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April 2020

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Solution to COVID-19 Is in Sight! By Howard Richman and Jesse Richman

By on April 6th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/a_solution_to_covid19_is_in_sight.html

A solution to the COVID-19 epidemic is in sight.  It is the combo used by South Korea, where people are back at work, to successfully stem its COVID-19 outbreak.  It has three parts: (1) greatly expanded testing of those who could be infected and (2) effective treatment of the virus with a hydroxychloroquine-zinc cocktail, combined with (3) the product of American ingenuity: rapid development of vaccines. 

While these solutions might be thwarted by bureaucracy, progress is happening rapidly, and there are reasons why our collective Groundhog Day of staying at home every day while the economy falters and body counts grow could soon be over. 

Greatly Expanded Testing

Testing is one key.  South Korea did its testing for COVID-19 by setting up drive-through testing stations around the country.  Sufficient tests are now available in the United States to make testing widespread, but it isn’t happening.  During President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force press conference on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence and Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx discussed the problem:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: On the subject of testing, we have now completed more than 1.1 million tests around the country. We’re working very closely with governors around America to — to assist them in drive-through and community testing centers[.] …

Abbott Laboratories is actually going to be producing 50,000 tests a day and distributing those around America.  There’s already the machines in some 18,000 different locations around the country, and they’ve told us they have several thousand on the shelf now[.] …

We’re testing about 100,000 Americans a day.  That’ll continue to grow.  It’ll continue to accelerate[.] …

DR. BIRX: It is disappointing to me right now that we have about 500,000 capacity of Abbott tests that are not being utilized.  So they are out.  They’re in the states.  They’re not being run and not utilized.

Why aren’t the tests being utilized?  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are standing in the way.  On its website, the CDC has extremely restrictive criteria regarding who should be tested.  The only ones with high priority are:

Hospitalized patients.
Those who are in long-term care facilities with symptoms.
Those who are 65 years of age or older with symptoms.
Those with underlying conditions with symptoms.
First responders with symptoms.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Steve Bryen’s New Book on Technology, Security and Strategy Is Must Reading By David P. Goldman

By on April 6th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/steve-bryens-new-book-on-technology-security-and-strategy-is-must-reading/

Book Review: Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy, Vol. III, by Stephen D. Bryen with Shoshana Bryen. 537 pages. $19.95 paperback/$9.95 Kindle.

Steve Bryen is a brilliant and high-qualified defense analyst who cuts through the baloney and tells you exactly what is going on. His lead article today in Asia Times on coronavirus problem on the USS Theodore Roosevelt argues that the carrier never should have been sent to Vietnam, where the crew mingled with locals in the middle of an epidemic. The State Department had already advised U.S. citizens not to travel overseas, yet the Navy put the crew at risk by exposing them to the locals in what boiled down to a public relations exercise. As so many times in the past, Bryen writes about key issues that no-one else talks about.

His latest volume of essays, many published originally in Asia Times, is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how technology shapes national security. His range of expertise is as broad as his background. He was an engineer, fighter pilot, senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the executive director of a grassroots political organization, the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration during the Reagan years. His brilliant wife Shoshana Bryen is senior director of the Jewish Policy Center.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Time to start figuring out which businesses can reopen first and how By Karol Markowicz

By on April 6th, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/its-time-to-figure-out-which-businesses-can-reopen-first-and-how/amp/?utm_source=

How do we reopen after the coronavirus goes away? The mere question, in the middle of the pandemic, is fraught.

Anyone entertaining the idea that businesses should move toward reopening is shamed as caring more about the stock market than people dying. Any discussion of how to get people working again is met with people smugly screaming “stay home!” at each other.

I am staying home, along with my whole family. We’re collectively taking COVID-19 very seriously. We’ve been in self-quarantine since March 13 — before restaurants and bars in the city were shut down, before Mayor Bill de Blasio finally closed city schools and days before his last trip to the gym.

All that to note that I’m no COVID-truther who thinks this is no big deal — it’s a very big deal. But looking ahead, figuring out a way to get people back to work has to be permitted. In fact, it’s essential.

It’s hard not to notice that many of the people shrieking and shaming are still employed. What about all the people who don’t have any money coming in for their families? We need to figure out the path back for them.

Businesses can’t open tomorrow or next week. But how do we get our city working again?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

World Health Coronavirus Disinformation WHO’s bows to Beijing have harmed the global response to the pandemic.

By on April 6th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/world-health-coronavirus-disinformation-11586122093?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

The coronavirus pandemic will offer many lessons in what to do better to save more lives and do less economic harm the next time. But there’s already one way to ensure future pandemics are less deadly: Reform or defund the World Health Organization (WHO).

Last week Florida Senator Rick Scott called for a Congressional investigation into the United Nations agency’s “role in helping Communist China cover up information regarding the threat of the Coronavirus.” The rot at WHO goes beyond canoodling with Beijing, but that’s a good place to start.

The coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China, sometime in the autumn, perhaps as early as November. It accelerated in December. Caixin Global reported that Chinese labs had sequenced the coronavirus genome by the end of December but were ordered by Chinese officials to destroy samples and not publish their findings. On Dec. 30 Dr. Li Wenliang warned Chinese doctors about the virus, and several days later local authorities accused him of lies that “severely disturbed the social order.”

Taiwanese officials warned WHO on Dec. 31 that they had seen evidence that the virus could be transmitted human-to-human. But the agency, bowing to Beijing, doesn’t have a normal relationship with Taiwan. On Jan. 14 WHO tweeted, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” The agency took another week to reverse that misinformation.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bet Big on Treatments for Coronavirus Antivirals and antibody therapies are showing promise. The FDA needs to step up its pace. By Scott Gottlieb

By on April 6th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bet-big-on-treatments-for-coronavirus-11586102963?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Some imagine that the coronavirus will run its tragic course in the spring, with the direst results avoided by intense social-distancing and other mitigation efforts, and then our lives can more or less return to normal in the summer.

But that isn’t realistic. Even if new cases start to stall in the summer heat, the virus will return in the fall, and so will fresh risk of large outbreaks and even a new epidemic. People will still be reluctant to crowd into stores, restaurants or arenas. Schools may remain closed. The public’s fears won’t relent simply because there are fewer new cases. We’ll be running an 80% economy.

The only way out is with technology. Aggressive surveillance and screening can help warn of new infection clusters that could turn into outbreaks, but that won’t be enough. A vaccine could beat the virus, but there won’t be one this year. The best near-term hope: an effective therapeutic drug. That would be transformative, and it’s plausible as soon as this summer. But the process will have to move faster.

Americans would have the confidence to return to work, even if the virus is still circulating in the fall, if they knew that a robust screening system is in place to identify and arrest new outbreaks and medication can significantly reduce the chance of becoming severely ill. Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, estimates that such a drug could restore at least $1 trillion in economic activity.

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