☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, April 11, 2022 ☙ SHANGHAI’D 🦠

The unreported humanitarian crisis exploding in Shanghai; Musk backs off a board seat; more bad news for dems; Fauci says something remarkable; and the Times wants reporters to stop tweeting so much.

Happy Monday C&C! I hope everyone had a blessed Palm Sunday, and we are now in the final approach to the most important Christian holiday of Easter — invoking the core Christian themes of rebirth and eternal life.

I have a terrific roundup for you today: lots on the unreported humanitarian crisis exploding in Shanghai; Musk backs off a board seat; more bad news for dems with significant defections and a faltering youth vote; Fauci says something remarkable; and the Times wants its reporters to stop tweeting and start reporting.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 The final report on our Mom’s for Liberty Operation Multiplier: $113,125.58 from 4,455 donors! In just a few weeks, we greatly increased over our previous operation involving Florida Representative Joe Harding. Who knows where we’ll end up?

⛑️ Thanks for all the well-wishes for Luke; he’s better, but now the entire rest of the family has the grunge. Michelle spent the entire day in bed Saturday, which says a lot, because she hates to sit still for even ten seconds. Yesterday there was so much coughing and sneezing in the Childers household it felt like I was back in an 1800’s smallpox tent or something. So far, I’m the only one left standing. I’m using Dr. McCullough’s saline-iodine nasal spray formula and that’s about it.

Everybody’s fine though, it seems like a moderate cold or flu type deal. We’re doing great!

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 Last week, Shanghai, China went into hard lockdown, what lockdown-lovers call a “real” lockdown. Home to 25 million souls, Shanghai is China’s premier city, its version of New York City, the communist nation’s showcase of Chinese technology, architecture, and most importantly, government. Last week, after watching cases escalate since March 1, the government imposed a set of strict lockdown rules that by the end of the week involved the city’s residents being locked — in some cases literally — in their apartments, unable to leave even for food or water.

Water is a particularly pressing problem, since the tap water in Shanghai is not fit to drink even after boiling due to the presence of heavy metals. Food can only be obtained through a phone app. The system of private suppliers broke down after only a few days, not least because of limiting rules and per-delivery testing requirements for delivery staff, and so the government took over midstream with an entirely new smartphone-powered food-delivery system. All residents must pay for their food, which when it is delivered is almost never what was ordered, but appears to be only what is available.

The lockdown rules are being enforced by soldiers from the ironically-named People’s Liberation Army, gangs of red-shirted “volunteers” who act more like roving brigands, and dystopian technology like drones with facial recognition that dock residents’ social credit scores and debit their bank accounts when residents are caught out on their balconies.

Widespread reports from Shanghai strongly suggest that large numbers of people are unable to reliably obtain food and water. In addition to being locked into their homes — in some cases physically locked in their buildings — residents are forced to exit whenever ordered for mandatory Covid testing. Those who test positive, including babies as young as one or two months old, are sent to prison-like quarantine facilities. Parents aren’t allowed to go with their quarantined children, no matter how young the child or infant might be.

Later in the week the government began seizing household pets, cats and dogs, summarily euthanizing animals whose owners are found Covid positive.

One horrifying video shows a poorly-trained government agent administering a Covid test to an infant, apparently penetrating the nasal cavity with the test stick too far, and the infant immediately dies. Other videos show government agents beating small dogs to death with their owners crying out for them to stop from behind locked apartment building doors. Another viral video showed sacks of house cats thrown into a garbage pile on the sidewalk, with many of the cats obviously still alive, struggling to move as best they could and mewing plaintively.

Shanghai residents are literally begging for food online. In this harrowing video, they can be heard screaming out of their windows:

Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing

Residents in #Shanghai screaming from high rise apartments after 7 straight days of the city lockdown. The narrator worries that there will be major problems. (in Shanghainese dialect—he predicts people can’t hold out much longer—he implies tragedy).

Not just residents. US Marines. Yesterday, Reuters ran a story headlined, “U.S. Consulate Staff in China Help Marines Running Low on Rations.” According to Reuters, a U.S. consulate employee — acting in their individual capacity — posted this message to WeChat, the Chinese version of Facebook: “Marines have depleted their food and can no longer get delivery. I know we are all running short on supplies. If you can spare a meal’s worth or two for 7 extra mouths, they’d be very appreciative.”

