☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, August 20, 2021 ☙ Blind to Their Blindness

Tons of news today. The slow-motion implosion of the Biden Administration continues as top allies condemn the commander-in-chief. Vaxx efficacy drops even faster. Brits back off boosters. Biden threatens to “investigate” pro-freedom governors. A win for a law professor. The summer wave starts to shoot up in the northern, highly-vaccinated, highly-masked states. Local bullies threaten docs who sign mask exemptions forms. And more.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 We blew it out yesterday with our call for C&C Army volunteers . 112 volunteers enlisted! I am already working on some new initiatives, which I am keeping under wraps for now (except for the enrolled). Will let you know once it’s underway. You can join the C&C Army here, Uncle C&C needs you: https://www.patreon.com/coffee_and_covid_army

☎️ The massive C&C calling team has 997 members as of this morning. I’m starting to run into random people around town who tell me “Jeff! I just made my calls!” It’s working. If you’d like to sign up, text 5DAY to 43506. Make your calls, and leave this message: “A special legislative session needs to be called IMMEDIATELY. People are being discriminated against and segregated based on whether or not they are vaccinated or wearing a mask. People are suffering, and this session should be called NOW.”

According the dashboard, we’ve only had 19 unsubscribes, or 2%. Feel free to copy the instructions above and send them out again to your networks. We need that special session.

The calling team is doing so GREAT. They are blowing out legislators’ voice mails and keeping them full so no other messages can get in. THANK YOU CALLERS!!

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY*

🔥 Things are going SO great. Just amazing. Earlier this week I expressed some mild criticism of the Biden Administration, arguing that the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was a good metaphor for how the Administration is handling the Covid crisis. Well. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who noticed how awful Biden is performing. Well, “performing” at least a couple days a week, that is.

Yesterday, the British Parliament voted to hold Joe Biden in contempt. That has never happened before. They called him dishonorable and shameful. Condemnation for Biden came from across the political spectrum in Britain, Tory and Labour alike, and even included usually lukewarm Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Tory leader Michael Howard said Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan “is, and will be seen by history, as a catastrophic mistake which may well prove to be the defining legacy of his presidency.”

Ten bucks says the children in the White House have a temper tantrum and do something moronic like hold up some aid payment to Britain in a fit of pique. Who wants to play?

And, aren’t you glad we got rid of the mean tweeter so that our relationships with our allies could finally improve? By improve, I mean collapse into a fiery radioactive hellhole.

💉 A new study published YESTERDAY by Oxford University researchers found that mRNA vaccine efficacy is already dropping, within the first three months after jabbing. The study involves hundreds of thousands of randomly-selected households in the UK. According to the report, vaccine “efficacy” fell from 92% after 14 days to 78% after only 90 days. As we have seen, Israeli studies show the vaxx loses about half its efficacy — falling to placebo levels — after 8 months.

💉After widespread announcements of mass-rollouts of booster shots in the UK, the Brits seem to be walking that back. Fast. The Telegraph reported that UK officials are now saying that boosters may be limited only to the most vulnerable citizens.

You think the British might be starting to get the idea?

😷 Biden told his Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, to figure out how to use civil rights laws to punish governors who ban mask mandates. Before now, civil rights laws have always been used to protect historically disadvantaged groups from being discriminated against. But who is being discriminated against by mask mandates that are being equally applied to all the kids in a school?

The answer lies in a squishy, difficult doctrine called “disparate impact.” The doctrine allow challenges to employment or educational practices that are facially nondiscriminatory but have a disproportionately negative effect on members of legally protected groups. Generally, it lets plaintiffs sue over policies that create different results for different protected groups.

In an interview on Wednesday, Secretary Cardona said that, like the president, he was “appalled that there are adults who are blind to their blindness, that there are people who are putting policies in place that are putting students and staff at risk.”

Blind to their blindness? Who talks like that?

Secretary Cardona said he would deploy the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm to investigate states that ban forced masking. The process is the punishment. Okay, but, what’s the disparate impact?

“I’ve heard those parents saying, ‘Miguel, because of these policies, my child cannot access their school, I would be putting them in harm’s way,’” Cardona said. “And to me, that goes against a free, appropriate public education. That goes against the fundamental beliefs of educators across the country to protect their students and provide a well-rounded education.”

“Goes against” a free public education? Goes against? What does that mean? I guess he means, “impacts” or something.

Anyway, it looks like the Department of Education is about to argue that parents with anxiety disorders are disparately impacted by forced masking bans. Genius! More incompetent magical thinking from the best and brightest in the Biden Administration.

🎗️ Just a reminder of this data reported in the New England Journal of Medicine back in February:

— Out of two million unmasked school children in Sweden, 65 died in the pre-covid period in 2019 (Nov — Feb). And only 69 died in the post-Covid period (Mar — Jun). So.

— No child with Covid-19 died during the post-Covid period.

— Fewer than 10 preschool teachers and 20 schoolteachers in Sweden received intensive care for Covid-19 through June 30, 2020.

— Sweden’s school children remain unmasked.

Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670

💉 Biden pulled some more of those federal money strings Wednesday, announcing that nursing homes receiving Medicate and Medicaid dollars have to get all their employees to take the jab. Or else Uncle Sugar Daddy is going to cut them off. Good thing we have single-payer systems for those nursing homes, huh? “If you visit, live or work in a nursing home, you should not be at a high risk for contracting COVID from unvaccinated employees,” Biden muttered. The new guidelines could take effect next month.

