I've mentioned N95 masks. Yes, I have some. For the record I've had them for years for those just-in-case problems, just like I have fire extinguishers, a fire blanket, an escape ladder, a few days of emergency rations, six gallons of water, clotting bandages, and insurance, to name some. Because sometimes bad things happen. And while I'd be more than happy to have wasted the money I spent on those things and services, if I need them I might not be able to get them. Or in the case of the masks, might not want to get in the way of health industry people buying them. On the other hand, it never occurred to me to stock up on toilet paper ...
A Chinese-backed company essentially looted Australia of medical supplies to send back to China to deal with the Wuhan Flu back in early February.
The federal government has called up National Guard units in New York, California, and Washington to combat the Wuhan Flu.
I prefer letting states decide on Wuhan Flu shutdowns rather than having the federal government decide for all. Isn't it better if parts of our economy work while they can while others that can't work shut down? Maybe in a month states now working will shut down and some states now on shutdown will go back to work. Maybe some states will find they never need to go on shutdown. And some have to remain on shutdown. But we can endure that longer than a uniform shutdown that applies to states that need it and don't need it.
Again, federalism is a feature and not a bug. How do people not realize we do not live in a unitary state like France?
The Wuhan Flu will be one more hit on an already shaky Middle East roiled by political unrest and civil war. This will affect our friends and our foes.
One of our deployed carriers has three Wuhan Flu infections. And now it is nearly two dozen.
Good grief, people, don't do that.
Sure, universal health care is not by definition socialism, which is the state ownership of production (of a service in this case). Universal coverage could be by everyone freely buying the service that competition makes affordable for your needs. If the state simply pays for everyone to have health care, that's a welfare state solution. If the state nationalizes the health care system, that's socialism. And if the state simply controls through extensive regulations the technically privately owned health care system, that's more like fascism.
The Marines are getting rid of their three tank battalions, three of their infantry battalions, 16 tube artillery batteries in order to get more rocket batteries, and the apparent elimination of a regimental headquarters, among other reductions. This is all to support the fleet more directly rather than being a "second army" fighting alongside the U.S. Army. The Army should probably be prepared to loan the Marines Army tank battalions if the Army needs the Marines on the battlefield again. One more reason the Army should maintain separate tank battalions or combined arms task forces, I say.
Ah, college-educated professional journalism: The Wuhan Flu escaped its place of origin as people traveled across China and across the world; and by the time China put travel restrictions in place the virus had already escaped. The conclusion? Travel restrictions don't work to stop the spread of a virus. Please see the double facepalm meme above. Yeah, the media can take down that "democracy dies in darkness" self-pleasuring slogan any time, now.
How do you social distance with people like this out there?
The Chinese continue to be total a-holes to Taiwan. We can't trust them.
I'm hearing that putting your N95 away for a number of days will certainly keep you safe from being infected by the mask from the Wuhan Flu, which will "die" in some number of days. But other things can grow on the mask. But it would be better than nothing if you are reusing your own mask. And putting it in sunlight would certainly do wonders for other things on the mask. So a ziplock bag on the window sill for three+ days will be the emergency procedure. Not ideal. But better than nothing.
Thoughts on the US reaction to the Wuhan Flu. Yeah, the shutdown can't last very long.
So how many people have really died in China? Do we think the CCP is suddenly honest?
Democrats should be ashamed of stalling the Wuhan Flu response package in Congress all to advance partisan political motives. We can always do more if what we do isn't enough. What we can't do is regain lost time. Remember that global warming was such a high priority of Democrats that much of the New Green Deal was about non-environmental issues close to the hearts of leftists. Democrats may be confused that this is a "normal" stimulus bill that can be used for what you'd do anyway if you can get away with it. But this is an epidemic response bill. While I knew this distinction between stimulus and response, thanks to Jonah Goldberg for making the distinction clear.
Exhibit X of why you can't trust the media to report the news rather than their political biases. "Journalism" schools were the worst thing the industry ever did. It was better with blue collar "reporters."
Good luck with that. The proponents of the sainted international community really do live in a fantasy world, don't they?
We no doubt have used highly imperfect data in formulating our Wuhan Flu response plan. But data will always be insufficient. I will say again that it is better to resolutely carry out an adequate plan than to switch between plans searching for the perfect response.
A timeline of the Chinese Communist Party lies that hid the Wuhan Flu from the world long enough to make its spread to the rest of the world inevitable.
HAHAHAHA! "Sanders, at this point, looks like an unindicted co-conspirator in the Rosenberg case."
I'm not terribly happy with the American government threatening to withhold aid to Afghanistan to pressure the government to accept the deal we negotiated with the Taliban. Aren't we essentially working as an arm of the Taliban? Wouldn't it have been better to go after the Taliban leadership more energetically to pressure the Taliban to accept a deal more to the liking of our allied Afghan government?
