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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Life in the Time of Wuhan |
| 2020-03-22 |
| [American Thinker] - Crises have a way of sorting out the good people, ideas, and institutions from the bad, and as the Wuhan virus spreads throughout the world, the sorting process is made easier. The decision to close our borders to China, criticized by the WHO, the left, and media as "racist," has proven to be essential, and the bien pensant governments around the world are now following suit, shutting down their borders to aid in containment. Flattening the curve ... ...Speed of containment is of the essence and the good news is that while the development of any vaccine against it requires more time, there are existing pharmaceuticals, some of which are readily available and not terribly expensive, that seem to be efficacious. Among these are hydroxychloroquine, (brand name Plaquinel) and chloroquine. Jeffrey Satinover reports that a "French clinical study with 24 patients and excellent 5 day elimination of the virus used" the more readily available Plaquinel). It must be taken under medical oversight because of the risk of interactions and the long-term "effects on the retina." Plaquinel is produced by Teva, an Israeli company which will donate six million tablets through wholesalers to hospitals around the country by the end of the month and more than 10 million tablets within a month. Resochin has shown some potential in treating the virus as well and Bayer just donated three million tablets. In Italy, remdesivir, a broad-spectrum antiviral drug produced by Gilead, proved effective. That drug, however, is in limited supply, though Gilead is working "to increase its stock a rapidly as possible." Favipiravir, a Japanese-produced drug, reportedly has proven effective in China. Certainly reason for optimism that with closed borders, self-isolation, and available drug treatments, we can stem the spread of this virus. Fly-over country seems largely unaffected but the big cities on the coasts are not. However, without tech that originates on the coasts. the flyover country is fokked - so don't gloat. ...For many decades big government proponents have worked and spent fortunes of tax revenues to wean Americans from their cars and onto public transportation, and it is now an "obvious fact that crowded subways and buses are the worst thing in the face of a new, extremely contagious respiratory virus." The same can be said of the misguided (indeed, in my view, idiotic) war on plastic bags by blue state and local politicians ...Social distancing as enough medicines, respirators, and medical facilities are becoming available is made more tolerable because of the internet and new ways it facilitates delivering services and goods to individual consumers. An early adapter I have found these to be an enormous saving of time and effort. These services now are proving invaluable in the time of social isolation. They also are providing new jobs for those temporarily dislocated as their normal employment is shut down. The Internet has also made distance learning available so learning can take place even with schools closed. That may, however, be a mixed blessing, as this laugh out loud video from an Israeli mother of four kids reveals Another example of independent entrepreneurial genius are the distilleries producing hand sanitizers to alleviate the shortage of them. (A shortage, by the way, made worse by the actions of New York governor Cuomo.) Abbott Molecular finally got FDA permission to produce needed test kits and this week deployed 150,000 of them and expect to produce up to one million of them a week by month’s end. In contrast to the private industries are government institutions, which on a national and international level are often so sclerotic they prevent necessary rapid, effective responses. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control comes to mind ...In part this occurred because, instead of concentrating on its core mission fighting the spread of infectious disease, the CDC had expanded its mission into faddish stuff like racism and obesity. The World Health Organization was even worse. At a critical time, it was acting as a propaganda arm of the Chinese communists, praising the Chinese who obfuscated the news and lied about it. ...As private industry steps up, the administration has scrapped a number of policies and regulations which slowed down aid. Among them are these: Finally, Medicare will pay for TeleMed so that the sick and elderly can get help from doctors by telephone instead of being forced to make trips to doctors’ offices. Truckers were given an okay to move emergency supplies without the federal mandates for rests so that they can move supplies more quickly to where they are needed. You Americans are lucky to have Trump, if Hillary won in 2016 you'd now be dying like the Italians. And we in Israel are lucky to have Bibi instead of that army boot Gantz. ...In the end, I expect and hope that the leadership of the adults in this administration will succeed in making this economic and social dislocation very short lived, and that the not-well-disguised hopes of his opponents for a depression and a huge death toll will end up being no more than self-discrediting monkey business. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #2 "the mountain might get em but the law never will" |
| Posted by: 746 2020-03-22 13:07 |
| #1 so every time i hear or read the phrase “flattening the curve,” a certain song by Waynon Jennings centered on 2 good ol’ boys driving an orange Dodge Charger pops into my head. in these perilous times, is that wrong? |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2020-03-22 10:39 |