CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: April 20th

April 20, 2020

WRITER

Glenn gives the latest coronavirus numbers, updating YOU on everything needed to know as Americans and officials monitor China's new COVID-19 virus:

Daily Stats as of 5:30 AM CT (from John's Hopkins)

Total Confirmed Cases Worldwide: 2,418,980 (up from 2,197,161 Friday)
Total Confirmed Deaths Worldwide: 165,761 (up from 147,512 Friday)
Total Confirmed Recovered Worldwide: 633,376 (up from 557,596 Friday)
US has 746,265 Confirmed Cases and 40,766 deaths, up from 687,201 cases and 34,641 deaths Friday
US currently has 13,566 people in Serious or Critical Condition
US is 13th in Fatality Rate per 1 Million people, behind Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Italy, UK and Belgium

Droning On and Onhttps://www.dailywire.com/news/this-is-crazy-chinese-made-drones-are-monitoring-streets-in-20-states-to-enforce-social-distancing-u-s-officials-are-concerned-about-spying

At least 20 states in the US are using Chinese-made aerial drones to ensure we're following Social Distancing regulations.
Drones were donated to law enforcement agencies by DJI, a Chinese tech company that dominates the civilian drone market with over 65% market share.
In 2018-2019, the US Department of Interior and Department of Defense both banned the use of DJI drones after it was discovered that the smartphone software used to fly the drones sends data back to parent-company DJI in China.
DJI has numerous ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including having CCP members on its board of Directors, according to the NY Times.

New York Now Officially a City of Ratshttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bill-de-blasio-new-york-citys-tattletale-in-chief

In a video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Mayor Bill DeBlasio encouraged New Yorkers to tattle on fellow citizens who aren't following social distancing guidelines by taking a picture of the alleged violation and texting it to city officials.
"Thank you to everyone who has done this the right way, but we still know there's some people who need to get the message," de Blasio said.
"And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we've got to have social distancing. So, now it is easier than ever — when you see a crowd, when you see a line that's not distanced, when you see a supermarket that's too crowded, anything, you can report it right away so we can get help there to fix the problem."
So far, the New York rat-hotline has received over 1,000 alleged reports of New Yorkers violating social distancing orders.

As Much as 60% of PPP Cash Went to Publicly Traded Companieshttps://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/business/small-businesses-ppp-loans-chain-restaurants/index.html

Congress had authorized $350 Billion via the Payroll Protection Program for Small Businesses.
Analysis now indicates that much of that cash went to chain restaurants, franchises, hotels, etc who are part of larger publicly traded companies.
Franchise locations, including some that are technically owned and operated by larger publicly traded companies, qualified as small businesses because they are separate companies owned by larger companies.
In one instance reported by CNN, one hotel chain received nearly $370 Million in loans for 10 hotel locations where each individual hotel is run as a separate LLC, even though the parent company has 12,000 employees and wouldn't qualify as a small business (capped at 500 employees or less).
Less than 10% of the PPP loans ended up going to small businesses that employed fewer than 50 employees, according to CNN's analysis.

Here Comes The Sunhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/sunlight-destroys-coronavirus-very-quickly-new-government-tests-find-but-experts-say-pandemic-could-still-last-through-summer-200745675.html

SARS-CoV-2 is easily destroyed by UV light, government study confirms.
Most Coronavirus studies are easily destroyed by exposure to sunlight, including SARS-CoV-2.
UV light cripples the lipid-based membrane of the virus very easily, including UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C spectrums.
UV-A and UV-B light both penetrate the earth's atmosphere and reach the surface. Both UV-A and UV-B cause cancer and can cause eye damage in humans.
UV-C light from the Sun does NOT penetrate the earth's atmosphere, but UV-C does kill Coronavirus. UV-C light is completely harmless to human skin and eyes according to a study by the National Institutes of Health in 2017. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29426899
UV-C light bulbs are available in the US.

Time To Close Grocery Stores?https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/business/grocery-stores-coronavirus-pickup-delivery/index.html

Despite masks, temperature checks, gloves, etc more than three dozen grocery store workers have died from COVID-19.
Some experts, union leaders and small grocery owners believe it has become too dangerous to let customers browse aisles, coming into close range with workers.
Grocery stores are still flooded with customers, and experts say it's time for large chains to go "dark" to the public and convert to curbside pickup and home delivery for food and other essential goods.
"Careless customers" are "probably the biggest threat" to workers right now, according to Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers' union.
The union said 85% of its grocery store member workers surveyed said that customers are not practicing social distancing in stores, not wearing facemasks or not standing more than 6 feet apart.

