[USA Today] U.S. exports of surgical masks, ventilators and other personal protective gear to China skyrocketed in January and February, when the coronavirus was wreaking havoc in the country where it began and as U.S. intelligence agencies warned it would soon spread.
American companies sold more than $17.5 million worth of face masks, more than $13.6 million in surgical garments and more than $27.2 million in ventilators to China during the first two months of the year, far exceeding that of any other similar period in the past decade, according to the most recent foreign trade data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
USA TODAY’s analysis of the trade numbers comes as medical professionals on the front lines of the nationwide crisis say they are being forced to reuse or go without personal protective equipment like surgical masks and face shields to account for a shortage. Some states also are scrambling to find ventilators to prepare for a crush of patients expected to need them.
The White House and congressional intelligence committees were briefed on the scope and threat of the coronavirus in January and February, but President Donald Trump has not stopped exports of key medical equipment ‐ a move taken by at least 54 other countries so far.
The data show how U.S. manufacturers stepped up production and cleared out inventory to supply protective medical equipment to China for weeks, even as the threat of the coronavirus became clear. The CDC reported its first case in the United States on Jan. 20. Within the next two weeks, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had declared the disease a public health emergency.
#1
Thedata show how U.S. manufacturers stepped up production and cleared out inventory to supply protective medical equipment to China for weeks, even as the threat of the coronavirus became clear.
So stepping up production capability, clearing out old inventory, and targeting the origins (initial 'hot spot') was a bad thing ?
".....early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China"
Scientists in China need additional training dollars? Who knew ?
#2
This was discussed in yesterday's press conference. NOW they're restricting exports, but not across the board.
And, hell, if the shipments to China during January and February had been restricted, the press would have been screaming that it was irresponsible and making things worse.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/03/2020 12:38 Comments ||
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[LA Times] Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.
The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories ‐ including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. USAID? Who are these people again? Oh, ok. Got it.
Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.
On Wednesday, USAID granted an emergency extension to the program, issuing $2.26 million over the next six months to send experts who will help foreign labs squelch the pandemic. But program leaders say the funding will do little to further the initiative’s original mission. No need in a re-start, too late. Trump failed. We've reassigned everyone to Afrikaanse oliphant studies.
“Look at the name: Our efforts were to predict this before it happens. That’s the part of the program that was exciting — and that’s the part I’m worried about,” Daszak said. Yes, your efforts. Twelve years running. Your reports please. Give us your reports, indications and warnings, etc.
“It’s absolutely critical that we don’t drop the idea of a large-scale, proactive, predictive program that tries to catch pandemics before they happen. Cutting a program that could in any way reduce the risk of things like COVID-19 happening again is, by any measure, shortsighted,” he added.
#1
A quick scan of the EcoHealth Alliance website provides a listing of over global 40 partners and contributors. Embedded in the list of Science advisors is the name of Dr. Scott Dowell, Deputy Director for Surveillance and Epidemiology at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Twelve years running, an alleged $200-million shortfall stops fok'n everything. Bill & Melinda, where were you ?
#2
Wasn't this the program that only funded for a set amount of time (which ran out)? Last time I checked the House funds those things and weren't they a bit busy with other things last year?
[Townhall] President Trump took 3M to task on Thursday night for the company's decision to sell medical masks to foreign governments while the United States struggles to provide masks to its own medical workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. The president announced at the White House press briefing on Thursday that he had invoked the Defense Production Act to direct the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to obtain masks from 3M.
Authorized distributors for 3M are reportedly filling orders from cash buyers representing foreign governments, Jason Moskowitz, the Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, told Tucker Carlson in an interview on Fox News. Texas Congressman Lance Gooden has called on 3M's distributors to immediately stop the export of face masks to foreign countries.
President Trump tweeted on Thursday that he invoked the Defense Production Act after learning that face masks were being sold to foreign governments, warning the company they "will have a big price to pay!"
