RUTHFULLY YOURS

In this episode of public health bureaucrats go crazy, let’s look at their numbers. Let’s accept their reality for the moment—the reality they claim to be working from—and trace the implications. Buckle up.

Start with Europe and just plain flu. Not COV. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe, “During the winter months, influenza may infect up to 20% of the population…” That’s ordinary seasonal flu.

The population of Europe is 741 million people. This works out to 148 million cases of ordinary flu. Not once. Every year. EVERY YEAR.

According to statista[dot]com, “As of March 23, 2020, there have been 170,424 confirmed cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) across the whole of Europe since the first confirmed cases in France on January 25.”

I urge readers to roll those comparative figures around in their minds, and realize that ordinary flu has never been called a pandemic, and has certainly never resulted in locking down countries.

If we take the COV Europe numbers I just quoted, which cover a period of two months, and multiply by six, to estimate the number for a year, we arrive at 1,022,544 cases. Even if you want to build up this figure by claiming it’s accelerating, do you really believe it’ll reach 148 million for the year, the number of ordinary flu cases? And again, 148 million is the estimate for EVERY YEAR. Every year—and no mention of a pandemic. No lockdowns.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-was-most-prepared-country-in-the-world-for-pandemics-johns-hopkins-study-found-in-2019

The United States was ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) — an assessment seemingly at odds with claims by Democrats that the Trump administration left the country vulnerable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The Global Health Security Index was was “developed with guidance from an international panel of experts from 13 countries, with research by the Economist Intelligence Unit” from 2018 to 2019, The Washington Post reported last year. “More than 100 researchers spent a year collecting and validating publicly available data.”

At the same time, the paper noted that the U.S. score was still not perfect, and that “factors driving down the U.S. score include the risks of social unrest and terrorism, and low public confidence in government.”

President Trump’s campaign has argued in recent days that misinformation may be one of the leading causes of that lack of confidence. For example, Trump’s team has pointed to claims by presidential contender Joe Biden that “no one on the National Security Council staff was put in charge” of pandemic preparedness, based on a report that in May 2018, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton eliminated the NSC’s Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense in a reorganization effort.

https://spectator.us/abolish-world-health-organization/

Way back on January 10, the official Twitter account of the World Health Organization declared that ‘WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travelers to and from Wuhan, #China.’ The tweet went on to say that ‘It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources.’ A follow-up tweet described how ‘WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on #China based on the information currently available.’

What we’ve learned since is that China was by then already engaged in a massive cover-up of the release and spread of the virus. It imprisoned doctors (one of whom would later die from contracting COVID-19) who attempted to warn the World Health Organization and the world.

On January 14, the same Twitter account blasted out that ‘Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.’

Two wrong tweets shouldn’t call into the question the creditability of the World Health Organization, but the direction in which its director-general, Tedros Adhanom, has steered the WHO, and his unwillingness to diverge from Beijing’s public pronouncements, should trouble the world.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/coronavirus-diversity/

The word “diversity” appears 32 times in the coronavirus relief bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) unveiled on Monday. Pelosi released her plan as critics questioned the priorities of Democratic lawmakers facing the China-caused pandemic.

Senate Democrats voted Sunday to block a coronavirus stimulus package worth up to $1.8 trillion, and continued voting down procedural motions on the bill Monday. Democrats in the upper chamber were reportedly upset that the legislation does not do enough to increase fuel-emissions standards for the airline industry or to provide additional tax credits to promote wind and solar energy.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Senate negotiations over the relief package were going well until Pelosi imposed herself on the process. Democratic obstruction gave the House speaker time to introduce her own coronavirus relief package in the House. At more than 1,100 pages, the “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act” is in keeping with the controversial comments Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) reportedly made on a conference call with Democratic lawmakers last week. “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” said Clyburn, in reference to the drafting of the House Democratic response bill.

The Pelosi bill focuses on “diversity,” for example, more than one might expect from an emergency economic relief package. The plan includes a section on “Improving Corporate Governance Through Diversity” that aims to “ensure that corporate boards reflect the diversity and perspectives of the communities and consumers impacted by the hardships due to the coronavirus disease.” The word “inclusion” appears 14 times in the text of the bill.

www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/biden-slow-to-explain-why-hed-be-quicker-than-trump-in-tackling-virus

Give Joe Biden some credit. On Jan. 27, he published an op-ed in USA Today recognizing that the coronavirus outbreak could become a big problem. But he devoted nearly the entire piece to bashing President Trump, then fighting off impeachment from Biden’s old Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, and nearly none of it to explaining what he, Joe Biden, would do to fight the pandemic.

Since then, where has Biden been? It’s been eight weeks since the Iowa caucuses, when Biden began a terrible stretch at the polls that threatened his presidential candidacy. It’s been three weeks since South Carolina and Super Tuesday, when he roared back and took a big lead over rival Bernie Sanders. Two weeks since primaries in Michigan and other states, when Biden took a prohibitive lead in the delegate race. And it’s been one week since primaries in Florida and elsewhere, when Biden essentially became the presumptive nominee.

During that time, the coronavirus outbreak has turned into a historic national crisis.

So, what has the man who wants to be the next president, now confident of his path to his party’s nomination, done? Not a lot. Biden is “largely out of sight hunkered down in Delaware,” the New York Times reported Sunday.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/the-economic-disaster-media-and-washington-havent-begun-to-notice/

The U.S. economy is in trouble, and if you can believe it, that trouble isn’t simply the closure of Main Street, the massive number of nationwide layoffs, and the danger of financial crisis we’ve all heard about. As companies run out of cash, pushing them toward insolvency, our country’s business-to-business trust is at risk of coming apart — tearing and ultimately collapsing the delicate system that keeps industries as diverse as farming, chemicals, and aluminum profitable and solvent.

Just beyond — and in the midst of — the public health and financial liquidity crises is the expansive and potentially devastating solvency crisis. It won’t be solved by the Federal Reserve or Washington stimulus, although there is a way to draw from an important Depression-era lesson and hold it at bay.

While government and scientists across the planet rush to find a vaccine or treatment, the harsh medicine we’ve prescribed is turning off much day-to-day economic activity. Normal things like work or family trips, eating out, going to a bar, or even regularly driving our cars have all ground to a crawl and, in many instances, a complete halt.