March 31, 2020

It's A Good Thing That The Federal Government Has Infinite Resources

March 31, 2020/ Francis Menton

The Covid-19 virus is upon us, and the deaths are mounting relentlessly. At this writing on March 31, the Worldometers site has the number of deaths in the U.S. at 3,882.
Over the past couple of weeks, governments (both federal and most states) have imposed varying degrees of “lockdown” on American communities, and some millions of workers have been furloughed from their jobs. On Friday Congress completed passage of the so-called CARES Act, providing some $2.2 trillion of “relief” and “stimulus” to help the U.S.. economy through the emergency. The Act passed on unrecorded voice vote in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate. $2.2 trillion had seemed like real money as recently as a month ago.
So can we all now just agree that it’s a fundamental job of the federal government to make sure that no one suffers any downside loss from this pandemic or any other natural disaster, and that the whole idea of budget constraints is no longer applicable in anything fairly characterized as a national emergency? To put it another way, can we all just agree that the federal government has infinite resources?

March 28, 2020

China Makes Itself A Laughingstock

March 28, 2020/ Francis Menton

China is a country that cares more than any other what outsiders think of it. And then in November there comes along this whole Wuhan coronavirus thing. How humiliating.
At first they tried to pretend that it did not exist. By December that wasn’t working any more; the word of a new disease was out. The next move was reporting to The WHO that the virus was a local phenomenon related to the Wuhan seafood market, but would not spread from person to person. Here is a WHO report from January 12. Key quote:
The government [of China] reports that there is no clear evidence that the virus passes easily from person to person.
That line also didn’t last long.

March 26, 2020

March 26, 2020/ Francis Menton

At this writing (Thursday evening), Worldometers is reporting that the U.S. death toll from the Covid-19 virus has reached 1293.
That number has been climbing rapidly in percentage terms (266 new deaths today is 20.6% of all U.S. deaths to date), but still is a small fraction of the 20,000 to 60,000 annual deaths from the regular seasonal flu.
Every death is a tragedy, but then, we’re all going to die. Nobody regards the regular seasonal flu as any kind of major crisis, let alone a reason to shut down the economy or have the federal government go on a special $2 trillion spending blowout.
So will the death toll from this virus ultimately reach or substantially exceed the toll from the regular annual seasonal flu?

March 23, 2020

March 23, 2020/ Francis Menton

Perhaps you sometimes have the impression that the American mainstream news media might be a little slanted, but you’re just not sure.
If so, you might want to consider the question of the different treatment of three political scandals currently in the news: those involving Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, Democratic former candidate for Governor of Florida Andrew Gillum, and Democratic Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Unless you are a news junkie, there is probably a 50/50 chance that you are not even aware of the scandals involving Gillum and Omar. On the other hand, you would have to have been hiding in a cave the last week not to be aware of the matter involving Burr.
Let’s start with a summary of the basic facts:

March 21, 2020

March 21, 2020/ Francis Menton

As of this writing (approximately 4 PM on March 21) the Worldometer site has recorded 24,142 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in the U.S., and 288 deaths. That would make for a death rate of 1.19% among confirmed cases.
Over the 10 years from 2010 to 2019, they estimate something in the range of 400,000 total deaths from the regular annual flu. Yes, they try to provide a vaccine (which varies in effectiveness by year), but mainly we go on about our normal business while this all these deaths are occurring.
When the COVID-19 thing started ramping up a few weeks ago, the essence of the message coming out of the government was a series of common sense public health measures.
But now in this last week, there has been a big change. The government response has gone over s tipping point from realistic concern to something approaching hysteria. At this point, there is very serious risk of permanent damage to the economy, not from the disease, but from the government over-reaction.. . .

March 17, 2020

March 17, 2020/ Francis Menton

Just a couple of days ago, in the run-up to the latest round of Democratic presidential primaries, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders faced off in a one-on-one debate. Mano-a-mano, as they say.

I’ve lately adopted a strategy of not watching these debates (it’s too painful), but rather getting a transcript after the fact. I have copied below at the end of this post the portion of the March 15 debate that focused on my favorite topic, climate change. This portion covered about 11 minutes of the two hour debate, from 13:37 to 24:32 in the second hour.