One of the members of Savannah's outstanding families has passed away. RIP Arnold.
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https://youtu.be/9v56tKHKlvE
And:
“What are the Democrats pushing for? Changing the emission standards on airplanes. What the hell do the emission standards on airplanes have to do with thousands of people dying and millions of people out of work in the coronavirus epidemic…Republicans have things we’d like to advance too. I’d like to abolish the IRS…but I am not standing here with an amendment saying as part of this emergency relief lets abolish the IRS. There is a place for that policy and political discussion. Democrats are pushing wind and solar tax credits. What in the hell does a windmill have to do with this crisis?”
Whether Trump responded to the Coronavirus threat quickly enough or even, initially understand it's severe world wide implications, as his constant haters would have you believe, has now been erased by a full court press of government and the private sector response.
It was understandable the first response emphasis was to protect physical human life and try and prevent any medical /health care breakdown. Hopefully, this has been accomplished to a large degree and now the government and private sector must address the economic implications. The baton of individual health concerns must be passed to those seeking to prevent a collapse in our, otherwise, healthy economy and that transition also carries risks of an increase in matters pertaining to physical health.
People must work, to earn a living so they can then be free to purchase what they need and return to a normal routine. That is where we are heading and if we can accomplish this essential goal at an acceptable cost , as Trump has said, America, and hopefully the world in varying degrees, might respond in a V like manner.
China Is Not a Coronavirus Role Model
The Communists’ coverup helped create this mess. We’ll need the free world’s innovation to get out of it.
By John Walters
The coronavirus pandemic has elicited some strange jealousy for China’s authoritarianism. “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history,” declared a Feb. 28 World Health Organization report. The argument is that the unchecked power of the Chinese government is a main reason the country has successfully slowed—and perhaps even stopped—domestic transmission of the virus. Some commentators even claim that China will emerge from the crisis a stronger global power, and that the U.S. will need its help to recover.
These claims are misleading. More to the point, neither China nor its style of authoritarian government will help America overcome the crisis, restore economic growth, and protect citizens from infectious diseases.
The first case of the new coronavirus in China can be traced to Nov. 17, according to government data seen by the South China Morning Post. New cases were reported by health authorities each day thereafter in November. Rather than share this information with the world, Chinese Communist Party officials suppressed discoveries and even punished the doctors who first reported them.
Li Wenliang warned fellow doctors in late December of a new disease that resembled SARS. He was reprimanded by Chinese police, accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order,” and made to admit to “illegal behavior.” Li then contracted the coronavirus and died on Feb. 7 at 33.
China’s coverup had global consequences. It wasted precious time during which governments could have isolated people at risk of spreading the disease from its epicenter in Wuhan, developed testing and treatment capacities, and prepared citizens to take precautions to protect themselves. China compromised the world’s ability to respond to the deadly virus. The result has been the most dangerous global pandemic in a century.
This crisis has also laid bare gaps in American policy. The U.S. needs to reevaluate its reliance on basic medical necessities made overseas. Biodefense is a key component of national security; the U.S. needs to put more technology—including real-time mapping and artificial intelligence—to work tracking diseases before the next big outbreak. U.S. officials also need to continue to speak the truth about who is going to help the world overcome this crisis. Spoiler: it isn’t the Chinese Communist Party.
As scientists around the world—including from China—are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party continues to sow the seeds of division and misinformation world-wide. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, whose Twitter account is an absurd repository of propaganda, accused the U.S. military earlier this month of bringing the coronavirus to Wuhan.
Last week China announced it was banishing most reporters from the Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post, many of whom conducted heroic front-line reporting on the coronavirus. These are not the actions of a global leader.
It will likely be the free nations of the world, with their superior capacities for scientific innovation, that develop treatments, a vaccine and new means of stopping the epidemic. And we can trust that they will share those innovations quickly with the world. It will also be the free economies, with their capacities for renewal and growth, that will bring back prosperity after the crisis abates. We can expect the free nations, led by the U.S., to emerge much stronger than China.
