The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

New Yorkers Are Infecting America

Posted on | March 25, 2020 | 1 Comment

Yesterday, we took note of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis imposing a two-week quarantine on visitors arriving from New York-area airports. New York City is the epicenter of the Chinese Bat Soup Flu pandemic, with more than 17,000 reported cases — including more than 3,000 added in just the past 24 hours. Two states, New York and New Jersey, account for 65% of reported cases. This is a risk to the rest of America:

The White House’s coronavirus response coordinator said Tuesday that anyone who has recently left New York should self-quarantine for 14 days in an effort to slow the spread of the virus in the US.
“To everyone who has left New York over the last few days, because of the rate of the number of cases, you may have been exposed before you left New York,” Dr. Deborah Birx said at a White House press briefing, adding that “everybody who was in New York should be self-quarantining for the next 14 days to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread to others.”
“No matter where they have gone, whether it’s Florida or North Carolina or out to the far reaches of Long Island,” Birx said.

So, this disease that began in Communist China because people eat bats there has now moved to New York and is spreading across America. We’re destroying our economy — spending trillions of dollars for an emergency rescue bill — because of bat-eaters and New Yorkers.




 

Category: New York

‘Chinese Bat Soup Flu’ Update

Posted on | March 24, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Hat-tip to Kurt Schlicter for giving this pandemic a memorable name. It’s going to get worse — perhaps a whole lot worse — before it gets better, but in the meantime, we can figure out what went wrong, and caution about what’s still going wrong. The first and most important thing President Trump needs to do now is to halt domestic flight departures from New York City-area airports:

New Yorkers who flee to Florida during the coronavirus outbreak will have to self quarantine for two weeks when they arrive — or risk facing criminal charges, the Sunshine State’s governor said Monday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was issuing the executive order that would apply to all travelers from New York City, which, as of Monday, has recorded 12,305 cases of the virus. By comparison, Florida so far has 1,100 cases.
The order also applies to areas surrounding the Big Apple, but DeSantis didn’t specify the exact perimeter.
The Florida governor said about 100 flights from New York City and the surrounding area arrive to his state daily. He said he believes at least one person aboard each flight is infected with the illness.
DeSantis at an earlier Monday press conference said, “We are getting huge amounts of people flying in. We are looking at how to address those flights.”
“In New York (City), when they did the stay-at-home order, what did people do? A lot of people fled the city and they are going to stay with their parents or fly (out),” DeSantis said.

With a large elderly population, Florida is uniquely vulnerable, and New York is now the U.S. epicenter of the Chinese Bat Soup Flu pandemic. New York and New Jersey combined have 23,719 reported cases of the virus, which is more than half (55.6%) of all U.S. cases (42,663). It is irresponsible to allow residents of such a “red zone” to hop on a plane and fly anywhere in the country, taking the virus with them. If you have 100 people on a plane leaving LaGuardia, JFK or Newark, chances are at least one of those passengers will be infected. Do you want them flying to your state? Ground those planes, Mr. President.

To get an idea of the way these pandemics can spread, here’s a story about a bunch of people who got sick after attending a March 5 party in Connecticut, and here’s a story about how one nursing home in Washington State became a “red zone.” While I have always been an optimist about America’s ability to fight this disease — and remember, I was potentially exposed to the virus when I covered CPAC — we cannot afford the kind of stupid errors that create these “red zones.” You don’t want the job of explaining to your kids that Grandma died because you didn’t practice proper hygiene and “social distancing.”

If we can just maintain quarantine conditions another week or two, there is every reason to believe that we will be past the the worst of it:

Those of us trying to predict what direction the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic will take in the United States have been paying close attention to reports from Italy. And until Sunday, the outlook there kept going from bad to worse.
For nearly two weeks after the Italian government imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 9, the daily number of coronavirus deaths mounted rapidly. On Friday, it was reported that 627 Italians died from the disease, as the country’s cumulative death toll passed 4,000. This was shocking, but then on Saturday, Italy reported that 793 more people had died from the virus.
If, like me, you have been laser-focused on this situation for the past week, you mentally braced yourself for Italy to report an even larger number on Sunday, but then breathed a sigh of relief when it was reported that only 651 Italians died of coronavirus. This was small consolation, as Italy — a nation with a population about 60 million — has already suffered more than 6,000 dead in this pandemic, with a total of more than 60,000 coronavirus cases and thousands of new infections still being reported every day. Yet Sunday’s numbers from Italy were a much-needed cause for hope, and this was followed by a further decrease in Monday’s reported deaths — down to 602, a 24-percent decline from Saturday’s peak. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Category: China, Donald Trump, Health Care, Italy

