☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, March 4, 2022 ☙ FOUND HIM 🦠
Somebody finally found Fauci—you'll never guess where; good news from the DeSantises; Delta tries to commit suicide; Quebec, France, Oregon, and the NFL drop mandates; and more...
Happy Friday, C&Cers! Today’s giant roundup includes: good news about Casey DeSantis; Epoch Times catches up to C&C; the Surgeon General seeks misinformation data; Business Insider hopes people who don’t like masks will never fly again; Quebec removes most restrictions in the face of a Covid scandal; questions about Ukraine; the House reveals a criminal conspiracy theory; Oregon drops its jab mandate for state employees; France drops its vaxx mandate and passport; the NFL cancels ALL its Covid rules; and somebody finally found Fauci — you’ll never guess where.
🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 Various media reported yesterday that Casey DeSantis got a clean bill of health from her cancer doctors, who told her she is now “cancer free.” Great news for Casey, for the Governor, and for Florida.
🔥 The Epoch Times finally caught up to C&C in an article yesterday headlined, “Florida to Allow Doctors to Use Off-Label Drugs for Early Treatment of COVID-19.” The article refers to the new guidance from the Department of Health that was a sort of consolation prize for those of us urging the Governor to veto SB 7021, the law extending the existing Covid liability shield for health care providers including hospitals.
While I strongly favored a veto, vetoing the bill would have been a substantial setback for hospitals, some of which did bravely support the Governor during the pandemic’s difficult days, such as when their CEO’s appeared with the Governor at press conferences and stated on the record that their emergency rooms were NOT overwhelmed and their ICU’s were NOT overloaded.
Epoch’s article identified Florida as “the first and only state” promoting a policy different from the CDC’s long-standing protocol requiring patients to wait until they are in critical condition before being admitted to the hospital. The article goes on to discuss the FLCCC protocol at length in a nice piece quoting Dr. Pierre Kory.
🔥 I’ve noted with interest that Facebook stopped running Covid-19 warning banners under my posts beginning around March 1, the SOTU day. But that doesn’t mean the federal government is giving up its war on badspeech, oh no. It’s a SAFETY ISSUE, after all. The New York Times ran a story yesterday headlined “The Surgeon General Calls on Big Tech to Turn Over Covid-19 Misinformation Data.”
That would be U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. According to the article, he wants to have a look at all the kooky things you’ve been forwarding on Facebook and gmail. Think of yourself as a child with an iPad, and the federal government is your parents. They have to make sure you’re using your iPad responsibly.
Murthy, who looks like an Indian version of Billy Idol, demanded information from the social media platforms about statistics related to how many people are reading misinformation, or something, and more ominously, he wants to know just who the “major sources of Covid-19 misinformation.” The social media companies’ deadline is May 2nd.
“Technology companies now have the opportunity to be open and transparent with the American people about the misinformation on their platforms,” Dr. Murthy explained, adding, “This is about protecting the nation’s health.” Uh huh.
It is not clear that the U.S Surgeon General has any authority at all to demand any information from anybody for any reason. Other articles reporting on the story have pointed this out, suggesting that nothing at all would happen if the social media companies just ignored him. So their cooperation, if it happens, would be purely voluntary.
My view is they should tell Murthy to go somewhere hot and stay there. And quit dying his hair, if that’s what he’s doing. If not, he might consider an elegant touchup. Just saying.
🔥 Business Insider’s totalitarian tendencies flared up in an article last week headlined, “Airline Passengers Who Refuse to Wear Masks Have Turned Violent — and if the TSA Extends Mask Mandates This Month, It’s Going to Get Even Uglier.”
The federal airline mask mandate is set to expire on March 18th, and Business Insider is completely triggered about the looming deadline. They’ve found a target for their anxiety: angry passengers who don’t like mask mandates. In what may be the most tone-deaf thing it’s ever printed, the Insider wondered, “Imagine the fury among anti-mask passengers if the federal government continues to enforce a mask requirement on airlines into the spring and summer, when no one’s making people mask up anywhere else.”
