Gun & Prepping News #84

Some links that may be of interest:

• "Concealed Carry Permit Holders Remain Among America’s Most Law-Abiding Citizens"--Ammo Land.  The article notes that "[t]he arrest rate for concealed carry permit holders is about 1.7% of the arrest rate of the general population," and about 1/5 of the estimated arrest rate of police officers. 
• "CMP Doubles Lifetime Limit on Surplus 1911 Pistols"--Guns America.  CMP has been trickling out the military surplus 1911 and 1911A1 pistols, but I suppose that even with that the pistols must not have been selling as strongly as they hoped, because the lifetime limit has now increased from 2 to 4.
• "Century Arms’ Centurion 11: Can A $400 1911 Be A Good Buy?"--The Truth About Guns. The reviewer thought it was a pretty decent firearm for the price, but it comes with standard 1911A sights, so not easily adjusted. 
• "The Magnum Legend: Ruger Super Redhawk"--The Mag Life. The author relates:

The Ruger Super Redhawk is a large-bore revolver that hit the gun market in 1987, meaning it has nearly 40 years of use under its belt. That first model was released in .44 Magnum—understandably so—with later models including .480 Ruger and .454 Casull. The Super Redhawk came on the heels of the Redhawk, launched in 1979. Unlike the original Redhawk, which is designed more for carry and self-defense, the Super Redhawk is definitely a hunting handgun. There’s no denying it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to shoot in general, though, because it is.    

It is long barreled weapon designed to mount a pistol scope. I've shot the Redhawk (I know a guy that has one in .45 Colt/.45 ACP) but never the Super Redhawk. 

• "Concealed Carry Corner: Is The Glock 48 the New Standard?"--The Firearm Blog.  The author essentially is arguing that with the new higher capacity magazines available for the Glock 48, it will replace the Glock 19 as a default "do it all" self-defense, concealed carry weapon. He writes:

For over two decades now, the Glock 19 has been the golden child of concealed carry pistols, with what many call online the perfect blend of size, capacity, and weight to be an all-season carry gun compared to other options on the market. Combine that with the reliability that Glock is notorious for and there was a gold standard born. If you read online forums where people debate the best carry gun of all time or even read a Top 5 article about carry guns, the Glock 19 is almost always on the list, if not on top of the list. Being a mid-size option on the market with 15+1 capacity and being bulletproof reliable makes it a tough option to rule out for something to depend on to protect yourself day in and day out. 

 But, he adds:

[I]f we are looking at a direct comparison to the Glock 19, the Glock 48 has a number of similar features while being almost half the width. With the release of Glock’s factory 15-round slimline magazine, the Glock 48 becomes a slim variant of the Glock 19 with the same length and height but significantly thinner than the Glock 19, while offering the same capacity. The most important factor after overall weight when it comes to a carry gun is the overall thickness and size. The length of the Glock 48 doesn't affect concealability, but being a slimmer version of the Glock 19 makes carrying it all day, every day in hot weather much easier.  

• "The SIG P365 Family: Still the Benchmark for Everyday Carry"--Guns America.  I think the author of this piece may disagree with the author of the article just above this. This author claims: "The plain SIG P365 still earns its place as a daily carry pistol because it balances concealability, capacity, shootability, and trust better than almost anything in the micro-compact 9mm world." The author also states:

    The standard P365 is still the heart of the lineup and, for my money, still one of the best pure carry guns ever made. Mine wears a Wilson Combat grip module, a red dot, an aftermarket slide because my original slide is too old to be cut for an optic, and that is the extent of it. The Wilson grip improves the texture and the feel in my hand without changing the footprint, and the optic does what optics do, which is let me put rounds where I am looking faster and with less thought under stress.

    What I want to emphasize is that those two changes are preferences, not corrections. Out of the box, the P365 ships with steel tritium night sights, a usable trigger, and a degree of reliability that has been proven across millions of rounds in the field. I have never felt undergunned with it, and I have never felt the need to fix anything fundamental about it. It conceals so well that I genuinely forget it is there, which for an all-day, every-day carry gun is the whole point. This is the one I trust when the day is ordinary and when it is not.  

He also discussed the P365X, XL, and Fuse. Frankly, I wonder if the P365 or one of the larger variants will be the one to inherent the generalist pistol category from the Glock 19. 

• "Harry’s Holsters IWB Speedloader Carrier"--Revolver Guy. The article outlines the process the author went through with designing a product in conjunction with Harry's Holsters and some experimentation on where to carry such a speedloader carrier. As for placement, the author states: "I think the most promising place to carry a speedloader on the belt, when you’re carrying your gun AIWB, is to take advantage of the hollow created by the gun’s cylinder, immediately forward of the gun." As for the final product:

The Harry’s Holsters IWB Speedloader Carrier is composed of a tall and thin body with an IWB clip on the outside, and a leather backer on the inside. The body is 3-D printed, and sized to accept a specific model of speedloader. My two samples were for HKS J-frame and K-frame .38/.357 revolvers, but there are available carriers for 5-Star and Safariland loaders, and .32/.327 caliber options as well.

They are selling for about $90. The article also covers the author's testing of the product.

• "The MAC IX Review: An MP5 Alternative Most Shooters Can Actually Afford"--The Truth About Guns. It's almost $800 which is nice, but it is a direct blowback design, not a roller delayed like the MP5. About the only similarity is that it uses MP5 magazines. 
• Related: "Best MP5 Clone Buyer’s Guide [Field Tested]"--Gun Digest. This 2025 article covers some non-HK clones (although some are built on HK machinery).  But their prices, as of last summer, were also $1,300 or more (unless you wanted the .22LR version).
• "Best Ranch Rifles: A Modern Ranch Rifle Revival"--Recoil.  By "Ranch Rifle" the author is looking at something that is semi-auto with a traditional butt stock, using a detachable box magazine, and shooting .223 or an intermediate cartridge like .300 BLK or 7.62x39. Like Ruger's "Ranch Rifle" back in the day, which was simply a Mini-14 with the cuts necessary to mount scope rings. The rifles the author is comparing are the Ruger Mini-14, CMMG BR4 Dissent, Fox Trot Mike Ranch Rifle, and SIG Sauer MCX Regulator. The latter three are AR-15 derived weapons mating an AR style upper with a redesigned lower that could accept a traditional style stock. While the free-float barrels and skeletonized hand guards are great for attachments and help with accuracy, they lack the clean lines of the Mini-14 and look "tactical" rather than "ranch". 
• "How to Start Dry Fire Training (Without Overthinking It)" by Grace Torrence, The Firearm Blog. The author explains: 

    I define dry fire as the act of practicing firearm handling and shooting skills without live ammunition. It allows shooters to build repetition and consistency without having to make a range trip or spend large amounts of money on ammo. While I was in college and then in grad school, dry fire became crucial to my development as a competitive shooter, and I attribute much of my success to it.

    Many skills can be improved through dry fire, including trigger control, sight alignment and acquisition, draws and presentations, reloads, and target transitions. More advanced shooters can even train movement and firearm transitions. Dry fire is a great way to develop these skills at home while simultaneously building muscle memory.

    Although dry fire can never fully replace live fire, it can make live fire training more productive. As you develop new skills, the muscle memory you’ve built will help make the application of these skills to your live fire practice much easier. Dry fire can also help with skills maintenance for shooters who have limited range access. By using dry fire to routinely practice specific skills that don’t necessarily require ammo, like draws and reloads, you can free up your limited range time to focus on shooting-specific skills.

• "Can Civilians Buy Body Armor? Laws and Restrictions Explained"--The Tactical Gear Blog. Not something I have to worry about in Idaho, but something that might be an issue in some states or jurisdictions. 
• "Caches – Preps of Last Resort"--Gat Daily. The author explains: 

Caching is a concept that’s been around for a very long time. The basic idea is to stash gear and supplies in a hidden location so that they can serve as either a resupply point or a backup to your primary equipment. This presupposes that your cache remains undiscovered as well as undamaged between the time you place it and when you go to retrieve it.

He then goes on to discuss appropriate containers, contents, and what can go wrong. For instance, writing about containers, the author notes:

Traditionally, these sorts of caches are buried, so the container needs to be able to withstand the pressure and weight of the soil above and around it. While there are numerous ways to pull this off, one of the most common approaches is to use PVC pipe as the cache container. That’s what was recommended in Ragnar Benson’s book forty-odd years ago, and it’s still a workable solution today. 

One of problems that is too infrequently discussed is the difficulty in retrieving a buried container. If you have watched any videos of people trying to recover buried containers, what they often discover is the pressure of the earth packed around the outside of the cache makes it extremely difficult to remove the cache container from the earth, particularly if it is in a tube buried perpendicular to the ground surface. And it is problematic if you are having to quickly retrieve material from a cache but it is going to take hours to dig out the cache tube. The author suggests using two tubes: an outer tube into which a smaller tube (with the cached materials are stored) is inserted. Make sure you have a strong enough strap or handle attached, however, to lift the full tube out.

    Another great piece of advice: "The biggest rule of caching is never put anything in a cache that you’re not comfortable never seeing again. This isn’t the place for treasured family heirlooms or anything exceptionally valuable. Instead, think along the lines of you’re down to nothing, and you desperately need to resupply as you travel from Point A to Point B. What would you want or need?" 

• "Power Outage? What Size Generator for a Freezer (And How Long to Run It)"--Modern Survival Blog.  The author outlines the issue:

    A long power outage doesn’t just mean the lights go out. It can quietly wipe out hundreds of dollars of frozen food sitting in your freezer.

    Meat, garden harvests, bulk buys… all of it starts warming the moment the power stops. And the worst part? You often don’t realize how close you are to losing everything until it’s too late.

    The good news is that keeping a freezer (or refrigerator) cold during an outage is much easier than most people think. You don’t need a huge generator. You don’t need to run it 24/7. And you definitely don’t need to burn through fuel unnecessarily.

