RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/the_nhs_had_13_years_to_prepare_for_coronavirus_but_still_didnt.html

“The National Institutes of Health is the government agency primarily responsible for biomedical and public health research. After SARS and, again, after H1N1, the NIH, along with the CDC, should have been paying close attention to illnesses emerging in China and other Second and Third World countries.”

If there’s one thing the coronavirus experience has taught us, it’s that bureaucracies don’t function as well as they’re supposed to. In New York, the bureaucracy opted to spend $500 million on illegal aliens instead of on ventilators. Likewise, during the Obama administration, after the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, the Obama administration, despite warnings, never bothered to replenish stockpile of N95.

It turns out now that the NIH was also doing the bureaucratic equivalent of twiddling its thumbs when it should have been acting to prepare America for the next pandemic. It’s sheer luck – mixed in with Trump’s foresight about China and good management skills – that John Hopkins, in late 2019, ranked America as the best-prepared country in the world for handling a pandemic.

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

The ongoing Wuhan virus hysteria is immensely frustrating to those trying to understand and think clearly, because the information available is incomplete, the key question (how lethal is it?) is unanswered and the vast majority of media coverage and “analysis” so infantile and innumerate.

It would appear that Real Clear Politics has taken to publishing a daily death rate by country, using diagnosed cases as the numerator.  But testing penetration of populations varies by country, and everywhere is heavily weighted to the very sick, missing completely the possibly huge number of Wuhan positives who are only slightly ill or have no symptoms at all.  A death rate based on that numerator is grossly misleading in an alarmist direction.

Potentially further calling into question the value of the published numbers is that there are apparently no international standards for when a death should be attributed to the Wuhan virus.  In Germany, it appears that they are strict — i.e., death must have been caused by the viral flu, not the underlying condition that put the usually elderly person at high risk.  To some extent, at least, this may account for Germany’s extraordinarily low death rate, even employing its known cases as numerator.

Italy, on the other hand, may be inadvertently inflating its death numbers by including virtually all deaths in Wuhan-positive persons in their total, regardless of apparent actual cause.  There is some evidence that Italy performs postmortem Wuhan tests, and if the body tests positive, the death is attributed to the virus — though, in fact, the (e.g.) 87-year-old who had been suffering from heart failure for months was carried off by his underlying, largely age-related frailty.

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

The coronavirus is an icky disease that takes a cruel toll on the elderly, the sick, and the unlucky.  In this modern era, we can outwit many things that once routinely killed people, but the Grim Reaper is still out there, and he’ll eventually get all of us.  Scary headlines have hinted that the coronavirus is now the Grim Reaper’s preferred method.

Media reports have told us that the coronavirus is significantly more deadly than the flu, which annually kills 30,000 to 60,000 Americans.  Based on the speed with which it killed in China, Italy, Iran, and Spain, it looked as if the American death toll could easily top two million people annually.  While that’s small potatoes compared to past pandemics (e.g., the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, Spanish Influenza), it’s a staggering toll in modern America.  Any actions seemed worthwhile to keep America from turning into a viral slaughterhouse.

But that might not be what’s happening.

At the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, two medical professors at Stanford, propose that we’re using the wrong math and that we are still missing the numbers we need to do the math correctly.  However, by extrapolating from available data, one can argue that the coronavirus’s mortality rate is significantly lower than the early estimates.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/03/26/is-there-wasteful-spending-in-the-coronavirus-stimulus-bill/#16ac159460ae

Last night, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion “Phase III” emergency aid package to help America recover from the coronavirus lockdown. Previous phases provided funds for testing and paid family leave.

Not one U.S. Senator voted against the legislation: 96-0. Twice during the first hour of Senate debate, two “final” versions were distributed. No one had time to read the final language.

Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com posted an official summary of the legislation’s supplemental $340 billion surge to emergency funding here.

The Republican majority Senate and Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced their 250-page version of this coronavirus aid relief and economic security act a week ago. It eventually became the $2 trillion, 883 page CARES Act – Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (H.R.748).  

Two days ago, in the ramp up to negotiations, House Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the “Take Responsibility For Workers and Family’s Act” (H.R.6379) – a $2.5 trillion, 1,404 page coronavirus response.

