It is a very good thing that, in this time of danger to the health of the people, the president of the United States is neither a doctor nor an economist. As a highly competent administrator who strives to do whatever he does to a high standard, President Trump seeks the knowledge of doctors and economists, and then decides what to do for the good of the nation’s health and economy.

An article by Ruth Papazian* at American Greatness, shows why experts must be asked for their knowledge but not be allowed to make the decisions:

During the daily briefings of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, repeatedly referred to reports from frontline clinicians that the combination of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin can completely clear coronavirus from the body within six days as “anecdotal” evidence.

And, as such, inadequate. As she puts it, “To a political journalist, ‘anecdotal’ evidence is unsubstantiated hearsay.”

But –

To a medical journalist, “anecdotal” evidence is what doctors in the field are reporting.

… Over and over again, Fauci gave the false impression that the experimental treatment regimen would not, or could not, be given to severely ill patients before data from large-scale, randomized double-blind clinical trials becomes available: “My job as a scientist is . . . to prove without a doubt that a drug is not only safe, but it actually works.”

All well and good, but a clinician’s job is to save lives. And in the midst of a burgeoning global pandemic when speed is of the essence, field experience with two drugs whose safety profiles are well understood suffices to treat patients who are likely to die. For this reason, the FDA-approved chloroquine … for “compassionate use”. …

The combination of HCQ+AZ could cause abnormal heart rhythms and would not be given to patients with known atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation. Research suggests one alternative for these patients: The combination of chloroquine and zinc, which can stop the virus from replicating.

“Anecdotal” evidence typically prompts new, off-label uses (not FDA-approved) of available medications that eventually become standard treatment after the controlled clinical studies are done. For instance, doctors used HCQ off-label to treat lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and sarcoidosis, and this is now standard treatment for these conditions.

Making the perfect the enemy of the good, Fauci was dismissive both of clinical use of HCQ+AZ in China and South Korea, but also of small clinical trials in China and in France. …

There is one critical clinical trial Fauci should have initiated as soon as it became apparent hospitals nationwide lacked adequate supplies of face masks and shields, gloves, gowns, and other personal protective equipment to handle the pandemic: The prophylactic administration of HCQ to frontline healthcare personnel in coronavirus hot spots.

Doctors and nurses at one hospital in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City could be given the anti-malarial drug to see whether they are more resistant to coronavirus infection than their counterparts at another hospital in those cities not taking it.

After 50 years in Washington, Fauci has become an overly-cautious bureaucrat: “It probably would be several weeks and maybe longer before we know whether [containment measures] are having an effect.”

No, we will know by mid-April whether the rate of infection has been significantly slowed by taking bold action to augment containment with widespread clinical use of HCQ+AZ to cure hospitalized patients and reduce the length of time they can pass on the infection to others, as well as to prevent infection in those caring for them.

Not taking these steps will unnecessarily prolong the pandemic, which will unnecessarily prolong and deepen the adverse economic effects of federal and state containment efforts.

We at The Atheist Conservative have no medical expertise, so we are not of course making a recommendation. We will just mention that we are drinking more gin and tonic than usual. The tonic gets its slightly bitter but pleasant taste from the quinine in it. It’s the quinine in hydroxychloroquine that – the medical experts say – helps to overcome the coronavirus. So while it is a pleasure to drink, gin-and-tonic might – just might – also be a life-saver.

 

*Ruth Papazian is the Republican candidate running for election against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th. Congressional District.

Has the Left, through the powerful authority of Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), deliberately worked a wrecking of the economy  by exaggerating the danger of the coronavirus so as to give dictatorial power to government as the only way to save the nation from the disease?

A wrecked economy could be detrimental to President Trump’s re-election. Could the Left be using the pandemic to dislodge him from office, having tried and failed to do so using the Russia hoax and impeachment?

As it turns out, the president’s popularity is rising on the strength of his handling of the crisis. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t such a plan – only that, thus far, it isn’t working as intended. Or only partly working. Damage to the economy has happened and continues to happen. But will American voters turn to the Democrats – specifically to corrupt senile Joe Biden – in the November election to restore it ? Or, rather, to establish socialism in its stead?

Sure this is a conspiracy theory. But could it be true?

In an article at American Thinker, M. Catharine Evans writes:

It seems some viral infection pandemics are more equal than others. At least when it comes to burning a vibrant Trump economy to the ground.

In September 2009, after millions had become infected with the H1N1 influenza and thousands had died, some of whom were young people and children, a relaxed and unalarmed Dr. Anthony Fauci told an interviewer that people just need “to use good judgment.” [See the video here.]

Parents should not send their kids to school if they’re sick, if you’re sick don’t go to work … avoid places where there are people who are sick and coughing, now that’s a difficult thing to do. … You can’t isolate yourself from the rest of the world for the whole flu season.

That’s quite a change from the esteemed expert’s views on the current virus from China sweeping the world.

It’s peculiar that nowhere in the 2009 video does Dr. Fauci suggest that in order to alleviate the stress on hospital supplies we “force, uh, delay,  if not cancel anything that’s elective, I mean any medical or surgical procedures that need to be done on an elective basis should not be done.”  Dr. Fauci’s statement to NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on March 20, 2020 and his obvious slip of the tongue using the word “force” reveals just how much influence Dr. Fauci has over our daily lives. To date, hospitals, imaging centers, and outpatient departments across the country have cancelled non-emergent testing and surgical procedures.