In The Mailbox: 03.23.20

Posted on | March 23, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
A View From The Beach: Don’t Worry!
357 Magnum: Rail Sabotage In Germany – Authorities Mystified As To Motive
EBL: Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease? also, Harvey Weinstein Tests Positive For WuFlu
Twitchy: Brit Hume Shares Thread About What Really Happened With Coronavirus Testing Delay
Louder With Crowder: Mike Rowe Tries To Make Sense Of Our Panicked Reaction To Corona-chan

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Love In The Time Of Corona
American Conservative: Forget Checks, How About Giving Everyone A Federal Reserve Account?
American Greatness: The Virus Isn’t Invincible, But It’s Exposing Who’s Irreplaceable, also, Giddy Democrats Planning To Exploit The Economic Crisis To Hurt Trump
American Thinker: FDA Must Approve Hydroxychloroquine Now, also, Why Is Italy In So Much Trouble? It’s More Than ICU Beds
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Trump Appoints Carlos Trujillo As Assistant SecState For Western Hemisphere, also, China, Cuba, & COVID-19 – Communist Regimes Lie To Protect & Maintain Their Grip On Power
BattleSwarm: Twitter Nukes @GayPatriot’s Account Again, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Cafe Hayek: Incessantly Treating Reality As Optional Doesn’t Make Reality Optional
Camp Of The Saints: Yin And Wang At South Beach
CDR Salamander: Obedience On Midrats, With Dr. Pauline Shanks Kaurin
Da Tech Guy: Donald Trump & The One Pitch Media, also, Review – Pandemic: How To Prevent An Outbreak
Don Surber: Press Wants Cuomo To Run. Too Bad.
First Street Journal: Mayor Jim Kenney (NSDAP-Philadelphia) Overrules The First Amendment
Fred On Everything: Washington In The Time Of Domitian
The Geller Report: Democrats To America – Drop Dead, also, Imam’s Anti-Semitic Preaching In NY Links Coronavirus To Jews
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, The Silver Dollar Galaxy
Hollywood In Toto: Fans Scorch Marvel’s Uberwoke New Warriors On YouTube, also, Hunt Producer Jason Blum  – “Hollywood Out Of Touch With America”
JustOneMinute: Are You Ready For Some Football?
Legal Insurrection: “This Is A Tremendous Opportunity To Reshape Things According To Our Vision”, also, Senate Democrats Block Economic Rescue Bill After Pelosi Power Play In House
Megan McArdle: The Fed Can Only Buy Us A Little Time
The PanAm Post: Maduro Regime’s Prisons Could Become Breeding Grounds For Coronavirus
Power Line: A Data-Driven Look At The Wuhan Coronavirus, also, Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Bad For Your Health
Shark Tank: DeSantis Shuts Down Elective Surgeries Due To Coronavirus
Shot In The Dark: Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others
The Political Hat: In This Crisis, We Need The Free Market More Than Ever
This Ain’t Hell: Dr. Anthony Fauci, also, Don’t Be “That Guy”
Victory Girls: Senate Democrats Choose Politics Over American Lives
Volokh Conspiracy: Divided PA Supremes Rule Governor Can Shut Down Gun Stores During Coronavirus Emergency
Weasel Zippers: Trump Eyes Two-Week Quarantine With Only Drug & Grocery Stores Open, also, NYT Quietly Edits Headline On Failed Coronavirus Deal To Protect Democrats – Twice
Mark Steyn: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, also, Sure, No NBA. No NHL – But No Bear-Baiting?

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Monday: Hayley Atwell

Posted on | March 23, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

After having missed it in the theaters, I finally got the chance to see Captain America: The First Avenger on Amazon Prime. It was an excellent movie, and one of the many outstanding actors that made it so was Hayley Atwell, who played Agent Peggy Carter, and went on to reprise that role in a number of other Marvel movies and some TV series. Here she is in her best known role.

From Season 2 of Agent Carter.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny starts this week’s dance with Hot Pick Of The Late Night, followed by the 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #930, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule Five Biden’s Hypocrisy Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s herd this week includes Hand Washing Is Better, Elina Garanca, Irish Dancing, La Boheme, Il Trovatore, St. Joseph’s Day, La Traviata, Kung Flu Fighting, Natalie Dessay, and Anna Netrebko.

