Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
“There are no viruses here - we don’t see them”
Alexander Lukashenko, President-for-Life of Belarus, says vodka and saunas will cure coronavirus.
“And tractors! Tractors cure everyone!”
Mr. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994, a reign that may not last too much longer.
The Wu Hu Flu has wreaked havoc on the country, but one good thing may come out of it, the exposure of the harm our federal and state bureaucracies and their regulations have been doing to our economy and our health. For instance, the critical shortage of nurses in some areas has caused a few states to suspend their policy of refusing to recognize the qualifications of out-of-state, fully-qualified, licensed nurses.
That’s just one example; the FDA, which dragged its feet forever in authorizing the use of private companies’ testing equipment, offers many more, and here’s one:
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has had enough of the FDA's dithering over approval of an innovative process that could get millions of N95 masks to hospitals and other healthcare facilities, where they are in critically short supply as the Chinese coronavirus continues to stretch their resources. "If this isn't cleared up by morning, I'm ready to sue the FDA," Yost wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday afternoon.
What's the problem? Yost says the FDA is limiting the number of masks that an Ohio Company, Battelle Memorial Institute, can sterilize for reuse. The company has pioneered a technology that uses hydrogen peroxide vapor to make N95 masks safe for reuse and wants to ramp up production at their facility so they can send the masks where needed, but the FDA essentially shrugged and seemed to say, 'what's the big hurry?'
"The Food and Drug Administration -- after dithering all week -- finally gave Battelle approval to sterilize a measly 10,000 masks a day," Yost said. "They could be doing 160,000 per day."
And while the FDA dithers, grandmas across the nation are hunched over their sewing machines, heroically pumping out handmade masks to help fill the need for the critical protective masks.
"Gov. Mike DeWine has called the President. The FDA commissioner assured him that this would be taken care of. But as of this writing, the FDA has not moved," said Yost.
"Here's the thing," Yost said, "if the technology is safe and works, there is no rational basis to limit it. If it is unsafe or doesn't work, then it shouldn't be permitted at all."
He called the decision to limit the number of masks to 10,000 per day "simply irrational."
Yost pointed out something that has become increasingly evident to every sentient American over the last two weeks: "The FDA is not known for innovation. Or responsiveness. Their timelines for quick action are measured with a multi-year calendar."
Yost pointed to a study Battelle submitted to the FDA–in 2016. The details about Battelle's innovative technology have been in the grubby little hands of FDA bureaucrats for nearly for years, and now, in the midst of a global Wuhan flu pandemic, the FDA can't seem to make up its mind.
In the 2016 study, which can be viewed on the FDA's website, the company warned:
In the event of a pandemic (e.g. influenza), large numbers of FFRs [filtering facepiece respirators] will be used by healthcare workers for protection. It was estimated that during a 42-day influenza pandemic over 90 million N95 FFRs will be needed to protect healthcare workers, resulting in a shortage of FFRs.
“An interagency working group of the U.S. government published a comprehensive report on the technology, which concluded that "respirators should be capable of being repeatedly decontaminated during a crisis for up to 50 cycles without causing damage to the respirator."
Battelle's study found that "the ability to decontaminate the respirator was demonstrated even after multiple cycles (up to 50) of biological exposure/decontamination" and is "a viable approach to decontaminate large numbers (>50) of FFRs simultaneously."
So why is the FDA throttling the company's ability to decontaminate masks, limiting them to 300,000 masks per month when they could be pumping out nearly 5 million? See above, where I said that every sentient American now understands what's going on here: federal bureaucracies are always inefficient and often incompetent, which is why critical time was wasted in the run-up to the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. after the CDC screwed up the tests.”
Critics of the government have for decades argued that zealous over-regulation drags down the economy and hurts everyone, arguments that have been denied or ignored by power-hungry politicians, unions and the Left’s media.
Respirators, ventilators, limits on the number of hospital beds, lack of reciprocity for professional licenses, trucking; the number of products ad industries and professions are endless, as are the regulations governing them. The pandemic is exposing how many of those regulations are at best useless and often harmful. Maybe this lesson will be remembered, though I doubt it: I fully expect the return of the reusable grocery bag in the not-so-distant future.
