The first item:

the death rate for people who contract Covid-19 is uncertain but is probably closer to that of the seasonal flu than figures commonly reported by the press.

Go here for the others, all of which give a less dire analysis (and prognosis) than our national agency for such matters, Center for Disease Control: Just Facts

Rand Paul — M.D. by the way — socks it to the career man who hasn’t survived without covering his options.

“Dr. Fauci, every day we seem to hear from you things we can’t do. But when you’re asked, ‘Can we go back to school?’? I don’t hear much certitude at all. ‘Well, maybe.’ ‘It depends.’

Guess what? It’s rare for kids to transmit this. I don’t hear that coming from you. All I hear is, ‘We can’t do this, we can’t do that, we can’t play baseball,’” Paul said.

“We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone. Only decentralized power and decision-making based on millions of individualized situations can arrive at what risk and behaviors each individual will choose. That’s what America was founded on, not a herd with Washington telling us what to do and like sheep we blindly follow.”

Yes, a million choices by a million citizens vs. the guy with the microphone.

via RealClearPolitics

Dawit Kelete: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

He dodged barriers to make them fly, the deceased and another woman, who has survived.

At a well-attended Council of Congregations meeting in Oak Park a few years back, a man who worked at a mental health center on Madison Street in nearby Austin laid it out: Mental illness abounds in this area.

The victim:

CHICAGO (CBS) — A 7-year-old girl is dead after being shot this 4th of July in the South Austin neighborhood.

The shooting happened in the 100 block of North Waller Avenue. Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Fred Waller said the girl was visiting her grandmother for a family July 4th party.

The girl was playing in her yard at the gathering, in which numerous other children were also playing and riding bicycles, Waller said.

Police said at 7:02 p.m., the girl was on the sidewalk when a light-colored vehicle pulled up and an unknown number of people exited. Those people then took out guns and fired shots in the girl’s direction, police said.

Lot of people with “Black Lives Matter” signs out in this peaceful N. Side ‘hood. How many have little girls in mind and black shooters?

via CBS Chicago

Indeed.

“Why do I even worry about some silly little statues coming down or some silly little street names changing?” asked Elizabeth Rogliani, who lived through Venezuela’s transition to communism.

“[W]hen I was living in Venezuela. Statues came down — Chavez didn’t want that history displayed. And then he changed the street names. Then came the [school curricula]. Then some movies couldn’t be shown, then certain TV channels, and so on and so forth….

“We didn’t believe it could happen to us. Most Venezuelans — Cubans warned us — and we were like, ‘This is Venezuela, we know about freedom. That’s not going to happen here.’ Yet it happened. And there are literally a lot of people wanting to destroy the U.S.”

Who’s doing this to us?

Two movements have been active in the violence. One is Antifa, which has been called “a revolutionary Marxist/anarchist militia movement that seeks to bring down the United States by means of violence and intimidation.” Antifa, although it claims to be antifascist, behaves in a fascistic way.

The other movement, Black Lives Matter, was founded in 2013 by three black women, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. Cullors declared that she and Garza are “trained Marxists”. The Black Lives Matter founding manifesto, published in 2016 (then removed from BLM website), describes the United States as a “corrupt democracy originally built on Indigenous genocide and chattel slavery” that “continues to thrive on the brutal exploitation of people of color” and that perpetuates “the ugly American traditions of patriarchy, classism, racism, and militarism”. In December 2014, a slogan at a Black Lives Matter demonstration organized by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, was: “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.”

How they doing?

If Antifa is widely rejected, Black Lives Matter is not. Its name has become a slogan on walls, storefronts and restaurants. The posters state: “No justice, no peace.”

There are widespread calls for defunding or abolishing the police. The city council of Minneapolis in fact voted on June 6 to disband its police force. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio cut $1 billion from New York City’s $6 billion police budget. At least six other cities have also slashed police budgets.

They’re getting somewhere, aren’t they?

