☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, September 22, 2021 ☙ Guard, Changed 🦠

I’m back! Today’s roundup includes all good news. You’re going to love it. I threw in a bunch of links for you, too.

Good morning, C&C family! You guys have been so patient over the last few days waiting for me to resume my normal snarky Covid commentary. Well, wait no longer! I’m back. We’ll ease into the normal routine today. So just relax already.

Today’s roundup includes all good news. You’re going to love it. I threw in a bunch of links for you, too.

🗞 THE C&C ARMY* POST 🗞

☎️ The 5DAY calls will continue (text 5DAY to 43506 if you want to help) while the legislature continues its work session. Fortunately, the current pro-mandate house speaker and president of the senate are rotating out. Thank heavens. Florida Representative Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) became the new Speaker Designate yesterday in the work session, replacing the otherwise useless Chris Sprowls. And Senator Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples), is slated to be formally designated as the next Senate president on October 19, replacing Wilton Simpson. Fortunately. So get ready, 5DAY’ers.

Links:

Renner’s legislative history: [Paul M. Renner - Ballotpedia]

Passidomo’s legislative history: [Kathleen Passidomo - Ballotpedia]

(* more like a club than an “army,” so don’t panic.)

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 So, this is HUGE. Yesterday, Governor DeSantis replaced the head of Florida’s Department of Health, Scott Rivkes, with whom the Governor has been said to have been frustrated for a long time. It is true that Rivkees — a lackluster pro-masker — has long been an impediment to fixing the schools. His replacement, the new Surgeon General, is Dr. Joseph Ladapo — a 42-year old Harvard-trained cardiovascular specialist. It was a terrific move, signaling the Governor is about to get super serious about Florida’s Covid-19 policies.

He looks like an amazing choice. Dr. Ladapo signed the Great Barrington Declaration last year, along with hundreds of prominent medical and scientific experts, which called for a Covid strategy based on protecting the vulnerable and allowing healthy people to develop natural immunity to the virus. In hindsight, it was 100% correct, even though the geniuses in charge of social media instantly de-platformed the Declaration.

Dr. Ladapo also published a series of op-eds that will interest you. Here are the handy links for you:

— [Are COVID-19 vaccines riskier than advertised?], Wall Street Journal

— [Vaccine mandates can’t stop COVID-19’s spread], Wall Street Journal

— [Masks are a distraction from the pandemic reality] , Wall Street Journal

— [Let’s all be honest about hydroxychloroquine: Evidence is more positive than many in the medical community admit] New York Daily News

These articles show that Dr. Ladapo is, first of all, thinking for himself, and second, not afraid of the Covid wokescolds who are trying their level best to shame, silence, and police the medical establishment.

During the press conference yesterday announcing his appointment, Ladapo said some very encouraging things. Here are a sample of his comments:

”Florida will completely reject fear as a way of making policies in public health. That's been, unfortunately, a centerpiece of health policy in the US ever since the beginning of the pandemic. And it's over here, expiration date, it's done.”

Whooo-hooo! Yes! Finally, someone in state government is talking about the pandemic of fear.

“Florida will completely reject fear. It doesn’t lead to good decisions.”

Yes! He gets it.

“Part of why [fear] is an issue is…the climate of distrust that has been engendered over the past year and a half, and that was the direct result of scientists…taking the science and basically misrepresenting it to fit their agendas.”

Oh man. You guys know how that right there is delightful music to my starving ears.

“You will know when we are talking about data and opinion. Never lose sight that public health is not just one thing. It is not just about the amount of COVID at a single location.”

“The state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn’t the only path to that. It’s been treated almost like a religion…”

Ya think? And, we don’t need any new religions, do we?

“There’s tremendous data that supports the fact that natural immunity protects people from getting very ill and also protects people from being infected again.”

Well. There it is, officially, from our new Surgeon General. Hopefully we will see some official guidance on how to treat folks who have already recovered from Covid. They should be exempt from ALL mandates.

