Pandemic Historian: Coronavirus ‘a Disease of Globalization’

 

 Article by John Binder in "Breitbart":

The Chinese coronavirus “is emphatically a disease of globalization,” a pandemic historian at Yale University says.

In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, Yale University’s Frank Snowden — a historian who most recently in 2006 published a book about Italy’s eradication of malaria — details how the coronavirus pandemic is threatening the globalist worldview of free movement of people and free trade.

The interview finds the Journal‘s Jason Willick seemingly admits the coronavirus is tainting globalism and pushing Americans and the peoples of Europe toward nationhood:

Yet while the [bubonic] plague saw power move up from villages and city-states to national capitals, the coronavirus is encouraging a devolution of authority from supranational units to the nation-state.  This is most obvious in the European Union, where member states are setting their own responses. Open borders within the EU have been closed, and some countries have restricted export of medical supplies. The virus has heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, as Beijing tries to protect its image and Americans worry about access to medical supply chains. [Emphasis added]

Snowden told the Journal the coronavirus is a direct result of the globalization of the American economy after nearly four decades of free trade policy initiatives:

The coronavirus is threatening “the economic and political sinews of globalization, and causing them to unravel to a certain degree,” Mr. Snowden says. He notes that “coronavirus is emphatically a disease of globalization.” The virus is striking hardest in cities that are “densely populated and linked by rapid air travel, by movements of tourists, of refugees, all kinds of business people, all kinds of interlocking networks.” [Emphasis added]

Globalization, Snowden notes, has driven the coronavirus to majorly impact the wealthiest of Americans.

“Respiratory viruses, Mr. Snowden says, tend to be socially indiscriminate in whom they infect. Yet because of its origins in the vectors of globalization, the coronavirus appears to have affected the elite in a high-profile way,” the Journal piece states. “From Tom Hanks to Boris Johnson, people who travel frequently or are in touch with travelers have been among the first to get infected.”

The infection of thousands of the nation’s rich and upper-middle-class has driven class warfare in regions like the Hamptons in New York where some of the wealthiest, most liberal celebrities own property.

A report by Maureen Callahan for the New York Post chronicles how the working class staff of the Hamptons’ elite are turning on them as those infected disregard rules and Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines:

“There’s not a vegetable to be found in this town right now,” says one resident of Springs, a working-class pocket of East Hampton. “It’s these elitist people who think they don’t have to follow the rules.” [Emphasis added]
It’s not just the drastic food shortage out here. Every aspect of life, most crucially medical care, is under strain from the sudden influx of rich Manhattanites panic-fleeing … — and in some cases, knowingly bringing coronavirus. [Emphasis added]

…
“We’re at the end of Long Island, the tip, and waves of people are bringing this s–t,” says lifelong Montauker James Katsipis. “We should blow up the bridges. Don’t let them in.” [Emphasis added]

While globalization has delivered soaring profits for corporate executives, working- and middle-class American communities have been left behind to grapple with fewer jobs, less industry, stagnant wages, and increase competition in the labor market due to decades-long mass legal immigration.

Since 2001, free trade with China has cost millions of Americans their jobs. For example, the Economic Policy Institute has found that from 2001 to 2015, about 3.4 million U.S. jobs were lost due to the nation’s trade deficit with China.

Of the 3.4 million U.S. jobs lost in that time period, about 2.6 million were lost in the manufacturing industry, making up about three-fourths of the loss of jobs from the U.S.-Chinese trade deficit.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/29/coronavirus-globalization-historian/

Birx Clears The Air: Governments Were Slow To Respond To Coronavirus ‘Because’ China Covered It Up

 
 Article by Anders Hagstrom in "The Daily Caller":

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx said the slow coronavirus response from global governments came because China’s public data on the virus was inaccurate.

Ryan Saavedra ✔ @RealSaavedra

Pandemic expert Dr. Deborah Birx says U.S. officials initially responded to the coronavirus outbreak the way that they did because they thought it was going to be "more like SARS" and not a "global pandemic" *BECAUSE* "we were missing a significant amount of the data" from China

“The medical community interpreted the Chinese data as, this was serious, but smaller,” she said. “Because, I think, probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”

Birx and fellow task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci also announced the U.S. is anticipating between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths before the pandemic ends. 

Fauci later said that the sobering projection could change – for better or for worse – with the addition of new data.

Birx’s statement comes the amid confirmation that China hasn’t been counting asymptomatic infections of the coronavirus in its public numbers. China initially suppressed all news of the disease when it originated in Wuhan, until a whistleblowing doctor took action.

 A March 11 study found that if China had taken action on the virus three weeks sooner, the number of cases across the globe would be 95 percent lower.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/31/deborah-birx-china-coronavirus-data/ 

Senator Hawley Believes China Should Be Held to Account for Allowing the Coronavirus Pandemic

 

Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia":

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley believes that the Chinese Communist government is responsible for the coronavirus pandemic. What's more, they know they're responsible and have launched a massive propaganda campaign to deflect blame onto the United States.