Currently, White House staff are not required to be vaccinated.

The big jabbing push is working. The nation’s rate of new vaccinations has nearly doubled over the past month. More than 200 million Americans have now received at least one dose. Around 80 million eligible Americans have not had the jab.

Churches are going to have to step up soon. There are going to be a lot of people being denied medical care by traditional institutions. It’s time to start building up the clinics and charitable hospitals again. About time, I mean.

🔥 Georgetown law professor Todd Zywicki scored a victory for common sense this week, when George Mason University threw in the towel and agreed to grant Zywicki a medical exemption to the vaccine in exchange for him dismissing his lawsuit. Zywicki had argued that since he’d already recovered from Covid-19, he had robust and durable natural immunity, so he should be medically exempt.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Zywicki said that the university’s coercive mandate “violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason.” Common sense.

Zywicki also argued that it “isn’t merely unnecessary for me to get the shot. It’s potentially dangerous. Covid-recovered individuals have been mostly excluded from the vaccine clinical trials, rendering any claims about the purported safety for this group largely speculative,” he wrote.

But a spokesman for GWU said there would be no overall change to the policy. People who’ve had Covid still have to get the jab. The settlement was just with Zywicki. So.

🦸‍♂️ Taking a page from DeSantis’ playbook, Governor Abbott — still recovering from post-vaccination Covid infection — announced that Texas is standing up nine Covid-19 antibody infusion sites around the Lone Star State. The first one opened Tuesday in San Antonio and is already providing treatment — 100 folks were treated on the first day. Treatment that you can’t, obviously, get in San Antonio hospitals. For some reason. So. Weird. You’d think hospitals would want to provide a popular medical therapy that saves lives. Oh well!

“Antibody infusion centers play an integral role in our efforts to combat Covid-19 because they help prevent hospitalizations and ensure that resources are available to treat the most severe cases of this virus,” said Governor Abbott.

🔥 Meanwhile, things are getting weird in Oregon. The state has one of the highest “full vaccination” rates in the country at over 70% of the eligible population. Masks are and have been required in all K-12 schools. There is a statewide indoor mask mandate. So, they are keeping things under control, right? Doing it right and all that? Crushing the curve? Being part of the solution and not the problem? Nope.

Pediatric cases in Oregon are at ALL TIME highs. Hospitals in Oregon report being overcrowded. One alarming article reported that a Covid patient even died right in the ER because no ICU beds were available there.

So.

Meanwhile, just across the border in British Columbia, even more folks are vaxxed: 74% of the eligible. And guess what? Spiking cases. Overall hospitalizations, which lag behind spikes, are up 49 per cent from last Thursday. Huh. So. Weird.

Local CEO of the multi-billion-dollar Shands Hospital franchise Ed Jimenez told the County Commission this week that the current wave of infections in Florida is definitely NOT a seasonal spike. No way. Impossible. On the other hand, Coffee & Covid has been telling you since March the seasonal summer spike was coming. I guess Coffee & Covid was right. So much for hospital CEOs.

I hereby challenge Mr. Jimenez to a public debate on the public response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Just say when and where.

📊*COVID IN FLORIDA AND ALACHUA COUNTY*

Hellzapoppin in Florida, and Alachua County seems to be the ringleader for lawless local government.

🔥 The Gainesville Sun ran a hit piece / advertisement on a local doctor that the paper claims is responsible for half of the “properly completed” medical exemptions to the school mask mandate. The Sun says that of 39 properly filled-out waiver forms, 18 were signed by Ronald Emerick, a pediatrician who owns the Little Pine Pediatrics practice in Alachua, Florida.

The doc signed 18 exemption forms. So what? Shouldn’t the story be, Alachua County’s school board has only found 39 mask exemption forms to be “properly filled out?”

Nope. Here’s what the Sun is saying, in other words: Hey doctors! If you sign exemption forms you’ll be called out in the newspaper!

Now where, oh where, could the Sun have gotten those figures on numbers of exemption forms submitted to the school board, and why would they even think to ask?

The Sun reported Superintendent Carlee Simon said most of the cases of granted waivers have been due to mental health issues, such as anxiety. She said a few other issues have been cited, including asthma and autism. “We are concerned, even for some of the explanations for the justification of why it should be an exemption, and so we are collecting this documentation and we will be submitting it to the medical board,” Simon said.

Ah, it becomes clear. So the School Board now also thinks it is qualified to be a medical supervisory team that is “reviewing” and “evaluating” doctors’ medical opinions and “submitting” them to the medical board. Got it. I bet all the other doctors in Alachua County got it, too.

🔥 On Wednesday, Governor DeSantis appointed a replacement for the District 2 school board seat. The previous occupant was removed after a lawsuit brought by my firm. Word on the street is that Ms. Simon’s future employment in Alachua County may be shorter now than it was last week. So. We shall see.

There you go, coffee swillers. Drink up and go out there and have a fantastic Friday. I’ll be back at the keyboard in the morning.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Join the C&C Army! https://www.patreon.com/coffee_and_covid_army

You can also find me on MeWe, mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.