RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/woody-allen-and-affirmative-action/

On March 7, the coronavirus death toll in Italy was 233. As of March 28, Italy’s coronavirus death toll was 10,023.

Some skeptics of “social distancing” have suggested that if most Americans had generally carried on with life as usual, the coronavirus would not present any greater threat than the seasonal flu or car crashes, each of which kill about 40,000 Americans a year. The fact that 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus in three weeks in Italy — a country with one-fifth the population of the United States — should dispel such wishful thinking.

And keep in mind that this is the death toll in Italy weeks after lockdowns were imposed — first within the region of Lombardy on February 21 (affecting only about 50,000 people) and then on March 9 for the entire country.

The spike in the daily death toll in Italy — a record 919 coronavirus deaths were recorded on March 27 alone — does not mean that the national lockdown is not working.

There is an average five-day delay between infection and appearance of symptoms and an average 18.5 days between the appearance of symptoms and death (for those who don’t survive).

The good news out of Italy is that the daily percentage growth of new cases has been decreasing:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/britains-creaking-national-health-system-gears-up-for-coronavirus-crisis-11585479601

EXCERPTS

LONDON—A vast convention center in east London is being turned into a sprawling hospital that can handle up to 4,000 patients. Thousands of retired nurses and doctors are being drafted back to work. The British army is delivering protective clothing to dozens of hospitals around the country.As the new coronavirus spreads here, Britain’s tightly funded National Health Service is taking drastic action to manage a crisis that some worry will overwhelm it.

How the NHS deals with an expected flood of patients will test whether a relatively low-cost, state-run health care system that is free at the point of delivery proves more resilient than its U.S. equivalent.The British system is limping into the crisis following 10 years of government belt tightening.

“This is a real problem at the moment,” said Chris Ham, a former director of strategy at Britain’s Department of Health. “The chickens are coming home to roost.” Already, doctors are complaining about a lack of protective clothing, with one NHS supplier reaching out to hardware stores to donate protective masks. The NHS is also struggling to ramp up mass testing for the coronavirus.

Going into the pandemic, U.K. hospital bed numbers had halved in three decades to 140,000, according to the King’s Fund, a health care charity.

More than 90% of hospital beds were occupied for all but four days of the 2017-18 winter, according to the British Medical Association, the doctors’ trade union. “It always runs right on the edge,” Mr. Edwards said.

The U.K. had 2.1 acute hospital beds—those where a patient receives treatment for severe injuries or illnesses—for every 1,000 inhabitants. That is among the lowest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to 2017 data, and compares with 2.4 beds per 1,000 in the U.S.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/italy-reports-second-straight-daily-drop-in-ccp-virus-deaths_3289999.html

Italian health officials reported a second daily drop in CCP virus deaths, hoping that strict measures implemented by the government will help curb the spread of the disease.

Italy’s Civil Protection agency said on Sunday that 756 people died from the virus in the past 24 hours, compared to 889 on Saturday as well as 919 deaths on Friday, according to ANSA.

The total number of those who have succumbed to the virus is now 10,779 in the country. New infections in the past 24 hours totaled 5,217, compared with 5,974 during the previous day, officials said in an update, bringing the number of cases to above 97,000.

The drop in numbers shows that Italians must continue to adhere to national lockdown measures, said officials. Politicians in the country have been quick to seize on drops in cases and deaths as proof that the lockdown is working.

“We must be even more convinced in respecting such measures,” said pulmonologist and government committee member Luca Richeldi during the conference. “The battle is very long, we must not let our guard down. In particular, the drop in deaths and ICU admissions gives solid and concrete data.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-korea-fires-more-missiles-than-ever-amid-ccp-virus-pandemic_3289909.html

North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean off its east coast on Sunday, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches that South Korea decried as “inappropriate” amid the global CCP virus pandemic, also known as the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Two “short-range projectiles” were launched from the coastal Wonsan area, and flew 143 miles at a maximum altitude of 19 miles, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) reported.

“In a situation where the entire world is experiencing difficulties due to COVID-19, this kind of military act by North Korea is very inappropriate and we call for an immediate halt,” South Korea’s JCS said in a statement, according to Yonhap news agency.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense said they appeared to be ballistic missiles, and they did not land in Japanese territory or its exclusive economic zone.

They would be the eighth and ninth missiles launched in four rounds of tests this month as North Korean troops conduct ongoing military drills, usually personally overseen by leader Kim Jong Un.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15813/uncertainty-bleak-moment

Uncertainty may also be affecting politics in Iran, where the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei may have slowed down his bid for exclusive hold on power, in the hope that Hassan Rouhani, the hapless president, will end up carrying the can for the disaster caused by the pandemic.

On positive note, the pandemic may have slowed down India’s tragic rush towards a major Hindu-Muslim civil war that threatened to tear its democracy apart.

