RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/23/looks-like-trump-was-right-about-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate/

Two new studies suggest that President Trump was right in early March when he guessed the fatality rate for coronavirus is under 1 percent.

In early March, President Donald Trump was lambasted for saying on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that he had a hunch the coronavirus fatality rate, which the World Health Organization pegged then at 3 to 4 percent, was in fact much lower, under 1 percent. Many commentators, myself included pointed out that the beginning of a pandemic medical crisis was not the time to be floating hunches. But, as we always knew was possible, it looks now like the president might well have been right.

New data from random antibody tests conducted in New York State suggest that as many as 2.7 million people statewide have had the coronavirus. That along with the just over 15,000 deaths that have occurred leads to a fatality rate for the virus of .5 percent according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Here is what Trump said on March 4:

“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor.”

He went on to say:

“I think that that number (the WHO number) is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

Democrats and media pundits blasted Trump for spreading “misinformation.”

While this data is preliminary, it is backed up by another study in Los Angeles that found 40 times more people had carried the virus then were previously known. This dropped the fatality rate in LA from 4.5 percent to .1-.3 percent.

It is difficult to stress how important these findings are. The 5-week lockdown that has destroyed the American economy was put in place by contemplating what looks to be rather absurd numbers by the WHO.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/22/the-chinese-coronavirus-is-this-generations-tiananmen-test/

We are suffering a catastrophe of the Chinese Communist Party’s making. It must be held accountable, made to pay for the destruction it has caused, putting every lever of American power on the table to ensure it.

Observers of the Chinese coronavirus crisis have cast it, with good reason, as a potential Chernobyl for General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party regime.

America, too, is faced with a challenge with relevant historical parallels, separate and apart from the wartime comparisons regarding the mobilization and sacrifices of our countrymen.

As with the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, we are once again at an inflection point in our relationship with China, faced with the carnage caused most directly by a malevolent CCP.

The Chinese coronavirus crisis may well represent this generation’s Tiananmen Square test.

The test is as follows: With the CCP inflicting incalculable costs in blood and treasure through its unique role in spreading the coronavirus, and its related menacing behavior, will we demand reparations, or will we let the regime off scot-free, emboldening it, and encouraging it to act with impunity and still more reckless abandon in its quest for hegemony going forward?

We failed this test in 1989.

Then, when presented with the image of “Tank Man,” we did something even worse than turning our back on him. Our immediate response to the CCP’s massacre of democracy protesters was toothless. But ultimately, we proceeded still further to embrace the Communist regime, effectively rewarding its villainy by integrating it into the global economic, financial, and geopolitical system.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/22/the-deadly-costs-of-extended-shutdown-orders/

The focus on saving “just one life” from the coronavirus to the exclusion of all other considerations likely will prove a catastrophic failure of policymaking. The devastation to individuals’ ability to flourish or even survive may soon become irreversible.

More than a dozen governors extended their economic shutdown orders recently into May and beyond. Those officials should have publicly addressed the following questions first:

How many coronavirus deaths do you expect to avert by the shut-down extension?
What will your state’s economy look like after another month of enforced stasis?
How many workers will have lost their jobs?
How many businesses will have closed for good?
How many of your state’s young residents, seeking employment for the first time, will be unable to find it?

Instead, the announcements of the prolonged shutdown were representative of government decision-making during the coronavirus crisis: opaque, lacking in criteria for measuring success and failure, and bereft of any attempt to measure the benefits of mitigating one particular health problem against the costs—including other health problems.

New York’s tele-ubiquitous governor, Andrew Cuomo, for example, announced on April 15 that New York’s economy would now be shut down through May 15, instead of reopening on April 29, as previously scheduled. How did he arrive at May 15? It is a mystery. Other governors had just as inscrutably chosen May 3, May 4, May 8, May 20, or June 10 for their extensions.