OCPAC Weekly Newsletter Published Monday, March 30, 2020
Table of Contents
BOB LINN Never Allow A Crisis Go To Waste
STEVE ANDERSON Corona Policy Warnings
STEVE ANDERSON The Character of Abortionists Unveiled
TRIBUTE TO TOM COBURN An Oklahoma Giant
| BOB LINN Never Allow A Crisis Go to Waste | The political left has made a good deal of hay by positioning far left policy into the middle of societal chaos and upheaval.
Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, recently dusted off an infamous old phrase he first employed twelve years ago when he served as Obama’s chief of staff. It came to his mind again during a recent interview with ABC’s This Week.
Never let a crisis go to waste is the first rule in the Socialist play book.
Last week was no exception. Top leadership of the American Democrat party offered Karl Marx as a solution to a world suffering under the corona pandemic.
$25 million to the Kennedy Arts Center and same-day voter registration are two of many solutions proposed by Democrats which appeared to have nothing to do with the coronavirus. The Democrats were not solving problems. They were simply not letting a crisis go to waste.
When I think of not letting a crisis go to waste, my mind goes more to the opportunity to extend a call to repentance to nations who have forgotten their Creator.
We are asking people to fear not the devastating potential of a mysterious virus. We extend the call of God to instead fear the Lord.
God remains in control of human history.
Not letting this crisis go to waste has everything to do with a return to Him. | STEVE ANDERSON Policy warnings from a Nobel Laureate and others within the Nation's Medical Community | An insightful analysis was published Tuesday by Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis. John is co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center and professor of medicine, biomedical data science, statistics, and epidemiology and population health. | His published analysis suggests that the response to the coronavirus pandemic may be “a fiasco in the making.” He observes that seismic decisions are being made based on “utterly unreliable” data. The data we do have, Ioannidis explains, indicates that we are likely severely overreacting.
Here is the problem. “Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes,” Ioannidis explains. Because current testing is very limited, the data we are working with suffer from “selection bias.” It will only get worse going forward.
Ioannidis then zooms in on the "one situation where an entire, closed population was tested.” He was speaking of the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantined passengers. | There were seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew. The fatality rate was 1.0%. Ioannidis points out that the population was largely elderly, the most at-risk demographic.
Projected out onto the age structure of the U.S. population, he calculates, the death rate among Americans is more like 0.125%, with a range of 0.025% to 0.625% based on the sample size.
Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%.
Even though this estimate is based on extremely thin data, it indicates a reality far different than we hear from the media. Based on the Diamond Princess incident, death rates in the U.S. could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). | If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. | For the sake of argument, lets look at the most pessimistic scenario. (One which I do not espouse.) If the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.
In 1918, life continued.
We don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health.
Unpredictable developments may ensue. Financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. | With lock-downs of months, if not years, life largely stops. Short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown. Billions, not just millions, of lives are at stake.
Dr. Marc Lipsitch is a Harvard epidemiologist and Director of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
He states that Dr. Ioannidis is correct when he states that the economic toll of intense social distancing for months or years would be destructive. | New York Times journalist, Spencer Bokat-Lindell, wrote of the same need to evaluate the extreme measures we have taken. He states:
Forced to make the impossible choice between wealth and health, we could end up with neither. | Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt predicts a quick coronavirus recovery.
Levitt blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus.
By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported. | Dr. David L. Kanz, Yale Professor Recommends Isolating Only High-Risk Groups | Dr. Katz is president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center.
He believes we should target only the high-risk segments of society. This will enble us to re-start the economic engines upon which we all depend. Like Dr. Iannidis, he points to the Diamond Princess cruise ship as a model. He states:
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself.
A focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs. Theaters and restaurants could reopen, though we might be wise to avoid very large social gatherings like stadium sporting events and concerts. | Last week, the Wall Street Journal made the case that we are on a path to destroy the economy. The costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour. It is a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Quoting the WSJ:
No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its economic health.
_____________________ | ~by Steve Anderson is Policy Analyst for The Oklahoma Conservative Political Political Action Committee (OCPAC) Edited by Bob Linn | OKLAHOMA ABORTIONISTS IGNORE CORONA and... Ignore Shutdown Orders | Why aren't abortion clinics offering their facilities for corona virus victims or for those that they believe will be kept out of needed ICU space because of the crisis?
Is the killing of the unborn so important that we will sacrifice those that are alive and fighting for their lives?
We learn a lot about priorities in a crisis and this is one very sick and twisted one.
Last week, the Governors of Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri ordered abortions clinics closed. Nothing different than the moves made against the entire medical and dental community regarding non-emergency procedures.
Not so in Oklahoma. Governor Stitt announced the cessation of abortion in Oklahoma. This was in tandem with the closing of other medical operations. However, the abortion clinics continued to operate on Friday. They were doing record business. Mothers from other states drove to Oklahoma to abort their babies last week. On Friday alone, Ekklesia of Oklahoma reported 25 abortions in the clinics they monitored.
For perspective, since the onset of the coronavirus, there have been a total of 15 corona-related deaths in Oklahoma. Oklahoma abortionists took more lives in one day than the coronavirus has in a month. And, they show no sign of wanting to become a part of the larger medical community's focus on managing the coronavirus.