Everyone knows the coronavirus originated in China. That was an act of nature that China had no control over. But its subsequent actions in allowing the virus to spread while hiding the true extent of the danger from world health authorities make it legally culpable.

Hawley penned an op-ed for Fox News demanding an international investigation.

The Chinese Communist Party has done everything it can to hide the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Party officials interrogated and punished Chinese doctors who tried to warn others as the virus began to spread. They ordered laboratories to stop testing for the virus and destroy their samples when it became clear that an outbreak was underway. They even sat on evidence showing the virus could be transmitted between humans. By the time they shared that information, the virus had already spread to other nations.

The Party’s decisions turned a local disease outbreak into a global pandemic. Rather than confront the coronavirus with the help of others – including American experts, whom it denied entry in January – it kept its citizens and the world in the dark. It let the virus slip over its borders, and it stole precious weeks from the United States and others who could have used that time to ready our national defenses.

Now the Chinese Communists are trying to rewrite history by claiming they're actually the heroes of the pandemic drama. They've been transparent since the beginning, they say. They are trying to make us believe that they "bought time" to fight the virus through their efforts and the rest of the world squandered it.

Most preposterously, they claim the virus didn't even originate in China, that it was created by the U.S. army.

Hawley thinks the time is now to begin the legal process of holding China accountable.

The first step to holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable is an international investigation. That is why I have introduced a Senate resolution calling on the United States and other nations to investigate how Beijing’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak contributed to this pandemic.

We need to know exactly what the Party knew, when it knew it, and how the Party’s decisions to try and hide the virus allowed it to spread and kept the United States and other nations from protecting ourselves sooner. I’m proud to have  U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., lead this effort in the House.

There's plenty of evidence of China's legal responsibility for causing massive death and trillions of dollars in economic activity destroyed. So the question becomes, what good will it do? China will never pay a cent to anyone and will continue to deny the truth and stonewall any investigation. What purpose does it serve to find China guilty?

If you believe the historical record is important, discovering the truth for future generations is worthwhile. But perhaps whatever damage can be done to China's hegemonistic designs by knocking them down a peg or two in the world's estimation is even more worth it.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/senator-hawley-believes-china-should-be-held-to-account-for-allowing-the-coronavirus-pandemic/ 

Chinese Markets Reopen — And They Still Sell Bats, Dogs And Cats

 
Article by Kyle Hooten in "The Daily Caller":

Live animals are still for sale in Chinese food markets that reopened after the country recently declared victory over coronavirus.

Cages full of cats and dogs waiting for slaughter and the unsanitary preparation of animals is again reportedly a common sight in Chinese food markets, often called wet-markets, according to in-country correspondents with the Daily Mail.

China ordered that its wet-markets be shut down in January, after facts emerged suggesting that coronavirus was first transmitted to humans via bats and other live animals sold in the often filthy places of commerce, according to Business Insider. However, now that China says it’s beaten the virus, the markets seem to have resumed business as usual.

“The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus,” said a Daily Mail correspondent who observed the markets re-opening Dongguan. “The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures which would never have happened before.”

Another correspondent in Guilin, a city in southwest China, photographed a sign advertising bats, snakes, spiders, lizards and scorpions for sale as remedies for common illnesses. 
 
Images have also begun to circulate on social media of traditional Chinese foods considered odd by Western standards for sale in the newly reopened wet markets. CNBC host Jim Cramer tweeted out a video of live scorpions for sale.

Although China says it’s beaten COVID-19, many are skeptical about how honest the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been in reporting infection statistics throughout the pandemic. National Review says it has identified dozens of instances in which China lied to the world about the virus in its borders.

China has recorded 82,342 cases of the virus, according to Our World In Data. The first case appeared in Wuhan in November, reports LiveScience

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/29/chinese-markets-reopen-bats-dogs-cats/

Trump Is Right: We Need to...

by ED FEULNER AND STEPHEN MOORE for The American Spectator

Trump Is Right: 

We Need to Get Our $20 Trillion Economy Back Up and Running

The latest labor market report showed 3.3 million Americans signing up for unemployment benefits — almost five times higher than any other month in history. Without a smart and medically responsible reopening of the U.S. economy soon, that number could soar to 30 million unemployed. There isn’t enough gold in Fort Knox to pay prolonged unemployment benefits to that many workers and for the associated economic damage.

This is why President Trump was right when he said last Monday “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” The public seems to approve of that strategy as Trump’s approval rating has soared to near 60 percent — the highest of his presidency. He has given Americans a sense of optimism that this lockdown can end in many parts of the country in weeks, not months, with the right, smart public health safeguards in place.

Not surprisingly, President Trump has been under heavy criticism from some in the media and many Democrats in Congress for this strategy of trying to get the economy opened. The New York Times has even recommended the opposite strategy of a nationwide economic lockdown — which would cripple our economy with trillions of dollars of permanent losses.

Trump’s strategy in no way minimizes the severity of this deadly “invisible enemy,” as the president has called the coronavirus. But it does calibrate into our decision that the devastation to the U.S. economy is starting to surpass the mortgage and banking crisis of 2008.