(Staff responded with supplies, a person said in a later post, adding, “The marines are beyond thankful.”)

If US military personnel can’t get food, imagine what it must be like for an ordinary Shanghai resident.

But our revolting corporate media has — for some reason — completely blacked out the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Shanghai. All the news about what is really going on there comes from residents, including Americans and other foreigners. What little reporting our “gold standard” media has done only mentions the lockdowns generally, and unquestioningly repeats what looks very much like Chinese government propaganda.

For just one example, here is a picture in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, from an article bragging that Shanghai hasn’t reported any Covid deaths:

For Facebook users, who can’t see the picture, it shows a large semi-sized delivery truck in a street about 40 feet away from the back of a building. Between the truck and the building extend two lines of men in white hygiene suits, standing about a foot from each other, about 30 men in all. The men appear to be passing boxes of supplies down the line from the back of the truck into the building.

This is almost certainly a propaganda photo. You’ll get it instantly when I point it out to you.

Look again at what these dummies are up to. There’s PLENTY of room to back that truck up, right to the building’s rear entrance. THE ROAD GOES RIGHT UP TO THE DOOR. Hey morons, you don’t need 30 men. You only need TWO guys. But if the truck were backed up that far, then the government photographer wouldn’t have been able to get the money shot of all these resources being deployed to help the poor lockdown victims.

Shame on the Wall Street Journal. Shame on you. You’re complicit in helping a murderous communist regime cover up a massive human-rights violation and maybe a mass starvation event. You guys need to do a lot of personal reflection about where your lives and morals have gone off the rails.

Reuters, at least, in its article about the starving marines, mentions in passing that “many Shanghai residents have been waking at dawn to work the phones in the hope of securing food supplies from over-subscribed delivery apps.” But U.S. corporate media paints totally fake but rosier picture of a happy lockdown with a fast-paced successful Chinese government response. Total garbage.

Instead, we have to rely on anecdotal reports, like this resident’s courageous silent protest:

(Facebook users: someone pushed their barren fridge out onto their balcony and opened the doors creating a powerful symbol.)

For some reason, we have endless reports on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, but simply silence on Shanghai. Why? Where are all the “I stand with Shanghai” memes? Where are the virtue signalers now? What is the difference?

China is obviously pulling out all the stops to prevent the truth on the ground in Shanghai from getting out. They’ve ordered their U.S. media agents not to talk about it, and are punishing residents who post about the problems on social media. But … what happens AFTER the lockdowns end? Won’t the surviving Shanghai residents talk then? Isn’t the truth going to come out eventually? Why hide it?

The only difference between us and the Chinese is a Constitution plus one extra Supreme Court justice. I am feeling extremely grateful for the Founding Fathers.

🔥 Twitter has announced that, after discussions with Elon Musk, he will NOT be joining the firm’s board of directors. Reporting on the story, the Daily Mail UK suggested one reason might be that joining the board would have stopped Musk from owning more than 14.9% of shares, raising speculation that he is planning a hostile takeover. We shall see.

Early this morning Musk tweeted an emoji of a smiling face, with a hand over its mouth, but then quickly deleted the tweet. Your guess is as good as mine.

🔥 Friday, Neiman Labs reported a story headlined, “The New York Times Would Really Like Its Reporters To Stop Scrolling And Get Off Twitter (At Least Once In A While).”

According to the story, NYT executive editor Dean Baquet sent a memo to staff that encouraged them to stop scrolling on twitter so much. “Tweet less, tweet more thoughtfully, and devote more time to reporting,” he explained.

This is a sort of policy change for the Times. In an interview about the memo, Baquet admitted that newsroom pressure to be on Twitter was real and significant. But in his new memo, Baquet asked reporters “to meaningfully reduce how much time you’re spending on the platform, tweeting or scrolling, in relation to other parts of your job.”

And, Baquet continued, reporters should “strengthen our commitment to treating information [on Twitter] with the journalistic skepticism that we would any source, story or critic.” Lol.

