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Coronavirus and the Laboratories in Wuhan Their researchers travel to caves across China, where they capture live bats to study viruses. Senator Tom Cotton

Posted By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratories-in-wuhan-11587486996?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party denies the possibility. “There is no way this virus came from us,” claimed Yuan Zhiming over the weekend. Mr. Yuan is a top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. He is also secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee. He accuses me of “deliberately trying to mislead people” for suggesting his laboratory as a possible origin for the pandemic.

Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan “wet market,” where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

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Mayor De Blasio Says He Needs Ventilators, While Governor Cuomo Is Giving Them Away to Other States By Matt Margolis

Posted By on April 22nd, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/mayor-de-blasio-says-he-needs-ventilators-while-governor-cuomo-is-giving-them-away-to-other-states/

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking to have ventilators built right in New York City in order to build up a reserve and protect the city during future pandemics. “We’ve learned the hard way that we cannot depend on the federal government,” claimed de Blasio said during his daily press briefing. “We’ll purchase what we need and create a stockpile. We New Yorkers will take care of ourselves.”

It was a bizarre announcement, considering that, according to President Trump, the United States is already on track to build as many as 200,000 ventilators in 2020, which is significantly higher than the 30,000 that were built in 2019. So, why is Mayor de Blasio blaming the federal government and claiming he can’t depend on them?

Not only did New York not need the 40,000 ventilators Cuomo requested from Trump, but the amount they had was more than they ultimately needed. Yet, Bill de Blasio, who’s trying to cover up for his own failures to contain the spread of the virus in New York City, is trying to blame the federal government (read: President Trump) for failing to provide enough ventilators and other equipment.

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We made a terrible mistake By Carol Brown

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/we_made_a_terrible_mistake.html?utm_source=vuukle&utm_medium=newsfeed

We’re told that social distancing is working because we’re flattening the curve.  How do we know that those two things are related?  There isn’t that all-important-for-good-science control group.  For all we know, the result would have been similar if we hadn’t put such draconian measures in place.

In addition, for all our medical experts’ talk of their high standards, they ignored those standards when they embraced the Imperial College model that, according to world-renowned epidemiologist Johan Giesecke, was an internal document that was unpublished and had not been peer-reviewed.  Giesecke had never seen a document of this type garner so much attention as to shape major public policy decisions.

He also described the strict lockdown measures embraced by many countries as non-evidence-based.  (What?!  You mean our experts who uphold the highest of double-blind standards have been shooting in the dark?!)

And speaking of lockdowns, according to some reports, the U.K. hit its peak before it put strict social distancing measures in place (here, here, here at the 6:40 mark).

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Bill de Blasio Says Trump ‘Should Kiss His Re-Election Goodbye’ Because of His Coronavirus Response Julio Rosas

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/04/21/bill-de-blasio-says-trump-should-kiss-his-reelection-goodbye-because-of-his-coronavirus-response-n2567320

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) complained to CNN’s Alysin Camerota on Tuesday about President Trump’s handling of the Wuhan coronavirus and said his poor performance will cost him reelection in November.

“So, I’ve asked President Trump repeatedly not just to help New York City and New York State, but to help all cities and states get back on our feet. We have lost now over $7 billion in revenue. That’s our projection of how much is already gone because of this crisis. That is the money we use to pay police, to pay firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, health care workers. That money ain’t coming back. The only place it can come from is the federal government,” de Blasio explained. “They gave $58 billion to the airline industry to bail them out. How about bailing out America’s cities, America’s states?”

De Blasio said he told Trump that while he understands the need to reopen the country again to kickstart the economy, New York City is going to need massive amounts of help from the federal government to do so.

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The CDC Testing Disaster By David Harsanyi

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-cdc-is-a-disaster/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The CDC — once the “Communicable Disease Center” before being renamed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — was created to prevent malaria and other dangerous communicable diseases from spreading across the nation. It was not created, you might be surprised to learn, to pester Americans about their salt intake or vaping habits.

The CDC has spent more than a decade spearheading nannyistic efforts to control sodium use, to ban trans fats, and to mislead the public on the dangers of e-cigarettes. Now, it would be one thing if the CDC effectively managed its most vital charge: mitigating the spread of dangerous diseases. But that rarely seems to be the case. Often, it can’t even abide by primum non nocere.

The New York Times reports today that the CDC failed to follow its own protocols when creating coronavirus tests, sending kits out across the country that had been rendered ineffective because they were tainted with the COVID-19 due to sloppiness:

Problems ranged from researchers entering and exiting the coronavirus laboratories without changing their coats, to test ingredients being assembled in the same room where researchers were working on positive coronavirus samples, officials said. Those practices made the tests sent to public health labs unusable because they were contaminated with the coronavirus, and produced some inconclusive results.

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MISUNDERESTIMATING CHINA: DAVID GOLDMAN

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/misunderestimating-china/

Toward the end of his new book, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, Matthew Kroenig offers sensible if tentative advice for responding to China’s ambitions for technological leadership:

U.S. government investments in basic science and R&D have been critical in past technological breakthroughs, including nuclear power and the Internet. . . and the United States could do more to invest in the technologies of the future. Democracies are often slow to build consensus for a problem, and that helps them to avoid mistakes. But when a national consensus is achieved, they can mass resources toward a problem just as well as any autocracy. And Washington is beginning to awake to this new Sputnik moment. When it does, it will be well positioned to compete.

