Tag: covid

Categories
international affairs media and media people

Bolsonaro’s Little Flu

CNN, Covid, Coronavirus, Bolsonaro,

“I know that nobody can recover from dying, but the economy not working leads to other causes of death and suicide,” said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro regarding his reopening of his country’s economy. “We have suffered very harsh criticism in this regard, but today it shows that we are right. The fact that I am infected shows that I am a human being like any other.”

Some of that strikes this reader as not well put, but there are two important points: shutting down commerce does lead to horrendous consequences, especially for the poor, and … President Bolsonaro — who is often characterized as a Brazilian Trump-​like figure — has been infected with SARS-​CoV‑2 and has COVID-​19, if in mild form.

He has taken hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, the much-​disputed treatment. 

The news report from CNN mentions his diagnosis and immediately follows it up with “after months of downplaying the virus.”

Now, downplaying threats is one way of handling them, for psychological reasons: sometimes the worst thing to fear is, as FDR said, “fear itself.” In the beginning, Bolsonaro called the virus a “little flu.”

“More than 65,000 people have now died of the virus in Brazil, according to figures released by the country’s health ministry on Monday,” CNN explains. “So far, 1,623,284 cases have been confirmed.”

That’s a 4 percent lethality rate — but that rests upon an under-​tested population, and CNN admits that “some local experts say the real number of people infected could be 12 to 16 times higher.”

Like so many major news reports, CNN does not describe the curve of coronavirus deaths, just says they’re up.

Apparently, good reporting has a high lethality rate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Rates that Matter

fear, Covid, Coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, propaganda,

Millions more Americans have been infected with SARS-​CoV‑2 than are considered “confirmed cases,”* at rates ranging from 6/​1 (Connecticut, early May) to 24/​1 (Missouri, late April), making the fatality rate of COVID-​19 much lower than feared.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust our news sources to be forthright about this.

The “death count” had been the pandemic’s repeated headline for months, Dr. Ron Paul noted yesterday, “all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about ‘cases’ and has always been all about ‘cases.’ Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant.”

There’s a reason for this re-​focus. Since peaking in April, deaths, you see, “had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.”

And the case number increases do look ominous, despite being almost innocuous: “This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more ‘cases’ you discover.”

And that is not the only change of spin regarding the pandemic, as Jeffrey Tucker dramatized on Twitter:

“Flatten the curve!”
“What does that do?”
“Pushes infections to the future”
3 months later
“There are new infections!”
“What should we do?”
“Flatten the curve!”

At Mr. Tucker’s stomping grounds, the American Institute for Economic Research, Gregory van Kipnis wrote last month that the “most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-​19 (COVID-​19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death.”

We have something to fear from the virus and its attack upon the respiratory system, but we have more to fear from fear itself.

That staple of propagandistic media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  A confirmed case is of a patient who has seen a doctor for symptoms of the disease and has tested positive with the diagnosis seconded and logged by scientists associated with a national health agency.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
subsidy too much government

Precedented Payments

CARES Act, Coronavirus, Covid,

I idly wonder who cooks up the initialisms for the big federal legislative packages (“laws”) — you know, like the recent “CARES Act” that distributed $2.3 trillion conjured out of thin air … and the faith and credit of a wobbly reputation. CARES stands for “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security,” and I say “idly” because I am not googling this. 

If I can resist searching for (as I am instructed to do daily) “any three numbers and ‘new cases,’” I can let others do that initialism research.

Whoever it is, though, does a pretty good job. Usually. Good P.R. But they missed the boat a bit on CARES. It should have been CORPSE, standing for “Coronavirus Overpayment, Relief, Prodigality, Stupidity and Eeeeek!” Act.

For, you see, $1.4 billion was sent to dead people.

More than a million of them.

At least we can be thankful that the IRS wants that money back.

Well, “wants” is a funny word to use for a bureaucracy. Especially since the IRS has no current plan “to notify ineligible recipients on how to return payments.” According to the General Accounting Office.

You can read about it all at Reason.

I would say it makes for fascinating reading, but it doesn’t really. This is the same-​old/​same-​old. The Department of Kludge and Fubar, you know, which would be a better name for most government bureaus.

The Reason piece call the CARES Act “unprecedented emergency spending,” but I think we could find plenty of precedents. 

If we googled.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs national politics & policies

Twelve Monkeys in Charge?

