Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Defeating COVID by Executive Order

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Censorship by Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is in full throttle in deleting information about the successful treatment of COVID-19, as described Monday by physicians who spoke in D.C. at a press conference. There have been more than 14 million views of a video in which physicians explain how effective hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been for their COVID patients, but Big Tech is censoring it.

Liberal, anti-Trump tech monopolies are on the rampage with their modern equivalent of book-burning. Twitter suspended the account of the President’s son, Don Jr., because he dared to tweet out information favorable to HCQ, and Twitter deleted retweets by the president, too.

Amid this blatant censorship, it is time for President Trump to go directly to the American people. By Executive Order he should command release of the more than 50 million doses of HCQ which are being withheld from the public in the Strategic National Stockpile.

President Trump should also order his Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, to post updated lists of where the public can access COVID medication without interference by Never-Trumpers and comrades of Anthony Fauci, who has again disparaged the effectiveness of HCQ despite its success in numerous studies and many countries for treating COVID.

President Trump was right to retweet complaints about interference by Democrats with timely, early treatment for COVID. The election may hinge on whether people are allowed to obtain early treatment for the disease, and blocking access interferes with Trump’s reelection.

Meanwhile, the sudden infection by COVID of 15 Florida Marlins baseball players is alarming not only to baseball fans, but to everyone concerned about the contagiousness of this disease. This casts doubt on whether the NFL football season, which involves more people in closer contact, will proceed.

The liberal fool’s gold of vaccination is opposed by a large part of Trump’s base of supporters. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that nearly 40% of evangelicals are unlikely to get vaccinated against coronavirus, even if it were made available for free.

This opposition to vaccination is even higher among Republicans, and higher still (45%) among strong conservatives, so the resistance is not merely religious. President Trump won in 2016 by garnering a record-breaking 81% of the white evangelical vote.

Reelection of Trump requires holding or surpassing his 2016 share of this massive voting bloc. But that entails appealing to how evangelicals and other conservatives want – and do not want – to address coronavirus.

Many Trump voters do not want the government mandating a vaccine against coronavirus, even if one could be developed. If the virus is the result of bioterrorism, an effective vaccine may not even be possible, or if feasible may be easily circumvented by a mutation of the virus.

Another poll cited on June 30 by the journal Science indicated that merely half of Americans would receive a coronavirus vaccine if made available to the public. The other half are predominantly Trump supporters, and promoting a quest for such a vaccine is not what they want.

Impervious to these numbers, Trump’s advisers have pushed through a $1.95 billion contract for Pfizer to produce a coronavirus vaccine, at taxpayer expense. The pro-vaccine advisers even got Trump to travel to North Carolina to visit a vaccine manufacturing facility on Monday to promote their approach.

The 21-time Grammy winner Kanye West, who has sold 140 million albums and downloads, is an evangelical black rapper who symbolizes potential support for Trump among minorities. His skepticism about a coronavirus vaccine is typical among evangelicals: “So when they say the way we’re going to fix COVID is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious.”

“That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven,” West added, and millions who do not agree with Kanye’s views are still opposed to mandatory vaccination.

The eagerness with which mega-billionaire Bill Gates seeks a coronavirus vaccine adds to the discomfort. He has heavily promoted population control, while his monopoly over the Windows operating system for computers has subjected many to unwanted influence by his company, Microsoft.

The skepticism expressed by Kanye West to a coronavirus vaccine is not limited to himself, or to evangelicals. No vaccine is even possible before the election, as Fauci himself has said that it takes 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine.

Trump has a golden opportunity to stand up again for ordinary Americans against the liberal elite and Deep State who are blocking access to inexpensive medication for COVID. He should issue Executive Orders releasing the federal stockpile of medication directly to the American people, and command his HHS Secretary Azar to post where Americans can access HCQ without interference.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Mask Police Not the Answer

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A stark difference between the approach of President Trump and the newly radicalized Democratic Party is revealed by the issue of mandatory face masks. The “mask police” mentality of the Dems is inciting an Orwellian society of snitches and bullies.

Democrats are now insisting that everyone be required to wear masks, and that anyone seen not wearing a mask be reported to the authorities. This is despite how leading liberal television commentators, including Chris Cuomo of CNN, were spotted outside without masks while they were being quarantined for COVID-19.

The wearing of masks in public places causes harm beyond COVID, which is why face coverings have long been against the law in many U.S. states and in other countries. There is no substitute for seeing the faces of strangers on the street and in stores.

A witness cannot give proper evidence in court while masked, for example. Reading a witness’ face is essential to determine his credibility.

The idea of a faceless society has long symbolized descent into totalitarian control, but that is where we are headed. The mask police are determined to exploit the COVID crisis to turn us into a faceless society.

A woman with a medical condition preventing her from wearing a mask recently entered a Walmart in Summit County, Utah, where masks are mandatory. In that Utah county, residents are required not only to wear masks, but to report on anyone seen without a mask so that the police can rush out and give the person a summons or ticket.

Is this what our society should become? With all the violent protests occurring, one would think that local authorities have better ways to spend their scarce resources than to be mask police.

