Fear is an opportunity for tyranny
And ’twas ever thus.
One of the many lessons of the COVID-19 response is how easily public officials embrace tyranny, and how many people accept it because of fear.
I’m afraid of COVID-19. I’m in a relatively high-risk group, and I’m laying very low. I’ll probably lay low for longer than my state tells me to, but that’s my decision. I didn’t like the initial 2-week shutdown, but I thought I understood the reasons – flatten the curve and keep the health care system from being totally overwhelmed – and I knew it would buy us time to learn more about the illness.
Mission accomplished. It’s been far more than two weeks, and the damage from the shutdown itself has gotten to the point that it becomes crystal clear it needs to be removed. The benefits have been less clear, too. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that shutdowns mattered all that much in the curve of the COVID-19 toll in various states and various countries. We understand more than we did, but although we don’t understand enough, we have to take a few leaps because one thing we do understand (and was clear from the start, actually) is that the shutdown itself is causing tremendous damage. And that damage is not limited to economics; it involves mental and physical health as well.
Almost six weeks ago I wrote this:
So here’s my question for all you epidemiologists and infectious disease experts out there –
Wouldn’t it be better to have only high-risk people stay home? People over 60 and those with pre-existing conditions? That way, if all those at low risk kept mingling, a lot of them would get a mild flu and herd immunity will be achieved fairly quickly, to the benefit of all, without overwhelming the health care system.
I’m not suggesting this as an actual policy right now, but I’m just wondering if my logic is flawed. I suppose the question is how long would it take for it to run its course and achieve sufficient herd immunity, and when would it be safe for us old folks to finally emerge. Also, would there be a lot of deaths among the younger ones in the meantime?
I just don’t see the end game for the current mitigation strategies.
It wasn’t rocket science to question what was happening back then. And that was before the worst of the draconian measures were put in place by governors such as Michigan’s Whitmer, which are not only startlingly strict but seemingly unrelated to any public health goal or logic involving such goals.
What’s going on? People in power like more power, particularly people on the left. Tyrants of all stripes have long used emergency powers to increase their control over the people. Sometimes those emergency powers become semi-permanent or even permanent. It certainly doesn’t surprise me that some governors are trying to stretch it out for as long as possible.
I believe that’s one of the reasons the MSM is trying to stoke fear, and has been doing so from the start. There’s plenty of fear to be had, of course, just from the basic facts of the matter without trying to increase it further. But the MSM is strongly motivated in various ways to do just that: in order to get Trump, to give petty tyrants like Whitmer more reasons to clamp down, and to increase traffic because “if it bleeds it leads.”
The real wild card in all this is how long the people are going to take it. Spring is stirring even in northern climes, and it’s fully flowering further south, and people are ready to burst forth from their own enforced isolation. Some people’s livelihoods depend on it, and a lot people feel their sanity does as well.
And some people are just tired of being told what to do without seeing sufficient reason to obey, when all they’re asking for is the freedom to go about their normal lives – or as near normal as possible, taking precautions to protect the most vulnerable.
[ADDENDUM: See also this.]
Leftists have been mocking Trump for stating an obvious truth, i.e. that the remedy must not be worse than the malady it is intended to cure. At the end of his long, distinguished career, Octavio Paz, the great Mexican poet/diplomat (who had been a Marxist in his youth) wrote in a very similar manner about the effects during the twentieth century of experiments in social engineering implemented by various totalitarian states around the world in order to solve the problems of inequality and poverty.
In a conversation with my mom maybe two or three weeks ago, she made a passing comment about “hundreds” of deaths in her county. This seemed implausible based on the data that I was already watching at the time, so I looked at data posted by county and state health departments in her area. At that time, there were less than a hundred deaths … in a major metro area of millions. I started tracking her state; there are still not “hundreds” of deaths there and case numbers appear to be declining.
“Where did you hear that, mom?” I asked. I didn’t get a clear answer. I don’t know if she misheard it on the news, or if it came from social media, or if it was something a friend or neighbor said (probably after mishearing it from the news or social media). What it wasn’t, was true. Nobody involved in the conversation actually checked out the facts until I came along and did so. And upon being informed of the facts, my mom was polite but I could tell from her tone that she disapproved of my attitude and was preferentially sticking with what she “knew” rather than actual facts to the contrary.
