Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, appeared recently with Tucker Carlson to explain his new legislation, aimed at blocking Red China from grabbing any of the Coronavirus funding from the Congress aimed at propping up the American economy during the shutdown.
Called the “No Chinese Handouts In National Assistance Act” or “No CHINA Act” for short, the bill’s aim is simple enough:
To restrict the use of funds made available in appropriations Acts for fiscal year 2020 for the benefit of any United States or foreign person subject to the control of the People’s Republic of China.
It’s good news that the China threat is becoming more widely understood in Washington. Too bad it took a worldwide pandemic to get the message across.
TUCKER CARLSON: Chinese business has penetrated big parts of the US economy; they control much of it, and many American companies now have Chinese ownership. Congressman Matt Gaetz represents Florida. He’s worried that a bailout will wind up enriching the Chinese and helping the Chinese government.
He joins us tonight. Congressman, tell us what your concern is and how you plan to address it.
CONGRESSMAN MATT GAETZ: Radisson hotels, AMC movie theaters, even the Waldorf Astoria New York are controlled by China in essence, and I think we ought to restore every American worker and American small business before borrowing money from China so that we can then give it to China to then pay China back with interest after the Chinese virus.
That seems like a foolish thing that a great nation would never do. I’ve introduced legislation to block bailouts to corporations that are controlled by China. It’s so obvious I can’t even believe it’s not the law already.
CARLSON: They unleash a pandemic on the world. We wind up sending them tax dollars — why would that be a controversial thing to propose?
GAETZ: China has a lot of influence, and the companies that seek Chinese investment also have that influence, but this is a time that we can actually put America first — the needs of our people and our businesses.
This should be the easiest time in the world to ensure that we are making reinvestment in the American economy and that we are not the world’s fools by borrowing money from a country in the bond market, recycling it back to them and then charging the next generation of Americans interest on that money. We cannot do that. Congress should include my No China Act in the ultimate relief package. Continue reading this article
Is the coronavirus response from Washington worth the economic devastation resulting from shutting down America’s economy?
That’s a question President Trump asked in a recent tweet:
WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020
As a businessman, he realizes the serious threat to America’s well being caused by closing the economy for an extended period. It’s not like a light you can switch off and on at will. The costs accrued by businesses being frozen cannot be easily fixed. I think of a nearby street of small stores, restaurants and a movie theater — rents are normally so high that when a business moves out, the storefront may remain empty for months. And that’s just one example of how costs are unforgiving.
A healthy economy is a virtuous circle of businesses that have workers who spend their paychecks in other businesses and so on around and around. Halting America’s dynamic economy is a terrible experiment that may end very badly, Hilton worries.
STEVE HILTON: You’ve been hearing everywhere else about the virus and the latest numbers and the medical response, but I want to focus tonight on what I think is an even bigger crisis, and that is the economic, social and above all human cost of the total shutdown policy.
No one should question the seriousness of this virus, and especially as I said last week, the need to avoid so many hospitalizations; at the same time that our medical system can’t cope. The chosen strategy is social distancing, and right now that involves extreme measures to shut down daily life. But there is a huge gap between sensible social distancing and the total shutdown spreading across the country.
Just as the spread of coronavirus creates a curve of the number of people infected, this economic shutdown is creating a curve of the numbers of people affected — losing their jobs, their homes, their businesses.
I’m not sure that the people on TV have grasped how serious this is, to the extent they’re focusing on it at all. They’re using completely the wrong frame of reference: they talk about a recession like the one we had in 2008. What planet are they on? We’ve never seen this before — a total self-imposed shutdown of the economy. Businesses large, medium and small will lose all their revenue, not a slight reduction or even a steep reduction, like in a recession, but all of it gone — no income, nothing potentially for months, we’re told unless we change course.
The best case is the worst recession since the Second World War; the moderate scenario is that it’s on a par with the Great Depression. The worst case scenario where this shutdown continues for months is even worse than the Great Depression. We hear about a V-shaped curve, a dramatic fall and a quick bounce-back — maybe. But if the V is as deep as the Grand Canyon that is a hell of a climb.
In Washington today, the Senate failed to advance the latest coronavirus relief package, so negotiations will continue on what’s looking to be a two trillion dollar stimulus plan. Let’s talk about that plan, and as we do, let’s remind ourselves what this is all about: men and women across America who have risked everything, worked every hour to follow their dreams and build a business.
Local businesses there are not just economic units but the lifeblood of a community. Most of the people in Congress, most of the talking heads on TV — they’ve never started a business, and don’t understand business. I have, and I do, so what I’m about to say comes not just from my perspective as someone who’s run policy at the heart of a large government, but someone who’s run a small business — a number of them actually, including one a restaurant that was at the heart of its community.
President Trump gets this too: he understands business, He loves entrepreneurs, he loves America’s small businesses and farmers and all the workers who rely on them for living and to support their families. So this economic curve we’re about to take a nosedive on — it is not just about money; it’s about the heart and soul of this country. Continue reading this article
It would be nice if the coronavirus debacle might wake Washington up to the danger that Red China represents.
The whole globalist economy idea was pitched to Americans as being good for creating more and less expensive consumer goods, a system with no downside.
The scheme was advantageous for nations with lots of cheap labor like China. And that country has grown from a poor backwater to a global powerhouse based on outsourced manufacturing from America.
Lately Red China feels strong enough to be the home of a new contagion (perhaps even creating it in a bioresearch lab) without warning the world about it.
Senator Josh Hawley appeared with Tucker Carlson recently to suggest that China be “held to account” for the evil it has exported.
TUCKER CARLSON: Senator Josh Hawley represents the State of Missouri. We’re always happy to have him on tonight. Great to see you, Senator.
SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): Thanks, Tucker.
CARLSON: You’ve been one of the relatively few people in the Congress who has been sounding the alarm on China for a long time. The coronavirus, I think, has highlighted the reasons why that’s an important story. Where should we go next?
HAWLEY: Well, I think one of the things the coronavirus has done, Tucker, is just bare the fact that our globalized economy is an economy that really works for China first and foremost, and not for the United States. Certainly not for American workers.
Our supply chains — where are they now? In China. Our medical devices, where are they made? China. Our pharmaceuticals, where are they made? China. Our Big Tech companies, who do they want to do business with? China.
I think it’s time that we asked ourselves what kind of an economy we have we allowed to be created, and what is it doing for American workers? We need some structural reform.
CARLSON: I think that’s exactly right. In the short term, though, the country is paralyzed by coronavirus, which came from eastern China, of course. What do we know about the Chinese government’s coverup of this virus in its early days?
HAWLEY: Well, we know that they suppressed the actual news, and we know that they ordered the whistleblower doctors to keep silent. Of course, one of those doctors, at least, lost his life because of that.
We know that they delayed global response to this virus by weeks, weeks that represent thousands of lost lives, Tucker.
There are studies out there that show that if we had had more time to deal with this, lives — many, many lives could have been saved.
So listen, the Chinese Communist Party has systematically lied to its own people who paid the price. They lied to the world. Now, we’re all paying the price. And that’s why I think we ought to have an international investigation about where this originated.
We know where it was; it was China. China ought to be held to account and they ought to be made to foot the bill for what the world — including the United States — is now suffering. Continue reading this article
The government’s reaction to the coronavirus of shutting down the normal economy has unsurprisingly inspired some business owners to contemplate shifting to non-human means of production by using machines that don’t get sick.
. . .Peter Xing, a keynote speaker and writer on emerging technologies and associate director in technology and growth initiatives at KPMG, would agree. Xing believes the coronavirus epidemic is presenting us with ample opportunities for increased automation and remote delivery of goods and services. “The upside right now is the burgeoning platform of the digital transformation ecosystem,” he said. . . .
Indeed, some quarters see the epidemic as a swell opportunity to switch to automation and away from annoying human workers who demand paychecks and lunch breaks.
Some industries, like automotive manufacturing (shown below), already have machine-only areas of production.
In China, businesses see an immediate need for service robots as well as more automation in factories:
Robots rising: Coronavirus drives up demand for non-human labour in China, Reuters, March 20, 2020
SHANGHAI, March 20 (Reuters) - A shortage of workers and restrictions on human contact because of the coronavirus pandemic is driving up demand for service robots in China, potentially boosting a sector that has struggled to scale up commercially.
Venture capitalists with expertise in the robotics sector said they are anticipating orders from China to rise significantly this year, based on interest since the end of January when the virus began spreading in China.
That could take the use of service robots from novelties that deliver food and drink in restaurants and hotels to an army that performs essential functions in hospitals bound by strict no-contact rules.
“The healthcare segment has been really hot,” said Emil Jensen, vice president of China sales for Denmark-based Mobile Industrial Robots, which makes customisable robots that are used both in hospitals and on factory floors. [. . .]
FACTORY AUTOMATION
Along with the service robots, the coronavirus pandemic could spur demand for more automation at factories.
Many Chinese semiconductor plants located in the virus epicentre of Wuhan have run continuously throughout the outbreak, which chip industry experts attribute to their highly automated production processes.
Still, the virus itself also presents an obstacle to widespread long-term adoption of automation because of the economic stress it is imposing on many companies.
Huan Liu of Mujin, which makes intelligent robot sorting and picking systems, said companies often must spend millions of dollars for a basic automation project, which can take six to twelve months to complete.
“For new customers, it depends on which factor is stronger,” said Liu. “The need to replace labour during the virus, or the need to balance the budget as sales go down during the virus.”
The more America imports unfriendly foreigners to live here, the more obvious the need for the Second Amendment. Of course, every citizen deserves access to adequate self-defense, and we were guaranteed that right in our founding documents.
Today normal life has suddenly become a lot more complicated and perhaps dangerous with the coronavirus threat, or at least that’s how many Americans must feel, as shown by increased numbers of firearms sales in recent days.
Tucker Carlson noticed the trend and surmised that many Americans must not feel safe for so many newbies to be buying guns.
He also observed that State Department continued to resettle refugees from corona-infected nations through this week, showing how old preferences live on.
SPARE AUDIO:
TUCKER CARLSON: Across the country, Americans are literally the lining up outside gun stores ahead of what could be some kind of shutdown.
UNIDENTIFIED LOS ANGELES REPORTER: Toilet paper, hand sanitizer and now gun supplies. Lines weave around gun shops.
UNIDENTIFIED GUN SHOPPER: I’ve been robbed before, you know, who says that the people aren’t going to start robbing for food, and that’s scary.
ANOTHER GUN SHOPPER: When you feel uncertainty about your security, you want to do something about it.
COLORADO REPORTER: Many of them are first-time firearm owners who are learning how to use a weapon to protect themselves and their families.
ARIZONA REPORTER: Coronavirus uncertainty has led to a spike of guns and ammo sales at his store.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They sold upwards of 40 to 50 guns yesterday alone.
ARIZONA REPORTER: That is a big uptick from a typical day.
NEW YORK STATE REPORTER: Owner Andrew Chernoff says sales are soaring as fears of coronavirus continue to climb.
GUN STORE OWNER ANDREW CHERNOFF: We got in a bunch of guns, I’m sure by the end of the day, we will be out of guns again. We are now seeing a lot of first time gun buyers who never would have thought to buy a gun before who are now saying I need to have something to protect myself.
CARLSON: And just to be clear, a lot of these people who have never owned a gun before, if the public believes their leaders would protect them, they wouldn’t be buying guns; but they know their leaders won’t, and so they are, and this infuriates Democrats.
In New York, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran attacked people for trying to protect themselves amid this uncertainty.
LAURA CURRAN, D-NASSAU COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Guns are not going to fight the virus. What will fight the virus is people staying home and isolating themselves and not having birthday parties and weddings and clustering together in big groups.
CARLSON: Arrogant, stupid, totally uneducated, nasty. That’s the face of it right there — Laura Curran.
Tim Schmidt is President of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. He joins us tonight. Tim, thanks so much for coming on. I mean, it does seem pretty clear that when you trust that the authorities are going to keep you safe, you’re probably not fixated on protecting yourself because you don’t have to be. People know that they need to protect themselves, correct?
TIM SCHMIDT, PRESIDENT, U.S. CONCEALED CARRY ASSOCIATION: Of course, Tucker, and as you’re talking about before, our law enforcement professionals and police departments, they had their hands full before the coronavirus, and so now, it’s only going to be worse.
Now more than ever, people need to understand that they need to be their family’s first line of defense.
CARLSON: Well, of course, and by the way, I thought there was a constitutional right guaranteeing that, and if there was ever a moment to invoke it, it’s now. So how can leaders lead? Air quotes around it, leaders like Laura Curran, the one we just saw right there from Nassau County, New York, how can she — I mean, how can any of them get in the way of your constitutional right to protect yourself?
SCHMIDT: Well, you’re right. They shouldn’t be, and honestly, I applaud all of these brand new people that are buying guns, but Tucker, what I’m about to say is going to become a little bit of a shock to you, especially coming from a guy like me, and that is that that so many — 90 percent of these brand new people buying guns have never owned guns before. They’ve probably never even touched a gun.
And that means they’re untrained. Now, don’t get me wrong, Tucker, I personally think that firearm ownership is a natural born right of free people. But with that, right, comes a tremendous responsibility and that responsibility is to be trained.
And so I will make a request right now if you’re watching this and you just bought a gun for self-defense, get training. Get training as fast as you can, whether it’s in person or even online, it will help you be a better defender, which we all know you’re going to have to be.
CARLSON: I think that’s really wise advice and anyone who has hunted a lot or has had guns, you know, they tend to have real respect for firearms because they’re dangerous tools. Thanks so much for that. Tim, we appreciate you coming on tonight.
SCHMIDT: My pleasure, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well around the world, thanks to this pandemic, countries are rediscovering the value of borders. Canada, believe it or not, has announced is closing itself off from foreigners. Obviously, it’s time we did the same.
And yet remarkably, until this very afternoon, the United States was still resettling refugees in the country, many of them from countries battling coronavirus outbreak. Let’s repeat that. Until this afternoon, our State Department was resettling refugees in your neighborhood from countries with virus outbreaks.
To stop a virus, while millions of Americans can’t go outside, the State Department was still dropping outsiders, foreign nationals into their communities. We’re glad the Trump administration put a stop to that. Thank God, at least for now.
Like a number of other people, Heather Mac Donald has expressed doubts about how the coronavirus story is playing out in the press: the media volume is turned up to high without a corresponding level of factual analysis.
Sadly, the New York Times missed her in Wednesday’s article scolding disbelievers of the approved narrative, From Jerry Falwell Jr. to Dr. Drew: 5 Coronavirus Doubters — maybe the NYTimes will get her next go-round!
Mac Donald recognizes the threat to public health, but her reaction is Compared to what? in a March 13 article explaining her disquiet.
It boils down to numbers — she sees an “unbridled panic” in America over several dozen deaths, 41 at her writing, while there were 34,200 flu deaths in the US during the 2018–19 influenza season. (And there were 61,000 flu fatalities the year before that.)
Mac Donald also notes the 38,800 traffic fatalities in the United States last year, but observes, “Shutting down highways would have a much more positive effect on the U.S. mortality rate than shutting down the U.S. economy to try to prevent the spread of the virus.”
She discussed the issues with radio host Larry O’Connor on March 16:
Here’s the original article:
Compared to what? by Heather Mac Donald, New Criterion, March 13, 2020
On the misguided response to covid-19.
Compared to what? That should be the question that every fear-mongering news story on the coronavirus has to start with. So far, the United States has seen forty-one deaths from the infection. Twenty-two of those deaths occurred in one poorly run nursing home outside of Seattle, the Life Care Center. Another nine deaths occurred in the rest of Washington state, leaving ten deaths (four in California, two in Florida, and one in each of Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, and South Dakota) spread throughout the rest of the approximately 329 million residents of the United States. This represents roughly .000012 percent of the U.S. population.
Much has been made of the “exponential” rate of infection in European and Asian countries—as if the spread of all transmittable diseases did not develop along geometric, as opposed to arithmetic, growth patterns. What actually matters is whether or not the growing “pandemic” overwhelms our ability to ensure the well-being of U.S. residents with efficiency and precision. But fear of the disease, and not the disease itself, has already spoiled that for us. Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.
By comparison, there were 38,800 traffic fatalities in the United States in 2019, the National Safety Council estimates. That represents an average of over one hundred traffic deaths every day; if the press catalogued these in as much painstaking detail as they have deaths from coronavirus, highways nationwide would be as empty as New York subways are now. Even assuming that coronavirus deaths in the United States increase by a factor of one thousand over the year, the resulting deaths would only outnumber annual traffic deaths by 2,200. Shutting down highways would have a much more positive effect on the U.S. mortality rate than shutting down the U.S. economy to try to prevent the spread of the virus.
