[Unz Review] When in doubt as to just how remiss your government was, see what Israel has done to protect its nationals from the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking its cues from the American Left, the Israeli left is all for national and individual self-immolation. But nobody who matters in that country has been listening to the Left babble on about "racism" and "Sinophobia."
Against the advice of its liberal think tanks‐and to protect its nationals from the Wuhan virus pandemic‐the Jewish State had, early on, closed its doors to "more and more of eastern Asia, starting with China, continuing to Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Thailand, South Korea and Japan."
China is Israel’s second-largest trading partner.
To follow were tough travel restrictions and a quarantine regimen on territories in Europe, in line with unfolding coronavirus contingencies. Israel has since extended the quarantine to all arrivals. Everyone who comes to Israel from abroad is sequestered for 14 days. Although the number of cases in the country is rising rapidly, there have been no deaths to date.
What is proving more difficult for the Jewish State is adding "New York and the states of Washington and California to its restricted list." Israeli public health officials recommend it, but Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is being muscled by Vice President Mike Pence to keep his country open to those COVID-19 hot zones.
Following transmission of the coronavirus from Wuhan to Washington State, I wondered, in a mild tweet, posted with links to the Israeli policy, why Americans didn’t deserve this kind of diligence from their government.
Came the strident reply, also on Twitter: "Because, unlike Israel, the U.S. is not a postage-stamp-sized garrison state. The U.S. needs to tailor its response to the disease to its role as global economic power."
Stalin apologist Walter Duranty summed up this Jacobin perspective perfectly. "You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs." Breaking a few old eggs, in an old-age home, in King County, Washington State, is what it apparently takes to make that great global omelet.
To the extent that it safeguards the well-being of its own people, the defensive measures taken by Israel comport with the role of government. "Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others‐intentionally or unintentionally‐falls perfectly within the purview of the night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory." Author's father is a South African rabbi, if he is still living. A Lengthy article, and a bit difficult to follow, but interesting nonetheless.
[RedState] Things appear to only be getting dumber as the Wuhan virus pandemic continues to grip the nation.
Yesterday, conservative host Ben Shapiro made some completely common sense suggestions in regards to China and the wet markets that started the spread. Namely, he called eating bats gross and said the Chinese should have some actual health standards. I’m gonna go with a fact-check true on that.
But this set Media Matters into a flutter, because of course it did.
I think the stopping of eating under-cooked bats with fur still on them is probably a good idea. I also think it’s perfectly fine to object to such practices as gross. Yes, some cultures eat "weird" foods in relation to what the Western world eats, but that’s not an excuse for spreading pandemics, of which these wet markets have been responsible for many. Some things are just objectively bad. That applies here.
Of course, there was more outrage to be had.
I don’t know who Jenny Yang is, but perhaps she ought to do a little research on the Chinese response, or lack there of, in the face of the Wuhan flu. They lied, obfuscated, and punished anyone who tried to warn the world of what was happening. By the time the truth came out, it was too late to stop the spread. China allowed over 5,000,000 people to leave the Wuhan area despite knowing person to person transmission was going on.
Regardless, I know pretty much no Americans who eat horse. As for gator, yes, we do eat that. We also eat it under stringent health guidelines and it is harvested in a way that is safe. The problem with eating bats is not just that it’s "gross," but that it’s dangerous. This isn’t difficult.
The Chinese government deserves every ounce of blame here. Deflections to "racism" are just that. It’s nothing a cheap attempt to try to run cover for the communists for political reasons. Anyone who does it needs to be held accountable.
#2
We didn't do anything substantial about HIV transmissive behavior. Why should anyone expect more now?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/20/2020 11:10 Comments ||
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#3
Jenny Yang is an American comic and writer in Los Angeles. Yang is the co-founder and co-producer of Dis/orient/ed Comedy, a nationally touring comedy showcase of Asian-American women, as well as the co-host of ISAtv's Angry Asian America along with Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man
Her all-cps tweet gave her away.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2020 11:48 Comments ||
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#4
I blame Andrew Zimmern
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/20/2020 15:28 Comments ||
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#6
Why, just the other week they all were crying about endangered African animals being poached so strange bits of them could be smuggled to China to make elixirs.
The attempt to whip up anti-Americanism appears to be an effort by the German government to blunt public criticism of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet for their lackadaisical response to the coronavirus epidemic.
The story was quickly picked up and uncritically disseminated by print and broadcast media throughout Europe ‐ and America. Nearly all quoted the Die Welt article verbatim without confirming the story on their own.
"To make it clear again on coronavirus: CureVac has not received from the US government or related entities an offer before, during and since the Task Force meeting in the White House on March 2. CureVac rejects all allegations from press." ‐ Statement by CureVac, March 16, 2020.
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell denied the allega tions. "Not true," he tweeted. "The Welt story was wrong. But Business Insider, Reuters and others went with it anyway despite not having their own sources. Now everyone is back peddling."
The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, in an article titled, "CureVac Has Not Received an Offer from the U.S. Government," described the Welt article as "Fake News" concocted by CureVac in order to secure government funding. The paper suggested that the German government helped to promote the lie...