    That means even a small portable generator can prevent hundreds of dollars of food loss.

 He also notes:

You don’t need to run a generator continuously. A full chest freezer can stay frozen 24–48 hours without power. During an outage, many people run a generator about 1 hour every 8–12 hours to maintain safe freezer temperatures. Use a thermometer and keep food below 32°F (0°C).

The wattage you need will vary according to the size and type of freezer, with the author giving the numbers for a small chest freezer, a medium chest freezer, and a refrigerator/freezer combo. He also ran a test using his freezers. He has a lot more advice and tips on the difference between starting watts versus running watts, suggestions as to types of generators, how long to run the generator to keep the food frozen, and more, so be sure to read the whole thing.

• "An ancient solar storm left clues in tree rings and a famous poet's diary: 'Red lights in the northern sky'"--Space.com. From the lede:

The solar cycle was several years shorter and the sun was experiencing an unusually active phase at the beginning of the 13th century — at least, that's the story told by evidence left behind in tree rings and historical records that suggest a burst of protons and enhanced coronal mass ejections battered Earth between the years 1200 and 1204 CE. 

•  "The 2026 Hybrid Survival Kit: Smart Tech Gear With Analog Backups"--Survival Life. The author explains:

    A Hybrid Survival Kit is a deliberate pairing of modern, battery-powered technology with a mechanical, physics-based backup. It means building a loadout where your Plan A runs on microchips, but your Plan B runs on gravity, friction, and magnetism.

    For every digital tool in your bag, there is a low-tech, bombproof equivalent sitting right next to it. It is not about “buying more stuff” to be a gear collector; it is about building a Silicon-to-Steel Bridge. You use the silicon (chips) to buy you time and awareness, and you use the steel (analog tools) to ensure you don’t die when the chips fail.

An example: a GPS unit backed up with a map and compass; or a USB-rechargeable dual-arc plasma lighter backed up with a ferro rod. 

•  I had included this in a recent Weekend Reading post but thought I would include it here in case you missed it: "Government Food Confiscation Laws: How Private Food Stores Were Seized in History and What Legal Mechanisms Still Exist"--Preppers Will. The author begins:

    Most people assume that the food stockpiled in their pantry, freezer, or basement belongs to them unconditionally. Under normal circumstances, they are absolutely right. But history tells a far more complicated story, and the legal frameworks governing food supply, distribution, and access during emergencies reveal a side of government power that most people rarely think about until a crisis forces them to.

    Government food confiscation laws, whether formally codified or embedded within broader emergency statutes, have existed in various forms across nearly every major civilization. And in the modern United States, the legal infrastructure for federally directed food resource management remains very much intact, even if rarely invoked.

    Understanding the history of how governments have seized, rationed, and redistributed private food stores is not just an academic exercise. Whether you are a prepper planning for long-term food independence, a policy researcher, or simply a curious citizen, knowing how these laws work and where they come from gives you a clearer picture of the relationship between individual property rights and state power during crisis scenarios.

    From Stalin’s grain brigades to the U.S. Office of Price Administration during World War II, and from the Defense Production Act of 1950 to the FDA’s modern mandatory recall authority, the legal machinery behind food control has always been more extensive than most people realize.

While we generally think of OPSEC regarding food stores as necessary to prevent a mob of hungry people from showing up at our doors, the more likely scenario might well be police or other law enforcement showing up to confiscate your food items. You might also want to check out my post, "An Example of Why OPSEC is Important" for an example of the application of anti-hoarding laws in place during WWI which resulted in the prosecution of a couple living in Washington D.C. for hoarding. As I noted, "The 'offenders' were caught because they were informed on by a friend of the local 'Food Administrator.'" 

VIDEO: Shooting .22 LR From A Survival Cache

The Realist pointed me to a recent video (below) from YouTuber "704 Gear" who shoots .22 LR ammo that he has stored for 10 years. The first batch was just stored in a shed with no climate control (with temperatures ranging from below freezing in winter to well over 100 degrees in summer), while the second batch was from a buried storage cache. The ammunition was Winchester Super-X. The ammunition was test fired in a Savage bolt-action .22 rifle and a Taurus TX-22 semi-auto pistol. There were no issues with either batch. 

 VIDEO: "Shooting .22lr From A 10-Year-Old Survival Cache"
704 Gear (4 min.)

Video Short: Caching Fail

A long-time reader sent me the link to the video below. The producer of the video appears to be one of those YouTubers that does films of backcountry exploration. He came across a mineshaft while recording on BLM land in Utah. Taking a peak inside the shaft, he saw what he thought were body bags. He informed law enforcement and the local sheriff's office investigated. The sheriff's office subsequently reported that the bags did not contain bodies, but were a food cache. 

    At one time stashing stuff in an abandoned mine shaft, as done here, would have been sufficient for a remote cache. But with an increasing community of people that explore old mines and caves on public land, it has become more likely that someone will discover a simple cache like this. 

    There are also people that specifically hunt for survival caches in order to claim the items as their own. Even if they don't outright take the items, they can turn them in to the local sheriff as lost property and claim it as their own when the true owner fails to claim the property within the statutory time period. 

    Something else to consider is access. I went out to the BLM land south of town to go shooting this weekend and decided to visit a spot that I like for short range shooting--handguns and .22 rifles--and discovered that the area had been fenced off by a rancher, including fencing across the old road to get to the area (based on the condition of the fence posts and wire, this had apparently been done this spring--maybe within just the last few weeks). They are supposed to leave access open to the public, but the road is so little used and overgrown they probably figured they could get away with it or received permission to just run the fence across it. 

VIDEO: "Body bags in an abandoned mine shaft??"--The Trek Planner (~ 1 min.)

The Realist: Cache Recovery Videos

 Another guest post from The Realist, who writes:

    I spent part of my Labor Day weekend watching YouTube videos after YouTube suggested some cache recovery videos to me. There are many videos on burying a cache, but precious few videos about recovering a cache. I am particularly interested in what caching techniques actually worked and which techniques didn't work.

    The purpose of a cache is to have important supplies being available when you need them later. Caches are not always buried, but most of the discussions I see about caching involve burying them. Besides the challenge of finding a previously buried cache, the contents of the cache must still be preserved in usable condition when the cache is opened.

Videos

    In these videos, the caches were all buried in fairly shallow holes, not deeply buried as most of the caching discussions I have seen have suggested. (One video did not discuss where or how deeply it was buried.)

    Youtuber Survival Theory has several videos about caching, including three cache recoveries. He mostly uses what looks like plastic one-gallon food jars - thin-walled and inherently fragile - as caching  containers. In two cases, the caches are recovered and the contents are in fairly good condition. In the third case, the cache was disturbed by what he believes was a bulldozer clearing the land where his cache was buried - the three containers he buried were all slightly crushed and most of the contents compromised by water that subsequently entered the containers.

Apocalypse Cache 30 Months Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlgoBfpy_0c

Recovering a Lost Cache Buried Two Years Ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLgBZcIsuoU

Cache Crushed By Bulldozer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrGfBtqRRjs

    The YouTube channel The Survival Outpost shows the recovery of a cache he had buried ten months before. Again, the cache was buried fairly shallow. The contents were in good condition when recovered.

digging up my SURVIVAL Supply Cache from 2022 | Survival Kit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL-IkVUmf1k

        YouTuber Coyote Works has videos of a couple different cache recoveries. These were experimental caches that had been buried about a year. In both cases, the caches were buried in a fairly dry environment and fairly shallow, and the contents were in good condition, other than some short-shelf-life foods being a little rancid, when recovered.

Digging Up a Rifle Buried in a Bug Out SHTF Survival Cache Over a Year Ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT3DkdaifnA

Digging up a Survival - Bug Out - SHTF Cache after 1 year - Coyote Works Desert Bugout Cache

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdOMKNM-XvA

    YouTuber PilotPatriot recovers his cache after one year. He used a large pet food "Vittles Vault" with a Gamma Seal lid. The Gamma Vittles Vault is a fairly large capacity plastic container, and significantly cheaper than typical purpose-built cache containers. The contents of his cache remained in good condition.

Digging Up A Survival Cache After 1 YEAR!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4OzBgEqlOs

    YouTube channel Hudson Valley Prepping and Survival shows the unpacking of a survival cache that had been in the ground for 15 to 20 years. Unfortunately, there is no information about the conditions under which it had been buried, and how difficult its recovery had been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOhGp34qlx4

Observations and Comments

    In the above videos, with the exception of the one cache where the containers were damaged, the contents recovered were in good condition. Three of the caches had firearms that remained in good condition, but had the cache containers been breached, there may have been a badly damaged firearm.

    Many of the caches contained various snack foods, including candy bars, granola bars, and other items. Some of those shack foods had become rancid over the course of the year. One apparently soft granola bar had disintegrated, but the hard Nature Valley granola bars appeared to store well at least for the year.

    I noticed that in most cases, when the cache included water, that water was in thin-walled PET plastic bottles. In my experience, those thin walled PET plastic water bottles will loose water over time via a process of diffusion (https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2018/04/hygroscopic-pet-bottles/). Since most of
the caches with water were buried for only a year, there had not been a sufficient amount of water diffused through the water bottle walls to cause problems.

    Because of diffusion, if the bottled water is stored inside a sealed cache container, the water will diffuse into the atmosphere of the cache over time. If descants are present, they will absorb some of the water until they become saturated. So, if you are going to store water in a cache container with other items, either store water packaged in Mylar pouches or non-plastic containers. I would not store water in a glass bottle or metal container unless you are absolutely sure the cache will never freeze. Or, store the water in a separate cache container.
    
    When burying a cache, OPSEC (Operations Security) is vitally important. You don't want to be observed while burying your cache. Avoiding observation includes not bringing your cell phone with you, and not driving to the cache site using a vehicle with a cellular modem (any vehicle that has built-in roadside assistance service features), since cellular geolocation data can be used to track your movements, and some of that data is retained by some cellular providers for up to five years (https://www.pcmag.com/news/heres-how-long-your-wireless-carrier-holds-on-to-your-location-data).

