COVID-19 | The Georgia Star News

Study Finds Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine 90 Percent Effective

June 15, 2021June 14, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Novavax announced on Monday that its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective, according to a press release on Novavax’s website.

The phase-3 trial enrolled 29,960 participants ages 18 and older in the U.S. and Mexico. The study found that 77 of the participants tested positive for COVID-19, with 63 testing positive in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group, according to the press release.

“Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global public health need for additional COVID-19 vaccines. These clinical results reinforce that NVX-CoV2373 is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infection,” Stanley C. Erck, President, and CEO of Novavax said in the press release.

Georgia’s Pre-COVID 19 Unemployment Insurance Requirements Reinstated

June 15, 2021June 14, 2021 Chris Butler

Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) officials have announced they will reinstate the unemployment insurance requirements they had in place before COVID-19. This, according to a press release that GDOL officials published late last week.

Suicide Attempts Among Adolescents Skyrocketed During the Pandemic, CDC Report Shows

June 14, 2021June 13, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Suicide-related emergency room visits among both adolescent girls and boys spiked amid the pandemic and continued to surge as lockdowns persisted, according to a government health report.

Emergency room (ER) mental health visits increased 31% among children aged 12-17 years old in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released Friday. The CDC noted that, while it couldn’t definitively establish a cause, it’s likely that pandemic-related restrictions on everyday life could be to blame for the increase.

“Young persons might represent a group at high risk because they might have been particularly affected by mitigation measures, such as physical distancing (including a lack of connectedness to schools, teachers, and peers); barriers to mental health treatment; increases in substance use; and anxiety about family health and economic problems,” the report stated.

Four States to Slash COVID-19 Unemployment Aid Saturday

June 14, 2021June 13, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Four states will be cutting pandemic unemployment increases three months early, ending the supplemental $300 in federal aid.

Alaska, Iowa, Missouri, and Mississippi will end pandemic-related unemployment relief on June 12. An additional 21 Republican-led states will slash federal aid before it expires on Sept. 6, according to Business Insider.

Conservatives continue to advocate an end to the increased benefits, saying they are no longer needed now that the pandemic is contained and speculating that the high payouts are discouraging would-be workers from returning.

FLASHBACK: Atlanta’s Fox 5 Reported on COVID-19 Outbreak in October at Fulton County Election Preparation Center Warehouse Where Absentee Ballots from Drop Boxes Were Delivered

June 13, 2021June 13, 2021 Julie Carr

A little more than two weeks prior to the 2020 election, Atlanta’s Fox5 TV reported on a COVID-19 outbreak at the Fulton County Election warehouse.

Commentary: Make Communist China Pay for COVID-19

June 13, 2021June 12, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

As the world slowly begins to emerge from the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic and American elites develop an interest in the formerly dismissed Wuhan lab leak theory, it is time to focus attention where it belongs: punishing a rogue Chinese Communist Party for what it has inflicted upon an unsuspecting world.

To many of us, it was obvious from the outset that COVID-19 was a “Chinese Chernobyl.” Regardless of whether the virus has as its provenance a zoonotic transmission at a wet market or an “escape” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology—to say nothing of the low, but still non-negligible, possibility that it was intentionally developed and weaponized as a bioweapon—the CCP’s gross negligence, recklessness and, indeed, malice all contributed to an initially localized virus metastasizing into a crippling global phenomenon.

The story is, by now, a familiar one: The CCP responded to the initial outbreak in Wuhan by arresting and muzzling scientists, suppressing journalistic investigation, and actively disseminating disinformation to the World Health Organization and other transnational institutions. As a study from Britain’s University of Southampton concluded well over a year ago, proper Chinese government intervention at the virus’ onset might have reduced its ultimate spread by as much as 95 percent.