The extraordinary lockdown measures pushed by governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California may be necessary in these heavily hit states. About half the infections have happened in New York, which has become ground zero for the virus in America.

But other areas in the country, such as Idaho, Iowa, and Utah, have fairly low caseloads. But, if imposed on a national basis and continued for an extended period, a lockdown would be a catastrophe for public health, the economy, and the American people.

The victims are not wealthy hedge fund managers losing a fraction of their portfolio; we’re talking about real Americans losing their life savings and their 401(k) plans they’ll depend on in retirement. We’re talking about the small business owners having to tell their employees not to come back to the office and the single mother who’s held down a job and worked hard her whole life having to hitch a ride to the unemployment office. The Wall Street Journal reports that the families that are being hit hardest by the paralysis of our economy are the lowest-income workers.

America is the business capital of the world, with 26 million men and women owning and operating small and medium-sized firms. Millions will crash into bankruptcy with a prolonged lockdown — regardless of the federal government’s business loan rescue program. Revenues are the oxygen source of any small business, and most have seen their customer base fall by half and even to zero through forced closures.

Because of the shutdown, Goldman Sachs forecasts GDP growth at negative for the first quarter of 2020 and declines of 10 to 20 percent in the next quarter.

Moreover, we are now seeing weakness in the U.S. commercial mortgage industry and the banking sector, which could cause a “domino effect” that could dwarf the negative impact of the Great Depression.

But this economic carnage is avoidable. The White House is already working on a plan with the best testing and screening possible in public places and workplaces, to keep the sick from spreading infection and to practice responsible social distancing in the workplace. Senior citizens who are especially vulnerable can and should be quarantined.

Why not let businesses and workers make their own informed decisions if they want to get back to work — especially in areas with few cases? No plan is perfect, and there are risks and tradeoffs with any strategy.

Instead of imposing a blanket-wide shelter-in-place on a national scale, Trump continues to reiterate that any decision regarding the reopening of the U.S. economy would be “based on hard facts and data” and be “grounded solely in the health, well-being and safety of our good citizens,” as any decision impacting the safety of Americans should.

There is no getting around it: the health, well-being, and security of America’s 320 million citizens depends on a functioning economy. We have a $20 trillion highly tuned economic engine — the envy of the world. That engine can’t be shut down for months and then with the switch of an ignition switch powered back up.

Getting America back to work soon while taking all necessary measures to contain the coronavirus is a balanced and wise solution.

Ed Feulner is the former president and founder of the Heritage Foundation and Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Heritage. He is the co-author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.

President Trump bolsters stable supply chains for virus

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:45 AM PT — Tuesday, March 31, 2020

As the nation continues to provide resources to states most impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, the White House held a meeting to ensure supply chains were stable enough to handle the demand.

Tampa Bay Sheriff Arrests Christian Pastor For Providing “Non-Essential” Church Services

“[Government] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  (First Amendment – U.S. Constitution)

Setting aside my profound disdain for this action… In the short-term there will likely be those who genuinely believe this is legally defensible as a result of a public health emergency. However, in the long-term two things will happen: (1) over time, and up to the possibility of SCOTUS intervention, the pastor will win any legal case against him; and (2) hopefully people will realize quickly the term “essential service” is arbitrary.

Inside the definition of two words “essential services” (which is different from area to area) is all that remains of your liberty.  The first amendment of the constitution applies equally for all persons in all areas; the definition of “essential services” does not.  That’s the legal issue that will see this pastor win, if he chooses to fight.  Faith, the ability to worship, is easily argued as the preeminent ‘essential service’ to the individual and church.

FLORIDA – A Hillsborough County pastor was arrested Monday after he intentionally and repeatedly violated orders that no gatherings of 10 or more people he held in order to stop of the spread of COVID-19 by holding services at his megachurch, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister announced Monday afternoon.

The sheriff’s office received an anonymous tip on Friday that Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, the pastor of the megachurch River at Tampa Bay Church in Riverview, refused to stop holding mass gatherings and instead was encouraging people to come to services.

[…] “His reckless disregard for human life put hundreds of people in his congregation at risk and thousands of residents who may interact with them in danger,” Chronister said.

The warrant charges the pastor with unlawful assembly and violation of public safety rules, both misdemeanors, according to Chronister.

Howard-Browne was booked into the local jail in Hernando County where he lives on Monday afternoon, and released 38 minutes later after posting bonds totaling $500. (more)

Let us be clear, the government can request, suggest and recommend that faith-based assemblies suspend their services; and in many cases those churches and religious groups may indeed choose to suspend their services. However, under no circumstance, including: war, famine or virus pandemics that could leave only a hand-full of people alive, can the government force the suspension; or punish those who refuse to comply.

Religious worship, including the assembly therein, is enshrined within the first amendment as it carries the first and ultimate essential service. There is absolutely no situation where that right can be removed.

