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March 2020

Sydney M. Williams:“Corona Virus and the Economy”

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

What impact Covid-19 will have on the global economy no one now knows, but at least two things seem clear and will have consequences, both of which have been instrumental in keeping inflation at bay. First, the benefits of globalization and, second, the process of “just-in-time” inventory. Both bear risks.

The concept of free trade is a search for an ideal, not unlike King Arthur’s Knights’ quest for the Holy Grail. However, the reality of free trade can never be. Yet the closer we get the better all are served. Free trade is based on the concept of division of labor, popularized by Adam Smith, of labor costs, and by the availability of natural resources and of the means of shipping resources and finished goods. Theoretically, each nation should manufacture for consumption and export that which it can produce most cost-efficiently – whether the product is soybeans, oil or electronics – and import what it needs.

Easier said than done. Every country has arable land. Every country has workers skilled in multiple areas, not just in those for which they are best known. No country wants to be totally dependent on another. Exploitation and subservience are, though, unfortunately, natural conditions of man. As well, intellectual property is protected in some countries, but not in others. Rule of law does not apply evenly. Nevertheless, the goal of global trade is worthy. For one, it takes advantage of efficiencies, resources availability and labor costs. But, most important, trade requires that countries communicate and come together, and gathering is better than isolating.

Trade has reduced inflationary pressures on the price of consumables, by outsourcing manufacturing and assembly to countries with low labor costs. Medicines produced by American companies in India or China would have been more expensive if produced in New Jersey or Illinois. The same could be said of automotive parts and consumer electronic gadgets. While low prices for finished products have benefitted consumers, the losers include factory workers and lab technicians – and perhaps consumers if and when supply disruptions come. In July 2019, the U.S.–China Economic Security Review Commission invoked a Department of Commerce study that found that 97% of all antibiotics come from China. The Corona Virus, originating in Wuhan, has highlighted the disadvantage of dependency on China for something as vital as antibiotics.

COVID-19: Scary Enough without the Scaremongering By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-scary-enough-without-scaremongering/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Like the reporters and pundits who seek out the most bloodcurdling predictions regarding coronavirus, I have no expertise on infectious diseases. But I’m far more skeptical about what certain experts say — not the scientists and doctors making amazing and tangible strides in combating the disease, but the model-making policymaking experts who often dominate news stories.

Former CDC director Tom Frieden, reports the Washington Post, says the U.S. death toll for coronavirus could range anywhere from 327 (best-case scenario) to 1.6 million (worst case). As I noted, I’m not an epidemiologist. That sounds like an extraordinarily wide-ranging set of predictions which are probably contingent on thousands of factors, many of which are beyond our control. Any one of you could comfortably predict a death toll somewhere between 327–1.7 million. These numbers need context.

Because partisans such as Andy Slavitt, an Obama-era bureaucrat, are out there telling followers and reporters that “experts expect over 1 million deaths in the U.S. since the virus was not contained & we cannot even test for it.”

First of all, the virus couldn’t be “contained” because we don’t live in a tyranny where we can send in the army and force citizens to shut down society. We live a sprawling and massive country. Yet there are some — Sen. Chris Murphy and news analysts at the New York Times, for instance — who lament the fact that Donald Trump hasn’t taken dictatorial federal powers to stop coronavirus. That’s not how it works, and the president is reportedly invoking emergency powers now.

As for the million expected deaths, the New York Times reported that one of CDC’s modeled scenarios found that between 200,000-1.7 million might die during the epidemic, with 2.4 million to 21 million people requiring hospitalization. A million deaths falls into the worst-case scenario category — not the “expected” number.

