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Church Closures, Lancet, Rioters, Planned Parenthood …And Thomas More

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Church Closures, Lancet, Rioters, Planned Parenthood …And Thomas More Church Closures, Lancet, Rioters, Planned Parenthood …and Thomas More Click here to watch the video. A couple of weeks ago, I uploaded a video about the coronavirus lockdowns in California, especially with regard to the closure of churches. Since that time, many governors across the nation have issued new rules dictating exactly how many people are allowed to attend church at any given time. In all of California, for example, churches can only open their doors to 25% of their total capacity or 100 people, whichever is less. New Jersey churches can only open to 25 people. Period. In Minnesota, all religious books must be removed from churches, even though the CDC recently came out with new guidance saying the threat of spreading the virus through surface contact is remote. And until a few days ago, religious services in New York were limited to 10 people. A church in Southern California sued the governor in federal court to lift California’s restrictive order. When they lost at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, they petitioned the Supreme Court to review their case. And, thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, the church lost. It should be noted that the church is located in San Diego county—a county of 3.3 million people that has seen a total of 296 COVID deaths to date. Nevertheless, Justice Roberts gave short shrift to the First Amendment, finding that “Our Constitution entrusts the safety and the health of the people to the politically accountable officials of the States to guard and protect.” In other words, the highly questionable power of governors to lock healthy people in their homes for months on end trumps the express religious rights found in the Constitution. And, as our VP of Legal Affairs, the brilliant Katie Short pointed out, California is still on lockdown. The governor has not rescinded the stay at home order; he has merely carved out narrow exceptions for certain activities, including religious services. Justice Daniel Collins of the Ninth Circuit—a Trump appointee by the way—writes in his dissent in the San Diego case that California’s “Executive Order presumptively prohibits California residents from leaving their homes for any reason, except to the extent that an exception to that order granted back the freedom to conduct particular activities He then urges us to “pause at the astonishing breadth of this assertion of government power over the citizenry, which in terms of its scope, intrusiveness, and duration is without parallel in our constitutional tradition.” Now I’m not saying that there are not times when certain limited restrictions are necessary for public health and safety, but California’s stay at home order has been in place for three months now. I have to tell you that when I express concerns about this, I do get some pushback from people who argue that this is a legitimate use of power to keep people safe. But is it? Let us remember what is at stake here. We are experiencing an absolutely unprecedented exercise of power by state and local officials over their citizenry. At no time during the history of our nation have we ever been categorically prohibited from attending church and from peaceably assembling—not even during times of war. As if that weren’t enough, there is a virtual blackout on what can and cannot be said about the coronavirus in the media. For example, social media platforms flagged posts about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 as “fake news.” Videos and posts were deleted. When President Trump announced that he held out hope that HCQ could be a cure for the coronavirus, the mainstream media lambasted his remarks as “unscientific.” Didn’t our President know that a leading medical journal, the Lancet, had posted two studies showing HCQ as ineffective at best and possibly even deadly? Didn’t he know that France had banned the use of HCQ and the World Health Organization and others had halted over 130 HCQ trials based on those studies? And didn’t he know that his own top immunologist Anthony Fauci had smugly pronounced that “The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy.” A couple of days ago, the Lancet—and the New England Journal of Medicine—retracted those studies because of “inconsistencies” in the claims made by the company Surgisphere, which authored the studies. Inconsistencies like the fact that according Surgisphere’s LinkedIn site, it only has four employees—and one of those died in 2018. He was, by the way, the science editor who had no scientific background, but rather was—perhaps appropriately—a science fiction writer. Surgisphere’s director of sales and marketing appears to be a lingerie model and adult entertainer. Its founder and CEO has a history of fraudulent claims and is facing several negligence suits. There are reports that Surgisphere iteself has been in liquidation since 2015. All of this information is readily available, yet two of the world’s most prestigious medical journals published these fraudulent studies without hesitation. Why? Maybe it has to do with an editorial published by the Lancet last month urging Americans to “put a president in the White House who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.” That might be written off as comedic irony, except people were denied HCQ because our top medical journals made their own partisan decision to disparage a treatment for COVID-19 that has shown varying degrees of effectiveness. And the media parotted their claims in their own rabid drive to demonize the president. How many people were denied treatment because the medical journals and the media put their politics over their responsibility to professional ethics? How many people died because they violated the public trust and trampled over the established restraints that would prohibit publishing such garbage. By the way, about a third of the WHO clinical trials that were halted are looking into the effectiveness of HCQ as a prophylaxis. Early data shows that HCQ could be used to prevent someone from getting COVID-19 in the first place, because it stops the virus from going into the cells. You might remember that President Trump took a round of HCQ for this very purpose— for which he was excoriated by the media. New York Magazine flashed the headline: “Trump Takes Hydroxychloroquine, Does Not Understand How Science Works.” The NY Times upped the ante with: “Trump’s Hydroxychloroquine Obsession Endangers Us All.” Although studies have shown mixed results regarding whether HCQ could help prevent the virus, the studies do show that participants did not suffer any adverse effects from the drug. But what does that matter? It’s much edgier to report that the President’s use of the drug puts all of us in danger. Rule number one: do not let the facts distract you from your narrative. New York Governor Mario Cuomo completely banned the off-label use of HCQ for COVID patients unless they were part of a clinical trial. For the record, Cuomo has no problem with the off-label use of prostate cancer drugs to kill babies in the womb. Because… “science.” New York has the highest rate of COVID infections and deaths in entire country. More than 30,000 people have reportedly died in New York state—nearly 25 percent of total COVID deaths in the nation. Why then would the governor deny patients access to a drug that even had the potential to save lives? The Arizona chapter of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons sent a letter to Arizona governor Doug Ducey begging him to authorize the use of HCQ, citing numerous international studies showing it has a 91.6% effectiveness rate in treating COVID-19. Ducey—a republican by the way, lest you think all the insanity was on one side of the political aisle—had issued an executive order restricting the availability of HCQ after Trump touted its effectiveness. By the way, the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons recently sued the FDA for restricting access to HCQ, saying the anti-malarial drug is safer than Tylenol, Advil, and even aspirin. Life Legal has handled several cases on involving COVID positive patients who were hospitalized. They were not given HCQ. Some of those patients died alone, without even a single family member by their side. And I have to wonder how many of them DIED because someone thought it was more important to discredit the president than to dig a little deeper and find out the truth? We have entered an era of unprecedented deception. Right is wrong. Up is down. Good is evil. Truth is “fake news.” It is unbelievably difficult to find one’s way through the smoke and mirrors. And now I’m going to shift gears for a minute. Our nation is based on the rule of law. This means we are guided by a system of written laws based on our Constitution that is enforced through civil institutions—our legislature, our courts, and our executive. I would argue—though some will disagree with me—that other institutions like our media, our businesses, our medical professionals, our churches, and our families also play a role in the way the rule of law is applied and enforced. But the rule of law requires that people act in good faith. This means all of us—of course, those who make, interpret, and enforce the laws as well as those who are subject to the laws. We have to be able to take each other at our word—whether government officials, the press, our doctors, and even our neighbors.
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