If the best we hoped for a few months ago didn’t happen, there is no reason why the worst that we now fear may come to pass. The beauty of uncertainty is that it works both ways.

Regardless of its denouement, the current coronavirus crisis may end up affecting the authority of the political, economic, media and scientific elites who shape world public opinion. The function of the elites, and their claim to legitimacy, has been linked to their ability to create certainty, in defiance of all and sundry Cassandras.

However, the current crisis, which struck like thunder out of the blue, has reasserted the evanescence, even the uncertainty, of human affairs. Just a few weeks ago the received wisdom was that stock exchanges will continue to move upwards while US President Donald J. Trump would sail to a second term and the post-Brexit European Union would settle for a period of anemic growth on the edge of recession. Globally, the elites peddled the certainty of business as usual.

And, yet, what we now have is uncertainty on a degree not seen in recent memory. Already the Brexit agenda in Europe is delayed, if not actually derailed, as British Premier Boris Johnson’s stiff upper lip is less impressive under a surgical mask. With French airplanes ferrying abandoned Brits back home from the four corners of the globe and British aircraft providing the same service to European tourists, the old union, cursed by the Brexiters, does not look as dead as Boris hoped.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15789/turkey-christians-attacks-discrimination

When Protestants introduce themselves to the authorities as a church, they receive warnings that they are not legal and may be closed down.

In 2019, however, many members of the foreign clergy, as well as church members, were deported, refused residence permits, or denied entry visas into Turkey — as in previous years.

Some textbooks also target Christian communities. “Missionary Activity” continues to be a heading under the section related to “National Threats” in the eighth grade elementary school textbook entitled, Revolutionary History and Kemalism. This teaching continues to be referenced in supplementary textbooks and tests related to missionary activity being considered a “national threat”.

Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches has released its 2019 “Human Rights Violations Report” detailing the state of religious freedom in the country.

The report sheds light on problems Protestant Christians faced in Turkey in 2019. These included barring foreign Protestants from entering Turkey for no other reason than their faith, as well as the inability of Christians to train their own religious workers.

One major difficulty for Protestant Christians in Turkey is that the Protestant community is not recognized as a legal entity.

According to the report, the Protestant community has mostly tried to solve this problem by establishing associations or becoming a representative of an already existing association. Associations and foundations, however, are not accepted as a “church” or a “place of worship.” The Protestants, therefore, cannot benefit from the advantages given to officially recognized places of worship. When Protestants introduce themselves to the authorities as a church, they receive warnings that they are not legal and may be closed down. On March 21, in Bolu, for example, a house church used by Iranian refugees was sealed off by the Bolu Governorate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15814/persecution-of-christians-january

Boko Haram… released another execution video. In it, a masked Muslim child holding a pistol appears standing behind a bound and kneeling hostage, later identified as Ropvil Daciya Dalep, a 22-year-old Christian… kidnapped on January 9 while traveling to his university, where he majored in biology. After chanting in Arabic and launching into an anti-Christian diatribe, the Muslim child proceeds to shoot Ropvil several times in the back of the head. — Independent Catholic News, January 23, 2020; Nigeria.

On January 2, Islamic gunmen abducted Reverend Lawan Andimi, a pastor … in Nigeria. After the terrorists demanded an exorbitant ransom for his release—two million euros, which his church and family simply could not raise—they beheaded the married father-of-nine…. — Morning Star News, January 21, 2020; Nigeria.

“Since the government and its apologists are claiming the killings have no religious undertones, why are the terrorists and herdsmen targeting the predominantly Christian communities and Christian leaders?” — The International Center for Investigative Reporting, January 21, 2020; Nigeria.

After Muhammad ‘Awad, 32, was arrested and questioned as to why he tried to murder Rafiq Karam, 56, he confessed that he did not know him, but that he simply “hates Christians.” — Coptic Solidarity, January 21, 2020; Egypt.

The Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria

During several separate incidents, militant Muslims—whether Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, or generic terrorists—continued to attack and massacre several Christians.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/29/iranians-die-by-the-thousand-of-covid-19-amidst-ayatollahs-greed/

Within days of requesting $5 billion from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei turned down and mocked America’s offer to send medical assistance to fight the spiraling Coronavirus crisis.

At present, restricted information coming from the Iranian government places the Coronavirus death toll at 2,234.  Meanwhile, the government’s primary political opposition organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), is reporting the number of deaths in Iran as having passed 11,500. It was the MeK which exposed the Iranian government’s covert nuclear weapons program. This organization’s ability to extract accurate intelligence out of Iran is always impressive. Furthermore, the 11,500 number is supported by satellite images which reveal extensive expansions of multiple cemeteries throughout Iran.   

In the city of Qom, 60-70 people are dying every day. Being unable to keep up with the burials, clerics asked Tehran officials to accept some of the bodies for interment. The request was denied as Tehran cemeteries are also overwhelmed.