[American Thinker] Sometime in June 2001, while browsing the Wall Street Journal, I stumbled upon an item on an inside page all the way at the bottom. It was no more than 75 words in a box. It covered a CIA security announcement concerning an increase in internet and cell phone traffic among suspected terrorists from suspect areas in the Arab world. I canceled a Fourth of July trip downtown because of it.
I assumed that if an attack was coming, it would be on America's premium self-celebratory holiday, the Fourth of July.
When nothing happened, I took off my tinfoil hat, ascribing my worries to my suspicion of Islam ‐ suspicions I had carefully curated from prior events such as the first World Trade Center attack, the Cole, the embassy bombings, and the killing of Americans soldiers in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.
It has become accepted knowledge that America's intelligence agencies missed 9/11 warning signs ‐ but that's not entirely true. Signs were seen, but they impelled no action. We were so convinced that the fall of the Soviet Union as the end of history precluded any need for urgency. Yet, even if there had been, no one, at that point, knew how to react.
I don't think I need to remind everyone of what happened on 09/11/2001.
I share this vignette as a means of showing that there are always signs. We, for whatever reason, miss them, or we ignore them for political purposes, or we refuse to believe them because they contradict the core tenets of our belief system.
I believe that China's actions today may be telegraphing an intent we are choosing to ignore. They show all the signs of a nation preparing to attack America. China seeks a bespoke world run by China with "Chinese characteristics" ‐ a dream that under Trump was drifting away.
China appears to be laying the groundwork for a "justified" attack on the United States, perhaps in the South China Sea or perhaps elsewhere. It will be a military attack, not an act of terrorism, and the excuse will be America's deliberate transmission of COVID-19 in Wuhan.
#1
Complex Epsilon-Delta mathematical proofs are unnecessary. A careful analysis will provide (likely has provided) an answer containing one or more of the following elements:
a. A simple laboratory accident involving the release of deadly bio-pathogens.
b. A naturally occurring epidemologial event resulting from wet market bush-meat.
c. The release of deadly bio-pathogens under the cover of an accident, i.e. a probing attack.
d. The release of deadly bio-pathogens as a precursor to actual conflict.
Again, I believe the supporting and confirming analysis is already in hand.
Unfortunately, I am privy to none of it.
#8
#5 Wuhan is one of their most important manufacturing centers.
Anyways, they're not dumb. If it were a deliberate release, it would've taken place somewhere far away. Just imagine how hard USA would've been hit if you didn't have a warning from that was happening in China & Europe.
Look, all I'm saying: don't underestimate your enemy.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
04/03/2020 6:12 Comments ||
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#13
I'll take (a) for 10 bucks - you don't release biological agents until you have protection for your own population.
Remember though force collectivization of farmers creating a famine that kills millions isn't a biological agent, just party policy. See - Ukraine Famine
#14
Hey, Herb, Admiral Yamamoto is said to have grave misgivings about attacking the Americans, having studied there and crossed the country seeing its industrial potential and population. Did his calculations have any weight with the leadership of his Asian country decision to launch a war. No.
You need a long time out to bone up on Chinese history.
1. They consider the Middle Kingdom to be the greatest civilization on earth. Technically, it probably was up till the early 1700s.
2. They've been humbled by the outside barbarian since.
3. They want to claim their place again. They are socially and politically at the same spot the Japanese found themselves in the early part of the 20th Century. They are just as racist/tribal and chauvinistic as any other population.
#15
It was a bio weapon that was leaked
Why were they developing a virus that our immune systems wouldn’t recognize?
Why do you develop bio weapons except to potentially use them
Why hasn’t some one stated the obvious that PRC is violating all of those nifty treaties about biological warfare?
#19
I am once again amused by the intellectual prowess of someone who thinks citing a Japanese example and applying it to the Chinese is somehow valid. Because they're "Asian".
I'm amused by someone who has never done the time and studied Asian history and culture to grasp anything related to it. The long line of influence of China-> via Korea -> Japan is in the books.