Additionally, nowhere in the 2009 interview does Dr. Fauci specifically mention restaurants and bars as hot spots for the transmission of the H1N1 virus as he does in his recent interview with Yahoo News: “When I see crowded bars and crowded restaurants, it is a little bit unnerving,” Fauci said. “It’s clear that those are the situations that put people very much at risk.” Talk about wielding power. Take a look around the country. Local and state officials have heeded Fauci’s “unnerving” concern and ordered restaurants to close their dining areas, or adhere to a 10-person limit.  In cities and small towns everywhere, the restaurant industry, which includes owners,  suppliers, chefs, line cooks, waitstaff, and bartenders, has been decimated.

Restaurants and bar owners, along with their employees, are the hardest hit economically by the virus. …

Nowhere in the 2009 interview does Fauci use inflammatory, fear-inducing rhetoric, despite the number of H1N1-infected individuals, increased hospitalizations and deaths occurring at that time. Eleven years later, on March 11, 2020, Fauci is gung ho about COVID-19, warning lawmakers at a hearing on Capitol Hill: “Bottom line, it’s going to get worse.”  Since then, the renowned epidemiologist has been seen daily at White House press conferences and on cable news shows reiterating this message to the public. …

Why did Dr. Fauci not sound the alarm in 2009 as urgently as he has done in 2020?  Why did he not insist we “force” hospitals to cancel elective tests and surgeries to save room for future infected patients during the H1N1 outbreak? Why did he pointedly target restaurants and bars in his concern for the spread of the coronavirus but not H1N1?  As a specialist in infectious diseases, and as a self-described “man of science”, why support the closing of schools, businesses, and home quarantine for one virus and not the other?  H1N1’s duration from April 2009 to April 2010 with 60 million infected and almost 13,000 deaths in the U.S. alone was no less serious than the 2020 coronavirus so why was Dr. Fauci taking a more measured approach in 2009?

The answers may come too late. The economy that was setting records has been broken … The working and middle classes, who only a month ago were celebrating the purchase of a new car, a house, a raise, moving out of their parents’ home or the promise of a better job are wondering if they can hold on, and some are waking up to the realization their lives have been turned upside down over a virus that is no more deadly than the flu they got last year.

Is there an answer to “why”?

Peter Barry Chowka, also writing at American Thinker, provides an answer by offering some evidence that Dr. Fauci may in fact be using his authority to advance the fiercely destructive political plans of the president’s Democratic enemies.

His article is titled: Anthony Fauci, the NIH’s face of the coronavirus, is a Deep-State Hillary Clinton-loving stooge.

He writes:

After seeing a March 9, 2020 tweet by Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., who has four degrees from MIT, I was inspired to take a look back to try to put Fauci’s current work on the coronavirus into some perspective.

In his tweet, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (“inventor of Email”) said:

As an MIT PhD in Biological Engineering who studies & does research nearly every day on the Immune System, [I think] the coronavirus fear mongering by the Deep State will go down in history as one of the biggest frauds to manipulate economies, suppress dissent, & push MANDATED Medicine!

What did Peter Barry Chowka find out about Dr. Fauci?

One of the first things I found about Dr. Fauci, at the WikiLeaks Clinton email trove, was a gushing 2013 email that Fauci had sent to Cheryl Mills, one of Hillary Clinton;s top aides, praising the then-secretary of state for her congressional testimony on Benghazi.

Cheryl: Anyone who had any doubts about the Secretary’s stamina and capability following her illness had those doubts washed away by today’s performance before the Senate and the House. She faced extremely difficult circumstances at the Hearings and still she hit it right out of the park.

Please tell her that we all love her and are very proud to know her.

Warm regards,

Tony

Anthony S. Fauci, MD Director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

OK, fine. So Fauci’s a typical, deeply embedded administrative state hack who can be expected to be obsequious to his political bosses like Mrs. Clinton. …

Careful observers have noted that after the almost daily White House news conferences with President Trump and members of the Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci, a regular attendee and the task force’s chief medical spokesman, often runs to Trump-hating media like CNN to contradict — usually with a degree of nuance that gives him plausible deniability — what the president has just said. The Daily Mail of London noted this behavior in a March 20 article, “Dr Anthony Fauci caught rolling his eyes and smirking as President Trump rants about the ‘deep state’ during coronavirus press conference.”

But can President Trump be used, fooled, exploited by Dr. Fauci?

If this is a plot to destroy President Trump by destroying the economy, will it work?

We don’t think it will.

 

(Hat-tip to Cogito]

It seems more than probable that the rickety, corrupt, gynocratic, dictatorial European Union is being finally destroyed by the Chinese Virus.

Its ultimate test came with the pandemic. The country worst affected – even worse perhaps than China itself where the pestilence originated – is the EU member-state, Italy.

In an article published today (March 21, 2020) by Gatestone, titled European Union: The End?, Judith Bergman writes:

Italy appealed [to the EU] for help at the beginning of its coronavirus crisis – and received in return exactly nothing. …

In addition, Germany and France, leading EU member states, even imposed bans or limitations on the export [sic] of facemasks and protective equipment.

The very idea that the countries of Europe, with their different characters, temperaments, languages, histories, traditions, capabilities and cultures, could form a union like the United States of America, was farcical. The attempt to implement it has been a prolonged pretense, a staged sham, a parody doomed to the ugly failure it is now proving to be.

Reality is exposing the make-believe, breaking up the theatrical performance:

When an entire continent is in the midst of a highly contagious virus epidemic, solidarity becomes a more complex issue. Every state inevitably considers whether it can afford to send facemasks and protective equipment that might be needed for its own citizens. In other words, every state considers its own national interest first. In the case of Italy’s appeal for help, EU member states made their own interests their highest priority. This is classic state behavior and would not have caused any outrage prior to the establishment of the European Union.