Evidence of WHO & CCP Cover-Up Growinghttps://www.foxnews.com/world/how-complicit-is-who-china-coronavirus-cover-up

U.S. officials are 100 percent confident China went to great lengths to cover up after the virus was out, according to government sources cited by Fox News.
Additionally, the US Government now believes that the World Health Organization was either complicit in the coverup or looked the other way. Publicly, the WHO has insisted that there is no evidence it originated in the laboratory.
The holes in the information disseminated from the UN body – the only international group tasked with global health – are growing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, doctors in Wuhan were aware the virus could spread between humans as early as the beginning of December, with patients falling ill despite having had no exposure to the wet market.
Epidemiologists from Taiwan had sent urgent memos to the WHO in December, warning of human to human transmission and of an atypical pneumonia associated with the virus.
As of January 14th, the WHO was still parroting Chinese Communist propaganda that there was no evidence of human to human transmission.
It is now confirmed the Chinese knew of human to human transmission as early as December 8th, 2019.

Chinese Produced News Article in Arabic Blames US for COVID-19https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/18/china-falsely-telling-arab-world-us-source-coronav/

A News program produced by a Chinese Communist Party media outlet openly blames US for Coronavirus outbreak.
A media research group has released the transcript of a China-produced Arabic-language news report to show how Beijing's propaganda machine is blaming the coronavirus on America.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors TV and social media in the Arab world, focused on a March 17 broadcast of "China View" on Beijing's Global Television Network Arabic (CGTN), which overall has 14 million viewers.
The Middle East is an increasingly ripe target for China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to build ports, highways and even cities to gain inroads into the oil-rich region and to compete with the U.S.
On the March 17th show, a Chinese scientist Ms V speculates that "Initially, many thought that the beginning of the virus' emergence was from one of the seafood markets in Wuhan, but Chinese researchers reported in new research that the transmission of the new coronavirus had started since at least December outside this market," she says in the piece.
"The virus may have transmitted from a source to the seafood market, where the rapid spread of transmission began due to the presence of a large number of close contacts within this place, and the research also reported that the virus had started spreading after the Wuhan International Military Games ended in October 2019. So, it is expected that the 'patient zero' in China has come from outside China," she continued.
There is no evidence for this propaganda, according to researchers.
On the "China View" program, according to MEMRI, "Ms. V" also attributed some of these claims to an outside news source from a U.S.-aligned nation.
She also indicated that some "leading scientists" believe COVID-19 was actively spreading in North Carolina in Summer, 2019, according to the Washington Times.

Latest Victim of COVID-19: Chinese 5Ghttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/uk-seeks-to-drop-huawei-contract-over-china-coronavirus-transparency

The UK and France now seeking to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei from providing hardware or service as part of their 5G roll outs.
Previously only the US & Canada had moved forward with a hard ban on the inclusion of Chinese technology in 5G platforms.
"We need to devise a proper, realistic exit strategy from relying on Huawei," Conservative MP Damian Green told Bloomberg News. "Our telecom providers … need to know the government is determined to drive down Huawei's involvement to zero percent over a realistic timescale."
"The mood in the parliamentary party has hardened," said Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative Party's chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. "It's a shared realization of what it means for dependence on a business that is part of a state that does not share our values."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has discouraged allies around the world from partnering with Huawei, arguing that China's spy services will exploit the next-generation wireless technology.
Huawei has denied cooperating with Chinese intelligence and urged the United Kingdom to not reverse its position.

PHOTOS: What Glenn saw in North Carolina was INSANE

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Last Thursday, October 3rd, Glenn traveled to North Carolina to join Mercury One as they provided critical aid to those devastated by Hurricane Helene.

What Glenn saw during his brief visit looked like scenes straight out of an apocalypse movie: houses torn from their foundations and tossed to the side, sometimes entire towns away from where they were built, semi-trucks rolled, railroad tracks swept away, bridges washed out. It was a level of destruction Glenn had never before seen.

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But perhaps the most shocking encounter of his whole trip was when Glenn discovered a lone FEMA crew. It was a miracle that Glenn even spotted the FEMA truck, as it was parked away from the main road without any signs or markers to indicate to any passerby in need of its existence. Glenn and Congressman Cory Mills decided to talk to this FEMA crew, the only one they had encountered on their trek, and see what they were up to. As it turns out, not much. The FEMA workers admitted that they had only arrived the day before (nearly a week after the hurricane) and still did not have any sort of supplies. They claimed that people would know where they were located via the local news, despite the fact that most people did not have access to power, cell service, their home, or even their cars. Moreover, there seemed to be confusion about whether they were to go door-to-door in order to render aid to those in need.

.@CoryMillsFL and I spoke with the ONLY FEMA crew we could find in Asheville, North Carolina. It was stationed OFF the main road where NO Hurricane Helene victims could easily see them:

“We got here yesterday.”
A WEEK LATE.