A View From The Beach brings us Hooray for Bollywood – Deepika Padukone, Fish Pic Friday – African Pompano,  “Onde Børn, Wet Wednesday, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!, Another Muddy Monday and Palm Sunday.

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe of the Week is Lauren Bacall, and Red Pilled Jew has Gratuitous Rule 5 Friday: “Hey, My Eyes Are Up Here!”

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

Democrats and Their ‘Friends’

Posted on | March 23, 2020 | Comments Off on Democrats and Their ‘Friends’

For years, conservatives have marveled at the stubbornness with which black Americans continue electing Democrats, despite the evidence that “progressive” policies are hurting the black community. This probably reflects the effectiveness of Democratic Party propaganda, which relentlessly accuses Republicans of “racism.” It also reflects the tenacity of political tribalism, a phenomenon I know quite well.

Human beings are social creatures, and the natural form of human society is the tribe — the local ethnic community, whose people are united by shared ancestry, customs and beliefs. This is a worldwide phenomenon, not unique to America, and one which long preceded the rise of modern democratic government and industrial capitalism. Thanks to advances in communication and travel, people are now more mobile, and can also share cultural products (books, music, movies, etc.) with people around the world. An American who travels overseas might see, in the streets of Kampala, Kiev or Kyoto, a teenager wearing an NFL team’s jersey, even though the locals have never played American football. This cultural transfer is not one-way, of course. The American in Milwaukee can dine on the ethnic cuisine of Mexico or Thailand and listen to the music of Korean pop groups or Jamaican reggae performers.

We now take this kind of cultural globalism for granted, but the point is that this cosmopolitan trend is very much at odds with the basic tribalism of human nature. Even the racial categories commonly used in America fail to reflect the underlying ethnic tribal reality. As was pointed out during the recent Democratic primary campaign, it is a mistake to think that California Sen. Kamala Harris is “black” in the historic sense that this term has been used in the United States. Harris is not the descendant of American slaves; in fact, none of her ancestors were American at all:

Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a Tamil Indian breast-cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from Madras, India, in 1960 to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Her father, Donald Harris, is a Stanford University economics professor who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study in economics at UC Berkeley.

To classify this offspring of a Jamaican father and Indian mother as “black” — in the same category as the descendant of American slaves — only makes sense from a Jim Crow segregationist mentality, where the old “one-drop rule” would be applied. Yet this sort of classification is demanded by the (allegedly “progressive”) identity politics formula of the Democratic Party, which aims to employ “intersectionality” to unite a coalition of victims against the white male heterosexual oppressors, embodied and symbolized by the Republican Party.

Identity politics is an appeal to mankind’s tribal nature, an appeal with which has affected me personally. I grew up in Georgia in the era of the so-called “Solid South,” when memories of the Civil War were still fresh enough that Republican Party was anathema to white Southerners. My parents’ generation of Southerners, while willing to vote for Dwight Eisenhower as president, nonetheless elected only Democrats to state and local officers. When I was 7 years old, this fanatical loyalty to the Democratic Party resulted in the segregationist Lester Maddox being elected governor of Georgia, and I never knew a Republican personally until college. It took decades for the GOP to overcome this “Solid South” tradition of partisan loyalty to the Democrats. It was not until 1994 that I ever voted for a Republican candidate for Congress, and the Democrats actually maintained their control of the states legislatures in Georgia and Alabama into the 21st century. It was not until the 2004 election that the GOP won a majority in the Georgia General Assembly, and it was 2010 before Republicans captured the state House in Alabama.

Because of my personal familiarity with this kind of partisan tribalism, I understand the kind of social pressures that maintain Democratic solidarity in the black community. If your parents are Democrats, and your grandparents are Democrats, and all your aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters are Democrat, it takes a phenomenal individualism to resist these social influences and say, “No, I’m voting Republican.”

When we behold the desolation of so many of America’s inner-city communities, where more than 90% of the black residents vote for Democrats, we have to wonder why the disastrous results of “progressive” policies don’t cause more defections from this partisan tribalism. And yet human nature being what it is, the accusation of “racism” against Republicans is usually sufficient to keep black people voting for Democrats. Remarkably, it seems that Donald Trump — allegedly the worst “racist” in GOP history — may have done more than any of his Republican predecessors to undermine this lockstep tribal politics. The economic gains made by black people under Trump’s presidency were undeniable — the lowest African-American unemployment rate in U.S. history — before the coronavirus panic struck in the past month.

