The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, March 11th, 2020

On March 12, 2020, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Wednesday, March 11th, 2020…but before we begin, this screenshot from the FOX News website begs two questions:

(1) Who would take survival tips from a quack like Dr. Oz, and (2) when did that slimiest of snakes Nancy Grace slither out from under whatever rock she’d been hiding and been handed another show? Seriously, is there a shortage of far more pleasant…and honest…television personalities out there?!?

Then again, anything Dr. Oz or Nancy Grace would say is still more believable than Joe Biden’s claim he supports the 2nd Amendment…

…after promising to appoint Beto his Gun Czar:

That’s the same Beto who vowed, if provided the opportunity, he’d u America’s favorite sporting rifle:

Yes, both Beto and Hairplug Joe, thank you indeed, as together you’ve provided The Donald the perfect campaign ad to run in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and most of the rest of the country.

P.S. Walt Meisen suggested, should Biden close Bernie out before the next debate, the DNC will cancel or “postpone” it due to Trump’s failure to control the coronavirus.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins examines an enigma, a puzzle as it were:

A Chinese Mystery and Covid-19’s Economic Puzzle

Has Beijing ‘contained’ the virus? If so, was the cost worth the benefit, and would it be for the U.S.?

“…Containment means quickly tracing the contacts of sick people and encouraging them to quarantine themselves, as well as closing schools, workplaces and public events. In the U.S. and other countries, it probably will not involve the forcible imprisoning of healthy people in their homes as adopted in parts of China. Containment nonetheless is the strategy recommended by the World Health Organization. (Likely ’cause, like Bernie and Biden, none of them has ever had to make a payroll!)

In contrast, mitigation means accepting that the virus is running flu-like through society and focusing on the severely ill. As with the flu, the elderly and those in bad health are most in jeopardy. Hundreds of such people die a week from “acute respiratory distress” in the best of times (a whole research literature exists to examine which of these patients gain meaningful benefit from being kept alive with ventilators).

Now this question becomes societal. At what point should we stop working so hard to prevent transmission to people who most likely will have a mild flu- or cold-like experience in hopes of preventing a small percentage of severe cases that require costly medical intervention?

Containment, after all, has costs for people’s well-being too: It deprives them of jobs and income as travel is curtailed, events are called off, and restaurants and other businesses empty out in ways that don’t happen with the flu…”

Best of the Web‘s Jim Freeman sounds a similar note of reality mixed with caution…

Before We Go Full Italy

As with any other problem in life, crafting a virus solution should include consideration of costs and benefits.

“The White House and Congress are considering ways to stimulate the economy to offset measures taken to counter the coronavirus. Perhaps President Donald Trump should first ask his economic team to estimate the costs and benefits of coronavirus countermeasures.

The world now has a second experiment to observe. First China’s Hubei province and now the country of Italy (with a total population roughly the same size as Hubei) have implemented significant restrictions on the movement of citizens. China seems to have had success in limiting the spread of infection and here’s hoping Italy does, too.

The costs are significant. The Journal’s Patricia Kowsmann and Giovanni Legorano report:

Italy is planning to introduce a large-scale moratorium on debt repayments, including mortgages, to help families and businesses cope with the coronavirus outbreak.

The announcement, made by Italy’s deputy economy minister Laura Castelli in a radio interview, follows the government’s decision Monday to lock down the entire country. Economists expect the shutdown to lead to a sharp economic slowdown. (Ya THINK?!?)

“We have pushed the banking system a lot to help as much as they can and we got full collaboration,” Ms. Castelli said.

If you were going to pick one banking system on which you’d prefer not to exert pressure, it would probably be Italy’s. But of course you don’t get to choose where viral outbreaks occur. The important thing is to try to respond to epidemics with speed but also wisdom. The Italian example highlights the stakes of interventions intended to protect public health. And the potential costs and unintended consequences of such interventions are not just financial.

…It’s encouraging that the President has been seeking advice from participants all across the health care system, including for-profit organizations which some Democratic presidential candidates would prefer didn’t exist. He should get the best advice from the medical community and also rely on his economic team to help protect public health while doing the least possible harm.“

In a related item courtesy of American Thinker via Ed Hickey, one Brian C. Joondeph, MD offers…

Coronavirus Codswallop — By the Numbers

“Codswallop” is one of those interesting words that might have been used by Supreme Court justice Anton Scalia in a dissenting opinion, or by conservative intellectual William F. Buckley in describing some liberal policy.