During the preceding 200 pages, though, Kroenig does little to elicit a sense of urgency with respect to China’s challenge. Instead, he presents a set-piece argument that autocracies in general and China in particular will inevitably fail to compete against democracies. Prof. Kroenig, who teaches at Georgetown University and directs a strategic studies program at the Atlantic Council, offers a complacent reading of China’s position today—hardly the makings of a Sputnik moment. He seems to be searching for something like the Spanish expression “mañana,” but without a connotation of urgency.

The first half of the book surveys the history of conflicts between democratic and authoritarian regimes with a disconcertingly selective choice of facts. The second half discusses China and, more briefly, Russia as today’s authoritarian challengers. The two parts of the book fit together poorly. The reader has the feeling that the author originally set out to write yet another comparison of democracy and autocracy, and later decided that a Chinese angle would elicit more interest.

Democracy and Autocracy

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The Foolish GOP Proposal to Open China to American Lawsuits over COVID-19 By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/the-foolish-gop-proposal-to-open-china-to-american-lawsuits-over-covid-19/

The bill introduced by Senators Marsha Blackburn and Martha McSally, however well-intentioned, would have disastrous consequences.

Some terrible ideas never go away, especially ideas that help politicians to disguise weakness as strength. One such scheme in the Beltway bag of tricks is the proposal to “punish” a hostile foreign power by allowing it to be sued in court.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Martha McSally (R., Ariz.) are the latest to try this tactic, proposing a bill that would allow Americans harmed by the coronavirus — or their estates if they have died from it — to sue China for damages. To pave the way, Senators Blackburn and McSally would strip of sovereign immunity any foreign state (i.e., China) that even accidentally discharges a biological agent upon the world.

Sounds ferocious, right? Except no American victim would actually get compensation, because Beijing would, of course, ignore the lawsuits . . . except to exploit them as a (further) excuse not to cooperate with American and foreign investigations; as a further basis not to honor its treaty obligations; as a reason to step up its aggression in the Far East; and as a rationale for retaliating by encouraging other countries to strip sovereign immunity from the United States, so that our nation and officials may be sued and indicted for harms real and imagined abroad.

This is foolish on so many levels it is tough to know where to begin.

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‘It’s a Free Country, Brother’ By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-bill-of-rights-protects-freedoms/

Thank God for the Bill of Rights.

I n this current crisis, the longest if not the first complete shutdown in U.S. history, the freedoms of American democracy are being tested in ways we scarcely ever imagined. Out of nowhere little Napoleonic governors arise to enact decrees prohibiting gardening or strolling on an empty beach — decrees that seem to have little purpose other than to reflect that they can do so. Snitches volunteer to out felonious social deviants who are seen cooking in the backyard with a neighbor. A little horned-devil virus seems to be trying to do what those Russkies never could.

Experts with all sorts of Ph.D.s, M.D.s, and J.D.s after their names lecture from authority about what we must right now do — or else! — on the principle that they have a scientific or technocratic prerogative to impress critics of their modeling or their demand that we shut down a $22-trillion economy for “18 months,” if need be.

A supposedly disinterested media — found by media watchdogs to be 93 percent negative in its presidential reportage before the virus crisis — envision their coverage of the Trump demon as an endless zero-sum game in which any morsel of good news for him is instantly bad for them.

In short, if American democracy were to fail to sustain itself under myriad pressures, then this would be the moment. For some, the Sixties can at last be made manifest — especially given that its aging children just impeached an American president on articles nowhere found in the Constitution, after weaponizing the FBI, CIA, and DOJ in an attempt to abort a presidential campaign and then presidency.

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US Officials Keeping Close Watch on North Korea Amid Reports on Kim By Zachary Stieber

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-officials-keeping-close-watch-on-north-korea-amid-reports-on-kim_3320989.html?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

U.S. officials are tracking what’s happening in North Korea but don’t know the current situation with Chairman Kim Jong Un, a top official said Tuesday.

American officials are “watching the reports closely” about Kim, who is rumored to be struggling after undergoing surgery, national security adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters outside the White House.

“It’s too early to talk about because we just don’t know what condition chairman Kim is in and we’ll have to see how it plays out,” he said, responding to a question about who would succeed North Korea’s leader.

The “basic assumption” is it would kin, given Kim is the third member of his family to control North Korea.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, is considered the most likely successor.

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USC Study Finds Coronavirus Far More Widespread In L.A. County Than Reported  By Tristan Justice

Posted By on April 21st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/usc-study-finds-coronavirus-far-more-spread-in-l-a-county-than-reported/

A new study unveiled Monday from the University of Southern California (USC) with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health discovered infections of the novel Wuhan coronavirus to be far more widespread with a lower fatality rate than initially thought.

The California researchers conducted rapid antibody testing of a representative sample of adults and found that approximately 2.8 to 5.6 percent of L.A. County’s adult population already had coronavirus antibodies present, translating to 221,000 to 442,000 past-infected people. The new estimate dwarfs the nearly 8,000 cases that had been reported at the time the study took place April 10-11. There are now nearly 14,000 confirmed cases of the virus and more than 600 deaths officially reported in the county as of this writing, according to L.A. County Department of Public Health.

“We haven’t known the true extent of COVID-19 infections in our community because we have only tested people with symptoms, and the availability of tests has been limited,” said the study’s lead investigator and USC Professor Neeraj Sood in a statement. “The estimates also suggest that we might have to recalibrate disease prediction models and rethink public health strategies.”