Unvaccinated Students at New Hampshire High School Marked and Tracked at Prom

June 13, 2021June 12, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Boy putting on a corsage on woman's wrist

Unvaccinated students who attended Exeter High School’s prom on Saturday were marked with numbers and contact traced throughout the course of the night, a school spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Students attending the event “who were unable to provide a vaccination card because they did not have or share a card or had not completed the full vaccination process had a number written on their hand,” an Exeter High School spokesperson told the DCNF. The school divided the dance floor into three sections and asked dancing students to stop periodically in between songs in order for them to “raise their hands to determine who they were around,” the spokesperson said.

The students were made aware of the contact tracing procedures beforehand, and were also told to provide vaccination information ahead of the event, the spokesperson said. Any personal information obtained for the event, including vaccination status, was destroyed, according to the spokesperson.

Rare Heart Inflammation Following COVID-19 Vaccination Sparks Emergency CDC Meeting

June 12, 2021June 11, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will discuss reports of a rare heart inflammation following doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in an emergency meeting, it announced Thursday.

The emergency meeting, set to take place on June 18, will include updates on mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety with a specific focus on rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, Scott Pauley of the CDC told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The risks and benefits of administering the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents and young adults will also be discussed, according to the meeting’s agenda.

The announcement comes following a presentation to the Food and Drug Administration by Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, confirming 226 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis in people under 30. These cases are more than twice what was expected under the FDA’s safety assessment for COVID-19 vaccines.

Illegal Border Crossings Surge to Highest Rates in Over 10 Years

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Illegal Aliens apprehended by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents with assistance from agents from Air and Marine Operations, Tucson Air Branch.

After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.

From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.

Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.

Commentary: China Is the Big Winner from Our COVID Hysteria

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

The tidal wave of probability, circumstantial evidence of such mass and consistency that it is now almost irrefutable, that the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, will alter China’s relationship with the world and particularly with the United States.

Accompanied as it is by the increasing volume of evidence that Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases—a post he has held for 37 years—and chief medical advisor to the president, went to unjustified lengths to deny that the coronavirus was anything but an unforeseeable escapee from a live food market, the unraveling story will ramify very widely. Seen as a whole, it has been an immense strategic victory for the People’s Republic of China. This victory is all the more remarkable because it was probably an extraordinary act of improvisation.

There is no reason to believe at this point that the Chinese authorities deliberately manufactured this virus and unleashed it mindless of the great damage it wrought among China’s civilian population. The great preponderance of evidence now is that the coronavirus was indeed manufactured, presumably for the purpose of enhanced research. As not infrequently occurs, it escaped, and while China imposed draconian measures to contain its spread among the Chinese population (and has never published believable figures about the extent of the harm that it did in China) it waited an unconscionable length of time before taking any measures to reduce its spread outside China.

Houston Methodist Hospital Sued by Nurses over Vaccine Mandate

June 7, 2021June 6, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

At least 117 nurses are suing their employer, Houston Methodist Hospital, in Texas’ largest city, over its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for workers, claiming they are being forced to be “human guinea pigs,” Fox News reported.

Jennifer Bridges, one of the nurses included in the suit, told “Fox News Primetime” on Wednesday that they are fighting for basic rights of workers. Her attorney Jared Woodfill V said they would otherwise be unemployed and could “face bankruptcy court” if unable to earn a living.

“This is very important. We’re basically fighting for everybody’s rights right now just to make our own decisions. Nobody should be forced to put something in their body if they are not comfortable with it — and lose their jobs over it,” said Bridges.

California Ordered to Pay $2 Million in Legal Fees to Church that Violated Coronavirus Restrictions

June 7, 2021June 6, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Inside of a church with stained glass and low lighting

After a lengthy court battle, the government of the state of California backed down in its efforts to enforce coronavirus restrictions on a church that continued hosting in-person worship services, and has now agreed in a settlement to pay the church’s $2 million worth of legal fees, Breitbart reports.

When the state repeatedly attempted to enforce strict capacity limits, mask mandates, and other “social distancing” requirements on the San Diego-based Pentecostal church, the church’s lawyers filed suit with the United States Supreme Court, winning all three suits. This ultimately led to lawyers on behalf of the state of California agreeing to the settlement, which was approved by a federal judge.