There have been 5,123 deaths worldwide so far—also a fraction of traffic deaths worldwide. And unlike coronavirus, driving kills indiscriminately, mowing down the young and the old, the sick and the healthy. The coronavirus, by comparison, is targeted in its lethality, overwhelmingly striking the elderly or the already severely sick. As of Monday, approximately 89 percent of Italy’s coronavirus deaths had been over the age of seventy, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sad to say, those victims were already nearing the end of their lifespans. They might have soon died from another illness. No child under the age of nine has died from the illness worldwide. In China, only one individual in the ten-to-nineteen age group has succumbed.
Comparing the relative value of lives makes for grisly calculus, but one is forced to ask: are we missing the forest for the trees? If the measures we undertake to protect a vulnerable few end up exposing them, along with the rest of society, to even more damaging risks—was it worth the cost?
An example: there were 34,200 deaths in the United States during the 2018–19 influenza season, estimates the cdc. We did not shut down public events and institutions to try to slow the spread of the flu. Yet we have already destroyed $5 trillion in stock market wealth over the last few weeks in the growing coronavirus panic, reports The New York Times, wiping out retirement savings for many.
The number of cases in most afflicted countries is paltry. As of today, 127 countries had reported some cases, but forty-eight of those countries had fewer than ten cases, according to Worldometer. At this point, more people have recovered from the virus than are still sick. But the damage to people’s livelihoods through the resulting economic contraction is real and widespread. Its health consequences will be more severe than those of the coronavirus, as Steve Malanga shows in City Journal. The people who can least afford to lose jobs will be the hardest hit by the assault on tourism. Small entrepreneurs, whether in manufacturing or the service sector, will struggle to stay afloat. Such unjustified, unpredicted economic havoc undermines government legitimacy. (Continues)
There is one good aspect to the coronavirus event, and that is the rediscovery of borders: they are so handy in keeping out people who might cause the preventable deaths of Americans from disease.
Unfortunately we face the Third World to our south and the border there is inadequate.
Perhaps worse is the cavalier attitude of Mexico toward the contagion. Life goes on as normal there in the corrupt and clueless nation. President Lopez Obrador leads the way, still hugging supporters at campaign rallies and remarking, “the pandemics… are not going to do anything to us.”
Mexicans have long thought of themselves as superior for some odd reason, but this latest delusion is a bit much.
Details were recently described in The Federalist:
The disease is going to spread fast in Mexico, where a weak and corrupt state has made almost no preparations.
As much of the world goes into various stages of lockdown because of the Wuhan coronavirus, Mexico is in denial. The government’s response thus far has been to downplay the risks and carry on with life as normal. Mexican officialdom has taken almost no steps to contain the virus or prepare for an outbreak, despite a warning last week from the deputy health minister that a widespread outbreak is inevitable and that community transmission could begin there in a matter of weeks.
When that happens—not if, when—things are going to deteriorate very quickly in Mexico. The outbreak will almost certainly affect the entire country, cripple the economy, and threaten to bring down an already weak and corrupt government. . . .
The author John Daniel Davidson appeared with Tucker Carlson on Tuesday to discuss the illegal immigration implications.
Davidson thinks things could get messy when the Mexican public decides the disease is a problem and they would like some nice American healthcare.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, nations around the world are rediscovering the value of borders. Even Canada has closed itself off from outsiders.
Of course, if we wanted to shut our border, it would be difficult along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, it would be impossible.
According to the New York Times, the Border Patrol will soon be instructed to immediately return all people detained at the border, even without a hearing.
But even then, if Mexico was hit hard by coronavirus outbreak, are we remotely ready for the ramifications of what could happen next?
John Daniel Davidson wrote a piece about this recently for The Federalist. We’re happy to have him on tonight. John, thanks so much for coming on. Explain what could happen if you would.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Yes, right now Mexico doesn’t have a huge outbreak of the coronavirus. I think they have less than a hundred confirmed cases right now.
But the danger is if there is an outbreak there, and there will be an outbreak there, health officials have said it is inevitable, it will be uncontrolled partly because the Mexican state is incredibly weak and corrupt.