Covid, coronavirus, Dr. Fauci, epidemic, pandemic, vaccine,

Dr. Anthony Fauci, current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, served as a leader on the “Global Vaccine Plan” through partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates, late of Microsoft, Inc., is on record desiring to make a future coronavirus vaccine mandatory for travel … and to institute tracking of everyone’s interactions.

After the Obama Administration pressured National Institutes of Health to put a moratorium on “gain of function” research of coronavirus in America, according to Newsweek, Dr. Fauci devoted over $7 million to that very research … in Wuhan, China.

The idea? To see if the coronavirus in bats could migrate into humans, using ferrets and other animals to cajole the virus to “gain function,” i.e. transmissibility.

The goal being to prepare vaccines in advance of naturally occurring jumps over the barrier between humans and other animals.

But many scientists regard this kind of research to be morally questionable. 

And 12 Monkeys dangerous. 

In the midst of all this has been one Dr. Charles Lieber, a 61-​year-​old nanoscience researcher, who recently “has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of making false statements and will be arraigned in federal court in Boston at a later date.  Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28, 2020, and charged by criminal complaint.” He allegedly lied about his relationship with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and his role as a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China.

Where SARS-​CoV‑2 — the coronavirus of the current pandemic — apparently came from.

Nanoscience is the engineering of really, really small stuff. Like strands of RNA and DNA and … viruses.

Does this induce confidence about that vaccine allegedly in the offing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom U.S. Constitution

Thoughts in Slo-Mo

car, accident,

“Oh my God,” my wife gasped after that eerie instant of calm when things stopped. She told me to call 911 just as I was pressing “9.”

We had been navigating the less-​than-​usually-​clogged interstates up the East Coast when suddenly dirt and debris swept across the asphalt. As we quickly stopped, a small vehicle flipped back onto Interstate-​84, rolling over twice, throwing its occupant — a 21-​year-​old woman — out of the car and onto the road some 30 feet in front of us.

As another man and I got to her, we saw she was breathing. Thankfully, a nurse came forward from the traffic, which would be stopped for hours. Within minutes, emergency personnel were on the scene.

The woman was airlifted to a hospital; she later died. 

Those slow-​motion seconds of the accident stay with me, along with the surrealism of the aftermath, standing on a stopped superhighway — helpless — feeling amazingly connected to someone’s precious life. 

And death.

Back on the road, after giving a statement to police, my wife wondered aloud if, what with the current pandemic, the young woman’s parents would even be able to get into the hospital to see her.

Throughout this coronavirus crisis we have heard stories of people dying all alone because of policies designed to “keep us safe” — by keeping relatives and even spouses out. 

We like safety, but if either my wife or I lies dying in a hospital, regardless of the COVID-​19 risk, each of us would wish to be with the other.

It’s “till death do us part,” not “till quarantine do us part.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs

Disgraced, Enraged, Belligerent

China, virus, Covid, coronavirus, authoritarianism,

“Over the course of April and throughout May,” writes Timothy McLaughlin in The Atlantic, “Beijing was undertaking aggressive actions across Asia.” These include:

  • The ramming — and sinking — of a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea.
  • Intrusive surveying by a Chinese research vessel (plus coast-​guard and other ships) near a Malaysian oil rig, drawing warships from the United States and Australia. 
  • Creating two administrative units on islands in the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. 
  • Ugly if predictable rage directed towards Taiwan, “whose handling of the pandemic has won plaudits and begun a push for more international recognition.”*

Bursting out of Wuhan, did the coronavirus pandemic, responsible so far for taking more than 350,000 lives worldwide, not make the Chinese rulers look bad enough?**

Now the Butchers of Beijing move against Hong Kong, today considering a so-​called “national security law” to further take away Hongkongers’ civil liberties. The CCP gang is so insecure they cannot stand to hear Hong Kong crowds boo the Chinese national anthem at soccer matches. So the new law will punish the Bronx cheer with three years in prison.

Months ago, former New York Mayor and short-​lived Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg argued that America would “have to deal with China” … “to solve the climate crisis.… because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yesterday, showing more backbone, the U.S. Congress passed legislation asking the Trump Administration to sanction Chinese officials over the camps imprisoning Uighurs. Meanwhile, responding to China’s Hong Kong clampdown, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the territory “not autonomous” from China, which could lead to a big change in trade status.

It is getting harder to ignore this menace in Asia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* For some reason, Mr. McLaughlin left the recent border clashes between China and India, which have left 100 soldiers injured, off his list. 

** They looked especially bad after it came out that the Chinese government had arrested doctors in Wuhan to cover it up.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts