ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Your Parents Aren’t Idiots For Not Freaking Out About Coronavirus Like You Are by Helen Raleigh

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/why-your-parents-arent-idiots-for-not-freaking-out-about-coronavirus-like-you-are/

I asked my parents if they are worried about the coronavirus, and they told me they had been through much worse in their lives. They aren’t freaking out like we are because they have seen it all.

My cousin called the other day and sounded very stressed. Come to think of it, who doesn’t feel a bit stressed these days? Her source of stress was her parents, who are in their 70s. She complained they would not take this Wuhan coronavirus outbreak seriously.

What she really meant was that they are not making the same choices about it that she is. Neither of her parents wear the masks she sent them when they are out and about, they didn’t stock up on hand sanitizer or toilet paper, her dad still planned to attend his weekly Toastmasters meeting, and her mom was getting ready to see her friends from the wine club this week. They were both bummed when their gatherings got canceled.

My cousin was beside herself. She couldn’t understand why in the world her parents wouldn’t take the coronavirus threat seriously, or why they still planned to carry out their normal routines, even given the abundance of medical data demonstrating that the elderly are the most vulnerable group in this pandemic.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chinese Authorities Underreporting New Infections in Epicenter of Wuhan: Leaked Documents BY Nicole Hao

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

The Chinese regime has maintained that there have been no new domestic infections of the CCP virus in the entire country since March 18.

Local authorities say that the epidemic has leveled off, as they ease travel restrictions and tell people to return to work.

But the situation in the ground zero of China’s epidemic, the city of Wuhan, is much worse than what has been officially reported, according to a series of internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

The documents include four reports from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, which were statistical data sheets about diagnostic test results in the city on March 14.

The data showed that there were 91 newly diagnosed patients in Wuhan on March 14. China’s National Health Commission only reported four cases for that date.

Meanwhile, two residential compounds in Wuhan posted notices to alert their residents that there were people living there who were diagnosed with the CCP virus on March 19—another indication that the Chinese regime is concealing the epidemic’s true scale.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Fighting against Coronavirus, for Freedom of Speech by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15785/palestinians-coronavirus-free-speech

Hamas is claiming that it is worried about the safety of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, often for multiple murders, while its own prisons in the Gaza Strip are full of Palestinians whose only crime is that they dared to criticize the Hamas leadership or its policies.

Did Hamas forget that just last month another Palestinian, Ahmed al-Sa’afeen, 39, died shortly after he was detained for his alleged affiliation with Fatah?

Instead of directing millions of dollars to building hospitals or improving healthcare, Hamas has for the past few years invested approximately $150 million in rebuilding its tunnel infrastructure, and has diverted dual-use construction materials such as concrete, steel, and wood, which could have gone to rebuilding Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

According to Palestinian sources, 50 Palestinians are being held in Palestinian Authority prisons in the West Bank because of their affiliation with Hamas and other opposition groups.

Both the PA and Hamas, even during the difficult time of a pandemic, as they have made abundantly clear, do not hesitate to pursue their repressive measures against anyone who dares to speak out against financial and administrative corruption, or express views that annoy anyone leading the Palestinians.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, says it has taken drastic steps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus among the two million Palestinians living under its rule.

On March 22, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health announced the first confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Gaza Strip: two Palestinians who returned from a visit to Pakistan. The ministry said the two patients were placed in quarantine in a field hospital near Gaza’s border with Egypt.

FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY Comments turned off

Lessons from History: The Reagan Legacy by Peter Huessy

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15746/reagan-nuclear-legacy

Even if Reagan believed the Soviets would never fire a long-range missile at the US — which he certainly did not believe — what about the long-range missile threats against the United States from China? Certainly, given such threats, the United States had the right to build strategic missile defenses, making any deal to forgo missile defenses with the Soviets an absurd proposition.

Even worse, what was described as “arms control” in the SALT 1 and 2 treaties was just an agreement between the Soviets and the United States largely to build-up US nuclear arsenals as it was already planning to do even without the arms treaties.

Reagan left an open window of consensus to 1) modernize the US nuclear deterrent, 2) seek future arms control that includes limiting all nuclear weapons, including China’s, and 3) deploy more robust missile defenses especially in the near term and refuse to negotiate away America’s current and future missile defense capability.

If these three “Reagan” factors can be preserved, the US may indeed remain safe from nuclear conflict. As these policies keep the US safe, hopefully its leaders will realize how well Reagan’s policy of “peace through strength” worked.

President Ronald Reagan envisioned a future with a highly survivable and modernized nuclear arsenal, markedly lower warhead numbers reduced through verifiable arms control, and the eventual deployment of robust missile defenses. The goal? To vitiate a nuclear-armed adversary’s ability to disarm the USA through a massive nuclear strike and to defeat any small or limited attacks from rogue states or terror groups.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Washington Liquidity Infusion The Senate virus bill may help the economy stave off a depression.

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-washington-liquidity-infusion-11584919023?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Federal and state governments have shut down much of the American economy, and now Washington is moving to lend its balance sheet to compensate for some of the losses it is causing. The foremost goal should be to provide liquidity to prevent defaults and business failures that will cascade into mass layoffs and another depression.

By our deadline, the Senate had not reached a final deal. But the bipartisan draft bill and summaries we’d seen on Sunday afternoon were a major improvement on the state of play on Friday. The overall cost is murky, though it will be in the multi-trillions of dollars, and that includes hundreds of billions in subsidy payments to individuals to buy broad political support.

The version we examined is nonetheless worthy of Senate passage—not least to avoid House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making it worse. She and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were blocking a deal late Sunday with more demands from their non-virus-related policy wish list.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

These Drugs Are Helping Our Coronavirus Patients The evidence is preliminary on repurposing two treatments. But we don’t have the luxury of time. By Jeff Colyer and Daniel Hinthorn

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-drugs-are-helping-our-coronavirus-patients-11584899438?mod=trending_now_4

A flash of potential good news from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic: A treatment is showing promise. Doctors in France, South Korea and the U.S. are using an antimalarial drug known as hydroxychloroquine with success. We are physicians treating patients with Covid-19, and the therapy appears to be making a difference. It isn’t a silver bullet, but if deployed quickly and strategically the drug could potentially help bend the pandemic’s “hockey stick” curve.

Hydroxychloroquine is a common generic drug used to treat lupus, arthritis and malaria. The medication, whose brand name is Plaquenil, is relatively safe, with the main side effect being stomach irritation, though it can cause echocardiogram and vision changes. In 2005, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that chloroquine, an analogue, could block a virus from penetrating a cell if administered before exposure. If tissue had already been infected, the drug inhibited the virus.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Former UK PM Accused of Letting Muslim Rape Gangs Roam Free in Exchange for Saudi Money Whatever the motivation, he and others certainly let them roam free. Robert Spencer

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/former-uk-pm-accused-letting-muslim-rape-gangs-robert-spencer/

Gordon Brown, who was Prime Minister of Britain and leader of its far-Left Labour Party from 2007 to 2010, has been accused of making a dirty deal with Saudi interests that resulted in a hands-off order to British police regarding the Muslim rape gangs that have plagued the once-sceptered isle for years.

The UK news site Politicalite reported Saturday “during Gordon Brown’s short tenure as Prime Minister he borrowed money from the Saudi’s [sic] – but the deal had BIG strings attached.”

Politicalite quoted an anonymous source that it said was connected to the world of finance, claiming: “In return for the money, the condition they insisted on, was that Muslims in Britain must be free to do anything they like.”

It sounds unbelievable – or does it, really, after all we have seen “public servants” do in the last few years, up to and including the attempted deep state coup against President Trump? And whether it was because of Brown or for some other reason, there is no doubt that British authorities for years were notably unwilling to do anything about the rape gangs, despite the fact that thousands of British girls had their lives destroyed.

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is The Media Ignoring Good News On Coronavirus? John Merline.

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/23/is-the-media-ignoring-good-news-on-coronavirus/

There has been some tantalizingly good news about the coronavirus in the past few days, not that you’d know it from the end-of-the-world treatment it gets in the press.

Of the 10 countries with the most COVID-19 cases, six showed declines in new reported cases over the past few days, including the United States. In France, the number has been flat for three days.

There hasn’t been a new case reported in China since early March, according to data from Worldometers.info. In South Korea, the number of new cases has stabilized at around 100 a day.

Meanwhile, data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that – when measured by date of onset rather than the day officially reported — the number of new COVID-19 cases peaked on March 9 at 194, then dropped to 172 on March 10. It was 174 on March 11. It plunged to 122 on March 12, although the CDC cautions that there may be people whose onsets haven’t been reported yet. In any case, all this was before the most draconian restrictions were put in place.

It’s far too early to draw any conclusions, but it certainly doesn’t look like an out-of-control plague, as commonly depicted by the press.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Seeking a sense of proportion about coronavirus deaths in America By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

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

Every evening during the Vietnam War, the nightly news anchor would announce the number of wounded and dead Americans on that day. Doing this imparted a sense of immediacy to those numbers that undoubtedly helped drive the anti-War movement.

In our coronavirus era, the media are doing the same with the numbers for those stricken or dead. For example, in the Daily Mail’s Sunday night article about the Democrats’ refusal to approve a $1.8 trillion coronavirus economic relief bill, we read this line:

The impact of coronavirus in the U.S. have [sic] skyrocketed in the last week to more than 30,200 confirmed cases and nearing 400 deaths.  

Various websites also keep a ticker tape of the “wounded” and dead. Avi Schiffmann, only 17, put together a simple, yet almost awe-inspiring, website that tracks all the coronavirus statistics from around the world. It’s so accurate that you can practically see people sicken and die in real-time.

Watching the numbers tick up is unnerving, but also misleading because it creates an artificial sense of terror. A sense of proportion helps control that terror.

As of this writing, the number of dead around the world is 14,730. Even if China, Russia, and Iran are lying about their mortality numbers, the actual number probably isn’t higher than 20,000. (And the number could be lower because Italy may have been overstating its mortality rate.)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is virus information from China, Russia, and Iran too corrupt to be useful? By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 23rd, 2020

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

There are reports from China suggesting that the government is lying about having coronavirus under control. Russia’s statistics are so low as to be suspect. And Iran is manifestly lying about its coronavirus data. Is this misinformation affecting the West’s ability to understand the virus and control its spread?

China has boasted that, thanks to its swift reaction, it has managed to stop all new coronavirus infections. (For now, please ignore China’s initial cover-up, which let a plague loose upon the world.) By March 19, both the New York Times and the Washington Post accepted without question China’s report that it had no new coronavirus infections.

Doctors still at work within China, though, were less sanguine:

Report by @appledaily_hk , Japanese news outlet interviewed Wuhan doctors, and confirmed Wuhan has stopped testing, that is why new case = 0 there. They release people in quarantine early too.

China is not alone in publishing suspect information. Russia, which Putin controls with an iron fist, has also touted its success with coronavirus, claiming that it’s tested over 133,000 people and identified only 367 cases, with only one death. Some experts find baffling Russia’s immunity to the disease, given that it shares a long border with China and has over 144 million people.