My GenX childhood friends, who I still see on Facebook (or at least, I did, until I pretty much quit FB in disgust) are in a panic. They see endless news stories about “healthy 20-year-olds” dying and still believe that 20% of people who get infected will end up on a ventilator unless they can’t get into an overwhelmed hospital, or something like that. They really can’t rationally discuss what they believe and why, but they are terrified. Most of them still live in that same area as my mom. I could tell them that the actual number of healthy people under 65 who have died there is a single-digit number (from a population of millions, remember), but they will also ignore me, while they continue to share tips on making masks from laundry leftovers and moral-scolding people who aren’t as mindlessly terrified as they are.
My mom and my friends are decent people, but they are in a place where they would do bad things out of fear. They didn’t even need a local tyrant to become this way.
Living in a place where facts don’t matter is a nightmare.
We’re all living in a country where facts don’t matter to half the population, and that’s been true for some time. I just don’t respond to emails from my “woke” friends.
T. J. Rogers had an op-ed in the WSJ a couple of days ago, with a chart showing various US states and European countries. Their deaths per million were compared to how quickly they went to lockdowns. There was no correlation between early shutdowns and later or no lockdowns and the death rates. Sweden is doing better than Italy and Spain, about the same as France, not much worse than Denmark, and a whole lot better than all of the hardest-hit US states.
Data seems to support masks in public places, especially on mass transit, isolation of the elderly, and few restrictions on healthy under-60 people.
Knowledge is power. The link below is by a Canadian, not an epidemiologist, who collected the data on non-hospital/home of ill, super spreader events. They have a common trait. Namely, prolonged, close-range, face-to-face conversations in group events. You can throw in handshakes, embraces, singing, loud talking/shouting in social, work and religious group events.
But for some reason, the “experts” aren’t trying to refine the restrictions the government has imposed. Like the 360 degree 6 ft distance when your spittle maker can only project, or collect, within a narrow angle centered on the face.
They’ve done no random sampling to give the people some idea of the actual probability of encountering the virus on a random surface or from a random passer-by. Very low, by the way. No documented cases in public venues.
https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/
When this all started, I thought, like Trump, that the panic would be over by Easter and we’d all feel a little bit foolish afterwards. Instead we have this National Pants-wetting of which I hope we have the sense someday to be truly ashamed.
An opportunity for tyranny in turn is an opportunity for those inexperienced with tyranny in their immediate lives to come to the recognition of tyranny for what it is.
Noted with interest that the President has been liberally paying out rope to the responsibility of our Governors, rope with which they can either demonstrate themselves to be decent men and women or in the alternative, despots.
You nailed it Neo.
Unfortunately, I think many politicians have now got themselves boxed in. I wrote early on that I thought Trump was between a rock and a hard place; the one being the Experts (and Media) if he deviated from their counsel, and the other being the effects of following their path.
Then, of course, we have the nascent Despots who have grabbed more power than they could ever dream; and will likely relinquish it grudgingly.
The population as a whole are also divided between those who are so panicked that they will accept any dictate that even remotely seems safer, and those skeptics who think the price is too high for the return.
I have also noted that the goal posts keep moving. My Medical daughter was arguing from the first that we had to “bend the curve” or else they would be overwhelmed. County and State medical bureaucrats hammered that theme. Though skeptical, I could not refute the assertion. The LA County medical system has never really been stressed; USNS Mercy never utilized. So now the new theme, voiced even by Trump, is that a state must observe a decrease in new cases for two weeks, or something like that.
To cite an aviation analogy we are in a spiral. Spirals are not necessarily disastrous, but they can be very dangerous if your focus wanders and your control is not precise. As applied to the national situation, all of the political in-fighting ensures that focus will be problematic, and control unlikely.
PA Gov. Tom Wolf just announced that starting May 1, golf courses, state parks and marinas can reopen. I live in southwestern PA and have heard that many people have been driving an hour or so to OH and WV to play golf (and to buy booze, since PLCB stores were shut down early on as “non-essential.”) People will find ways around restrictions, especially those that seem illogical, and I sense that growing numbers of Americans are deciding that enough is enough.
Anecdotally, I’ve started seeing more articles on how fragile our food supply is. That some farmers are killing livestock instead of feeding them. That other farmers are plowing plants into the ground rather than bringing them to market at low prices.
Should we be worried?
CV,
I also read yesterday that there were quite a few cases at a state-run VA nursing home. Wolf seems like an idiot who likes to talk but doesn’t do his job.
