Posted on 03/11/2020 3:12:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the markets have plummeted over global fears surrounding the fallout from the new coronavirus, political pundits have taken up the call: Find some meaning in the coronavirus outbreak and response. And where there is a demand for speculative opinion, there's never a shortage of supply. Thus we've seen the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, be blamed on President Donald Trump. We've seen government-managed response, which has varied widely in terms of success by country, touted as a final rebuttal of libertarian precepts. We've seen the coronavirus' economic impact cited as a rationale for breaking global supply chains and pursuing industrial autarky instead.
None of these takeaways are particularly compelling. The Trump administration's response has been about as strong as prior federal attempts to deal with public epidemics, ranging from SARS to swine flu. While Trump himself hasn't exactly projected a sense of calming administrative competence, those around him, ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, are fully capable of performing as needed. Libertarianism does not suggest that collective action ought to be out of bounds in the case of public emergencies with serious externalities -- few libertarians oppose police departments or proper environmental regulations, for example -- and the record of government competence has been, at best, rather mixed. The solution to vulnerable supply chains running through authoritarian countries is, first, for Western countries to consider security threats when formulating trade policy, and second, for companies to harden their supply chains by diversifying those chains even further.
So, what are the real lessons to be learned from the coronavirus?
First, we should favor governments that are transparent in their distribution of information. China has been celebrated for its extraordinary crackdown on public life, which has brought transmissions down dramatically. But if it were not for China's propagandistic efforts to quash news about the coronavirus in the first place, the epidemic probably would not have become a pandemic.
Second, we must stop humoring anti-scientific rumormongering about issues like vaccines. The curbing of the coronavirus will be reliant on the development of a vaccine, and Americans should understand that vaccines work, and that misinformation about vaccinations should generally be rejected.
Third, we should remember that crises exacerbate underlying issues; they rarely create them. Economic volatility in the aftermath of the coronavirus has merely exposed the underlying weaknesses of the Chinese and European economies; those systemic problems won't be solved through Band-Aid solutions. The public health issues with homelessness will likely be exposed dramatically in the United States; they won't go away when the coronavirus ends. The coronavirus should underscore the necessity for action in the absence of crisis.
Finally, we should remember that charity and local community support matter. Large-scale government response will never be as efficient or as personal as local response. Care for our neighbors. Care for our families. Implement personal behavior that lowers risk. And then wait for more information. Perhaps that's the best lesson from all of this: Jumping to conclusions based on lack of information is a serious mistake.
The most important thing to learn is that people like Ben are ignorant. Trump’s response has been aggressive and on point. Little Ben doesn’t remember the no response that H1N1and SARS and MERS brought.... no msm panic porn. No travel bans. No ramping up CDC. No involving private sector. Etc etc
Do you realize this is an Op-Ed? Probably not.
Covid has taught us that sanctuary cities and states are wonderful. Sanctuaries provide a place illegal aliens carrying diseases can be concentrated to keep the rest of the country free of the Coronavirus.
Because it was during the time of either Bush or Obama.
I’ve quarantined little Ben long ago.
The disastrous rollout of tests by the CDC is a huge example of why centralized control fails and free enterprise work.
The CDC is a massive bureaucracy and has created rules that say: (1) only they can develop tests, (2) any state or local health agency that wants to use a test other than the CDC’s has to ask the CDC for permission through an application process that takes many months.
The CDC and their exclusive contractor messed up development and rollout of tests, and had the arrogance to reject state applications for using working tests developed by other countries. Of course the media blamed Trump for this, but the villains were the government bureaucrats at the CDC which Trump inherited (probably 90% of whom voted Democrat).
There are dozens of labs across the US that have the capabilities of developing a test, and if we had simply allowed the free enterprise system to work, we would have had cheap tests everywhere they were needed 2 months earlier.
MERS = 2,442 cases worldwide (over 7 years), 857 fatalities.
SARS = 8,098 worldwide cases, 774 fatalities total (8 in the USA).
H1N1 (2009) = 60 million cases, 12,649 fatalities (way less than “regular” flu).
If COVID-19 gets to a million cases in the USA the current stats (i.e. S. Korea) show 7,000 fatalities. If it gets to 45 million cases like a bad “regular flu” year then bad news.
Another issue that Trump has been ridiculed for is “downplaying” the severity of the coronavirus, but in fact he is one of the few adults in the room, asking the questions that should occur to any mathematically literate person.
The “medical” experts have been citing astronomical mortality rates of 5% or more, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to calculate a mortality rate. It’s simply:
100 X (# of people who die)/(# of people who contract virus)
We can identify and count the number of people who die from coronvirus pretty easily, its the numerator that is the problem. Its pretty easy to get huge mortality rates, when you only test people who are extremely sick from the virus, but you’re excluding all the people who contract the virus and don’t get sick at all, or only a little bit sick and never get tested.
South Korea, which has medical care comparable to ours, and which has which has tested over 200,000 people, has found a mortality rate of about 0.7%. This is significantly higher than other strains of influenza, but nowhere near 5%. Somehow all the Ph.D.s at the CDC or WHO, who know perfectly well that once actual data is available, the mortality rate is going be less than 1%, don’t feel any need to correct the misinformation out there. So Trump gets criticized for saying what any literate person already knows.
Chuck the Ficoms?
Don’t dip your raw bat and Petri dishes before taking a bite while working in a biological weapons lab in the dark with no masks on.
And don’t bring home the leftover bat
Shapiro is tiresome.
He just can’t help his never-Trumpism.
The “Bureaucracy” is in the business of keeping itself in business.
The Federal Bureaucracies should have a shelf life and they should be dismantled when they reach their sell-by date.
Ben is just following the “Never let a crisis go to waste” paradigm and using it to burnish his mantle of omniscience. He knows all and tells us lesser beings what we should learn & believe, Sorry Ben, no sale.
Yes and it’s by Ben Shapiro. What’s your point?
It should teach us not to instantly look to the government to fix all problems. “Mommy! Make it go AWAY!”
Presidents who get blindsided like this deserve an additional term to compensate them.
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