What the coronavirus crisis reveals is that the member states of the European Union will revert to national interests when extreme circumstances call for it. While such revelations may not spell the immediate end of the European Union, they certainly raise questions about the point of an organization that pledges solidarity as a founding principle, but abandons that principle the moment it is most called for.

And it’s not only the awful reality of a highly infectious disease that is forcing the diverse nations to admit and attend to necessary self interest. There is also the Islamic invasion, now reaching a climax as Turkey threatens to pour a million Muslim immigrants – aka “refugees” – into Europe through the poor EU member-state Greece. Greece found itself standing alone against an incoming human tide. Greek soldiers guarded the border, shot live ammunition into the invading hordes, and even exchanged fire with a Turkish tank or two.

As Judith Bergman says –

Coronavirus, however, is not the only recent issue to put into question the viability of the European Union.

The current crisis on the Greek-Turkish border has shown the EU not only as unhelpful, but an actual liability: The EU left an already overwhelmed Greece to deal with the migrant crisis — manufactured by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for political gain – on its own, despite the apparent rhetorical support by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who called Greece Europe’s “shield”.

President Erdoğan wants Turkey’s admittance to the EU, and billions of Euros in aid. Angela Merkel, still de facto leader of the wealthiest member-state Germany and therefore also of the EU, pays again and again.

Turkey’s migrant blackmail worked surprisingly well and surprisingly fast. …

Erdoğan got what he wanted.

The money, anyway. Five billion euros already given is only a start.

Consequently, on March 18, Erdoğan announced that the migrant crisis that he had orchestrated was officially over: Turkey was closing its borders with Greece and Bulgaria, ostensibly due to the coronavirus. The Telegraph cited reports from Turkish news website Medyascope that around 150 buses had been readied to collect migrants from the border and ferry them back to Istanbul and refugee camps.

Erdoğan can use the same threat as often as he chooses. And it will continue to work for him. Until Angela Merkel goes. Or the EU itself has gone with the infected wind of change.

The EU may not formalize its disbandment for a while yet, but who can continue to believe in its viability now?

Paul Joseph Watson talks about the pandemic of the Chinese Virus:

 

(Hat-tip to our commenter Jeanne)

 

We may choose:

We can all stay away from public places to save our lives, and then the economy tanks. Or we resume normal activities, work and play, at high risk of catching the Chinese Virus – which can be very nasty for anyone of any age, and is fatal for the frail and old.

The Wall Street Journal tells it as it is:

Financial markets paused their slide Thursday, but no one should think this rolling economic calamity is over. If this government-ordered shutdown continues for much more than another week or two, the human cost of job losses and bankruptcies will exceed what most Americans imagine. This won’t be popular to read in some quarters, but federal and state officials need to start adjusting their anti-virus strategy now to avoid an economic recession that will dwarf the harm from 2008-2009.

The vast social-distancing project of the last 10 days or so has been necessary and has done much good. Warnings about large gatherings of more than 10 people and limiting access to nursing homes will save lives. The public has received a crucial education in hygiene and disease prevention, and even young people may get the message. With any luck, this behavior change will reduce the coronavirus spread enough that our hospitals won’t be overwhelmed with patients. …

Yet the costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don’t mean federal spending. We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue but that isn’t true of millions of small and mid-sized firms. …

The deadweight loss in production will be profound and take years to rebuild. In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month….

The politicians in Washington are telling Americans, as they always do, that they are riding to the rescue by writing checks to individuals and offering loans to business. But there is no amount of money that can make up for losses of the magnitude we are facing if this extends for several more weeks. After the first $1 trillion this month, will we have to spend another $1 trillion in April, and another in June? …

Millions of businesses will be bankrupt and tens of millions will be jobless….

But no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health. Even America’s resources to fight a viral plague aren’t limitless—and they will become more limited by the day as individuals lose jobs, businesses close, and American prosperity gives way to poverty.

America urgently needs a pandemic strategy that is more economically and socially sustainable than the current national lockdown.

What could that strategy be?  

If quick cure is the only answer, can President Trump get it done? If anyone can, he can.

The coronavirus is Chinese. It comes from China.

President Trump is right to call it “the Chinese Virus”.

China is virulent. Infections seep out of it and poison the world.

Ann Coulter writes at Townhall:

Here’s a thought: While self-quarantining with their families in multimillion-dollar Manhattan co-ops, Wall Street wives ought to have a chat with their Master of the Universe husbands about China, globalism and political correctness. Those are the vectors of their robber-baron wealth.

Thanks to “globalism” – i.e., cheap goods from China – we’ve gotten many wondrous things, for example:

Toothpaste on American shelves made with a poison found in antifreeze;

Toxic Chinese drywall installed in about 100,000 U.S. homes, emitting noxious fumes that destroyed electrical wiring and metal fixtures and sickened homeowners. Replacement of the drywall, pipes and wiring cost Americans billions of dollars.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of American dogs killed by melamine-laced Chinese dog food in 2007.

The loss of about 200,000 beautiful maple trees lining the streets of small New England towns, eaten by Asian long-horned beetles that arrived on Chinese cargo ships in 1996. The U.S. taxpayer spends hundreds of millions of dollars to eradicate the repeated outbreaks that continue to this day, despite promises from the Chinese to do better.

Viral pandemics – H1N1 (from China), bird flu (from China), SARS (from China) and now the Wuhan virus (from China).

Is it really worth paying $3 for a T-shirt at Walmart, rather than $9? The precise reason Chinese goods are so cheap is that they skip the crucial quality-control step.