The same thing has occurred in NY with Cuomo and De Blasio sending recovering patients to nursing homes and not letting positive patients onto the Comfort. I believe Powerline has talked about the number of Minnesota deaths in nursing homes.
In contrast, Florida which has a large number of seniors and people from NY focused on testing and tracing nursing home cases. The didn’t have the huge spike they might have.
But this has been a wonderful opportunity for politicians to get in touch with their inner commissar.
sdferr:
Maybe a little taste of tyranny confers a certain amount of immunity – to the victims – although it whets the appetite of the perpetrators.
” So now the new theme, voiced even by Trump, is that a state must observe a decrease in new cases for two weeks, or something like that.”
Combine that with the ever fervent call for “MORE TESTING!” and you will have a case where restrictions are never lifted. Given what the Santa Clara, LA, NY, and Miami data has said with anywhere between 20-80x more people than reported having the virus at one time or another. More testing will just reveal “more cases” and we will never reach that magical two weeks of decrease in new cases.
I’ve been worried for several weeks now that Trump is not getting good information from sources other than Fauci and Birx. I’m very surprised and disappointed in his handling the last few weeks.
Neo, this is a must see which 100% validates what you wrote 6 weeks ago.
ER doctors saying unequivocally time to return to work except of course for the compromised. To the contrary, keeping healthy people locked down will cause a weakening of immune systems, and then when things do open up people won’t be able to fight other things off causing an overwhelming of the system.
https://youtu.be/zb6j7o1pLBw
SteveS- That was linked to on Powerline recently and had already had 2 million+ views on YouTube. Definitely worth seeing. What is scary is that Facebook has decided not to allow it.
The Democratic party cannot allow Trump to lead this nation into a better stable place and claim a win. To the best of their ability they will fly our nation right into the side of a mountain in order to demolish Trump. Actually all of the breaking eggs to make an omelet thing is going on and will continue until November and if thing work the way I suspect the conservative states like my state Texas might be on their way to recovery and the hard core lefty socialist states will be requiring major bail outs. This world we are living in now has changed and I don’t think we will ever return to what we knew up until February of this year, all sorts of new rules and regulations will be in place as the months go by.
Go to page 11 of the Massachusetts Covid-19 dashboard. It gives you a plot of deaths by age.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-april-25-2020/download
Notice that 80 and over are 1733/2730 = 63% of the deaths, and 70 and over are 2337/2730 = 86% of the deaths. This tells you immediately where to concentrate the public health effort, the elderly and especially the old elderly. Blanket quarantine is massive over kill for the problem. To make an analogy, if there’s a leaky faucet in my house, I only turn off the water to that faucet before fixing it. I don’t turn off the water to the whole house. The current quarantine is equivalent to turning off the entire city water supply, utterly incompetent and stupid.
I think the problem is in who is running the show in most places, professional politicians, people who have never had a job where they could get demoted or fired on the spot for bad performance. Even worse, their idea of solving a problem is to make deals with and manipulate other people. Doesn’t work with mother nature.
Physicsguy at 5:55 pm. I’m with you, cases are a mythical number. The only useful metric is number of deaths since you can count the bodies. The number of deaths each day seem to be decreasing, which should be the signal that the pandemic is dying out.
Fauci and Birx are bureaucrats first and MDs/scientists second. The alarm bells went up when Ferguson at Oxford initially predicted two million deaths. Their BS detectors should have pinned when he dropped the estimate to sixty thousand just two weeks later with no real new information. His history of wildly inflated predictions in past epidemics never came to their attention either or worse, was ignored. In any case, they have boxed Trump in and anything deaths will be blamed on him if he makes any moves, hence his strategy of cheerleading the governors.
physicsguy, since you’ve been tracking NC data for a friend, today the state HHS finally released data about nursing homes. More than half of the total deaths in the state have been in “congregate living facilities,” that is, nursing homes, assisted living centers, and prisons. (Very few of the deaths are in prisons.)
Paul in Boston articulated some of my thoughts about Fauci and Birx. I have characterized them as bean counters. Now, I am not disparaging bean counters because it is necessary work. And it may be that Fauci and Birx are doing valuable work; but, it is hard to understand why they advocated policy based on models of such dubious credibility, when they knew better than anyone that they were supported by little valid data. In my opinion they ran scared and forced dubious policy. Once on that path, they are trying to keep Trump in a box with a narrow field of view. He is trying to break out, but faces obstacles.