    I hope you will find these videos as informative as I have.

    My thanks to The Realist for another great post. I will add that from what I have seen from similar caching videos a few additional points:

• Make sure your cache is buried below the frost line, particularly if including canned or bottled food items. I saw several videos where cans were bulged or food items otherwise spoiled because the contents had frozen over a winter.
• One common difficulty was actually getting the cached container out of the ground. In several of the videos I've seen on the topic, the people seemed to think that if you exposed the top of the container and perhaps a bit of the sides, you could simply pull it up out of the ground; they had not planned on having to take the time and effort to dig free the walls of the containers from the soil. One way to remedy this is to use a double container system: bury a larger tube or box into which the cache container is inserted or placed. That way, you just need to expose the lid of the larger tube or box, open it, and then you should be able to pull out the container with the actual cached items. This can greatly speed the recovery time; particularly important because I would assume that if you need the cached items, you will probably be in a hurry. If you can't do a double container system, you are better off laying the box or container on its long side--it is easier to dig a hole that is larger in area but shallower than having to dig a deeper hole to free a container.
• Be very careful with mapping the location of your cache. Based on the difficulties I observed in various videos, I would avoid using trees as landmarks as trees grow and can change appearance, be burned, or cut or blown down. In any event, even a few feet of uncertainty can greatly increase the difficulty and speed of recovering a buried cache. 

Video: Found Survival Cache

"Found Buried Guns Cache In Desert & Money Cache ($20 000) Survival Cache 3 of 25 Southern Utah"--Silver Axe (8 min.)

The Realist sent me the link to this video. The author of the video had purchased the contents of a storage unit, in which he found electronic copies of photographs, including one with GPS coordinates. He took a metal detector to the site and uncovered a storage cache with 3 firearms (including what appears to be a Colt Python), $20,000 in $100 bills, and a variety of other survival items.

A Quick Run Around the Web (5/4/2020)

"How to build a Cache & Select a Site | Always be prepared"--Tactical Rifleman (47 min.)

A couple ex-Green Beret's discuss how they would go about caching supplies or a rifle, go about burying it, recording the location, and recovering it. I have a question, however, to those readers that might have experience with caching: is there a reason not to bury a cache tube vertically so you just have to dig down to the cap, remove the cap, and then pull the items out of the cache (you could put a sling under the cached items inside the tube when you stuff it into the tube so you could just pull on the rope or material and pull it all out) without removing the cache tube?

• "Department of Defense Chooses 6.5 Creedmoor Ammo from Hornady"--The Firearm Blog. The real story here is that the military is abandoning the .300 Winchester Magnum for the 6.5 Creedmoor.
• "An economical battery of guns for the backwoods home"--by Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine. Short list: "At an absolute minimum, I would suggest four guns for the backwoods home. These would be a .22, a shotgun, a defensive-type handgun, and a high-powered rifle." Low cost .22 rifles he lists are the Mossberg Plinkster, the Ruger 10/22, and the Marlin Model 60. For the shotgun, the low cost examples he gives are the Mossberg 500 and Remington 870 pump shotguns. The high-powered rifle is seen by Ayoob as primarily a hunting weapon, and therefore will depend on where you live and what game you intend to hunt; he mentions lever-actions like the Winchester Model 94 .30-30 and Marlin Model 336 as possibilities, as well bolt-action rifles shooting modern center-fire loads. Because it is for hunting, Ayoob does describe the high-powered rifle as optional if you don't plan on doing any hunting. As for handguns, Ayoob writes:

Cost effective choice: For a small .38 Special or .357 Magnum revolver with a short barrel that lives in your pants pocket, a Ruger, Taurus, or Smith & Wesson will do nicely. The MSRP can range from low $400 to around a grand. In a holster-size semiautomatic pistol in a caliber with authority (9mm, .40, .45, or .357 SIG) you’re looking at Glock, Ruger, SIG, Smith & Wesson and Taurus in a roughly $400-700 range bought new.

But he also suggests a .44 Magnum if you are in big bear country.

• "Concealed Carry Corner: Things To Consider When Carrying In A Vehicle"--The Firearm Blog. Main takeaway is that laws on carrying a weapon in a vehicle vary considerably from state to state, or even from one county or community to another. Even the definition of what constitutes a "loaded" firearm varies widely.  
• "Knife Defense Exercises You Need to Practice"--Survival Sullivan. The author writes:

      Defending against a knife attack is a high-stakes all-or-nothing affair; it is certainly not the flashy, artistic series of feints and parries you see on the big screen or demonstrated by practitioners of Far East martial arts. Knives are easy to hide and blindingly quick into action.

     Many victims do not even know they are being attacked by a knife until they see their own blood gushing out of their bodies. This is something you simply cannot get wrong, and anything less than subconsciously programmed and relentlessly drilled responses will fail.

     Today, let this article serve as a primer for your entry into the world of knife defense techniques and tactics. While no article on the internet, even here on Survival Sullivan, will ever replace training, blood, sweat and effort for keeping you safe, it can serve as a guide to point you in the right direction.

He continues:

      Knife-defense techniques that work in the real world don’t look good. At least they don’t compared to the traditional fancypants stuff above we talked about. They look ugly, brutal and crude.

     You might say they look like a fight looks. That’s because they do, and that’s what you’ll be in. If you want to get out of the fight with the same number of holes you came into it with, you had better start paying attention.

     Knife defense is not about fending the knife off all day long. Even if you are supremely fast, strong and coordinated, you’ll get cut and/or stabbed eventually.

     As your wounds pile up and the bad guy keeps coming, you’ll be losing more and more blood and he’ll be getting closer and closer to that big payday stab deep into your trunk or a limb. Then it’s over.

    Instead, knife defense for success revolves around three simple concepts: One, stuff the attack before you are hurt, or stop the follow-on attacks if you get caught unawares.

     Two, tie up or immobilize the “sharp” limb to minimize its threat or remove it from play entirely. Three, go on the offensive tearing into the attacker with such rage and ferocity the urn containing his parent’s ashes will scream in terror.

Read the whole thing.

• "Why 'Moderate' Pro-Gun Groups like ACRGO Always Fail"--All Outdoor. This 2015 article is still true today:

      The main reason that these fake pro-gun groups keep cropping up is that there’s a perpetual fantasy on some parts of the left that goes something like this: if only there were a reasonable, non-insane alternative to the NRA, then everyday, sensible, non-extremist gun owners would surely turn out in droves to sign up. Thus, the reasoning then goes, why don’t we find a semi-celebrity spokesperson who also happens to be a gun owner and make one!

      Unfortunately for the people who think this way, the only NRA alternatives that have gotten any traction in recent years are even further toward the gun rights absolutist end of the spectrum than the NRA. If the folks who dream up and fund these “moderate” gun organizations had actually talked to real gun owners, then they’d find that most are concerned that the NRA is too squishy on gun rights, not too extreme, hence the growth of gun rights orgs that are even more stringent.

• "An Argument for DA/SA Pistols"--Modern Survival Online. I've seen a lot of good arguments why double-action/single-action pistols (where the first shot is a double-action pull starting with the hammer decocked and the following are single-action) are passé, at best, or obsolete monstrosities at worst. The typical argument focuses on the difference between the two modes of fire and that the long DA pull will result in the first shot being missed. And its true that the trigger pull for even the best double-actions on a pistol are heavy and long. But, just as there arguments for carrying a revolver in this age of high-capacity auto-loaders, there are also arguments in favor of the DA/SA handgun. The author writes:

      The current gestalt among pistol shooters is that striker gun-equals-better gun for all the reasons I mentioned above; simpler, consistent, easier to shoot, etc.

     Are those qualities all that matter in a defensive gun? Is raw “shooting” performance the first and only barometer of a good defensive gun?

     I say no, that while it is certainly important there is far more that can and will occur when it is time for you to defend your life with a gun in hand, and the design and operation of that pistol will either contribute to keeping you safe or help set you up for failure.

After discussing the reasoning for the single-action or striker-fired pistol, the author continues:

      A student with a DA/SA semi or DA revolver whose teacher preaches the old dogma of placing just the tip of the trigger finger on the trigger to shoot will quickly become frustrated with their lack of performance and annoyed with how difficult the gun is to operate.

     You don’t pull one of those longer, heavier triggers the same way as you would a custom 1911 with a 3 lb. trigger. More leverage is needed to yield the control required to move these heavier triggers to the rear consistently.

     The trigger itself is particularly important on a DA/SA pistol. Weight is often emphasized here, with lighter being better (and it often is) but of even greater importance is that the trigger be smooth and hitch-free.

     A smooth, consistent trigger is easy to manage and shoot well with just a little bit of practice, even for beginners. Paying proper attention to grip and trigger finger placement is easily taught and more importantly easily executed. After that first shot and the gun transitions to single action mode most students are in for smooth sailing.

     As far as the rest of the case against DA/SA pistols having a complex manual of arms, I refuse to subscribe to that notion in any way. Compared to the majority of striker-fired pistols that lack decockers or manual safeties, sure, a typical DA/SA gun is more complicated… By a matter of exactly one extra step!

     Critics of these pistols would have you believe that running one additional switch, the decocker or safety-decocker, at the conclusion of shooting is simply too great a burden to bear and too hard to teach to your average adult.

He then moves on to what he considers the advantage to a double-action first shot:

      A longer, heavier trigger is more likely to prevent an unintended discharge than a lighter one. No two ways about it. If a finger or foreign object should make its way into the trigger guard when no shot is intended and begin to apply pressure to the trigger, a short, light trigger will result in a discharge more often and more quickly than the aforementioned long pull. I can hear some hate simmering in the comments already…

     I have heard from many peers, readers and dissenters who proclaim any modern handgun more than safe enough irrespective of action if only the user is well trained enough to keep their stinkin’ finger off the trigger. That is the key absolute to safety, they say, and will hear no discussion to the contrary.