A fellow Walmart shopper apparently saw the woman's bare face and took the law into his own hands. He accosted the woman, allegedly yelling sarcastically “thanks for wearing a mask!!!”

Then the male shopper rammed his shopping cart repeatedly into the cart of the maskless woman, as captured on surveillance video in the store. The bare-faced shopper was allegedly injured by the attack.
Some countries, such as Sweden, have rejected the suggestion that masks be required, and never shut down its society. Sweden indicated that masks can do more harm than good, and could create a false sense of security.

The mortality rate from COVID-19 in Sweden is not significantly worse than in the United States, or in Western European countries which have required masks for many weeks. All have mortality from the disease of less than one in a thousand in the overall population.

Sweden is not the only country to successfully reject masks. Iceland, as another example, rejected going the route of the mask police and never locked its country down either, but still successfully defeated COVID-19.

The latest data show that Iceland has had a mortality of only 29 per million residents, which is less than 7% the reported mortality rate in the United States. Iceland had an outbreak of COVID-19, but then did what Democrats should have supported here: quarantine travelers from other countries.

These steps were what Peter Navarro, the trade advisor to Trump in the White House, wanted to do by closing travel from China when the COVID pandemic first began. But it was Trump's opponents, including Hillary Clinton-supporter Anthony Fauci, who opposed adopting sensible measures early to protect the American people from the Wuhan virus.

There are many valid reasons why a particular individual may be better off not wearing a mask, like the Walmart shopper who had a medical justification. Besides, in a vast open store with high ceilings like Walmart, it is not obvious how a mask would really make a difference as people still touch shopping carts and check-out counters.

When people take off their masks after returning to their cars, their hands typically touch their faces, which the CDC has long said is a particularly dangerous habit. Dr. Fauci even wants us to stop shaking hands permanently to reduce germ transmission by touching.

One might wonder if people will ever be allowed to see others smile again, as the mask police enforce their unreasonable demands. We cannot allow the government to deprive us of the ability to see emotions of other people through their facial expressions, as depicted in the science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Once Democrats get a new rule installed, such as mandatory masks, it becomes very difficult to ever remove it. Democrat President Truman delayed lifting restrictions imposed for World War II until a landslide Republican victory in November 1946 forced him to.

President Trump is right to reject wearing a mask in most places. Bandits and anarchists wear masks, not the leader of the free world.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

OTC for HCQ to End COVID

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

It is time to take the bull by the horns to conquer the Wuhan virus. Drastic action is necessary, like on December 8, 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

President Trump should order immediate public access to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by making the medication available over-the-counter (OTC). Liberals have interfered with public access to this medication for COVID-19 through the old-fashioned route of requiring a prescription and then having a pharmacist fill or reject the prescription.

Millions of Americans do not visit physicians, and cannot obtain a prescription for HCQ if they did. Even if you have been exposed to COVID-19, you cannot obtain a prescription for HCQ in most states because regulators prohibit dispensing it without a positive test result, which typically cannot be obtained until late in the progression of the disease.

No one credibly doubts that HCQ is safe, and safer than many medications currently available OTC. No one credibly doubts the dozens of studies showing that early use of HCQ, pre-exposure and immediately after exposure to COVID, has helped many overcome this dreaded disease.

Americans do not need a prescription to obtain hundreds of medications which once required a prescription. Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec, Claritin, Flonase, and Primatene Mist are medications that have been shifted from Rx to OTC in recent years, not because the medical establishment pushed for the change, but because of public demand for it.

No demand is higher at this time than for a medication which helps prevent against COVID. Yet Americans are not being allowed to access the medication which they want and need, and instead are being told by FDA and state officials that they cannot have it.

Last month the Oregon pharmacy board, for example, blocked HCQ access as follows: “Prescription orders for chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 infection may only be dispensed if written for a patient enrolled in a clinical trial by an authorized investigator.”

They based their ban on an improper statement issued by FDA, which is controlled by opponents of Trump’s reelection. Of course, many government officials in Oregon are against Trump, too.

Every state board of pharmacy or medicine is controlled by left-leaning government workers who, by and large, despise President Trump and hope he loses in November. They are accomplishing their dream by choking off public access to HCQ.

In other countries, such as Costa Rica and Honduras, HCQ is being given freely to the public to successfully defeat coronavirus there. In some countries officials are even going door-to-door distributing HCQ to build up protection against the virus, with great success.

The mortality rate from COVID-19 in the United States is far higher per case, and per million of residents, despite how we have the finest hospital system in the world. We don’t currently have public access to HCQ to protect against the disease, however, and that is what is needed at this time.

An executive order by President Trump, through use of his full emergency authority, could give Americans the same rights to HCQ for COVID which some of the poorest people in the world enjoy. Trump could even dispense HCQ at his rallies, which would both restore their massive numbers and help safeguard against spread of the virus.

But the medical establishment, such as Dr. John Fleming who is advising Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is impeding this solution to the crisis. As a physician, Dr. Fleming is instinctively trained to oppose OTC status for most medications, and he is beholden to the mindset of requiring people to see physicians first.

