PA Counties locked down

[PickingPA]

(Tom Wolf turns on the TV and sees Minneapolis burning for the second straight night)

Rolls over and whispers:

whew, that helps take the pressure off me!

[jesemd]

I truly hope that you all are correct and this whole thing is nothing to worry about for anyone. In the meantime, with my wife and I both being in a high risk group for respiratory infections, and having an elderly father whom I would like to keep around as long as possible, I will err on the side of caution and continue to wear a mask when in close quarters with strangers. This is MY decision, based on a lifetime accumulation of common sense and NOT because any particular person told me to. When it’s all over and I was wrong I will gladly accept all ridicule.

The important thing is to do what you believe is right, not what Wolf or Fauci or anyone else tells you. You can only trust yourself.

[eatmydust]

I truly hope that you all are correct and this whole thing is nothing to worry about for anyone. In the meantime, with my wife and I both being in a high risk group for respiratory infections, and having an elderly father whom I would like to keep around as long as possible, I will err on the side of caution and continue to wear a mask when in close quarters with strangers. This is MY decision, based on a lifetime accumulation of common sense and NOT because any particular person told me to. When it*s all over and I was wrong I will gladly accept all ridicule.

The important thing is to do what you believe is right, not what Wolf or Fauci or anyone else tells you. You can only trust yourself.

I agree with you 100%, what you are talking about is the individual's freedom to pursue happiness, as each sees fit. Our U.S. and Commonwealth Constitutions protect out God given rights of freedom and personal choice, that is all the majority of us have been arguing for. You choose your path and we'll choose ours, just as it is supposed to be. God bless us all.

[Wilderness 1864]

(Tom Wolf turns on the TV and sees Minneapolis burning for the second straight night)

Rolls over and whispers:

When given their marching orders Kenney and Krasner will be bringing to Philly soon enough, so the Governor ought not sleep to comfortably on this.

[PickingPA]

When given their marching orders Kenney and Krasner will be bringing to Philly soon enough, so the Governor ought not sleep to comfortably on this.

No doubt. These riots are quickly popping up in cities across the country, and Philly is in no way insulated from becoming the next BREAKING NEWS

[Sparks]

Minneapolis has nothing to do with Covid lockdowns.

[Wilderness 1864]

Minneapolis has nothing to do with Covid lockdowns.

I disagree. It is the "next wave". Look at the video and pictures of the rioters, a lot of white folks and Antifa are in the mix. There is a lot about this that is simply odd. This is an operation just as much as a protest and not everyone involved may have the same agenda. How long will Minneapolis remain under curfew and policed by the National Guard? Outbreaks of the violence are in multiple cities already. I think it is but a matter of time before Philly is targeted. They were storming the White House earlier.

This is going Nationwide. What those behind the Covid19 epidemic failed to accomplish, is going to be pursued in this latest effort. I do not believe the violence is all just spontaneous, although some of it might be. But the results will be similar: extended lockdowns, police enforced curfews, business closures all over again, supply chain disruptions.

[john9001]

An agent provocateur (French for "inciting agent") is a person who commits or who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act.

[Joe from Media]

Not to worry. This virus stuff will be over on November 4...providing a Democrat wins.

[ImminentDanger]

None are so blind as those who choose not to see!

Americans almost always are willing to sacrifice as needed, by choice, when there is a real crisis.
But when, instead of a crisis, a Promoted Panic is created, THE PEOPLE should punish the liars!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...f-the-chainsaw

In the next crisis, let's use the scalpel instead of the chainsaw
by Bob McClure - June 02, 2020 12:00 AM

Opinion

In politics, perception is reality. But not in policy. Policy has real-life effects on real people — people we work with and interact with, our friends and family, and even people we never have the privilege to meet. Whether we are looking at policies in education, taxation, criminal justice, or healthcare — facts, not perception, dictate reality.

Facts and data on policy have never been more vital than now because actual lives are on the line. Lives are lost from a novel virus that can ravage some who become infected and lead to death or Depression-level economic catastrophe.

Research from the World Economic Forum estimated that the economic crisis of 2008-2009 resulted in 5,000 additional suicides in the United States, directly resulting from the recession. Peak U.S. unemployment in the Great Recession was around 10%, with some states seeing it as high as 14% or 15%. Fast-forward to 2020; in a span of weeks, the U.S. economy effectively shut down, sending more than 33 million workers into the unemployment line. Those aren't just numbers — they are lives sinking into economic, physical, and emotional turmoil.

An examination of the statistics on COVID-19 deaths paints a surprising picture. As of Monday, the Centers for Disease Control data page reports 103,700 COVID-19 deaths. Forty-four percent of those deaths had occurred in just three states that straddle New York City — Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey — which comprise 9.7% of the nation’s population. Digging in a bit further, looking at specific counties, an even more remarkable picture emerges. Thirteen of the hardest-hit counties in the U.S., all of them in the New York City area, account for 4.4% of the U.S. population but 33% of the nation's COVID-19 deaths.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now see that we might have overreacted in taking the experts' advice to shut down the entire country and pull the plug on the most prosperous economy in modern history. We got out the bazooka when a scalpel might have done the job better. We might have been able to protect the most vulnerable while taking more drastic measures only in the high-density places where the virus seems to thrive.

What we needed was sober and reasoned leadership emanating from experts in the federal government that then resulted in sound policy wisdom from governors and policymakers. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, for example, resisted overzealous calls for a state shutdown. Her state has suffered 64 coronavirus-related deaths, making it, on a per capita basis, the 13th least-affected state in the union.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, in my home state of Florida, threaded the needle by addressing virus hot spots limited to a handful of South Florida counties. He was savagely criticized for avoiding a total lockdown, but the results speak for themselves. It is unfortunate that 2,447 Floridians died of COVID-19, but that figure is comparable to the 2,118 who died just in Nassau — one county in suburban New York. Florida has a larger population than all of New York state, yet despite its less stringent approach, it has less than one-twelfth the number of COVID-related deaths.

Based on expert opinion, commentators predicted disastrous outbreaks in both South Dakota and Florida. They were wrong. Their rates of coronavirus-related deaths per capita are far below the national average and even further below those of some states where governors took the most heavy-handed and, in some cases, legally dubious actions in commandeering their states' economies — Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia, for example.

Surgeons use scalpels because patients don’t respond well to chainsaws. When a virus is viciously attacking a small part of the population in one specific region of the country, we should use a policy scalpel and get to work on an appropriate response. If we've learned anything, it is that there is little sense in taking the chainsaw to the other 95%, turning the economy into a wasteland that destroys even more lives.

I hope that we can find some scalpels for the next crisis we face. We’ll need them.

Dr. Bob McClure is president and CEO of The James Madison Institute, a nonpartisan, free market think tank based in Tallahassee.