To put it in some perspective, China has reported around 80,000 cases of coronavirus in a country of 1.3 billion, and the number of new cases has been dropping and the death rate plunging over the past week. Of course China can’t be trusted with numbers, and the United States can’t take authoritarian measures to contain millions of human beings as China did. But, as I write this, there have been 5,056 reported deaths in the entire world. That number is sure to spike, but as the virus moves we learn more about how to mitigate its effects. We produce vaccines. We manufacture more — and more accurate and faster — tests. The FDA just approved a new coronavirus test that is ten times faster than the one used right now. We self-quarantine: South Korea now sees more recoveries than new cases.

Remembering Who Is Keeping Us Alive By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/remembering-who-is-keeping-us-alive/

I tried an experiment yesterday. I went to four large supermarkets in Fresno County, the nation’s largest and most diverse food-producing county, and looked at both checkouts and shelf space. The two big sellers seemed to be cleansers of all sorts (bleach wipes were all sold out, for example) and staples such as canned soup, pasta, and canned fish and preserved meat.

Then I drove in about a 50-mile circumference to look at local farms — vineyards, orchards, row crops, dairy, etc. — and packinghouses and processors. There seemed absolutely no interruption at all. Farmers and workers were on tractors, packing houses were bringing in late citrus for cold storage, and lots of people were harvesting winter vegetables in the field. Machines were fertilizing, spraying, and cultivating.

The point is that in our age of necessary shutdowns and staying home, one thing we must do is eat — and eat well to stay healthy. And that means lots of people have to go to work and produce food and transport it to the major cities, and not always in isolation on the south 40.

NYT Admits, at Last, That Its 1619 Project Is Wrong By Bryan Preston

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nyt-admits-at-last-that-its-1619-project-is-wrong/

“Why?” is a fundamental question in both journalism and history. We’re constantly asking it, along with who, what, when, where, and how. We’re also constantly debating it. We know, for instance, that a given battle happened at a specific place. But why? Why were the combatants on that spot at that time, and what events or ideas led to conflict and bloodshed? In other words, why did it happen? We’re constantly debating and re-evaluating as new information comes to light and as we look at old information in new ways.

In August 2019, The New York Times launched a project it called the 1619 Project. Its aim was to locate the founding of America to that year, 1619.

Why?

Because 1619 was the year the first slave ships arrived in the New World.

The Times explicitly sought to diminish America’s actual founding in 1776 by changing the focus from 1776 to 1619.

Why?

Because in 1776, the American revolutionaries laid out their “Why?” in the Declaration of Independence as they commenced the revolution to throw off the yoke of the British monarchy. The Times explicitly set out to re-write America’s answer to its central purpose. The Times set out to make liars of  America’s founders.

The 1619 Project sought to re-write the American story. We would no longer be a nation built to protect the inalienable rights of all, as the Declaration states, but would instead become a nation forged specifically to enslave some. Who would, who could, be proud to be an American if our nation was founded specifically to protect and project the abomination of slavery? What would future Americans think, and do, if the Times’ version of history stands?

Compared to what? by Heather Mac Donald On the misguided response to COVID-19.

https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/compared-to-what

Compared to what? That should be the question that every fear-mongering news story on the coronavirus has to start with. So far, the United States has seen forty-one deaths from the infection. Twenty-two of those deaths occurred in one poorly run nursing home outside of Seattle, the Life Care Center. Another nine deaths occurred in the rest of Washington state, leaving ten deaths (four in California, two in Florida, and one in each of Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, and South Dakota) spread throughout the rest of the approximately 329 million residents of the United States. This represents roughly .000012 percent of the U.S. population.

Much has been made of the “exponential” rate of infection in European and Asian countries—as if the spread of all transmittable diseases did not develop along geometric, as opposed to arithmetic, growth patterns. What actually matters is whether or not the growing “pandemic” overwhelms our ability to ensure the well-being of U.S. residents with efficiency and precision. But fear of the disease, and not the disease itself, has already spoiled that for us. Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.

