RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/freeze-travel-to-and-from-cuba/

There are reasons to think that the coronavirus there is rampant. The Communist regime has a record of downplaying its public-health crises.

The actions of China’s Communist leaders concerning the coronavirus pandemic have, yet again, made abundantly clear that totalitarian regimes do not behave like responsible nations. Rather than share information promptly to avert a global health emergency, the “revolution,” or regime, puts itself before all else, regardless of how many human beings are infected or die.

Only when the ghastly reality of the Wuhan coronavirus could no longer be contained did Beijing’s leadership stop some of the censorship, shifting to propaganda, lies, and baseless attacks to deflect responsibility for the crisis. The Iranian regime has followed a similar pattern. So will Communist Cuba, as history has shown that it cannot be relied on for accurate and complete health data on pandemics or other urgent global health challenges.

Unlike China or Iran, however, Cuba is just a 45-minute flight away from the U.S. mainland. To safeguard the American people, it was essential for the U.S. to suspend all travel to and from Cuba. It appears from a tweet Thursday by the U.S. mission in Havana that the administration has implemented such a measure. It should also consider blocking entry to the U.S. for all foreign travelers who have visited the island within the previous 120 days. This suggested timeframe is based on estimates of the spread of the novel coronavirus and on statutory limitations concerning access to American ports by vessels that have been in Cuba. Once the health crisis subsides, the U.S. can reassess travel protocols based on verifiable measures, not Cuban-government rhetoric.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/how-to-make-china-pay/

The WHO sells out to China, but we don’t have to.

One of the big questions facing the international community today is how to hold China legally and politically accountable for all its dishonesty and harm to people around the world. According to reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed to the White House that China has deliberately understated the number of its people who have contracted and died from the coronavirus epidemic. Such deceit follows Beijing’s recklessness in suppressing news of the origins, rapid spread, and lethality of COVID-19 in December and January. Chinese officials punished doctors who tried to warn of the outbreak in Wuhan, slowed identification and research on the virus, and allowed thousands to leave the region for the rest of the world.

If China were an individual, a company, or a law-abiding nation, it would be required to provide compensation for the harm it has inflicted globally. The United States alone may well suffer 200,000 or more deaths, billions in health-care costs, trillions in lost economic activity, and trillions more in new government spending. China’s failures render it legally liable under international law, but the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the crisis of ineffectiveness and corruption of international institutions. Instead of focusing on international law, the U.S. should thus protect its national interests by opting for the self-help mechanism.

International institutions provide no meaningful way to force China to remedy the harm it has caused. The United Nations Security Council, allegedly the supreme lawmaking and executive body in international law, cannot hold China to account because China and Russia exercise their permanent right to veto any Security Council resolution. China has rendered the U.N. impotent, even though U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has declared the COVID-19 pandemic the world’s most challenging crisis since World War II, as it has become a threat to international peace and security by shutting down swaths of the global economy and killing thousands, if not millions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15856/coronavirus-euro-collapse

In Spain, which recently overtook Italy as the epicenter of the coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez committed €200 billion — 20% of the country’s GDP — to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. When asked how he would pay for that amount of spending, Sánchez replied that he was counting on financial help from “Europe.”

“The worst growth figure in France since 1945 was in 2009, after the great financial crisis of 2008: -2.2%. We will probably be far beyond -2.2% this year,” Le Maire told the Senate Economic Affairs Committee. “This shows the extent of the economic shock we are facing.” — French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, April 6, 2020

“Today, not a single European country is doing well, which means there is limited willingness for European countries to come to each other’s aid. They are busy dealing with their own crises. Just witness how Italy has been left alone with its crisis by Europe and now rather gets its medical support from China….” — Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative, March 23, 2020

“An almighty economic earthquake is in the making. In a few weeks or months, several large European economies will require bailout and assistance packages. These will be several times larger than anything Europe has seen. Yet no country, central bank or institution will be eager or even able to provide them. Even the gargantuan sums on the table now will not be enough.” — Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative, March 23, 2020

As the coronavirus unleashes economic shockwaves across Europe, the European single currency, the most visible symbol of European unification, is facing collapse.

The eurozone — a monetary union of 19 of the 27 Member States of the European Union that have adopted the euro as their common currency — is being buffeted not only by the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession. Northern and Southern European countries are also feuding over possible financial support for Italy and Spain, the EU’s third- and fourth-largest economies, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus.

On March 13, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde dismissed calls by Italy for financial assistance to help it cope with the pandemic. After her comments rattled financial markets, Lagarde quickly reversed course and said that the ECB was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.” Italian President Sergio Mattarella replied that Italy had a right to expect solidarity from beyond its borders rather than obstacles.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15844/coronavirus-china-cover-up

Bats were not, it seems, sold at Wuhan’s seafood market. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the market.

One more person has just disappeared. Ai Fen, a Chinese physician, who… claimed her bosses silenced her early warnings about coronavirus, appears to have vanished…. The journalists who saw what happened inside Wuhan have also disappeared.

“No one has been able to study it. How can you say it’s not a release from a lab if you can’t go to the lab? Indeed, we have seen Beijing do its best to prevent virologists and epidemiologists from actually going to Wuhan.” — Gordon Chang, in Die Weltwoche, March 31, 2020.

That is another major problem. The potential major investigator on Wuhan’s origin, the World Health Organization, is now accused of being “China’s coronavirus’ accomplice”.

Why is China trafficking in dangerous viruses in the first place?

“Debate may rage over which center it is, but at this point it seems undeniable that a center has been directly involved with research on viruses, although not necessarily on the creation of a virus.” — Father Renzo Milanese, AsiaNews.it, March 13, 2020.

We have been paying dearly for China’s lies.