Our auditors dug deeply into McConnell’s Senate bill and compared it to Pelosi’s House bill. While half the nation was “sheltered in place,” here’s what lawmakers — in both parties — considered “essential spending” for coronavirus recovery:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/489698-trump-outlines-plan-to-classify-counties-by-risk-level-for

President Trump on Thursday outlined plans for his administration to classify each county across the United States based on its risk for an outbreak of coronavirus and use that information to create targeted guidelines.

In a letter to the nation’s governors, Trump spoke optimistically about expanded testing capabilities that would allow officials to identify which areas of the country are grappling with outbreaks and where the virus is spreading.

Based on that surveillance testing data, federal agencies would determine if a specific county is high-risk, medium-risk or low-risk for the virus. The administration is simultaneously working on new guidelines for social distancing that would apply to an area depending on its classification, Trump wrote. 

“With each passing day, our increasingly extensive testing capabilities are giving us a better understanding of the virus and its path,” Trump wrote. “As testing gives us more information about who has been infected, we are tracking the virus and isolating it to prevent further spread. This new information will drive the next phase in our war against this invisible enemy.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/26/the-scientist-whose-doomsday-pandemic-model-predicted-armageddon-just-walked-back-the-apocalyptic-predictions/

British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios.

Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.” His “models” showed overflowing hospitals and ICU beds.

“For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries,” the report reads.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, reportedly said the administration was particularly focused on the Imperial College report’s conclusion that entire households should stay in isolation for 14 days if any member suffered from COVID-19 symptoms.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/25/octopelosi/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns 80 on Thursday. In the runup to that milestone, Pelosi launched impeachment proceedings against President Trump, who was duly acquitted. By way of follow-up, she decided to block the Senate’s coronavirus response package earlier this week, and on Monday offered a 1,200-page version of her own chock full of goodies meant to keep the Ocasio-Cortez-Tlaib-Omar squad in line.

And behind the scenes, Pelosi is pulling the strings on the Golden State.

“I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” said California governor Gavin Newsom in his March 12 press conference telling 40 million Californians to stay home. “We had a very long conversation today. Talk about meeting the moment. We are so blessed to have her leadership in California. She’s very familiar to northern Californians, certainly familiar to me as a former mayor of San Francisco.”

Listeners might not have known the other ways in which Nancy Pelosi is familiar to the governor, whose grandfather, William Newsom, helped Pat Brown win the 1943 race for San Francisco district attorney.

In 1960, with the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, Governor Pat Brown awarded the concession to William Newsom and John Pelosi. In 1963, John’s son Paul married Nancy D’Alesandro, daughter of congressman and Baltimore mayor Thomas D’Alesandro. In 1969, Paul and Nancy Pelosi moved to San Francisco, where Paul’s brother Ron was a county supervisor. Ron married William Newsom’s daughter Barbara, so Nancy Pelosi was Gavin Newsom’s aunt by marriage until the couple divorced.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/senate-passes-coronavirus-bill-proving-pelosi-gambled-with-americans-lives-and-lost/

In the wee hours of Wednesday evening, the U.S. Senate finally passed the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill after a great deal of Democrat stalling and a futile effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to put forward a separate bill jam-packed with liberal Christmas wish-list items. The bill provides crucial relief to businesses struggling with the social distancing strategy of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. It now heads to the House.

The stimulus bill is far from perfect, but its passage unmasked Pelosi’s tactics as a disgraceful waste of time during this crisis. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) slammed the speaker for her attempt to jam her liberal pipe dreams down Americans’ throats in the midst of a crisis.

“Democrats wanted to use the coronavirus response package to change election law & implement parts of their Green New Deal. The Senate just passed strong bipartisan legislation that scraps those items, & it’s clear. ⇨ Their delay achieved nothing but more pain for Americans,” McCarthy tweeted.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/03/new-york-dems-demand-coronavirus-cash-museum-w29-daniel-greenfield/

Fear not ladies and sufferers, the Pelosi coronavirus pigout is just getting started.

New York is facing an eruption in coronavirus cases. And what’s on the minds of its Dem delegation? Ventilators, masks? Museums.

“NYC isn’t NYC without our non-profit museums. But if we want our museums to survive COVID-19, we need to protect them NOW. That’s why I led the NYC Congressional delegation with @RepMaloney in calling for $4 billion in emergency funds to equip museums to outlast this pandemic,” Rep Nadler tweeted.

How many ventilators could $4 billion buy? We know the answer to that one.

In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million.

But why bother. Now it’s time for the pork pigout.