It is often the case where people rush into reactions without thinking through the profound consequences.   Why do you think ‘freedom of religion‘, and ‘the right to peaceably assemble‘ is the first amendment?  The FIRSTamendment.  It is specifically the first amendment so that government cannot define arbitrary reasons, any reasons, to limit that constitutional right.

The ability/right to go to a grocery store crowded with people is not more essential than the ability/right to practice your faith. Accept the removal of the primary right of U.S. citizens and there is no longer a country for coronavirus to infect.

This is not a slippery slope; this is akin to voluntarily jumping directly into the abyss….

The ‘Orange Man Bad’ Disease

Robert Stacy McCain for The American Spectator

The ‘Orange Man Bad’ Disease 

As late as March 11, Mayor Bill de Blasio was still telling New York City residents to carry on life as normal: “If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life.” Two days earlier, Italy had announced a national lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and cases were already beginning to appear in New York, but de Blasio did not close the city’s schools until March 15.

Now that New York City has become the epicenter of this pandemic — more than 32,000 cases as of Sunday, with nearly 700 deaths — Mayor de Blasio’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak appears astonishingly irresponsible. Jim Geraghty of National Review has compiled a timeline of how New York City officials dealt with the crisis, and their recklessness seems mindboggling in hindsight. Early on, their main concern was that the virus might discourage city residents from attending Chinese New Year celebrations. “I want to remind everyone to enjoy the parade and not change any plans due to misinformation spreading about #coronavirus,” the city’s health commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a Feb. 9 tweet, promoting festivities in Chinatown.

As idiotic as such declarations seem now, we must note that hindsight is always 20/20, and very few Americans in early February believed that we faced any great danger of this disease becoming rampant here. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have spent recent weeks blaming President Trump for this crisis, but it is important to point out that the same people were downplaying the coronavirus threat just a few weeks ago. Trump’s critics want us to forget, for example, that when the president announced a ban on travel from China on Jan. 31, many of them condemned this measure as a racist overreaction. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science,” Joe Biden said the day after the China travel ban was announced, while falsely claiming that Trump had made “draconian cuts” to federal health agencies.

At that time, the known worldwide death toll from the Wuhan virus was still less than 200, and, because the Chinese government had sought to suppress facts about the disease, the scope of the danger was not apparent. The liberal media weren’t sounding the alarm, but quite the opposite. The headline on a Jan. 28 BuzzFeed article advised Americans, “Don’t Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu.” On Jan. 29, Farhad Manjoo published a column in the New York Times with the headline “Beware the Pandemic Panic.” Manjoo downplayed the danger of the virus and instead cautioned, “What worries me more than the new disease is that fear of a vague and terrifying new illness might spiral into panic, and that it might be used to justify unnecessarily severe limits on movement and on civil liberties, especially of racial and religious minorities around the world.” One thing we can never expect from elite journalists is accountability. Rather than admitting his own errors, Manjoo simply pivoted to blaming Trump: “Coronavirus Is What You Get When You Ignore Science” was the headline on his March 4 column, in which he asserted that the president had “gut[ted] the United States’ pandemic-response infrastructure.”

This is the “Orange Man Bad” theory of causation, where everything bad is ultimately Trump’s fault, and the proponents of this theory evidently can’t understand why it has cost them their credibility. When journalists insist on interpreting every event from a partisan perspective — “How can we spin this to hurt Trump?” — their errors follow a predictable pattern. Thus, at one point, the danger of coronavirus was Trump’s “xenophobia,” which threatened “racial and religious minorities.” Now, we are told, the problem is that Trump is “anti-science.” Last week, one New York Times columnist blamed “the science denialism of [Trump’s] ultraconservative religious allies” for the coronavirus pandemic. The “evidence” cited in such tendentious arguments is irrelevant; what matters to liberals is the conclusion, i.e., Trump, is always wrong.

Because they imagine themselves infinitely superior to the rest of us, the journalistic elite think we don’t notice the methods by which they dishonestly manipulate the narrative. They believe we won’t notice, for example, how they ignore the bungling of Democrats like Mayor de Blasio. Nor are we expected to contrast the media’s alarmism over COVID-19 with the way they treated the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009–10. According to CDC estimates, about 60 million Americans were infected with swine flu, which caused more than a quarter-million hospitalizations and more than 12,000 deaths. Yet cable-news networks didn’t provide 24/7 coverage of the swine flu outbreak or blame President Obama for the spread of the disease, so why is the Chinese coronavirus such an emergency? Obvious answer: “Orange Man Bad!”

We might not resent this belated effort to blame this plague on Trump so much if Democrats and the media (again, I repeat myself) had spent January and February spreading the alarm about COVID-19. But for much of that period, Democrats and their media allies were consumed with impeaching the president over Ukraine, and when that anti-Trump crusade failed, their attention next turned to trying to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It was not until early March — after Biden’s wins on Super Tuesday stopped the Sanders threat — that the coronavirus pandemic became the media’s obsession. It was March 6 that an MSNBC panel discussion hosted by Nicolle Wallaceturned into a sort of pep rally for coronavirus, with the guests expressing the enthusiastic hope that the pandemic would become “Trump’s Katrina.”