“This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic,” said Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before the US intelligence community concluded, in a classified report to the White House, that China has concealed the origin and extent of the catastrophic global coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15846/iran-exploit-coronavirus

The international community needs to refrain from handing the Iranian regime any direct financial aid. The four-decade history of the ruling mullahs has shown that any extra revenues obtained by the leadership have not benefited the ordinary people in Iran.

If the mullahs are seeking financial assistance because they actually desire to help their own people, why did they refuse America’s offer of medical assistance? Why did their regime revoke its approval for the emergency team sent by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières), along with the materials needed to build a 50-bed inflatable treatment unit?

The international community therefore must not directly give the Iranian regime financial aid: it will most likely be funneled into supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its terror and militia groups across the region.

Instead of handing billions of dollars to the ruling mullahs, financial aid can alternatively be towards trustworthy international medical organizations to combat coronavirus directly on the ground, both in Iran and other countries afflicted.

The Iranian leaders have been pushing the international community to provide it with financial assistance to “combat coronavirus” there. The EU has apparently decided to give the mullahs €20 million (approximately $21 million), all while many EU citizens are languishing in Iran’s prisons, often on trumped-up charges. The EU taxpayers’ money will more likely be misused by the Iranian regime to advance still further the mullahs’ malign agendas.

Iran’s leaders are also demanding that the US-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) give them financial assistance. They are asking for a $5 billion emergency loan after the IMF declared that it is making $50 billion available to assist countries with the coronavirus crisis.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, on Twitter, ordered the IMF to provide Iran with money:

“IMF’s @KGeorgieva has stated that countries affected by #COVID19 will be supported via Rapid Financial Instrument. Our Central Bank requested access to this facility immediately. IMF/IMF Board should adhere to Fund’s mandate, stand on right side of history & act responsibly.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15845/china-fake-news-coronavirus

The virus is hitting China in a second wave. The second wave is claiming victims, including the Party’s propaganda narratives. The most dangerous of these narratives is that ruler Xi Jinping, with heaven’s mandate, has an obligation to dominate the international system.

To push America aside and seize global leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, to say that China’s response to the coronavirus showed the “superiority of the Chinese system and this experience is worthy of emulation by other countries.” Then Beijing set about making a big show of “donating” medical equipment and diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.

Xi’s initial policies turned a local outbreak into a pandemic, and now they are making even more people sick and forcing China into another pit of disease. China’s inaccurate diagnostic kits and substandard protective gear donated around the world along with the new infections will show the truth: communism is incompetent if not downright malign.

China can lie with statistics, but the virus gets the last word. “Victory” over both COVID-19 and the United States is still far out of sight.

China has “defeated” the coronavirus and declared “victory,” Communist Party media tells us.

A funny thing happened on the way to victory, however. The virus is hitting China in a second wave. The second wave is claiming victims, including the Party’s propaganda narratives. The most dangerous of these narratives is that ruler Xi Jinping, with heaven’s mandate, has an obligation to dominate the international system.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/covid-19-and-swedish-exception-bruce-bawer/

A few weeks ago, while other countries around the world were locking down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK and Sweden chose to go with business as usual: keep everything running, act as if nothing’s wrong, let people hold parties and meetings and candlelight suppers. In response to a public outcry and a growing sense that the nation was barreling toward disaster, British officials soon backed off from this policy. But Sweden, on the advice of top government epidemiologist Anders Tegnell – described by Reuters as “only months ago a little known civil servant but now rivalling the prime minister for publicity” – stuck to its guns. Hence the denizens of IKEA-land are still going to work, kids are still going to school, and shops and bars and restaurants and gyms and barbershops are still open.

To be sure, this approach has its share of credentialed and outspoken domestic critics. Epidemiologist Joacim Rocklöv has called it “a big and risky experiment with the entire population that could have a catastrophic outcome.” Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a virologist at the Karolinska Institute, used the same word: Sweden’s government, she charged, is “leading us to catastrophe.” Meanwhile, a mathematics professor at the University of Stockholm has warned that thanks to the official hands-off strategy, half of the country’s population could be infected with the virus by the end of April. And at last count, no fewer than 2300 academics, including the head of the Nobel Foundation, have signed a petition calling “for more stringent measures” against the virus.

In neighboring Denmark, which has pursued a lockdown along the line of America’s, the state of affairs in Sweden is causing no small degree of trepidation. “Looking at Sweden is a bit like watching a horror film,” a Danish TV reporter, Lisbeth Davidsen, said the other day. The reaction in next-door Norway has been similar. 

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.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/04/maladies-and-diseases/

There was a rare cheerfulness in much of the country over Christmas and the New Year. It would be hard to exaggerate the relief that many Britons felt after December’s unexpected election result. Thanks in large part to the people of the traditionally Labour-voting cities of the north of England, the country (and by extension the NATO alliance) had just been saved from a Corbyn government. The Tory prime minister Boris Johnson had won a large enough majority to avoid the political paralysis that had marked the previous six months. It seemed at least possible that, so equipped, this clever but transparently flawed chancer with a talent for winning the affection of ordinary people might achieve great things, or at least things that his more conventional predecessors and rivals had not.

In March, things felt rather different. There have been any number of reminders of the deep problems in British governance and society that recent governments have failed to grapple with. On February 2 for example, only two months after the London Bridge terrorist stabbing incident, yet another Islamist terrorism convict who had been released from prison “on licence”, attacked random citizens in the streets of Streatham. There could hardly have been a better illustration of the disastrous inadequacy of the country’s probation system, its under-staffed, overcrowded, poorly-run prisons, its laughable sentencing laws, its hopeless de-radicalisation programs and its failure to confront the ideological roots of Islamist terror.