Rod Dreher's Blog, page 167

‘Fake! Everything Is Fake!’

Can you imagine having to be the White House person whose job it was to tell this butt-covering lie to NPR?

“An administration official told NPR on the condition of anonymity that when Trump said sick people go to work, he was talking about telecommuting.” https://t.co/BkOVFidUVw

— Blake News (@blakehounshell) March 6, 2020

When the history of the coronavirus outbreak is written, it will not be kind to Donald Trump and his administration. From Time magazine:

The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working.

“We have contained this. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in a television interview on Feb. 25, echoing Trump’s tweeted declaration that the virus was “very much under control” in the United States.

But it wasn’t, and the administration’s rosy messaging was fundamentally at odds with a growing cacophony of alarm bells inside and outside the U.S. government. Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administration’s insistence that containment was—and should remain—the primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake.

In congressional testimony, in medical webcasts and in private discussions with health officials, they warned that the unique features of this flu-like virus made it impossible to control, and that the administration must use any time that containment measures might buy to prepare the country for an inevitable outbreak. The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house.

“The current U.S. policy to deny visas to travelers from China and to quarantine returning Americans is not the right approach,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and expert in disease outbreak detection and response at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, testified to Congress on February 5. “I am deeply concerned that these measures will make us less safe by diverting public health resources from higher priority disease mitigation approaches.”

This is entirely on the Trump administration. We had over one month to get ready for this day, and the administration blew it. A doctor e-mailed me yesterday to say that at his clinic, they can’t leave hand sanitizer, masks, or gloves in the exam rooms, because people are stealing them. Someone ripped a bottle of medical-grade hand sanitizer off the wall yesterday morning. People are freaking out. Again, all of this was foreseeable since at least January, seeing what was happening in China. The administration preferred to believe that it could stop this virus at the borders.

Now we know that the administration will not be able to fulfill its commitment to get more coronavirus tests out this week. VP Mike Pence admitted this. Notice the juxtaposition with the paragraph preceding the admission in the NYT report:

In China, residents of Wuhan who have been confined to their homes for weeks minced few words when the vice prime minister visited on Thursday. As the central government has crowed about a reduction in new cases, the people at the center of the outbreak who have most borne the brunt of the government’s initial cover-up, literally shouted from their windows: “Fake! Everything is fake!”

Americans scrambled to make plans after schools were abruptly closed in Washington State and New York City and struggled to make sense of conflicting information from President Trump and members of his own cabinet. Vice President Mike Pence who previously vowed that “any American could be tested,” on Thursday conceded that “we don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.”

Do you know why we know about the massive outbreak in Seattle? Because local physicians got around federal regulations and created their own test! Here’s the incredible story:

Washington State health authorities announced late Friday that they have found a case of Covid-19 in a teenager from Snohomish County, north of Seattle. The teen had not traveled outside the country and had no known contact with a confirmed Covid-19 patient, meaning this was likely a case of community transmission of the virus. This was the first such case for Washington State and one of the first four or five detected in the country.

The case was actually found by the Seattle Flu Study. Bedford, a co-investigator, normally works on influenza but has been one of the key players trying to assess what is happening with the new virus by studying genetic sequences from around the world.

Frustrated by the lack of testing resulting from the problem with the CDC-developed kit, the Seattle Flu Study began using an in-house developed test to look for Covid-19 in samples from people who had flu-like symptoms but who had tested negative for flu. That work — permissible because it was research — uncovered the Snohomish County teenager.

More:

[Computational biologist Trevor] Bedford said Seattle faces a stark choice — take aggressive actions to slow down the spread of the new coronavirus now or face the type of outbreak that engulfed Wuhan’s health facilities and led to a lockdown of the city that remains in place six weeks later.

Seattle is effectively in the position that Wuhan was on Jan. 1, when it first recognized it had an outbreak of a new virus, but did not realize the scale of the problem or the speed at which the virus was spreading, Bedford said.

Here is a March 5 statement from a quarantined nurse in northern California:

As a nurse, I’m very concerned that not enough is being done to stop the spread of the coronavirus. I know because I am currently sick and in quarantine after caring for a patient who tested positive. I’m awaiting “permission” from the federal government to allow for my testing, even after my physician and county health professional ordered it.

I volunteered to be on the care team for this patient, who we knew was positive. I did this because I had all the recommended protective gear and training from my employer. I did this assuming that if something happened to me, of course I too would be cared for.