By comparison, there were 38,800 traffic fatalities in the United States in 2019, the National Safety Council estimates. That represents an average of over one hundred traffic deaths every day; if the press catalogued these in as much painstaking detail as they have deaths from coronavirus, highways nationwide would be as empty as New York subways are now. Even assuming that coronavirus deaths in the United States increase by a factor of one thousand over the year, the resulting deaths would only outnumber annual traffic deaths by 2,200. Shutting down highways would have a much more positive effect on the U.S. mortality rate than shutting down the U.S. economy to try to prevent the spread of the virus.

UN General Secretary Claims ‘Climate Change’ Is Bigger Threat Than Coronavirus

https://www.thepiratescove.us/2020/03/12/un-general-secretary-claims-climate-change-is-bigger-threat-than-coronavirus/

Because, this silly virus is a distraction from the Really Important Issue, which is why lots of global big wigs took long fossil fueled flights and limo rides

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, is worried that the coronavirus panic will distract people from the fight against climate change, which he says is far more important. Speaking in New York at the launch of a new UN climate report published on March 10, Guterres said, “We will not fight climate change with a virus.”

He was referring to a question about the coronavirus’ impact on the planet, and how there has been a drop in global greenhouse gas emissions due to the sudden economic slowdown. China’s CO2 emissions have dropped by a quarter, equal to 100 million metric tons. While this may have short-lived benefits for the planet, Guterres insisted that we cannot lose sight of the big picture.

“The disease is expected to be temporary, [but] climate change has been a phenomenon for many years, and will ‘remain with us for decades and require constant action’… Both [COVID-19 and climate change] require a determined response. Both must be defeated.” (snip)

Guterres said, “I call on everyone ― from government, civil society and business leaders to individual citizens – to heed these facts and take urgent action to halt the worst effects of climate change.” What’s interesting is that everyone is doing precisely this to deal with the spread of the coronavirus, which goes to show that governments, individuals, and businesses have the global capability to take rapid and strong action, but have lacked the will to do so until now. Now if only this momentum could be funnelled toward fighting climate change with the same dedication.

Except, Coronavirus is real. It may be very overblown in the scare factor, but, it is real, and more deadly than the flu, at least for older folks and those already sick. ‘Climate change’ is simply a way to scare people into allowing government to control their lives and take their money.

The Coming American Autumn? by Ray McCoy

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/13/the-coming-american-autumn/

After years of tolerating insurgent radicals and promoting them in their ranks, the Democrats have pumped the brakes hard on the left-wing of their party by uniting to stop Bernie Sanders. It won’t be enough to avoid the violent reaction of his most radical supporters.

Much to my chagrin, a relative of mine in 2017 took her young children to her local Women’s March and proudly proclaimed “This is what democracy looks like!” as legions of feminists and others protested the inauguration of Donald Trump.

After three years of similar protests, special counsel investigations, government shutdowns and impeachment she hasn’t budged from her belief that Trump represents everything wrong with America. This primary season she supported the candidate that she thought best matched up against the president. Unfortunately, that candidate turned out to be former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out the weekend before her state’s primary.

The consolidation of the Democratic field after the South Carolina primary and the resulting Super Tuesday wave for Joe Biden were rapidly, if reluctantly, accepted as the necessary move by establishment media spooked by the possibility of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders being their candidate. It also has revealed again that the party that claims to be the heir of Thomas Jefferson doesn’t particularly resemble what “democracy looks like.”

Much of the momentum that Biden received in the Palmetto State came by virtue of the late endorsement of Representative James Clyburn, a machine politician with reliable pull among black residents as shown with his efforts in 2016. The carnage of that week, which appears to have wrecked Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination, has led to comical outbursts of anger from his supporters.

The division between the progressive and corporate wings of the Democratic Party cannot be bridged, and the deceptive primary process is likely to lead to a backlash that will not be limited to wearing pussy hats and vagina costumes on the National Mall.

America could see a reboot of an often forgotten era of urban radicalism buried in the 1970s. Time will tell whether it will be as violent. It will depend on whether the believers in armed resistance are willing to make the choice actively to pursue it, but it would not be unprecedented and the social climate is ripe for an encore.