Dr. Ladapo was hired Monday at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where he will be about as welcome as a porcupine at a nudist colony. So.

During the press conference announcing Ladapo’s appointment, Governor DeSantis said — referring to school quarantine policy — “Someone will test positive, and then they send the healthy kids home. That needs to be re-evaluated, that’s not how they do it in the European countries… We’re going to be looking at that… Healthy kids, they have a right to be in the classroom.”

Hear that, parents? Help is on the way.

DeSantis also said, “You have to say the truth to people. You can’t tell noble lies to try to get them to behave in a way that you think you want them to behave in.”

Thank you! Please stop lying to us, government. I wonder who the Governor could be talking about?

🔥 The assistant director of Norway’s CDC (the NIPH), Geir Bukholm, said the coronavirus can now be put in the same category as illnesses such as flu, common colds and RS (respiratory syncytial virus). “We are now in a new phase where we must look at the coronavirus as one of several respiratory diseases with seasonal variation,” Bukholm said. So. He said it, not me. I’m just a lawyer.

🔥 Organized crime is taking a bizarre but oh-so-tasy turn in New Zealand. Yesterday, Auckland police announced the arrest of a pair of alleged “gang associates” who were nabbed trying to enter the state with a trunk full of KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN. Since under Auckland’s strict lockdown, all restaurants including take-out are completely shut down, and the Colonel’s addictive chicken products can’t be found anywhere in the area, it has apparently created a burgeoning black market in salty fried fast food.

Auckland police said the two men, aged 23 and 30, had travelled from Hamilton, about 75 miles south of Auckland. They also had thousands of dollars in cash with them, apparently the product of their illicit poultry smuggling operation, along with a bunch of suspicious-looking sandwich bags.

Fortunately, Auckland’s crack squad of highly-motivated police interceptors were able to shut down these chicken-runners and their reckless defiance of authority. Reports did not indicate what happened to the truckload of KFC. One wonders.

I’ll just point out in closing that New Zealand was last year’s Covid lockdown darling, the fearmongers’ iconic island of viral refuge. If only we could be like New Zealand, they said. No thanks. I’ll keep my KFC extra-crispy at the drive-through, thank you. I don’t need to be having to buy it on some sketchy street corner somewhere.

🔥 The Sheriffs are starting to come out against Biden’s currently-invisible vaccine mandate. Cleburne County, Arkansas Sheriff Chris Brown is one of two sheriffs in Arkansas who are now declaring that they will NOT comply with Biden’s federal vaccine mandate, calling it “dictator-like” and brazenly unconstitutional. In Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones took to Facebook yesterday to say that he will not be enforcing vaccine mandates. Cherokee County, Oklahoma Sheriff Jason Chennault said recently that “I will not enforce my employees to get vaccinated. I will not enforce the public to get vaccinated. I’ve been asked that several times and my answer has always been no throughout the whole thing.” Horry County, South Carolina Sheriff Philip Thompson added his support to a letter from the South Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, saying that his office would also NOT enforce Biden’s proposed vaccine mandate. Riverside County, California Sheriff Chad Bianco said he would not enforce a vaccine mandate in his county in the wake of Los Angeles County issuing vaccine mandates and after Biden issued his executive order directing OSHA to regulate and enforce a vaccine mandate on employers with more than 100 workers.

🔥 According to a source who was present at the time, after our widely-watched and widely-reported anti-vaccine-mandate hearing in Circuit Court on Monday, Orange County’s attorneys said they would take termination “off the table” — a retreat from that county’s previous “vaccinate or terminate” position. A different source told me that the City of Clearwater also said yesterday that they were no longer considering a “vaccinate or terminate” policy for their employees. So. Progress.

🔥 For all you ivermectin and “right-to-try” fans, you’ll REALLY enjoy the public comment section from the Polk County Commission meeting yesterday. Check it out here: [BoCC Regular Meeting & Public Hearing: September 21, 2021].

Have a wonderful Wednesday, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning to round up a whole bunch of more stuff for you that’s been piling up over the last few days. It’ll be great.

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