Notice that any time Fauci is not present at the daily dog and pony show, or doesn’t get to the microphone, the media gets excited. That, and the fact that he consistently shows up on TV blab shows and makes ambiguous statements that are then interpreted as criticism of Trump leads me think of a mill stone.
So much at stake; not the least at this point, the next election. (I am betting that Trump won’t be running against Biden. Or against Biden with a DNC hand picked successor. On that score if Biden were smart, which he isn’t but he is cunning, he would have witnesses whom he trusts in his presence at all times.)
Tuvea,
I am an old farm boy, but after I left the farm and to this day, I closely follow the ag markets. IMO, you should be concerned about the food supply chain. Many farmers will go bankrupt. They operate on a narrow margin. (“You can’t raise a Cain back up when he’s in defeat.”) It doesn’t take much price destruction to put them up against the proverbial wall.
Dairy farmers are pouring milk on the ground, meat and egg producers are killing livestock because they can’t afford to feed them. Produce farmers are plowing their crops into the ground. And grain farmers are wondering if it’s wise to commit to the cost of planting their fields.
The IMF says we are close to a financial crisis that will rival the Great Depression. Somber words.
While we’re talking about petty (and great) tyrants using the virus fear for control, how about my county, Wake County, North Carolina? The Chairman of the County Commission, a Democrat, has issued regulations on how Christians may (or mostly may not) distribute Holy Communion, while allowing carry-out food and shopping under much less restrictive rules. This is a clear violation of First Amendment rights.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/27/wake-county-nc-still-banning-christians-from-communion-while-allowing-takeout/
One of the food supply issues that seems to be getting much worse is with Smithfield Foods corp. A couple weeks ago or more, the big pork processing plant in S. Dakota was extensively hit with COVID-19. Now it appears that similar company plants in Iowa and Indiana were also hit and shut down.
Today some financial person claimed that the situation is so severe that hog farmers may not have a market into which they can sell their hogs. Needless to say, you can’t buy pork products from an non-existent market either.
Of secondary interest, why would a group of pork processing plant strung across the Midwest get hit much worse than the states they are located in? Super spreaders, or something else?
Do any of you remember Fauci when HIV-Aids was spreading through the homosexual and intravenous drug abuser communities? I do because the models back then showed HIV-Aids was a deadly threat to heterosexuals. Pure poppycock.
Remember global warming – extreme weather – abrupt climate change? More poppycock. All models are agenda driven. We might as well welcome 5 year plans from our betters and embrace the motto “they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.” and do whatever it takes to avoid the gulags.
Thank you for the comments on the food supply. I understand it’s a tight margin business and the supply chain has been turned on its head, but is it something that can shift quickly if a good plan is put in place? (I’m speaking solely about U.S. production.)
For example, can States purchase surplus food and store it? Can produce that usually goes to restaurants be routed to livestock? Can milk that used to go to school children go to cheese producers? I know those things can’t change in a day, but can they change in a few weeks, if well coordinated and backed by government funds?
Tommy Jay,
I vote something else.
RTF,
Nice wishful hoping. A majority of states don’t have the means or the credit worthiness to make these imaginary purchases. How do States purchase foodstuffs that no longer exist? Farmers will not continue pouring good money down bad money holes.
The window will close by mid May. Dio you think he elitists are so nimble to react in 2. Week time frame? Do you think they care?
TommyJay,
Something else.
I think Smithfield is owned or has ties to China. My suspicion is China is playing dirty every which way it can.
There may be some illnesses. But they may also be shutting things down to screw with our markets. Looking into how many of our food companies are owned by China is as sobering as anything lately.
Parker at 9:28 pm. I remember that because it nearly cost one of my Ph.D. students his life. Andy was a hemophiliac and needed the occasional blood transfusion. Unfortunately, when the gay guys were sodomizing each other twenty times a night, they were not just passing around HIV but also hepatitis. Along with convincing everyone that anyone could get AIDS, the gay mafia were able to convince the medical community that it was just fine for them to donate blood. The net result was the blood for transfusions was infected with hepatitis. A lot of hemophiliacs became infected and died because of the gay propaganda.
Andy managed to survive. One day he quit his position as a Physics Professor because he couldn’t stand writing grants all day every day and went back to his home town in Canada where he made a fortune in banking. There was no way on earth that he was going to get the liver transplant that he needed under the Canadian medical system, but since he was rich, he was able to get a transplant in the US. He’s doing fine today.
