Opinion
By Jeff Childers
03-26-24
Good morning, C&C, and Happy Four-Year Anniversary! Today’s post is a special Anniversary Edition, with some brief comments on C&C, a short author interview, and a great little news roundup at the end with two important stories. Thank you for first four terrific years, and — I hope — for lots more.
🎉 CELEBRATING FOUR YEARS OF C&C 🎉
Happy Anniversary, Coffee & Covid family! It’s been four short years.
To celebrate this gala occasion, I wrote several lengthy pages of deep reflection, introspection, and amusing anecdotes from C&C’s history. I extolled in great detail our accomplishments, our community, and our inside jokes. But then I looked at the whole thing and said to myself, hey dummy—they are here for a news roundup, not a novel about how one time you made a blog.
So I saved all that other stuff for the Ten Year Anniversary, assuming we make it that far. Today, I’ll be brief! To set the table, I’ve always felt gripped, impelled, driven maybe, by a much bigger mission far beyond me or my musings. You could call that undeniable pressure a God thing (I do). And my very first job when I started in 2020 was pushing back the spirit of fear that was creeping over the whole Earth, using humor, sarcasm mostly, and focusing on good news.
That’s C&C.
Then the missions started mounting up. As soon as we’d make progress on one mission, the next mission would pop up in the queue. After turning fear into scorn, we then fought back the lockdowns, then the mask mandates, then the jab mandates, and then we pushed legislators to prune local emergency powers.
We’ve won every single battle.
But, what now? What’s the next mission? Oh, it’s nothing too hard. Now we must get some justice, justice for the injured, justice against the criminals who caused it. After, we still need to Save America from the swarm of demented termites that resemble miniature, insectile incarnations of the demonic philosopher-prince Karl Marx.
In celebration of our Anniversary together, I decided to sit for an “author Q&A,” except that I will ask the questions around here, thank you. (And I’ll handle the answers, too.) Let’s go!
How do you have time to write Coffee & Covid and run a law firm?
Great question. The short answer is: I’m not sure. I just do it. I wake up at 4:45am, pray, exercise a little to get the blood moving through the old grey matter, snag a hot caffeinated beverage, and then get on the day’s post.
The more practical answer is, I traded some unproductive evening hours — by going to bed earlier and waking up earlier — and have scaled back my law work, thanks to supporters’ help. I will say it does take a special kind of discipline, or maybe obsessive-compulsion, to do this every single day.
How long does it take you every day?
It takes about three or four hours to go from a blank screen to hitting “publish.” That’s why you sometimes see typos, grammar errors, and fragments (extra words left over from editing). The short deadlines mean I don’t have a lot of time for proofreading. In the afternoons I do my research and collect a “stack of stuff” for the next day’s inspiration depending on how much free time I get from day to day.
How many people get Coffee & Covid every day?
More than 150,000 people are signed up for the newsletter. More than that actually see it, because some folks forward the post, or read it to their spouse, and so on. I’d guess that around 20% of the total read the entire roundup on any given day, but I’m just guessing.
More importantly, we have regular readers from all walks of life. Our fans range all the way from a nun who’ve took a vow of poverty (hello Sister!) to billionaires, from handymen to passenger-jet captains, from holistic nurse-assistants to cardiac surgeons, from school teachers to state senators, and about every other line of work you can think of.
Now that covid is over why not retire the blog?
I ask myself that question all the time. But … is covid over? You might say it’s not over till we get justice for everyone harmed by the defective jab products and the nefarious hospital schemes. Never leave a man behind. Or a woman either.
A more robust answer is Coffee & Covid isn’t just a blog. It’s practically a cliché to say that ‘we are a community,’ but I mean, just look at the comments. I don’t know how many other Substacks have 700 or more daily comments, but we must be in the top five percent. That’s all you guys.
But more important: Coffee and Covid is not just an echo chamber where a bunch of people agree with each other and ignore the world. We actually do stuff. We actually move the needle, in the real world. My job is to quietly persuade through engaging words, so that you can send C&C to someone, get them hooked, and redpill them. It’s happened over and over.