The media’s reaction to this latest pandemic out of China is to say …

Let’s get one thing straight: the Chinese have nothing to do with this! 

Well, like most animal-to-human viruses, this one did originate in China and then spread across the globe when Chinese tourists infected people in other countries. …

When the pandemic arrived, at least the World Health Organization leapt to action. First step: Find a cure? Develop a vaccine? Demand protections for the elderly?

NO!

WHO officials got together and worked on coming up with a new name for the “Wuhan virus” that sounded less Asian.

Next, the WHO put out a “Fact Sheet” to ensure that those with Kung Flu would not be stigmatized. It instructed:

DO talk about people “acquiring” or “contracting” #COVID-19.

DON’T talk about people “transmitting COVID-19”, “infecting others” or “spreading the virus” as it implies intentional transmission & assigns blame.

The WHO is a UN agency and therefore incurably corrupt, friendly to tyrannies, deceitful, anti-American, and evil through and through.

And therefore Americans on the Left appreciate it immensely.

Americans on the Left “think” that to be racist is much worse than to be a spreader of coronavirus:

As fear of the Chinese virus spread, Gloria Allred brought a lawsuit against a Los Angeles school for sending an Asian student to the school nurse after he coughed in class.

Americans are cowering in their homes. Airlines, restaurants, beaches, ski resorts, professional sports, colleges and stores have been shut down. But we must never violate the fundamental civil right of an Asian to cough in class and refuse to see the nurse!

The New York Times has also been on the racism beat, with these pressing stories:

As Chinese Grapple With a New Illness, an Old Stigma Is Revived

An Outbreak of Racist Sentiment as Coronavirus Reaches Australia

As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Sentiment

And there’s more!

Virus Fuels Anti-Chinese Sentiment Overseas

Coronavirus Outbreak Risks Reviving Stigma for China

… A few weeks ago – before a trillion dollars in wealth was destroyed by the coronavirus panic and we learned the real disease was racism – everyone, including the [New York] Times, admitted that the virus was brought to Italy by two Chinese tourists.

“[T]here had not yet been any confirmed cases in Italy,” the Times reported, “until Jan. 30, when the government announced the first two cases.” The scientific director of an infectious diseases hospital in Rome identified them: “Two Chinese tourists visiting Rome.”

[But then] the Times buried this fact in an article perversely titled: “Cruise Passengers Are Held at Italian Port in False Alarm Over Coronavirus.” On one hand, a bunch of cruise passengers were inconvenienced for 12 hours; on the other hand, a viral pandemic that could kill millions was introduced to Italy. You write the headline.

Lombardy is the Italian region most devastated by the Wuhan virus. As far back as 2003, a Library of Congress report cited Lombardy as having the highest concentration of Chinese immigrants in Italy. Our media refuses to tell us this fact today – or any day. …

According to the dire estimates of the Imperial College of London – whose assessment we are following – excepting those with underlying medical conditions, the new coronavirus is far less deadly than the seasonal flu to anyone under 60 years old. It’s no worse than the 2017-18 flu season for those in their 60s.

But it’s five to 10 times more deadly than the regular flu for those in their 70s and 80s, respectively.

We ought to surround old folks homes with the National Guard and call it a day. It would probably save more lives and wouldn’t destroy the economy.

But there’s no time to think about saving lives.

The important thing is to stamp out the idea that a virus that originated in China has anything to do China.

Because in truth it has everything to do with China.

Democrats object to that being said, not only because in their race-obsessed minds saying so is “racist”, but also because their policies for America are of a Chinese Communist kind.

The whole line of Democratic presidential candidates were for Communist policies: national health (death panel) service, open borders (for world Communist government), abortion on an industrial scale, leaving newborn babies to die, censoring news, disarming the citizens …

John Nolte writes at Breitbart:

With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now?

Hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the coronavirus. What we do know, though, is that between last Sunday and this Sunday, things went from Zero to Crazy in one week: We shut down our economy, store shelves are empty or emptying, the president’s on television every day, and there’s serious talk of a national quarantine.

We are also learning, at a fairly rapid pace, how a pandemic operates, how a virus spreads, and how vulnerable we are to such things, and just how so many leftist ideas have made us even more vulnerable.

Just for a moment, close your eyes, and picture the establishment media’s and left’s (but I repeat myself) idea of The Virtuous American…

• • Virtuous American wakes up in a small efficiency apartment located in a densely populated high-rise, eco-friendly building where there’s no fresh air because you can’t open the windows. But all that recycled air ensures a perfect 72 degree lifestyle.
  • Virtuous American exits his high-rise building for a half-mile walk through Virtue City, which is teeming with people.
  • Along the way, Virtuous American stops at a coffee shop, which is packed with other Virtuous Americans, who are handing reusable, eco-friendly containers to a barista who fills everyone’s order without changing his gloves (to save plastic) or washing his hands (to save water).
  • Virtuous American rides to work in jam-packed subway car.
  • Virtuous American exits the subway and walks to work through a sanctuary city teeming with illegal aliens who have been allowed to sneak in from every foreign country and stay without being screened or tested.
  • Virtuous American goes to work in an urban high-rise building that is hermetically sealed to save energy, which means recycled air instead of fresh air… You can’t open the windows.
  • Throughout the day, Virtuous American sips water from a bacteria-infested reusable bottle (that he might have rinsed out with cold water a few days ago). He refills his environmentally friendly, reusable bottle from a centrally located, environmentally friendly dispenser everyone touches throughout the day.
  • For lunch, Virtuous American enters a crowded deli and orders food prepared and served by illegal aliens who have never been screened or tested.
  • On the way back to the office, Virtuous American digs into his man-purse and removes a bacteria-infested reusable straw (he or may not have run a little cold water through a couple of days ago) and pops it into his iced coffee while gingerly walking through a poopy homeless encampment because Virtue City’s building regulations protect Gaia.
  • After work, Virtuous American stops at the grocery store and fills his environmentally friendly bacteria-infested reusable cloth grocery bags (that he might have washed two weeks ago) with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Then the pandemic hits… And thanks to a dense population, crowded mass transit, recycled air, poopy streets, bacteria-infested (but environmentally friendly) cups, straws, bottles, and bags, it spreads like wildfire though Virtue City.

Will Virtuous American be laughing at McMansion American while looking for a place in that tiny (but environmentally friendly) apartment to store enough food and water for four weeks?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Gun-Nut American when tensions increase due to empty store shelves and the only thing between Virtuous American and I’m Taking All Your Shit American is a door made from 100% recycled paper products?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Hick American who lives anywhere from 50 feet to 50 acres from any potential Possibly Infected American?

And what about Globalist American? When his parents can’t get their medications because they’re made in China, how funny is America First American looking now, pal?

And let’s not forget Social Justice American, the American who demands the Centers for Disease Control atomize its focus to include obesity and guns.

What do these environmental loons think? That the whole idea of disposable items was just for laughs? That single-use was developed by some Bond villain desperate to destroy the planet? That going out to the country for “fresh air” was just some quaint concept?

No, the reason disposable items became so popular was sanitation. What could be safer than removing a straw from a sealed paper sleeve? Those straws are now outlawed in California.

What could be safer than single-use grocery bags where you throw away that leaked meat juice instead of carrying it around until you finally throw the bags in the wash? Those single-use bags are now banned in eight states, including New York, whose ban took effect on March 1.

What could be safer than opening your own factory-sealed water bottle?

What could be more secure and safe than a home large enough to self-quarantine for two months and the firearms to protect it?

What could be smarter than not relying on China, a country that is infamous for being Pandemic Ground Zero, for our supply chains?

Why do you think we had immigrants funneled through Ellis Island? So we knew who was coming in. So we could give them a medical check, dumbass.

Oh, and by all means Medicare for All! Even as the private sector gears us up for the testing our government couldn’t handle, even as Democrat governors beg for more state autonomy to handle these health issues… By all means, it’s time to hand our health care over to the one-size-fits-all geniuses whose health care killed countless American veterans. 

But there was Joe Biden … promising that in the first 100 days of his administration the borders will be wide open.

And he’s going to pass tougher gun laws.

And he’s going to make us even more dependent on foreign oil.

And he doesn’t take the threat of China seriously.

And he opposes travel bans [even when they help to stop the spread of a disease].

And, and, and…

And no matter what happens, the Left will never, ever, ever change their ways or stop promoting their ideal of The Virtuous American.

*

Not only did the virus originate in China – the Chinese dictatorship went to some trouble to let it spread.

To emphasize China’s guilt we quote this, by Guy Benson writing at Townhall:

A recent study determined that if the Chinese government had listened to an early whistleblower and quickly initiated containment efforts, rather than punishing and censoring the information, cases in their country could have been reduced by up to 95 percent: “The early detection and isolation of cases was estimated to prevent more infections than travel restrictions and contact reductions, but integrated NPIs would achieve the strongest and most rapid effect. If NPIs could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier in China, cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86%, and 95%, respectively, together with significantly reducing the number of affected areas.”

We are living through another grave legacy of Communism. That won’t do much to help alleviate our current immense health and economic challenges, and it doesn’t absolve western leaders of any accountability for poor decisions, but it’s still the truth.

Italians isolated in their apartments because of the coronavirus pandemic find a way to make music together:

Sicily has figured out this whole self-isolation thing.#COVID19 #CoronavirusPandemic pic.twitter.com/93whPVtQcR

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) March 13, 2020

https://twitter.com/i/status/1238523168765218817

https://twitter.com/i/status/1238895639372509184

 

Writing  about the coronavirus that is killing thousands of people all over the world, Conrad Black says:

China now purports—with what must be acknowledged as majestic (though not simply admirable) aplomb—to be laying out a “silk road” of medical assistance to late-coming sufferer-nations. Of course, these nations are all victims of China’s official lies about the medical dangers it had inadvertently fostered and negligently transmitted. Having inflicted this pestilence on the world, China now claims to be the indispensable world leader in mastering the problem.

But was the virus “inadvertently fostered”? Is it not at least possible that an inhumane power, antagonistic to most of the rest of the world, would foster a biological weapon such as the coronavirus in a laboratory? 

Of course, the Chinese must not be allowed to get away with this colossal rodomontade. The United States must take the lead in repatriating pharmaceutical production from China, demanding the World Health Organization cease to be a shill-and-whitewash operation for the Peoples’ Republic, and render a truthful and objective account of how this virus got started and how it got so completely out of control.

Is it not at least possible that it was deliberately let out of captivity?  Not “negligently transmitted” but malevolently released? 

Sure it killed a lot of the regime’s own subject people, but when was that ever a problem to the regime? To use a popular turn of phrase, it is “not a bug but a feature” of Communism. The Chinese Communist dictatorship has required untold number of infants to be left to die. It kills people in order to harvest their organs for sale. And – Conrad Black points out – it has trampled millions underfoot, “oppressed and traduced” millions, “from the long Civil War (1920s-1949) through the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and the occupation of Tibet”, to its enlarging concentration camps and recent violent suppression of protestors in Hong Kong.

All of which is a matter of “praxis”, the implementation of Communist orthodoxy, which states: it is the collective that matters, not the individual. That is the core, the hub, the nitty-gritty of Communism.

As if the collective can feel pain or fear death! 

The Chinese role must be exposed in effectively assuring the exportation of the coronavirus to the whole world, including through the large concentrations of Chinese workers building the self-important “Belt and Road” with which the Middle Kingdom will assert itself across the Eurasian land-mass, and through its failure to give advisory warnings to international travelers. China deliberately ignored the universally recognized responsibilities of all countries to report outbreaks of communicable diseases promptly and accurately. …

This attempt of the Chinese government, as it blames the United States for this debacle and threatens to be sluggish about the transmission to the United States of medical supplies produced in China by American companies it had induced to invest there, requires a sharp rejoinder.

Where this creates a conundrum for the United States is that although all Chinese comments on the coronavirus have to be somewhat, or even substantially, discounted, China’s partially plausible claim that it has turned the corner and that the virus is now in retreat, is extremely useful in combating the profound panic which is sweeping the United States and the entire Western world. In democratic countries, the media are free to hype any version of events, no matter how terrifying, and the temptation to do so in the United States is aggravated by the possibility presented to the anti-Trump media to hammer the president for incompetence and deception in an election year, and destroy the benefits of his skillful management of the economy.

This is going to require the administration to execute the sophisticated maneuver of exposing China’s duplicity and negligence, while citing the fact that even despite the Beijing regime’s blunders and disinformation, the incidence and impact of the coronavirus are clearly now declining in China.

But is the epidemic declining in China? Should we trust that claim while distrusting others made by the regime – simply because it is useful to us? Or should we pretend to believe it simply because it is useful to us? That seems to be what Conrad Black is advocating:

The remit of the scientists is to end the medical crisis, but the administration has the challenge of imposing total risk-avoidance measures on the susceptible elements of the population (the infirm and elderly), and urging those with minimal chance of serious, much less, mortal illness, to pursue their occupations as best they can …

On the premise of a plausible lie?

These are delicate balances the administration will have to sort out. …

Indeed they are.

I predict that the administration will thread this needle and that the coronavirus crisis will be seen to be receding before the end of May.

That would be good, but it is only wishful thinking. A penchant for substituting words for reality is an oriental characteristic that the global Left has adopted, and is unexpected from a conservative commentator. It is not a useful device. It doesn’t work. Reality goes on accruing its consequences.

We do not know, we cannot know, when this Chinese Communist killer stalking the earth will stop or be stopped.

In this interview Mark Steyn denounces with indignation the Left’s inability to talk seriously about the coronavirus pandemic. Instead those “shrieking twerps” bring all discussion within their own “shriveled pointless parameters”, forever crying “racist”:

 

And Deroy Murdock writes at TrumpTrain on the Left’s irrational Trump hatred and its tedious inappropriate accusation of racism:

President Donald J. Trump could announce tomorrow morning that he pulled an all-nighter, whipped out the Bunsen burners and Petri dishes, and created a combined vaccine and treatment against the deadly COVID-19 virus. Furthermore, under his new Injections for All program, 330 million free shots would be available for every American, starting with doses at every Walgreens and Duane Reade, as of High Noon.

Rather than cheer the president’s diligence and creativity, the guttersnipes who slam him at every turn would moan: “So what? Why didn’t he cure breast cancer? Does he hate women? And what about Tay-Sachs Disease? No cure for that? At last, this proves conclusively that he’s an anti-Semite.”

Soon after this pandemic emerged in Wuhan Province, China, and began its long march overseas, Trump banned the arrival of foreign nationals from China and those who had traveled there within 14 days of reaching the U.S. Rather than applaud Trump’s January 31 action to defend America from these dreadful pathogens, his indefatigable foes lined up to smite him.

“This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science,” former vice president Joe Biden thundered [or quavered] on February 2.

Three days later, Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer said via Twitter: “The premature travel ban to and from China by the current administration is just an excuse to further his ongoing war against immigrants.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – California) attacked Trump for “using scare tactics about people coming back to our country”.

CNN warned that “the US coronavirus travel ban could backfire” and wind up “stigmatizing countries and ethnicities”. CNN also berated Trump’s panel of experts on public health and infectious disease for its “lack of diversity”, as if germs gave a damn about skin color.

CNN’s odious Jim Acosta berated Trump for calling COVID-19 a “foreign virus”, since this, too, would fuel — what else? — xenophobia. Never mind that this microbe first arose in China, which is not an American state, but a foreign country. Also, on January 23, Acosta referred via Twitter to “the growing spread of Wuhan Coronavirus.” Wuhan is not in Wisconsin. It’s in China. So, Acosta lacks even toothpicks on which to stand when he spews his ugliness.

Despite the Left’s destructive sniping, Trump’s “bigoted” travel restrictions kept infections and deaths far lower than they would have been otherwise.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, lauded the “original decision that was made by the president”. He added at a February 29 press conference: “If we had not done that, we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”

If Trump had not taken these tough-but-effective steps six weeks ago, dead bodies likely would have piled up, as they have in Italy, and these very same Left-wing jackals would be screaming, “Why didn’t Trump ban flights from China? He knew each one was a missile brimming with biological weapons. But he let them land here anyway. Monster!”

The Daily Mail transmitted this lie via Twitter on March 9: “Trump REFUSES to say if he has been tested for coronavirus and storms out of White House briefing on crisis.”

Garbage!

As Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson demonstrated via a video clip that he posted on Twitter, President Trump finished his press conference and said, “Thank you very much.” As he turned right to exit the White House press room, the gathered journalists inelegantly hollered questions at him, as they have done in that situation for decades. “Have you been tested?” a man in the crowd shouted. “Have you been tested? Mr. President, have you been tested? Mr. President, have you been tested?”

As presidents have done for decades, Trump ignored these screams and very casually walked out the door. He did not “REFUSE” to say anything, nor did he storm out of anywhere.

LIES! Or, more politely, fake news.

The dinosaur media also claimed that President Trump called COVID-19 “a hoax”. In fact, he referred to the Left’s critique of his Corona response as a hoax, designed to sandbag him, like the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes.

Revolting.

It doesn’t matter.

Trump is evil for not getting tested for Corona virus.

“If he understood his role as a moral leader, Trump would submit to the test — modeling appropriate behavior for the public,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza scolded. He cited the president’s CPAC speech, where he had no direct contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. “Sure, it would be done out of an abundance of caution, given that he almost certainly hasn’t been infected. But it would also provide leadership, destigmatizing and demystifying the idea of being tested. It would show that Trump was willing to go above and beyond prescribed conduct for the good of the American people.”

Cillizza added: “The Point: Trump has never understood the moral responsibilities and imperatives of being President. And he doesn’t appear to be starting now.”

So, to summarize: Trump is immoral and failed to destigmatize a non-mysterious test for which people are clamoring and whose limited supply is overwhelmed by enormous public demand.

But if Trump had gotten tested, just imagine the outrage. Cillizza and others would have demanded to know:

Why is Donald Trump wasting precious test kits on himself, while he is asymptomatic? Doesn’t he know that these test kits are extremely scarce, or his he too stupid to understand this? Who the hell does he think he is? This proves, once and for all, that he is a terminal narcissist!

For weeks, these vultures have called Trump’s response lackadaisical.

“What he’s doing is late, too late, anemic,” Pelosi whined. “Hopefully, we can make up for the loss of time.” On February 24, Schumer said Trump was “asleep at the wheel” and had “no plan”.

Perhaps President Trump could have fought this headache harder and sooner if he were not busy battling something that Pelosi, Schumer, and their Democrat comrades concocted all on their own: his impeachment by the House and trial in the Senate. While COVID-19 incubated and expanded, Trump was at least slightly distracted by Democrats’ despicable, futile, and totally failed bid to dislodge him from office. In fact, Trump’s February 6 Senate acquittal came a full week after his Chinese-travel ban.

According to NBC News, “The president doesn’t appear to be taking seriously the threat Americans see to their physical and financial health.”

Trump has failed to take COVID-19 seriously, specifically, through these initiatives: his initial Chinese-travel ban, his original public-health-emergency declaration, his formation of a task force to coordinate these efforts, under the leadership of Vice President Mike Pence; his signature on an $8.5 billion Corona emergency spending bill, meetings with drug companies to speed vaccine development, pressure on the FDA to remove Obama-Biden-era red tape that hinders new-drug production, negotiations with insurance companies to encourage them to offer COVID-19 tests for free (absent co-pays, etc.), and more.

Also, the president addressed the American people from the Oval Office Wednesday night. That’s as serious as a president of the United States can get. He announced a 30-day moratorium on flights from 26 European nations, starting tonight. (The UK and Northern Ireland are exempt.) Centers for Disease Control chief Robert Redfield said: “If you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China.”

Well, now Trump is overreacting. It’s too much. He’s out of control.

“Coronavirus knows no borders but borders are the only thing that President Trump knows with regard to Covid-19,” global-health expert Thomas Bollyky told Vox in an article headlined Coronavirus is already here. Blocking travelers won’t prevent its spread. …

Allowing new cases into America would not be spreading it?

And now that Trump is blocking flights from Austria, France, Germany, Norway and other countries that quite fairly can be called white, does this expose his anti-Caucasian bias? If so, his self-hatred would seem to negate charges of his towering vanity. If not, this suggests that such travel limits are color blind and are a necessary evil when coping with people who, through no fault of their own, carry disease — whether they are Chinese, European, or simply traversing those locations.

It never stops.

Trump haters pummel him with sledgehammers all day, every day, no matter what.

It doesn’t matter.

This reprehensible headline in America’s so-called “Paper of Record” serves as an instruction manual for the enemies of the President of the United States to respond to anything and everything he does or says while battling this national emergency:

“Let’s Call It Trumpvirus.”

So proving the accuracy of Mark Steyn’s description of those “shrieking twerps” on the Left! Having no cause but hatred of President Trump, nothing to say but  “Racist!”, those are the “shriveled parameters” of their discourse.

Is it prudent or stupid to lay in a stock of necessities in a time when shortages are likely? If most of us do it, shortages are ensured. If some of us for that very reason do not, we could find ourselves helplessly regretting it.

Is it prudent or stupid for political leaders to stress the seriousness of the coronavirus epidemic, advise extreme caution (such as not going to the office, working from home), and order the closing down of schools, theaters, sport meetings, swimming-pools, public transport …?

Theodore Dalrymple writes at Law & Liberty:

The first casualty of war is truth. It is also the first casualty of epidemics.

When serious epidemics make their presence felt, a dialectic between complacency and panic is set up in the minds of both the public and the political class. Only after the epidemic is over can a proper assessment of whether too much or too little was done to halt it be made. Since life is lived forward rather than backward, it is only with hindsight that what would have been the right response becomes clear; but if the epidemic has killed a large number of people, recrimination is almost inevitable.

