Ferri Tales

Joe Biden will become president on January 20th regardless of what Trump, his enablers, his supporters, and Bradford county (PA) commissioner Doug McLinko believe. How did this happen? There are two scenarios. The first is that Democrats rigged the election. The brilliant plot even sacrificed some down-ballot elections to divert suspicion. The plot even survived scrutiny of Republican led states who certified Biden as the winner because they could find no valid reason to do otherwise. The second scenario is that tens of millions of people already knew or finally realized that Trump is a lousy president who is not interested in doing his job. He golfs obsessively. He has done almost nothing to slow or stop the pandemic and has actively exacerbated its spread. He is a white supremacist with no impulse control who denies science. Democrats merely convinced 81 million people to vote. After losing, he is whining and grifting his supporters for money that he will use personally. Trump's

In November 2016, Kellyanne Conway tweeted , "306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic," of Trump's win over Hillary Clinton even though Hillary had 3 million more popular votes. Four years later, Joe Biden's win over Trump is even more of a landslide historic blowout. Even though Trump received 72.9 million votes, the record for a sitting president, 5.8 million more people voted for Biden. Trump has lied about election security since taking office and is still lying about it. He slowed mail delivery. Republicans attempted to suppress votes any way they could. Their efforts failed miserably even during a deadly pandemic. No evidence of fraud has been found anywhere, and Trump's desperate and ill-conceived lawsuits are being dismissed everywhere. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declared this election the most secure ever. Trump fired the person who told the truth. In desperation, Trump proposed to the leaders of four critical states that they select their elect

During an interview with a WENY reporter, Bradford County (PA) commissioner Doug McLinko said the recent spike of covid-19 cases in the county is taking its "natural course" and that we shouldn't "live in fear", but to not "put yourself in harm's way." He also said that he would not take part in any discussions to shut down the county and, "we just have to be vigilant and tough and get through it." McLinko has adopted the herd immunity plan of Donald Trump and his non-epidemiologist medical advisor Dr. Scott Atlas. The plan is to allow the virus to spread among younger and healthier people who have a higher chance of survival until enough people have developed immunity (the herd level) to stop the spread of further infection. There are several problems: First, immunity after an infection hasn't yet been proven. Second, it will be next to impossible to protect vulnerable people if ten of thousands in the county are infected. And third

Donald Trump has been attempting to reduce the reported covid-19 deaths with outright lies. His latest con is that the U.S. deaths are overstated by a factor of 16. He claims that the number of deaths are only 6% of the reported numbers. According to the CDC, covid-19 was listed as the only cause of death in 6% of the cases and that, on average, for the remaining deaths, "there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death." By Trump's logic, if he shot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue and then the man had a heart attack and died, the cause of death would not be the gun shot.   He conveniently ignores that the 7 day averages for U.S. death rates of approximately 2% from covid-19 is consistent with that of other countries. None report death rates 16 times lower. The CDC also reports that U.S. excess deaths from covid-19 since February 1st range from approximately 202,000 to 263,000. These figures are in direct conflict with Trump's lies and agree with rea

During his first run for president, Donald Trump implied that he could fix what Obama had done. Here are a few of Obama's accomplishments: he fixed the economy that tanked while G.W. Bush was busy fighting a war of choice that killed almost 4500 American soldiers and maimed tens of thousands more; he successfully stopped several potential epidemics by listening to experts; and he passed a well liked health care program that covers per-existing conditions. Trump did "fix" some of Obama's successes: he has repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with nothing, even during a pandemic; he failed to follow the pandemic response playbook Obama created and let a deadly pandemic infect over 6 million Americans, killing 180,000 with more to come; and his choice to ignore the pandemic has destroyed the U.S. economy and his chance for valid re-election. After WWI, Hitler became dictator of a Germany destroyed by a war they started by promising t

In an ongoing attempt to reopen schools before the coronavirus pandemic is under control, Trump claimed that children are "almost immune from the disease…. They just don't have a problem." He also claimed that the reason we have so many cases is because we test so much, and that the virus will "go away like things go away." His comments were removed from Twitter and Facebook because they are factually wrong and ignore all of the evidence that has been collected since the beginning of the pandemic. Children should be able to return to school. It's the best place for learning, and not only of academic subjects. They also learn to socialize and interact with their peers and with teachers. They learn that hard work has benefits. It also allows parents or guardians to work while children are in school. But the reopening of schools should happen only if it is safe to do so. School children have been the most quarantined group in the country because of

Walmart Corporation recently instituted a policy that will mandate facial masks in all of their stores beginning on Monday, July 20. They weren't clear about exceptions or how they will enforce their mandate. I was at Walmart, Sayre, PA for about an hour on Thursday, July 16. Mask compliance was about 75%. I spoke with a manager, Lisa Barnes, and wished her luck for Monday. I asked how they intended to enforce mask compliance. She said that incidents would be reported to managers and they would respond. She didn't elaborate. Walmart should not require their already underpaid workers to be the enforcers. Stores in the Elmira and Horseheads areas of New York including a Walmart and Sam's Club have mandated masks for months. Customers wear them because it is enforced. There are no exceptions. No mask, no service. Also, breaking with Trump, these Republican governors have mandated masks in their states: Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Kay Ivey of Alabama, and Jim Justice of W

