RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-covid-new-york-coronavirus-de-blasio-shutdown-timing-11599836994?mod=itp_wsj&mod=&mod=djemITP_h
Governor overrode mayor on shutdown timing, faced criticism for nursing home moves; ‘It’s not your call’

New York City was locking down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to say when and how it would happen.

After Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents in a March 17 news conference to prepare to “shelter in place,” Mr. Cuomo dismissed the mayor’s plan in a television interview while his aides blitzed City Hall with calls.

“The phones were ringing off the hook,” recalled Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary at the time. “They said, ‘[The mayor] sounds crazy. He’s scaring people. You have to walk it back. It’s not up to you. It’s not your call.’ ”

The federal government largely left the coronavirus response to states. While some governors ceded power to local officials, others centralized it. Mr. Cuomo, more than most state leaders, insisted that nearly every decision come from his office, including when to close office buildings, the size of weddings and the type of air filters required at shopping malls.

Mr. Cuomo and his small team took command of the state Health Department and overrode local governments that wanted to go beyond the state’s social-distancing restrictions. That delayed the shutdown of the nation’s biggest city and slowed the reaction time as the virus spread in nursing homes, contributing to the nation’s highest death toll.

Instead of the abrupt shutdown Mr. de Blasio called for, Mr. Cuomo had his own plan: a gradual closure tailored to avoid panic and encourage public compliance. Millions of people continued to pack commuter trains and subways in the five-day span between Mr. de Blasio’s “shelter in place” comments and Mr. Cuomo’s eventual shutdown order.

By the time “New York on Pause” took effect at 8 p.m. on March 22, about 25,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for Covid-19. The virus soon would push the state’s hospital system to the brink and kill more than 30,000.

State lawmakers are still assessing whom to blame for the thousands of deaths of nursing-home residents. The Justice Department recently said it had requested data on nursing-home deaths and infections from New York and several other states to determine whether an investigation is warranted—an announcement Mr. Cuomo said was politically motivated.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/coronavirus-policy-economic-costs-scientific-approach-evaluation/

Has the U.S. incurred larger COVID losses than countries held up as role models?

The idea that America has incurred larger losses from COVID than any other nation has been widely repeated, but it’s not true. In reality, the United States has incurred smaller COVID losses than many other countries often cast as role models, once the total cost of the disease — in both lost lives and economic activity — is correctly measured and taken into account. A truly scientific approach to evaluating COVID policy relies on quantification of the tradeoffs involved, as opposed to only considering health losses.

The issue is how to measure the quantitative magnitudes of two separate strands of losses, the cost of disease prevention and the cost of the disease itself, to guide policy on minimizing the total impact. Economists routinely quantify and assess tradeoffs between health and other valuable activities to determine overall costs they impose. Doing so does not trivialize human life but acknowledges — as all of us must — that saving lives at any cost is not practical nor desirable.

Consider a somewhat extreme hypothetical example. Over 40,000 people die on U.S. roads each year, yet we don’t shut down highways. Instead of closing them — and losing all the economic benefits they provide — the government manages but does not eliminate the risks from bad drivers by regulating speed limits, enforcing DUI laws, and requiring people to have licenses to drive. Put differently, closing roads would entail a loss from prevention that would be higher than the value of the lives saved.

Tradeoffs obviously play a role in setting health-related policies. Yet some epidemiologists ignore tradeoffs when pushing for their preferred COVID prevention. They only measure one type of loss in terms of health. However, these medical scientists still drive to work like everyone else, even though their mortality would be lower if they did not. This shows how, in every other aspect of life, common sense balances the costs of prevention against its benefits in terms of lower mortality. But for COVID policy decisions, in many locales, the so-called scientists adhere to unscientific economic claims about the quantitative tradeoffs involved.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-islamists-and-wokeists-have-in-common-11599779507?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There were many American heroes on 9/11, but the greatest were the passengers and crew of Flight 93. Not only did they avert what al Qaeda planned—a direct hit on the White House—but they also embodied Patrick Henry’s credo “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

Do those words still have a meaning in the America of 2020? For two decades, I have opposed the fanatical illiberalism of those strands of Islam that gave rise to al Qaeda. I broke with my Somali family and ultimately with their faith because I believed that it is human freedom that should be sacrosanct, not antiquated doctrines that demand submission by the individual.

So implacable are the proponents of Shariah that I have faced repeated death threats. Yet I have always consoled myself that, in the U.S., freedom of conscience and expression rank above any set of religious beliefs. It was partly for this reason that I moved here and became a citizen in 2013.

It never occurred to me that free speech would come under threat in my newly adopted country. Even when I first encountered what has come to be known as “cancel culture”—in 2014 I was invited to receive an honorary degree at Brandeis University and then ungraciously disinvited—I didn’t fret too much. I was inclined to dismiss the alliance of campus leftists and Islamists as a lunatic fringe.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/10/the-resistance-war-games-a-post-election-civil-war/

Consider yourselves warned, America.

Cancel the Election Night party and forget the long-awaited moment when George Stephanopoulos announces, in the late hours of November 3, the official winner. And buckle up for an election-year nightmare that will make the 2000 recount look like a walk in a Palm Beach County park.

A vengeful and well-funded coalition of Trump-hating insurrectionists are prepping the battlefield for a post-election civil war, threatening not only to extend the 2020 election into 2021 but to weaponize every tool at their disposal to make sure Joe Biden assumes the presidency even if President Trump legitimately wins. 

The very same sore losers on the Left and NeverTrump Right who still refuse to accept the results of the 2016 presidential contest are preparing to do whatever it takes—including promote the secession of western states—to force the removal of Donald Trump next January.

Their plan, using the intentionally misleading title, “Transition Integrity Project,” outlines alarming and wholly unconstitutional responses to a number of post-election scenarios. Once upon a time, I would’ve read such a far-fetched document through tears of laughter. But considering the desperation and depravity of the people involved, this terrifying roadmap needs to be taken seriously.

Organizers, including Clinton loyalist John Podesta and NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol, have been playing war games for the past few months, plotting how to deploy media, government, and public armies to install Biden no matter what. Their scorched earth strategy rests on two factors: the use of widespread mail-in voting, intended to delay the official result so they can manipulate the outcome while stoking civil unrest until Republicans cry uncle, and the notion that if he loses, President Trump will claim the Democrats stole the election, a legitimate possibility that this plan only serves to further validate.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/10/9-11-19-years-later/

For 19 years, we all lived in the long, dark shadow of 9/11. Every time September 11 rolled around again, we engaged in ritual remembrance of the events of that day and reflected on the ways in which the world had changed in its aftermath. There was pre-9/11 and there was post-9/11.

If the immediate consequence of 9/11 was a feeling of strong national unity, its long-term effect was the opening up of a huge national divide. On one side were those who loved America, cherished its founding principles, and recognized the attacks on 9/11 as an assault on those principles by totalitarian ideologues. On the other side were those who reacted to 9/11 by deciding that America’s enemies must have a point and by buying the claim that America’s legacy is one not of freedom and equality but of prejudice and exploitation. 

On 9/11, who would have imagined that Islam would soon be widely depicted as a religion not of totalitarian conquest but of innocent victimhood, and that Sharia apologists like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib would be congresswomen? 

It started with George W. Bush’s whitewashing of Islam and his use of 9/11 as an excuse for Middle East nation-building. Barack Obama, who spoke loftily of “one America” as a candidate, but took every opportunity to undermine American unity and question American greatness as president, was far worse, singing Islam’s praises even as 9/11 was succeeded by one act of jihadist mass murder after another.