     Fair enough. Most unintended discharges are indeed negligent instead of truly accidental so their claim has merit. But what if I told you that their entire premise is a flawed one? And more than that that the vagaries and stress of a life-or-death encounter means managing your pistol entails far more than just getting a short mouse-click trigger press before sending lead downrange?

     While I do not doubt that many readers are extremely well trained and take their practice as seriously as life itself, I do doubt very much their claims of flawlessness, that they won’t make mistakes and that sheer bad luck has never overtaken them.

      I have trained and trained with too many shooters who I would consider excellent and reviewed too much video of both live events and seriously high-pressure force-on-force training to believe in perfection when it comes to trigger finger discipline any more.

     Whether from extreme stress, fatigue or fear, a curious phenomenon manifests itself in these situations, which is that of the shooter quickly, briefly placing their finger down onto the trigger seemingly in an effort to ascertain that it is still there.

     This pre-emptive positioning most often occurs with the shooter having no conscious knowledge of it occurring. During a later debrief when it is brought up to them they swear on all that is good and holy that they did no such thing.

     But cameras do not lie, and the proof is positive: this curious glitch whatever you care to call it does occur, and should it happen on a gun with a light, short trigger when muscles are tense or the shooter is startled the result can be an ND.

     The long, heavy pull of the first DA shot provides more feedback to the shooter between pressure accumulating on the trigger and bang that “something is happening,” and this can be enough to correct the deficiency.

     Furthermore, a long trigger pull can allow a shooter to back off of a trigger in time before breaking the shot should the need to shoot vanish or new information change the scenario.

     With light single-action and striker-fired pistols there is precious little that happens between “decision to fire” and “bang,” and while a double-action pull does not take that much more, it is sufficiently long and tactile to allow a shooter to cancel the shot should the need arise.

Another advantage he discusses is there being a hammer on the DA/SA autos, because it gives you some control and tactile feedback when holstering the weapon. That is, if you have used a decocker to let down the hammer, attempt to reholster and your shirt gets tangled in the holster and starts to pull the trigger, you will be able to tell if you keep you thumb on the hammer (as you should) when reholstering. The author adds:

      Once again, it is too easy to proclaim that it won’t happen to you, that you are safe, reholster carefully and verify the mouth of the holster is clear of any obstructions before proceeding. Yeah, you are that good, or maybe it is just hubris worming its way into your mind.

     If this capability was only a fringe benefit as some have suggested why would companies like Tau Development group and their Striker Control Device, or “Gadget” be gaining a small but vocal and legitimate group of expert striker gun users in professional circles?

     The Gadget, in case you are unfamiliar, is a replacement backplate for Glocks that features an articulated hinge or button that is depressed by the user’s thumb during reholstering in order to prevent the striker from moving to the rear, which in turn prevents the trigger bar from moving which in turn halts the trigger itself. This akin to what your thumb should do when holstering a gun with a hammer and accomplishes the same thing.

     Sounds like capability like that is, perhaps, a good thing to have during what is statistically one of the most dangerous operations you can perform with your pistol- holstering it. Something to think about.

      I've carried and shot SA-only 1911 style handguns carrying cocked and locked, DA/SA handguns, double-action revolvers, and striker fired pistols. They all have pluses and minuses. I would also offer an additional argument in favor of DA/SA pistols: when doing dry fire practice, you don't have to rack the slide between each "shot." 

       By the way, if use a 9 mm Glock pistol with the standard width slide for concealed carry, I would definitely recommend the Glock gadget. It is worth that extra peace of mind when holstering.

• On a similar note: "The Value of a Hammer"--Priority Performance. The author argues:

A hammer on a handgun gives us an extra layer of safety. If we control the hammer while holstering not only will it give us tactile feedback of what the trigger is doing, but it has mechanical advantage over the trigger. If pressure is applied to the hammer, the trigger cannot move to the rear. If something were to inadvertently press the trigger, like an untucked shirt, or the draw string on a pullover, or magic fairies bent on our demise, it (or they) wouldn’t be able to press the trigger as long as we maintained pressure on the hammer.

This author also offers up the Striker Control Device (SCD) as an example of the continued need for some tactile way of being sure you are holstering safely.

• Never say "never": "Four Reasons to NEVER Carry Just a .38 Snubnose"--Ammo Land. "RIP my inbox – but hear me out before you glass me from orbit," the author writes. He goes on to contend that "[a] snub-nosed, double-action-only revolver in any caliber is a very difficult firearm to shoot both accurately and quickly." By "accurately" he is complaining of the heavy DA trigger pull and recoil. By "quickly" he means to reload. The accuracy issue is a matter of practice and finding the right grips/stocks. The people from Ergo Grips wouldn't know me from Adam, and I don't get anything for saying this, but their Delta Grip really can make a big difference. As for "quickly" I guess it comes down to whether you think you are going to be a statistical outlier to Frank McGee's “rule of three” as to the average gunfight: three rounds, three yards, three seconds. For many years, my primary carry gun was a 5-shot J-frame. But in the last couple years, I've also carried a 6-round "pocket sized" semi-auto and a larger, 13-round semi-auto. 
• "Leatherman P4 Review"--Loose Rounds. Short take is that the multi-tool was cheaply made and wasn't very good.
• "First look: KelTec P17 pistol"--Bayou Renaissance Man. He likes it so far, but promises a more detailed review after he has been able to shoot it some more.
• "The Trust Deficit"--City Journal. Excerpt:

      ... In case after case, we see leaders—from ship crews to local police to federal officials—who seem more concerned about potentially unruly behavior by ordinary citizens than about the crisis at hand. In reality, most civilians show impressive calm and resilience in emergencies. Nonetheless, authorities find it hard to shake their fear that any big disruption will turn the public into a panicked, or even criminal, mob. In response, they often try to limit or spin information, clamp down on public movement, and step up measures against anticipated lawbreaking.

       It’s understandable that officials want civilians to stay put and out of trouble during disasters. That’s usually good advice—but not always. People on the upper floors of the World Trade Center were told to “shelter in place”—standard procedure at the time—after planes struck the towers on 9/11. The only survivors from those floors were those who defied the instructions. In 2014, hundreds of South Korean high school students obediently followed orders to stay below decks while the ocean-going ferry MV Sewol took on water and sank, killing more than half of the 476 passengers and crew on board. Authorities also frequently mobilize to prevent anticipated spasms of lawbreaking. After the Alaska earthquake of 1964, officials in Anchorage temporarily halted searching for survivors in order to defend downtown stores from a nonexistent army of looters.

"Solar Superstorms | Ending the Modern World"--Suspicious Observers (14 min.)

• "How to Get Blood Stains Out of Sheets"--Apartment Therapy. "There’s a high chance you’ve had the unpleasant experience of waking up to blood-stained sheets at some point in your life," the author notes. Yeah, like after that drug-fueled drinking binge in Bangkok ten years ago. Just kidding, but it is amazing how omitting a handful of words can be used to make something sound worse than it really is. Anyway, the article continues:

 It can be panic-inducing to find blood on your bed sheets or pillow case, but the most important first step is not to panic—the cleaning process isn’t as bad as you think.The second step? Strip your bed and gather your supplies. The stain-removing task at hand is far from impossible—it will just take a little time and effort to do it right.

      The author first offers some tips and advice: (1) start immediately before the blood dries because dried blood will cling more strongly to the fibers and be harder to remove; (2) always use COLD water as warm or hot water can also cause the blood to set; and (3), if the fabric is silk or wool, avoid enzyme cleaners (which are otherwise recommended) because they can damage the fabric. The author then offers up some recommendations on products to treat the stain: hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), "Wine Away," sodium percarbonate bleach alternatives such as "The Laundress’ All-Purpose Bleach Alternative," and "Nature's Miracle" (an enzymatic cleaner).

      Now for the steps:

1. Blot out the stain with a clean, dry cloth

      The first step is to remove any excess blood from the sheets. Use a dry cloth to gently blot at the stain, removing as much blood as you can from the sheet with a brush or cloth. You may want to adjust your cloth periodically to blot with a clean section of cloth, to avoid spreading the stain.

2. Rinse with cold water

      Dunk the stained area of the sheet in cold water to rinse, essentially to dilute the stain and make it easier to remove.

3. Treat with a stain-removing solution, then launder as usual

      Treat the stained area with your stain-removal product of choice, following whatever directions are on the label (or our directions above). Goodman recommends pre-treating by creating a soaking solution in a plastic bucket with 25 ml liquid detergent per gallon of cold water. Allow the stained portion of the sheet to soak for up to 30 minutes, using the weight of a towel to keep it totally submerged. After treatment, wash the sheets as you normally would, always making sure to use cold water.

4. Air- or line-dry your sheets

      If the stain remains after air drying, you should treat the stain again, or try an alternate method/product from the list above. Don’t machine-dry your item because the heat could set the stain. “It’s not impossible to get a stain out of something if you’ve run it through the dryer, but it will be a lot harder,” Richardson says.

And what about a dried blood stain or a stubborn stain?

      While it’s always best to attempt removing a stain as quickly as possible, you can still remove dried blood from your sheets with the same steps as above. But there’s an important first step, Richardson says. Just make sure the affected spot is moist before washing it. “Make the blood spot wet with some water, and then treat it like normal,” Richardson says. 

     If the stain is particularly stubborn, follow the same steps an additional time.

• "And then they came for Tolkien"--Vox Popoli. Vox Day notes that one of the SJWs latest targets is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth works and, specifically, what they contend is the implied racism behind the portrayal of elves and orcs. According to the SJW he quotes, "Orcs are depicted in fantasy literature mirrors the racist tropes and narratives about indigenous and black people that was used to justify colonialism and slavery." The author then goes on to praise certain games for how they have re-imagined orcs. Of course, the mythology upon which Tolkien drew upon pre-existed European contact with "indigenous and black people," but we don't want to confuse the SJWs with facts. Besides, I think this has more to do with justifying the recycling of Tolkien's universe because the SJWs lack the creativity to come up with their own worlds than it has to do with addressing racism.

