The FDA gets into the tyranny game

Yesterday, the FDA made a major announcement. They have banned all self service food dispensing. This one order will cause at least 100,000 people to lose their jobs.

Help customers maintain good infection control and social distancing by:

  • Discontinuing operations, such as salad bars, buffets, and beverage service stations that require customers to use common utensils or dispensers.   
  • Finding ways to encourage spacing between customers while in line for service or check out in accordance with the applicable State or local requirements.
  • Discouraging customers from bringing pets — except service animals — into stores or waiting areas.

This is going to have wide ranging effects across the entire country, and has already put at least two nationwide restaurant chains out of business. Garden Fresh restaurants has announced that it will be closing its 97 SouPlantation  locations and its 97 Sweet Tomatoes locations as a result of the FDA’s order.

  • This will affect drink stations in fast food locations like Subway, McDonald’s, WaWa, Racetrack, 7-eleven, and others. 
  • It means an end to companies like Golden Corral, Sizzler, CiCi’s, along with every Chinese and Indian food buffet in the country. 
  • Other companies will have to change their business: PizzaHut’s lunch buffet is gone, and along with it is Chevy’s salsa bar, and this also kills the salad bar in every restaurant. 
  • Casinos will have to get rid of their buffets. (I will miss these. The buffets in Las Vegas and Biloxi are outstanding.)
  • Hotels that offer free breakfast are also gone, as is the common use coffee pot. 

All of this despite the fact that there is no evidence that this was a common source for COVID infections, and not one word about the New York subway system.

The order doesn’t stop there. Even though there is not one shred of evidence that animals transmitted COVID, they are saying that only service animals are allowed in restaurants. If this were really being done to halt COVID, then why even allow service animals? Even arguing that animals are a health hazard and service animals are a necessary risk, there is no system in place to ensure that the animal really is a service animal.

It seems like every government agency is using the Wuhan virus to expand their reach. “Let no crisis go to waste,” indeed.

Antivaxxer horseshit

There is a video running around social media where a woman claiming to be a virology researcher is claiming that the entire vaccine system is fabricated by big pharmaceutical companies to purposely make people sick. She claims that she discovered that the COVID pandemic has been manufactured by Dr Fauci and the US government. She has made a documentary referring to it as the “Plandemic.”

The woman who made this video has been well known among anti-vaxxers and has now turned her attention to COVID. Many of my right leaning friends have latched on to this BS and are claiming that the entire COVID pandemic has been manufactured,

The woman who is at the center of this was discredited, jailed, and bankrupt, having to work as a Las Vegas bartender. She claims that she was jailed for discovering that AIDS was a manufactured crisis. Let me post some links to a few facts:

Heavy did a piece on her. I include this because there are links in the article to court cases, bot because Heavy is a primary source.

The supposed miracle breakthrough that she discovered? The one she claims got her thrown in jail? Well, that study was retracted after being discredited in a most embarrassing way. The NY TImes covers that here.  It turns out that she was jailed for stealing (and co-opting others to steal) materials from the University of Nevada.

You can find the history of her retractions here.

She trumpets being published in the magazine Science, but that same magazine later retracted her article after nine different laboratories were unable to replicate her results. They reported on her again here. 

The Chicago Tribune did a story on her discrediting here.

So after posting all of that information, this is a typical response that I get:

I get that you can post things from ‘Heavy.com ‘ and the garbage Tribune. And I respect that you have different views than I do, but allow me to respectfully disagree on this one. I BELIEVE her. She has the most calm, rational testimony I have seen in a long time. There is a REASON they are constantly removing her video. There is a REASON they issued a Gag order. I already thought Fauci was a quack. He has made Millions, and killed Millions. Nothing will change my mind on this. I just hope she isn’t eliminated like the Chinese doctor was a couple days ago. Hope you have a great day my friend. 

The people on the right, especially the quack antivax people are arguing against evidence and against reason to the point where they say that NOTHING can change their mind. I just can’t deal with all of the conspiracy theory people who see Illuminati in every world event.

My son was livestreaming reports from NYC in an attempt to help his medical friends learn from his experiences in treating COVID. He was hoping that he could save lives by letting people see what worked or didn’t work. He had to stop because too many people were accusing him of being a part of the “Plandemic” and saying that he was a crisis actor.

I normally do not delete any comments, even those that disagree with my position. However, since the conspiracy anti vaxxers are publicly stating that they have abandoned reason, anyone who posts on this page a comment that makes an accusation of any conspiracy with regards to COVID or references any sort of a “Plandemic” without a link to a primary source or valid scientific study will have their comments deleted without warning. If you want to post that shit without a valid source to back you up, do it on someone else’s blog.

Any studies that involve Judy Mikovits or Andrew Wakefield will not be accepted. Both of those researchers have been repeatedly discredited.

EDITED To add: User  “Wayne” has insisted on continuing to post antivax horseshit, even after the above notes AND having his first post deleted. He instead decided to continue his diatribe abd then accuse me of trying to have a “monopoly.” My blog, my rules.

Because I have had to delete multiple posts from this guy, comments for this post are locked.

