Co-Founder & Chairman @FREOPP. Chief Strategy Officer @Strive $ASST $SATA. @Forbes @BitcoinPolicy @AspenAGLN @BPC_Bipartisan et al. Pronounced “OH-vick.”
Austin, TX
- Tweets 22,781
- Following 9,211
- Followers 50,511
- Likes 17,109
New @FREOPP: Our paper on how to end the cycle of tuition hikes and student loan bailouts, and actually reduce the cost of higher education, building on reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Taxpayers spend $150 billion per year on student financial aid. A quarter of that debt will never be repaid, and it's taxpayers rather than the colleges who will absorb the loss.
@Avik and @JustinWStapley outline how Congress can implement accountability: freopp.org/whitepapers/highe…
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So @YouTube just took down a June 23 interview that Scott Atlas (@SWAtlasHoover) did with his employer, Stanford's @HooverInst, because it "contradicts the World Health Organization or local health authorities' medical information about COVID-19." hoover.org/research/doctor-s…
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David Kelly of @JPMorganAM: "The trouble with tariffs, to be succinct, is that they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality, diminish productivity and increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine."
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Antitrust jurisprudence and regulation in the U.S. needs to be modernized on many fronts, especially to tackle the problem of multinational technology companies that attempt to impose a monopoly on information.
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According to my sources, the SEC/DOJ "investigation" of @ElonMusk is timed to thwart his bid for @Twitter. Normally, in the absence of a better offer, Twitter's board is effectively obligated by its fiduciary duty to shareholders to accept Musk's offer. If true, it's scandalous.
BREAKING: As @elonmusk offers to buy the rest of @Twitter a legal source tells @FoxBusiness @SECGov and @TheJusticeDept have launched what he described as a "joint investigation" into a myriad of Musk regulatory issues primarily involving @Tesla wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-o…
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Guys, it was literally *June 2024* when the Supreme Court ruled that it was ok for the Biden Administration to pressure tech platforms to censor COVID lockdown skeptics. No one tweeting today about the “dire threats to free speech” had anything to say about it.
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Under the CARES Act, hospitals get paid 15% more by Medicare if they classify their patients as having “a principal or secondary diagnosis of COVID-19.” Get ready for every hospital in America to pass off everyday coughing as “suspected COVID-19.” nitter.app/ExitPlannerGuy/status/… #Covid19
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If you want to understand what's going on with #COVID19 right now, the best place to look is Florida, because they do the best job of anyone in terms of data transparency. Note the different age distributions of cases, hospitalizations, & deaths in their regular report.
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"I'm getting sick an tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation...the U.S. has no obligation to evacuate 1—or 100,001—South Vietnamese." —Sen. Joe Biden, 1975 wsj.com/articles/biden-blink…
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Plenty of people (myself included) have been the subject of violent threats on Twitter, and yet, strangely, @Twitter remains available on the Apple App Store.
NEW: Apple has suspended social media app Parler from its app store. Apple said it had “continued to find direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action” in violation of its rules. Apple says Parler is suspended “until they resolve these issues.”
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The old anti-immigration line was “immigrants were lazy moochers enrolling in welfare programs.” The new anti-immigration line is “immigrants work too hard and make too much money.”
America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.
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Time to take @Facebook off the Apple App Store.
Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler?
Zero.
The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start.
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I would love for someone to explain to me why beaches need to be closed while the NYC Subway is open. politi.co/2WXT4ae
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This @WSJ piece tries to claim that @GovRonDeSantis was “lucky” with Florida’s #COVID19 stats thus far. But the article makes clear that DeSantis followed the *actual* evidence, unlike those who prescribe unscientific one-size-fits-all lockdowns. wsj.com/articles/smart-or-lu…
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THREAD: Big news today. For the first time, we have a confirmed report of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection by a patient in Hong Kong—his/her #COVID19 diagnoses were 4.5 months apart. This blows a big hole in the "let's stay locked down until there's a vaccine" position. Let me explain why.
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Sweden appears to have achieved herd immunity.
Lockdowns pushing infections into the future.