Americans are accustomed to being advised to consult a physician before starting a weight-loss plan, an attorney before writing a will, and an accountant before filing a tax return. In ideal situations, recommending use of a professional is non-controversial.

When there is a crisis, however, the dynamic is different. When thousands are dying unnecessarily, and millions are paralyzed by fear, directly alleviating that mortality and fear becomes paramount.

There is no valid reason to deny public access to low-dose HCQ, which studies show can protect against COVID, just as there is no legitimate reason to require a prescription for low-dose steroid cream (Cortisone) and many other over-the-counter medications. The political motivation to block access to HCQ justifies making it publicly available.

This is not a decision for Anthony Fauci or the medical establishment or FDA to make during a national crisis. This is for President Trump to decide, and make HCQ available quickly to the public.

If an intruder is discovered in one’s home in the middle of the night, no responsible father tries first to call an expert to get an opinion about what to do. Instead, quick and decisive action is taken, and that means OTC status for HCQ to conquer COVID.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Anti-Trump Book Channels Farcical Faulkner

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The latest fake news to come after President Donald Trump is a book by his Hillary Clinton-supporting niece, Mary L. Trump, to be released on July 14. It should be sold as fiction because it apparently channels the made-up Compson family of William Faulkner’s novels.

The Washington Post reported that the initial listing of this book concealed Mary Trump’s name by saying it was written by Mary “Compson,” and Mary even used the name “Compson Enterprises” for the company she created. The Post also found that as a student Mary was engrossed in Faulkner’s novels, which portray the Compson family as having immigrated from Scotland just as Trump’s mother did.

William Faulkner was a liberal icon imposed on many of us in high school and college, despite how few students could make sense of his stream-of-consciousness writings. Faulkner was an obscure writer until he was put on the map by a surprise award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honor never bestowed on conservatives.

Faulkner wrote novels about the rural South, often in stereotypical language that would be considered offensive today. His fictional characters frequently used the N-word, and if the Left were consistent about tearing down monuments they would be demanding expulsion of Faulkner from schools, too.

The liberal-controlled Pulitzer Prizes honored him not just once but twice for his writings, and he doubly won the prestigious National Book Award, too. Like other favored liberal authors of the last century, Faulkner has been a mainstay of the academic elite who are not anxious to admit their errors.

Princeton University recently scrubbed the name of Woodrow Wilson from its campus buildings and programs, even though Wilson had been Princeton’s president before being elected twice as president of the United States. But English departments are notably more liberal and less willing to drop sacred cows like Faulkner down the memory hole.

Unless the author is Shakespeare, of course, who has been a target of the cultural destroyers for years. Or the movie Gone With the Wind, which is being censored despite never using the N-word which Faulkner used so copiously.

Faulkner’s favorite fictional family, the Compsons, was as dysfunctional as imaginable. As the leftwing Daily Beast observed, the Compsons were “a clan plagued by alcoholism, depression, suicide, hypochondria, teen-age pregnancy, and incestuous urges.”

Few Faulkner readers would take the Compson name and adopt it as their own, or draw inspiration from such fiction to smear a president of the United States. But there is big money to be made in fake news, particularly when the presidential election is less than four months away.

Mary L. Trump had been publicly silent about our president throughout his tenure in office, and her book appears timed to exploit the publicity of her uncle’s reelection campaign. It is hardly credible that all of a sudden this disgruntled family member, long estranged from Donald, has something fair to say about him.

The book complains that her grandfather Fred Trump Sr. shouted in front of employees that “Donald is worth ten of” her own father, Fred Jr. It is hardly Donald’s fault if his father spoke of him more highly than his older brother, and no one doubts that Donald was more successful in continuing his father’s real estate business.

Mary L. Trump, a psychologist in New York City, is as biased a relative as anyone could be. She felt shortchanged by a family property settlement after bitter litigation, and she is politically opposed to Trump, too.

Mary’s father Fred Jr. died from an alcohol-related heart attack after becoming an airline pilot. Donald Trump has frequently spoken graciously of Mary’s father in a caring and sympathetic way, while noting that his brother’s tragic fate motivated Donald not to drink alcohol.

While Trump has spoken highly of his relatives, including Mary’s father, the media desperately gives a platform to those who want to criticize our president. The media’s promotion of a fiction-based book by a disgruntled relative is beyond the pale.

This was a bit much even for the Daily Beast, a website that has long been opposed to Donald Trump. That website wondered about this book on Trump as written by someone who apparently views herself and her famous relatives to be characters in a work of fiction.

Why not simply read Faulkner’s famous novel itself, if you have time to waste, instead of trying to retrofit Faulkner’s fiction into the life of President Trump? the Daily Beast implied. On that point many can agree.

But then, nothing about President Trump fits the “Southern Gothic” narrative of a Faulkner novel. Trump grew up in multicultural Queens, made his mark as a builder in diverse New York City, and his approval rating among black voters has been comparable to that of other Republican presidents.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.