Then, what was a small concern after a few days of caring for this patient, became my reality: I started getting sick. When employee health told me that my fever and other symptoms fit the criteria for potential coronavirus, I was put on a 14-day self-quarantine. Since the criteria was met, the testing would be done.

My doctor ordered the test through the county. The public county officer called me and verified my symptoms and agreed with testing. But the National CDC would not initiate testing. They said they would not test me because if I were wearing the recommended protective equipment, then I wouldn’t have the coronavirus.

What kind of science-based answer is that? What a ridiculous and uneducated response from the department that is in charge of our health in this country.

Later, they called back, and now it’s an issue with something called the “identifier number.” They claim they prioritize running samples by illness severity and that there are only so many to give out each day. So I have to wait in line to find out the results.

This is not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter; it’s a public health emergency! I am a registered nurse, and I need to know if I am positive before going back to caring for patients. I am appalled at the level of bureaucracy that’s preventing nurses from getting tested. That is a health care decision my doctor and my county health department agree with. Delaying this test puts the whole community at risk.

I have the backing of my union. Nurses aren’t going to stand by and let this testing delay continue; we are going to stand together to make sure we can protect our patients—by being protected ourselves.

I remind you that the administration had at least a month to prepare for this eventuality.

Here in Baton Rouge, coronavirus is barely making the local media. Most officials and the media here seem to be treating it like it’s a story about other people living far away. We have no idea how many people are infected here. If anybody is talking about closing schools or public gatherings, it’s not being communicated to the public.

Do you believe senior public health officials? I want to, but the president has been so bound and determined to downplay this whole thing that I feel like yelling, like a fed-up Wuhanite, “Fake! Everything is fake!” Jeremy Konyndyk was director of USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the second Obama administration:

This is a bizarre answer and I’m curious what epi folks make of this.

There is NO data I have seen to suggest a CFR approaching anywhere close to the 0.1% CFR for seasonal flu.

What we’ve seen so far is that COVID-19 fatality rate is highly variable but much higher than flu. https://t.co/t73Zj6VnCL

— Jeremy WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) March 6, 2020

The president tweeted this yesterday:

With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2020

This is propaganda. We only have that many cases because we are barely testing for them, because the Trump administration did not prepare the tests. In truth, we don’t know how many cases we have now. Fake! Everything is fake!

As my colleague Daniel Larison writes:

There is a quote from the miniseries Chernobyl that seems appropriate to cite here: “When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember that it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”

The post ‘Fake! Everything Is Fake!’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

Pink Bernie’s Useful Idiocy

The New York Times reports on a trove of documents in Russian archives revealing the extent to which Bernie Sanders, as the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, reached out to the Soviets — and the ways in which Soviet officials saw him as useful to their propaganda efforts. It had to do with Sanders’s successful efforts to establish a sister city relationship between Burlington and the Russian city of Yaroslavl. Excerpts:

The New York Times examined 89 pages of letters, telegrams and internal Soviet government documents revealing in far greater detail the extent of Mr. Sanders’s personal effort to establish ties between his city and a country many Americans then still considered an enemy despite the reforms being initiated at the time under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary.

They also show how the Kremlin viewed these sister city relationships as vehicles to sway American public opinion about the Soviet Union.

“One of the most useful channels, in practice, for actively carrying out information-propaganda efforts has proved to be sister-city contact,” a Soviet Foreign Ministry document provided to Yaroslavl officials said.

The documents are part of a government archive in Yaroslavl, Russia, which became the sister city of Burlington. The files are open to the public, though archivists there said that, until now, no one had asked to see them.

More:

But the trip wasn’t enough to cinch the sister-city relationship. Mr. Sanders still had to convince Soviet officials in Moscow to grant their approval and allow Yaroslavl representatives to travel to Burlington. He offered glowing reviews in public and ratcheted up his lobbying effort in private.

“People there seemed reasonably happy and content,” Mr. Sanders told reporters in Burlington about Yaroslavl, a city of about 600,000. “I didn’t notice much deprivation.”

Two days after returning to Vermont, Mr. Sanders wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, asking for help in setting up the sister-city program.

He didn’t notice much deprivation. Of course not; he saw what they wanted him to see — and what he wanted to see. This was standard lefty useful-idiocy. More:

The sister city program was something of a capstone to nearly a decade’s worth of foreign policy activism in Burlington City Hall. As mayor, Mr. Sanders championed a range of international causes that often aligned him with left-wing movements and leaders in other countries, and against the Reagan administration, which he described as pursuing a strategy of military escalation that risked setting off a nuclear war.

