On March 31, 2020 – last Tuesday – New York state was declared to be “the coronavirus epicenter of the world” with 75,795 cases.

A report today – Sunday, April 5, 2020 – provides this information:

As of midday Sunday, there have been more than 122,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus discovered in New York, including more than 67,500 in New York City. At least 4,159 people with COVID-19 have died in the state, which has the largest number — around 40 percent — of confirmed cases in the U.S.

Nationwide, more than 311,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories. At least 8,400 people have died from the virus in the country, where 9 states have confirmed more than 10,000 cases. COVID-19 has killed more than 66,000 worldwide.

New York City is the Wuhan of America. How did that come about?

Daniel Greenfield explains how at Front Page.

He writes:

The coronavirus outbreak has exploded in New York City. And everyone has gone all in on the cover-up. The inept De Blasio administration, which didn’t bother ordering protective equipment until March, when it was still assuring New Yorkers that there was nothing to worry about, has been blaming Trump.

This is what happened:

Last year, New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot was warning that “even brief contact with the police or indirect exposure is associated with lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health”….

From such contact you can catch Police Officer Disease, a special variant of Racism, the dreaded White Death.

Why was New York City so badly unprepared for the arrival of the coronavirus? The answer was radical politics. And Barbot …[embodies] the public health mismanagement of a radical administration.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, the disgraced figure at the center of the city’s coronavirus meltdown, had graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1991. She had worked as a pediatrician, before being selected as the Medical Director for the Office of School Health in New York in 2003. Her qualification for the job was unclear and her bio doesn’t list any administrative degrees.

In 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake chose Barbot as Baltimore’s health commissioner. Blake would later become infamous for announcing that she had given the city’s race rioters “space to destroy”.

The city’s murder rate has continued hitting new highs since.

A few years later, Barbot came back to New York City and began working her way up through the Department of Health. When she was named Health Commissioner last year, the big news was that the city had its “first Latina commissioner” who had come out the Bronx housing projects.

That’s what counted. Her race. Not her competence. Not her record.

Barbot succeeded Mary T. Bassett: a 17-year veteran of the University of Zimbabwe. Bassett had launched the Center for Health Equity and spent her time warning of the public health threat from racism in talks, Why Your Doctor Should Care About Social Justice, articles, How Does Racism Affect Your Health, and research papers, Uprooting Institutionalized Racism as Public Health Practice.

As Health Commissioner, Barbot’s bio boasted that “she uses a racial equity lens” and credited her with “spearheading the creation of the Center for Health Equity which operationalizes the Department’s commitment to racial justice”.

As the coronavirus bore down on New York City, Barbot and the Health Department were busy operationalizing social justice while remaining oblivious to the scientific realities of the pandemic.

The department’s focus on health equity required it to discourage recent arrivals from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine or avoiding large public gatherings like the Lunar New Year celebrations.

“We are very clear: We wish New Yorkers a Happy Lunar New Year and we encourage people to spend time with their families and go about their celebration,” Barbot insisted.

A week later, Barbot appeared at a press event promoting Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.

“As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus,” she insisted.

By then there had already been over 17,000 cases of the Wuhan Virus in China with nearly 3,000 new cases in one day. For the first time, someone outside Mainland China had died of the disease.

Manhattan’s Chinatown, where Barbot had appeared, is one of the densest parts of the city. The old core community where the Lunar New Year celebration is based is a maze of cramped tenements, narrow streets, tiny stores whose counters extend far into the street, and other unsafe conditions.

Barbot went on urging people to participate in the parade while spreading misinformation about the risk. “You won’t get it merely from riding the subways – you get it from secretions,” she even claimed.

The commissioner went on with the happy talk in March.

After the first coronavirus case in the city, she claimed that “disease detectives” would prevent the spread of the coronavirus and that New Yorkers were “at low risk”.

“As we confront this emerging outbreak, we need to separate facts from fear, and guard against stigma and panic,” Commissioner Barbot signed off: warning that the real enemy was prejudice.

“There’s no indication that being in a car, being in the subways with someone who’s potentially sick is a risk factor,” she told New Yorkers.

Four days later, she finally admitted, “It’s not just prolonged household contact as we initially thought. We have evidence that there are other types of interactions that can occur that can transmit the virus.”

Barbot and her boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, had been spreading dangerous nonsense with no scientific basis. When asked about some of her claims at a press conference, she said, “This is a novel virus that we’re still learning a lot about.”

That was better than Bill de Blasio who, when asked how Barbot’s Department of Health had decided that the virus dies quickly in the air, rambled, “All information is valuable, but the information that we’re gleaning from our own direct experience is the most valuable to us.”

Had New York City’s health authorities lost their minds? Not exactly. They had enveloped their medical decisions in a fog of identity politics pseudoscience which had redefined medicine around equity.

That was Barbot’s real job. The obsession with equity in everything had been the signature of the entire De Blasio administration. Just as Marxists had used class as the master theory explaining all the problems of human history, radicals in this country had redefined racism as the explanation for all ills.

To Barbot and De Blasio, the coronavirus wasn’t the real threat, racism was. Their job was to suppress overreaction to the coronavirus by persuading New Yorkers that there was no real risk of contagion.

The actual science, objective research, was irrelevant compared to the city’s own truths about racism. …

New York City’s Health Department had already medicalized this approach with HIV. Last year, the Health Department was back to running ads encouraging sex with HIV positive people. …

The difference with coronavirus was how quickly the risk of a disease outbreak turned into the reality.

New York City’s politicized government had inhabited its own bubble in which filling the streets with criminals, protecting terrorists and illegal aliens, or encouraging unsafe sex, was ideologically correct. …

But the coronavirus crisis did not work that way. …

By the time reality, in the form of angry editorials, state action, local protests, intruded, it was too late.

Identity politics lied. New Yorkers died.

While President Trump bears the heavy responsibility of dealing with a pandemic – and doing so very competently – the Democrats whinge and carp at every step he takes and sneer at him for everything he says. All their efforts are made with the object of obstructing and discrediting him. They don’t give a toss for the people they ache to govern.

In an article at Front Page titled America’s Superb Unappreciated President, John Perazzo writes:

The coordinated campaign of premeditated lies and smears that the Democrats and their media mouthpieces have been waging against President Trump ever since the word “coronavirus” first entered the American people’s consciousness, has been obscene. But there is something else that also needs to be addressed. Have you noticed that even now — after the life-and-death dangers inherent in the Democrats’ open-borders, catch-and-release immigration policies have been thoroughly laid bare by the current crisis — Democrats in public office have been utterly silent about those dangers? Have you noticed that they have not ventured even to speculate that perhaps President Trump’s pre-coronavirus warnings about the need to regulate our nation’s borders were well-founded and had absolutely nothing to do with racism?

This is because the Democrat narrative never changes in any significant way. It merely makes minor adjustments for the sake of political expediency. So because right now it would be politically inconvenient to link racism to the type of border security that is very obviously a matter of life-and-death for many Americans, the Democrats have simply found a new way of framing their “racism” charade. Thus have we heard one Democrat after another intone their latest mantra-of-the-moment: the notion that Trump’s use of the term “China [he says ‘Chinese’] virus” is damnable proof of his “racism”.

The Democratic Party has devolved into something quite diabolical. Its very considerable energies are now spent on little more than a constant stream of frenzied efforts to cover their political foes in rhetorical bird droppings. Aside from that, the party has nothing to offer the American people.

And Victor Davis Hanson writes at American Greatness:

Trump once enraged liberal sensibilities by issuing travel bans against countries in the Middle East, Iran, Nigeria, and North Korea as they could not be trusted to audit their own departing citizens. His notion that nations have clearly defined and enforced borders was antithetical to the new norms that open borders and sanctuary cities were part of the global village of the 21st century.

Trump certainly distrusted globalization. He has waged a veritable multifront war against the overreach of transnational organizations, whether that be the European Union or the various agencies of the United Nations. Even relatively uncontroversial steps, such as greenlighting experimental drugs and off-label uses of old medicines for terminal patients drew the ire of federal bureaucrats and medical schools as potentially dangerous or irrelevant in cost-benefit analyses.

Yet since the outbreak of the virus, Trump’s idiosyncratic sixth sense has come in handy. The country is united in its furor at China—even if it is giving no credit to Trump for being years ahead of where it is now.

No longer is there a national debate over the evils of “protectionism” and “nationalism”, but rather over how quickly and effectively can the U.S. return the manufacturing of key medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, strategically vital technologies, and rare earth metals to American shores. Offshoring and outsourcing are now more likely synonymous with tragedy than smart investment strategies. …

When Trump issued the key January 31 travel ban that suddenly stopped the arrival of 15,000 visitors per day to the United States from China, the Left was as outraged as it had been with the ban against Libya, North Korea, and Iran. Candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders saw an opening against their presumed 2020 opponent, and quickly sought to demagogue voters with “here-we-go-again” rhetoric that racist Trump is banning free travel of a marginalized people in his habitual “xenophobic” and “racist” fits. …

How odd that no prior critical major newspaper, network, or politician has now called for the end of such unnecessary and hurtful bans and the resumption of travel from China without further interruption …

We are learning, belatedly, that Trump was also rightly wary of transnationalism. The World Health Organization in the early weeks of the outbreak was mostly a paid-for Chinese megaphone. Its functionary director propagandized, on Chinese prompts, that the virus was likely not transmissible from human to human and that travel bans were ineffective and thus reflective of Trump’s repugnant views.

Americans were startled at how quickly the brotherhood of the European Union collapsed. Within days, individual countries were ignoring the Schengen open-borders rules and reinvented themselves as nations. None were eager to welcome in their neighbors. Few were willing to share medical supplies and key pharmaceuticals across ancient boundaries. …

The quite diverse manner in which Germany and Italy respectively reacted to the virus showed very little European commonality, but reflected that both were unique cultures and societies as they had been for centuries. …

Here at home, under the present lockdown conditions, Americans worry about finding their needed but long-ago outsourced prescriptions and medical supplies, but they are not so fearful of running out of food or fuel for their vehicles and heat for their homes. Was it good then to have demanded expansions of native gas and oil production, to have supported pipeline construction and more fracking and horizontal drilling? Was it in retrospect wise or foolish to have tried vehemently to stop California authorities from releasing precious state and federal reservoir water out to sea thereby shorting the irrigation contracts of the nation’s most important food producer?

At such times as these, was it smarter to trust in bureaucracies like the CDC to issue test kits or to encourage private enterprise to step forward and become creative producers?

… as President Trump has done.

Could counties and states adapt better to the local and regional differences of the virus’s manifestations than a monolithic federal government?

President Trump believes counties and states can adapt better to local needs.

[The president’s] suspicions about China and globalization, his distrust of bureaucratic regulations, his support for domestic production of key industries, his promotion of the interests of farmers and frackers, and his vehement opposition to increased gun control, all reflect a world view of national and self-independence, in which Americans can only count on themselves and their fellow citizens.

He has been right all along.

Yet still half the nation fails to appreciate that he is a superb president.

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.

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.

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”:

https://youtu.be/FmMKjHyn410

 

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.

It becomes obvious that governments unaccountable to the people are dangerous to the whole world when they cannot control and contain a viral epidemic. Countries and continents  are now too interconnected, people travel far too much for an infection not to spread rapidly everywhere. In our time, such governments are intolerable to the entire human race.

We are pointing an accusing finger at China, of course. But it is not only China and the other Communist countries whose governments are not accountable to the people and can all too easily spread disease and death.

To a lesser extent, but still dangerously, the Deep State, or the Administrative State, or the Swamp (aren’t they really the same thing?) of the United States does it too.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

The decision to fly back infected American passengers from the Diamond Princess … helped spread the virus inside the United States.

President Trump had been told that nobody with the coronavirus would be flown to America.

The State Department decided to do it anyway without telling him and only made the announcement shortly after the planes landed in the United States.

According to the Washington Post, as unfriendly an outlet to the administration as there is, “Trump has since had several calls with top White House officials to say he should have been told, that it should have been his decision and that he did not agree with the decision that was made.”

Who in the State Department actually made the decision? That’s a very good question.

According to a State Department briefing, the missions were carried out by the Directorate of Operational Medicine within the Bureau of Medical Services. You might think that sounds like it would be part of HHS or NIH, but the Bureau of Medical Services is actually an arm of the State Department.

The State Department is notoriously an extra noxious region of the Swamp.

The Directorate of Operational Medicine is a part of the Bureau assigned to deal with crisis response with a $250 million portfolio and a lot of employees that almost no one outside D.C. ever heard of. At least unless you remember an event at which Barack Obama honored Dr. William Walters, the head of the Directorate, for evacuating Ebola patients to the United States.

“Now, remember, the decision to move Kent back to the United States was controversial.  Some worried about bringing the disease to our shores.  But what folks like William knew was that we had to make the decisions based not on fear, but on science,” Obama said.

By “some”, Obama meant, among others, Trump, who had been a strong critic of the move.

Despite Obama’s end-zone dance, the State Department had badly botched the Ebola evacuations.

Under Bush, the CDC had prepped an evacuation aircraft for flying out contagious Americans. The Obama administration shelved the gear because of the cost, and then failed to make use of it. The evacuation process led to the same infighting between the State Department and the CDC as now.

Dr. William Walters is still on duty. In 2017, Walters was boasting of prepping more Ebola evacuations even over President Trump’s opposition to the practice. And he was once again at the wheel now.

“The question was simply this: Are these evacuees?” Walters explained the decision to evacuate coronavirus patients to the United States. “And do we follow our protocol? And the answer to that was yes on both accounts.”

Consulting President Trump was not part of the protocol even on a major national security issue.

In a Congressional briefing, Walters boasted that, “the Department executed the largest non-military evacuation of U.S. citizens in its history. The safe and efficient evacuation of 1,174 people from Wuhan, China and people onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan is a testament to the agility, proficiency, and dedication of our workforce to accomplishing our core mission – advancing the interests of the American people.”

And the triumph of the administrative state and its bureaucratic protocols over the President.

At a State Department briefing, Walters stated that, “The chief of mission, right, through the U.S. embassy, is ultimately the head of all executive branch activities.”

That is the problem. Right there.

Walters got his job in 2011. He’s a relic of the Obama era. That doesn’t mean that his politics are those of his former boss. But this is not about him. It’s about the reality that the White House doesn’t make many of the most vital decisions and doesn’t even know that they’re being made until it’s too late.

And what that means, beyond the politics of the moment, is that the people don’t decide.

You can vote one way or another and the real decisions that matter will still be made by the head of a directorate that is a subsection of a bureau that you never heard of, but that has a budget in the hundreds of millions, a small army as its disposal, and will follow whatever the protocol is.

This is how the country is really run. And that’s the problem.

The underlying problem with our government is that it’s too big to control. Voting in an election or even sitting in the Oval Office doesn’t mean you’re in charge. The problem goes beyond the current obsession with the Deep State. The real issue has always been the Deep Industry or the administrative state.

If the coronavirus becomes a critical problem in this country, the blame will go back to an obscure arm of the State Department, but it will never be placed there. Whatever happens a year from now, no one outside a small professional class will have ever heard of the Directorate of Operational Medicine.

The media will spend all its time bashing President Trump, Pence, assorted cabinet members, and perhaps the CDC, without ever drilling down to the facts, even though it has them at hand. The media’s rule of thumb is that natural disasters and disease outbreaks are always successfully managed by Democrats and mismanaged by Republicans. Katrina and Maria were disasters, but Sandy was a success story. The coronavirus is a catastrophe, but the Ebola virus was brilliantly handed by smart people who are handling the coronavirus response. But it’s different because the guy in the White House is.

The truth is that all of these were mismanaged by the same agencies, many of the same people, and by a government infrastructure that excels at drawing up big budget proposals, but is inept at solving problems when they actually emerge, and just follow whatever protocols will cover its collective asses.

All the rest is a matter of the uncontrollable, the innate qualities of the storm or the disease, and the story that the media chooses to tell about the disaster in the service of its political agenda.

Even during the dying days of impeachment, the media was forced to realize that there was more interest in the coronavirus than there was in its attacks on Trump. The unfortunate decision to evacuate infected people to this country, against President Trump’s explicit wishes, provided the media with the opportunity to combine its attacks on Trump with the coverage of the coronavirus for ratings gold.

And if the stock market goes on falling, and the economy declines, it can even pull off a narrative coup.

Just as after Katrina and Maria, watch for the outpouring of lies, the claims that New Orleans had reverted to cannibalism and that everyone in Puerto Rico was dead, will be matched and exceeded.

There will be a cure for the coronavirus. But there’s no cure for the spread of viral fake news.

There is however a cure for the decisions that led to a coronavirus problem in the United States.

It’s called the Constitution.

America was meant to have a small government under the control of the people, not the bureaucrats. The real disease is bigger than the coronavirus. It’s a fatal illness called big government. Unlike the coronavirus, it has a total mortality rate. No society that has succumbed to it has ever survived.

*

Our Facebook abstract of a Teaparty article:

The common influenza viruses have symptoms worse than those of the coronavirus and a much higher mortality rate. When are people going to wake up and stop buying into the propaganda about the dangerousness of the coronavirus being spread by the irresponsible leftist media which are literally looking to cause widespread chaos? A world in chaos is the only way the Left’s globalist agenda will come to fruition and here we are accepting it. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that just because a virus has an official name does not mean it is cause for mass panic and chaos.

The war in Afghanistan, launched on October 7, 2001, may be over.

The reason for it was to punish the Islamic terrorist organizations which had plotted and assisted the attack on the US a month earlier on September 11.

AP reports:

The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants on Saturday [today, February 29, 2020] aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan and allowing U.S. troops to return home from America’s longest war.

Under the agreement, the U.S. would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next 3-4 months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. …

President George W. Bush ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. …

It only took a few months [for “the coalition” in theory, which is to say the US in practice – ed] to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaida militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan …

At which point victory was declared and American soldiers were brought home …  Wasn’t it? Weren’t they? No. Why not?

The war dragged on for years as the United States tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world.

Yes, the US under the leadership of President George W. Bush went on pouring blood and treasure into that benighted country to make it “a stable, functioning state”. And under the followship of Barack Obama (follow he did, not only after Bush as president but by “leading from behind” as he put it) the US military were turned into a charitable organization, forbidden to shoot unless shot at, and compelled to build schools and clinics for the pitiable “undeveloped” Afghans.

So then what happened?

The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The U.S. spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. [Wrong choice of word, “indelibly”, AP. “Irredeemably” would be better – ed] …

How has the end been brought about? Has the Taliban been defeated?

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office, but did not sign the agreement.

It seems the Secretary of State was reluctant to sign the “agreement”. The signature on it, for the United States, does not carry much authority.

Instead, it was signed by U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Addressing reporters after the signing ceremony, Pompeo said the U.S. is “realistic” about the peace deal it signed, but is “seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation”.

He said he was still angry about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and that the U.S. will not ”squander” what its soldiers “have won through blood, sweat and tears”. He said the U.S. will do whatever is necessary for its security if the Taliban do not comply with the agreement.

Pompeo had privately told a conference of U.S. ambassadors at the State Department this week that he was going only because President Donald Trump had insisted on his participation, according to two people present.

The Taliban believe they have won the war. Are they wrong?

Dozens of Taliban members had earlier held a small victory march in Qatar in which they waved the militant group’s white flags, according to a video shared on Taliban websites. “Today is the day of victory, which has come with the help of Allah,” said Abbas Stanikzai, one of the Taliban’s lead negotiators, who joined the march. …

Last September, on short notice, [President Trump] called off what was to be a signing ceremony with the Taliban at Camp David after a series of new Taliban attacks. But he has since been supportive of the talks led by his special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Under the agreement, the Taliban promise …

… the Taliban promise! …

… not to let extremists use the country as a staging ground for attacking the U.S. or its allies. But U.S. officials are loath to trust the Taliban to fulfill their obligations.

At least they are “loath to trust” the savage terrorist organization.

What will they do when the Taliban break their promise?

We expect President Trump to devise the most effective response. He has made it known that he’s reluctant to have the US engage in foreign wars that don’t directly affect US interests.

Perhaps Americans will never again have to fight a “savage war of peace”.  Or at least not in the next four years. 

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the Taj Mahal