Seriously, I'm going to start believing that the Wuhan Flu isn't really much of a crisis if global warmers see government stimulus to combat the economic effects of the epidemic as a means to get Green spending.The article also says that the epidemic might cause the cancellation of the next U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. I don't know, global warming hasn't stopped people from jetting in from around the world for the past summits. If global warming didn't stop them from cancelling the summits in the past why would an epidemic that they don't seem to think requires our focus do the trick?
The bureaucracy's built-in inertia hobbled a rapid response to the Wuhan Flu. That's not a partisan thing. It's an institutional thing. Tip to Instapundit.
Honestly, Biden should be taking advantage of the Wuhan Flu to lay low avoiding exposure and not try to break through the public focus on the virus and the economic fallout of the virus. We may find out how many voters will pull the lever (figuratively) for a ham sandwich with a (D) after his name, confident that the vice presidential candidate is the real presidential candidate. But unless that's the Democratic Party strategy--or has it been to put up a loyal soldier to lose without dragging the rest of the party down and avoiding the taint of defeat for the 2024 candidate?--I suspect that the Democratic Party will figure out a way to substitute an actual candidate capable of running without an entire party-media edifice propping him (or her) up. Could New York Governor Andrew Cuomo be the savior-of-the-moment well-timed to get the nod from the party? Although I will say that the video of Biden losing the TelePrompter feed in a recent talk about the Wuhan Flu and motioning for it to be moved up doesn't look nearly as bad as a lot on the right are saying.
Yes, Chinese-Americans and the Chinese people are not responsible for the Wuhan Flu. But that's what it is normal to call it and no Chinese Communist Party propaganda campaign to deflect blame abroad--especially to America--should prevent us from facing the responsibility of the CCP for making an epidemic a pandemic. Media fools are useful idiots in the service of Peking to claim racism is at work. This crisis demonstrates why decoupling from economic ties to communist-run China in key areas important to our national interests should be done much more quickly than the general trend already evident.
Last week I cited an article wondering about using our Navy hospital ships to support the Wuhan Flu response. One, they use reservists from the civilian health system; and two, they are designed for combat trauma rather than viruses. This week I hear the ships will be used for trauma response to save land hospitals for the epidemic. So one objection is solved--as long as patients are screened so the epidemic doesn't sweep through the ships' crews.
The ongoing race between tank protection and anti-tank weapons with thoughts on killing tanks with new protections. It's nice to see people recognizing that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Of course, we didn't rely on active protection systems in place of passive armor. We have both. But the basic concept of seeking out weaknesses holds true.
China is investing on American-style body armor for their troops.
I'm not sure why we'd listen to their advice to leverage the Wuhan Flu crisis for Green spending since by their logic any spending on the Wuhan Flu is wasted because climate change has pretty much doomed us anyway.
I'm reasonably sure that Maduro sees the Wuhan Flu as a solution--perhaps final--to his problem with insufficient loyalty to his autocratic socialist regime. Effing up the country with socialism was just prepping the battlefield for the decisive epidemic sure to come. And who will dare to send in troops to that plague environment to help? It's going to get ugly there. Very ugly. Uglier than we can imagine right now. God help them.
Given that we shut down travel from China in February I find it hard to believe this optimistic possibility that a lot of people in America have already gotten and recovered from the Wuhan Flu and so "herd immunity" is already being achieved. But if true, lockdowns could end faster than we think. But this is speculation based on assumptions that I have no reason to believe are accurate. All I know is that I don't think we have enough information to know.
Good, I suppose, but self-reporting is not the best way to monitor actual behavior. Tip to Instapundit.
Four weeks ago I wondered if the Wuhan Flu would be an excuse to pull our troops out of Iraq. I see the French are withdrawing their troops from Iraq to help cope with the epidemic at home. More broadly, American and coalition forces pulled out of another base in Iraq as part of a general goal of consolidating forces, which for America means paring down to just two bases (at Baghdad and at Ain al-Asad Air Base in the west). This makes the troops easier to defend if we go after Iranian assets in Iraq. And makes it easier to quickly pull out of Iraq, too. Are the French the earliest withdrawal from the coalition or are they just unwilling to fight Iran if needed? Or they could be concerned about the epidemic, I suppose.
Jihadis killed a lot of Chadian and Nigerian troops. The death toll suggests very sloppy force protection practices by the troop commanders.
The Libyan civil war flared up around an airbase 80 miles west of Tripoli.
Remember, we can handle this epidemic.