Mr. Sanders pressed the city government to take positions against American intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and against the invasion of Grenada. In 1985, he visited Managua for the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution and met with its leader, Daniel Ortega.

Read the whole thing. 

Truth to tell, there are no real smoking guns here. This doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know. It cannot be a surprise to anybody that the Soviets saw Sanders and leftist Americans like him as helpful to their propaganda efforts.

Why is this important, then? Because it says something about Sanders’s judgment. His gullible, sentimental leftism caused him to seek out opportunities to aid totalitarian governments, for the cause of “peace.” I am not aware that he attempted to establish a sister city relationship with, say, Johannesburg. What Bernie did is pretty much what you would expect if a left-wing nut were mayor of your city. Right-wingers don’t try to establish foreign policies for their cities. That is a leftist conceit. It doesn’t appear to have done much harm, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the Republicans will have a ball exploiting should Sanders be the Democratic nominee. If you are a Sanders supporter, it’s actually better to have this out there now, rather than later.

Remember on the excellent FX series The Americans, how the Soviets took advantage of the sentimental leftism of Pastor Tim, the peace activist? This is that, except with Mayor Bernie.

The post Pink Bernie’s Useful Idiocy appeared first on The American Conservative.

A Bad Omen For Pro-Lifers

David French, who is a seasoned litigator and a pro-life conservative, has a bad feeling about yesterday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court about abortion jurisprudence. He’s basing this on the questions the justices asked in the arguments yesterday. French points out that you can’t predict with certainty how the justices will ultimately rule based on the questioning during arguments, but it’s nevertheless a pretty good indication. He concludes:

In practical terms, it appeared that Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts were open to upholding an admitting privileges law only when it placed a de minimis burden on abortion rights. There was no serious discussion of distinguishing Whole Women’s Health if it had a substantial impact on abortion access.

In the decades since Roe, pro-life voters and activists have exerted a staggering amount of political energy in the effort to elect presidents who nominate justices who are willing to reverse Roe. Abortion rights activists have responded with their own intense efforts, and the public debate is white-hot.

The judiciary has in fact been remade—at least to a degree—but America’s judicial transformation has perhaps affected abortion rights less than any other contentious area of American constitutional law. Put another way, the most activist energy has yielded the least constitutional impact, and if today’s oral argument is any indication, then that dreary stability looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. Pro-life activists are not likely obtaining the outcome they seek.

Read the whole thing. 

If he’s right about this — and we’ll know in June — then it really will be a blow to conservatives who vote Republican in large part, or wholly, over the abortion issue. If we vote Republican to get justices on the High Court who understand what a moral and constitutional travesty Roe v. Wade is, and after all the decades of fighting, and marching, and donating to pro-life causes, and to pro-life politicians, we get the “dreary stability” that French fears, then how motivated will pro-lifers be to get out to vote this fall? Especially if voting for Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, is already a hard, hard ask?

If French proves correct, then I think the most reasonable conclusion will be that Supreme Court justices, as members of the elite (de facto), have interiorized the fact that the single issue that women of their social class believe in more than any other, is protecting abortion rights.

The post A Bad Omen For Pro-Lifers appeared first on The American Conservative.

Coronavirus Crisis And Denial

A physician reader sends me the PDF of a 2007 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which the authors study records from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and conclude that closing schools and banning public gatherings early saved a lot of lives. Here’s a link to the paper; here’s a screenshot of the précis, etc:

We are not going to do that, obviously. We are in the “oh, look at all those dead rats piling up on the street; sure hope somebody does something about it” stage of this pandemic. It’s all in Camus’s The Plague, which you should be reading now. Camus sets his fictional narrative in the 1940s, and says that the people of the city simply could not imagine that something like the plague could affect their modern society. From the novel:

Today a small British airline, which had been struggling financially, declared bankruptcy as the result of lost business due to coronavirus. The Times reports that the airline industry is facing losses that an industry spokesman calls “almost without precedent” from this thing.

In China, some people who had the virus, and recovered, are falling sick with it again — at least one man has died. This suggests that the body does not develop immunity to it, or perhaps, to put it another way, its attack on the immune system is such that the body’s normal immune response can’t recover. Think about that.