Exactly what I have been saying for two weeks now. The original goal was to flatten the curve and buy some time for the medical system to be prepared. Well, mission accomplished. Time to open up again. We can protect the most vulnerable, but the lockdown isn’t needed any longer, and It’s causing more damage.
This is the first time in history that the healthy were quarantined
Why did we stay home?
Our pastors obeyed and didn’t allow us to resist.
Our stores and restaurants closed and didn’t allow us to resist.
Our employers closed and didn’t allow us to resist.
So some of us protested at our state capitals and nobody cared.
And nobody called for an armed insurrection.
“My mom and my friends are decent people, but they are in a place where they would do bad things out of fear. They didn’t even need a local tyrant to become this way.
Living in a place where facts don’t matter is a nightmare.” – KyndyllG
Neatly stated summary of your experience, and very frightening.
Kafka comes to mind.
“To make an analogy, if there’s a leaky faucet in my house, I only turn off the water to that faucet before fixing it. I don’t turn off the water to the whole house. The current quarantine is equivalent to turning off the entire city water supply, utterly incompetent and stupid.” – Paul
Brilliant – I wish I knew how to make a viral meme out of this analogy.
“if thing work the way I suspect the conservative states like my state Texas might be on their way to recovery and the hard core lefty socialist states will be requiring major bail outs.” – OldTexan
I’ll make the viral meme out of your flying analogy next.
In the meantime, consider that the HCLS states are already demanding that the recovered ones pony up to pay the costs of their mishandled economic policies.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/coronavirus-bail-out-state-local-governments
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/20/illinois-pension-bailout-request-reaction-roundupand-why-its-a-nonstarter/#6d812ddf6c2a
I wonder how long it will be before some of these states who want to keep businesses shut until next December realize that there is not sales tax revenue incoming to their coffers.
That’s why they want Fed bailouts, and why they should not get them.
“To cite an aviation analogy we are in a spiral. Spirals are not necessarily disastrous, but they can be very dangerous if your focus wanders and your control is not precise. As applied to the national situation, all of the political in-fighting ensures that focus will be problematic, and control unlikely.” – Oldflyer
Spiraling planes crashing into mountains while passengers throw eggs out the window to make their socialist – facist omelets.
Yep. Sounds about right.
“…. they can either demonstrate themselves to be decent men and women or in the alternative, despots.” – sdferr
The test applies to all of us, not just the government “leaders” (and I use the sarc quotes deliberately) who are demonstrating how totally incompetent they really are, if not purposely malicious (fools and/or knaves, the perennial question — I vote for “and”).
Look at how many people, and companies, have stepped up with donations of PPE and food, hours of volunteer time, and supplying critical needs, while others hoard goods for scalping, obstruct useful medical care (looking at you FDA & CDC), politicize incessantly to pick up what they think is some kind of partisan advantage, and flat-out make insane decisions (deBlasio, Cuomo, and Co.).
It’s a great sifting of the wheat and the chaff.
Isaiah had a few choice words to say on the subject.
neo on April 27, 2020 at 5:55 pm said:
sdferr:
Maybe a little taste of tyranny confers a certain amount of immunity – to the victims – although it whets the appetite of the perpetrators.
* * *
We used to have pretty good herd immunity to despotism in the US of A, but it’s been enervated in the last century by the quasi-socialists, and now we are looking at being saddled with the genuine article.
It’s about power and control, and nothing more, as is pretty much always the case with the left. Never let a crisis go to waste. This was the opportunity of a century for many of these wannabe petty tyrants and the minions of technocrats whispering in their ears. At long last, here is our excuse to finally bring those deplorables to heel.
I don’t know much about Whitmer, but Pritzker is basically a walking liberal stereotype: scion of an absurdly rich family who has been intermingling private and public power for generations. Is there any doubt he looks upon the people of downatate Illinois as peasants who must be compelled to follow his brilliant and benevolent directives by any means necessary?