They barely exercise control over vast swathes of their own territory, and the healthcare system there is virtually non-existent in some places.
So an outbreak there is going to put communities in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California that border Mexico in great danger even if the coronavirus is introduced to those areas from the United States.
Crossing back and forth over the Rio Grande is going to become a very great concern because of the lack of any kind of governmental control and the lack of any kind of preparedness in Mexico right now. Continue reading this article
Unlike Russia, Red China actually represents a long term threat to America. It’s bad enough that the Chinese have been stealing American technology for years, but now we are learning of their malfeasance in the current coronavirus event.
Red China hasn’t really changed that much from the bad old Mao days.
So it’s nice to see Senator Tom Cotton being a stand-up leader, calling on America “to re-evaluate our relationship with China” because of its irresponsibility in reporting the illness and then trying to blame the coronavirus on the United States.
Plus, he’s calling for “consequences” — like bringing home the manufacturing of America’s pharmaceuticals which the Beijing communists have threatened to withhold from us.
The senator appeared recently with Jesse Watters on Fox News.
JESSE WATTERS: Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton — so senator, you said something very interesting the other day on Twitter, you said that China will pay a price for coronavirus. What did you mean by that?
SENATOR TOM COTTON: Jesse, thanks for having me on, and thanks for those very sensible words about what all Americans should do — remain vigilant, and take prudent precautions in their daily lives while we’re working in the government trying to get this crisis under control.
In the long term though, we have to re-evaluate our relationship with China. If China had been transparent with its own people in the world from the very beginning in early December, we might not have seen this virus spread so widely and so quickly all around the world.
There have to be consequences for that. For instance, China now makes much of our basic pharmaceutical products. That has to change, and it has to change fast. There going to be other consequences as we look ahead towards our relationship in China in the long term as well.
WATTERS: Yeah, China actually threatened to withhold some pharmaceutical ingredients and they said it would plunge America into a “mighty sea of coronavirus.” When you hear that type of talk from people in China, how does that make you feel as a US senator?
COTTON: Well it makes me outraged at the Chinese Communist Party that they are threatening the lives of the American people by withholding basic pharmaceutical products like antibiotics. It also makes me a little angry at our leadership classes over the last 30 years that stood by while we outsourced so many of these critical industries to China.
But that’s water under the bridge: we can look ahead, and we can make a change. We can say that if you’re making these kind of critical products — whether it’s pharmaceuticals or medical devices in China — it’s time to pack up and get out. And if you don’t do it on your terms, then you will do it on our terms. Continue reading this article
The real news here is the New York Times taking the side of America and not the Chinese in a recent news article where the word “Chokehold” was used in a headline to describe the relationship.
Apparently the Times must see the situation as serious to use such language — good!
Coronavirus Spurs U.S. Efforts to End China’s Chokehold on Drugs, New York Times, March 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — The global spread of the coronavirus is reigniting efforts by the Trump administration to encourage more American manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and reduce dependence on China for the drugs and medical products that fuel the federal health care system.
The effort includes a push by the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to tighten “Buy American” laws so federal agencies are required to purchase American-made pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
The administration has been preparing an executive order, which could be released in the coming days, that would close loopholes allowing the government to purchase pharmaceuticals, face masks, ventilators and other medical products from foreign countries. The hope is that increasing government demand for American-made drugs and medical products will provide an incentive for companies to make their products in the United States, rather than China.
To help facilitate such production, the White House is also pushing for streamlined regulatory approvals for American-made products and more detailed labeling of the origin of products made offshore, these people said.
“China has managed to dominate all aspects of the supply chain using the same unfair trade practices that it has used to dominate other sectors — cheap sweatshop labor, lax environmental regulations and massive government subsidies,” Mr. Navarro said in an interview. “As President Trump has said, what we need to do is bring those jobs home so that we can protect the public health and the economic and national security of the country.”
China is known as the world’s factory for car parts, toys and electronics, but it also churns out much of the penicillin, antibiotics and pain medicines used across the globe, as well as surgical masks and medical devices.
While the United States remains a global leader in drug discovery, much of the manufacturing has moved offshore. The last American plant to make key ingredients for penicillin announced it would close its doors in 2004.