And look at this latest news from Washington:

The Trump administration won’t be able to meet its promised timeline of having a million coronavirus tests available by the end of the week, senators said after a briefing from health officials.

“There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week,” Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida said in Washington Thursday. “It’s way smaller than that. And still, at this point, it’s still through public-health departments.”

Our government wasted the entire month of February, while the virus was shredding China, in not preparing tests on the likelihood that the virus would arrive here. How do you explain this?

I strongly recommend subscribing (it’s free) to the coronavirus subreddit, a moderated list where you can get excellent updates.

Meanwhile, the President of the United States is staying focused on the important things:

Mini Mike, you’re easy! pic.twitter.com/rxFiqSB9RQ https://t.co/G2M1QHj0HV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2020

And he’s defending himself from consequences of his crackpot Hannity remarks last night:

I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work. This is just more Fake News and disinformation put out by the Democrats, in particular MSDNC. Comcast covers the CoronaVirus situation horribly, only looking to do harm to the incredible & successful effort being made!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2020

No, as a matter of fact, he did not say “sick people should go to work.” Here’s what he said precisely:

‘So, if you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better.’

In context, he’s saying that it’s really not that big of a deal — hey, some people even go to work, though they’re sick, and they get better. Which is no doubt true, but again, in context of the entire interview, he’s downplaying the seriousness of this thing, and failing to reinforce what public health officials have been saying: that if you have symptoms, stay home.

Trump said this line in an interview in which he said that worrywarts are making this seem worse than it is. Listen to the president’s own words here:

In this clip, Trump:

1. Denies WHO’s coronavirus death rate based on “hunch”

2. Calls coronavirus “corona flu”

3. Suggests it’s fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work

4. Compares coronavirus to “the regular flu,” indicating he doesn’t get the difference pic.twitter.com/uC9c03zX31

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2020

Listen to the entire clip. Trump is busy blaming the media for distorting his words. This has been the narrative inside the White House for some time, it appears. A week ago, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, said at CPAC that media reporting on coronavirus is “all about” the media wanting to weaponize the pandemic against the president:

WATCH: Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney at CPAC saying coronavirus “is all about an attempt to bring down the president” and blaming the media for the market nosedive.pic.twitter.com/u8PonTKN0A

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 28, 2020

That does not seem especially credible outside the most committed members of the Trump Tribe. Here’s some news today about a new Pew survey:

The American public has long expressed negative views of some of Donald Trump’s personal traits and behaviors, including his temperament and his tweeting. A new national survey finds that just 15% of U.S. adults say they like the way he conducts himself as president. A far larger share (53%) say they don’t like how he conducts himself, while another 30% say they have mixed feelings.

For the most part, Americans also do not agree with Trump on most of the important issues facing the country. Fewer than half (42%) say they agree with Donald Trump on many or nearly all of the top issues facing the country today; nearly six-in-ten (58%) say they agree with him on few or almost no issues.

Even 73 percent of Republicans polled agree that Trump is “self-centered.” Pew notes that even though most Republicans don’t like the way he conducts himself, they still approve of the job he’s done. That’s sustainable when things are going well for the country. But we are at the beginning of a pandemic that, public health considerations aside, is going to have massive social and economic impact. The markets are diving not because the media are telling them to, but because investors can see clearly the long-term significance of this crisis. I remind you that China has all but shut down its economy to fight this thing. That doesn’t happen over nothing.

Think of it: Boeing enters this crisis in serious trouble over its self-inflicted 737 Max problem. Now it is facing an airline industry that expects catastrophic losses. This will have obvious impact on Boeing’s orders. What will it mean to the American economy, and to the economy in Washington state, if Boeing goes under?

No president has the power to prevent this pandemic from reaching our shores, and it would be unfair to blame Trump for it. But it is perfectly fair to give him credit or blame for the way he handles the crisis. Trump has enormous political liabilities in the best of times … and suddenly, these are not the best of times, and they are not going to be good for the foreseeable future. The idea that the President of the United States is sitting in the White House thinking only about himself, sending out childish tweets about his political enemies, and blaming the media for hyping the coronavirus threat — well, the political idiocy of this response could easily be the thing that not only gives the White House to the Democrats, but also costs the GOP the Senate. Trump has no cushion here.