And moving ahead on thought control:

What seems to be trying to gain more influence is a wish — born before the riots — to rewrite the history of the United States. The New York Times, for instance, on August, 14, 2019, launched “The 1619 Project“. Its author, Nikole Hannah Jones, wrote that the United States had been founded on slavery and is therefore — presumably still — guilty of “structural racism.”

Prominent historians Gordon Stewart Wood, recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History, and James M. McPherson, former president of the American Historical Association, noted that the 1619 Project is based on “misleading and historically inaccurate claims”.

Oh. Beside the point. Accuracy is what the Times says it is.

And Hillary’s 2016 running mate is all aboard.

On June 17, Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, laughably said that the United States had “created slavery”.

Lots more here, via A Will to Overthrow the United States

Trump “dug deeper” into divisions.

MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL, S.D. — At the foot of Mount Rushmore and on the eve of Independence Day, President Donald Trump dug deeper into America’s divisions by accusing protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.”

AP to the barricades. (Chi Trib says welcome.)

Then “protesters who have pushed for racial justice.”  That fool, that rat. How dare he impugn the motives of such noble people?

Oh boy, where would we be with AP to fill the pages of newspapers throughout the fruited plain etc.?

The president, in remarks Friday night at the South Dakota landmark, offered a discordant tone to an electorate battered by a pandemic and seared by the recent high-profile killings of Black people.

He zeroed in on the desecration by some demonstrators of monuments and statues across the country that honor those who have benefited from slavery, including some past presidents.

“Discordant tone”! Yes. Nothing concordant in his talk, no hat-in-hand apology to iconoclasts. Instead, he disturbs the tranquility that surrounds us. Has he no shame?

Four months from Election Day, his comments amounted to a direct appeal to the political base, including many disaffected white votes, that carried him to the White House in 2016.

No!

The speech and fireworks at Mount Rushmore came against the backdrop of a pandemic that has killed over 125,000 Americans. The president flew across the nation to gather a big crowd of supporters, most of them maskless and all of them flouting public health guidelines that recommend not gathering in large groups.

A Democrat talking point, I ween! Yes. Heard it last night on CNN and MSNBC. It’s clearly something they are counting on. Keep the economy tamped down — damn those two consecutive booming job reports! — and maybe even make Dr. Fauci the running mate for Joe.

As for talking points, the S. Dakota governor put it nicely:

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem echoed Trump’s attacks against his opponents who “are trying to wipe away the lessons of history.”

“Make no mistake: This is being done deliberately to discredit America’s founding principles by discrediting the individuals who formed them,” she said.

Thanks for that, AP. You’re not bad people, you know, just misguided. You got your U.S. history from Howard Zinn, I bet.

via Chicago Tribune

Question: How many agitators are needed to direct a mob? And of course the juvenile, obligatory Trump crack. That’s what’s on the writer’s mind? Please. We know your ranks are almost all Democrats. Something here to distract from Chicago’s and Illinois’ woeful political leadership?

Few of those arrested in Chicago during the unrest that followed George Floyd’s death were from out of state, despite the Trump administration’s insistence that outside agitators were to blame for the looting and destruction that followed peaceful protests here and in other cities over police use of force.

That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times examination of detailed data from the Chicago Police Department that showed 1 percent of the 2,511 people arrested for any reason within city limits during the height of the protests and unrest — a total of 40 people — were from out of state.

Of course, the “outside agitators” phrase was the first thing out of the mouth of Richard J. Daley in the ’60s. Well, “shoot to kill” was the first.

via Post-George Floyd arrests in Chicago weren’t outside agitators, despite claims – Chicago Sun-Times

This story a pure weeper.

No context provided as regards immigration issues. Something entirely to make the reader sob or gnash his or her teeth, vote Democratic or do other unadvisable things. Come on, hard-working Sun-Times. This is not the best you can do.

via – Chicago Sun-Times

My cohort, 80 to 89, would figure very highly, of course. Off the charts, I bet, but I’d still like to know how 88-year-olds are doing . . .  In fact, in rundowns like this, I’d like to see it in the headlines. Not to be self-centered about it, of course . . .  Yet and still . . .

via Latest coronavirus news: July 4, 2020 live blog – Chicago Sun-Times