But also … the multipliers! I know why nobody else does it: fear. If they pick the wrong recipient, and that person turns out to be a goat or a shyster, they might get blamed. And in fact, over the years we’ve funded a couple duds (fortunately no shysters), but more often we’ve fueled superstars like Chris Rufo and Chaya Raichik (Libs of Tik Tok).
We don’t do fear at C&C. Maybe one day a multiplier will backfire, but we don’t multiply people because we’ve decided they’re saints. We don’t believe in the ‘Superman theory’ around here. We multiply people to send a message: don’t try to cancel conservatives.
What was the top multiplier of all time?
There are a couple we couldn’t get any feedback on, but I believe the top multiplier of all time was for Dr. Peter McCullough, which raised over $400,000 for his legal defense in three days.
Why does a Coffee & Covid subscription cost so much compared to other Substacks?
I respect the question but it makes me chuckle every time. While most Substacks charge a fraction of what C&C does for a paid membership, they also put out a fraction of the content. On a per-word basis, I think C&C is probably around the least expensive stack.
But that’s not why people sign up anyway. C&C gives away six out of seven posts every week! Why? Because the mission is to reach folks, destroy narratives, and change minds, not run a business. The best way to reach the largest number of folks is by giving away most of the content. So, paid subs help me spend more time writing C&C, and as a gift they get my day of rest in the form of a bonus post.
Folks should thank the paid subscribers, who literally make it all possible.
There’s also a practical reason for the price point. In early 2022, after publishing my most viral post ever, C&C got canceled, all on the same day, on every platform including Patreon, which handled the finances. Patreon had allowed many price points. But then I had to start over on a new platform, and we picked Substack.
Substack does not allow multiple levels of support. You have to pick one.
So, in a wild hurry to get everything back online fast, we chose the average level of support. It seemed right because it was about the same as what I charge for an hour of legal advice at the firm. So in effect, supporters each pledge to buy one hour of legal advice a year. It’s helped me justify the trade-off of spending less time on clients and more time on the C&C mission.
I wish I could help with the mission but I can’t afford $50 a month. Now what?
Well, just reading helps! Forwarding C&C to others helps, and cross-linking each day’s post in social media helps.
And I don’t mention it much, but there is a one-time donation option, which just got a major glow-up this year and is new and greatly improved. Here is the link: Donate now to Coffee & Covid. Note that you can make a recurring donation of any amount if you want.
Honestly though, I am just grateful and honored that you are here reading and helping me beat back the media’s silly narratives.
Do you use artificial intelligence to help write C&C?
Some might argue there’s no intelligence here at all. Haha, just kidding. I sometimes use a chatbot to answer a question, like who was the 23rd president or something, but I don’t really trust them much. I certainly don’t use chatbots to help write any content, as the frequent typos prove (sorry!).
And I will never let the AIs write any part of Coffee & Covid. I’m not even sure the chatbots are willing to mock tiny Tony Fauci, the human cockroach. And if they won’t even do that much, they’re out.
What’s the ‘spreadsheet’ that long-time readers sometimes refer to?
Over the first few months, my Facebook blog, not yet called Coffee & Covid, evolved a lot as I added more and more daily covid data, and I started including my own comments on the covid data and the day’s optimistic pandemic news. For instance, here’s the March 26, 2021 post, one year in, which shows my then-classic covid spreadsheet:
You can see how after a full year of daily blogging, we’d finally reached 123 ‘likes’ and 43 comments. If you want a tip to getting your blog going, maybe that shows consistency is key, as they say.
Can you explain the ‘So’ thing?
‘So’ was a censorship-avoidance technique. For the first several years of C&C, I would end a key thought with the word “So.” It was intended to make a point , a point that if I said it explicitly, I would get canceled or thrown in Facebook jail. For instance, it might go something like this:
Yesterday the New York Times quietly ran a story way down the webpage headlined, “Diamond Princess death numbers revised downwards.” In other words, the terrifying figures our panicked leaders used to lock down the country were, it seems, somehow, slightly over-estimated. So.
That ungrammatical shorthand became a kind of C&C trademark, an inside joke, a knowing wink at each other. While I was speaking at a covid conference once, I noticed some C&C fans wearing shirts they made with “So” on them. And because of relentless reader demand, and with lots of help from a passionate volunteer, we set up the C&C Shop, where you can buy C&C Swag, like “So” shirts and “So” mugs. I’ve heard they get lots of comments.