So it goes. I cannot for the life of me understand why, leaving aside the public health aspects of the president’s response, people cannot see what a political disaster he’s making for himself and the GOP. He doesn’t have to act like the zombie apocalypse is upon us. He only has to behave like Rudy Giuliani did as Mayor of New York City in the fall of 2001. But then, as we know, Donald Trump saw the Twin Towers fall, and thought about … himself:

UPDATE: Important editorial from a Twitter coronavirus news aggregator account (follow it here) run by scientists and medical professionals:

UPDATE.2: Important thread from the editor of The New Atlantis:

We are wasting precious time squabbling about who’s right and wrong about how bad covid is going to get when the salient point is that we *do not know* how bad it is going to get. And policy must be executed now in the dark, not later in the light.

— Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) March 5, 2020

UPDATE.3: An account of an event today with the chief epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins:

UPDATE.4: In northern Italy, an advanced first-world nation, ten percent (!) of COVID-19 positive cases end up in the ICU. Think of the strain on resources:

The post Coronavirus Crisis And Denial appeared first on The American Conservative.

Trump: Public Health Menace

This is a thing that just happened:

In this clip, Trump:

1. Denies WHO’s coronavirus death rate based on “hunch”

2. Calls coronavirus “corona flu”

3. Suggests it’s fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work

4. Compares coronavirus to “the regular flu,” indicating he doesn’t get the difference pic.twitter.com/uC9c03zX31

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2020

You just shake your head in disbelief at the utter idiocy of this man, and his reckless irresponsibility. The President of the United States going on national television to jaw about this pandemic that has brought China and its economy to its knees, and now threatens the entire world, talking like he’s Cliff Claven at the bar in Cheers!

It’s a testament to the power of partisan psychology that a virus seemingly tailor-mutated to confirm populist priors about the perils of globalized supply chains originating in Red China is being minimized by certain right-wingers because Trump doesn’t want it to be a big deal.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) March 5, 2020

Where do you even start with what Trump said tonight? All the good work that the people in the executive branch below him are doing to fight this pandemic is completely overshadowed by this nitwit going on Hannity to say things that are not only untrue, but dangerously untrue. Listen to the clip — a simple recap can’t do it justice. The man just opens his mouth and foolishness falls out.

I agree with TAC’s Peter Van Buren that the media have not done well in their coverage, and have in some cases allowed anti-Trump bias to undermine their credibility. But the op-ed columnists at The New York Times did not make Donald Trump go on Hannity and say these stupid things.

It is the case that around 97 percent people recover from coronavirus, though a significant percentage of those will be very, very sick. And, as far as we know, most people have only mild symptoms. But this thing is so virulent that tremendous numbers of people are getting infected. Even a one percent death rate, as Trump’s “hunch” claims, would make coronavirus many times more deadly than the seasonal flu. According to the Washington Post, the WHO number is 3.4 percent, based on Chinese numbers, but a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine says it’s more like 1.4 percent. Even if the lower number is more accurate, that’s still vastly more deadly than the seasonal flu, the death rate of which is 0.1 percent.

This is one reason why the president is way off the mark saying coronavirus is about the like the regular flu. Here’s another:

Gene sequencing by Beijing Ditan Hospital found coronavirus in the cerebrospinal fluid of a 56-year-old confirmed #COVID19 patient with encephalitis, which provides evidence that COVID19 can invade patients’ nervous systems, just like SARS and MERS. pic.twitter.com/GBmZ9Z5Gvw

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 4, 2020

And a Chinese scientific paper based on autopsies of coronavirus victims indicates that the disease can cause permanent scarring of the lungs, leaving even survivors with a lifetime of breathing difficulties.

I tell you a particular reason why this makes me so angry. My widowed mother is 76 years old, and has the kind of breathing difficulties you would expect from someone who has spent a lifetime smoking heavily. I’ve been trying my very best these last few days to get her to take the medical warnings seriously, to stock up on medicines and supplies, and to stop going out of the house unnecessarily, based on the CDC’s warnings to seniors. She’s trying to be a good soldier, but it’s all such an abstract threat to her, because the coronavirus hasn’t yet been officially found here in Louisiana. She said don’t worry, if she gets sick, she’ll just stay in bed and take ibuprofen. I’ve had to patiently explain that the coronavirus mortality rate for people in her age group is eight percent, and that given her age and diminished lung capacity, she would have a hell of a time fighting it (and she certainly wouldn’t do it alone; I would go up there and move in to care for her). There is no guarantee that if she needed the hospital, that there would be a bed available for her if she gets sick. Don’t risk going out, I’ve begged her. It’s just not worth it. Let me or a neighbor bring you anything you need, until the threat goes away.

Here’s the thing: she’s an avid Fox News watcher, and Trump supporter. When the President of the United States, a man she believes in, appearing on a Fox program, minimizes the seriousness of the threat, at best this is going to confuse her, and at worst it’s going to undo all the work I’ve been trying to do to protect her health. This is personal to me. I’m not all that worried about what happens to me if I get it. I’m not elderly, though I’m not young either, and I do have a somewhat compromised immune system, the legacy of a three-year battle with the Epstein-Barr virus. I’m worried about my mom, and my uncle, an aging shut-in with diabetes, which makes him more vulnerable to it. I worry about the older people at my church. They’re all the ones who are at much greater risk of dying from this thing. They’re the main reasons we all have to take this much more seriously than our president does.

Trump ought to shut his gob and let the scientists and competent public health authorities work. He’s making this worse. It is our curse to be led by such a fool in this crisis. My great fear about Trump was that he would face a war, and wouldn’t know how to handle it. I never imagined that his leadership would be tested by a global pandemic. Who could have guessed that as the crisis broke on our shores, the President of the United States would call in a Fox primetime show and start riffing on how scientists are saying one thing, but his “hunch” tells him that it’s not as bad as they say? Did you watch the HBO series Chernobyl? If it gets bad enough, this crisis could be Trump’s Chernobyl.  Look:

“If [modeled case projection] analysis is correct, that could mean that Washington is in the position that Wuhan was in January, after the virus was detected but had already been spreading in the community.“ https://t.co/rJfD6chhIL

— Jeremy WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) March 5, 2020

I urge you to read this incredible Wall Street Journal story about the courage and dedication of Chinese doctors, on the front line of this thing. What they have been going through, and are still going through, we are also going to have to deal with in some capacity. We hope and pray it won’t be as bad as it has been in China, but we just do not yet know what’s coming. This is the kind of heroism that will be expected of doctors, nurses, and health workers in this country and around the world now. Excerpts:

Around the world, doctors are being stretched to the limit. Short on supplies and sleep, they’re being asked to stop a global pandemic that no one fully understands. Adding to that strain, they’re risking their own health while they diagnose cases and attend to sick patients—along with the health of their spouses, children and other close family members.

With the virus now growing more quickly outside China than inside, it’s a problem other countries will increasingly face.

In China, more than 3,000 doctors have been infected, according to official data, and at least 22 have died. Some medical professionals believe the numbers are even higher, adding uncertainty for doctors elsewhere confronting the virus. Untold numbers of family members have fallen ill.

Chinese doctors are working shifts of 10 hours or more. Many stay in the same hazmat suits the entire time, without food, water or bathroom breaks. Disrobing to eat or go to the bathroom could risk exposure. Medical workers are requesting psychological help to try to deal with the stress.

The story of Dr. Zhang Xiaochun is one of the most stirring accounts of grace under pressure that I’ve read in ages. More:

One night, Dr. Zhang returned to her hotel carrying half a dozen lunch boxes for her colleagues. She says her back felt like it would split in two, and she had developed a persistent cough.

A hotel security guard checked Dr. Zhang’s temperature and asked her to log what time she entered the building. She had completely lost track of time.

“I’m fine,” she said, as the guard raised a thermometer to her forehead. It was normal.

“If we fail, what happens to you all?” she said, walking away.

Unless he manages to get control of himself, the American president’s contemptible, irresponsible behavior in this unfolding crisis will be held against him in November — and by history. If this pandemic hits us hard enough, even diehard religious conservatives like me who aren’t Trump fans, but who deeply fear what a Democratic president will mean for the judiciary, abortion and religious liberty, will find it impossible to support an administration led by such a spectacularly incompetent man. Sooner or later, even the most ardent supporters of the president will learn that coronavirus is a far greater threat, politically and otherwise, than Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Trump actually behaves like a deranged person — he went on national TV tonight and said that the global pandemic that has forced China to shut its economy down, and has caused Italy to shutter all schools, universities, and sports matches, is not such a big deal, and that Americans shouldn’t really worry about it — what do you call it then?

UPDATE: Piers Morgan writes:

‘Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,’ Trump tweeted last week, the day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the spread of the virus was inevitable.

The CDC’s prediction sent the media into overdrive, which prompted Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, to say it was overreacting about coronavirus because ‘they think this is going to be what brings down the president’.

But ironically, it will be UNDER-reaction to coronavirus by the Trump administration that could bring down the president.

There’s a very fine line between cool, calm confidence in such situations and complacency – and right now, I fear President Trump is falling into a trap of his own making by underestimating the scale of what is going to come very soon.

More:

He’s consistently playing down the danger, boasting about how well he’s dealing with it, and even quibbling with his top medical experts over how long it will take to get a coronavirus vaccine – even as all the scientific evidence suggests America’s about to be engulfed with infections.

For now, U.S. authorities are playing a ‘wait-and-see’ game with the virus and avoiding taking any of the draconian action taken by the Chinese which included complete lockdowns of whole cities like Wuhan.

But that draconian action seems to have worked: China, and we shouldn’t necessarily take their word for this given how misleading they’ve been in the past about such viruses, is now saying that rates of infection in the country are falling.

If so, what is America waiting for?

And:

The consequences of inaction, and it’s hard not to suspect this is down to Trump not wanting to panic his beloved financial markets into utter meltdown, might end up being far more costly than the consequences of tough action.

If tens of thousands of Americans start dying from coronavirus, as seems more likely than not, and the economy continues to tank, then Trump will be blamed for not taking it seriously enough and that could prove to be a far greater threat to his chances of re-election than anything the Democrats, and their likely nominee Joe ‘Lazarus’ Biden, can throw at him over the next eight months.

Read it all. 

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Big Abortion’s Ugly Threat

“I get that you’re not a fan of Trump, but why are you not a Democrat, Dad?” one of my kids just asked me in the car.

“Three main reasons,” I said. “One, they’re fanatically pro-abortion. Second, they don’t have a lot of respect for religious liberty. Third, they have an idea of justice that’s based on race and gender, instead of individual fairness.”

I explained all three points in greater detail. Late last month, Senate Democrats killed a bill that would have required medical personnel to treat babies born alive in the process of a botched abortion. As Tim Carney pointed out, the media, carrying water as they always do, failed to describe the bill accurately. And, of course, nearly all the Senate Dems voted against it. Abortion is an issue on which it is impossible to get Democrats to speak honestly.

Got home, then saw the news about what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said today:

Speaking in front of the Supreme Court at a pro-abortion demonstration on the day of oral arguments in the Louisiana abortion case, Schumer threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

“I want to tell you, Neil Gorusch, and you, Brett Kavanaugh, you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said. “You won’t know what hit you, if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Here’s a link to the CBS Evening News report about the issue, which includes both Schumer’s threat and the rebuke the comments brought from Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts said in a statement:

You will recall that the last time the Chief Justice said anything like this was when he rightly rebuked President Trump in 2018 for shooting his mouth off about the politicization of the judiciary.

This is how fanatical the Democrats are about abortion: their chief Senate leader will stand on the steps of the Supreme Court and threaten justices that he believes might not vote his way. And he won’t back down, either:

The very liberal Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe also rebuked Schumer:

These remarks by @SenSchumer were inexcusable. Chief Justice Roberts was right to call him on his comments. I hope the Senator, whom I’ve long admired and consider a friend, apologizes and takes back his implicit threat. It’s beneath him and his office. https://t.co/xbNnUeznRR

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 4, 2020

If a party is willing to allow accidentally-born human beings die on the operating table rather than restrict abortion in any way, then threatening two Supreme Court justices because they might not vote on abortion in a Democratic-approved way is nothing.

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Cops: Man Flashes Child In All-Gender Restroom

News from the front lines of social justice:

An 18-year-old student at Rhinelander High School, Austin Sauer, was arrested on Thursday for child enticement, fourth degree sexual assault and exposing genitals to a child, according to the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office.

Captain Terri Hook said the alleged incident occurred in the gender-neutral bathroom of the school, which has now been closed by the Rhinelander High School. Cpt. Terri Hook said the school did not send a message to parents as it was an isolated incident and the student was removed from the school.

Sauer has not yet been charged, and the OCSO says the investigation is still ongoing.

The school did not tell parents that this happened?! Because, no doubt, they didn’t want parents to question the righteousness of an all-gender toilet used by children in a school.

The school has now closed the gender-neutral bathroom. Imagine that.

One day, we are going to look back on this era as a time when our society lost its collective mind. First, though, it is going to take a girl being sexually assaulted by a male in one of these school bathrooms, and for the girl and her parents to sue the everliving hell out of the school district, before society sobers up.