It’s a British expression that refers to words or ideas that are foolish or untrue, in other words, nonsense.

While codswallop is a good description of the entire Democrat agenda, today I will restrict its use to the hysteria surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, media fearmongering, and resulting public panic.

Big media is all about ratings, view, and clicks, hence their axiom, “If it bleeds, it leads.” A viral outbreak is the perfect story, on par with a missing Malaysian airliner or a celebrity football player named OJ on trial for murder. The added bonus is that any negative news can be laid at the feet of a president loathed by the media, who just so happens to be running for reelection. The media is in full campaign mode, trying desperately to drag the carcass of one of their corpselike candidates across the presidential finish line.

…The overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza. In other words, coronavirus may be a nastier version of the seasonal flu, potentially fatal for the elderly and infirm. How many Americans die from the flu each day? Let’s ask the CDC.

Influenza and pneumonia caused 55,672 deaths in the U.S. in 2017, or 153 persons per day. As a reminder, only 15 have died from coronavirus to date, the number dying in any four-hour period from the flu.

Over the past decade, influenza flu has affected between 9.3 and 45 million persons each year, depending on the flu severity. Hospitalizations for the flu have ranged from 140,000 to 800,000 persons per year and deaths varied between 12,000 and 61,000 each year.

These numbers, in America only, far eclipse the number of coronavirus fatalities worldwide, about 3,600 thus far. This could and will likely change, but are the numbers worthy of the hair-on-fire reaction from cable news anchors and Democrat politicians?

Remember the coronavirus mortality rate of 3.4% pushed by the World Health Organization, the global deep state’s health mouthpiece? President Trump said that was number was too high and was excoriated by the liberal media, eagerly willing to trade a bunch of dead Americans for a Trump defeat in November.

It turns out the President was correct. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Admiral Brett Giroir declared, “The best estimates now of the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.1% and 1%.”

For comparison, the fatality rate for the seasonal flu is 0.1%. [That] The coronavirus fatality rate is likely similar to the 0.1-1% figure is based on confirmed cases. How many individuals have a normal cold, when in reality they have coronavirus, and recover after a week? Meaning that far more are infected but are unreported as their infection is a nonevent, making the fatality rate lower than reported.

Look also at past viral illnesses, far more lethal than coronavirus. The fatality rate for MERS and SARS was 34.4% and 9.5% respectively. Neither illness generated as much media hysteria as coronavirus.

Swine flu, also known as H1N1, happened on Obama’s watch. With over 60 million cases in the U.S., and over 12,000 deaths, where was the vitriol hurled at Obama, compared to what we are seeing directed toward Trump?

Another number ignored by the media is the number of cases of coronavirus per capita. The U.S. rate is obviously far lower than China, South Korea, and Japan, but also lower than Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.

President Trump’s decisive actions, again contrary to media reporting, are responsible for keeping U.S. numbers down due to his travel ban.

For additional perspective, heart disease kills 1774 persons a day, cancer 1641, accidents 466, and strokes 401 per day. A recent tornado in Tennessee claimed 24 lives, almost twice the number of Americans who died from coronavirus thus far.

Some other numbers offer perspective. Americans die each year from unusual causes. 160 die each year from autoerotic asphyxiation, 67 are victims of serial killers, 986 are killed by police, 75 from lawnmowers, 31 struck by lightning, and one American dies each year being trampled on Black Friday.

I haven’t heard any media angst over lawnmowers or auto-erotica. Medical errors are also far more dangerous than any viral epidemic. From 250,000 to 400,000 Americans die each year from medical errors, the third most common cause of death in the U.S. What would happen if Bernie Sanders got his wish and government was in charge of all of healthcare?

…President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” If you watch the evening news or read the daily newspaper, you will be inundated with fear. Take the constant barrage of coronavirus codswallop with a grain of salt and keep things in perspective.“

We’ll sum up our coverage of the coronavirus with this forward from Balls Cotton:

Color us a conspiracy theorist, but think about it: maybe…just maybe…it’s Biden’s buddies the ChiComs who are looking to influence U.S. elections!