My Hudson Institute colleague John Lee has chronicled in two recent reports how the Chinese economy was slowing even before this global downturn because of chronic, politically directed overinvestment. This still threatens the solvency of China’s overleveraged local governments. Remember, too, why China steals intellectual property: because it can’t produce innovation on the scale that the U.S. economy does.
Free, transparent and dynamic economic and political systems are needed to win the fight against the coronavirus and drive the recovery. This is why the U.S. will remain the most important global leader. Don’t expect Communist China to offer meaningful help any time soon.
Mr. Walters is chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute.
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Risk, Uncertainty and Coronavirus
We don’t have enough data to know whether drastic lock-downs are worth the economic damage.
By Allison Schrager
The government response to the coronavirus pandemic has seemed chaotic—underreaction one minute, piling on restrictions the next. It has left many wondering whether anyone is weighing the trade-offs. Do heavy-handed measures carry the benefits to justify the considerable costs? The uncomfortable answer: We don’t know.
The novel coronavirus appears at first to be a problem of risk management. It is a dangerous disease that threatens the lives of our neighbors and loved ones. Our response—increased social distancing, shutting down businesses—is aimed at reducing that risk. But the problem isn’t risk so much as uncertainty.
In 1921, shortly after the 1918 flu pandemic, economist Frank Knight made the distinction between risk and uncertainty. The future is unknowable, but risk is measurable. It can be estimated using data, provided similar situations have happened before. Uncertainty, on the other hand, deals with outcomes we can’t predict or never saw coming.
Risk can be managed. Uncertainty makes it impossible to weigh costs and benefits, such as whether reducing the spread of a virus is worth the cost of an economic shutdown that could last several months. The most responsible course of action is to assume the worst and take the most risk-averse position. Managing uncertainty is expensive: In markets, it means holding cash; in society, it means shutting down.
Almost everything about the novel coronavirus is uncertain. It was unexpected, though perhaps more of a surprise than it should have been. Public-health experts have been warning for years that a pandemic could happen. But every few years come warnings of potential catastrophes that never seem to materialize.
Among the unknowns about the virus: the true hospitalization and death rates; how infectious it is; how many asymptomatic patients are walking around; how it affects young people; how risk factors vary among different countries with different populations, pollution levels and urban densities. It seems certain the virus will overwhelm hospitals in some places, as it has in China and Italy. We also don’t know how long these extreme economic and social disruptions will last. Without reliable information, predictions are based on incomplete data and heroic assumptions.
This uncertainty makes it much harder to manage the virus, or to strike a balance between public health and the economy. What happened in 1918 or 1957 isn’t particularly instructive. The virus is different. The world is different. So is our health-care system.
The goal should be to move from uncertainty to risk, which will take time and data. The way forward is testing as many people as possible—not only people with symptoms. Some carriers are asymptomatic. California is starting to test asymptomatic young people to learn more about transmission and infection rates. Testing everyone may not be feasible, but regularly testing a random sample of the population would be informative.
This helped in South Korea, which tested thousands of people a day. South Korea has managed to slow the rate of new cases and gather data about how the disease has spread, its effects on different populations, and the mortality rate in that country. More testing would also help spare the world from future shutdowns if the virus reappears before there is a safe, effective vaccine.
Every medical test has some rate of false positives and negatives. The error rate for Covid-19 tests may be especially high. Scientists are still learning about how long the virus lives in the body. Administering tests takes skill and is prone to human error. We don’t know how reliable tests were in China; studies suggest the false-negative rate there is between 3% and 50%—an enormous range. If tests aren’t reliable, the supposed source of certainty can create even more uncertainty. The Food and Drug Administration must balance the urgency for more testing with caution to ensure new tests meet its standards for accuracy.
Policy makers should throw as much energy as possible into getting accurate data. That would allow the world to assess the real risk of the coronavirus. This may lead us to continue to take drastic action to limit its spread, or it may allow us to temper our response, managing the risk at a much lower cost to both society and the economy. Whatever the response, it will be appropriate, based on an assessment of risk—not uncertainty and fear.