Iran continues to cover-up the fact that it has replaced China as the epicenter of Coronavirus. In early February, Tehran started downplaying the growing medical threat. The ruling fundamentalists did not want interruptions to two interconnected activities: on February 11th the government conducted country-wide anniversary celebrations of the 1979 fall of the monarchy; these celebrations were preludes to local legislative elections conducted ten days later.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/03/emperor-xi-has-no-clothes/

China’s celebrated billionaire property-developer Ren Chiqiang did not hold back in his response the teleconferenced speech by President-for-life Xi Jinping’s on February 23, 2020, about the status of COVID-19:

I saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes’ but a clown prince who stripped naked and insisted on being emperor.

This is part of a diabolical pattern. The late Dr Li Wenliang was arrested in Wuhan in December last year after alerting people on his microblog to the danger of the novel coronavirus. Dr Li’s crime, according to Communist Party of China (CCP), was spreading rumours to fellow medical practitioners. In reality, of course, Li was being truthful, not only about a new viral respiratory illness, but also the People’s Republic of China: “I think a healthy society should not just have one voice.”

How we respond to the pandemic of 2020 tell us a lot about our long-held biases. The subject of our fury turns out to be, more often than not, what we already believed is wrong with the world. Gail Collins, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, decided on February 26 that her readers should call Covid-19 “the Trump virus”. A more helpful suggestion, perhaps, might be to rename Collins’s four-year case of Trump Derangement Virus (TDV). Elizabeth Lopatto, also suffering from TDV, had this to say in The Verge on March 12: “The best thing he can do for the country, to speed its response to the novel coronavirus, is to resign and let someone capable take over.” Peter Wehner, a day later in The Atlantic, announced the potential good news about the COVID-19 that those who have contracted TDV are so desperate to hear: “The Trump Presidency Is Over.”

For the rest of us, though, potential good news would be more along the lines of a medical cure. Various solutions have already been mooted, although the general availability of a single-purpose vaccine might be as much as 18 months away. That said, at his March 19 White House briefing, President Trump touted a promising, if not scientifically verified, medicine usually used in the treatment of malaria and strong cases of arthritis: “Now, a drug called chloroquine…Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. Now, this is a common malaria drug…But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it – if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.” Scientists and scientific journals were quick to note that hydroxychloroquine has not been subjected to “thorough rigorous clinical trials” with regards to COVID-19, even if anecdotal evidence points to its effectiveness as a cure and, conceivably, a preventive measure. Trump, pointedly, made his comment in the context of his support for the Right to Try Act, passed into law in May 2018. This law empowers patients in desperate straits and “unable to participate in a clinical trial” the right to “access certain unapproved treatments”. The widespread distribution of hydroxychloroquine, if properly monitored, is actually “beyond” – Trump’s word – the Right to Try Act, because chloroquine has been available for almost eighty years. There is the added factor that the supervised distribution of hydroxychloroquine, or a comparable undocumented treatment for COVID-19 such as HIV medication Kaletra, could in itself serve as a clinical trial.

https://epochtimes.today/editorial-where-ties-with-communist-china-are-

EXCERPTS FROM MARCH 3, EDITORIAL

In the United States, one of the earliest- and worst-hit places was the Seattle area in Wash-ington state. By March 20, the state had seen 74 deaths from the virus, around a third of the national total.

In the late 1970s, in the early days of the CCP’s deceptive economic reforms, it was the port of Seattle that welcomed the first Chinese cargo ships. In the years since, with increasing enthusiasm from local politicians and businesses, Seattle has hosted all four of the PRC’s heads of state, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

The decades since saw the CCP wage a secret Cold War against the United States, funneling America’s technology and jobs to mainland China in an onslaught abetted by oppor-tunistic profit-seekers, who compromised America’s conscience. Recently, the CCP has attempted to portray its draconian handling of the epidemic as a triumph for the Party’s authoritarian system, going so far as to pin the blame for a disaster of its own making on the United States.

Misled by the CCP’s propaganda machine and a left-leaning domestic media environment fixated on the failures—whether real or imagined—of the U.S. system, many Chinese residing overseas have made the decision to return home.

But the Chinese historical record is more sobering. Throughout the centuries, plagues and other calamities signaled the downfall of imperial dynasties. And at present—with growing numbers of whistleblowers standing up to contradict official figures that downplay the mainland epidemic—the CCP’s claim that it has curbed the virus rings as false as the lies it deployed last year to cover up the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Taking history as a mirror, as ancient Chinese scholars did, it is apparent that the pandemic is a calamity linked with the CCP and its 70 years of brutal rule. And today, the world is an interconnected community. Any country, community, or organization that keeps too close to the CCP and falls for its deception will taste the bitter fruits of that involvement.