"Place in the Sun" knows no cultural exclusivity. Just look at the Jihadists trying to re-establish the Caliphate.
Herb, your mind is just as closed as those who you accuse of the same.
#22
China hasn't been coy that their primary target is the United States. They've been saying that for decades.
That said, I lean towards the release being an accident. A lab animal with a new virus that could infect humans was "disposed" in the market rather than the incinerator.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/03/2020 9:15 Comments ||
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#23
Hey, the Chinese at least have this going for them, Herb: they can do all that and still you come up with reasons that they're not really trying to passively-aggressively go to war with us. Multiply that by all the old-time libertarian isolationists and all the old-line communists in the Dems who helped sell China _and_ Vietnam _and_ North Korea to International Communism to begin with, and it adds up.
#25
Nah. Chinese can afford to wait another 20 or 30 years until all the remaining industry has been shipped over to them and few native engineers and (hard) scientists remain, only H1B imports. We'll probably surrender to them at the first mention of them cutting off our 6G body computers.
#26
Why does anyone assume they're entirely rational, deliberate, well-organized?
The CCP leadership are extraordinarily greedy, venal, chaotic, and torn apart by internal conflicts. Even the Soviets were more stable and predictable than these vicious and corrupt weasels.
#28
I still have have lingering thoughts of (e) kill/disband your own protesters to save your politburo necks from being torn apart by the crowds. But then I may be alone at that.
I'm (a) followed by opportunistic (e). The organizing principle of current China is preservation of the Party's power. The existential contagion was protest not coronavirus. In amplifying the response to an infectious outbreak, China was able to turn the totalitarian knob to high. Imagine the roundup of trouble makers that occurred under cover of COVID...
There's been a follow on opportunistic response in the west (f) catalyzed by (e). These are boom times for authoritarians.
#32
The virus has 8 or more major flavors. Each one that targets one people better than the other. I am sorry random evolution does not make successful flavors that fast.
I am of the point of view that they have been working on this set of beasties in the Wuhan Lab since at least 2004.
I believe China was developing them for release at the Japan Olympics. It accidentally got released earlier so what the heck... China said "Let's do it! Release all the forms on the world! Just the one virus form at home."
#33
Ref #32: I believe China was developing them for release at the Japan Olympics. It accidentally got released earlier so what the heck... China said "Let's do it! Release all the forms on the world! Just the one virus form at home." Posted by 3dc
Provocative! A potentially unexplored hypothesis, at least here. Great work 3dc.
#34
Maybe they thought wrecking the US economy would keep Trump from being reelected. Maybe they thought it was at least worth a try. You know they'd much rather have a pliant Joe Biden in office than Trump who is wise to them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/03/2020 12:17 Comments ||
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#35
And then, right on cue, Nancy and Schifferbrains launch yet another investigation to try to blame it on Trump.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/03/2020 12:19 Comments ||
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#36
As for their own citizens, heck, when you have 1.4 billion you can afford to lose a few. You know the Inner Party is safely ensconced at locations forbidden to the unwashed.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/03/2020 12:22 Comments ||
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#37
All interesting points to ponder. I wonder how China’s ports and shipping firms are bracing for a second wave of supply chain disruptions (page 3) figures in?
Did the Chicoms miss that factor? Not care? Seems like this would add pressure to the population, thus feeding their unrest. Or is there no one left to complain?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/03/2020 12:31 Comments ||
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#38
Of course, this did knock Hong kong off the front pages. The CCP may have considered HK a worse threat than the virus.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/03/2020 13:13 Comments ||
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#39
I'm (a) followed by opportunistic (e).
^
This.
The release may not have been planned, but it's created a geopolitical dynamic which the PRC is now exploiting with their "this was an American military op" meme.
With help from the Western left and the Justin Raimondo types.
