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No, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Didn't Spawn 250,000 Coronavirus Cases

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Here's what we were told: An August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, helped spread COVID-19 to more than a quarter-million Americans, making it the root of about 20 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. last month. So said a new white paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, at least. And national news outlets ran with it.

"Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was 'superspreading event' that cost public health $12.2 billion," tweeted The Hill.

"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota last month may have caused 250,000 new coronavirus cases," said NBC News.


"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the 'worst-case scenarios' for superspreading occurred simultaneously," the researchers write in the new paper, titled "The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19."

Not so fast. Let's take a look at what they actually tracked and what's mere speculation.
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Navalny, Nordstream 2, Belarus, and the American Elections: The Tangled Web of Smears against Russia

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The narrative is banal and so familiar: Russia is once again accused of having “poisoned” an individual trumpeted by the Western media as threatening the Russian government’s interests. The minor political activist Alexei Navalny made the headlines after a suspicious incident at the airport in Tomsk on August 20, 2020 sickened him and necessitated emergency medical assistance. Russian doctors at the hospital in Omsk fought for his life for two days and stabilized his condition.

Questions abound concerning the way in which the events surrounding this incident have progressed. Outside of the Western media, Navalny’s importance is negligible: his occasional demonstrations in Russia have drawn small crowds, and any arrests with short detentions have come from his not obeying Russian law and giving notice to the police of the location of a given demonstration—so that police could properly secure the location for the event. Thus his ensuing arrest garners international attention as an example of the “brutality” and “arbitrariness” of Russian law enforcement. 

The average Russian citizen has little to no interest in Navalny’s political aspirations or activism. Moreover, his insignificance poses no threat to any of Russia’s six major political parties. Modern Russian society is well-functioning and law-abiding, and does not possess the kind of lawlessness that would tolerate an attempt on anyone’s life. Modern Russia maintains a record of acting in accordance with international laws and norms.
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The Evidence Keeps Piling up: Lockdowns Don’t Work

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The toll lockdowns have taken on human life and human rights has been incalculable. Increases in child abuse, suicide, and even heart attacks, all appear to be a feature of mandatory stay-at-home orders issued by politicians who now rule by decree without any legislative or democratic due process. And then, of course, there is the economic toll on employment, which will feed negative impacts into the longer term. The economic burden has fallen the most on the young and on working-class families, whose earners are least able to work from home.
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Message To Governor: Open Texas Up! With Judge Mark Keough

Fresh off a viral video on Facebook, Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough joins today's Liberty Report with a clear message to Texas political leaders from local mayors all the way to the Governor's office: the measures taken to fight coronavirus in Texas have not made one bit of difference. Masks or no masks, lockdowns or no lockdowns, the survival rate for those infected with the coronavirus is more than 99 percent. It is time to open Texas up completely. 100 percent! Also, Judge Keough explains why Governor Abbott's "mask mandate" is no such thing. Don't miss today's Liberty Report
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The War on Terror Presaged Covid Mania

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This week is the 19th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. America never recovered politically from those attacks, and government responses to the Covid pandemic are repeating many of the same follies of the War on Terror.

Three days after the World Trade Center towers tumbled down, President George W. Bush promised to “rid the world of evil.” After making an outlandish promise that should have earned him derision in perpetuity, the media and the political elite rallied around Bush to give him unlimited power to purportedly achieve that goal. The fact that the 9/11 attacks were preceded by the biggest intelligence failures since Pearl Harbor became irrelevant. 

Nowadays, presidents are expected to rid the nation of all risks. Politicians who promise to keep citizens safe have been permitted unlimited power to shut down businesses, churches, and almost any other activity. The Democratic Party is echoing this theme in its campaign message that President Trump is practically guilty of murdering 180,000 Americans because he failed to prevent the Covid pandemic. The fact that stunning errors by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration compounded the Covid death toll did not stop the rush to sacralize all government experts.
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Coronavirus Policy Has Been Hurting, Not Helping, Older and Less Healthy People

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At first, coronavirus was sold as a very dangerous disease for everyone. Some people still believe that line, but the facts were clear months ago that for healthy, younger individuals the risk of severe illness or death from coronavirus is very low. And the risk diminishes the younger one is, with children being at nearly zero risk of death and tending to have no to minor symptoms if infected.
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A Nobel Peace Prize For Trump?

A Norwegian lawmaker has nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work facilitating the recent UAE/Israel agreement. Trump is accused of shooting from the hip - at least verbally - and his presidency is marked by significantly increased military spending. But is there some logic to the nomination? Especially considering the last US president to receive a Nobel Peace Prize? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Navalny False-Flag Authors Invent New Twist to Cover Lies

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So now the Navalny poison episode takes on a new twist with German military intelligence subsequently claiming they found traces of Novichok on a bottle of water the Russian dissident had purportedly been drinking from. Rather, it sounds more like the authors of this false-flag operation have “bottled” – meaning became unnerved by the absurdities inherent in their own narrative.

Last week the German government announced that a Bundeswehr military laboratory had detected Novichok in the body fluids of Sergei Navalny. That promptly led to charges that the Kremlin was responsible for the attempted murder of Navalny using the Soviet-era nerve poison.

The trouble for the German side was that their narrative soon ran into contradictions from the Russian toxicologists who first treated Navalny when he apparently fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. The Russian medics said they had tested Navalny for a whole range of poisons, including organophosphate-type chemicals which attack the nervous system. The Russian doctors affirmed they found no poison traces. They concluded Navalny’s coma was induced by an existing medical condition, presumably diabetes. Furthermore, the doctors at the hospital in Omsk where Navalny was taken to on August 20, said they have original samples of his body fluids.
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ACLU Staffer Attacks University For Admitting Nick Sandmann While Professor Denounces His 'Anti-Intellectual' Views

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I have previously written, as a long supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), about my concern over how the venerable group has changed under its current leadership, including a departure from its long robust defense of free speech. Recently, the ACLU has abandoned its famed neutrality and has not supported some on the right while supporting those on the left. 

Now, the ACLU’s Samuel Crankshaw in Kentucky has targeted Transylvania University for admitting Nick Sandmann, who was falsely accused of abusing a Native American activist in front of Lincoln Memorial. (Crankshaw identifies as an ACLU staffer on social media) Despite various media organizations correcting the story and some settling with Sandmann, some in the media have continued to attack him. Yet, it is far more alarming to see an ACLU official rallying people against a young man whose chief offense appears to be that he is publicly (and unapologetically) conservative and pro-life.

Crankshaw went to Facebook to alert people that Sandmann would be attending the college and expressing veiled outrage that the school would admit someone with his opposing views. He warns that this kid is “more dangerous” than figures like Milo Yiannopolous.
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