Responding to the settlement, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, a legal group that represents churches facing suppression of their First Amendment rights, pointed out that while businesses such as Costco were limited to 50 percent capacity, while churches were forced to stay as low as 25 percent, and sometimes even lower.

American Higher Education Has Deep Ties to EcoHealth Alliance, Wuhan Institute of Virology

June 7, 2021June 6, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Several American researchers have worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance on coronavirus-related research, including gain of function research, dating back more than a decade, and emails reveal that several professors were in contact with Dr. Anthony Fauci during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

As the intelligence community commences its investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, a series of scientific papers and studies belie a close relationship between American academia and the Wuhan lab, as well as EcoHealth Alliance, the multinational organization through which the NIH sent $600,000 to study the transmission of coronaviruses.

What follows is a brief timeline of research publications on which university researchers collaborated with partners from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance.

Commentary: 3.7 Million People Dead Due to Covid Cover-Up of Potential Wuhan Lab Origin of Virus

June 6, 2021June 5, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Almost 3.7 million people have died worldwide from the Covid pandemic that began in the Wuhan province of China in late 2019, and now, the American people are learning that the U.S. government has had intelligence for months that indicates the virus might have been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in a laboratory accident.

On Jan. 15, right at the end of former President Donald Trump’s term in office, the State Department released a fact sheet that stated, “The United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”

And it accused the Wuhan lab of possibly conducting “gain of function” research on bat-to-human transmission of coronaviruses: “Starting in at least 2016, WIV researchers studied RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). Since the outbreak, the WIV has not been transparent nor consistent about its work with RaTG13 or other similar viruses, including possible ‘gain of function’ experiments to enhance transmissibility or lethality.”

Commentary: The Island of Dr. Fauci

June 5, 2021June 4, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

How long will the Biden gerontocracy, also known as Geezer’s Palace, continue to indulge Anthony Fauci’s mendacious reign of medical terror?

Gain-of-function research is a field in which an organism or pathogen is altered genetically in a way that increases its performance. To speak of “performance” in this context, of course, raises the question, “performance of what?” Performance is based on a goal, and in medical science, long cut free from the moorings of intelligible ideas about the good, that means viability.

When the organism in question is a pathogen, viability means new qualities of pathogenesis, transmissibility, or the types of hosts the pathogen can infect, leading to the greater propagation of the pathogen.

Peter Daszak Orchestrated ‘Bullying Campaign’ to Make Sure COVID Outbreak Was Not Linked to the Wuhan Lab

June 5, 2021June 4, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Dr. Peter Daszak, the director of the New York-based non-profit that funneled hundreds of thousands of American tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reportedly orchestrated “a behind-the-scenes bullying campaign” to make sure the Covid-19 outbreak was not linked to the Wuhan lab.

Daszak got more than two dozen other scientists to sign off on the letter he wrote to the highly respected British medical journal, The Lancet, the Daily Mail reported. The idea, according to the emails, was to put forward a statement from “a community supporting our colleagues.”

Emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Daszak considered not signing the letter himself, although in the end he did.

Realtor Groups Bring Eviction Moratorium Case to Supreme Court, Argue Against CDC’s ‘Staggering’ Power

June 5, 2021June 4, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

A group of realtor organizations asked the Supreme Court to block the federal eviction moratorium that has been in effect throughout the pandemic and prevents landlords from evicting tenants who skip rent payments.

The group, led by the Alabama Association of Realtors, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to issue an emergency order blocking the moratorium, which had been crafted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to court filings. The moratorium has resulted in more than $13 billion in unpaid rent per month since it was introduced, the coalition wrote to the high court.

“Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it now claims,” the groups’ filing said.

Commentary: Never Let a Plague Go to Waste

June 4, 2021June 3, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded them.

They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into rest homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable.
They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into rest homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable.

Infectious Disease Expert Told Fauci in January 2020 That COVID-19 Looked Potentially ‘Engineered’

June 3, 2021June 2, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

An infectious disease expert emailed Dr. Anthony Fauci in late January 2020 informing him that a small part of COVID-19 “potentially” looked engineered.