#41
Seems if we go with this Olympic theory, China screws up and let's the first flavor of virus go in their own populace. Knowing the mistake,they try to keep it hidden as possible,while buying supplies,to try and put the cat back into the bag. While,knowing their special ops secret is out of the bag,unleash the other strains on the other countries.
#42
It's just a theory possibly worth exploring. An interesting take on COVID-19...
Hmmm... one has to wonder...?????????????
The corona Virus travelled entire world from Wuhan but it did not reach Beijing and Shanghai... can anybody put light?
Looks So Logical....After all Chinese Stock Market didn't crash....American and European Markets did....
Destroy other markets and be ready to capture them in every way
How to dominate the world quickly?
THE GREAT CHINESE STAGE
1. Create a virus and the antidote.
2. Spread the virus.
3. A demonstration of efficiency, building hospitals in a few days. After all, you were already prepared, with the projects, ordering the equipment, hiring the labor, the water and sewage network, the prefabricated building materials and stocked in an impressive volume.
4. Cause chaos in the world, starting with Europe.
5. Quickly plaster the economy of dozens of countries.
6. Stop production lines in factories in other countries.
7. Cause stock markets to fall and buy companies at a bargain price.
8. Quickly control the epidemic in your country. After all, you were already prepared.
9. Lower the price of commodities, including the price of oil you buy on a large scale.
10. Get back to producing quickly while the world is at a standstill. Buy what you negotiated cheaply in the crisis and sell more expensive what is lacking in countries that have paralyzed their industries.
PS: Pl read the book by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, from 1999, “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s master plan to destroy America”, on Amazon. It's all there.
Worth pondering..
Just Think about this...
How come Russia & North Korea are totally free of Covid- 19? Because they are staunch ally of China. Not a single case reported from this 2 countries. On the other hand South Korea / United Kingdom / Italy / Spain and Asia are severely hit. How come Wuhan is suddenly free from the deadly virus?
China will say that their drastic initial measures they took was very stern and Wuhan was locked down to contain the spread to other areas. I am sure they are using the Anti dode of the virus.
Why Beijing was not hit? Why only Wuhan? Kind of interesting to ponder upon.. right? Well ..Wuhan is open for business now. America and all the above mentioned countries are devastated financially. Soon American economy will collapse as planned by China. China knows it CANNOT defeat America militarily as USA is at present
THE MOST POWERFUL country in the world. So use the virus...to cripple the economy and paralyse the nation and its Defense capabilities. I'm sure Nancy Pelosi got a part in this. . to topple Trump. Lately President Trump was always telling of how GREAT American economy was improving in all fronts. The only way to destroy his vision of making AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is to create an economic havoc. Nancy Pelosi was unable to bring down Trump thru impeachment. ....so work along with China to destroy Trump by releasing a virus. Wuhan,s epidemic was a showcase. At the peak of the virus epidemic.
China's President Xi Jinping...just wore a simple RM1 facemask to visit those effected areas. As President he should be covered from head to toe.....but it was not the case. He was already injected to resist any harm from the virus....that means a cure was already in place before the virus was released.
Some may ask....Bill Gates already predicted the outbreak in 2015...so the chinese agenda cannot be true. The answer is. ..YES...Bill Gates did predict. .but that prediction is based on a genuine virus outbreak. Now China is also telling that the virus was predicted well in advance. ....so that its agenda would play along well to match that prediction. China,s vision is to control the World economy by buying up stocks now from countries facing the brink of severe ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. Later China will announce that their Medical Researchers have found a cure to destroy the virus. Now China have other countries stocks in their arsenal and these countries will soon be slave to their master...CHINA.
Just Think about it ...
The Doctor Who declared this virus was also Silenced by the Chinese Authorities...
#45
Regarding the idea of this being an attack... The US has been on a mission to self-destruct for a few decades know. Even the War on Terror only brought us together for a short while. Certainly the Chinese could have seen this and waited another decade before launching an attack that would be the only thing likely to snap the US out of our liberal spiral.