What can we do to help celebrate C&C?
To help celebrate our four-year anniversary, why don’t you write in the comments about what C&C meant to you during the pandemic, or if you’re a post-pandemic reader, how C&C improves your life. Or, tell your best C&C conversion story or anything else meaningful. Let’s collect everyone’s C&C stories in one place!
Now, at long last (and thank you for indulging me in a little Anniversary discussion), on to today’s roundup.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 The media is having a quiet temper tantrum. As predicted, yesterday we found out how Trump is handling the collection bond. Not everyone was happy about it. Don Lemon and Whoopi Goldberg sobbed themselves to sleep last night, drenching their soggy pillows in salty tears of rage and despair. In spite of its broad effect, you won’t find the story covered by corporate media anywhere; you can search their websites in vain.
Reuters got closest with its distracting headline: “Billionaires sought to help fund Trump bond in civil fraud case, sources say” The International news agency smuggled the real news into what looked like a random, boring story about Trump’s billionaire donors.
Hilariously, in a fit of unmitigated pique, Reuters obviously applied an orange filter to their Trump photo (not the one above), a tricky bit of photoshopping obvious even to me, a red/green colorblind. Reuters must have been more enraged than Nancy Pelosi opening her second Subzero freezer and discovering it was also out of dragonfruit gelato.
Yesterday’s big news, which you probably already heard blanketed on conservative media, was that Trump’s appellate motion seeking a bond reduction was partially granted. It didn’t waive the bond, but the appellate court wisely reduced the bond amount, from around $600 million (including interest) to a flat, more affordable $175 million dollars.
But much better than the welcome reduction, the appellate court also gave Trump another ten days to come up with the money, putting him safely past Truth Social’s public offering, when it will be much easier to afford the $175 million.
According to Reuters, Trump told reporters in New York that “I’ll post either the $175 million in cash or bonds or securities or whatever is necessary, very quickly.”
Done and done.
Reuters’ ‘billionaire donor’ facade was a red herring. But, from reading the story, it turned out liberals were just waiting for some billionaire to step up to the plate, so they could be criminally indicted for exceeding campaign finance donation limits. It was always a trap. (Just ask conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who spent a year in jail for a $30,000 campaign contribution.)
But now, Trump won’t need any billionaires. Oh well! Another reason for liberal media types to cry themselves to sleep again tonight.
And, while the appellate court’s decision was good, it wasn’t great. Even a $175 million dollar bond in this case is outrageous. The good news is the amount — a third of the original — signals the court of appeals is leaning toward lopping the head of Judge Engoran’s ridiculous fine.
The appellate judges are probably thinking about the Constitutional issue.
Under the Constitution and settled Supreme Court law, punitive fines generally can’t exceed three times actual damages. Nor can they be so large as to bankrupt someone, or even “impose an undue financial burden on the individual.” Overlarge fines offend the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive fines. In a major recent case, Timbs v. Indiana (2019), the Court confirmed that the excessive fines clause of the Eighth Amendment applies to the States (not just the federal government), in both civil and criminal cases.
So that’s my best guess as to what the court of appeals had in view. That and politics. If it waived the bond requirement it would have been pilloried. Media doesn’t seem to know what to make of the $175 million bond, which is still a LOT, so they’re mostly ignoring it.
Assuming that Judge Engoran’s fine for “overestimating real estate” stands at all, it seems likely to be greatly reduced.
Three days ago, the Biden Campaign released an unseemly series of messages and ads prematurely celebrating President Trump’s inability to pay for his appeal bond. The new campaign tried to stick Trump with a dumb new nickname, “Broke Don”:
Whoops. But it looks Trump can raise money; a lot, too. Biden blundered again!
Maybe Biden should be the one to get a new nickname. How about “Broke Brain Biden?” What do you suggest?
💉 On Sunday, I dissected the UK Telegraph’s “epidemic of young cancer” story, explaining exactly how the media twists the cancer narrative and the facts to protect the jabs. Yesterday, the Daily Mail UK ran a similar story headlined, “Alarm over mystery cancer ‘epidemic’ striking under-50s like Kate Middleton as scientists scramble to find cause of startling increase.”