So dumb. Hey, Insider. IF NO ONE’S MAKING PEOPLE MASK UP ANYWHERE ELSE, WHAT EXACTLY DO AIRPLANE MASKS PROTECT ANYBODY FROM? Please, try to think.
The news spurring the article was a letter Delta Airlines’ CEO Ed Bastian sent to the Justice Department, begging it to create a national “no fly” list banning passengers with a “history of unruly behavior” from boarding ANY commercial flight, not just the ones where there was a problem. ALL of the flights. Forever. That will teach them!
It’s hard to say who is stupider, Business Insider’s reporters or CEO Ed Bastian. Ed apparently learned nothing from when the National School Board Association sent that letter to the DOJ asking it to investigate moms who were angry at school boards about masks, and now the NASB is just about out of business. Supposedly — and I recognize that it’s getting harder and harder to tell where private corporations stop and government begins these days — supposedly Ed is running some kind of business. That’s what I heard, anyway. It seems like asking the government to ban customers from using your business seems, well, a tad counter-productive. Just a smidge.
The other airlines seem not to have been infected with the Moron Virus like Ed. The Insider reported, “Other than Delta, [the others] been mum on the subject.“ I guess the other airlines aren’t suicidal.
Anyway — if you don’t LOVE masking on airplanes, Delta doesn’t want you as a customer. So keep that in mind. Just saying.
🇨🇦 Quebec announced this week it will lift most of its Covid restrictions by March 12th, except for vaccine requirements. Required masking in most public spaces is now scheduled to end in April, and on public transport in May. Why not now? Oh well. Science.
Coincident with the announcement was news of a leaked internal memo from Montreal’s public health department advising the government AGAINST ordering curfews, and pointing out (1) curfews won’t help and (2) they will do a lot of damage. But Quebec ordered curfews anyways. For some reason.
This new disclosure has generated a TON of controversy and fueled opposition politics there. Quebec’s public health director has resigned, according to reports. So.
🪖 Let me know if you want me to start covering the latest media fear frenzy, Ukraine. I have so many questions. Like, I’m not a military expert or anything, but why is the power still on in Kyiv? I mean, Russia has all those jets flying around. Allegedly. They can’t bomb a power plant? Shouldn’t that have been job number one?
And why did Putin advertise the invasion for three weeks before it started? Doesn’t blabbing about your invasion for weeks and weeks just give your enemy time to get their defenses in place? But, DID Ukraine build up its defenses with all that time to get ready?
And why were Fox News and CNN running the exact same footage from Kharkiv last night for the whole news hour?
🔥 In what SHOULD have the big story yesterday, the House’s January 6 investigators filed a motion in one of the lawsuits that finally laid out at least part of their awesome theory. The House’s lawyers claimed that President Trump “engaged in criminal conspiracy” with unnamed allies to attack the Capitol and “overturn” the election.
To date, they’ve been very coy with their theory of criminal liability, even though many — including me — believed that they were working on just that objective. But John Eastman, a lawyer advising Trump at the time, invoked attorney-client privilege over some documents that the House wants. One of the ways the House’s lawyers responded was to invoke a doctrine that can defeat attorney-client privilege called the “crime-fraud exception.”
To get somebody’s privileged information using the “crime-fraud exception,” you have to show it is likely they used their attorney to commit a crime or fraud. So the committee has come up with some crimes and frauds to try to get at Trump’s attorney-client privileged information.
They named three crimes: Obstruction of a government process, defrauding the US, and, believe it or not, common-law fraud. All of these are described in the context of a conspiracy, which means the House has its baleful sights set on a bunch of other people, too. Maybe a whole lot of them. Specifically, the committee claimed it “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
These three crimes may not be ALL the crimes that the House is cooking up. They are just ones it needs to beat Eastman’s invocation of attorney-client privilege. And, according to the House’s brief, it was the D.C. JUDGE who suggested that they consider using the crime-fraud exception. Very helpful.
This is a watershed or inflection point of some kind, because until now, the House investigators have diligently obscured all sign that they were considering ANY criminal conduct of any kind, because now that’s out, every other person who they want to depose has a perfectly valid Fifth Amendment defense. From this point, anyone contacted by the House should strongly consider these developments.