Having made clear their intention of scapegoating the president for this virus from China, the media are now astonished that Americans aren’t buying their blame game. After polls showed Trump’s approval ratings had risen during this crisis, the networks decided to stop carrying live broadcasts of Trump’s coronavirus briefings. This is more evidence of media bias that we’re supposedly too stupid to notice, in the same way we’re not supposed to notice either (a) Joe Biden’s rapid descent into senility or (b) the media’s effort to promote New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a substitute presidential nominee for the Democrats.

So far, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 are still only a single-digit percentage of the more than 30,000 Americans who die annually from ordinary flu infections. As bad as the coronavirus outbreak is — and it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — we must keep it in perspective. We must be able to distinguish between real risks from this disease and the politically motivated fear campaign being hyped by the media. Eventually, the coronavirus pandemic will end, but the media’s liberal bias is incurable. From now until November, the blame game will continue, and if Trump gets reelected, we’ll have another four years of the same shrieking journalistic hysteria: “Orange Man Bad!”

Social Distancing

There is mine. Post them if you have one. 

Federal Judge Rules Killing Babies is an “Essential Service”

Strange times we live in…

Earlier today in Tampa, Florida, the county sheriff let the criminal inmates out of his jail, and then went to arrest a pastor for delivering Sunday church services and put him in the same jail. Now a federal judge rules that getting a hip replacement should be delayed to help offset medical supply needs; but killing babies is an “essential service” that needs to continue.

TEXAS – […] Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced last week that abortion providers were covered by a state order that required postponement of non-urgent medical procedures to preserve hospital beds and equipment during the pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin ruled that Paxton’s action “prevents Texas women from exercising what the Supreme Court has declared is their fundamental constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is viable.” (read)

Darling, Let’s Do Coronavirus in...

Kate Aronoff for New Republic

Darling, 

Let’s Do Coronavirus in 

the Hamptons This Year

The rich continue their tradition of escapist virtue signaling.

March 27, 2020

Goldman Sachs co-head of investment banking Gregg Lemkau wants to disabuse you of any notion that working from his summer home in Hawaii is all it’s cracked up to be. Lemkau complained on Twitter this week that the sun doesn’t come up for several hours into his workday. He’s one of many people eschewing New York City for second, third, or fourth homes in places with lower infection rates, from the Hamptons to Hawaii. Contractors servicing ski and summer homes in Maine are scurrying to get houses ready that are usually empty this time of year and avoiding routine maintenance visits for fear of what germs their wealthy clientele might be harboring. “I’m not going into a unit for somebody that came here from New York City to expose myself to the coronavirus,” plumber John Maynard told the Lewiston Sun Journal. “That’s why they came here, to get away from it. I don’t know if they were exposed or not.” Tourist destinations are urging those who might want to ride out their quarantines in warmer and more scenic environs to stay home; they fear wealthy and potentially Covid-19-riddled visitors overrunning already taxed local hospitals.

It’s long been assumed that during a nuclear war, the ravages of climate change, or an asteroid strike, the wealthy would be able to ride out rising floods and soaring temperatures in private bunkers, exclusive floating cities, or colonies on Mars. As this pandemic is showing, though, the lifestyles of the rich and famous can’t exist without the small armies of workers who shop for and deliver to them, care for their children, walk their dogs, cook their food, teach their children, and treat their ailments. The coronavirus may not be the great equalizer between rich and poor, as Madonna opined from a bathtub this week. But it’s forcing the former to reckon with the fact that we’re all connected, whether we like it or not. Atlas, it turns out, can’t really shrug.

Whether in a pandemic or a climate crisis, capital can only escape labor for so long while fleeing to higher ground. The relationship between the two is close and fraught: This week, stocks rallied even after news that 3.3 million people had filed unemployment claims last week. News of the stimulus was partly responsible for that, but it’s also true that figures that translate to economic ruin and insecurity for millions can be great news for corporate America. Low unemployment before this most recent downturn created what’s known as a tight labor market, where companies are more likely to have to compete with one another to retain workers through higher wages and better working conditions. Three million unemployment claims—for Wall Street—means people will be willing to work for less. 

Scandalized by the stimulus bill’s provision to give those out of work an extra $600 a month on top of regular unemployment payments, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote this week that “workers will now make at least $15 an hour (assuming a 40-hour workweek) and as much as $35 an hour in places like Massachusetts—for not working.” Who, they wondered, would apply for a job in a Walmart or Amazon fulfillment center in such conditions? In a time of pandemic—when going to work can be a death sentence either for oneself, a loved one, or a total stranger—it was a striking statement of priorities. Normally, bosses prefer workers hungry, desperate, and obedient. Amid an outbreak, perhaps they don’t mind if they’re dead, so long as there are a few more at the ready to replace them?