Well, what about the Chinese virus pandemic?

The Democratic fiefdom of New York City (Hillary Clinton got more than 87% of the vote in Manhattan) is the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. And this deadly pandemic would have been even worse, had it not been for President Trump’s early decision to halt travel from China. Yet the partisan tribalism of New Yorkers is such that they despise Trump and will give him no credit — even though Trump himself is a New Yorker. To be a Republican is to betray one’s duty as a New Yorker, according to this tribal belief system, wherein only Democrats are “real” New Yorkers.

This reflects the same mentality by which any black person who votes Republican is accused of being a “traitor” or a “sellout.” Simply because Democrats claim to represent the interests of your particular community, you are supposed to vote Democrat, forfeiting your political independence for the sake of tribal solidarity, and ignoring whether the policies Democrats support are actually good for you or not.

New Yorkers, being affluent and favorably disposed toward internationalism — a natural attitude, considering New York’s status as one of the world’s great hubs of travel and commerce — instinctively oppose Trump’s nationalist policies. Yet when globalism put their city uniquely at risk for what Kurt Schlicter calls “Chinese Bat Soup Flu,” it turns out that our allegedly “racist” president’s willingness to ban travel from China may have saved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers.

Do I expect a majority of New Yorkers to vote for Trump in November? No. Tribal prejudice does not instantly evaporate that way. What I would like to see, however, is that more Democrat voters — in New York and everywhere else — begin to examine whether their own interests (as individuals, as well as members of particular communities) are best served by their irrational sense of tribal loyalty to the Democratic Party.




 

Category: Democrats, New York, Racism

Finally: Encouraging News From Italy

Posted on | March 23, 2020 | Comments Off on Finally: Encouraging News From Italy

The curve finally appears to be flattening:

The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has risen by 651 to 5,476, officials said on Sunday, an increase of 13.5% but down on Saturday’s figure when some 793 people died.
The total number of cases in Italy rose to 59,138 from a previous 53,578, an increase of 10.4%, the Civil Protection Agency said — the lowest rise in percentage terms since the contagion came to light on Feb. 21.
Of those originally infected nationwide, 7,024 had fully recovered on Sunday compared to 6,072 the day before.

Italy has now been on a nationwide lockdown since March 9, so this diminution of the number of daily deaths was to be expected. The number of diagnosed cases continues to increase, but the people have been effectively quarantined for nearly two weeks, which necessarily is limiting the spread of the disease. The most vulnerable populations — the elderly and those with underlying health problems — have certainly been taking precautions, and so the pandemic appears to be losing its momentum. Let’s hope the trend continues.




 

Category: Italy

Nancy Pelosi Blocks $1.8 Trillion #Coronavirus Bill. Why? Abortion!

Posted on | March 22, 2020 | Comments Off on Nancy Pelosi Blocks $1.8 Trillion #Coronavirus Bill. Why? Abortion!

 

This is absolutely stunning: An emergency stimulus bill, intended to prevent mass bankruptcies caused by quarantine measures necessary to fight the Chinese virus, has been blocked by House Democrats, because it does not include a bailout for Planned Parenthood. Quite understandably, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is livid:

“The American people are watching this spectacle,” McConnell said. “I’m told the futures market is down 5%. I’m also told that that’s when trading stops. So the notion that we have time to play games here with the American economy and the American people is utterly absurd.”

Read the whole thing, or watch the video:




 

Category: Democrats, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Senate

#Coronavirus: The Italian Catastrophe and the Pandemic Danger to America

Posted on | March 22, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Everybody complaining about the economic impact of shutdowns, quarantines and “shelter-in-place” orders to deal with the Chinese coronavirus pandemic should take a hard look at Italy. As I have pointed out, Italy was particularly vulnerable to this disease because they had a large number of Chinese workers — 300,000 nationwide — mostly employed in the fashion industry. (Also, Italy had more Chinese tourists than any other European country, about 5 million annually.) A lot Chinese workers in Italy traveled to China for the Lunar New Year celebration Jan. 24, and then evidently brought the virus back with them when they returned to Italy in late January/early February.

As pointed out by Tyler O’Neill at PJMedia and Stacey Matthews at Legal Insurrection, the initial response to the Wuhan virus outbreak in Italy was impeded by social justice concerns about anti-Chinese “racism.” The mayor of Florence, for example, took to social media in early February to promote the politically correct message “hug a Chinese”!