Chinese pharmaceutical companies have supplied more than 90 percent of U.S. antibiotics, vitamin C, ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, as well as 70 percent of acetaminophen and 40 to 45 percent of heparin in recent years, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Continues)
Limbaugh observed that the 2009 Swine flu was far worse than the epidemic we are experiencing now, with 300,000 Americans hospitalized (and an estimated 13,000 deaths).
But at that time, the media-favorite Obama was president, so no criticism was heard from the press about the state of public health in the nation.
But today the media criticizes the president’s every move, even though the press had no interest at all in the previous Swine flu epidemic.
RUSH: I’m always interested in people’s reaction to this program. I think I have a lot of empathy, and I think one of the reasons why the relationship you and I have is good is ’cause I know how you hear this show. That, I think, is a key ingredient. It’s called empathy. I know how you hear it.
So when I check emails and get questions from people, usually I’m not surprised, and I’m not surprised that I got beaucoup number of questions: “Rush, you don’t sound panicked over any of this. The last two days, you don’t sound panicked, and yet everybody’s panicked. I’m panicked,” people say in their email. “I’m scared to death. I mean, I’ve looked, the stock market was pulling up to 30,000. Now it’s down to 21,000. The Democrat Party, every move they’re making is designed to grow government, make government bigger, and you don’t seem alarmed.”
Folks, panic is… I don’t know. I’m not panicked. I am ticked off like you cannot believe, and I am really having a conversation with myself about how far to go in explaining why I’m mad, ’cause I’m mad about the politics of this. For example, let me give you some statistics. How many of you even remember the swine flu 2009, 2010? I don’t remember it. I mean, I remember we had it. But I don’t remember any panic about it. I don’t remember a thing about the swine flu.
I went back and looked at the stats and I was stunned. Are you ready for this? The swine flu outbreak in this country in 2009 and 2010, 60 million Americans were infected. Do you remember that? Sixty million were infected. Dr. Siegel, one of the Fox doctors was on TV explaining this last night. He was not my primary source for it, but he ended up confirming it. Sixty million people were infected.
Do you know how many people were hospitalized in 2009-2010 with the swine flu? Three hundred thousand were hospitalized. So 60 million people infected, 300,000 hospitalized. And nobody even remembers it. And why? Well, because we had a different president. We had a Democrat president by the name of Barack Obama, and the news then was how wonderfully well Obama was handling it, how expertly well Obama was dealing with it.
There wasn’t any media panic. The Republican Party did not politicize it at all. They made not one single effort that anybody can find or remember to try to make political hay out of it. It was treated as a health issue from top to bottom. Sixty million Americans infected, 300,000 hospitalized. I don’t know what the death toll was. The numbers with the coronavirus are not even close. They are barely a fraction of a percentage compared to the swine flu.
And then we also had Ebola. And I do remember a little bit more about Ebola, and once again, the Drive-By Media was praising the skills and the composure and the brilliance of Barack Obama in dealing with it. And I remember being kind of ticked off about that because there wasn’t anything anybody can do about Ebola. Ebola is like any of these other viruses. There’s nothing we can do to contain them.
See, the reason I’m not panicked is I don’t have enough emotion left for panic ’cause I’m too mad. I’m too ticked off at this. We’re watching the U.S. economy be wrecked here. There’s some people enjoying it. And it makes me mad. There’s some people’s lives here that are being seriously damaged over this. And you know what’s gonna happen? It’s gonna end. We are going to overcome it. It’s going to fizzle out like all of these do.
How did we ever survive 60 million infected with the swine flu? But we did to the point that hardly anybody remembers it. And that’s just 10 years ago, 300,000 hospitalized. So we overcame it. We overcame Ebola. This is gonna end, it’s gonna pass. And I’ll tell you what else is gonna happen. Because of the actions President Trump has taken, like this travel ban from Europe, that has really put the Democrats in a dicey position. Continue reading this article
The list of business casualties could go on and on, given the major assault of the media against Trump’s successful economy. Clearly the press cares zero about the human pain they are creating in terms of job layoffs and the huge disruption to normal society.
Conveniently for Democrats, the presidential election is just eight months off, and the left hopes the corona troubles will succeed in ousting President Trump when impeachment failed.