Next up, writing at Townhall.com, Derek Hunter details the leisurely lives of…

Liberal Children Of Privilege

“One of the weirdest things about the modern left isn’t how much the activist class despises people who succeed, it’s how many of those activists actually come from money themselves. Not that they want you to know it, they pretend it isn’t true while enjoying the freedoms that come from their family’s accomplishments.

The latest example of this comes from the New York Post, which exposed a guy named Carlos Maza as a hypocrite on Saturday.

Maza, who goes by the name “gay wonk,” is known for whining about people who’ve earned a lot of money and trying to “cancel” conservatives for making fun of him. The “wonk” part of his name must be used ironically since his resume exhibits nothing remotely close to an area of policy expertise.

After a stint at the fascistic Media Matters, Maza was hired by Vox to host a video series which amounted to not much more than him complaining about things he didn’t like. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last and he struck out on his own.

How could an untalented person known for complaining and attacking people he disagrees with politically (and being a far-left nut, that’s almost everyone) afford to go it on their own? Family money, it seems.

The Post reported, “Through his clan, the millennial firebrand is connected to multiple Florida mega-mansions, a $7.1 million pad on the Upper West Side purchased under an LLC — and a yacht by luxury maker boat-maker Donzi.” Those damn rich people!

Maza’s mother, it turns out, is quite wealthy, worth millions, in fact.

According to the Post, Maza, once it became clear his secret was going to be reported by the paper, admitted his hypocrisy. “My mom and her fiance are very wealthy thanks to a software company they started together when I was a kid. As a result I’ve gotten to live a life of tremendous privilege,” Maza wrote.

Maybe this is why so many leftists rail against “privilege” all the time? If you work to pass the time rather than because you absolutely have to, I’d imagine that would eat at people inclined to feel guilty about such things. There’s a difference between walking a tightrope 100 feet in the air and a foot off the ground over a padded floor.

But Maza isn’t alone. Many of the so-called “leaders” of the millennial progressive movement are kids who come from money, everything from the child of a college professor, to a failed writer who comes from a family of successful writers, to one of the wealthiest families in the country. All of these “privileged children” advocate for the poor without any concept of what it’s like to be poor and no worry they’ll ever find themselves struggling to pay their bills.

Must be nice.

They’ve all made public fools of themselves, some more than others, but none seem bothered by it in the least. And none have unburdened themselves of their wealth or redistributed it in a “fair” way…”

Which is another way of saying leadership by example…

…is incredibly effective!

And in the EnvironMental Moment, brought to us by Jeff Foutch and Breitbart, James Delingpole relates how, in the best traditions of Uncle Joe…

Wikipedia Airbrushes List of Climate Sceptic Scientists Out of History

“Wikipedia has deleted its ‘List of Scientists Who Disagree with the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming’. Stalin — who set the template for airbrushing inconvenient people out of history — would no doubt have heartily approved of this wanton act of censorship.

But what would probably have pleased him more is the magnificently twisted justification offered by the editor responsible:

“The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.”

What this Wikipedia editor is saying, in other words, is that if you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in global warming then that automatically makes you not a scientist.

In fact many tens of thousands of scientists are sceptical of catastrophic man-made global warming theory, including some of the most eminent experts in the field, among them physicists Dr Richard Lindzen of MIT and Dr Will Happer of Princeton.

But the kind of intolerant leftists who tend to edit Wikipedia pages don’t want you to know this.

…A few brave contrarian voices try to argue against censorship.

One makes the point that the scientists on the list aren’t exactly cranks:

Let’s take a look at the list of people responsible for your so called “fringe theories advanced for religious purposes,” shall we?

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace;

Ivan Giaver, who won the Nobel Peace Prize;

Judith Curry, retired head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department of the Georgia Institute of Technology;

Richard Lindzen, retired head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and member of the National Academy of Sciences (you know, that thing Einstein was a member of);

Vincent Courtillot, a member of the French Academy of Sciences;

Khabibullo Abdussamatov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences;

John Christy, who is a professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who keeps the temperature data used by NOAA and NASSA, and who contributes to the IPCC reports;

Roy Spencer, who keeps the data with John Christy;

Frederich Seitz, former President of the National Academy of Sciences.

…Wikipedia gave up trying to be a neutral source of information long ago. If you don’t share its leftist values, you’re really not welcome there.“

Putting this editor right up there with another, unquestionably more famous hypocrite: