The New York Times, The President, And Coronavirus

A friend of mine forwarded to me a recent article from the New York Times detailing at great length all the warning signs about the coronavirus threat that Mr. Trump supposedly ignored or minimized, resulting in inaction that led to our present crisis. Let's set the record straight.

 

News about this strange virus in Wuhan began emerging in December and early January. While news of the virus was building up what was preoccupying the complete attention of congress, and inevitably to some extent the President? An impeachment trial which was carried on from January 16 to February 6, an exercise which Speaker Pelosi, and everyone else, understood to be pointless given the makeup of the Senate.

Despite this, was the President distracted enough to ignore the virus as his enemies contend? Well, on January 31, while the trial was ongoing, he imposed a ban on all flights from China, a dramatic decision at the time, which was criticized as being unnecessary  by the World Health Organization, and which Joe Biden, and for that matter Bernie Sanders, labeled as hysterical and xenophobic.  Shortly thereafter came the same condemnation from the clairvoyant New York Times and the Washington Post as well as all the anti-Trump TV networks.

By this time in late January Mr. Trump had already formed and met regularly with a Task Force to evaluate and advise about the matter, which included as members Dr. Fauci and later Dr. Brix as well as his other health and economic advisors.

 

What were they advising? Well on February 17 Dr. Fauci, in an interview with USA Today, stated that the risk of coronavirus in the U.S. was miniscule and that we should worry more about influenza. He advised that we definitely should not be avoiding Chinese restaurants because of excessive concern. I saw him being interviewed only yesterday on the Jesse Watters show, and when asked about his statements, he explained that this was based on the erroneous information he had about the transmissibility of the virus. Really Dr. Fauci? On February 17, more than 2 weeks after the Chinese flight ban. Don't get me wrong. I admire Dr. Fauci's expertise and integrity as much as anyone else, but I point this out to demonstrate how difficult potential events were to predict, even for an epidemiology expert.

But Dr. Fauci wasn't the only one. On February 24, Nancy Pelosi made a publicity tour of the San Francisco Chinatown, particularly to calm the concerns of the local business owners. During the event she said that there was no reason for tourists or locals to be staying away from the area out of fear over coronavirus concerns and even implied that to do so was racist.

The President went on to ban all travel from Europe on March 12 and then announced the federal guidelines on social distancing shutting down the country on March 16. Showboat Jim Acosta looked in the retrospectoscope and asked in one of the press conferences how many less people would have died if he had put the guidelines in place 2 weeks earlier. That would have been when there was a total of 5 deaths in the country, and incidentally 573 deaths from influenza.

 

The decision to close schools, non-essential businesses, concerts, sports events, social gatherings, church services was courageous and painful. As we all understand, millions lost their jobs, most especially the little guys, the waitresses, hair stylists and assembly line workers that the political allies of the New York Times claim to represent. How many 40 somethings who put their savings in hock and went into debt to open a new business have seen everything disappear in a flash. And the trillions that congress has appropriated does not come from some mysterious government money tree.

Yes, the President was happy with the economic surge that came on with his administration. Could there be any President who would not be? But give him some credit for his concern for our country's welfare and his reluctance to put our citizens through this trial. I say thank heavens he's where he is. Would Joe Biden have had the energy and managerial ability to oversee all the medical, economic, logistical, foreign policy and political aspects of this crisis?

 

I'm a pretty even-tempered guy but this New York Times article makes me angry. For 3 years the President's enemies have subjected him to every harassment they can conceive of. Fair enough, that's politics although pretty darn intense. But the ongoing attempt to undermine his every word and action during this national crisis, which affects every race and gender, Democrat and Republican, is not right. It even leaves me with the feeling that some critics would like to see things go bad just to turn people against him and defeat him in the coming election. I hope not. But then didn't so-called comedian Bill Maher say that he hoped we would have a depression so we could get rid of Trump.

 

Well Bill. Here's your depression. How do you like it?

 

 

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The Strange Case Of The Coronavirus Around The World

Something very strange is going on with the coronavirus epidemiology picture. I watch Drs. Fauci and Birx every day and, although they certainly have great expertise and integrity, I'm starting to think that their almost exclusive emphasis on mitigation is missing something. It's not that I necessarily think their recommendations are wrong, although it must be admitted that they are causing great economic havoc and suffering. They appear to be necessary, less to save lives than to prevent an overwhelming of the health care system. But it looks to me like there's got to be more to the story of this epidemic.

 

What started me thinking was my happening to come upon the article by Victor Davis Hanson that I posted recently. Written in late March, it deals the question of the great disparity in the effects of the virus between California, as well as other west coast states, and New York, which has 40% of the country's cases. VDH points out that by any measure, California should be the largest hot spot in the country. The good doctors Fauci and Birx attribute the good results in California to their efforts at mitigation, but I don't believe it. Governor Newsome in California announced a state lockdown on March 23. Governor Cuomo in New York started theirs on March 20 and by March 23 NYC was a "ghost town" with the remarkable photos of empty streets.