Note to New York Times — not everyone has been fooled by the full court media press on the corona fraud. Yes there is a communicable disease out there, but it is hardly worth the crazed reaction. On March 9, the number of deaths in the US was 26, with an average age of 77. A report from March 11 put the deaths at 37 with the average age being 78.
On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the corona disease a pandemic. For a little history, NBC observed:
The last pandemic was the 2009 swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus. That pandemic, which was first detected in Mexico, killed an estimated 200,000 people and hit young adults and children hardest.
The coronavirus pandemic is killing mostly older adults with underlying health conditions. As of Wednesday, there are more than 120,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 114 countries, with 4,373 deaths.
So clearly the use of the word “pandemic” has become degraded and politicized now.
For an even bigger pandemic than the swine flu, there was the 1918 influenza (aka the Spanish flu) that swept the world, killing 600,000 in America alone. A couple years back, PBS made a film about the event, Influenza 1918. Here’s a clip:
So America has suffered genuine pandemics, but that is not the situation we have now. Instead, the liberal press is overstating a relatively minor public health threat in order to ruin the American economy in hopes of taking down President Trump.
And people who don’t accept the propaganda are in denial of the approved liberal narrative, according to the Times.
How Right-Wing Pundits Are Covering Coronavirus, New York Times, March 11, 2020
Sean Hannity used his syndicated talk-radio program on Wednesday to share a prediction he had found on Twitter about what is really happening with the coronavirus: It’s a “fraud” by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent.
“May be true,” Mr. Hannity declared to millions of listeners around the country.
As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, denial and disinformation about the risks are proliferating on media outlets popular with conservatives.
“This coronavirus?” Rush Limbaugh asked skeptically during his Wednesday program. “All of this panic is just not warranted.”
The Fox Business anchor Trish Regan told viewers on Monday that the worry over coronavirus “is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
Where doctors and scientists see a public health crisis, President Trump and his media allies see a political coup afoot.
Distorted realities and discarded facts are now such a part of everyday life that the way they shape events like impeachment, a mass shooting or a presidential address often goes unmentioned.
But when partisan news meets a pandemic, the information silos where people shelter themselves can become not just deluded but also dangerous, according to those who criticize conservative commentators for shedding any semblance of objectivity when it comes to covering the president. (Continues)
It seems there is a belief on the right that “the media and some politicians are playing up the threat of coronavirus to hurt President Trump.”
Wherever would these citizens get such an idea?
Perhaps they have seen Dr. Drew Pinsky on TV pointing out the crazy discrepancies of press attention to the flu in the United States with around 18,000 dead this year versus the coronavirus’ 26 deaths as of today. Nineteen deaths occurred in a Seattle nursing home, which should be a hint about the group most endangered.
There is a pattern to corona deaths, but it is confined to those already old and feeble, not the general public. Yet the media would have us believe that a couple dozen deaths of the elderly portend a nationwide pandemic in the near future from the virus.
Dr. Drew appeared on CBS New York a few days ago:
DR. DREW: “A bad flu season is 80,000 dead, we’ve got about 18,000 dead from influenza this year, we have a hundred from corona. Which should you be worried about influenza or Corona? A hundred versus 18,000? It’s not a trick question. And look, everything that’s going on with the New York cleaning the subways and everyone using Clorox wipes and get your flu shot, which should be the other message, that’s good. That’s a good thing, so I have no problem with the behaviors. What I have a problem with is the panic and the fact that businesses are getting destroyed that people’s lives are being upended, not by the virus, but by the panic. The panic must stop. And the press, they really somehow need to be held accountable because they are hurting people.”
Dr. Drew has been a rare voice of sanity during a mass media panic attack which is having negative affects in the stock market and many businesses.
Nothing on television that I’ve seen has discussed the demographics of those killed by the illness. But a Google search for Average Age of Coronavirus Deaths in America brought up the following:
Everything we know about the 26 coronavirus deaths in the U.S., KXAN, March 9, 2020
. . . But a breakdown of the deaths do offer some guidance as to which people are most at risk. Based on a rough estimate using the range of ages given for the victims, we can tell that the average age of each victim is approximately 77 years old.
No one younger than 40 has died from the disease in the U.S. Deaths skew much older. And even the one person in their 40s who did die had an underlying medical condition. . .
Fair Use: This site contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues related to culture and mass immigration. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information, see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html. In order to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