This  was written by  Joe Morice , a father in Fairfax county, VA on July 10, 2020 in his Facebook account. If you are someone that wants/needs schools to open regardless of the risk and lack of logistical details provided to families and staff, then you need to read this and read it carefully. It has been formatted lightly for ease of reading. Mr. Morice lists various statements he has heard in favor of returning to school and gives his reasons otherwise. To our fellow FCPS families, this is it gang, 5 days until the 2 days in school vs. 100% virtual decision. Let’s talk it out, in my traditional mammoth TL/DR form. From Joe Morice, daughters in 8th & 10th grade in our Centreville Pyramid: To our fellow FCPS families, this is it gang, 5 days until the 2 days in school vs. 100% virtual decision. Let’s talk it out, in my traditional mammoth TL/DR form. Like all of you, I’ve seen my feed become a flood of anxiety and faux expertise. You’ll get no presumption of experti

This was copied from Facebook. The original author is not mentioned. If you know the source, please let me know so that this can be properly credited. 400 years ago White people brought black people over here and enslaved them, sold them and treated them as less than human. For 250 years. While white men built the country (on the backs of slavery and on land stolen from Native Americans) and created its laws and its systems of government (without a thought of people of color). While 10, 15 generations of white families got to grow and flourish and make choices that could make their lives better. 150 years ago White people "freed" black people from slavery. But then angry white people created laws that made it impossible for them to vote. Or to own land. Or to have the same rights as white people. And even erected monuments glorifying people who actively had fought to keep them enslaved. All while another 5, 10 generations of white families got to grow, accumulate, pe

At the beginning of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the number of cases started rising in mid-March and eventually leveled off in early April at around 30,000 cases of covid-19 per day. It stayed at that level through April and started to decrease to approx. 20,000 cases per day until the middle of June when the daily number of cases started rising again. The early cases were from the northeast section of the country. The latest new cases are coming from different areas, primarily the southeast through to the southwest. Daily cases are currently approaching 60,000 per day. The daily rate of infection is twice that of the previous peak. Trump said it's going to disappear, and Pence says things are fine. It's not going to disappear. Things are not fine.  Wishful thinking is not going to solve this growing emergency. The situation is worse than it was before, and the economic consequences we have already paid were wasted because of Trump's gross incomp

Dr. Rich Davis , PhD, D(ABMM), MLS is Clinical Microbiology Lab Director at Sacred Heart Medical Center , Spokane, WA. He did two  simple demonstrations  to show the effectiveness of a properly worn surgical face mask in reducing the spread of biological contaminants. The first demonstrates the effectiveness of a mask to block respiratory droplets at a fixed short distance under different circumstances. The second demonstrates the effectiveness to block respiratory droplets at varying distances if the wearer is coughing. In all of the demonstrations, standard agar culture plates are used to show the level of contamination from respiratory droplets. After a few days, the culture plates show the presence (or absence) of bacteria (not viruses) and are meant to be a proxy for biological contaminants in the droplets. In the first demonstration, Dr. Davis held a culture plate about a foot in front of his face for each test: while sneezing, singing, talking, and coughing -- each without

The commissioners of Florida's Palm Beach County voted unanimously to make face masks mandatory in an effort to slow the spread of covid-19 in the county. Here are comments   from irate citizens that disagreed with the ruling: From the woman with black hair, red top: "You literally cannot mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that the mask is killing people. It literally is killing people. And my, the people, we the people, are waking up. And we know what citizen's arrest is because citizen's arrests are already happening. O.K. And every single one of you that are obeying the devil's laws are going to be arrested. And you, doctor, [pointing to a medical doctor on the board] are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity. From the woman with brown hair, black top, glasses, green scarf: "The problem with humanity today is ignorance, arrogance, and apathy. Keep taking the road of least resistance, keep listening to the TV brainwashing you f

The following is from a Facebook post by retired surgeon Sam Laucks II . It's worth looking at the original post on Facebook to read the comments. Here is what he has to say about wearing masks: “OK, here’s my rant about masks: I have spent the past 39 years working in the field of surgery. For a significant part of that time, I have worn a mask. I have worked with hundreds (probably thousands) of colleagues during those years, who have also worn masks. Not a single one us of became ill, passed out or died from lack of oxygen. Not a single one of us became ill, passed out or died from breathing too much carbon dioxide. Not a single one us of became ill, passed out or died from rebreathing a little of our own exhaled air. Let’s begin here by putting those scare tactics to rest! (It is true that some people, with advanced lung diseases, may be so fragile that a mask could make their already-tenuous breathing more difficult. If your lungs are that bad, you probably shouldn’