RELATED: Government accidentally shuts itself down when it bans non-essential businesses
Two classic Bob Newhart routines.
Harvard shows its solidarity with the poor
Harvard ($40.9 B endowment) fires its dining hall workers w/o severance pay
“This whole Asian sickness thingamabob is just causing us all sorts of inconvenience” Harvard Trustee Thursten Howell III told FWIW. “What with the students leaving, and that new, dreadful tax on our endowment: 1.4%! — can you imagine? Well, I tell you, economies must be taken, and who better to make them than a dishwasher? He knows to suffer, I’m sure, so what’s a bit more?
“Besides, these people love us, and are no doubt delighted to do a bit of sacrificing for the good of this fine institution”.
UPDATE: There’s a petition circulating asking Harvard to turn its now-empty dorms into homeless shelters! What fun! I’ve signed, and hope ypu’ll show your compassion by doing likewise. Maybe they’ll have to rehire those cafeteria workers to serve them.
Don’ wanna hurt no kangaroo
By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/)
Australia bans gatherings of more than two even as infection rate drops by half
Joking aside, this sounds like good news
Just guessing here, but he probably didn’t have a New York carry permit, either
Newburg, NY man shot and killed after he shot policeman. Guess who’s rioting?
One police officer in Newburgh, N.Y. was shot when trying to arrest an armed man wanted for questioning in a shooting. Bodycam footage clearly shows the man armed with a silver handgun violently resisting arrest, drawing his gun, and shooting the officer before getting shot to death by the police.
Cut and dried case of police defending themselves? Not if you're an activist wanting to stoke the fires of racial hatred.
Newburgh residents rioted that evening after a councilman-at-large, Omari Shakur, bitterly complained about police targeting blacks.
The people who gathered near both scenes were visibly emotional.=
A man standing on the sidewalk on William Street near the police scene, who said he has lived in the City of Newburgh for 50 years, said loudly, “They’re killing us for nothing.”
Cry me a river.
Question: are these people practicing safe social-distancing?
The Presbyterian church called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrel infestation. After much prayer and consideration, they concluded that the squirrels were predestined to be there, and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.
At the Baptist church the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a water-slide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide and unfortunately, knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.
The Lutheran church decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creatures. So, they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist church. Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the water-slide.
The Episcopalians tried a much more unique path by setting out pans of whiskey around their church in an effort to kill the squirrels with alcohol poisoning. They sadly learned how much damage a band of drunk squirrels can do.
But the Catholic church came up with a very creative strategy! They baptized all the squirrels and made them members of the church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter.
And not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue. They took the first squirrel and circumcised him. They haven't seen a squirrel since.
And I promise to do for your country what I did to New York!
New York City’s ICU bed capacity ranks in bottom quarter nationally
The Big Apple’s intensive-care bed capacity of about 2.7 per 10,000 residents over the age of 15 — 1,800 beds total — ranks No. 220 on a list of 305 US hospital regions studied by The Washington Post and Columbia University Professor Adam Sacarny.
New Orleans, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Baltimore, Nashville, Las Vegas and Detroit all have more ICU beds per capita than New York City.
Eastern Long Island, Anchorage and Palm Springs are even worse-off than NYC, according to 2016-2018 data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Statewide, Albany is the only medical region with less ICU bed capacity than New York City, with 2.4/10,000.
The best place to get critically ill? The town of Slidell in Louisiana, outside New Orleans, with 11 ICU beds per 10,000 residents.
The worst, Fort Collins, Colorado, with only 1.
So what did De Blasio spend the city’s money on if not hospital beds (and ventilators)? Well, there was the billion dollars he poured down the rat hole he called his “Renewal Education Reform”, an effort now abandoned, and his “co-mayor” wife claims to have spent $850 million on her own “Thrive” program, intended to care for the homeless and mentally ill. Mind you, neither she nor the city’s auditors can explain or locate where that money actually went, but we know one thing: it didn’t go into strengthening the city’s health care system.
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