I had mentioned that the Wuhan Flu means we should probably put more intelligence into identifying emerging epidemics coming from China even if China tries to hide the problem. This article reinforces that view but weakens the case with some severe TDS that ignores that sophisticated and--dare I say nuanced--Europeans have been hit really hard. Is their failure to contain the epidemic somehow Trump's fault, too? And it ignores that opposition to Trump railed against Trump's early travel ban on China to try to keep the virus away from us.
Yes, China's military budget is effectively much higher than the formal figures indicate. One, China has military funding outside of the official budget; and two, this is an area where purchasing power parity actually does apply.
Early in this Wuhan Flu there were some saying perhaps we should just get it over with by getting infected to get herd immunity. The main argument--aside from accepting the death toll--was that this would overwhelm the ability of our health system to handle such a surge. I also read that viruses tend to mutate to less lethal versions to help the virus survive. So just delaying getting the virus is good. And we can see that delay helps in treating the virus. We have time to make the equipment and to test and make drugs to treat the patients. And in time, we'll have an inoculation to prevent it. Sometimes all you can do initially is buy time.
The U.S. military has halted all movement of overseas troops, civilians, and their families for 60 days to prevent moving Wuhan Flu infections around.
There is widespread skepticism about China's claims to have halted the Wuhan Flu in its tracks.
The Wuhan Flu in India and Pakistan.
Please, who needed one of them express this concern out loud to know most of them think this?
A reminder that not all murderous vile terrorists are jihadis. But at least he's a good terrorist now.
The sainted international community: WHO edition. Tip to Instapundit.
So an EU naval mission to enforce the weapons ban for Libya is going to shoot at Turkish ships?
Yes, railing about corporate welfare lacks compassion about the effects of broken corporations. We knew this was coming. That's the whole obvious and intended result of shutting down our economy to get social distancing. That is why there is already talk of restarting the economy when we can.
Peering behind the Chinese curtain in Oz.
To the great annoyance of liberals, the proto-Hitler Trump bizarrely refuses to exploit the Wuhan Flu to gather the powers of dictatorship. It must be hard to pretend you are the only force standing between Trump and America when Trump refuses to play along with your dystopian fantasies. Kind of makes those Resistance bumper stickers look even more stupid, eh? Well, they'll always have "dog whistles," I suppose. Seriously, the Resistance is just Birthers with college degrees.
WTF Michigan?
Wanted
I'm a good part anti-anti-Trump, so this is pretty funny:
After lying about the extent of their epidemic that started in Wuhan, and after starting a propaganda campaign to blame America for the Wuhan Flu, China began a propaganda campaign to portray themselves as the saviors of the world by shipping experts and supplies abroad. Spain and the Czech Republic sadly received that "help." But China got the propaganda videos of planes landing and crates being unloaded as smiling experts exited the planes. So no big deal for them, eh? We can totally trust China that the epidemic has stopped in China.
Speaker Pelosi really did drop beneath my low expectations of what politicians are willing to do even in a crisis. Tip to Instapundit.
If your behavior changes for the better from what the model assumed, naturally the model output will no longer reflect reality. That's a good thing. Yay us.
I'm in favor of topping off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while oil prices are low. This is not a new position: "Trump should not tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Personally, I'd expand it while oil is cheaper. Oil may be plentiful now. But if war breaks out somewhere, oil will no doubt suffer. And while America is basically self sufficient in energy now, we have allies who are far from immune to supply disruptions and we will need to help them if we are to keep them fighting on our side." It's an insurance policy: "I'm fully against selling portions of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We can't imagine anything bad happening given new energy trends, apparently. Perhaps I just have a better imagination."
The media was assured there would be no math during the Wuhan Flu. Tip to Instapundit.
Optimist that I am, doesn't this decision to eject our reporters from China mean that the Chinese Communist Party can't trust American reporters in China to "report" the CCP propaganda?
I've mentioned this before, but the U.S. is readopting land mines. We developed safer land mines for after the battle, and we will use them. Much of the world is complaining we are going against the 1997 international ban. But those complaining don't need them. Plus we never formally adopted the treaty and only mostly went along with it. And many of our enemies never agreed to the ban. And now that great power competition is back, we sure as heck need them against our enemies who never stopped using them.
So China managed to get zero new Wuhan Flu infections by halting virus testing? Is that true?
More than 9,000 retired Army medical MOS soldiers responded to a call to reenter the force to help with the Wuhan Flu. We'll see how many are still qualified and/or not in the civilian health system.
