Good post...

On the last point... China is beginning to reopen some things... Malls, movie theaters, restaurants... They're doing it slowly and being cautious...Lots of requirements and restrictions.. But I think it's too soon...

Schools have not resumed and my university is predicting it won't open until May...

I fear a second outbreak is in the making... And wish folk would exercise a little common sense...

Still... Optimism and hope are always welcome

Pity the people of America. They do battle now with one of the greatest challenges in their history, led by a man who is not only among the worst ever occupants of the White House but whose character makes him the last person on the face of the Earth you would nominate to be in charge at this moment. On Thursday the US reached the top of the global league table for c****av***s infections, edging ahead of its closest rival for that honour, China. No law of nature dictated that outcome. Much of it is directly attributable to one dreadful fact: that Donald Trump is president of the United States.

It’s become a commonplace to note Trump’s lack of basic human empathy, his tendency to be unmoved by others’ loss. But that gap in his mindset matters now far beyond an inability to offer consolation to the bereaved: it is warping his approach to a lethal disease.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” he tweeted in caps lock at the start of the week. Trump and his outriders contend that, while mass death is not ideal, it’s better than allowing the US economy to stall. Some, like Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, are explicit, urging the elderly to risk their lives so that their grandchildren might enjoy the fruits of uninterrupted American capitalism. “If that’s the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said. He was taking his cue from Trump who, while not putting it quite as baldly, has been quite clear. If c****av***s is a stick-up artist asking America, “Your money or your life”, Trump’s response has been: “Take the lives of the old and the weak: I want the money.” Of course, no such choice is available. Even if Trump were to get his way, ditching social distancing and having the US open for business by Easter, the disease would not politely confine its appetite to the groups Trump has deemed dispensable. Instead the v***s would run rampant, infecting an estimated half the population. Not that Trump would know or recognise that, thanks to a second character trait that, like the void where his sense of compassion should be, is so fatefully, and fatally, determining the US response to this p******c: namely, his disregard for science.

“This is just my hunch,” he said as he dismissed a projection of the likely C****-** death rate by the World Health Organization as “a false number”. On Thursday, he said “I have a feeling” that New York would need far fewer ventilators than the tens of thousands the state has requested. “You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying can we order 30,000 ventilators?” An imbecile at the head of the US government would always be a problem. But an imbecile so narcissistic that he elevates his own stunted knowledge above the judgment of medicine and science is a calamity.

The effect is to undermine wh**ever public health effort the professionals can mount, as they try to work around the man they serve. At its most visual, it’s the daily press briefing where Trump fails to observe the social distancing measures his administration is demanding of the American public, with himself standing at the centre of a cluster of speakers bunched together by the podium. Note the initial insistence that c****a was nothing to worry about, that it was no more than flu, that it would soon disappear, like a “miracle”. All of that succeeded in lowering Americans’ guard.

Since then, it’s been the daily grouching at the stay-at-home directives, the hint that they’ll be relaxed soon, the absurd promises that a v*****e is “very close”. The impact is plain to see, in data that confirms that Americans break down on partisan lines even over the most basic matters of mortality. One in four Republicans still say they are “not concerned at all” about the v***s – while only 5% of Democrats are similarly unbothered. Only 14% of Democrats trust Trump for information on the v***s, compared with 90% of Republicans. Put simply, there is a body of Americans who do not take this threat as seriously as they should, and the blame for that lies with the president.

Trump’s dishonesty matters here too. He was rightly derided in 2016 as a “snake-oil salesman”, and the cliche is so well-worn it’s easy to forget what it originally refers to: the 19th-century hawkers who sold bogus cures to the gullible. Recall that Trump rushed to tell people a pre-existing drug would cure C****-**, leading to a shortage of a medication that was needed for other illnesses, and several deaths, as desperate people rushed to buy tablets that, for them, proved lethal.

The world’s peoples now look at the US and comfort themselves with the small solace that they, at least, face only a lethal disease, and not the malignancy that is Donald Trump.

Jonathan Freedland

https://dennismichaellynch.com/report-top-cdc-official-warns-new-yorks-c****av***s-outbreak-is-just-a-preview/

New Orleans is following, and the state in general is spiking. The rate new cases are growing puts it as the next NYC like crisis epicenter, and they worry that it will spread out across the south from there. Their criticism is going to be in not shutting down Mardi Gras, like Florida is going to be blamed for not shutting down spring break or even the state yet. We will be seeing red state denial and how that works all too soon.

https://dennismichaellynch.com/report-experts-warn-major-city-in-the-south-emerging-as-next-c****av***s-epicenter/

You’re Being Played HARD...


Governments do not want you to have authority over yourself. They want conformity and control. They want you to think self-reliance is damaging, and that government should be submitted to in all cases. Mass inoculations and universal healthcare mean control over your body by government. Government men always wants more of that and will seek it at every opportunity they get.

Yours for the t***h,

Bob Livingston
Editor, The Bob Livingston Letter®