In 2010, then–Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein defended lush executive bonuses handed out in the wake of a crash that left millions homeless and unemployed thanks to a crisis these executives had helped engineer. “The people of Goldman Sachs,” he claimed, “are among the most productive in the world,” as evidenced by their “net income generated per head” doing “God’s work.” As Covid-19 sets in, it’s been health care workers, grocery store shelf stockers, and delivery workers who have kept the world going—many of them earning barely more than minimum wage. It wouldn’t make much of a difference to most people if high-frequency speculative trading shut down for a few days. Blankfein, by contrast, might not last long without teams of workers attending to his every need, whether he’s in Bridgehampton or the Upper West Side. And there won’t be an interest rate low enough to drain his lungs if he catches the coronavirus and there aren’t health care workers around to help him.

The social services cuts that America’s free-market ideologues have pushed for decades are coming back to infect them. Chronically underfunded hospitals, companies competing over who can profit the most off novel testing and vaccines, millions uninsured, and people forced by financial necessity to go to work while infected are all part of the vision many companies and their representatives have spent billions lobbying to create. Those on its losing end are now fighting back, with rent strikes planned across the country and Instacart workers set to strike for hazard, sick pay, and protective equipment; sanitation workers in Pittsburgh already have. Italy’s Amazon warehouse workers were some of the hundreds of thousands there to partake in rolling strikes of shipbuilders, steelworkers, and more, demanding stronger health protections from the federal government. 

As with their private jet–aided appeals to lower emissions, the 1 percent’s virtue signaling about social distancing during this outbreak obscures the fact that they’ve helped make the crisis worse. Even starved of their chefs and personal shoppers, the rich might be able to weather Covid-19 in their summer homes. Their worldview, on the other hand, may not be so lucky—and could face an angrier, more organized public on the other side. 

My Crystal Ball Tells Me That This Summer Is Going to Be Awful

 

Article by Stephen Kruiser in "PJMedia":

Oddly, I keep encountering friends, relatives, and people on social media who have remained rather optimistic during this most impossible March. Admittedly, that would be odd to me under any circumstances, as I am not one who is naturally given to optimism. I think that every moment of pure joy has to be followed by ten or fifteen bad ones, so I am always waiting for a series of other shoes to drop.

I worry about those who aren't expecting the worst because I think that they are all in for a rough few months.

When Major League Baseball missed Opening Day last week I had several conversations with sports fan friends about when the season might finally get underway. They were all convinced that it would. I brought a little rain to the parade and suggested that I wasn't even sure that there would be an NFL season this year because of the virus lockdown.

This was all less than a week ago, when we thought things would be easing up, well, now. Things got a little bleaker on Sunday when President Trump extended the social distancing guidelines until April 30, effectively canceling Easter.

The guidelines are what some governors and mayors are using to enact more onerous protocols. Los Angeles has become a mini-police state. The entire Washington, D.C., area got the "stay-at-home" finger wag on Monday from the governors of Maryland and Virginia, as well as Washington's mayor. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam made his decree effective until June 10, no doubt relishing the opportunity to prove that he didn't have to follow federal rules.

We even got a stay-at-home order here in Arizona on Monday, and we usually don't play nice with the rest of the country like that.

The pit of my bureaucratic tyranny-loathing stomach keeps telling me that we are just getting started with the decrees and the threats from petty wannabe dictators to jail anyone who doesn't comply with them. A lot can be done in the name of public safety by power-hungry people, and not much of it good.

We have yet to see the worst of things in New York City, Southern California, and Florida. If those numbers get -- as many expect -- much worse, you can be assured that Northam's June 10 date will look like early parole. The certainty that the infection numbers will keep getting much worse for a while practically guarantees that the restrictions will be stricter and/or last longer. There is no way that bad news coming out of any of the population centers is going to lead to anything but a lengthening of our "stay at home for the public good" purgatory.

I am not someone who is advocating for us to all begin throwing block parties next weekend, but I am a bit concerned at the docility of the much of the American public thus far. We've shut down the economy and a lot of fiercely independent Americans have watched it happen unquestioningly, offering little more than a "Whaddya gonna do?" shrug.

At this rate, the possibility of a summer shutdown shouldn't surprise anyone, but it probably will.

I don't mind being responsible right now but I will keep advocating for the same thing I have been for three weeks now: something concrete. We need to press our municipal, state, and federal leaders for some specifics. Give us some metrics and a hard-out date. Tell us what needs to happen to infection rates by what date in order to trigger another date where we might begin to attempt to return to normalcy.

That's not unfair. If x doesn't happen, then y and z don't either. At least we would know what the rules and parameters are.

At the moment, we are living in a world where officials are releasing criminals from jails to prevent the spread of an infection they weren't spreading because they were in a confined space and those same officials are threatening to fill those jails with otherwise law-abiding citizens who leave their homes under a martial law that no one is calling martial law.

A few pesky demands from the citizenry are probably in order at the moment.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/my-crystal-ball-tells-me-that-this-summer-is-going-to-be-awful/ 

Homeschooling During Coronavirus? Here Are Resources for Parents Left in the Lurch

 
Article by Tyler O'Neil in "PJMedia":

Due to the coronavirus crisis, schools across the country have been closed for three weeks, and many have left parents in the lurch. The Texas Homeschool Coalition launched a website to help parents who find themselves becoming "accidental homeschoolers" at https://coronavirushomeschooling.com/

"Our plan is to meet the needs of these accidental homeschoolers. The Texas Homeschool Coalition has put together this website because they’ve been at this for decades. I’ve been at this for ten years," Sam Sorbo, an actress, radio host, mother, and homeschool advocate, told PJ Media in an interview on Monday.