 

The fear of inciting anti-Chinese “racism” among the Italian populace had a harmful impact on that country’s initial reaction to the outbreak of a disease which indeed originated in China, but when Italy finally got serious about the pandemic, they got very serious.

On March 9, a nationwide lockdown order went into effect. At that time, there had been fewer than 500 coronavirus deaths in Italy. Now, less than two weeks later, the cumulative death toll is approaching 5,000, and Saturday there were nearly 800 coronavirus deaths in a single day reported in Italy. Some accounts suggest Italy is wrongly exaggerating their coronavirus death toll, but I think this suggestion is dubious. Even if Italy’s death toll includes cancer patients, AIDS patients or diabetes sufferers who might have died even if they hadn’t caught this virus, such considerations do not reduce the expenditure of resources devoted to treating these vulnerable people with underlying health issues. America has lots of vulnerable people, too, and if they get the Wuhan virus, nurses and doctors will have to treat them. That is the problem.

While I have never been someone who automatically trusts “experts,” the concerns of medical experts about the Wuhan virus pandemic deserve our careful consideration. What worries them is that there is a finite number of beds in intensive-care units, and a finite number of ventilators, which are needed to treat the severe respiratory problems that this disease causes. Reports from Italy indicate that, even apart from the coronavirus death tolls — which is scary enough — their medical facilities are being strained to the max in an effort to keep up with the number of patients requiring ICU treatment.

“Well,” says my patriotic American reader, “we’re better than Italy.”

True enough, but there are limits to what even American ingenuity can accomplish. Let us assume that President Trump waives all the regulations that might otherwise slow U.S. production of ventilators and other medical supplies necessary to deal with coronavirus patients. But what about doctors and nurses? We can’t educate thousands of new medical professionals in a matter of weeks, so the human resources necessary to treat tens of thousands of coronavirus patients is going to be strained — overtime shifts, 70-hour weeks, etc. — and every hour of a nurse’s time spent treating a coronavirus patient is an hour not spent treating patients with other medical problems.

Imagine being an expectant mother nearing your delivery date, when hospitals are trying to cope with this deadly viral pandemic!

Do you see now why the situation in Italy is so scary?

On the day Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown, they reported 97 new deaths. That seemed shocking at the time — a hundred a day! — but in the past 12 days, Italy’s daily death-toll has increased eight-fold. There are about 60 million people in Italy, whereas we have about 330 million here. If we cannot bring this pandemic under control — if we can’t “flatten the curve,” as they say — our number of coronavirus deaths could rapidly escalate to the point where many hundreds of Americans are dying every day. As I pointed out Saturday, 11 states have 87% of reported U.S. coronavirus deaths, so the other 39 states are comparatively safe. That’s good news, if you live in Iowa, Idaho, Alabama or one of the other states with zero deaths so far. If you don’t live in one of the pandemic “hot” zones — Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, New Orleans, etc. — the economic impact of lockdowns and quarantines may seem excessive, but the alternative is a loss of the safety you’ve had so far.

We can watch the progress of the pandemic in Italy and extrapolate the probable course the Wuhan virus outbreak here. The bad news is, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Italy went into lockdown about a week before similar measures were imposed in most U.S. cities, and yet the Italian outbreak continues to escalate. We can therefore project that the number of American cases will continue doubling every three days or so for the foreseeable future, and the death toll will keep mounting. Death by coronavirus generally takes two or three weeks from the time the patient first exhibits symptoms, so that patients who will die during the week of April 6-12, who were exposed to the virus a week ago, may just now be experiencing their first fever, cough, etc.

The good news is that, eventually, the Wuhan virus pandemic in Italy will peak, and the daily death toll will decline. My hunch — and it’s just a hunch — is that Italy will pass that peak sometime in the next 10-14 days. The cumulative number of coronavirus cases reported in Italy will still keep increasing (because it’s cumulative, after all), but the number of deaths reported each day will start going down, and once that happens, it will be possible to begin thinking about how soon it will be safe to end the quarantine orders, to re-open bars and restaurants, etc. Our situation in the U.S. will probably lag a week or two behind the progress in Italy, so by late April, the worst of the Chinese virus scare could be over.

Let’s hope so, anyway. In the meantime, we’ve got at least another month of “social distancing” ahead of us, and I must once again urge everyone to read this article about symptoms of the disease.




 

Category: Health Care, Italy
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