"While [COVID] have spiked across several parts of the EU, including ES, FR, DE, BE, and NL, Sweden - where a lockdown was never issued - continues to report a downward trend in new cases and new deaths."
newsweek.com/sweden-covid-19…
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Dave Portnoy basically says in 3.5 minutes what the @FREOPP plan says in 31 minutes (of text: bit.ly/2wAVHWa). The claim that we can lock down the economy until we have a cure for #COVID19 is…well, I’ll let him explain.
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Less than three months ago, @BennieGThompson attempted to revoke Trump’s Secret Service protection.
There is no room in American democracy for political violence. I am grateful for law enforcement’s fast response to this incident.
I am glad the former President is safe, and my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved.
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The likelihood that my son and daughter will have to fight in a war *to defend the United States* have increased massively, thanks to our appeasement of Russia.
Ignore all the blue and gold virtue signaling. The most telling question is: How many of them are willing to send their own sons and daughters to fight?
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Finished reading the Senate HC bill. Put simply: If it passes, it’ll be the greatest policy achievement by a GOP Congress in my lifetime.
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Aside from the antitrust issues: Science is about constantly questioning established dogmas, and about having an open debate among people with different takes on the available evidence. To suppress that debate, as @YouTube did, is to oppose science.
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A Heritage exec confronted a Heritage scholar b/c the scholar disagreed with Tucker Carlson on an issue. The scholar replied: “I don’t watch Tucker’s monologue anymore.” Exec: “Well, you ought to watch it, because the people who pay your salary watch it.” thedispatch.com/p/partisansh…
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Remember that only 1.8% of U.S. residents live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, and yet these facilities have tallied 42% of all #COVID19 deaths.
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I’m very open to thoughtful critiques of the Senate bill from the left. “MILLIONS WILL DIE” is not it.
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If McCarthy can't get the votes, the idea of @JustinAmash intrigues me. He has some sound ideas for improving House parliamentary procedures so that indiv. members can propose amendments again (that process has been heavily centralized in recent years). thehill.com/homenews/house/3…
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Correct. On May 13, @GovWhitmer *renewed* her mandate forcing nursing homes to accept infected #COVID19 patients. bit.ly/2TKDhKS And Michigan still refuses to disclose nursing home death statistics.
.@Avik tells me that Michigan *still* hasn’t abandoned terrible nursing home policies, while also declining to release data on nursing home deaths. How is this remotely defensible?
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Memo to @KamalaHarris: where are $5,000 deductibles commonplace? Obamacare.
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It’s worth remembering that the rationale for lockdowns is not to protect every single American from COVID-19. The purpose of lockdowns is to prevent Italy-style overwhelming of U.S. hospital ICU capacity. We’ve done that. Time to stop annihilating the economy.
The case for reopening by playing the odds that young people are less likely to take a #COVID19 hit (and that they won't intermingle with the more vulnerable)
wsj.com/articles/reopening-t… by @Avik
I don't that risk is tenable. We need to use this time to gear up
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This is a disgustingly mendacious framing by @Heritage. Reagan and Thatcher, who made Heritage rich and famous, are rolling in their graves.
Biden gave $700 to Hawaii victims, but he took $900 from them and sent it to Ukraine.
On the left is Kyiv, on the right is Maui.
ALT Russian military equipment destroyed by the Ukrainian army on August 21, 2023 in Kyiv, Ukraine.
ALT August 17, 2023 aerial shot of a neighborhood destroyed by wildfires on the island of Maui.
Community note
The US has donated around $44billion of military gear and assistance to Ukraine, which at a population of 332million works out at around $132.5 per person, not $900.
It also largely consists of old and used stockpiles of military equipment, rather than taxpayer money.
state.gov/u-s-security-c…
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New: my @WSJ Review cover story on the compelling case for reopening schools, especially for younger children. Children themselves are at extremely low risk of serious illness or death. So the question I answer is: can children pass #COVID19 to adults? wsj.com/articles/why-its-mos…
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Actually the far graver problem is health professionals who want to practice economics.
