Have you been watching the TV news about the coronavirus not-quite-yet-a-pandemic? Normally, I only watch TV news when I’m drunkblogging a debate or an election, but I’m at CPAC this week, and the TV news is impossible to avoid here in the work-suite I’m sharing during the stay with my Townhall compadres. If you’ve had better luck at avoiding the TV news than I have in recent days, let me sum up their coronavirus coverage for you.
OH MY GOD TRUMP IS GOING TO KILL US ALL
The media doesn’t think you’re gullible enough to believe that Donald Trump is America’s Patient Zero and that he will personally sneeze on you just out of spite. Rather, the media line is that Trump’s hamfisted incompetence (always on display; never actually seen) will prevent an effective response to the crisis.
Never you mind that the guy has built an impressive number of hotels, resorts, etc., which getting done even one time requires a sharp eye for finding the right people, an obsessive attention to detail, savvy enough to deal with greedy union officials and corrupt politicians (and an even sharper eye for telling which is which, because in big cities that can be very blurred line), knowledge of finance and regulation… well, I think you get the idea. Sloppy people who aren’t good managers can barely get their kitchens remodeled, much less erect giant downtown hotels.
Yet still, they persist in this narrative that Trump’s a bumbler.
ASIDE: None of this is to imply that coronavirus isn’t serious and can be safely laughed away. Far from it. The damn thing is verging on a pandemic, and is deeply affecting the global economy in ways that might take years to fully manifest. So take precautions, please.
The meme takes its form this time with headlines like this gem from CNN, breathlessly repeating whatever Nancy Pelosi needs them to: Nancy Pelosi spoke with Mike Pence and expressed concern over his track record on public health. Trump made Pence his coronavirus point man, about which Pelosi had this to say for the cameras:
I spoke with the Vice President this morning, made some of these concerns known to him. We have always had a very candid relationship and I expressed to him a concern that I had of his being in this position and while I look forward to working with him about when he was governor of Indiana slashing the public health budget and having some clinics, especially a Planned Parenthood clinic closed, which was the only place in that (inaudible) county where you could get tested for HIV and AIDS.
Pence doesn’t like publicly-funded abortions, so Orange Man Bad will KILL US ALL WITH CHINA FLU! It makes you wonder how the Left will respond when a billion-jillion Americans don’t die of coronavirus. That is, we few straggling survivors of World War II-level gun violence, the end of Net Neutrality, and the Trump tax cuts.
In addition to Pence, Trump has put together a full team to deal with the crisis. And what does someone who, unlike Pelosi, knows what the hell they’re talking about have to say? For that, let’s go to biochemist Leslie Eastman, who watched Trump’s announcement and found it to be “a masterful response.” Eastman also called Pence “the perfect choice” to head up the task force, and that Trump’s suggestion that “Americans use the same protocol for protecting themselves against a flu for which there was no vaccine…and describing the approach so vividly… was pitch-perfect.”
My sense is that Eastman is impressed with Trump’s reaction and with the team he’s assembled, and for now that’s good enough for me.
What isn’t good enough is what the Left would do, if, God forbid, they were in charge right now. Former veep and current presidential wanna-be Joe Biden said late in January, “We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus. This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Anyone with a lick of sense knows that limiting travel to and from a country suffering a deadly outbreak of disease isn’t xenophobia, hysterical or otherwise. It’s just smart. But Biden would make your family’s health hostage to his political correctness.
Elizabeth Warren, apparently confused about the various vectors disease uses to move around, “wants to defund Trump’s border wall and use the money to fight coronavirus.” Or maybe we build the wall and kill two birds with one stone? Nope: Warren would open the border in the name of stopping the spread of disease.
As for Bernies Sanders, Tom Rogan explained on Wednesday that the “coronavirus vaccine shows the problem with Bernie Sanders’ socialism.” Here’s the key bit:
It’s textbook moral capitalism: innovation fueled by the private sector interest in delivering a return on investment. Again, American dominance in this process is not at all accidental. American private biomedical research investment stretches into many tens of billions of dollars each year. It dramatically exceeds government funding. But the broader issue here is the global pharmaceutical market. Namely, in which American companies produce the vast majority of new drugs that allow the world’s citizens to live longer, healthier lives.
Sanders has promised to take the profits out of pharmaceuticals, which Rogan says “would kill the goose that’s been laying golden eggs for everyone.”
In the short term, be sensible about coronavirus: Avoid crowds when you can, wash your hands often, and maybe postpone that outdoor market tour of Wuhan province. In the longer term, the best way to stay safe is to avoid voting for Democrats.
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