Gov. Whitmer blames 'layer of misogyny' for recent criticisms despite Michigan having highest COVID-19 rate in US



Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer claimed Sunday that criticisms of her performance as governor and handling of the coronavirus pandemic are the result of "misogyny," and are untethered from her actual job performance.

The Democratic governor's comments came as Michigan experiences the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the United States, as state officials there face scrutiny over their vaccine distribution plan (many Michiganders have traveled to Ohio to receive their shots), and as Whitmer faces her own nursing home scandal.

What did Whitmer say?

Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," Whitmer was asked about criticism from top Michigan Republicans.

Recently, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser said Michigan's top female Democratic politicians — Whitmer, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — are three "witches" who should be "ready for the burning at the stake," politically speaking. Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) also bragged about having "spanked" Whitmer on legislative battles, such as the state budget and political appointees.

Show host Margaret Brennan asked Whitmer, "But do you think there should be repercussions for misogynistic, threatening remarks like this?"

"I can tell you this, though, that sadly in this moment there have been a lot of death threats," Whitmer responded. "We know that there was a plot to kidnap and kill me. Death threats against me and my family. It's different in what I'm confronting than what some of my male counterparts are.

"So, yes, I do think that there is a layer of misogyny here that every woman in leadership has been confronting and dealing with to some extent," she continued.

"I don't have time, though, to focus on that or to go punch for punch. I'm not going to do that," Whitmer added. "I've got a job to do and that is helping get my state through this, helping get our economy back on track, supporting the American Jobs Plan so that that helps us do both of those things. And that's what I'm going to stay focused on."

What is happening in Michigan?

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Michigan currently has the highest rate of COVID-19 infection across the country at nearly 516 cases per 100,000 people. New Jersey is second-highest with just 300 cases per 100,000 people.

That means Michigan's infection rate is greater than the three most populous states — California, Texas, and Florida — combined.

New international study says coronavirus lockdowns not more effective than voluntary measures, not needed to slow the spread



A new international study examining the effectiveness of state-mandated coronavirus lockdowns compared to other voluntary pandemic safety measures found that the lockdowns were no better at stopping the spread of coronavirus than less restrictive measures, like social distancing or reducing travel.

The peer-reviewed study, which Newsweek reported was published on Jan. 5 in the Wiley Online Library, examined how the virus spread in 10 countries in early 2020.

The study examined virus cases in countries that used "non-pharmaceutical interventions" — the academic term for lockdown policies — to those that did not. Researchers examined cases from England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States, which all imposed lockdowns in early 2020, to two countries that decided to use less intrusive, voluntary social-distancing measures — South Korea and Sweden. The aim of the study was to examine whether policies that closed businesses and forced people to stay in their homes were as effective as less restrictive policies to contain the spread of the virus.

To calculate this, the authors of the study used a mathematical model that subtracted "the sum of non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did not enact more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (mrNPIs) from the sum of NPI effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did."

According to their analysis, "there is no evidence that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions ('lockdowns') contributed substantially to bending the curve of new cases" in countries that imposed lockdowns.

While lockdown policies may provide some benefits that voluntary measures do not, the study found that these benefits are not significantly better, and the harms imposed by lockdowns, "including hunger, opioid-related overdoses, missed vaccinations, increase in non-COVID diseases from missed health services, domestic abuse, mental health and suicidality, as well as a host of economic consequences with health implications."

While the study found "no evidence of large anti-contagion effects from mandatory stay-at-home and business closure policies," the researchers did note some important limitations to the underlying data and methods used in their research. The authors acknowledged that cross-country comparisons are difficult because nations have different rules, cultures, and relationships between the government and the citizenry. Additionally, some countries are better at providing coronavirus data than others. The study also relied on confirmed case counts for its analysis, which can be "a noisy measure of disease transmission."

Given these limitations, the researchers could not conclusively declare that lock down policies had no benefits whatsoever. "However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmission may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures," the study concluded.

Lockdown policies in the United States are highly controversial, with advocates pointing to studies that claim they have saved millions of lives and detractors arguing experience shows places with less restrictive policies fared no worse than areas that were locked down.

Last June, Reuters reported a study published by researchers at Imperial College London that compared estimated coronavirus deaths in several European countries to the actual number of deaths recorded, claiming that some 3.1 million deaths were averted because of the imposition of lockdowns.

However, critics have accused early coronavirus models of overestimating the projected casualties of the virus. They point to states like Florida, which did not impose draconian lockdown policies and yet has fewer coronavirus deaths than states like New York that did lock down. In states with severe coronavirus restrictions like California, local business leaders have begun speaking out about the need to end lockdown policies, questioning their effectiveness.

Nationally, the Center Square reports that state-mandated lockdown policies have closed 19% of businesses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on private-sector data collected from July 20 to Sept. 30, 2020. Businesses in the state of Michigan have suffered most, with the BLS reporting 32% of the businesses there had to close at least temporarily because of government restrictions. Michigan was followed in business closures by Pennsylvania (30%); Washington (27%); Vermont, Hawaii, and New York (26%).

