☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, April 12, 2022 ☙ 😃 COVID SMILES 🦠

A good news roundup! Florida supports fatherhood; the Squad catches Covid; Colorado sheds equity; Florida tops Covid performance; the CDC finally figures out animal reservoirs exist, and more...

Good morning, and Happy Tuesday everyone! Yesterday’s news was a little difficult ,so today we’ll lighten it up with a big giant good news roundup: Florida creates new programs supporting something called “fatherhood;” the Squad gets more Covid; a new study ranks Florida near the top for pandemic performance; a big win for a newly-conservative Colorado school board; the CDC finally realizes the big problem with controlling Covid; Tennessee makes a big ivermectin move; New Zealand’s horse-faced PM pivots; Kamala’s emotions get in the way; groomer worst hit by plunging school enrollment figures in California; and Biden temporarily pauses the federal mandate.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 Yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law supporting programs that, get ready for it, encourage FATHERHOOD. You remember fatherhood, right? Fatherhood is like a bicycle that a fish doesn’t need or something. But humans aren’t fish.

HB 7065 allocates $70 million dollars for initiatives creating educational and mentorship programs to help kids, fathers and families in the state. Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice will create a mentorship program for at-risk youth, and DCF will launch a statewide campaign about the importance of fatherhood, and will support nonprofit organizations that help fathers stay engaged and connect with their kids.

Promoting fatherhood to groups who’ve historically received the exact opposite message from government seems like an improvement, and most national media seemed to grudgingly allow it as a positive development. DeSantis is clearly — and smartly — pursuing a pro-parent, pro-kid, pro-family agenda. Former NFL head coach Tony Dungy spoke along with Governor DeSantis at the remarkable signing conference, watch it if you have five minutes.

Among other things, Dungy said, “I asked, how do those young boys (19, 20, 21) get [sent to prison]? And he told me it’s not socio-economic, it’s not racial, it’s not education, it’s none of that. 95% of these boys did not grow up with their dad.” Imagine that.

But Florida Democrats accused Governor DeSantis of being racist and anti-gay for signing the bill. Please don’t ask me to explain that. I haven’t had enough coffee yet.

As I’ve said before, I don’t believe these kinds of bills would have been possible without the pandemic. Thanks Covid!

📈 The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board commented yesterday on a recently-published economic study comparing U.S. states and their Covid mitigation performance. The researchers compared Covid outcomes in the 50 states and District of Columbia based on three variables: the economy, education, and mortality.

The top-ten BEST performing states were all small states except one: Florida, which came in at 6th best overall. While Florida did about average on mortality, it truly excelled in protecting its citizens from severe economic harm and protecting its kids from lost schooling.

The bottom 10 states are dominated by those with the most stringent lockdowns and that were among the last to reopen schools. Their economies are for the most part still behind most others in recovering from the pandemic. For example, New York, where Governor Cuomo kicked old people down the Covid stairs into packed nursing homes, scored second to last (49th) in the study.

You’ll be shocked to hear this, but the researchers didn’t find any correlation between strong economic lockdowns and health performance. “The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero,” said the authors, “which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.” Thanks experts!

Do you think folks who live in those lockdown states will ever get an apology from the experts? We can dream, can’t we? But seriously, we all can thank President Trump for properly setting up the Covid response from the beginning as a state-lead effort rather than federalizing it, which could have easily happened.

You know, somebody should go back and round up all the insane predictions experts made about Florida and how DeSantis’ open-economy policy was going to get everyone killed. I’d like to make them into a sweater or quilt or wrap my car in them or something. Dummies.

🔥 Triple-jabbed Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and a member of the radical lawmaker group that for some reason is called “The Squad,” which sounds like a bad 70’s police dramedy, has become the latest member of Congress to test positive for Covid after Biden’s super-spreader event last week. Whoops!

Rashida Tlaib @RashidaTlaib

I've tested positive for COVID-19. After not feeling well over the weekend, I took an at home and PCR test. I am home quarantining and recovering. Please stay safe, everyone.

🔥 Progress! Colorado Springs School District 11 just deleted its “groundbreaking” Department of Equity and Inclusion and chucked the clownish “director of equity and inclusion” position into the Colorado river. Buh bye!

In a “thumbs-up” vote at the April 6th school board meeting, District 11’s board voted 4-2 to de-fund the so-called “equity” department right out of the 2022-23 preliminary school year budget. The board’s new majority carried the decision, after conservatives secured the board in the recent November elections.

Radical leftists were hardest hit, hysterically convinced that removing the racist department will permanently destroy the entire school system. “It is heartbreaking to see our beloved school district being liquidated in pursuit of a political agenda,” a statement from the dishonestly-named “Neighbors for Education” group said.

I just love these names they come up with.

Liquidated! It’s just like Soylent Green!

🔥 I was talking as early as Spring 2021 about how we can never eliminate Covid because of ANIMAL RESERVOIRS. At the time, I pointed out how there’s no way we could vaccinate all the wild animals even if we wanted to, because animals don’t respond to shaming or threats of loss of employment. So.

Well, good news ! The CDC has finally caught up with me! It only took them a year. Don’t be judgy, they aren’t the sharpest needles in the vaccine rack. But I’m starting to think they could use some help. Maybe they should put ME in charge? Where do I send my resume?