When interviewed about his memo, Baquet cited two main problems. The first was time. Employees should be reporting, not tweeting. Second, and more interesting, was feedback. “Twitter’s reaction to your coverage should not be the primary way you regard the success or failure of your coverage,” Baquet explained.

Good luck with that. All writers want to know what people think about their stories. I know this from personal experience.

🪳 Yesterday, in an interview with ABC’s This Week, psycho deep-state doctor Tony Fauci shocked reporters by saying it’s now up to Americans to make their OWN medical risk assessments. Imagine that. “This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci rambled during the interview.

“What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take,” the despised doctor allowed. “We’re at that point where in many respects … we’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community.”

Gosh. A revolution in science. And after all that safe and effective jabbing.

📉 More bad news for Covid restriction lovers! Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a long article headlined, “School Reopening Mess Drives Frustrated Parents Toward GOP.” The sub-headline blames democrat party defections on Covid restrictions: “So disillusioned: Covid restrictions are weighing heavily for Democratic voters who say their party officials left mandates in place too long, with devastating consequences for their children.”

The article reports on a series of former lifelong democrats who admit they voted straight Republican in the last elections and plan to keep on doing it.

Just a couple years ago, Pelosi was confidently predicting that the democrat party was poised to finally achieve permanent party dominance. This article suggests she was WAY off. The Journal noted that “interviews with New Jersey voters revealed that some Democrats’ breaks from their party last fall were neither flippant nor fleeting.”

One of those interviewed was Gina Genovese, a longtime Democratic voter until November, when she cast her ballot for Governor Murphy’s unsuccessful Republican challenger. Ms. Genovese was the state’s first openly gay mayor in 2006 when she presided over Long Hill, N.J., as a Democrat.

But Genovese told the Journal that she was turned off by her party’s support for mask and vaccine mandates, which she viewed as violations of personal freedom. Last year, she helped pay for a lawsuit that tried to strike Governor Murphy’s school mask mandate. This year, she has repeatedly turned down fundraising requests from the Democratic Party. “Democrats have left me so disillusioned,” she said.

Ms. Genovese described herself as “far-left” on global warming and gay rights, and admitted it was a tough decision to support Republicans during the pandemic. But she said she would probably back Republican Thomas Kean for Congress this fall. “Everything is a balance,” she said.

Rachel Keane, a 35-year-old registered nurse and mother of two in West Orange, N.J., said she had never voted Republican until last fall, when she straight Republican on her ballot, right down the ticket. She admitted she was worried about what her liberal parents would think about her switch, but described her decision as an awakening. She had always supported democrats without a second thought, but her anger over the governor’s mask requirements for children made her question that loyalty.

“I knew I wasn’t going to vote for Murphy, but wasn’t sure if I was going to leave it blank or what,” Ms. Keane said. “Then I just got angry and in the back of my head I thought, ‘F— you!’ And I voted Republican all the way down the line.”

56-year-old teacher Donna Davis said she had been a lifelong Democratic voter until the pandemic, when the Republican push to keep the economy open made her more receptive to conservative candidates. When schools started mandating masks and pushing vaccines, she didn’t want to do either, or to return to the classroom, and thought her teaching days were over—until she heard about an alternative learning center defying the mandates. She also supported Gov. Murphy’s conservative challenger and plans to vote Republican this fall.

I told you in 2020 these local governments would eventually regret all the mandates. So.

📉 And there’s even MORE bad polling news for dems! Yesterday, Newsmax ran an article headlined, “Democrats Facing Loss in Youth Support.” The article explains that young voters’ support for Joe Biden has not been as low for a Democrat president in decades.

Newsmax cites a Politico story reporting that pollster John Della Volpe warned Democrats in February, noting under-30 voters delivered for dems in 2018 and 2020 but are “no longer a sure thing.” Della Volpe should know; he’s run the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics Youth Poll since it started in 2000.

Another democrat pollster, Ben Tulchin, told Politico he’s concerned “about where young people are in terms of not feeling engaged or motivated right now.” I BET they aren’t motivated.

I wonder how much of the problem with young voters has to do with them being pummeled mercilessly with mandates, masks and jabs, and chucked out of all their social environments. I guess dems thought they’d forget about all that stuff.

Have a marvelous Monday, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow for more!

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