~ by SteveAnderson | | TRIBUTE TO TOM COBURN by Bob Linn
| | Dr. Thomas Allen Coburn was born in Casper, Wyoming. Casper is Wyoming’s own “Oil City”. It is also a city deep in “cowboy” country. Wyoming’s culture provided a natural foundation for Dr. Coburn’s eventual passage to Oklahoma.
Oklahoma, home to both the oldest Petroleum Program in the U.S. (the University of Oklahoma) and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, was a natural destination for the pride of Casper, Wyoming.
Oklahoma provided the opportunity for the man who would become known as "Dr. No" to grow to national prominence. | | The foundation of his life was two-fold. He was a product of common-man’s Americana. He was in all things guided by his Christian faith.
Tom Coburn was known as one of the few in Washington who stood firm on principle.
Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid, declared in 2008, “You cannot negotiate with Tom Coburn.” | | His business & professional successes meant that Washington, D.C. money did not entice him. Nor was he confused by the games its entrenched political establishment played. | | While still a young man in his twenties, Tom demonstrated his leadership when he moved to Virginia to take charge of the Coburn family business there. Under his leadership, the Virginia division of Coburn Optical grew from 13 employees to more than 350 and captured 35 percent of the U.S. market. And, in 1975, Revlon, the cosmetic giant, bought the company Coburn developed.
It was then that Tom Coburn had his first bout with cancer. He was given a 20% chance of survival. He survived, but the experience gave him a love for medicine. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma medical school, he opened his obstetrics practice in 1983. | | Having personally delivered more than 4,000 babies, he was a fierce advocate of the rights of pre-born babies. He also stood up against the leftist fake science of global-warming, same-sex marriage, opponents of the second amendment, and the expansion of the federal government. | | His business & professional successes also combined with his Christian foundation to give him his fierce, patriotic independence. What Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute congressional scholar, called the iconoclastic streak inherent in Dr. Tom Coburn.
Iconoclasm is the bold and assertive destruction of cherished beliefs and the practices of established institutions. Having established himself in Washington as a voice of moral rectitude, he raised the hackles of senior leadership of both parties as he denunciated their high-dollar pet projects and earmarks. | | He demonstrated that iconoclastic fire when, in 2011, he wrote a thirty-seven-page report titled, “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous.” It detailed nearly $30 billion spent annually in government subsidies, tax breaks, and federal grant programs to millionaires. | | His report states, “From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous."
In 2014, he told Sixty Minutes:
I see them make decisions every day that benefit their career, rather than the country. | | Famed theologian, Gabriel Vahanian, said, the “Christian faith can be true to itself only if it is iconoclastic.”
Clearly, the iconoclastic Dr. Coburn was true to his Christian faith in the world’s center of political power.
All of this prompted Charles McCall, Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, to say of him, “He was successful in politics, medicine and business, but never forgot his faith in Jesus Christ.” | | He married the 1967 Miss Oklahoma and his three daughters includes the accomplished operatic soprano, Sarah. This extraordinary family affirmed his deep Christian values.
In a family statement, they said, “because of his strong faith, he rested in the hope found in John chapter 11 verse 25 where Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, will live, even though they die.’ Today, he lives in heaven.”
The Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC) salutes the Coburn family and the rich political and cultural heritage they have given to the future of Oklahoma. _____________________ | | STEVE ANDERSON My Time with Dr. Coburn | | I am saddened to hear that Dr. Tom Coburn has died.
When I was working for Tom Daxon in the Keating Administration, Tom asked me to work with Dr. Coburn. We were gathering information from the ground floor on Medicaid.
I'll always remember how incredibly patient Dr. Coburn was with me. He even took my calls between actual patients. We had many conversations regarding this particular project.
Several times he was called away to deliver a baby in the middle of a call. He called me back every time. I ask you, how many doctors would call you back if you were just some annoying government worker?
At the time Keating left office, we were still in the middle of pursuing a large number of corruption issues. We have found waste and general abuse of power.
At the time of Keating's departure, we had not put together enough evidence for prosecution. Since both chambers were still of the opposing party (Democrat), pursuing these issues was made difficult for us.
However, I was later contacted by Citizens Against Government Waste. It was a group which formed in part because of Dr. Coburn's efforts.
The group was publishing a yearly Federal waste summary. It was called the Piglet Book. They contacted me about doing something similar in Oklahoma.
Because of my work with Governor Keating, I was able to write about a number of those things that were on the edge of criminal. This enable us to go quite a bit deeper in our research.
To protect my professional business affairs, Dr. Coburn let me write it anonymously.
When the Oklahoma Piglet Book was finished, Dr. Coburn came back at his own expense to promoted it. His stature got it attention it would have never have otherwise received.
The Oklahoma Piglet Booklet became the basis for a number of changes in government operations. It was also be beginning of the prosecution of some of our long serving elected officials. One in particular, a very high profile elected official.
This was just one example of the MANY things this man has done for Oklahoma. Dr. No, we will miss you!
My prayers to his family and my congratulations to the Lord our God for receiving another soul that has now been seated in his place in heaven. | | | | | | |