In the United States there have been 22,965,957 total cases and 383,351 total deaths reported to the CDC.

Horowitz: Murder rate surging in 2020 as COVID policies keep criminals out of jail



Aside from the viral epidemic, 2020 will be remembered for a crime epidemic that broke the back of the criminal justice system, which has successfully reduced crime since the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, criminals continue to be kept out of jail and prison in order to keep "social distancing" in prisons, when data show they have a lower fatality rate than the rest of the population. More criminals on the streets, more crime, and less freedom for law abiding citizens. What will 2021 bring us?

On Monday, the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (NCCCJ) released an updated crime data report, which examined weekly changes in major crime offenses across 28 cities from January 2017 through October 2020. The findings were quite alarming.

Overall, homicide rates between June and October 2020 increased by 36% compared to the same period in 2019 in 21 cities, amounting to 610 more lost lives than last year. Aggravated assaults increased by 15% in the summer and 13% in the fall of 2020 over the same period last year; gun assaults increased by 15% and 16%. Residential burglaries, on the other hand, declined significantly because so many people remain at home.

NCCCJ is a program created by the Council of Criminal Justice in July and is co-chaired by former U.S. Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Loretta Lynch.

The study observed, "The precipitous rise in homicide and assaults in the late spring of 2020 coincided with the emergence of mass protests after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, although the connection, if any, between the social unrest and heightened violence remains uncertain."

While the rise of Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioting certainly contributed to the rise in vandalism, arson, and assaults, there have only been a few homicides traced back to the riots. What the study fails to point out is that the increase in homicide is mainly from career criminals who are increasingly not locked up, especially while awaiting trial. The other variable this year, aside from the "protests," is the mass de-incarceration under the guise of protecting prisoners from the spread of COVID.

The NCCCJ study concluded:

Finally, policymakers must take police reform seriously. Protesters have called for increasing accountability for police misconduct and shifting functions such as addressing the day-to-day problems of the homeless and responding to drug overdoses to other agencies and personnel better equipped to handle them.

But what does that have to do with the increase in homicide? So, unless they enact "police reform," the beatings and murder will continue? Most murder is gang-related. Are they really murdering in order to protest "police misconduct"? Sure, there is more murder because police are taking a hands-off approach on the streets, but how does handcuffing police help that?

The reality is that there are more potential murderers on the street, not to be deterred by police in any capacity. According to UCLA's data tracking on COVID-related incarceration releases, over 123,000 criminals have been released from prison and jail this year because of COVID-19, capping several years of gradual release under other jailbreak programs. On top of that, there are countless thousands of new criminals who are not being locked up initially because of the stigma against adding to the prison population at a time like this. Judges are increasingly taking this into account.

Now it turns out that all the deaths that will result from these criminals on the streets were built on a false premise that prisons would be deaths traps, with the virus killing prisoners at a higher rate than the general population.

In the early spring, the ACLU warned that "detention centers would be petri dishes for the spread of COVID-19 — and a death trap for thousands of people in civil detention." But in reality, they indeed were good petri dishes to study what would happen if the virus actually spread to a fully confined population. And it turns out it's not the death trap the ACLU envisioned – not any worse than it is in the general population. Yes, the virus spreads far and wide in confined spaces, but as we've seen from the natural epidemiological case study of prisons, most people are asymptomatic and very few required hospitalization.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that despite the widespread transmission of the virus in prisons, "the case-fatality ratio, or the percentage of coronavirus cases that are fatal, is lower among inmates than the broader population." According to their data, the case-fatality rate among inmates was about 0.7%, one-third that of the general population (2.1%).

Now, obviously, the true fatality rate is likely not that much better in prison, because case fatality rates only measure the deaths against the known cases. In jails and prisons, a much larger percentage of the true infections have been confirmed through mass testing than among the general public. But it still appears, based on overall deaths per 100,000, that the fatality rate among the incarcerated population is at least somewhat lower than the general population.

There are roughly 2.2 million incarcerated individuals in the country, and as of Dec. 1, according to the UCLA tracking project, there were 1,449 COVID deaths among inmates. That is a death rate of 65.9 per 100,000. At 269K COVID deaths in the general population, that would be 81 deaths per capita.

While it is true that prisoners are a younger population, they also have a lot of underlying conditions. Plus, the population is disproportionately black and Hispanic. According to the CDC, the COVID-19 death rate among black and Hispanic people is three times higher than among white people. If the premise of those pushing for corona jailbreak were correct, we'd be seeing a bloodbath in prisons relative to the population. That is simply not playing out.

Thus, the same overstating of the severity of the virus, along with overstating our ability to stop the spread, that has spawned the criminalization of human living has also wrongly enabled the release of thousands of dangerous criminals. We are the criminals, and the criminals are the victims.

After all, the only crime that is considered serious by our governing elites is not wearing a mask. And given that most violent criminals seem to be wearing masks, there is nothing to see here.