’s set his sights on the medical folks who now say put COVID on pause, as if this is a video game, and smash racism. . .

[Warning: Tweets contain explicit language.]

And this is how you morph a colossal event that possibly could have hurt Trump in 2020 into a massive in-kind contribution to his re-election effort. Why? Because liberals are stupid. Yes, their allies in the media did a swell job selling panic and trashing the market. And then thinking this reversal after everything that’s been said—it’s just…you cannot make it up. The liberal bias is explicitly clear, and be prepared to defend every suggestion you make from here on out because the default position should be to look on these clowns with contempt and skepticism. (Read more from “Expert Advice: It Looks Like the 180-Degree Turn on COVID Lockdowns Just Became a Huge In-Kind Contribution to Trump’s Re-Election” HERE)

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