CoronavirusHomsechooling.com provides daily lessons for kids in Kindergarten through fifth grade, with plans to include curriculum for older kids, as well.

"I encourage parents, 'Take the reins. The schools have now ceded their authority to you,'" Sorbo said. "We're in this interesting situation where the government is telling us, 'You need to home educate.' So many schools are not sending out materials."

Sorbo noted that schools across the country have been closed for three weeks, and they still haven't sent out a curriculum for the parents to keep teaching their children. "So many schools have sent them no schooling materials whatsoever."

"Give them a week. Okay, fine. Why didn't I have the materials last week?" the mother demanded. Rather than providing curricula, teachers have sent out videos assuring kids that they miss them. "They say they're hoping the kids stay safe but not saying a peep about education. How about 'Don't forget to read your books this week!' or 'Don't forget to keep up on your math facts!' These are the 'educators.'"

Sorbo insisted that parents already have what it takes to homeschool their children, they just need the right resources.

"What strikes me as egregious is the idea that parents don't know what to do," she said. "We're here to reassure them — you still know enough to teach K-5 and sixth grade. You don't have to solve everything today. It's less difficult than you think and it's better than you could ever dream, frankly."

Sorbo noted that CoronavirusHomeschooling.com sends emails to parents every day, providing them with the lessons their children need. The website also offers a community for parents to learn from others like Sorbo herself, who have been homeschooling for years.

The mother insisted that parents have been indoctrinated to think that they don't have what it takes to teach their children. "It took me more than three years to wrap my head around just how brainwashed I had been," she recalled. "I felt incompetent just because I was taught I was incompetent."

"We grow up thinking that's what we have to do with our kids. You've been taught that it's hard because that's job security for the educators," she said. She said she did not mean to minimize the hard work of educators, but she insisted that parents can teach their own children. Meanwhile, the education system has been failing children, with even top graduates needing remedial lessons in math at the college level.

Sorbo said parents often give two reasons for doubting their homeschooling ability: "I don't know how" and "I lack the patience."

Websites like CoronavirusHomeschooling.com provide the resources to help, and "everything that you ever wanted to learn, you can look up on YouTube now." Parents who graduated high school or more should be able to teach their young children, Sorbo insisted. "How good is a high school education if you're unable to impart knowledge to a third grader?"

As for patience, "maybe your children are supposed to teach you patience," Sorbo suggested. "Patience is the ability to not get angry. Why are you angry at your children? Figure it out instead, love that child."

The homeschooling mother insisted that parents often stress themselves too much about education. "Parents are thinking, 'My child will be underserved and it's going to be my fault that my child doesn't get into Yale.' You shouldn't pile on your child like that," she said.

Sorbo argued that school for younger children should take "less than 3 hours a day. It's absolutely not a three-hour commitment for the adult. If you think that educating your children is a full-time job, you're incorrect."

She shared some of her own experiences. "I would get my fifth-grader started on his book; I'd get my third-grader started on the copy work for handwriting; I'd give the first-grader the grammar lesson," the homeschooling mother recalled. "It's not three hours for me, it's maybe three hours for the child."

Teaching children at home gives parents flexibility, Sorbo insisted. She suggested that if a child does well in a math lesson one day, perhaps the parent can skip the math lesson the next day and do something fun instead — be a "hero."

Ultimately, the point of homeschooling — and much of parenting in general — is to "create an environment of learning for your kids," setting them up for a lifetime of learning and growth.

"You're more important than the school, so stop fretting that the less important component is no longer available," Sorbo quipped.

Homeschooling is not easy, but it may be far easier than parents think it is. The coronavirus crisis may force them to give it a try — and they may end up liking it far more than they anticipated.

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/homeschooling-during-coronavirus-here-are-resources-for-parents-left-in-the-lurch/ 

Coronavirus: Love knows no borders for elderly couple

An elderly couple have become local celebrities amid the coronavirus outbreak for their daily cross-border meeting.

Inga Rasmussen, 85, from Denmark and Karsten Tüchsen Hansen, 89, from Germany meet near the town of Aventoft to chat and share a drink, sitting at the recommended safe distance.
The Germany-Denmark border was closed two weeks ago amid the outbreak.
Germany has some 63,000 confirmed cases of the virus, and Denmark over 2,500.
Europe’s Schengen Area - which allows restriction-free travel throughout vast swathes of the Continent - has seen borders between nations reappear, in some cases for the first time in 25 years

But the octogenarian couple will not let a global pandemic stop them.
"It's sad, but we can't change it," Ms Rasmussen told German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
Both have become local celebrities during the crisis after the mayor of the local town of Tonder found the pair while he was on a bike ride.