“The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” the expert, Kristian Andersen, wrote Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The New Regressive Dark Ages

June 1, 2021May 31, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data.

In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked according to logical and even “scientific” principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological- or myth-driven zealots.

Not now. “Progressives,” especially the media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else.

California Offering Awards Totaling $116.5M to Get Vaxxed

June 1, 2021May 31, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Governor Newsom announced Thursday a $116.5 million vaccine incentive program including $1.5 million in cash prizes to encourage Californians to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

California follows other states in offering big vaccine incentive payouts, New York is giving out scratch-off tickets for the chance to win up to $5 million, according to Politico.

“California has already made incredible progress in the fight against COVID-19, with the lowest case rates in the country while administering millions more vaccines than any other state,” Newsom said in a release. “But we aren’t stopping there, we’re doing everything it takes to get Californians vaccinated as we approach June 15 to help us fully reopen safely.”

Commentary: Florida Governor DeSantis Strikes Back Against Big Tech Censorship

June 1, 2021May 31, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Person holding phone up in Times Square.

After months of aggressively censoring what it called “COVID-19 misinformation,” Facebook recently announced that it would no longer block user posts claiming that the coronavirus was “man-made” or “manufactured.” That’s because those posts, which typically referenced the work of scientists who supported the idea of a possible coronavirus “lab leak” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now appear to have been credible.

This entire episode should be extremely embarrassing for Facebook, a company so confident it has cornered the market on “truth” that it has made it their prerogative to “fact-check” individual user posts, banning anything that fails to comport with Silicon Valley’s extreme left-wing view of reality. Last year, Facebook banned an ad from the American Principles Project PAC claiming Joe Biden and the Democrats would destroy girls’ sports by supporting policies that allowed boys who identify as transgender to compete against girls.

Facebook said the ad was “missing context,” and so our PAC wasn’t allowed to communicate with voters. On Joe Biden’s first day as president, he signed an executive order specifically allowing these boys to compete in girls’ sports.

Florida Concert Promoter: Tickets Are $18 if You’re Vaccinated but $1,000 if You’re Not

May 31, 2021May 30, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

A concert promoter in Florida is selling $18 discounted tickets to an upcoming show for those who have been vaccinated and charging $999.99 per ticket for those who have not, ABC News reports.

Paul Williams of Leadfoot Promotions in Tampa Bay is organizing the concert which is set to take place on June 26 at the VFW Post 39 venue in St. Petersburg. It will feature performances from three punk rock banks: Teenage Bottlerocket, MakeWar and Rutterkin, according to the report.

Posters for the punk event feature an image of “Nightmare on Elm Street” killer Freddy Krueger with needles for fingers and the Leadfoot Promotions booking page advises attendees to bring their “COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card” showing they have had two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on or before 6/12/2021.

Job Searches Increased in Republican States Canceling Federal Unemployment Boost: Report

May 31, 2021May 30, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Relative to the national trend, job searches temporarily increased in states that have announced they will no longer offer the pandemic-related federal unemployment boost, an economic report showed.

In states that are withdrawing from the federal unemployment program, interest in job postings increased 5%, according to the report released Thursday by job listings site Indeed. The increase was relative to a national average recorded during the final two weeks of April, before Republican governors began canceling the federal benefit.

“In May, job search activity on Indeed increased, relative to the national trend, in states that announced they would end federal [unemployment] benefits prematurely,” the Indeed report said.

Wuhan Lab Researcher’s Wife Died of COVID-Like Illness in December 2019, Former Lead U.S. Investigator Says

May 31, 2021May 30, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

The wife of a Wuhan lab researcher working on coronaviruses died of what appeared to be COVID-19 in December 2019, the leader of a State Department investigation under the Trump administration told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

It would have been an early clue that the virus could be transmitted among humans, yet Chinese authorities said that the virus was not transmissible for at least a month after they knew it was, allowing it to spread, according to David Asher, who led an investigation on COVID-19’s origins and served in the State Department under Democrat and Republican presidents.