Ms. Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”
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And in Israel same old same old :
Netanyahu, Gantz talk up unity as their parties sling mud at each other
PM says differences small, urges Blue and White chief to meet him immediately to form coalition; Gantz insists on heading such a government
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz on Tuesday both expressed willingness to continue efforts to form a unity government that would include both their parties, even as Likud and Blue and White kept hurling accusations at each other.
Gantz was tasked last week with forming a government after 61 lawmakers backed him as prime minister, and he has a week left to form a coalition. However, since he does not have enough votes for a government that relies on the support of both Avigdor Liberman’s hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party and the Arab-majority Joint List, the leading option has remained a unity government.
In recent days, Likud and Blue and White have clashed over the latter’s bid to call a Knesset vote to replace parliament speaker Yuli Edelstein, a Likud member. Such a move would hand Gantz’s party control over the legislative agenda, including, possibly, passing a law that would bar Netanyahu from serving as prime minister. The High Court on Monday night ruled that Edelstein must hold such a vote by Wednesday. Likud has warned that if Edelstein is replaced, that would be the end of unity talks.
“The citizens of Israel need a unity government that would act to save their lives and livelihoods,” he said, addressing Gantz. “This isn’t time for fourth elections. Let’s meet now and form a government today. I am waiting for you.”
Gantz said he was demanding that he go first as prime minister in a rotating premiership deal.
“I have an expectation and a demand for a unity government headed by me, as the one who has [the support of] 62 Knesset seats,” he told activists from his party who had demonstrated outside his house, calling on him to form a unity coalition rather than a minority government propped up by the Joint List.
“There is some expectation to join [a unity government] under Netanyahu, as if that is the only alternative,” Gantz added. “I have overseen wars. We know how to handle national crises as well as they do.”
Likud fumed earlier Tuesday following the High Court ruling and the formation of parliamentary oversight committees by Blue and White despite Likud’s opposition.
After gaining control over the Arrangements Committee, which determines which parliamentary committees will be formed and who will sit on them during a transitional government, the center-left bloc late Monday pushed ahead with the formation of six special parliamentary committees, including one to oversee Israel’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. Likud’s bloc boycotted all the votes.
“Blue and White together with [Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor] Liberman and the [mostly Arab] Joint List decided to steal the Knesset from 2.5 million right-wing voters,” Likud said in a statement Tuesday.
“While showing unprecedented destructiveness, ignoring any existing norm in the Knesset’s history, they decided to form no fewer than six temporary committees, in all of which they set a majority for themselves with their representative heading the committee,” it charged. “That is in total contrast with the total Knesset seat distribution and with the accepted practice throughout 22 [previous] Knessets.”
The party said the right-wing bloc “will not cooperate with this and won’t take part in these undemocratic discussions and votes, which quash and ignore 58 MKs chosen by the people.” It vowed to fight the “thuggish and undemocratic behavior.”
On Monday night, High Court justices ordered Edelstein to hold a vote by Wednesday on replacing him, ruling against Edelstein’s effort to block the vote, and calling his delaying tactics unjustified and anti-democratic.
The ruling had come barely an hour after Edelstein rebuffed the justices’ call on him earlier in the day to hold a vote on a new speaker.
Were Edelstein to again defy the court, Israel would be plunged into a constitutional crisis.
Edelstein would likely lose his job in such a vote, since the alliance of 61 MKs led by Gantz is set to back Gantz loyalist Meir Cohen for the post. Blue and White would then gain control of the parliamentary agenda.
Blue and White is also seeking to advance legislation that would bar a Knesset member facing criminal charges from forming a government, effectively disqualifying Netanyahu.
Edelstein set off a firestorm of criticism last Wednesday after he refused to allow the Knesset plenum to convene to vote both on establishing the Arrangements Committee and electing a new speaker. Edelstein at first argued the freeze was linked to safety precautions amid the coronavirus outbreak, but later explained it was meant to force Likud and Blue and White to compromise in unity talks.
Critics said it amounted to an illegal shuttering of parliament by Likud in order to improve the party’s leverage in the coalition talks, and some argued that it constituted part of an attempted political coup, with a parliamentary majority headed by Gantz prevented from assuming control of the Knesset’s agenda.
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