"A German minister, who heard from another German minister, that a German journalist, who was not there, reported that the U.S. president offered $1 billion for a company that has not yet developed a vaccine against COVID-19.... For my taste, much hearsay, the striving of Die Welt for many clicks, the fueling of resentment against Trump and perhaps intelligent marketing by the company for public funding in times of the corona crisis." ‐ Reader comment in Die Welt, March 17, 2020.
Or not. Isn’t the biggest army in the world American unorganized militia?
[End of the American Dream] One of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world is that we are supposed to have certain civil liberties guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution. Of course the U.S. Constitution has been absolutely trampled on by many of our leaders for decades, but most Americans still deeply cherish the basic rights which are enshrined in our founding document.
Unfortunately, many of our politicians are convinced that all of those rights can be taken away during a "national emergency", and these days the bar for declaring a "national emergency" has been set very low. Yes, this coronavirus pandemic is a major threat, and experts are warning that millions of Americans could die. But in the process of fighting this virus, we don’t want to relinquish the freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought so hard to secure for us. As history has demonstrated, once certain freedoms are gone they can be exceedingly difficult to get back. We are now being warned that this pandemic could last 18 months or longer, and losing any of our freedoms for that long is absolutely unthinkable.
#6
Put me down in the "we're WAY over-reacting" camp. Its one thing to discourage large sporting events and concerts and that sort of thing, but to close restaurants and bars is basically a totalitarian's dream scenario and a nightmare to those who love liberty. We no longer have the right to peacefully assemble and associate?
#7
Lex has been a prolific and interesting commentator; G(r)omgoru a long-time, prolific contributor. Leave us not turn on one another because of a difference of opinion about the present condition.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2020 10:22 Comments ||
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#8
Amen. I've said my piece on this and will let events take their course.
#10
^I posted A brief history of quarantine for a reason. The reason being that it shows that (US) constitutional rights DO NOT apply during plague. Which, if you think about it, makes sense.
Briefly. Your Constitution (see I even used upper case - because respect) speaks of "Inalienable rights given by G*d". Inalienable by whom? Inalienable by the government, because government is not G*d. But not inalienable by G*d who gave them in the first place. And plague is an act of G*d.
I'm only half-joking
#11
According to the Quarantine article, Italian city-states Genoa and Venice had some success blocking the Black Death in the middle ages by quarantining all ships in the harbor for 40 days. Later discovered the incubation period for B.D. is 37 days.
Probably seemed a little over-the-top for the shippers, 40 days sitting on your boat in the harbor, but medicine is somewhat more advanced now.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2020 12:10 Comments ||
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#12
And plague is an act of G*d.
G*d or Xi Jinping. I think that's a subject for debate.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/20/2020 13:29 Comments ||
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#14
Yeah, so if Xi did, it G*d will get him for it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/20/2020 15:15 Comments ||
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#15
Huh.
Borders,
End to uncontrolled immigration,
Healthcare for all,
Tax review,
Transport industry crash,
Hospitality industry crash,
Prima donna boutiques of food and service shutdown,
public gatherings, parties, mobs, gangs restricted,
expanded work-from-home policies,
smog, pollution, ungreening reduced...
NEO via Instapundit
There’s a recurrent pattern ever since Trump has been president: he says something or tweets something that the MSM and the Democrats consider an example of his impulsiveness and his repulsiveness. Then they attack whatever it is, pointing out its supposed racism or some other type of offensiveness to PC discourse.
Meanwhile, the thing is talked about and talked about and talked about. By the time they’re through, no one who follows the news is unaware of whatever the issue might be.
And in the process, the MSM and the Democrats tend to overreach and overreact, and there’s a backlash against them because the public doesn’t buy what they’re saying. Meanwhile, Trump has made his point and a lot of people are getting whatever message he’s trying to deliver. I don’t think this happens by accident and I don’t think it’s an example of his impulsivity. I think it’s planned and purposeful on his part.
The latest example is, of course, his calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," and having the MSM and Democrats say he’s nasty and insensitive and racist. But not only do they sound like carping nitpickers in a crisis, but it gives Trump and his supporters the opportunity to point out the following:
(1) Many viruses are still called by place names signifying their point of origin, although in recent years WHO has discouraged that and prefers the viruses be called by their more technical names.
(2) The virus actually did originate in China.
(3) And most of all, the Chinese engaged in a huge coverup of what was happening back when alerting the world in a timely fashion might have prevented COVID-19’s spread (see this).
Note also that Trump isn’t calling it the "Wuhan virus," which was the original name even newscasters were giving to it before WHO emphasized "COVID-19." He’s calling it the Chinese virus, and he’s doing it to make a point about the Chinese government.
Do Trump’s opponents really continue to think that Trump tweets and speaks without thinking? At this point, it they do, it’s a sign of their failure to notice something that’s glaringly obvious. Of course, their entire Ideology - Western Baby Bolshevism - is based on ignoring the glaringly obvious.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Unz Review] When in doubt as to just how remiss your government was, see what Israel has done to protect its nationals from the coronavirus pandemic.