#46
I'm in the accidental release from a lab grouping, and that the subsequent events including a massive overreaction on the part of the West has opened opportunities for exploitation in terms of increasing market/[roduction share of industries worldwide. The US has driven itself into a deep depression economically, and it will take a long time to repair the damages and second/third order consequences, not the least of which is public trust in our government by a large number of our citizens, pushed hard by the left unaware of this being their biggest loss longterm. The silver lining might be a return to quasi-isolationism as we become a hemispheric power and reindustrializing the nation, while losing the globalist mindset of the next generations and reintroducing trade and job skills over farcical pieces of paper. Fingers crossed Trump man-ups and starts the economy back end of April or before? Shelter in place the most vulnerable and get on with herd immunity while we find a vaccine for us old farts!
#47
silver lining might be a return to quasi-isolationism as we become a hemispheric power and reindustrializing the nation, while losing the globalist mindset
Bingo.
Less stuff, a slightly lower material standard of living but much stronger communities and families and a healthier culture.
Less capital diverted to bullshit consumer tech and a vast increase in funding of
1) infrastructure / deferred maintenance
2) basic biomedical research.
(Also an increase in funding of traditional high culture consumed locally in live performances rather than Hollywood garbage designed for a global market - see "healthiervukture," above).
Fewer college degrees given but each one worth more, and much less student debt.
A foreign policy of smart realism based on overwhelming force, cleverly-designed bilateral alliances, and above all, getting close to Russia and isolating China.
As to our domestic politics I've no f---ing idea how to fix the terminal rot that afflicts our Shitshow political class. Exile them for 10 years?
Mises Institute via Instapundit
The Food and Drug Administration helped turn the coronavirus from a deadly peril into a national catastrophe. Long after foreign nations had been ravaged and many cases had been detected in America, the FDA continued blocking private testing. The FDA continued forcing the nation’s most innovative firms to submit to its command-and-control approach notwithstanding the pandemic. South Korean is in a far better situation dealing with coronavirus, because its government did not preemptively cripple private testing.
One of the clearest lessons from the current pandemic is that nothing has changed at one of the nation’s most powerful regulatory agencies. The FDA is repeating the same mistakes and showing the same arrogance that I chronicled decades ago in articles for the Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator, and other publications.
Dr. David Kessler, who became FDA commissioner in 1990, quickly sought to intimidate the companies that his agency regulates. A laudatory Washington Post article concluded, "What he cannot accomplish with ordinary regulation, Kessler hopes to accomplish with fear." Kenneth Feather of the FDA's drug advertising surveillance branch boasted: "We want to say to these companies that you don't know when or how we'll strike. We want to eliminate predictability."
...Dr. Kessler declared in 1992: "If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions...then the whole rationale for the [FDA] would cease to exist." Kessler derided "freedom of choice" as an illusion unless people are presented only with government-approved choices. But the FDA "liberated" people by shielding them from information, devices, and drugs that could have saved their lives.
Many Americans could die in the coming weeks and months thanks to the FDA’s blockade on coronavirus testing. Should we consider those victims as martyrs for the principle of bureaucratic supremacy? The FDA’s current commissioner, Stephen Hahn, conceded last week: "There are always opportunities to learn from situations like this one." Perhaps the clearest lesson is that it is time to track the death toll of FDA regulatory debacles.
It's Kurt
[Townhall] We Americans are truly blessed by having a mainstream media full of brilliant renaissance men, women, and gender non-specific entities who are masters of so many varied and intermittently useful skills and who are eager to share their knowledge with us benighted souls. The pandemic has revealed that every urban Twitter blue check scribbler, MSNBCNN panelist, NYT/WaPo doofus, and barely legal "senior editor" of a website you never heard of, is a Nobel Prize-winning epidemiologist, a master logistician, and a diversity consultant too boot.
They may all be lousy journalists, but damn it, they are also lousy at other jobs that they didn't even pretend to train to do.
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.