My state (Washington) is where it all began. Our governor is, to put it politely, a dimwit (I have met him; I thought that prior to meeting him and it was only reinforced by meeting him). I don’t think he sees himself as a philosopher-king, like I’m pretty sure Pritzker does. I think he’s an amiable doofus, who just does what his little circle of experts tell him to do. I’m not sure which is worse
KyndyllG: “Living in a place where facts don’t matter is a nightmare.”–I’m trying to keep a little perspective on this. When I was growing up, the scariest story I encountered was the Scopes Monkey Trial. I couldn’t believe people could go to jail for arguing about facts. This isn’t new, as the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and the story of Galileo made clear long, long ago. That’s not to say that it’s not awfully disappointing that we rarely seem to make permanent progress. People simply aren’t rational, particularly when they’re frightened. Look at the nonsense perpetrated by the TSA in airports. I have no solutions to offer about making people more rational; I just keep pushing policies that require people to decide on their own risks and accept the consequences of their own decisions. I don’t need someone else to force me to guard my own safety more closely, and I don’t need to force someone else to guard his, as long as he’s not paying my medical (etc.) bills and I’m not paying his. Then, if I feel sorry enough to someone who guessed wrong and got smashed, I can help or not help, out of my own pocket, without anyone second-guessing me on that, either. By the same token, I want to see some states open and others not, with each state dealing with the consequences of its own decision. I don’t want to bail out Michigan’s destroyed economy any more than I want to bail out Illinois’s corrupt pensions. Do it your way, guys, pay for your own mistakes, or revel in your own paradises if you turned out to be prescient.
One more thing: we’re trying to figure out what explains good and bad COVID-19 results. Is it average age? Average health? Diet? Obscure impacts on healthy immune systems from turmeric or whatever’s fashionable this year? ICU beds per capita? Foreign travel exposure?
I see only a couple of plausible answers: density in housing and transport. That’s it. Numbers of people crammed into close spaces and breathing on each other. Mass transit bad, sprawl good.
Also: it’s not too surprising, after the public debate howler that has been the Global Warming dispute over the last 25 years, that we are incapable of a rational discussion of whether a proposed cure is more damaging than the feared disease. Ditto our inability to assess the efficacy of a model, or even to tell the difference between predictions and data, and alter theory or policy to match.
The thread is categorized as being about, among other things, “finance and economics,” so here goes.
China, it appears, has thrust its tentacles wide and deep into the United States.
Just as the whole Deep State coup attempt against Trump has been a revelatory exercise, has caused all sorts of heretofore under the radar forces and operatives to become visible–to reveal themselves through their statements and actions–so, too, the eruption of the Chinese Coronavirus has caused us to focus, has shown a spotlight on all sorts of Chinese tentacles that reach into the U.S.; that slowly crept in, were there, but not seen and more widely recognized until now.
For instance, what one would think was an all-American company, Smithfield, recently closed one of their meat packing plants, because many of their workers had reportedly tested positive for the Chinese Coronavirus.
Well, in the course of one story about this, is was casually mentioned that Smithfield had been bought out for several billion dollars a few years ago by a Chinese billionaire, and was now a Chinese company.
While we’re at it, it would be interesting–and I’m betting quite alarming–to know what the stakes various Chinese organizations and individuals have in all sorts of companies that we assume are “American companies”–companies in the medical, electronics, finance, aerospace, food, media, entertainment, software, and in many other fields.
Just how may companies here in the U.S.–one wonders–are now, in reality, “Chinese companies”?
Are we here in the U.S. actually walking through the back lot of a movie set, where there is actually very little, or even no “USA” behind the real looking, one sheet of plywood thick, all-American facades?
I’m beginning to wonder if the good ol’ USA hasn’t been largely bought out from under us while we weren’t lookin’.
Parker: speaking of Fauci and the early days of AIDS, I remember the howling when contact tracing was suggested as a way to contain spread. How dare you stigmatize the gay community! This disease affects everyone equally! But now people seem willing to sign up for an app that will track their every movement. We are in a bad place folks.
Snow – are you making an argument that possibly some problems in our supply chain might be exacerbated by deliberate actions of Chinese owners?
I don’t think that is beyond the realms of possibility.
Notice that, although President Trump has heretofore used his emergency authorization under the Defense Production Act sparingly, and mostly to shield companies from liability for doing what needs to be done, but now he is telling the meat packers (Chinese and all) to stay on the job.
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/04/28/breaking-trump-to-order-meat-processing-plants-to-stay-open-as-critical-infrastructure/
I’ve been suspicious of the Chinese connection to the pork packers – coincidentally, it’s mostly pork products that are affected. To what extent this is related to the collapse of the Chinese pork exports, that occurred in the aftermath of an infection in pigs that had them slaughtering a large percentage before getting it under control, I leave to you.
But, I know the way I’d bet (and, I never bet unless I’m absolutely SURE I’ll win).
