RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/25/lessons-from-the-burst-zika-bubble/

Disease epidemics are messy, fast and frightening, and they’ll keep coming. To prepare for the future, the least we can do at the end of one is to use the benefit of hindsight to assess how well we conducted ourselves.

Sometimes phenomena flare into public consciousness, crowd out other concerns, then disappear. Only later we realize that judicious assessment of the evidence might have saved a great deal of distress.

There are disturbing clues that the Brazilian Zika scare might have been one such phenomenon, fueled by fear, haste, and fallacious conclusions instead of scientific rigor.

The World Health Organization declared the Zika virus a global emergency in 2016 and introduced drastic measures. People panicked not because the mosquito-borne virus causes direct illness—mostly there are no symptoms or just mild malady—but because of the small heads, or microcephaly, that it was believed to inflict on babies born to infected mothers.

The media went wild, and there were calls to cancel the 2016 Rio Olympics. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control told women who were pregnant or might become pregnant to stay away from nearly 100 countries or regions.

The United States spent more than $1 billion battling the virus’s spread. The 6,000 or so Zika-research articles funded and published after 2014 represent 500-times the previous 50 years’ total.

But let’s zoom out 1,200 miles from Rio to look at the northeast Brazil city of Recife with its endemic poverty, tropical temperatures, and mosquito-friendly open sewage-canals. This was ground-zero for Zika and the babies with underdeveloped brains. It was here physicians perceived more small-head-circumference babies being born amongst the poor.

One of the first microcephaly babies to arouse suspicion of a viral cause was a non-identical twin whose brother was completely normal. Microcephaly is usually an inherited genetic condition or caused by the mother’s alcohol abuse or other toxin-exposure. With her personal clinical assessment that the appearance implied infection, a prominent neuropediatrician inferred a novel cause, despite the brother’s normality under identical circumstances.

She teamed up with a clinician who was investigating other neurological problems associated with an unknown mosquito-borne infection. They joined a WhatsApp group of physicians who communicated rapidly between themselves.

A lack of objective science followed. They issued an alert for small-head-circumference babies and gathered an increase in reports. But was the increase real? Clinicians couldn’t check, because Brazil had not been compiling microcephaly data against which to compare. When scientists eventually looked back at reconstructed data, they found no evidence of a Zika-coincident epidemic.

Second, the Zika diagnoses relied not on lab results but on mothers’ recollections of first-trimester symptoms, such as mild rash or fever. Brazil had no experience of Zika, so it was not equipped for unambiguous diagnosis. In any case, serum tests do a poor job of distinguishing whether the infecting virus was Zika, or its flavivirus-”cousin” dengue. Neither can they reveal how recently the infection occurred. The test that specifically detects Zika does so only briefly after the virus infects a patient.

Third, varying criteria seem to have been used to diagnose microcephaly. Perhaps clinicians used medical standards of normal head sizes that came from richer cities with better-nourished mothers and adults about three inches taller? Babies born into poverty tend to be smaller overall due to a gamut of poverty-related ills. Confusing smaller heads with microcephaly is akin to categorizing every short person as a dwarf. Looking back, it’s clear that in Recife the microcephaly prevalence tracked with income.

Furthermore, there were lower rates in parts of Brazil further away from the WhatsApp-axis.

In 2015, there was a perceived microcephaly increase and there were possible Zika or dengue infections. Any meaningful link between the two was vanishingly rare. An international team of researchers reported that in early 2016 there were 4,180 reported cases of microcephaly in Brazil suspected to be associated with Zika infection, of which only a fifth were investigated and classified. In the end, just six babies were positive for both Zika infection and central nervous system malformations.

Medical knowledge is dispositive: Zika is essentially harmless to humans. In the 60 years prior to 2007, only 14 human infections were documented, all mild, and none causing congenital issues.

More common flaviviruses, such as hepatitis-C and dengue, never cause congenital neurodevelopmental problems. Rubella-virus, which does, damages essentially all infected first-trimester embryos. The highest estimate for Zika puts its hit-rate at 7 percent.

This was likely a case of human instincts’ bowling over scientific rigor. The first instinct is to love babies and care for our young. Nobody wants to be responsible for something that delivers new parents their worst nightmare. Another is the tendency to see patterns whether they are there or not—particularly when you’re looking for them. Two tools that rein in this instinct are the scientific method and the analysis of statistical significance. They were not employed.

The Zika bubble has burst. The failure of the predicted pandemic to materialize is being put down to populations’ developing immunity. But following the initial 2015 Zika outbreak, there was a 2016 spurt of Zika cases in Brazil. In that year, however, according to a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, there was no reported increase in newborns with microcephaly.

No increase was found during the 2018 outbreak in Rajasthan, India, either.

Disease epidemics are messy, fast and frightening, and they’ll keep coming. To prepare for the future, the least we can do at the end of one is to use the benefit of hindsight to assess how well we conducted ourselves.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/coronavirus-and-november-election-bruce-thornton/

Early in the new year, President Trump seemed in good shape to be reelected. The economy was booming, with record-setting stock-market highs and unemployment lows. The over three years of various inquisitions into “scandals” like the Russian collusion or Ukrainian quid pro quo had culminated in no evidence of any crimes, and in a failed impeachment conviction. The opposition Democrats looked increasingly likely to be settling one of two old, rich, white mediocrities as their standard-bearer for November, with nothing to recommend them other than utopian, expensive anti-free market policies and their irrational hatred of Donald Trump.

The more prudent prognosticators knew that despite such tail-winds, Trump still faced the greatest fear of every politician: events. Some are known possibilities, such as an economic downturn, a shooting war, or some Harvey Weinstein level of scandal. But no one foresaw that a pandemic starting in a Chinese wet market would incite mass hysteria and containment policies that have wounded our economy, tanked the market, raised unemployment, and threaten to bring on a deep recession, if not a depression.

What does all this mean for Trump’s chances to be reelected?

On the one hand, economic bad news usually overrides the advantage of being the incumbent, especially when it is accompanied by a foreign policy disaster, as Jimmy Carter learned when his reelection was hampered by, among many other things, the stagflation of the Seventies and the Iranian hostage crisis. But the current economic woes have not been caused by Trump’s or his party’s policies, which in fact created the boom in the first place. Nor does he face abroad anything as serious as the hostage crisis.

The current economic debacle is the consequence of an unforeseen contingency no state can adequately plan for. And unlike Carter’s blunders, Trump’s occasional misspeaking or exaggerations, all hyped and distorted by the media, have been redeemed by his swift move to ban all air travel from China, and a few weeks later from Europe as well. These actions no doubt have saved thousands of American lives.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/covid19_and_the_fog_of_war.html

Every year, many thousands of people die of what is called ordinary flu.  Tens of thousands die in traffic accidents.  Then there are industrial accidents, household mishaps, and huge numbers of avoidable deaths attributed to tobacco and illegal drugs.

We have, sad to say, learned to live with these deaths.  We do not close down society because of them.

The coronavirus (COVID-19), tragic though it is, pales in comparison, so far, with other causes of death.

While we should never downplay the effects of the current pandemic, we must keep it in perspective.  To allow the counter-measures to bring about an economic collapse would kill untold numbers of people, directly or indirectly.  In addition, the economic collapse of one large, bellicose nation could trigger a war, with millions of dead in a short time.

North Korea claims to have had no COVID-19 infections.  Even if that doubtful claim were true, it is but a matter of time before there is an outbreak of the virus there.  Faced with the imminent prospect of his entire army being debilitated, Kim Jong-un, mercurial and reckless in the best of times, is likely to roll the dice militarily.

Iran is another case of modern-day but psychologically medieval leaders with their fingers on triggers.  They hold an apocalyptic view that commits them to bringing about world chaos in order to prompt the return of their Twelfth Imam.  COVID-19 seems to be running rampant in that nation, which rejects U.S. assistance in controlling the disease.  Instead of wearing suicide vests, might the newest jihadis choose self-sacrifice by contagion

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-virus-may-make-trump-stronger-11585149792?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

This is not what his critics expected. At 49% overall job approval in the latest Gallup poll, and with 60% approval of the way he is handling the coronavirus epidemic, President Trump’s standing with voters has improved even as the country closed down and the stock market underwent a historic meltdown. That may change as this unpredictable crisis develops, but bitter and often justified criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision making in the early months of the pandemic has so far failed to break the bond between the 45th president and his political base.

One reason Mr. Trump’s opponents have had such a hard time damaging his connection with voters is that they still don’t understand why so many Americans want a wrecking-ball presidency. Beyond attributing Mr. Trump’s support to a mix of racism, religious fundamentalism and profound ignorance, the president’s establishment opponents in both parties have yet to grasp the depth and intensity of the populist energy that animates his base and the Bernie Sanders movement.

The sheer number of voters in open political rebellion against centrist politics is remarkable. Adding the Sanders base (36% of the Democratic vote in the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, or roughly 13% of the national vote considering that about 45% of voters lean Democratic) to the core Trump base of roughly 42%, and around 55% of U.S. voters now support politicians who openly despise the central assumptions of the political establishment.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/use-the-defense-production-act/

President Trump last week invoked the Defense Production Act, a law enacted during the Korean War that allows the federal government to direct American industry to produce products required for the national defense. The president has since declined to use the rights given him under the DPA. He shouldn’t. It’s time to act.

While I appreciate governmental restraint and his hesitancy to use what Peter Navarro called, “the heavy hand of government” to direct private businesses, we are not currently in a period of limited government action.

Government has ordered something like a quarter of the country into lockdown, all “nonessential” businesses are closed in many states, travel is banned between the United States and more than 30 countries, the Congress is on the cusp of passing a $2 trillion emergency spending bill, and the Federal Reserve has committed to unlimited trillions of dollars of quantitative easing in the form of bond market purchases.

Yet, somehow speeding the production and acquisition of medical equipment has been deemed a bridge too far. This makes no sense.

At present there are shortages of critical equipment used by healthcare providers, including N95 respirators, surgical gowns, the ventilators required to keep critically ill COVID patients breathing, along with certain pharmaceuticals, including hydroxychloroquine. That drug has been used in apparently successful small trials in both France and the United States to treat coronavirus both alone and in combination with azithromycin.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/23/can-ron-desantis-bring-some-sanity

No one is speaking for the tens of millions of terrified Americans suffering mostly in silence over fears they will be shamed as uncompassionate or ignorant. It’s time for a real leader to emerge at the state level. Maybe DeSantis will be the one.

Considering its demographics and daily influx of tourists from around the world, Florida should be ground zero for the spread of COVID-19.

The Sunshine State is home to the highest percentage of senior citizens in the country, and that doesn’t include snowbirds from the Midwest and East Coast who seek temporary refuge during the winter months. Given what we know about the higher risk for people over age 65, hospitals in the state should be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

Further, as college campuses emptied out in early March and students headed to “Where the Boys Are,” these virus-carrying hedonists should have infected thousands of elderly Floridians. Florida also is a favorite destination for international tourists: Two of the top four U.S. cities visited each year by foreigners—Miami and Orlando—are in Florida. As the virus spread across the globe in the first two months of 2020, it undoubtedly made its way to the state unbeknownst to health officials.

But unlike New York City and a few other hotspots in the country, there is no evidence of a widespread, lethal outbreak of coronavirus in Florida. As of Monday morning, 90 percent of Floridians tested were negative for COVID-19. Only 217 people have been hospitalized and 14 total have died. (About eight people per day commit suicide in Florida according to 2017 statistics.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2020/03/21/a-coronavirus-end-game-that-avoids-a-depression/#9543e1f5798f

The federal government is playing tragic catchup with the Coronavirus, which is now quickly turning into economic and health Armageddon. Absent immediate articulation of a clear and effective national health and economic policy, our governors need to step in to guide federal policy with a clear and single voice.

Short of the Trump Administration immediately taking appropriate steps (discussed below) to control the spread of Coronavirus or the discovery of a miraculous cure, we’re heading toward a full-scale depression. Goldman Sachs is forecasting a 24% drop in second quarter GDP. To put this figure in perspective, the maximum GDP-decline in the Great Depression (GD) was 26% and this took three years, not three months. The unemployment rate peaked during the GD at 25%.

In today’s economy, unemployment at such a rate would entail 36 million people out of work. The process has started. Over the past week, claims for unemployment jumped 70,000 — the biggest increase since the Great Recession. Kevin Hassett, former Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisor, believes we could see 1 million people lose their jobs over the next month. Secretary Mnunchin recently raised the specter of a 20% unemployment rate if congress doesn’t pass a fiscal relief package. Since such a package will likely have very little impact on employment, he’s actually simply predicting one in five working Americans will be tossed to the street.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-york-imam-finds-the-key-coronavirus-comes-from-women-showing-too-much-ankle/

Amid all the controversy over where the coronavirus comes from (don’t you dare call it the “Chinese Virus,” a la “Spanish Flu,” that would be racist, and to be racist is worse than the virus itself) and what should be done about it, a Muslim cleric in Syracuse, NY., has found the key; thousands of people are being infected, many are dying, and America is teetering on the edge of economic collapse because American women are showing too much ankle.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/23/republicans-want-a-lifeline-democrats-want-to-remake-the-country/

The cynical partisan opportunism of Democrats exhibited during the coronavirus economic crisis has been breathtaking.

Rather than move forward with quick, no-frills, massive $1.8 trillion dollar rescue plan, Democrats decided to hold the country hostage by trying to cram through a slew of lefty goodies that have absolutely nothing to do with the pending economic crisis.

As corporate boards struggle to figure out ways to keep their companies afloat, Nancy Pelosi is demanding that they spend time filling gender and racial quotas, down to “subcommittee assignments.”

As the transportation sector wrestles with a once-in-a-century economic disaster, Democrats are trying to compel airlines — who have seen a 90 percent drop in customers — to cut greenhouse gas emissions every year until they hit a 50 percent reduction.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/why-your-parents-arent-idiots-for-not-freaking-out-about-coronavirus-like-you-are/

I asked my parents if they are worried about the coronavirus, and they told me they had been through much worse in their lives. They aren’t freaking out like we are because they have seen it all.

My cousin called the other day and sounded very stressed. Come to think of it, who doesn’t feel a bit stressed these days? Her source of stress was her parents, who are in their 70s. She complained they would not take this Wuhan coronavirus outbreak seriously.

What she really meant was that they are not making the same choices about it that she is. Neither of her parents wear the masks she sent them when they are out and about, they didn’t stock up on hand sanitizer or toilet paper, her dad still planned to attend his weekly Toastmasters meeting, and her mom was getting ready to see her friends from the wine club this week. They were both bummed when their gatherings got canceled.

My cousin was beside herself. She couldn’t understand why in the world her parents wouldn’t take the coronavirus threat seriously, or why they still planned to carry out their normal routines, even given the abundance of medical data demonstrating that the elderly are the most vulnerable group in this pandemic.