To its credit, the Daily Mail almost seemed like a kidnapping victim, desperately trying to smuggle out a secret message: help me! Right from the top of the story, it included this remarkable bit of reporting:
Scientists are scrambling to find the cause of a mystery cancer ‘epidemic’ which is striking under-50s. Despite years of research, researchers are baffled as to what is behind the problem.
But, in the wake of the Princess of Wales’ news, one surgeon claimed a yet-to-be discovered factor could be to blame. Professor Andrew Beggs, a consultant colorectal surgeon and a senior clinical fellow at the University of Birmingham, said: ‘There might be an unknown environmental factor that we haven’t discovered, despite extensive research.’
An unknown environmental factor! What could it be?? Does it come in a needle? Obviously the Mail immediately dropped that line of inquiry and lost all interest in speculating what kind of environmental factor might be involved. But they put it out there as a limited hangout.
Maybe the Mail’s handy infographic map could give us a clue. It shows western countries plus Russia and China with the highest rates of under-50 cancer:
Poor Australia! That benighted continent is now the young-cancer epicenter. What could have happened there, out in the desert, so far away from everyone? What common “environmental” factor could possibly tie Australia to Europe and the U.S., which are both drafting right behind the Down Under? Hmm?
Like the Telegraph, the Mail’s article fogged the cancer story with the same batch of distracting nonsense. For example, it named a bunch of early-onset cancer victims, but they were red herrings. For example, the Mail rounded up a small batch of celebrity cancers to demonstrate the trend.
But the Mail’s four sample cancers occurred over a twenty-year period — all before the jabs, and some a quarter-century ago: Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman (died of colon cancer in 2020, aged 43); Modern Family’s Sophia Vergara (thyroid cancer in 2000, aged 28); A-lister Ewan McGregor (skin cancer —two moles!— removed in 2008), and Australia’s top singer Kylie Minogue (breast cancer back in 2005, aged 36).
A twenty-five year span? Come on. I could round up four celebrities with turbo cancer just over the last four months. And if you give me the last three years, I could easily beat four times that many.
And I won’t even include celebrities who just had a couple moles removed.
Anyway, the Daily Mail also rounded up some cancer doctors, so you can add them to the ones quoted for the Telegraph. For example:
Oncologist Dr Shivan Sivakumar, from the University of Birmingham, said: ‘There is an epidemic currently of young people (under 50) getting cancer. Nobody knows the cause, but we are seeing more patients getting abdominal cancers.’
Professor Karol Sikora, a world-renowned oncologist with over 40 years’ experience, said experts had ‘no idea’ what was causing a ‘frightening’ surge in cases of pancreatic cancer, especially among young women.
UK data shows women in their early 40s, like Kate, are twice as likely (2.1 times), to get cancer than a man of the same age. Cancers of the breast, prostate, lung and bowel make-up the overwhelming majority of all new cancer diagnoses, accounting for around half of the total.
Finally, the article cited the same irrelevant study that popped up in the Telegraph’s article. At least the Mail linked the study. As we noted before, that study shows an increase in young cancer rates over a thirty year period between 1990 and, conveniently, 2019. Misleadingly, the Mail printed not one single word about cancer rates during the last three years, allowing readers to falsely conclude they are looking at just one long, uninterrupted trend.
Baffling! A baffling environmental factor.
Kate Middleton’s tragic cancer story — we must never forget the Royal Family initially insisted it was definitely not cancer — her tragic cancer story has conveniently opened a box of permission for media to talk about the epidemic of turbo cancers in young people. The stories are rolling out now, all following the identical repulsive narrative formula.
It looks like a well-organized, coordinated limited hangout, reprehensibly using Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis as a pretext.
The recent ‘cancer epidemic’ stories are so similar it is tempting to think they all came from the same desk. But that would just be kooky conspiracy talk. It is merely a coincidence that all these different media platforms wrote their ‘cancer epidemic’ stories the same way, using the same language of baffling epidemics, citing the same irrelevant study, and exhibiting the same moribund lack of curiosity about the “environmental cause.”
Shut up! Science!
Have a terrific Tuesday, and Happy Anniversary! Get yourself back here tomorrow for another great C&C roundup, where our hangouts are always UNlimited.
We can’t do it without you. Would you join with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds? I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com
© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