I have been saying for weeks we were driven by fear. Two million US deaths is much mere fearsome than that of a bad flue year. Some people will never make up the economic losses of the past month. Many restaurants will never reopen. Other businesses like barbers and hair salons will struggle to make up for lost revenue. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, and suicide have all risen. All this for a bad flu season. If we were to take all the social problems and subtract them from Wuhan flu deaths and it would not surpise me if the shutdown was a net negative. It was all driven by fear. Once again, government has failed us.
AesopFan—What I was pointing to above was that, we are all very much aware of “offshoring”–of how we have transferred a large proportion of and, in some cases, apparently virtually all of our manufacturing capability for certain items or classes of items to China.
But, from a mention here and there, it is starting to look like we have also allowed Chinese interests to gain major influence on/control of some—and perhaps many—of the supposedly U.S. companies that we still have left here in this country, and that this is a major vulnerability that we should be very conscious of, and try to eliminate.
Given Chinese behavior in the Global Pandemic it’s actions and non-actions apparently facilitated and intensified, stripping out Chinese ownership of U.S. companies should be just one of the first of many penalties that should be applied to that Communist regime which is, quite evidently, so hostile to the United States.
Let’s not pretend here.
Despite Trump’s playing a game of kissy-face with Chinese leaders, the Communist leadership of China is our enemy, and has really always been our enemy.
P.S.–There are laws on the books which allow the U.S. government to review and, in some cases, to forbid the foreign acquisition of/gaining a controlling interest in certain companies deemed essential for our national security.
I don’t see why we can’t broaden the definition of our “national security” to include any and all U.S. companies, on the theory that any such foreign acquisition or control would weaken our position, and benefit a country that is pretty evidently hostile to the U.S.
“Despite Trump’s playing a game of kissy-face with Chinese leaders, the Communist leadership of China is our enemy, and has really always been our enemy.” – Snow
I don’t think DJT is under any illusions here, given his long-time criticism of the Chinese economic hegemony. As President, he was IMO trying to entice Xi to behave responsibly with a carrot or two; he is now going to have to apply the stick.
“I don’t see why we can’t broaden the definition of our “national security” to include any and all U.S. companies, on the theory that any such foreign acquisition or control would weaken our position, and benefit a country that is pretty evidently hostile to the U.S.” – Snow
We should probably add Russia to that list (uranium springs to mind), and most of the Middle East that actually has any money to invest. I wonder how much of American “capital” comes from The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
Lee Smith in re China h/t PowerLineBlog
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/lee-smith-china-coronavirus-2
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China is the archenemy.
Read this thoroughly researched and documented book by a man who recently spent years in China:
https://smile.amazon.com/Chinas-Vision-Victory-Jonathan-Ward-ebook/dp/B07RV4VL8L
It will set your hair on fire.
It’s not just Xi and his cronies either.
For example, China made a movie about Chinese special forces helping an African state against rebels supported by US troops. The US side was defeated. Point is, this movie was overwhelmingly popular in China, was nominated as Best Foreign Film at Academy Awards. Title is “Wolf Warrior 2”. China’s highest grossing film ever.
See this about it in National Review:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/wolf-warrior-ii-tells-us-a-lot-about-china/
We have just about ceded them victory. Trump is the only post-Reagan president who has seen and articulated this, and also acted on it. But it is almost certainly too late.
Apparently armed patriots did some angry messaging today in Lansing Michigan.
I smell insurrection.
Yuri Bezmenov did an interview with Ed Griffin back in 1985 or so. He calls it when the facts no longer matter is a brainwashing technique called ideological subversion or active measures.
China and cia both have a huge influence over the films that are being made in Hollywood all the anti-American propaganda that you see.
The tribe yearns for the “good old days” of their Messiahs – Lenin and Stalin. When they say “jump”, on the way up you ask “How high???”
The tyranny and the departments that arose from the 9-11 attacks nearly 2 decades ago have exponentially expanded, and we have learned nothing from it. By the time we “have had enough” it’s going to be too late I’m afraid.
Terry D on May 1, 2020 at 3:56 am said:
China and cia both have a huge influence over the films that are being made in Hollywood all the anti-American propaganda that you see.
* * *
Ted Cruz don’ like it.
https://www.redstate.com/slee/2020/04/28/827545/
Want The Pentagon’s Help With A Film? Sen. Ted Cruz Plans To Make That Impossible If A Studio Bows To Chinese Censorship
Posted at 8:15 pm on April 28, 2020 by Sarah Lee