“They could go online, make a phone call, or use our… pic.twitter.com/IU5I6KAL5r
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) October 4, 2024

FEMA dropped the ball on this entire affair, and it is only going to get worse. FEMA is claiming they blew their yearly allowance on aiding illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, another hurricane is approaching Florida and is expected to make landfall on Wednesday. It seems unlikely that FEMA will be of any use to Floridians in need, and they will have to rely on the aid of their fellow Americans.

Want to help out your fellow countrymen where our government has failed? You can donate at Mercury One and rest assured that your money will be used to step in to help hurricane victims where the government is failing.

The case for mass deportation

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Unchecked illegal immigration into America may be the most dangerous issue our country faces today, and with every day it goes unsolved, the risk of a terrorist attack of 9/11 proportions only increases.

Despite the risk, we can't even touch the subject without the Left and the mainstream media having a meltdown. Even suggesting that the tide of undocumented immigrants may pose some sort of national problem will quickly get you labeled as a racist, stumping intelligent conversation before it can even begin. But as any right-minded Conservative will tell you, calls to close the border and deport the people who stole into our country have nothing to do with race.

In his most recent TV special, Glenn described in detail what sorts of dangers we have let into our countries, with facts and figures that prove that if we don't act soon we will be in deep trouble. Glenn made it clear: we need to conduct a mass deportation or risk being torn apart from within. Here are three reasons that make the case for mass deportations:

Islamic terror cells are forming in South America.

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Congressional testimony from the Committee on Homeland Security in 2011 revealed that Hugo Chavez held a "Secret Summit" involving the Supreme Leader of Hamas, the Chief of Operations for Hezbollah, and the Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Caracas, Venezuela. It is clear that ever since (and possibly before) there has been a Radical Islamic Terrorist presence in Venezuela. Right now there is an Iranian beachhead off the Venezuelan coast on Margarita Island, where the Iranian government is running criminal activities and recruiting and training Venezuelan gangs. These gangs have used our border crisis to infiltrate the U.S. The most infamous of these gangs, Tren de Aragua, has been declared a terrorist organization by the State of Texas.

Terrorist-backed gangs are smuggling in weapons and tearing through the country.

John Moore / Staff | Getty Images

What are these Iranian-trained and backed gangs doing in America? As you can imagine, nothing good. Just this year alone an estimated million rounds of ammunition, 1.2 million gun parts, 3,000 body armor vests, and thousands of pieces of other military paraphernalia have been smuggled across the border. On top of that, they have already taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, and are now terrorizing the remaining residents.

It's noteworthy that the gang managed to move into the apartment in the first place because they received subsidies through an NGO that was assisting the Colorado asylum seekers program, using money given to the state by the Biden administration in 2021.

Gangs have attacked military bases.

Lee Corkran / Contributor | Getty Images

It hasn't stopped at apartment complexes either. A leak from the U.S. Army revealed that the gangs have launched probing attacks on military facilities within the U.S. Members have been sighted taking surveillance photos of Lackland Air Force Base, as well as firing multiple shots into the facility. Another military base in Texas, Fort Sam Houston, caught a gang member attempting to gain access to the facility. This coincides with suspicious activity documented within the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S.

They are smuggling in vast quantities of military equipment, probing and surveying military facilities and key energy locations, and taking over residential areas. What exactly is going on and why isn't the federal government taking it more seriously?

VP debate recap: A Vance victory

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This might have been the most consequential VP debate in recent memory.

For those of you who missed the debate, it was a decisive victory for J.D. Vance and the Trump-Vance team as a whole. Vance presented a calm, collected, and considerate side of the Republican party that compliments Trump and helps to make their platform more palatable. Meanwhile, Tim Walz had a lackluster, though certainly not catastrophic, night. He had a few embarrassing gaffes and came across as overly nervous, but like Vance, kept it civil.

Both VP candidates entered the stage as relative unknowns to most Americans, and by the end, both men had given an accurate representation of their characters. Here is a brief recap just in case you missed the debate:

J.D. Vance looked great

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

Vance came out of the gate swinging, with a stellar opening statement that helped set the stage for the rest of the debate. He delivered a concise yet compelling recap of his life, which framed him as everything Walz claims to be: a relatable veteran from humble beginnings who earned his position through hard work and service. He then went on to deliver a clear and palatable defense of Trump's platform and mission while cooly drawing attention to the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Overall, J.D. Vance looked incredibly presidential. He presented himself not just as a capable vice president, but as a strong successor to Trump and as a valid replacement if anything should happen to the former president between now and the end of his hypothetical second term. Vance also successfully dispelled the notion that he is "weird" as Walz called him, and if anyone looked strange during the debate, it certainly wasnot Vance.