China reported in mid-January that the virus was transmissible among humans.

Texas Bill Banning Abortion If Roe Is Overturned Heads to Governor’s Desk

May 30, 2021May 29, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

The Texas state Senate has sent a bill banning abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned to the pro-life governor’s desk for signing.

The Human Life Protection Act of 2021 is a trigger bill that would ban abortion if the United States Supreme Court overturns the landmark decision Roe v. Wade. The court announced in mid May that it had agreed to take up a major Mississippi abortion case that could directly challenge Roe v. Wade, sparking hope in pro-life advocates and fear among abortion proponents.

Under the Texas trigger bill, which the Senate voted to send to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk Tuesday night, doctors or individuals attempting to perform abortions would face a second degree felony, and if the unborn baby died “as a result of the offense,” the penalty would increase to a first degree felony with the potential of a life sentence.

Commentary: Spinning Wuhan with ‘Intelligence’

May 29, 2021May 28, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Joe Biden’s instruction to the U.S. intelligence community to report whether the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a comical attempt to avoid being discredited by the unraveling narrative that China’s role in the pandemic is another manifestation of racism. You know, the racism that results in Asian Americans being beaten in the streets by white Trump voters insidiously disguised as black Democrats. Having much invested in that narrative, the Democratic Party wants to distance itself from its unavoidable collapse.

Basic facts should be stipulated.

U.S. intelligence does not possess hard facts to prove exactly what happened in that lab. If it had them, it would have informed the previous president as well as the current one.

New Study Shows Masks Did Not Slow COVID Spread

May 29, 2021May 28, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

According to a new study by University of Louisville the state mask mandates didn’t help slow the spread of COVID-19, Townhall reported.

The study found that “80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic” and while “mandates induced greater mask compliance, [they] did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima).” According to the report, the study used data from the CDC which covered multiple seasons and concluded that “mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states.”

Commentary: Giving Parents the Choice in Their Children’s Education

May 29, 2021May 28, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

With widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the debate over school choice has once again taken center stage.

For the past seven years, approximately two-thirds of Americans have consistently supported school choice. Additionally, support is largely bipartisan, with 82 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of Independents, and 55 percent of Democrats in favor of school choice.

The positive impact of access to quality education is clear. As President Donald Trump said during his State of the Union Address on February 4, 2020, “The next step forward in building an inclusive society is making sure that every young American gets a great education and the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.”

Jody Hice Outlines How Joe Biden Makes Federal Government Less Efficient After COVID-19

May 29, 2021May 28, 2021 Chris Butler

U.S. Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA-10) told constituents in an email Thursday that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated several longstanding problems and created more than a few new ones within the federal government. “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), for example, has a tremendous backlog of millions of income tax returns waiting to be processed, leading to lengthy delays in refunds and stimulus checks to many Americans. Another case is the State Department, which is taking 10 to 12 weeks to process even a simple passport application. Perhaps the worst example is the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), a little known but critical agency responsible for the military service records needed for veterans to receive care from the VA. As of April, the backlog for veterans’ records is roughly 500,000 and may take up to two years to clear. Unreal!” Hice wrote.

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter Tells Joe Biden About Intellectual Property Concerns with China

May 28, 2021May 27, 2021 Chris Butler

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA-01) and U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL-16) this month wrote U.S. President Joe Biden expressing concerns about the president’s support for waiving Intellectual Property (IP) protections related to the COVID-19 vaccines. This, according to a newsletter that Carter emailed his constituents.

Media Dismissed Lab Leak Theory Because Trump Talked About It, According to a Senior Washington Post Reporter

May 26, 2021May 25, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Doctor with protective gloves handling vaccine

The corporate press spent much of the pandemic dismissing the theory that COVID-19 could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology because former President Donald Trump talked about it, according to Washington Post senior reporter Aaron Blake.