🔥 The Oregonian reported Wednesday that it is ending its vaccine mandate for 40,000 state employees, according to governor Kate Brown’s office. She will rescind the state employee jab mandate order, explaining that “extraordinary emergency” orders are no longer needed as “we learn to live with this virus.” So.
🔥 The Local ran a story yesterday headlined “BREAKING: France to Scrap Vaccine Pass and Mask Rule,” and sub-headlined “The French Prime Minister has confirmed that the rules on masks and vaccine passes will be scrapped in almost all venues from March 14th.”
According to the article, France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex said “After a fifth wave of Covid on an unprecedented scale, the health situation has been improving significantly for several weeks. In particular, the pressure on hospitals due to the epidemic has decreased significantly, allowing the lifting of emergency protocols and a gradual resumption of scheduled appointments and surgeries. Under these conditions, and while scientific models do not foresee any change in this favourable trajectory in the coming weeks, we can today announce new measures.”
France is now using hospitalizations too! They must have got in touch with the CDC or something.
Starting Monday, March 14th, masks will no longer be mandatory in any indoor spaces except public transportation, hospitals and nursing homes. The country’s vaccine passport – currently needed for bars, restaurants, tourist sites and ski lifts and others – will also be suspended starting March 14th. Buh bye.
🏈 The NFL and NFLPA announced this week they are suspending ALL of their joint Covid-19 protocols effective immediately, according to sports media sources. It’s another Covid miracle.
🔥 Yesterday, seizing an opportunity where a half dozen Democrats didn’t show up for work, Republicans in the US Senate took two votes: (1) to end the Covid-19 national state of emergency, and (2) to end Biden’s CMS vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Both votes passed.
The votes were strictly along party lines. 48 GOP senators voted in favor of the resolutions, while 47 Democrat senators opposed ending the state of emergency and the vaccine mandate. So, you know whose fault it is. While it’s a nice gesture, the resolution is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, and Biden would just veto it anyway. But it’s a start, I suppose.
Kansas’ Senator Roger Marshall led the measure, explaining that “the American people are worn out and yearning to be free.”
“The robust powers emergency declaration provides the federal government are no longer necessary,” Marshall continued, “and Congress must debate and ultimately repeal them in order to begin the process of unwinding the powers the government took hold of during the peak of the crisis.”
The Republicans invoked the Congressional Review Act to force the vote. The CRA is a tool used overturn federal agency rules. Republicans were able to win the vote because six Democrats did not show up.
🪳 Somebody finally found Fauci! He was crawling behind the furniture. But seriously, Fauci may be down, but he’s not out. The scrappy puppy-torturer is now making the rounds of local TV stations, like NextStar in D.C., and downmarket YouTube channels. I’m not kidding. Recently, he’s appeared on “Woke AF” (AF means, “As F-ck”), and the Karlous Miller and Chico Bean show.
I promise I am not making this up. Here are the receipts:
If you have time and want to be mildly entertained, watch Fauci’s interview on the Karlous Miller show. The hosts are obviously much smarter than Fauci. Hopefully he will keep spiraling around the bottom of the toilet bowl, his little legs scrabbling wildly, before finally flushing down the drain.
Have a fantastic Friday, and I’ll hit you back here for the Weekend Edition tomorrow morning.
You can help get the truth out and spread optimism and hope: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-
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Twitter: @jchilders98
I am happy to have found your Substack as a resident of Florida. My suggestion is to keep your eye on the WHO as they ramp up the plan to sign up all nations to work around their constitutions to fight the next “pandemic” by 2024. The vaccine passports may be on the way out, but the digital I.d.s are very much alive. Thank you for all your hard work. Best regards to the Governor and Mrs. DeSantis. We in Florida are truly blessed.
Jeff, if you can decode WTH is actually going on with Ukraine you could win a Pulitzer. Or something. I have been really busy spending my free time trying to help some sane school board and city council candidates get elected on April 5 so we can have our own little Youngkin moment in my town, so have not had a lot of time to really study this. But OMG some really bizarre theories going around out on non censored social media.