 

Then I happened to see a post by one of my more liberal friends where it was pointed out that New Zealand had only a single death (at this point it is up to 4) implying a deficiency in the U.S. efforts. The commenter attributed New Zealand's good fortune to aggressive mitigation efforts and widespread testing. But when I checked it out it wasn't true. New Zealand in fact was rather late to the game, starting aggressive mitigation on March 25, and with limited viral testing early on due to a deficiency of testing kits. Drive through testing started on 3/21, is limited to those with symptoms and with considerable variability in different parts of the country.

I talked to my cousin who lives in Sydney Australia last night, and their situation, on a larger scale, is similar to New Zealand. Out of a population of 24 million they have at this point 53 coronavirus deaths, many of them coming from a single infected cruise ship,  even though they did not start mitigation efforts until March 25 and testing was delayed due to lack of test kits and limited to those only with respiratory  symptoms accompanied by fever.

 

China is much closer to these countries than to the U.S. Both have large  Chinese populations, especially Australia, with a tremendous amount of travel between the countries, especially between 12/19 and 2/20 for the Chinese New Year. One would expect a high infection and death rate.

So I thought to look at other East Asian countries, closer still to China. Japan is interesting. It's a country with 126 million population of particularly high density. In the densest areas of Tokyo population is 22 thousand/sq km while the densest areas of NYC is 28 thousand/sq km. Although the Japanese people were being cautious and wearing masks, etc. fairly early on, and schools were closed in late February, Prime Minister Abe was concerned about the economy and did not impose general mitigation measures until April 7, long after it started in the U.S. Viral testing is now being ramped up, but until very recently was very limited, being done only for vulnerable persons.

 

Other East Asian countries are similar. Taiwan did take the illness seriously, started screening of travelers and follow up of contacts, but did not ban flights from China until about the same time as the U.S. did. Their screening was pretty much just extensive temperature taking, rather than actual viral testing, leaving the large loads of asymptomatic carriers undetected. In Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea the situation has been the same, even allowing entertainment venues like bars and mahjong parlors to continue operation until the past few days. And how can you account for the fact that millions of Chinese left Wuhan before it was shut down, before China reported the virus, many of them one would presume were showing no signs of any illness.

So then, what is the death toll in these countries. In Japan 93, Taiwan 6, S. Korea 211, Singapore 8, and Hong Kong, which is contiguous with mainland China with a population of 7.5 million and one of the highest population densities in the world, 5.

 

So, to my mind the reason for these gross incongruities in the impact of this virus in different geographic areas is mysterious. From what I could find, a difference in the carrying out of public health measures is not a satisfactory explanation. Somebody help me!

 

 

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The Coronavirus and How We Communicate

Everything is shut down but the one thing we continue to have plenty of is online communication. I think we should, for a while at least, forget the politics and use that ability to keep each other informed about their personal status and what's going on in their local community. Clearly, we want government agencies to do their best but it's up to the individual people to let each other know if they're having problems, give assistance and solutions that they've found for themselves. Americans have been through much worse than this, but these days we have the advantage of widespread communication to help. Let's use it positively.

That goes for the news media as well. They've got to be broadcasting helpful stuff, like who's being hurt financially and ways we can help, where we can get services, and especially virus testing. Testing is supposed to be coming online, but I still don't know the details of where to get it done and how to go about it. Pretty clearly the government leaders and agencies are going all out to do what is needed, so if the news media have something to say let it be in the way of positive suggestions and stop the blame game. There'll be plenty of time for that after the crisis is over.

 

 

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Government Regulation and Coronavirus Testing.

For those of you who call for the current administration to get out of the way and let the scientists handle the coronavirus problem, let's clarify things.

As I (and obviously many others far more knowledgeable than I) have been bitching about for some time, widespread testing to determine who has and doesn't have the virus is a big key to making appropriate public health measures and the delay of large-scale testing was frustrating.

South Korea, which first had the largest outbreak outside China, and was initially slow to respond, got smart and initiated drive through testing early on. They additionally took serious but voluntary "social distancing" actions such as we are now doing, and they are now experiencing a drop in cases and I hear are going back to work.

President Trump's administration over the past 2 weeks has been meeting with a large team of key private medical and non-medical businesses to put together a public private partnership to ramp up testing and we should see the effects of that this week. I watched the press conference about this yesterday and their work in addressing the logistical problems that were involved was truly impressive.

The genome for this virus was put out by the Chinese in early January. Once this was available the ability to devise an accurate test should have been a matter of days. But the CDC, staffed by the government scientists who critics contend we are to rely on for leadership, had regulations. They, not commercial labs who do this for a living, were to first devise the test, be its sole source and then test its validity. In fact, their initial test ran into big problems with false positives. It was not until 6 weeks after the genome was available, in late February, that the regulations were called off, to allow commercial and state labs to run with it.

So, this week we'll see how the plan to ramp up testing works out in actual practice. From what I saw at the press conference yesterday, I'd be surprised if it doesn't come off as planned. And, by the way, in response to those who scoffed at the idea of putting V.P. Pence in charge of this issue, I think he seems to be doing a masterful job.