“It has become evident that some corners of the mainstream media overcorrected when it came to one particular theory from Trump and his allies: that the coronavirus emanated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than naturally,” Blake wrote in an analysis piece published Monday. “It’s also true that many criticisms of the coverage are overwrought and that Trump’s and his allies’ claims invited and deserved skepticism.”

Blake explained that the media was justified in being skeptical of the lab leak theory because Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had leaned in “hard” to the theory without providing “even piecemeal evidence” to support their claims.

More Americans Lack Confidence in U.S. Economy

May 26, 2021May 25, 2021 The Center Square

As economic figures cast doubt on a post-COVID economic boom, the latest polling data show Americans lack confidence in the economy under President Joe Biden.

New polling data released by Gallup Monday shows Americans are not confident in the economy and are largely unhappy with the nation’s current trajectory.

The poll found only 36% of Americans are “satisfied with the way things are going.” Specifically on the economy, Americans also are pessimistic.

Medical Experts Raise Alarm Over Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines in Children, Pregnant Women, and Those Who Already Have Antibodies

May 25, 2021May 24, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Two prominent medical professionals are raising red flags over the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines in children, in pregnant women, and in those who have previously caught the coronavirus and now have antibodies. There are alarming reports in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of healthy children dying shortly after being vaccinated, the doctors say.

Also, multiple studies are showing higher rates of adverse effects in people who have recovered from the virus, and the vaccine is not proven to be safe for pregnant women, especially those in their first trimester, according to the doctors.

Dr. Peter McCullough, an American professor of epidemiology at Baylor University, and Dr. Harvey Risch, professor at the Yale School of Public Health appeared on Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle” Thursday night to voice their concerns regarding these issues.

Commentary: Military, Science, and the Law Are Losing the Trust of Middle America

May 25, 2021May 24, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

two individuals holding an American flag on a bridge to honor Sun Prairie’s fallen firefighter as the procession passed underneath.

Americans mostly have given up on familiar institutions for entertainment, guidance, or reassurance. What now do Hollywood, network news, the media in general, Silicon Valley, the NBA, NFL, MLB, or higher education all have in common?

A propensity to lecture Americans on their moral inferiorities, a general ethical decline in their own disciplines, and a strange obsession to acquire great wealth while living in contrast to what they advocate for others. Add also incompetence. Movies are mostly bad now. The network news is blow-dried groupthink. There is no “paper of record” anywhere. Twitter and Facebook no longer even try to hide their politicized contortions of warped rules and twisted protocols.

Professional athletes are now reminders of why no one ever wants to be “enlightened” by multimillionaire quarter-educated narcissists. The public a half-century ago lost faith in academia. It wasn’t just that most new bad ideas could be traced to the campus or that hothouse professors increasingly seemed both ignorant and arrogant, but rather their product—educating students—was defective. No one believes anymore a BA is synonymous with knowledge. More likely, it is a euphemism for incurring $100,000 in debt.

Reporter Gets Access to Michigan’s COVID Nursing Home Death Data

May 24, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff has reached a settlement with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to gain access to data on the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths in the state.

The health department agreed to release some of the public records LeDuff requested. The department also acknowledges it can’t determine if some patients killed by COVID-19 contracted the virus at a nursing home or other long-term care facility.

LeDuff sued March 9 after submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for data on COVID-19 deaths but the MDHHS failed to produce the requested records. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation represented him.

“We stood up to Goliath and won,” LeDuff said in a statement. “While I’m pleased that some of the records were released, the state’s overall response is alarming and disappointing. Still, this is a win for the people of Michigan, and I’m glad this lawsuit was able to shed some light.”

Senate Republicans Pressure Biden Administration over Claims It Coordinated with Teachers’ Unions on School Reopening

May 23, 2021May 22, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

A handful of Senate Republicans sent a letter to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Wednesday demanding more information about the newly-announced school reopening guidelines, as reported by the Daily Caller.

The letter, signed by five Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.,) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), is addressed to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, as well as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. The letter asks both officials to provide explanations for why the CDC has ultimately decided to reopen all American schools by June 2nd.