Harlem, getting back to normal

My son just got back to his hotel after working the night shift in New York City. He said that the hospital where he is working is getting back to normal. They are no longer seeing any COVID patients. Last night was a parade of homeless people with vague complaints looking for a place to sleep, one shooting, a stabbing, and a bunch of drug and alcohol complaints. The hospital is not a cardiac or a stroke center, so they don’t see much in the way of serious calls.

They are closing the subways every night between 1 and 5 am. The police go through and kick all of the homeless out of the subway at that time. The homeless shelters have a curfew: if a homeless person isn’t there by midnight, they cannot get in until 6 am the next morning. That means that the EDs at all of the hospitals are filled with homeless who were drunk or high, missed curfew, and were also unable to sleep it off in the subway. They come to the ED with vague complaints, and the staff lets them sleep in the lobby.

The hospitals are beginning to send medical surge workers home and return to normal staffing. Here in Florida, that means that there are 4 patients maximum per nurse in the emergency room. In NYC, that number is much higher: 16 patients per nurse. Providers (Doctors, PAs, and NPs) are similarly stretched thin. As the surge workers leave, workloads are increasing. So, my son tells me that even if he could extend, paying him as much as they are still isn’t worth it for the increasing workload.

Medical drugs are always on short supply: even without the COVID crisis, hospitals are chronically out of everything.

On top of that, he says that the entire place smells like pot and urine, and the New Yorkers are using drugs that are almost unheard of in other places. He has seen people OD on things like PCP, which is not even a thing down here in Florida.

He also said that living in New York is a great reminder of why he can’t ever vote Democrat. The entire city, according to him, is dysfunctional. Everything is broken and costs four times what it should. He complains that all levels of government pour billions into the city of New York, and all the residents manage to do with it is hand out special favors in graft and corruption, blow it on drugs and alcohol, and then live in a dirty city filled with losers who can’t hold a job because they are high and drunk most of the time. They didn’t even realize that failing to clean the subways in the middle of a pandemic and allowing unwashed, homeless drug abusers with mental problems live in the same dirty subway cars that are the primary transportation for 6 million people a day could possibly lead to widespread illness. 

So, he will be home at the conclusion of this contract, early June. He is looking forward to that, and tells me that he can’t wait for the next New Yorker in Florida who tries to tell him how great it was back home in New York.

Communism

The far left wing of the US Congress is taking up the cause of #CancelRent. Ilhan Omar introduced the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act, which would relieve tenants of their obligation to pay rent, transfer mortgages to the federal government, and allow landlords to recoup their rent costs — but only if they agree to a vast new regulatory program that includes a rent freeze and the inability to collect back payments.

What would the program look like?

No tenants will have to pay rent for the duration of the COVID 19 suspension period, which is defined as beginning April 1, 2020 and ending 30 days after the termination of the FEMA state of emergency. During this period, the landlord cannot:

  1. charge the tenant penalties for late or nonpayment of rent
  2. NEVER force the tenant to repay any money owed to the landlord. 
  3. report the tenant’s nonpayment to any credit reporting agency. 

The same would apply to banks and mortgages.

A landlord who violates this can be sued by the tenant up to two years later, plus $5,000 for the first violation, $10,000 for the second, and for $50,000 to forfeiture of the property for the third violation.

Believe it or not, that is not the worst part of the bill. Now we get to the good part:

Landlords and mortgage holders can apply to the Feds to be reimbursed for the loss of income. In order to apply, the applicant must sign an agreement stating that, for the next five years:

  1. Rent cannot be increased (if interest rates, taxes, or other costs increase, the landlord eats it)
  2. Tenants can only be evicted for cause with written advanced notice
  3. Tenants cannot be denied because of the source of their income, sexual orientation, gender identity, criminal record, credit history, or immigration status.
  4. If the rental unit is vacant, the landlord must make the unit available for rental to people receiving public assistance.
  5. If, at the end of the 5 year period, a tenant owes the landlord money, the landlord is not permitted to collect that money. (if they trash the place, the landlord eats the cost of repairs)
  6. Landlords may not retaliate in any way against a tenant for any reason, including reporting to credit reporting agencies or fines. 
  7. HUD must be notified 60 days before you sell the property, and gets first right of refusal AND even if HUD decides not to purchase the property, HUD will notify eligible purchasers in the area that the property is for sale, and still gets to decide who is eligible to buy the property and the amount that it will sell for. 

Even after signing the agreement, there is no guarantee that a landlord will be reimbursed. The fund has a fixed amount of money available, and priority of payment is to nonprofit organizations. If you do get reimbursed and are found to have violated any of the above conditions, you must return 100% of the assistance you received, and are still subject to being sued.

Make no mistake, this will DESTROY real estate in this country. Without credit checks or credit reporting, there is no way to ensure that you are renting to a person who will pay. If they don’t pay or destroy the place by setting up a meth lab, the landlord has no recourse.

Since banks could not discriminate by using credit or criminal history, the risks would simply be too high, and mortgage lending would come to a halt. Combined with the fact that HUD would get to decide who buys every house and for how much, there is no way for anyone to sell property. Housing values would plummet.

Most mom and pop landlords would be ruined. We bought our rentals by personally guaranteeing the loans. With no way to collect rent, no way to sell, and no escape from bankruptcy, anyone invested in real estate would be ruined.