• Related: "Lovecraft Country’s first trailer teems with monsters, genre subversion, and social allegory"--Vox. HBO's new series "Lovecraft Country" is based on H.P. Lovecraft's works but with a twist: the main characters are blacks and it is set in the 1950s to the background of the Jim Crow era--as a dig to H.P. Lovecraft's supposed racism. That the New England states, where all of this supposedly takes place, didn't have Jim Crow laws, seems to have escaped the author's notice. Thus, again a situation where someone is using alleged racism to justify recycling someone else's works because he or she has no original, creative ideas.

• "Women are driving America into the future"--Fabius Maximus. Excerpt:

The progress of feminism is the chief manifestation of the Left’s power. It is one of the largest social engineering experiments in history (e.g., see this and this). The first three waves of feminism obtained increasingly broad forms of equality, each facing weaker opposition. Now we have fourth-wave feminism – the quest for superiority. It abandons any pretense of society as a joint endeavor of men and women. It is about organizing women to work for their own benefit.

As an example, my wife and I watch a couple television programs on IMDb's streaming service, and I've noticed this past week an ad from Tide honoring the first responders and people on the front line of "fighting" the Wuhan virus, and all the fire fighters, police, nurses, etc., are women.

• "Unconscious Contempt"--The Rational Male. Excerpt:

       I’ve seen a few of these “I got a vasectomy and my wife thinks it’s funny” social media posts before this one. Creating little post-it note jokes to apply to the snacks in the pantry might seem cute, but why is this even a thing? Why is it women/wives think it’s cute to publicly ridicule their partner about the impotence he elected to have? Amongst the Facebook and Instagram shots of her life, amongst the motivational quote memes, and among the complaints about kids, marriage and domestic life a moment of ridiculing their husband seems par for the course. And it’s all acceptable so long as the context is one of being ‘all in fun’.

* * *

      Imagine what the outrage would be on social media were you to make ‘cute’ jokes in the same way about your wife’s uterine ablation or tubal ligation. At the very least women wouldn’t think it was funny. No one tells women, “Lighten up. What, are you so insecure in your femininity that you can’t take a joke?” When a woman is rendered infertile it doesn’t occur to anyone to make light of it, but for a man to be neutered – and at the mutual agreement with his wife – we find the hit to his masculinity hilarious. Why is this?

• Because it's ugly: "WHY YOU HATE CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE"--Current Affairs. From the lede:

The British author Douglas Adams had this to say about airports: “Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of special effort.” Sadly, this truth is not applicable merely to airports: it can also be said of most contemporary architecture.

• Related: "Eyesores Galore" by Theodore Dalrymple at Taki's Magazine. He begins: "Compared with the slum dwellers of São Paulo who erect their own shacks in a day or two, the average French (or British) architect is a complete aesthetic illiterate and incompetent, or perhaps moron would be a better word for it. Aesthetically, if not hygienically, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are to the modernist quarters of Paris what Fra Angelico is to Damien Hirst."

• "Hydroxychloroquine Saves Nursing Home In Texas: All Of The Models By The Professional Medical Community Are Wrong"--The Captain's Journal. There seems to be a lot of evidence that hydroxychloroquine can save lives, especially if administered early on (see, e.g., this article about a Chinese study). Another article, discussing the mechanism of how the Wuhan virus attacks the body and is blocked by hydroxychloroquine also notes:

Finally, further confirmation of this hypothesis is provided by the data collected in the register of the SIR (Italian Society of Rheumatology). In order to evaluate the possible correlations between chronic patients and COVID-19 SIR interviewed 1,200 rheumatologists throughout Italy to collect statistics on contagions. Out of an audience of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil/hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, and nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far.

But, instead of supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine, the top bureaucrats medical experts like director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci are touting an expensive, still patented remdesivir, which the FDA has approved for use by patients suffering from coronavirus. In backing use of the drug, Fauci stated: "The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery." Nevertheless, as the same article makes clear, "[f]or now, there simply isn’t enough data to be certain of how remdesivir changes outcomes for patients suffering from COVID-19. Only a handful of studies have been conducted so far, and results have been mixed." The article continues:

       Fauci’s praise for the drug referred to a recent, government sponsored study where around 1,000 COVID-19 patients were treated with either remdesivir or a placebo, with neither the patients nor their caregivers knowing which they received (this is known as a controlled double-blind study). While there was no statistical significance in the small difference in mortality rate between the two groups, remdesivir patients spent less time in the hospital overall: an average of 11 days compared to 15.

      A shorter hospital stay means less time spent at risk of developing complications. It also means ICU beds and ventilators can open up to serve other patients more quickly. But the study’s full data hasn’t been released to the public or reviewed by other scientists, so it’s difficult to know how these results could be applied to patients in general.

* * *

      Gilead recently released the findings of its own study conducted over the last several weeks, which reported positive results. However, this study didn’t compare remdesivir to a placebo—it only tested patients taking either five- or ten-day courses of the drug. That means its data doesn’t prove that remdesivir is more effective than no antivirals or other types of treatments. A third study conducted in China, which focused on patients with more severe COVID-19 than those studied in US trials, reported no significant benefit from remdesivir.

Nevertheless, reports Quartz:

The pharmaceutical supply chain is moving rapidly to treat coronavirus patients. On May 1, the US Food and Drug Administration granted the antiviral drug remdesivir emergency use authorization, meaning it can be used as treatment. The head of the Gilead Sciences, which makes remdesivir, today said the company had donated its full supply to the US government, and that federal authorities will begin shipping the drug across the country in the next few days.

There is something fishy going on here what with Fauci dissing hydroxychloroquine but throwing his support of remdesivir on less evidence than that supporting the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, the coordinated attempts to discourage doctors from using hydroxycholoroquine, and the media bandwagon clearly being in the anti-hydroxychloroquine camp.

• It's no longer about flattening the curve. The Boston Globe complains "Six weeks after social distancing began, Mass. coronavirus hospitalizations and cases remain high. Why so little improvement?" The article relates:

“A lot of the models were a little bit misleading in terms of suggesting that there would be these nice, perfect bell curves,” said Thomas Tsai, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “And what we are seeing is that, realistically, instead of a peak and then a rapid climb down the mountain, so to speak, there’s more of a plateau, especially when it comes to hospitalizations and deaths, because those are lagged behind development of new cases by a few weeks.”

Hmm. Curve no longer bell-shaped, but showing a plateau: that is the very definition of flattening a curve! 

       John Nolte, writing at Breitbart, expresses the growing frustration:

       In order to flatten the curve of the coronavirus, the politicians told us we must lockdown and be quarantined while our economy collapsed. They told us we had to flatten the curve to ensure our health care system was not overwhelmed by the sick and dying. They told us that if the health care system was overwhelmed, people would die who could otherwise be saved. They told us losing people who can be saved is intolerable, and America agreed…

       And so, for the first time in recorded history, healthy Americans dutifully fulfilled our end of the bargain and went into quarantine by dutifully agreeing to go into lockdown while our economy collapsed.

       And now we know we were suckers…

      Now we know the politicians lied to us.

      This was never about saving the healthcare system from crashing, because we have saved the system from crashing, and most of us are still in these goddamned lockdowns.

       He asks why extend the lock downs? But that is to ask why the scorpion stings or the snake bites--it is the nature of government and our elites. "Past Crises Have Ratcheted Up Leviathan. The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Too," proclaims Reason Magazine. And, frankly, a lot of the elites simply like to see much of the country locked up. Breitbart reports, for instance:

       Robert Redford and his son, film director James Redford, say one of the “pleasant surprises” of the Chinese coronavirus is how lockdown measures have been a means for “potential environmental repair.”

     “As many of the world’s transportation and industrial sectors have reduced operations, there has been a remarkable decline in global levels of carbon dioxide emissions,” wrote the Redfords in an op-ed published by NBC News on Thursday.

       There is certainly no factual reason for continuing the lock downs as long as some are suggesting. "The latest figures on overall death rates from all causes show no increase at all. Deaths are lower than in 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015, slightly higher than in 2016. Any upward bias is imparted by population growth." 

       Now writing a book on the crisis with bestselling author Jay Richards, Briggs concludes: “Since pneumonia deaths are up, yet all deaths are down, it must mean people are being recorded as dying from other things at smaller rates than usual.” Deaths from other causes are simply being ascribed to the coronavirus.

     As usual every year, deaths began trending downward in January. It’s an annual pattern. Look it up. Since the lockdown began in mid-March, the politicians cannot claim that their policies had anything to do with the declining death rate.

      A global study published in Israel by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and Council on Research and Development, shows that “the spread of the coronavirus declines to almost zero after 70 days—no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.”

      In fact, by impeding herd immunity, particularly among students and other non-susceptible young people, the lockdown in the U.S. has prolonged and exacerbated the medical problem. As Briggs concludes, “People need to get out into virus-killing sunshine and germicidal air.”

     This flu like all previous viral flues will give way only to herd immunity, whether through natural propagation of an extremely infectious pathogen, or through the success of one of the hundreds of vaccine projects.

     No evidence indicates that this flu was exceptionally dangerous. On March 20th, the French published a major controlled study that shows no excess mortality at all from coronavirus compared to other flues. SARS and Mers were both much more lethal and did not occasion what Briggs’ reader “Uncle Dave” described as “taking a hammer and sickle to the economy.”

      We now know that the crisis was a comedy of errors. The Chinese let it get going in the raw bat markets of Wuhan. But together with the Koreans, the Chinese dithered and demurred and allowed six weeks of rampant propagation to create herd immunity before they began locking everyone up. Therefore, the Chinese and Koreans were among the first to recover.