In the letter, the senators point to recently-unearthed emails, first uncovered by Americans for Public Trust, which reveal that the CDC communicated directly with the nation’s top teachers’ unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), to discuss drafting the reopening guidelines.

Commentary: Remote Work’s Impending Transformation of Middle America

May 23, 2021May 22, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Computer with video chat on screen and mug next to laptop

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a great deal about America and Americans. Most have acquiesced to anything and everything government bureaucrats asked for in the name of public safety. Masks have been donned, churches have been shuttered, and many of us stayed at home for months, working remotely.

This last item may end up being the largest and most permanent transformation of the United States. The mobility that comes with remote work may end up transforming middle America as left-coast technologists migrate inward. Freed from the work-based ties that bind them to Silicon Valley and New York City, they can now easily take their jobs and their left-wing politics to the heartland, ushering in a transformative moment in American politics.

Thomas Edsall, writing for The New York Times, discusses how many from densely populated urban areas on the coasts are finding that remote work enables them to have big city paychecks while living in suburban or rural areas with lower costs of living.

Biden Admin to Close ICE Detention Centers Where Officials Allegedly Performed Unnecessary Hysterectomies and Used Excessive Force Against Detainees

May 23, 2021May 22, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

The Biden administration plans to close two Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers after allegations of medical and physical abuse against detainees, CNN reported Thursday.

A doctor allegedly performed unauthorized hysterectomies and neglected other detainees at the privately operated Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, while it is alleged that officials exercised excessive use of force against peaceful detainees at the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center in Bristol County, Massachusetts, both facilities are expected to close, according to CNN.

“We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement, CNN reported. “This marks an important first step to realizing that goal.”

Chris Cuomo Faces Calls to Resign from CNN After Advising His Brother on Scandal Fallout

May 22, 2021May 21, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is facing mounting calls to resign from his job at CNN, after recently admitting to directly advising his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), on how to deal with growing scandals in his administration, Fox News reports.

Cuomo admitted on his Thursday night show that he had directly provided advice to his older brother in the same capacity as a senior adviser, as the embattled governor dealt with multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault, as well as the fallout from the revelation that his administration deliberately covered up the true number of nursing home deaths due to the coronavirus.

“Like you, I bet, my family means everything to me,” the younger Cuomo said in his attempted explanation. “And I am fiercely loyal to them. I’m family first, job second…I know where the line is.”

House GOP Report: Likely U.S. Engaged in ‘Dangerous’ Research in China, COVID Escaped Lab

May 21, 2021May 20, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

House Intelligence Committee Republicans reported Wednesday evening they believe the U.S. government has engaged in “dangerous scientific research with China” that lends increasing credibility to the theory that COVID-19 may have accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan as early as October 2019.

Commentary: You Don’t Need a Permission Slip to Go Back to Normal

May 19, 2021May 18, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Group of people together socializing at dinner table

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control did an about-face, announcing that the fully vaccinated among us may resume normal activities. The news came more than a year after California initiated the first lockdown on March 19, 2020.

The CDC’s new posture comes with some narrow exceptions. If you’re traveling on a plane or find yourself in a homeless shelter or in a medical or correctional facility, you still need to wear a mask; and the CDC made sure to clarify, apparently out of great deference for federalism and Hayekian spontaneous order, that its guidance does not predominate over the requirements of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.

Before the CDC updated its pandemic guidance, this was exactly the position espoused by libertarian law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. Writing from his regular perch at the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, Somin’s argument is summarized nicely in the subheading of his piece, “Free the Vaccinated from COVID Restrictions”: “Doing so will protect constitutional rights, reduce vaccine hesitancy, and increase liberty—all at once.”

CDC Tells Schools to Keep Students in Masks

May 17, 2021May 16, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Student on campus wearing a mask outside.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told schools nationwide on Saturday they should plan to keep students in masks because of the limited vaccinations of children.