Revolution After Clearing the Rubble

The Open-Border Fetish Is Turning Into a Symbol of Death Ilana Mercer *****

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/13/the-open-border-fetish-is-turning-into-a-symbol-of-death/

For open-border offenders to talk-up open borders during a pandemic is scandalous—as scandalous as it would have been for Harvey Weinstein to be talking up rough sex during his sentencing for sexual assault.

Taking its cues from the American Left, the Israeli Left is all for national and individual self-immolation. But nobody who matters in that country has been listening to the Left babble on about “racism” and “Sinophobia.”

Against the advice of its liberal think tanks—and to protect its nationals from the Wuhan virus pandemic—the Israel had, early on, closed its doors to “more and more of eastern Asia, starting with China, continuing to Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Thailand, South Korea and Japan.”

China is Israel’s second-largest trading partner.

To follow were tough travel restrictions and a quarantine regimen on territories in Europe, in line with unfolding coronavirus contingencies. Israel has since extended the quarantine to all arrivals. Consequently, of the 9 million Israelis, 100 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded so far, but no deaths.

What is proving more difficult for Israel is adding “New York and the states of Washington and California to its restricted list.” Israeli public health officials recommend it, but Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is being muscled by Vice President Mike Pence to keep his country open to those COVID-19 hot zones.

Following transmission of the coronavirus from Wuhan to Washington State, I wondered, in a mild tweet, posted with links to the Israeli policy, why Americans didn’t deserve this kind of diligence from their government.

Came the strident reply, also on Twitter: “Because, unlike Israel, the U.S. is not a postage-stamp-sized garrison state. The U.S. needs to tailor its response to the disease to its role as global economic power.”

Stalin apologist Walter Duranty summed up this Jacobin perspective perfectly. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Breaking a few old eggs, in an old-age home, in King County, Washington State, is what it apparently takes to make that great global omelet.

‘No Israeli coronaivirus vaccine for me,’ Iranian journalist tweets By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/no_israeli_coronaivirus_vaccine_for_me_iranian_journalist_tweets.html

As coronavirus panic spreads, scientists around the world are working to develop a vaccine to combat the disease.  Along with scientists in other countries, scientists in Israel and the U.S. announced they’ve had some early successes in the development process, although obviously much more remains to be done before anything is ready for humans.  

Amid fears of a looming pandemic, scientists in the US and across the globe are scrambling to develop vaccines — including in Israel, where one group of researchers says it could be ready in just three weeks and available for use within 90 days.

The scientists at the Galilee Research Institute, known as MIGAL, are adapting its vaccine against the avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus, or IBV, to work for the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“Congratulations to MIGAL on this exciting breakthrough. I am confident that there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat,” said Ofir Akunis, Israel’s minister of science and technology. …

MIGAL CEO David Zigdon said the vaccine could “achieve safety approval in 90 days,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

As Trump Spoke, Stocks Soared, But CNN Won’t Tell You That By David Marcus

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/as-trump-spoke-stocks-soared-but-cnn-wont-tell-you-that/

Donald Trump and the team he assembled to fight the Wuhan virus in the United States gave a press conference this afternoon at the White House. As the president and his team spoke, the stock market soared, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing Friday at an all-time record increase of 1,972.

The wide-ranging but highly focused press conference laid out concrete plans to drastically increase testing for coronavirus in the United States. It laid out public-private partnerships to make this happen, including Google creating a portal for those seeking testing.

On the financial side, Trump offered a suspension of interest for student debt, an aggressive approach to the oil crisis, and suggested the federal government was prepared to send taxpayer dollars to the cruise and airline industries, among others, to recoup losses from the pandemic.

The stock market roared. Yesterday’s record losses were won back. This is enormously good news for millions of Americans with 401(k)s or stocks. It is absolutely something that every American should celebrate. By the way, the largest gain in the Dow Jones ever also happens to be pretty newsworthy.