      The Italians scared everybody with their haphazard health system and smoking fogies. Crammed together in subways and tenements, the New Yorkers registered a brief blip of extreme cases. Intubations and ventilators turned out not to help (80 percent died). This sowed fear and frustration among medical personnel slow to see that the problem was impaired hemogloblin in the blood rather than lung damage.

      The New York media piled on with panic, with bogus reports of rising deaths. “Coronavirus deaths” soared by assuming that people dying with the virus were dying from it and then by ascribing to the coronavirus other deaths among people with symptoms of pulmonary distress, even without being tested.

Yet as the statistics stack up and show that all of the models are wrong, the "experts" are once again relying on a modeling study from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota to claim that the disease won't be contained for at least another two years. But Americans are not going to stay in lock down for much longer--the walls are already cracking as more and more Americans decide to ignore lock down orders and/or protest those orders. In Michigan, which has suffered under the tyrannical Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, armed protesters rallied at the Capital to protest any extension of the emergency powers given to Whitmer (the legislature voted against the extension, but Whitmer contends she doesn't need legislative authority to extend lock downs, which will probably lead to a showdown between the legislature and the governor). Marches were also held last week in North Carolina to protest the lock down in that state.Chicago residents have torn down fences to get into locked down city parks. A handful of sheriffs in Washington and Arizona have stated that they will no longer enforce lock down orders.

      But, as with all other things, there are two sets of laws: one for the elites and those for the general peasantry. Thus, we see Illinois Governor Pritzker was discovered to have recently sent his wife and kids to Florida during the state stay-at-home orders. Last month, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot went to a hairstylist visit amid coronavirus outbreak, despite barbers and stylist's businesses being shut down for public safety. While New York City remains under lockdown, Mayor de Blasio still goes jogging in a park 12 miles from his home, and even visited the YMCA. And Michelle Obama released a recorded message in which she said, “Remember, we urge you to stay home except if you need essential healthcare, essential food or supplies or to go to your essential job,” even as her husband, former President Obama, went to play a round of golf. 

• Extending the research on the lack of social cohesion in diverse communities: "Diversity and the Death of Labor"--Unz Report. Excerpt:

      Bombshell leaked emails showing that Amazon strikebreakers uses racial diversity to ensure workers at Whole Foods never unionize only confirms taboo research showing that multiculturalism destroys civic cohesion and engagement of all kinds.

      Unionized workers — and their threat to strike — is a massive threat to executive bonuses and a companies stock value. America’s plutocrats are the wealthiest in the world, even as living standards for the majority decline.

      According to Amazon’s internal documents, more racially homogenous stores, which is usually codeword for white, have higher rates of sales, but tend to be “hot spots” for the threat of unionization. In other words, it’s not even totally economic, but also a question of power. Jeff Bezos would rather sell fewer products than have to negotiate any conditions with his workers.

• Related: "Bush Center Slams Trump: We Want More Migration"--Breitbart. 

      The economics director at President George W. Bush’s advocacy center slammed President Donald Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration policy.

     The May 1 slam came just before Bush posted a May 2 video urging national unity in the coronavirus crash that has pushed more than 25 million Americans out of jobs.

     “The most important thing to remember in this is that we don’t want [Trump’s] temporary policy to become permanent immigration policy,” economic director Laura Collins said a video posted on the center’s Twitter account. 

• An inconvenient truth: "NOAA Satellite records second largest 2-month temperature drop in history"--Watts Up With That. 

      In April, 2020, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its 2nd largest 2-month drop in temperature in the 497-month satellite record.

      The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2020 was +0.38 deg. C, down from the March, 2020 value of +0.48 deg. C.

      The Northern Hemisphere temperature anomaly fell from +0.96 deg. C to 0.43 deg. C from February to April, a 0.53 deg. C drop which is the 2nd largest 2-month drop in the 497-month satellite record. The largest 2-month drop was -0.69 deg. C from December 1987 to February 1988.

An Additional Warning Concerning Caching

A few days ago, I posted a roundup of articles that included one on caching firearms. I had a reader comment about potential issues with using GPS and the efficacy of using small scale maps to make it easier to locate a cache, and I recommend you reading it if you have not done so. However, I received another comment from a reader via email who gave permission for me to share it on the blog:

        Early in the era of the Clinton Administration, I was talking to an acquaintance and the topic of caching firearms came up. Given the concern about Clinton and a Democrat Congress outlawing many firearms (they did enact the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban), many people were caching firearms in National Forest land.

       This acquaintance knew someone who had made a hobby out of finding cached firearms. This hobbyist would go to nearby National Forest land, travel along logging roads and other side roads, and search for caches along the side of the roads with his metal detector. When he found a cache with a firearm, he would take it to the Sheriff's office and report that he had found this "lost" firearm. He would publish notice of the find as a public notice in the local news paper. After 30 days, unless somebody responded to the notice to recover their lost firearm (which never happened), he would return to the Sheriff's office and take possession of his new firearm.

       I don't know what other clues this hobbyist used in his search for caches. Maybe these people didn't adequately dispose of the excess dirt? Maybe they didn't adequately fill the hole where the cache was located? Maybe they didn't restore the surface of the ground? However, they apparently buried the cache close to the road. While burying the cache close to the road is convenient and makes it easier to find, it also makes it easier for someone else to find.

       If you are going to go to the effort to cache something valuable, like a firearm, put a little extra effort into placing the cache where it will take a lot of effort for someone else to find.

A Quick Run Around the Web (4/28/2020)

"3 Reasons I Ditched My BUG OUT BAG"--Warrior Poet Society (19 min.)

• "How to Spot a Bad Guy- A Comprehensive Look at Body Language and Pre-Assault Indicators"--Active Response Training. A must read, not just because of the information on giving you warning about an impending attack, but also because the information is useful for articulating why you may have used force or drawn a weapon.
• "Police Tactics: Using a Patrol Car as Cover During a Shootout"--Tactical Life. The author relates a DEA test of a vehicle where after receiving a barrage of bullets, not only where the targets in the car (under the front dashboard area of the driver’s side and another simulating a crouched suspect in the backseat floor area) unscathed, but the instructor was able to drive the car off the range. But, as the author notes, cars are not made of homogeneous materials, so some areas may be easily penetrated by bullets, while others (e.g., the engine block) can provide hard cover against small arms fire. An excerpt:

      I strongly recommend that you try various positions of cover with your patrol car. I remember taking a rookie I was training back behind an industrial complex at night on patrol and practicing “debussing” drills, counter-ambush drills and how to use the patrol car as cover.

      Just seated behind the wheel or in the passenger seat and using the front “A” pillars as cover takes some work. A right-handed officer firing from the driver’s seat should keep his or her feet inside the car. Once you place your feet on the ground outside the car, they are susceptible to bullets skipping off the deck or fragments of pavement from rounds fired into the asphalt or concrete. Leaning forward, a right-handed officer has to cant his or her pistol outboard to clear the pillar. Another consideration is your cruiser’s spotlight, if you have one; both the handle inside and the light housing itself may get in your way. A right-handed officer in the front passenger seat will have an easier time, but practice both so that it’s easier to get into these positions in a shooting. You can minimize your exposure behind the pillar and dash by extending your legs and slouching in the seat. Once again, except for the window gears and metal framing, side doors in this technique offer little protection.

After going over advice as to shooting stances and staying a bit back from the vehicle, the author goes on to recommend:

If better cover is available and within close proximity, move to it prior to engaging the suspect; there’s a lot of concrete, brick, trees and poles in our modern environment. But if a spontaneous assault occurs while you’re behind the wheel or in the car as a passenger, maximize your effectiveness and protection by positioning behind the most solid points in the car.

• "Duty weapon retention"--Police One. Short take: "Having a tactical knife accessible from your weak side may be the best way to protect your duty weapon."
• "Front Waistband Disarming with Police Krav Maga"--Police Magazine. Although this article is more of an advertisement for the author's classes, he does raise a couple useful points:

       A suspect in close proximity to an approaching officer unexpectedly reaches for a handgun in his waistband. The officer's sidearm is holstered. Because action beats reaction, the perpetrator is likely to outdraw the officer, something that is borne out by the numbers.

      Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) 2004 statistics indicate that a perpetrator can deploy a handgun from his waistband in as little as one-third of a second. In stark contrast, FLETC notes the average officer's reaction time to counter-draw a weapon is between two and four seconds.

      • The NYPD's 2010 LEOKA report underscores that 55% of officers killed were within 0-5 feet of the assailant.

      • The FBI Unified Crime Report 1980-2010 corroborates a similar number of 53% of officers killed within five feet of an assailant.

• "Hiding a gun — The rules of three"--Backwoods Home Magazine. The author discusses three reasons why you might want to hide (i.e., cache) a gun, three types of guns you might want to cache, three ways to prepare the firearm for caching, three types of storage containers, three types of places to cache them, and, finally, three ways of noting the location so you can find it later. Note that the last is very important: a cached weapon is of no use if can't find it later. His suggestions on this last point:

       You should mark the location of your hidden weapon in three different ways. You should have a compass or a GPS unit (or both) and know how to use them.

      First, identify the location visually, preferably using distant and/or virtually immovable features of the landscape. Mountain peaks, waterfalls, house-sized boulders, freeway interchanges, ancient monuments, etc. Then you can take note of nearby trees, rocks, and other objects as a backup. It’s probably more useful to make note of the terrain than features on the terrain. Note whether the ground rises or falls around your stash, or how many paces the stash is from a nearby hillock.

      Second, take compass headings to your cache location from at least three different recognizable objects. Again, you should choose objects that aren’t likely to move. But if you take a heading from a power pole, a tree, and a boulder, and 10 years later the tree has fallen down, you still have other things to guide you.