Tim Walz's gaffes

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

While Tim Walz certainly didn't have an awful night, he did not stack up well against Vance. Walz had a major gaffe around halfway through the debate when asked to explain the change in his position on assault weapon bans. Walz then claimed that he had befriended school shooters during his time in office. While that was clearly not the intention of what he was saying, it was embarrassing nonetheless.

Another weak moment was when the moderators asked Walz to explain a claim he had made regarding being in Hong Kong during the infamous Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, which has since been proven false. Walz gave a long-winded, rambling answer about taking students to visit China and how Trump should have joined in on those trips, before being called out by the moderator for dodging the question.

Vance fact-checked the fact-checkers

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

One of the conditions of the CBS debate was that the moderators would not fact-check the debaters live, but instead rely on after-the-matter fact-checking. But, CBS couldn't keep to its own rules. While Vance was describing the migrant crisis that has swelled during the Biden-Harris administration, one of the CBS moderators, Margaret Brennan, chimed in with a "fact check." She claimed that the Haitian migrants in Ohio have legal status, to which Vance clapped back by calling Brennan out for breaking the rules of the debate, then proceeded to correct her, explaining that they only had legal status due to overreach by the Biden-Harris administration.

Dockworker strike: Everything you need to know

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At midnight on September 30th, dockworkers across the East Coast went on strike, effectively cutting the country's import and export capabilities in half.

Don't go out and panic buy a pallet of toilet paper and instant ramen just yet. It's going to take some time for the full effects of the strike to be felt and hopefully, the strike will be good and over by then. But there are no guarantees, and this election cycle could get significantly more insane as we draw near to the election. And even if the strike is settled quickly, it shows growing cracks in our infrastructure and industrial capacity that needs to be addressed if America wants to maintain its global dominance.

Here is everything you need to know about the dockworker strike:

What do the dockworkers want?

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As with most strikes, pay is the driving factor behind this situation the country now finds itself in. The longshoremen want more pay, and with rising inflation who can blame them? After all, working the docks is hard and dangerous business, and fair compensation only seems... fair. But when you compare the wage of a dockworker, which is around $100,000 to $200,00 a year to the average income in America of $56,000, suddenly they seem significantly less sympathetic.

How much money are they asking for? For most Americans, a three percent raise is considered high, but the unions are asking up to 15 percent, depending on location. On top of that, they are asking for a 77 percent raise over the next six years. The West Coast dock workers recently made off with a 36 percent raise and were considered lucky. These increases in costs are just going to be transferred to the end consumer, and we'll likely see a jump in prices if these terms are accepted.

The other major ticket item is protection against automation. Autonomous ports are quickly becoming a reality, with major ports in China that are capable of handling vast amounts of cargo being run by a single office, not an army of dock workers. Naturally, the longshoremen are concerned that their jobs are at risk of being replaced by machines that can work harder, longer, for cheaper, and without risk of injury.

How will it affect Americans?

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

Don't panic yet!

It is going to take some time for consumers to feel the effects of the strike and it is possible that a resolution could happen at any time.

Week one should be pretty much business as usual. It might be a good idea to stock up on fruit and other perishables, but there is no need to go COVID-lockdown-crazy yet.

Week two is when you'll first start feeling the pinch. Fresh fruits and veggies will become scarce, along with other imported goods like shoes, toys, and TVs. Prices will start to creep up as the shelves will start to look a little sparse. The supply of tools, lumber, and other hardware materials will also begin to dry up.

By week three, the cracks in the system will really start to show. Entire industries will begin to slow down, or even stop. Factory workers will get furloughed and sent home without pay. Stores will have to ration items, prices will be sky-high, and online orders will come to a standstill. At this point, the strike will have escalated into a full-blown crisis, and even if it was resolved immediately, it would still take weeks to restore everything to working order.

At the four-week mark, the situation will have developed into a national security crisis, and as Glenn describes, a poly-crisis. Small business will be closing their doors, entire brands will be out of stock, and everything that remains will be so expensive it is unaffordable. By this point, the holiday season will be drawing near and there will be a rush on any sort of gift or decor items left. At this point, irreparable damage to our economy will have occurred and it will be months if not years before it can be mended.

While that sounds bleak, with the election just around the corner, it seems unlikely that the Biden-Harris administration will let it get that bad. That being said, their administration has not been characterized by good decision-making and reasonable policy, so there are no guarantees.

What can be done?

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The big question is "Why hasn't Biden already done something?"

President Biden, who ran on the image of a blue-collar, union-worker, has been uncharacteristically absent from the issue. Despite his earlier involvement in a train strike, Biden has declared that involvement in union fights is not a presidential issue unless it getsreally bad.

So where's the line? At what point will he step in? He has to understand that an economic crisis right before the election will reflect poorly on Kamala.

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