As the Pentagon works on plans to seriously go after pro-Iran militias in Iraq if they continue to hit our bases, the local American commander warns of the risk of escalation if Iraq is not fully on board our operations. We might want to capture or kill just local commanders. Or we could go to the source and hurt Iran directly, with as quiet a campaign form as we can manage. We'd need more troops there, too, if we mount a serious effort. We are not primarily in Iraq to conduct combat operations of that nature there. The Wuhan Flu alone may argue against pulling that particular trigger in the near term.
An American university stands up to its students to defend the Chinese Communist Party (top to Instapundit). You think those
You have to get to the sixth paragraph that you learn that Michigan is not being targeted because Trump doesn't like our governor as the headline and charge say, and that other states are also finding out that the federal government is preempting state purchases. Perhaps it isn't targeting Michigan but trying to centralize purchases to dole out to states as needed. Maybe Whitmer is right, but the facts in the article don't seem to support that charge. And the history of the media undermines my ability to trust them. The one thing that might bolster the charge--depending on the context--is Trump quoted as saying to Pence that he shouldn't bother calling the Michigan governor. But then the story says the governor is grateful for her good relationship with the vice president. So the quote does not describe what has happened. And the idea that Trump would target Michigan given that it was key in his 2016 election and will be key again in 2020 is kind of ludicrous, isn't it? And it's a HuffPost article, so there's that. Here's some context (tip to Instapundit). Using Trump as the whipping boy to deflect criticism from themselves flows easily from the left's constant demonization of Trump the last four years.
The mayor of Moscow is pushing hard and may drag all of Russia into stricter Wuhan Fu measures like a lockdown. The Soviet Union was basically two relatively modern cities (Moscow and Leningrad) with a vast Third World country attached. Today I imagine Russia is two more modern cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg) with a vast developing country attached. So what Moscow does is likely to be really influential--and important--to all of Russia.
Let's remember that even as the left and the media are accusing Trump of failing to lead early enough on the Wuhan Flu, the left and the media called Trump's early travel ban from China "racist" and "xenophobic" because the epidemic was not that big of a deal. You need to remember because our media and the left don't want you to remember. Tip to Instapundit.
Well Brazil's hands-off approach to the Wuhan Flu will certainly make a nice case study to compare the responses of other countries, eh? I'd hate to live in the petri dish, though.
Welcome North Macedonia to NATO. Iran is panicking in 3 ... 2... 1 ...
I will again recommend Jonah Goldberg. While sometimes I think he is a bit overboard in his criticism of Trump--especially considering the alternative--he is defending conservatism against both the Democrats and Trump. And I'd like to see small government federalist conservatism come back once Trump is gone. And Trump is only recently conservative--with a lot of ideas not terribly conservative. So sometimes criticism of him is fully justified. Plus we have a right to criticize our president even in the face of efforts to unify the ranks in the face of admittedly insane left-wing opposition. Anyway, I've liked Jonah's material and trusted his motives for a long time and see no reason to change my view of him. But I admit that sometimes I turn off his Remnant podcast. Not very often. But sometimes.
Where freedom is a crime: The Chinese government-backed Hong Kong police arrested anti-government politician Cheng Lai-king. Oppression doesn't take timeouts for epidemics.
Experts now say masks provide some protection from the Wuhan Flu. I've been saying that for a while now. Reading between the lines of what was actually said and not what reporters said the sources said would lead you to conclude that. A couple months ago I gave my daughter a N95 mask in a ziplock bag to keep in school just in case they announced a Wuhan Flu case during the school day. I explained my view and sent her a YouTube video on putting it on properly. She wasn't worried but I figured she was the most exposed in theory and if it provided comfort in addition to the value, she should have it.
Okay, that's funny. Tip to Instapundit.
It looks like Wuhan Flu lockdowns as a federal objective goes to April 30th. By mid-month the models show peak deaths. I guess I'll see if our governor renews the lockdown period in EO 2020-21. She already said it is unlikely that school will resume. I guess I still need to get groceries to extend my last-in-the-line longer-shelf life food.
The Detroit police are getting hit with the Wuhan Flu. Well, Wayne County is being hit hard. Wayne County is always hit hard with viruses, apparently. Be careful out there.
The Saudis intercepted missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthis at two Saudi cities.
North Korea isn't letting their need for help with the Wuhan Flu interrupt their threatening missile launches.
Must... Not... Make... Obvious... Joke. Argghhhhhh!!! Tip to Instapundit. In the future, that juvenile temptation will be eliminated:
Because I am managing to hunker down without traveling much since community spread became a thing, I haven't had to use my small supply of N-95 masks that I bought many years ago after another scare raised my awareness of the device. They popped up on Amazon and I figured, what the heck. Ideally they mostly remain in storage for when I really need them. Delivering groceries to my REDACTED-year-old mom (you're welcome for the censorship, mom!) is one good use, at this point. But I hope I never really need to use them up this year.