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Fortunately, in this case, @HooverInst has published the transcript of the interview, so you can see for yourself what Scott Atlas had to say, and why @YouTube felt the need to censor it. hoover.org/research/doctor-s…
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When I was a kid, and Ronald Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter, the criticism of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy was that it punished our friends and rewarded our enemies. Surreal to watch what’s happening in the Oval Office today.
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I guarantee you that if there was even a single school in the entire U.S. that was causing a spike in adult infections, it would on the front page of @nytimes. So we can be reasonably confident that it hasn’t happened.
Since the places that have gone back to (K–12) school don’t appear to be turning into COVID hotbeds, unless I am missing coverage that I feel like I’d be seeing?
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It’s time for all Rubio supporters—and all conservatives—to unite around @TedCruz.
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Today, I've published a deep dive into El Salvador president @nayibbukele's proposal to adopt bitcoin as legal tender @Forbes. Could El Salvador become the global capital of the #Bitcoin ecosystem? forbes.com/sites/theapotheca…
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Argentina under @JMilei sees first monthly budget surplus in 12 years: barrons.com/news/argentina-s…
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It’s amazing how many people I meet in Washington who believe that subsidizing poor people makes them lazy, but that subsidizing corporations makes them innovative.
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Wow. @PeteHegseth is an inspired pick for Defense Secretary. Pete and I have worked together on veterans’ health reform for a decade, and he will provide imaginative leadership to an institution that desperately needs it.
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The biggest scandal in elite college admissions isn’t celebrities bribing athletic coaches. It’s systematic, institutional racial discrimination against Asian-Americans. nationalreview.com/magazine/…
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I went line-by-line through @ewarren’s health care plan. I estimate her plan increases the deficit by $15 trillion from 2020-29. She substantially overstates the revenues from her tax hikes & underestimates increases in federal health spending: bit.ly/2Cy2iA7 @FREOPP
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.@VivekGRamaswamy is never better than when he talks about his religious faith.
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The great thing about baseball is that, regardless of who wins, it's always a great season if the Yankees end theirs with a loss.
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The last 5 minutes of @nayibbukele’s speech at CPAC are the most important. He walks through the coming fiscal and monetary crisis in the U.S. with clarity and simplicity.
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Will @YouTube disclose the name of the person (or the person programming the algorithm) responsible? Is he/she/it more knowledgable, or less, about #COVID19 than @SWAtlasHoover? What specifically about Atlas' remarks did @YouTube find so dangerous for the public to consume?
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Norwegian health chief: Norway "could have controlled infection without lockdown." R0 was 1.1 before the lockdown was announced. "The scientific backing [for lockdown] was not good enough." thelocal.no/20200522/norway-…
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The extremely low rate of transmission in schools for young children is entirely unsurprising to those who followed the science. Unfortunately, the politicians who endlessly repeat the phrase "follow the science" don't fall into this category.
Especially in a county like mine with low positivity (currently 2.17 %), at what point is it clear that many public school closures have been non-sensical? And ambiguity or no ambiguity, @AlecMacGillis and @Avik have leaned forward on this issue early on. theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv…
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President of El Salvador announced at @TheBitcoinConf that he is introducing a bill to make #bitcoin legal tender in the country. This is a major development in the history of monetary policy.
piped.video/l04Ohwg_Qpw via @YouTube
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So, when you see reports about rising numbers of hospitalizations, it's critical to ask: what's the age distribution of the people being hospitalized? We talking about elderly or young people? Without that information, "hospitalizations" statistics are far less useful.
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The @nytimes describes the severe deficiencies in childhood learning as "fallout from the pandemic," as if the virus caused the deficiencies. *People* in power caused learning deficiencies, by closing schools despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. nytimes.com/2022/03/08/us/pa…
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The most important #COVID19 statistic for thinking about our public policy response is that 43% of all U.S. deaths have taken place among 0.6% of the population: those who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. forbes.com/sites/theapotheca… @Forbes
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The policy content of the El Salvador Bitcoin Law is pretty straightforward. #Bitcoin will be instantly convertible into USD, and will have the same legal standing as USD for commerce and legal obligations. If it passes the @AsambleaSV, it will be a remarkable achievement.
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Meanwhile, a Republican Senator had six ribs broken by a violent assailant, and Democrats and liberals literally *laugh* about it: cnn.it/2DTs3yb
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Today, El Salvador is best known in the U.S. as a source of migrants. In the future, if @nayibbukele is successful, El Salvador may become best known as a destination for emigrants *from* the United States, especially those who care about building the #Bitcoin ecosystem.
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How many people who are sick with non-COVID illnesses are going to die because they didn't—or couldn't—seek care over the last month? I'm not aware of any epidemiologists modeling that. newsobserver.com/news/local/… #COVID19
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Everyone who believes in the slogan #NeverAgain needs to read this: buzzfeednews.com/article/meg…
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Do you wonder why the media & economic elites champion #COVID19 lockdowns? Here's a great @MorningConsult chart showing that people with graduate degrees and those >$100k income are doing *better* under lockdowns, while everyone else does worse. morningconsult.com/2021/01/1…
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Any Obamacare fan who is today complaining about deductibles and premiums needs to review what has happened from 2013-2017.
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I love that Kevin has gone with the "I apologize that you misunderstood me" strategy. Every time I try that with my wife, it doesn't end well.
Remarks from @KevinRobertsTX at a Monday night speech at Hillsdale College on antisemitism and cancel culture.
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This is a poll of young people aged 18-29. They have far less interaction with the health care system than the average adult. That 41% of them think murdering CEOs is ok is the result of our education system, not health care.
Shock poll: 41 percent of young voters find killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO acceptable yahoo.com/news/shock-poll-41… via @Yahoo
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There has been so much irresponsible and dishonest reporting around the Trump health care orders. (1/x) bit.ly/2zoy3cc
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New @FREOPP: Updated report on #COVID19 nursing home fatalities with the latest data as of Friday. freopp.org/the-covid-19-nurs… Nursing homes & assisted living facilities now represent 42% of all deaths from the coronavirus—up from 40% earlier this month—and 52% outside of NY state.
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The U.S. produces more crude oil per day than does Saudi Arabia, and could produce more without the interference of the Biden administration. So it’s a bit puzzling that we’re complaining about OPEC.
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The Declaration of Independence was handwritten. Somehow we managed ok.
Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?
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Anti-vaxxers claim that COVID vaccines are "experimental." But there's more data vouching for the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine's safety than there has been for any other vaccine approved by the FDA: wsj.com/articles/the-fda-cov…
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Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is great and all, but what Biden really needs to do for national security is to end his war against domestic energy production.
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Scott Atlas and I don't agree on everything—for example, our @FREOPP report on reopening schools is more nuanced than his position—but he has every right to his views, and contributes positively to the debate about lockdowns and reopening society. freopp.org/reopening-america…
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I've transcribed the English version of @nayibbukele's #Bitcoin Law @FREOPP for easier analysis. The bottom line: this is about as robust an endorsement of #bitcoin as legal tender as one could expect. freopp.org/el-salvadors-bitc…
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In the above article, @nytimes reporters claim that "a large study from South Korea" showed kids 10-19 "can spread the virus as much as adults do." That conclusion was debunked by *the Korean CDC* on August 8. The @nytimes article was published on Sep 28.
In the @WSJ article I published Saturday on reopening schools, I talk about a South Korean study that got top billing @nytimes with the headline "Older Children Spread the Coronavirus Just as Much as Adults, Large Study Finds." Well, now there's a twist. nytimes.com/2020/07/18/healt…
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El Salvador's proposed Bitcoin Law makes clear in several places that the government will provide resources to ensure that Salvadorans can be trained in the use of #Bitcoin, and gain access to the technologies (e.g. smartphones, software, bandwidth) necessary to use it.
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The growth in Austin’s housing supply, leading to lower housing prices, is a massive policy victory. And yet there are pundits who claim it’s a terrible thing.
The Austin, TX housing downturn keeps getting worse.
Inventory of homes for sale just surged +442% over the last two years. Up to almost 9,000 houses on the market.
That's the highest inventory level on record for April going back 7 years.
Prepare for more price declines in H2 2024.
Values already down close to 20%.
Access home price and inventory data in Austin on Reventure App: map.reventure.app/dashboard?…
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The Biden plan for subsidizing child care would drive up its cost by restricting supply and increasing demand. Over the last two years, the major bottleneck in child care was the fact that schools were closed across the U.S., despite the evidence that they could be safely open.
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New @FREOPP: We've updated our nursing home #COVID19 fatalities article with the latest statistics. 45% of all #coronavirus deaths have taken place in facilities housing 0.6% of the U.S. population. freopp.org/the-covid-19-nurs…
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Obamacare has doubled premiums in the individual market. BCRA would lower premiums by 20-30%. Notable how much lefties avoid this topic.
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Here's a crazy stat for you. The last time a newly elected Democratic president was inaugurated without a Democratic House and Senate was...1884. !!!
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Perhaps the most absurd aspect of tonight’s Twitter tax debate is #Obamacare supporters complaining that the tax bill is 400-odd pages.
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For those who like to see this data visualized, here's a chart of the mortality rate of hospitalized #COVID19 patients by age bracket (in honor of UF grad @GreggGirvan the bars are in retro Gator blue). Not all COVID hospitalizations are created equal.
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Correction: The final version of the bill bumped the premium from 15% to 20% for “an individual diagnosed with COVID-19.” Up to @CMSGov to specify what qualifies for that diagnosis, so as to prevent upcoding/gaming.
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In other words, El Salvador isn’t making #bitcoin legal tender in an attempt to be trendy. This is an attempt to protect Salvadorans from inflationary U.S. policy. A number of other countries could follow SLV’s lead. Caribbean nations would be of particular importance.
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The full report is here: floridadisaster.org/globalas…. The point is that not all hospitalizations are the same. If you're 85 and you've been hospitalized with #COVID19, the risk of death is 61%. If you're 35-44, the risk is 5%. If you're 25-34, 2%.
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Anybody who says that policies in this bill haven't been open for debate has been too busy obsessing over Russian collusion and not following the actual months-long policy debate on taxes.
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Here's a similar chart, but this time of the death rate for #COVID19 *cases* in FL. Age trend is even more pronounced, b/c the death rate for COVID *cases* for people under 55 is well below 1%. So when people talk about rising cases, 1st q to ask is: what's the age distribution?
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We’re not a banana republic because people are bringing legal action against Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. We’re a banana republic to the degree that people are *okay* with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
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Remember that only 0.6% of Americans live in long-term care facilities, and yet they account for 43% of all #COVID19 deaths. In New Jersey, 11% of all nursing home & assisted living facility residents have died from COVID.
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It may take months or years to develop an effective treatment for Covid-19. In the meantime, the U.S. needs to start thinking realistically about how to reopen the economy even if the pandemic continues, I write in the @WSJ: on.wsj.com/2ScHlD8
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Nikki Haley and I were born in the same year. I remember 7% unemployment, 15% inflation, and 22% interest rates under Jimmy Carter, & the omnipresent specter of nuclear war with the Soviets. Didn't feel that simple or easy to me.
Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out. #RTM2023
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Summary of #RNCinCLE Day 1: Brown people are making America less safe.
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More exit poll data: Latino men supporting Trump 54-44%, a 33% improvement from Trump’s showing in 2020. !!
.@NBCNews: Latino men are breaking for Trump by a 10-point margin, 54% to 44%, in a major reversal from four years ago, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. In 2020, Latino men backed Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, 59% to 36%. nbcnews.com/politics/2024-el…
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I've created confusion by using the word "fiduciary" above, which many have interpreted to mean that I think Twitter is legally required to accept Elon's offer. That's not the case. Twitter's board can reject the offer, but shareholders would likely side with Elon in a vote.
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Wow. Indiana Gov. Holcomb nearly fully reopening, including sporting events and large gatherings. Will large gatherings require distancing? indystar.com/story/news/heal… via @indystar
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Memo to rival GOP campaigns: As someone who has known @VivekGRamaswamy for ~15 years, I can 100% promise you that he is running to be President, not to sell books. The guy is worth ~$500M. Has more hard dollars than you. Dismiss him at your peril. semafor.com/article/07/20/20…
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