CBS News ran the story yesterday headlined, “Watching For New Covid Variants In Wildlife ‘Now Critical,’ CDC says.” In its statement, the CDC announced “One of CDC’s primary One Health concerns is the establishment of a North American animal reservoir in which the virus could ‘hide,’ mutate, and potentially re-emerge as a new variant in the human population.”

Hahahaha! I’ve been wondering if they’d ever figure this out. Better late than never, I suppose. But still, the goofy scientists at the CDC aren’t quite getting it. They think, and I am not making this up, I promise, that it is somehow possible to control the animal population. The CDC’s new guidance asks states to start administering Covid tests to animals.

I PROMISE I am not making that up. I wonder if the CDC is next going to ask the animals to socially distance, wear masks, and show proof of vaccination to eat each other.

Fortunately they are not advocating for massacring all the wildlife. An expert cited by CBS said “One of the things we don’t want to do, and we’ve seen historically in the past, is ‘oh, we’ll need to kill the wildlife.’ And that’s just really not a viable strategy.” So, that’s good, because suspicious public health experts in Denmark rampaged against their mink population back in 2020, and loopy Japanese doctors rounded up all the sketchiest-looking hamsters earlier this year.

You did NOT want to be a hamster in Japan in January this year, I promise. It was a tough month for the adorable rodents.

But fortunately CBS’ expert said culling isn’t really a viable option for all the wild animals. Whew. But maybe at least we can ‘nudge’ the deer, bears, and prairie dogs into taking vaccines somehow. Check with the behavioral experts.

💊 Ivermectin will soon be available for the treatment of Covid without a prescription in Tennessee. The new law essentially allows pharmacists to sell the drug over the counter, along with some counseling and a few rules and regulations. You know, it’d be easier to just do it here, but Tennessee is less than a day’s drive from where I am in Florida. Progress!

🔥 New Zealand’s Prime Minister is pivoting! The Daily Mail UK reported a story yesterday headlined, “Jacinda Ardern admits she’s NOT a fan of vaccine mandates and explains why she imposed them on New Zealanders anyway.” Her views are EVOLVING.

A few weeks ago, New Zealand’s highest court found the vaccine mandate for its military and police forces to be a violation of human rights, and illegal. Now, the Daily Mail reports that the hated horse-faced prime minister gave a long TV interview yesterday, telling Kiwi reporters, “I still don’t [want vaccine mandates]. I did [change my tune]. They weren’t something I wanted us to have to use, but I think its easy to forget where we were.”

Aww. Don’t blame Jacinda. Dr. Fauci made her do it.

Jacinda dismissed six months of widespread protests over her Covid policies referring to the protest groups as ‘Trump supporters’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’. Trump supporters? In New Zealand? Did something change? Is Trump running in New Zealand now?

Is it just me, or is EVERYBODY blaming Trump nowadays? Does Jacinda even know Trump is a pro-vaxxer? His program created the damnable jabs. Comments like Ardern’s are the kind of thing that make me suspicious the jab must be involved with some kind of cognitive decline. Just saying. Don’t cancel me.

🔥 Jen Psaki explained to skeptical reporters yesterday that Kamala Harris wasn’t wearing a mask indoors during the Ketanji Jackson event because “it was an emotional day, it was a historic day.” Well, that’s okay then if it was her EMOTIONS! That’s obviously a GREAT reason to take off that dirty face rag. I actually kind of agree with that, at least to the extent that just about ANY reason is a good enough reason to get those bacteria wipes away from your mucous membranes.

But Psaki’s comment perfectly illustrates pro-masker thinking. Emotions are the reason they put the masks ON, too.

🔥 More good news for kids, and bad news for groomers! The LA Times ran an article yesterday headlined “California Public School Enrollment Spirals, Dropping By 110,000 Students This Year.” Whoops. That’s a lot of kids.

Even worse, this year’s decline follows an historic enrollment hit during the previous 2020-21 school year, when California experienced the largest drop in 20 years, shedding -160,000 students. Yahoo said California education policy makers had hoped that this year’s enrollment numbers would show some signs of rebounding from last school year’s massive loss. But no.

While the recent losses are still just a few percentage points of the total 5 million enrolled kids, the loss in revenue to schools is significant, prompting Governor Newsom to relax the grading standards, I mean the funding standards, allowing schools to use the greater of current attendance or three-year average attendance. But the new formula could be a problem in some districts because averaging involves MATH.

Well, they have to do SOMETHING. It’s not like they can change the policies that are driving people away or anything.

🔥 Good news for federal workers! After the Fifth Circuit vacated the lower court’s injunction last week, the Biden Administration paused the federal worker mandate while litigation is pending. So the jab mandate is NOT back on, not yet. Unjabbed federal workers can breath easy for now.

🔥 I remain the only family member unaffected by a seasonal cold that got Michelle and all three boys. I think it’s because of the saline iodine spray. We’ll see if it holds, I will let you guys know.

🎨 Finally, my law firm recently sponsored a contest for World Art Day for local kids in grades K-3rd. There’s still a little time before the April 15th deadline to submit entries to Alexis.White@smartbizlaw.com, in the theme “What I want to be when I grow up.” We have a bunch of prizes. Since submissions to date have been a little thin, the team has opened up the local contest to kids anywhere. Feel free to submit an entry for your child, including their first name, grade, and school (along with your contact info in the email, of course).

Have a terrific Tuesday! I’ll see you all back here tomorrow for another encouraging roundup.

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