“CDC recommends schools continue to use the current COVID-19 prevention strategies for the 2020-2021 school year,” the agency said in new guidance for students issued just days after it cleared vaccinated adults to ditch their masks in most instances.

“All schools should implement and layer prevention strategies and should prioritize universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing,” it added.

Commentary: The World Health Organization Endorses Lockdowns Forever

May 17, 2021May 16, 2021 RealClearWire

The last 14 months elevated a global group of intellectuals and bureaucrats about which most people had previously cared very little. Among them, the ones who believe least in freedom entrenched their power, thanks to a big push by the lavishly funded but largely discredited World Health Organization.

The WHO tapped an “independent panel” (the fix was already in: the panel’s head is former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark) to figure out what the world did right and did wrong in response to Covid-19. The final report has all the expected verbiage about the needs for more global coordination and largesse going to public health.

The key conclusion follows:

“Every country should apply non-pharmaceutical measures systematically and rigorously at the scale the epidemiological situation requires, with an explicit evidence-based strategy agreed at the highest level of government…”

Dozens of House GOP Reps Urge Pelosi to Drop Masking Rules Following Revised CDC Guidance

May 17, 2021May 16, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Nearly three dozen House GOP representatives this week urged Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to formally drop the House’s strict mask mandate, citing recently updated masking guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the Friday letter, issued from the office of Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs, 34 Republicans “urge[d] [Pelosi] to immediately return to normal voting procedures and end mandatory mask requirements in the House of Representatives.”

“CDC guidance states fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask or physically distance in any setting except where required by governmental or workplace mandate,” the letter declares. “It is time to update our own workplace regulations. Every member of Congress has had the opportunity to be vaccinated, and you have indicated about 75 percent have taken advantage of this opportunity.”

Jobless Claims Hit New Pandemic Low, Drop to 473,000

May 15, 2021May 14, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Photo “Unemployment Insurance Claims Office” by Bytemarks. CC BY 2.0.

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 473,000 last week as the economy continues to slowly recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending May 1, when 507,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 498,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.

Economists expected Thursday’s jobless claims number to come in at 500,000, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Not One State Reported a Sizable Increase in Coronavirus Cases Last Week

May 15, 2021May 14, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

For the first time in months, not one state reported a dramatic weekly increase in coronavirus cases.

While average daily cases fell by less than 10% in 11 states, 37 states saw cases fall by over 10% and just two states had cases marginally increase, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States also averaged fewer than 40,000 daily cases last week, a 21% drop from the week prior and the lowest total since September.

Death and hospitalization rates have also plummeted nationwide. The U.S. has averaged 600 deaths per day, the lowest point in approximately 10 months. If the number continues to fall the nation could soon hit its lowest point of the entire pandemic, according to the Associated Press.

‘Too Risky’: Progressives Are Upset CDC Lifted Mask Mandate

May 15, 2021May 14, 2021 Georgia Star News Staff

Progressives voiced their dismay following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors or outdoors.

Progressives and medical experts immediately criticized the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mask guidelines, arguing that the alteration was extreme and would be harmful to certain parts of the population. Others said the new guidance is confusing and disincentivizes people to get vaccinated.

“The CDC has done an about-face that’s shockingly abrupt: it’s confusing & could actually disincentivize vaccines,” Dr. Leana Wen, a George Washington University public health professor, tweeted after the announcement Thursday.

“Yes, vaccinated people are well-protected and not a threat to others,” she said in a later tweet. “But do we trust that the honor system—won’t unvaccinated people pretend to be vaccinated & stop wearing masks?”

Despite COVID-19, New Report Credits Georgia Policies for Improved Economic Outlook Ranking

May 15, 2021May 14, 2021 Chris Butler

Cutting taxes, paying down debt and maintaining free market policies this past year helped Georgia and other states improve their rankings for economic competitiveness, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. An Arlington, Virginia-based organization this week released a report that praised Georgia, among other states, for its economic policies. Members of that group, The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) published the report, which they titled Rich States, Poor States. This is the report’s 14th edition.