 

 

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Who is to Blame for the Ukrainian Plane Disaster

We see on the news today that thousands of Iranian citizens, at some considerable personal risk,  are protesting the recent shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane by their own military. They apparently see their own leaders as the problem, blaming them for their decades long fomenting of terror and aggression and for wasting their precious resources on such activities and they are calling for the downfall of their present government. Here's a quote from one news article I saw: "They are lying that our enemy is America, our enemy is right here," one group of protesters chanted outside a university in Tehran, according to video posted on Twitter.

 

American liberals are blaming Mr. Trump. Their explanation is that by killing the terrorist leader Soleimani, who was responsible for the death of thousands, including hundreds of our own soldiers,  the President upset the Iranian leaders causing them to send missiles our way, including the errant one that hit the plane.

 

Who has a better handle on the actual cause of the situation?

 

 

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My Idea of Jesus's Birth. The Stable and the Manger.

Here's an aspect to the Jesus birth story that I thought was interesting.

According to biblical scholars Jesus was indeed born in Bethlehem and that Mary and Joseph were there visiting. But rather than an inn, where observant Jews would not stay, they were likely housed in a private home, presumably with friends or relatives. But were they unceremoniously sent out to the barnyard? That's how we tend to interpret it in modern times, but actually the situation seems to be that since the house was crowded, probably from other visitors, they were put up in the lower level where some of the household animals were kept. To us it seems strange, but to a society which was 90% agrarian, and in which farm animals were very valuable, keeping them in the house was ordinary and routine.

It's not so strange to me either, and here's why. The house pictured on my home page is very special to me because it is the ages old stone house on a plot of farmland where my father told me he was born in Palazzo, a little town in the plain below the breathtakingly beautiful city of Assisi. He was brought to Scranton by his father in 1906 at age 18 months, and finally went back for a visit in the 1970's to see his cousin who was still living there. He visited the old house which was then occupied by a tenant farmer who evidently was still using oxen to plow the fields since he showed me pictures of the animals, sure enough on the ground floor, what the Italians call pianterreno. The family lived on the upstairs level. My dad told me there was no heat in the house, the climate being something like Northern California, but the animals gave off a lot of heat which rose upward in the cooler months.

I finally got to visit the house in the early 1990's. At that point it was unoccupied since it had been damaged in an earthquake, and I didn't try going upstairs but I did open the door, which was a little off kilter, to look around the pianterreno. It was empty, stone plastered walls, and sure enough, along one wall, the feeding trough, or if you'd like, the manger. So, in a pinch, to people of that time, being put up in a room downstairs, near the animals, wouldn't seem so strange.

So this place, now completely boarded up, which still chokes me up to visit, gives me a bit of an idea of what the scene might have been like in the countryside around Bethlehem, 2 millennia ago, when the one we celebrate today was born.

 

 

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The Great Impeachment Show

I hate to give any attention at all to the impeachment fiasco, but I can't help myself. The actual articles of impeachment that the Democrats have come up with are so contrived and inconsequential as to reveal the true nature of what is going on, namely that they are driven to distraction and so desperate that they will grasp at any straw to make themselves feel better. That fact that their efforts are certain to fail in the senate has not deterred them. It's likely that another motivation is that they have felt that they will blemish the President enough to make him fail in the pending election, particularly since none of the Democrat candidates that are presently offering themselves seem likely to do it. The public response to their efforts so far seems to be having the opposite effect.

 

Mr. Trump's personal qualities grate on their nerves, as to be sure they do on some of the Republicans, most especially the small group of never-Trumper "conservatives" who find themselves being replaced as the philosophical spokespersons of the party. But his real crime is his success, not only in being chosen over a very substantial group of establishment Republican candidates and then, against all predictions and assumptions, over Mrs. Clinton, but in also his ability to articulate and carry through his policies.

 

The whole affair is obvious fakery. From the moment of his inauguration there were calls for impeachment, and since then a variety of justifications have been put forth to remove him before fulfilling his first term. Appeals to the 25^th amendment, the emoluments clause, the 2-year Russia investigation have all failed. In 2016, however, the new Democrat controlled House seized its opportunity and have relentlessly investigated, seemingly to the exclusion of all other activities, to come up with something that would fill the bill. The result is totally unconvincing to anyone who is not hopelessly biased and likely would not pass muster even if the Senate was not Republican controlled. I suspect that the ultimate political result will be for the Democrats the same thing the Republicans suffered after their failed impeachment of Bill Clinton over lying to a grand jury about his sexual peccadillos.

 

Ms. Pelosi has cautioned her followers not to gloat or appear jubilant. Accordingly, the Dems are wearing long faces, black clothing and announcing that they feel sober and solemn, another indication of subterfuge since they are no doubt gleeful and high fiving in private. In this I agree with them that there is a sadness to the occasion. The body of the elected representatives of the people of this great republic, whose duty is to debate and legislate over matters that concern us, has become a circus show. We can only hope that eventually they will be chastened enough from their actions that the show will not now be repeated in each successive administration.

 

 

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