Politicians who have never given a moment’s thought to the science of epidemiology before are suddenly thrust into the roles of expert and prophet, while at the same time having to keep an eye on their ratings in the opinion polls. If they admit their ignorance, they are accused of lack of foresight and leadership; but if they make definite pronouncements they are bound soon to be contradicted by their opponents, if not by the facts themselves. …

Error is not the same as foolishness or wickedness, of course, though in dire situations it is often treated as if it were. The desire then for a scapegoat is almost overwhelming. …

If the epidemic is contained, [President] Trump will claim the credit; if it is not, he will blame others. His opponents will do the same, but the other way round: if the epidemic is contained, they will praise others; if it is not they will blame Mr. Trump.

In the next paragraph, the wise doctor puts the Dem in the panic, showing how the pandemic can be used by the unscrupulous Left to serve its political interest. (We plead guilty to the word play. Frivolity over the virus is not felt or intended.)

There is thus a disturbing grain of truth in the assertion that Democratic politicians would not be altogether sorry to see the epidemic spread, at least spread enough to turn the population against the administration: one extra death might be worth a thousand votes. The desire for power distorts everyone’s scale of values, whichever party they belong to. This, unfortunately, is the human condition, and even the most stringent authoritarianism or dictatorship can only paper over the cracks for a time.

Much is still unknown about the virus and its mode of spread. Even its fatality rate is unknown because many infections may have been without symptoms and therefore not come to the attention of the public health authorities. If this is indeed the case, the fatality rate would be considerably lower than the 2 per cent at present estimated, though it would also indicate that the spread is more difficult to control.

All that can be said for certain is that the old are more at risk than the young, as are those with pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. If a vaccine were developed but was initially in short supply, it is they who should be immunised first; but in any case, it is unlikely that one will be developed quickly enough to affect the course of the epidemic. (Even the need to immunize the old first might be disputed, for more years of human life might be saved by preventing the death of one thirty year-old than by preventing the deaths of five eighty year-olds.)

It is a serious ethical dilemma, about which Mark Steyn writes:

A lady who claims to be “COVID-19 Positive” but has been thrice denied a test argues that restricted testing is intentional and strategic:

The Official Policy of the Trump Administration is Eldercide. They have seen the statistics from China and decided “Well, if grandma & grandpa die that won’t hurt the economy.” Make no mistake, these people don’t believe the Government should do anything.

I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next chap, and I’m willing to entertain the proposition that COVID-19 is Deep State payback or Politburo bio-warfare retaliation for the Trump trade war or all kinds of other things. But the above theory makes no sense. If “Eldercide” is anybody’s strategic goal, it’s surely the left’s: Their position is that it’s the geezer vote that provided the margin of victory for Trump and Brexit and everything else they revile, but that this is a last gasp of a xenophobic homophobic Islamophobic transphobic gerontocracy and as soon as the old coots are six feet under the triumph of the new utopia is inevitable.

If that’s the case, why would Trump kill off the only demographic keeping him in business?

To return to Theodore Dalrymple – he says:

As in the Cold War, we now talk of containment rather than of eradication. Early hopes that the United States might be spared the epidemic have proved what they always were, illusory. It is not only goods that are globalised.

For the moment, containment relies on case-finding, contact-tracing, and isolation or quarantine. In essence we are employing the methods used during the Black Death of 1347-1349. (They were unsuccessful in the Black Death, which killed a third to one half of the population of Europe, because, unknown at the time, the disease was carried mainly by a non-human vector.) Those who have symptoms of the disease, and those who have been in contact with them, are asked to isolate themselves for two weeks, until they are no longer—according to current ideas—infectious to others. Large gatherings are to be cancelled or postponed, as during the Black Death, and people are advised to travel as little as possible, especially by public transport, where the possibility of contagion is high. In the fourteenth century, walls were washed with vinegar and fumigated with burning herbs; we are told to wash our hands often and not to touch our own eyes or mouths, though how far this is actually effective in preventing spread to oneself is unknown. Sometimes it is necessary to go beyond the evidence.

It is hardly surprising that such advice—no doubt good—should lead to panic buying in supermarkets. Staying home as much as possible is the best way of avoiding contracting the disease even if one knows no one who has it, and more people than ever can continue to work from home. But of course, staying at home requires considerable stocking up of food and other necessities. Stocks of goods in supermarkets without re-supply are notoriously sufficient only for a few days even in times of normal buying. At the first sign of panic, it was obvious that the shelves would soon empty, which could only increase the initial panic. …

Is this prudence or stupidity? … [Most people do not] refuse to leave their homes because of the chance of a road accident. … [But] while it is perfectly possible that the numbers of deaths from coronavirus will grow at a rapid exponential rate, it is unlikely, to say the least, that the rate of death from road accidents … will do likewise. …

Epidemics do not go on for ever, and by the time this epidemic is over it is likely that, by the standards of the catastrophic Spanish flu of 1918-19, it will prove to have been relatively minor. It is always possible, however, that the next epidemic of a novel virus will be worse, so that the dialectic of complacency and panic will continue. …

The epidemic might well have effects far beyond any that its death rate could account for. The world has suddenly woken up to the dangers of allowing China to be the workshop of the world and of relying on it as the ultimate source for supply chains for almost everything, from cars to medicines, from computers to telephones. No doubt normal service will soon resume once the epidemic is over, even if at a lower level, but at the very least supply chains should be diversified politically and perhaps geographically; dependence on a single country is to industry what dependence on monoculture is to agriculture. And just as the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of, so countries may have strategic reasons that economic reasons know not of.

Which  is to say the prudent country grows its own food and makes its own weapons and medicines, regardless of the economic case for international division of labor.