The pair first met two years ago, and for more than a year have spent nearly every day together.
Ms Rasmussen drives to the border from her town of Gallehus, while Mr Hansen rides his bike from Süderlügum.
He will sometimes have a glass of schnapps during their meeting, but Ms Rasmussen sticks to coffee. “After all, I have to drive a car,” she told Danish newspaper Der Nordschleswiger

Ms Rasmussen and Mr Hansen have taken trips together in the past, and plan to travel again once the outbreak is over.
They are just one couple who have found creative ways to keep their relationship alive during the pandemic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52104955

Dangerous Density: Should Coronavirus Change Our Thinking on City Living?

Article by Phillip Carl Salzman in "PJMedia":

Urban planners and social critics have long urged that we move to higher density, high rise urban centers, and away from dispersed, low rise, and especially single-family dwellings in the suburbs and exurbs. One of the main arguments in favor is that dense urban centers are more “sustainable,” which reflects urban planners’ dislike of automobiles and roads, regarded as only sources of pollution. Furthermore, they argue that “people who live in dense, walkable areas tend to be physically healthier, happier, and more productive. Local governments pay less in infrastructure costs to support urbanites than they to support suburbanites. Per-capita energy consumption is lower in dense areas, which is good for air pollution and climate change. Plus, dense, walkable areas tend to be buzzy and culturally vibrant.” But how should pandemics like coronavirus affect our thinking?

The reality is that many Americans prefer the suburbs to urban centers. According to Pew Research, “since 2000, suburban counties saw a 16% increase in population, compared with increases of 13% and 3%, respectively, in urban and rural counties. The overall share of U.S. residents who live in suburban counties has also risen during this period while holding steady in urban counties and declining in rural ones.” Urban planners know that their preference for dense, high-rise urban centers is not popular.

But they are not deterred by how their fellow citizens actually want to live their lives, and they focus on “overcoming resistance” to advancing dense urban centers.

Is high population density an unalloyed good? Even if highly dense urban areas are preferred by some people, and may be beneficial in various ways, e.g. “cultural vibrancy,” what are the costs, the negative consequences? There may be many, for example, the difficulty and cost of having children in dense urban areas, and the consequent decline in population replacement. But an obvious downside during this time of coronavirus pandemic is the ease of contagion and transmission of the virus among people in close contact.

States with heavily rural, low-density populations—the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Nevada, Idaho—have only small numbers of coronavirus infections, States with large, dense urban areas—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Washington—have been hardest hit by the pandemic. Above all, it is the urban areas—New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle—that have suffered the greatest number of cases and deaths.

Our main tool for stopping virus contagion is “social distancing,” the spatial separation of people so that the virus is not passed from one person to another. This is particularly difficult in dense urban areas. Living in a high rise means that getting into or out of one’s apartment means taking a small elevator with other residents. Outside of one’s dwelling, travel to another part of the city requires public transportation, busses or subway trains, once again crowded together with other travelers. Only that greatly denounced “evil,” rare in central cities, the automobile with one occupant, provides “social distancing.” Unfortunately, human density “cultural vibrancy” is closely correlated with “virus vibrancy.”

One of the reasons that young families like to live in the suburbs is that it is relatively safe for children. During the coronavirus, it has become obvious that single-family homes separated from one another also offer a greater degree of “social distance” and thus greater protection from virus contagion and infection than do the dense high rises, tenements, and row houses of dense urban areas. And as do private autos compared with public transportation.

Perhaps it is time for urban density and public transport advocates to stop claiming the moral high ground and to stop demeaning alternative choices. If they do, there may be one small benefit from the otherwise horrific and dangerous coronavirus pandemic.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/dangerous-density-should-coronavirus-change-our-thinking-on-city-living/ 

Pittsburgh Area Residents Queue Two Miles for Drive Through Food Bank Distribution

As more essential service outlets start to become overwhelmed at the stress upon their food delivery operations; and with more food store employees necessarily absent due to the coronavirus spread; regionally, the food supply chain will becoming more dependent on food bank distribution.

If the virus spread continues at current pace, some regional supermarkets with multiple locations will likely begin targeted shut-downs by retreating and disbursing available healthy (non-infected) employees on a store-by-store basis.  The potential for this issue is most likely to first originate within urban communities; and then outflow.

Hundreds of cars wait to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne. Collection begins at noon. @PghFoodBank @PittsburghPG pic.twitter.com/94YFaO7dqX

— Andrew Rush (@andrewrush) March 30, 2020

Hundreds of cars are already in line for the @PghFoodBank food distribution. It goes from noon-3 today. Traffic restrictions are already in place in Duquesne. @KDKA pic.twitter.com/SrJEkamZ3w

— Chris Hoffman (@NewsmanChris) March 30, 2020

Depending on your location, and depending on your potential risk exposure to these types of impacts, it would be suggested to prepare yourself and your family accordingly.

This phase, the phase everyone is hoping to avoid, is not a total supply issue; there is no shortage of food products.  The issue becomes one of local distribution where diminished workforce capacity begins to have an impact on the local provider.