      In using a compass you must know the declination in your area — that is, how much magnetic north varies from true north. Later, when you’re ready to go back to find your hidden tools, you should check the declination again (NOAA has a website for this). Magnetic north drifts from year to year. I was aware of this but didn’t realize how much the drift could impact caching until Carl Bussjaeger, a writer and a reader of my blog, alerted me. Then I checked. Turns out, over 10 or 15 years, the change in declination in a given area could easily be enough to put you many feet away from your hidden stuff if you don’t adjust for it. (It’s easier than it may sound, though.)

     Finally, you should mark the location with your standalone GPS unit (and remember, never, ever with a cellphone). Then, when you get home, transfer those coordinates to a piece of paper or an encrypted computer file (along with your compass headings), and erase them from the GPS unit.

     If you write the coordinates down, disguise them in some way. One blog reader who works in security suggested making them look like a phone number and putting them in your address book. It goes without saying that you should hide or disguise your record of the coordinates very well — but not so well that you can’t find it years later. But then, that’s why you use three marking methods; if one fails, you still have the others.

I question the efficacy of caching because of the difficulties of locating and accessing caches, especially if several years intervene between when you cache the item and when you need to get it. A lot can change, especially if some major disaster intervenes; and something like a repeat of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 or "the Big One" expected for California would probably make it impossible to locate a buried cache. And don't expect GPS (or, at the least, accurate GPS) in the event of war or civil upheaval. 

• "Behind Enemy Lines: Guns of Vietnam's SOG Warriors"--American Rifleman. These were forces that operated in Laos and Cambodia, and thus American deniability was a requirement. Accordingly, in the early years of the conflict, the forces used a variety of foreign weapons or weapons dating from the World War II era that could not be definitively traced by to the United States. But the article notes:

By 1967, the enemy had captured enough U.S. weapons in South Vietnam that weapon deniability was relaxed for missions into Laos, although the requirement continued another two years for Cambodia. Teams could now carry M16s, but they soon were rearmed with what would become SOG recon’s trademark arm—the CAR-15.

The units also used a variety of suppressed firearms and other modified weapons. The article is an interesting read. 

• "Breaking Down 5 Different 300 Blackout Loads’ Terminal Ballistics"--Outdoor Hub. All shot from an 8-inch barrel AR pistol. I've been using the 110-grain Hornady V-Max but I may have to take a closer look at the Barnes 110-grain TAC-TX.
• "Are You Chitting Me? Preparing Seed Potatoes for Planting"--Preparedness Mama. The author explains that pre-sprouting potatoes is called chitting or greening. From the article:

      Potatoes are a cool weather crop and should be planted about one month before your last frost date. In my Zone 8, the last frost is Mar 15. This is important because the productivity of potatoes falls in weather above 90 degrees and anything hotter than that may even kill the plants.

      I plan on starting my seed potatoes by February 1st so they can be out in the garden by March 15th.

      Chitting is best done 6 weeks in advance. If the potatoes sprout earlier than that you can remove any sprout larger than 2″. This way, the sprout will not grow back but the potato will be able to focus its entire stored energy into growing or producing new sprouts just in time for planting.

* * *

       You can pre-sprout and plant whole seed potatoes (2 inches and under) or cut them into pieces with multiple eyes. By cutting them into multiple pieces, you’ll get fewer but bigger potatoes than you would if you planted them whole.

      However, if you do plant them whole, sprout only egg-sized potatoes with at most three eyes on each (as someone’s potato-loving Grandma’s once aptly put it, “One [eye] for shoots, one for roots, and one to thank God.“)

* * *

     Under normal conditions, one eye will produce three tubers: one large, one medium-sized, and one egg-sized. It is best to keep the egg-sized potatoes from a harvest for a new crop next year.

     If you do cut the sprouted potatoes in pieces, give them a day or two to callus over and cure. Some old timers dip them in wood ash to help the process. This curing is important if you are going to plant in damp, cold soil to prevent rot and fungus growth.

Lots more advice so read the whole thing.

• Related: "Why You Should Plant Potatoes For Survival"--Backwoods Resistance.

• "Canoeing: Learn the A to Z Essentials of Piloting a Canoe"--Real World Survival. This article covers not just different methods of using a paddle, but discusses essential kit. I've wondered about getting into canoeing, but the fact of the matter is that most of Idaho is high mountain desert and lacking in navigable streams or lakes. 
• "The 10 Most Gruesome, Shocking, and Bizarre Survival Stories Ever"--Field & Stream. This article is a series of short excerpts that link to longer stories on the particular topic. Nevertheless, one of the items related was: “The elk lunged at me. My hand slipped off, and the antlers hit my face. ‘You have a hell of a hole in your neck,’ my son-in-law said. ‘And it’s bleeding good, too!’ It had happened so fast that I didn’t even feel it.”
• "Start Here"--Lizard Farmer. His recommendation for a good place to start in learning about defense of a homestead or rural community. And that place is this short, online book called The Farmer At War about farmers and what they did to survive during the Rhodesian conflict. 
• "How To Master The Sitting Position"--Shooting Sports USA. 
• "Review: Midwest Industries Combat Rifle Offset Sight Set"--Shooting Illustrated. More than just a review, it discusses the advantage of using an offset set of backup iron sights when employing a telescopic sight on your modern sporting rifle.
• This sure seems to be going down the memory hole fast, probably because it demonstrates that gun control laws are a farce--articles about the Nova Scotia shooter, Gabriel Wortman:

• "Nova Scotia shooter’s profile an ‘outlier’ to the police impersonator archetype"--The Globe and Mail.

• "Canada mass shooting erupted after argument between gunman Gabriel Wortman and his girlfriend: official"--South China Morning Post. 

• "LILLEY: PM using Nova Scotia massacre to push misguided rifle ban agenda"--Toronto Sun. 

      It took the Mounties until Wednesday afternoon to admit publicly they had known since they first heard Wortman’s name and ran it through the computer that he didn’t have a gun licence.

     Yet somehow, Wortman was armed with a gun or guns. We don’t know for sure because the RCMP won’t say.

     As first reported by my colleague Joe Warmington and has since been confirmed elsewhere, Wortman took the service pistol and magazines from RCMP Const. Heidi Stephenson after he killed her.

      Asked about the guns Wortman used, the RCMP has been silent even though they obviously know what type of firearms he was found with. Could it be because they don’t want to admit this rampage was carried out in whole or in part with RCMP guns?

• "Some of N.S. gunman's weapons came from U.S., police say"--CBC. This article indicates that Wortman used a handgun and multiple long guns, but no details about the weapons or how he obtained them. 

"Solar Superstorms | Field Collapse Risk [Part 1]"--Suspicious Observers (5 min.)

• Can't stump the Trump, 2020 edition: "Looks Like Trump Was Right About The Coronavirus Fatality Rate"--The Federalist. On March 4, the President predicted that the actual fatality numbers would be well below 1%; current studies are showing 0.5% or less. 

       While this data is preliminary, it is backed up by another study in Los Angeles that found 40 times more people had carried the virus then were previously known. This dropped the fatality rate in LA from 4.5 percent to .1-.3 percent.

     It is difficult to stress how important these findings are. The 5-week lockdown that has destroyed the American economy was put in place by contemplating what looks to be rather absurd numbers by the WHO.

     While the United States has nearly lost a terrible 50,000 lives to the virus, this radical shift in our understanding of just how deadly it really is should make us question not only the logic of the lockdown in the first place, but more importantly how much longer we are going to stay on this destructive course.

• Ditto: "Coronavirus treatment hope in form of an antiviral drug taken as a nasal spray as lab tests show it 'blocks the deadly virus from latching on to lung cells'"--Daily Mail. 
• And another ditto: "An Experimental Ultraviolet Light Treatment for Covid-19 Takes Political Heat: Trump’s musings prompt social-media censorship of information about an experimental treatment."--Instapundit quoting from a Wall Street Journal article:

      I ran an obscure pharmaceutical company until a few days ago. Then we got famous. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Aytu BioScience made a commitment to find ways to help. One of those ways came through our newly formed relationship with a prominent Los Angeles hospital.

     On April 20 we put out a press release titled “Aytu BioScience Signs Exclusive Global License with Cedars-Sinai for Potential Coronavirus Treatment.” The treatment is called Healight, and it was developed by research physicians at the hospital’s Medically Associated Science and Technology Program. The technology, which has been in development since 2016, uses ultraviolet light as an antimicrobial and is a promising potential treatment for Covid-19.

      Aytu and Cedars-Sinai have engaged with the Food and Drug Administration to pursue a rapid path to human use through an Emergency Use Authorization. But hardly anyone noticed—until Thursday, when President Trump mused, “. . . supposing you brought the light inside the body . . .”

     My team and I knew the president’s comments could trigger a backlash against the idea of UV light as a treatment, which might hinder our ability to get the word out. We decided to create a YouTube account, upload a video animation we had created, and tweet it out. It received some 50,000 views in 24 hours.

      Then YouTube took it down. So did Vimeo. Twitter suspended our account. The narrative changed from whether UV light can be used to treat Covid-19 to “Aytu is being censored.”

      These days, politics seems to dictate that if one party says, “The sky is blue,” the other party is obligated to reply, “No, it’s not, and you’re a terrible human being for thinking that.” That leaves no room for science, in which the data speak for themselves, regardless of ideology, and only when they’re ready. Unfortunately, the visceral excitement of political conflict draws far more clicks and better ratings than the methodical world of science.

      Technologies like Healight, which if borne out through clinical studies may represent a viable way to kill coronaviruses, aren’t provided the clear-headed consideration they deserve but are instead flushed into the political mosh-pit of “us vs. them.”

     Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo are under enormous pressure from political activists. They also need to ensure that information on their platforms is safe and accurate. That’s exactly why Aytu decided to post videos and tweet about Healight.

      We at Aytu BioScience are confident that treatments for Covid-19 will be found. We hope we can help. But above all we hope science will ultimately speak louder than politics.

• The suicide of expertise: "'The Pretense of Knowledge' has Cost America Dearly"--The American Thinker. Discussing the Wuhan outbreak models that were so grossly wrong:

       ... In retrospect, and despite their air of authority, the experts never had enough knowledge about this virus to make reliable calculations about the future.

      But the real problem with the models weren’t that they proved to be false, but rather that they were promoted with false certitude.

• QOTD: "If the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated anything, it is that there is no situation so severe that government can't make it worse."
• "IT’S TIME TO BUILD" by Marc Andreessen. The author writes concerning the reaction to the pandemic:

      Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t *do* in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to *build*.

     We see this today with the things we urgently need but don’t have. We don’t have enough coronavirus tests, or test materials — including, amazingly, cotton swabs and common reagents. We don’t have enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms, and ICU beds. And we don’t have enough surgical masks, eye shields, and medical gowns — as I write this, New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America!

     We also don’t have therapies or a vaccine — despite, again, years of advance warning about bat-borne coronaviruses. Our scientists will hopefully invent therapies and a vaccine, but then we may not have the manufacturing factories required to scale their production. And even then, we’ll see if we can deploy therapies or a vaccine fast enough to matter — it took scientists 5 years to get regulatory testing approval for the new Ebola vaccine after that scourge’s 2014 outbreak, at the cost of many lives.

      In the U.S., we don’t even have the ability to get federal bailout money to the people and businesses that need it. Tens of millions of laid off workers and their families, and many millions of small businesses, are in serious trouble *right now*, and we have no direct method to transfer them money without potentially disastrous delays. A government that collects money from all its citizens and businesses each year has never built a system to distribute money to us when it’s needed most.

     Why do we not have these things? Medical equipment and financial conduits involve no rocket science whatsoever. At least therapies and vaccines are hard! Making masks and transferring money are not hard. We could have these things but we chose not to — specifically we chose not to have the mechanisms, the factories, the systems to make these things. We chose not to *build*.

      You don’t just see this smug complacency, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build, in the pandemic, or in healthcare generally. You see it throughout Western life, and specifically throughout American life.

Read the whole thing.

• Related: "Up to 13.9 million Americans are out of work but have NOT been able to register for unemployment benefits, Economic Policy Institute survey finds"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "Single mom, 37, who filed for unemployment 44 days ago and still hasn't seen a single payment says she's 'lost all hope' as she now relies on loans from relatives"--Daily Mail. 

• "The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation"--The Hill. The doctor that authored this piece explains:

      Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

     Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.

      The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.  

     In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. 

     Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.

     Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.

     We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded "age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization." Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.

     Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.

     We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response — antibodies — so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.” Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases — to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy. That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.

      Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.

     Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to accommodate “potential” COVID-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most states and many hospitals abruptly stopped “nonessential” procedures and surgery. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. An estimated 80 percent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent disability.

      Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.

     The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group — older people and others with underlying conditions — is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.

      The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.

• From another doctor: "I’ve worked the coronavirus front line — and I say it’s time to start opening up"--New York Post. He raises several points to support his contention, the first being:

First, the wave has crested. At 1 p.m. April 7, the COVID-19 arrivals slowed down. It was a discrete, noticeable event. Stretchers became available by 5 p.m., and the number of arriving COVID-19 patients dropped below the number discharged, transferred or deceased.

• "‘This Is Insanity’: Tucker Carlson Questions The ‘Science’ Behind The Shutdown"--The Daily Caller. 

       “Mass quarantines, they tell us again and again, are the only way to save lives,” Carlson said. “But that’s a lie. They don’t know it’s true, despite what they’ve claimed. There’s no scientific record to consult. It’s never been done. We’re currently living through the largest and most expensive experiment ever conducted in human history. We’ve spent trillions of dollars, and crushed millions of people, purely on the guess that a nationwide lockdown would save us from the coronavirus. Has it worked? Was the guess correct?”

      Looking at the “data,” the Daily Caller co-founder noted that the eight U.S. states that have yet to issue shelter-in-place orders are still “below the national average in coronavirus cases, and deaths, per capita.” He then referred to the work of “journalist and professor Wilfred Reilly,” who “did the math” comparing per capita numbers per state and finding that “a state’s lockdown strategy had virtually no effect on how severe its outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus was.”

     “Are you surprised by this?” Carlson asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t be. You can see the same trend at work in other countries. Sweden, most famously, has never locked down. Restaurants there have never closed. That country is still suffering from coronavirus, suffering more in fact than we are in the U.S. But the country’s epidemic appears to have peaked. And without locking down, Sweden has, and this is the key, has fared far better than other European countries that did lock down. That includes Britain, Italy, Spain and Belgium.”

• "Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No." Instapundit quotes the following from a Wall Street Journal article.

      To normalize for an unambiguous comparison of deaths between states at the midpoint of an epidemic, we counted deaths per million population for a fixed 21-day period, measured from when the death rate first hit 1 per million—e.g.,‒three deaths in Iowa or 19 in New York state. A state’s “days to shutdown” was the time after a state crossed the 1 per million threshold until it ordered businesses shut down.

      We ran a simple one-variable correlation of deaths per million and days to shutdown, which ranged from minus-10 days (some states shut down before any sign of Covid-19) to 35 days for South Dakota, one of seven states with limited or no shutdown. The correlation coefficient was 5.5%—so low that the engineers I used to employ would have summarized it as “no correlation” and moved on to find the real cause of the problem. (The trendline sloped downward—states that delayed more tended to have lower death rates—but that’s also a meaningless result due to the low correlation coefficient.)

     No conclusions can be drawn about the states that sheltered quickly, because their death rates ran the full gamut, from 20 per million in Oregon to 360 in New York.

• "California Docs Say Lockdown vs. Non-Lockdown 'Did Not Produce a Statistically Different Number of Deaths'"--PJ Media. 
• "Instead Of ‘Flattening The Curve,’ We Flattened Hospitals, Doctors, And The U.S. Health Care System"--The Federalist. The author begins by noting:

      When the lockdowns began last month, we were told that if we didn’t stay home our hospitals would be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, intensive care wards would be overrun, there wouldn’t be enough ventilators, and some people would probably die in their homes for lack of care. To maintain capacity in the health-care system, we all had to go on lockdown—not just the big cities, but everywhere.

      So we stayed home, businesses closed, and tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. But with the exception of New York City, the overwhelming surge of coronavirus patients never really appeared—at least not in the predicted numbers, which have been off by hundreds of thousands.

Because those Wuhan virus patients never showed up, and hospitals and clinics are empty of patients, hospitals are laying off or cutting back hours and many could go bankrupt.

• "NYT’s Friedman: ‘Depths of Despair’ by Crushing the Economy Will Kill More People Than Coronavirus Itself"--Breitbart. For the environmentalists and global warming fanatics, that is just a bonus.
• "Never waste 'a crisis': IMF chief sees coronavirus as 'great opportunity' to create a green economy"--Washington Examiner. From the article:

      Environmentalists have an unprecedented chance to turn their policy hopes into a global reality during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund.

      “You know, a crisis [is] never to be missed as an opportunity to do better,” IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday.

      Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist who took over as IMF chief last year, has a prominent role influencing how countries soften the economic blows delivered by the pandemic. She is also working on strategies to “jump-start economies” after the contagion passes. She favors a “coordinated fiscal stimulus that can generate a new momentum for the world economy,” crafted with an eye on climate change as well as the coronavirus crisis.

      “Look, Mother Nature is not going to let us forget that climate change is a major risk to the well-being of people and the well-being of economies,” she told the Atlantic Council via videoconference. “Right now, we are concentrated on the immediate emergency, and rightly so, but as we deal with COVID-19 and we restart economies, it is a great opportunity to see what are the policies that we can put in place and even accelerate so we can [see] climate-friendly growth in the future.”

      The opportunity for environmentally-minded policymakers derives in part from the global nature of the response to the pandemic, which means that green policies developed now could see wider adoption than any prescription spurred by an environmental disaster.

* * *

     She ... even suggested that people who “have difficulty to service their mortgages” could be incentivized to adopt green energy practices.

      “What if we decide to have a program that if you retrofit your house, you get a discount on how you service your debt or you have a prolongation of servicing that debt?” Georgieva suggested. “There are many policy ideas that can serve us really well, so we come in a way better off.”

• "Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer wants a 28-day emergency powers extension for her state days after armed protesters gathered at her home over her plan to extend stay-at-home order to May 15"--Daily Mail. Whitmar is quoted in the article as saying: "The emergency powers that I have as Governor do not depend on the Legislature, but the protections do."
• "Tens of thousands swarm California beaches despite governor's stay-at-home orders"--The Blaze. 
• "Protesters Descend On Wisconsin Capitol To Send A Message: We’re Done Staying Home"--The Federalist. 
• "America Held Hostage"--American Thinker. 

      We're allowing governors to restrict people's movement; prevent citizens from assembling; and order mandatory masks, testing, and vaccines.  These governors now claim the right to track our every move, to surveil every American in order to ensure compliance.  This shutdown is not just a slippery slope to socialism and communism; it's a downhill slalom.  

      How did we get here?  Americans aren't cowards who would eagerly surrender liberty for immunity.  But therein lies the genius of the left.  It's not just about you and me, now, is it? 

     The left has hostages: our aging parents, grandparents, sick relatives.  Either we put down the Constitution and slowly back away or the hostages will die. 

• "Will States Owe Businesses Just Compensation for Forced Closures When the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Over?"--Foundation for Economic Education. The author presents an argument why the forced closure of businesses was a taking compensable under the Constitution.
• A lot of rich people just lost a lot of money: "Hopes dashed as coronavirus drug remdesivir 'fails first trial'"--BBC. 
• The banality of evil: "Sting operation nabs 2 after salon services offered during lockdown"--AJC. Yet property crimes are almost never investigated. The article has a nice summary of several events where police have broken social distancing to arrest people and lock them in jails for not obeying quarantine orders, even if that person in the middle of the ocean by himself.