RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/chinas_happy_harmony_hell.html

David Alan Brat is the dean of the Liberty University School of Business. He served as the U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district from 2014 to 2019. He defeated smug Eric Cantor in the GOP primary and won the general election…..

Dear World: Are you happy yet? This is not a story about coronavirus; it’s worse. It is a story about War, Unrestricted War. The Chinese have promised the world Happiness and Harmony, but have instead lost the “Mandate of Heaven” and delivered Hell. A few courageous experts have been right all along and this is a letter of thanks to them — and a note to the Americans who may want to follow. After you see the scale of deception unleashed upon our country and after your emotions calm, please take economic action! China is at war. Are we?

General Robert Spalding, in his book, “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept” gives it away in the title. But the stories of deception will send chills up your spine. Up front, the damage from the war is real. “Simply put, 3.4 million US jobs vanished between 2001 and 2017 due to our trade relationship with China….with 75% of the jobs lost in manufacturing.” All of this occurred under the false assumption that this is just “normal free market competition.” How do you adhere to free markets when your competition is communist and does not respect the price system, private property, or the rule of law? Economic elites have no answer. Everyone should know by now that “China welcomes investment, but it won’t let investors take their profits out of the country (China). Chinese companies set up shop all around the world, but the totalitarian CCP (Chinese Communist Party) puts all kinds of limits on foreign companies (USA) growing in China.” Is this the free market system the elites have in mind? Adam Smith knew better.

How has the language and economic logic been so tortured and twisted in China’s favor?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-it-safe-to-reopen-schools-europe-is-about-to-find-out-11589278169?mod=world_major_1_pos6

Governments in the U.S. and across the world are trying to figure out how to reopen schools during a coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, millions of children are returning to classrooms, turning the continent into a giant lab for what works and what doesn’t.

Here is what we know and don’t know about children and Covid-19, what measures schools in Europe are taking, and what we might find out.

What does science tell us about how children can become infected?

Anyone with children knows that the younger they are, the more likely they are to catch whatever pathogen they come into contact with. But the new coronavirus is different. Most doctors agree that children who catch Covid-19 rarely become seriously ill. How broadly they can spread the virus—and whether they are less susceptible to infections than adults—are still contested issues among scientists.

The World Health Organization has said early research suggests children don’t appear to be spreading the new coronavirus as often as adults, perhaps because younger patients rarely display severe symptoms and so tend to cough and sneeze less than older ones.

French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told The Wall Street Journal that the latest studies indicate that children below 10 are less contagious than those who are older.

However, Christian Drosten, head of the virology department at Berlin’s Charité clinic, last week warned about reopening schools after finding that a sample of infected children treated at his hospital carried the same viral load as adults.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/05/14/the-european-union-is-having-a-bad-

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

Seventy years ago this month Robert Schuman, the French foreign minister, proposed a European “coal and steel community”. With that humble agreement governing two commodities, six war-ravaged countries created a common market that evolved into the European Union.

The journey towards integration since then has been bumpy, but it has had a sense of direction. National leaders came and went, the Berlin Wall rose and fell, economic hurricanes struck and blew themselves out. Somehow, the eu muddled through. It deepened, building the world’s largest single market, letting its people move freely across borders and creating a common currency. It broadened, as 22 states joined the original six, including 11 that had suffered for decades under communism. It cemented peace and spread prosperity. Today, Europe is a beacon of liberal values and an exemplar of a gentler type of capitalism.

Yet the eu has also lost its way. The pandemic in Europe is not just an economic crisis, as elsewhere in the world, but is fast becoming a political and constitutional crisis, too. This is solvable in principle, but the eu’s members cannot agree on what is needed to make their union more resilient, nor on how to bring about reform. Now of all times, when America and China are at loggerheads, that is a tragic missed opportunity.