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Christopher Ferrara 
With the decision in Soos v. Cuomo, federal district Judge Gary L. Sharpe has removed religious gatherings from the virtual ghetto in which Governor Cuomo, his Attorney General and New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio had placed them under Cuomo’s crazy-quilt scheme of executive orders by which he is enforcing his increasingly indefensible, and in many applications patently ridiculous, COVID-19 lockdown.

A hearing by Skype was held today before the Honorable Gary L. Sharpe of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. The proceedings went well, and the Court has permitted final submissions on Monday, June 22 with a decision by next Friday on my motion for a temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction barring Cuomo and de Blasio from enforcing their limits on religious gatherings as presently constituted.

The hearing was largely taken up with the development that Cuomo and de Blasio have approved of mass demonstrations on behalf of George Floyd in every major city in New York State, with de Blasio even personally participating, while enforcing strict limits on other gatherings, above all religious gatherings. 

I implore Remnant readers to keep praying for a just and speedy outcome in this very important case affecting the lives of 19 million people.

Chris Ferrara

I haven’t appeared on these pages for a while because, as Special Counsel to the Thomas More Society (TMS), my time has been consumed with filing and prosecuting major litigation against the Governors of New York and New Jersey and the Mayor of New York City over their tyrannical and increasingly ridiculous COVID-19 “lockdown” regimes of executive orders that micromanage literally every aspect of the lives of millions of people on the pretext of a virus that is going the way of all seasonal viral epidemics.

Both suits involve an unusual alliance between priests of the Society of Saint Pius X—the only Catholic priests willing so far to challenge the lockdowns in court—and Orthodox Jews, who likewise are the only willing Jewish plaintiffs in suits against this tyranny.

Introduction: the Usual Incoherence

Unlike so many of the blowhards who infest cyberspace, Rod Dreher has a gift: a verbal adroitness that makes him exquisitely annoying to rational observers of his reason-free, grandstanding polemics against the conservative/traditionalist unwashed by which he has made his name as an Internet sage—that is to say, a shallow demagogue.

Introduction

As followers of this series will know, my father Joseph, age 96, has tested positive for the Wuhan virus. He received the diagnosis on Good Friday in the midst of a statewide coronavirus “lockdown” of his VA nursing facility in Paramus, NJ that began on March 12. My sister and I were barred from visiting him until April 17, when my sister was informed that family members would now be allowed a “compassionate visit” as my father had been transferred to the “COVID ward,” which is considered an end-of-life scenario. Fear of contagion was suddenly no longer a concern and we would be permitted to see him, but only to send him off.

Introduction

On Easter Sunday evening, we reached a turning point in the monumental, wholly unprecedented, nation-wrecking fiasco that is Coronagate: President Trump retweeted a post with the hashtag #FireFauci. Both the original tweet and Trump’s telling retweet were prompted by Anthony Fauci’s latest appearance on Fake News CNN. On Easter Sunday, no less, Fauci, who has been undermining Trump since the day this fiasco began, implied in response to loaded questions by the insufferable Jake Tapper that Trump could have saved lives had he announced “social distancing guidelines” that Fauci supposedly recommended to him as early as the third week of February.

Fauci made no such recommendation in February, but was rather saying the exactly opposite that month, as  even the left-wing Politico shows in an article entitled Virus 'Experts' Early Statements Belie 'Prescient' Portrayal.  Thus, on Easter Sunday Fauci cooperated with Tapper in disseminating a demonstrable lie to the nation. Before we get to the lie, here is the background that demonstrates it.

What is in dispute here is not the potential lethality of this particular virus, but the ongoing COVID-19 agitprop campaign by the media, their Democrat allies, and clearly left-leaning elements of the globalist medical establishment.
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Introduction

As I write this piece, I have just been informed by my sister that my 96-year-old father, Joseph, who has been locked into a veteran’s nursing facility since March 12 because the Wuhan virus is present, now has fever of more than 102°. While his COVID-19 test results will not be available for days, as a precaution he will be taken by ambulance to the local hospital where we hope he will receive the drug hydroxychloroquine—the same drug the evil, lying media have been on a “jihad” to discredit, as Attorney General Barr put it, merely because President Trump endorsed it.   My father has an iron constitution, so we are hoping and praying that if he has the Wuhan virus he will overcome it, as did this 103-year-old woman in Italy. 

“And I predict that even stranger things have happened.” - The Amazing Kreskin

In what has become a continuing series on the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020, I would like to begin this much shorter article by thanking Remnant readers for their prayers for my father, Joseph, who is still locked down in a nursing facility in which the Wuhan virus is present. So far, he is doing well and shows no signs of the virus.

To sum up where we stand today, April 6: Based on the pretext that we must “limit the spread” of the Wuhan virus, the American economic boom of the past three years has been reversed in a matter of days, millions have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small businesses have been shuttered and will probably never reopen, and three-quarters of the American population has been subjected to some form of house arrest by state, county and city governments. 

Introduction

As I write this from Richmond, Virginia, I am informed by my sister that COVID-19 is now infecting residents in the same nursing home for veterans in which my 96-year-old father, Joseph, has been under a lockdown since March 12, as I noted in my previous article in what is becoming a series on The Coronavirus Panic of 2020.  Before the lockdown, my sister was able to spend almost every day with him at her own home in New Jersey, taking him to daily Mass and other outings and returning him to the nursing facility in the late evening for bedtime. I will make my sister’s words my own:

The nursing facility lost many lives to the flu outbreak earlier this year, and as a family we prayed daily that Dad would not be one of them. Even though there was a flu quarantine for two months during that time, we and others were allowed to visit residents in the nursing home so long as we took proper precautions by wearing face masks and using hand sanitizer while inside the facility.  Since Dad himself was not ill, we were still permitted to take him out to daily Mass and for visits to our home.

Editor's Note: The topic of this article is obviously so important to the lives of all of us at the moment that I'd like to encourage thoughtful debate on it for the next several days.  I invite all Remnant followers to read this piece and to then help us to get the conversation going. We need not engage in spitting contests against one another along the lines of a particular partisan point of view carefully prepared for us by the media. Rather I invite all comers to carefully consider the evidence provided herein, and then to contribute to the discussion in the comments section below.

We will be leaving this article in its present location here on our homepage through the weekend in the hope that it might provide a truth and information service as we all grapple with this bizarre turn of events. May God grant us true discernment of what's really going on here. - Michael J. Matt

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Introduction: Two Competing Narratives

AMERICA IS NOW in the grips of a struggle between two competing narratives surrounding the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, so named because it is a coronavirus disease first detected in 2019.

The Republican narrative is that COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic that could kill millions, but the American people, led by President Trump, will defeat the virus in a great demonstration of American courage and resolve no less momentous than the victory in World War II. The American economy will revive, and free enterprise will flourish once again in the world’s most vibrant economy, bigger and better than ever.

The Democrat narrative is that COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic that could kill millions, yet Trump has failed miserably to blunt its relentless and deadly advance.  The only way to save America from the deadly pandemic is to restructure the entire nation along the lines dictated by the Democrat Party’s radical left wing, which now comprises essentially the entire party.