I would just like to remind readers which side the likely Democratic nominee for president is on — and it ain’t the side of parents and vulnerable children:

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

Do you think the media are going to ask Biden or Sanders any critical questions ever about transgender rights? Don’t be silly!

UPDATE: A reader points to a terrific Tucker Carlson commentary on something that just happened in South Dakota. Excerpts:

In early February, a group of lawmakers in South Dakota tried to pass a bill to ban radical medical experimentation on young children. Under heavy pressure from business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican-dominated legislature voted it down.

Why would they do such a thing? Well, as you’ve probably guessed by now, it’s because conducting radical experiments on children is popular now. These experiments are justified in the name of transgenderism.

The failed South Dakota bill would have barred doctors from performing sex reassignment surgery on children under 16. Those are radical, often irreversible procedures that can include double mastectomies, sterilization and castration. The bill would also have barred doctors from prescribing hormones to aid in the transition process, again, only for those under 16.

It used to be that everyone agreed with this. It was common sense. Adults are free to do what they want. But if you’re fifteen, or nine, or ten, you’re too young to consent to sex – so you’re also too young to have your sex organs cut off.

More:

South Dakota lawmakers had the chance to say “no,” and spare their children from this insanity. But they declined.

Why? Well, the State Chamber of Commerce attacked the bill. They said it threatened the state’s “economic development,” and apparently, Republicans in South Dakota agreed. And it really was Republicans.

The South Dakota House has 59 Republicans and 11 Democrats. The Senate is 30 Republicans to 5 Democrats. And a bill to protect children from experimentation still failed. Remember that.

Republicans will do almost anything to protect businesses’ access to cheap labor. But your children? They’re fine sacrificing them.

Preach it, Tucker, preach it!

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Christianity’s Kodak Moment

A fascinating e-mail from a young pastor in Europe. He asked me to remove a couple of details to protect his privacy:

I have been reading your blog since last Autumn, having read The Benedict Option. I enjoyed it, and your blog has since then encouraged me to also preach against all kinds of awakening totalitarianism in my sermons. There is a lot I’d like to write to you about, but today I wanted to share with you something that is not related to politics or faith in any way, but that still does make me feel somewhat hopeful.

The thing is, as a young male I have felt like a dinosaur not only due to my Christian values and pro-life/classic sexual morals but also due to my love towards many things analog: I love taking photographs on film and I even make home movies on super-8 small-gauge film — which we then watch as a family projected with an authentic film projector.

Eight years ago I was really getting into all this. And I felt devastated: all news regarding film photography and cinematography seemed to be filled with stories of it all ending: Kodak, Chapter 11; Fujifilm stopping the production of movie film; yet another film laboratory closing. I really felt like all the beautiful things were disappearing: Christianity in the West, and even film photography. I had found something and now I’d have to see it disappear, way too early. Every (large) batch of film I bought I bought with dread: this might be the last one.

Then something happened. While I was busy with my family and my work, something changed. In the past couple months I have heard really positive news. And I mean something like a total reversal of everything I saw in the past eight years. Not only is Kodak expanding because they have trouble fulfilling all orders, it seems that even the most die-hard digital photographers are finally getting over the attitude of “film is dead, and if it isn’t, it should already die” — apparently even dpreview, which has been very anti-film ,has now a subsection for film photography on their forums. Young people (male and female!) have discovered film and are buying cameras, film, and film developing chemicals.

Couple of links here:

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/large-format-film-kodak-2020-no-time-to-die-tenet-wonder-woman-1984-1202213355/

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/eastman-kodak-strong-increasing-demand-for-movie-film.172406/

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/my-local-camera-shop-business-booming-anyone-else.168718/page-8#post-2256353

Anyway, I’m not saying this is going to be analogous with how things are turning out with Christian values and Faith in the West. What I’m saying, however, is that future is shrouded. What might seem inevitable might still not be inevitable.

Also, it might be that we have to see the “Chapter 11” [bankruptcy] of our churches before things get better, the total loss of power and status — like what happened to film. After all, it was the only way photos and movies were made for over a century, its position was really strong … but then came the total humiliation, loss of status and supposed death through the victory of digital photography. And then … unexpected resurrection?

One young Christian from the Czech Republic I met some years ago told me that in his country most of the old people are very reserved and against Christianity due to the Communist propaganda. However, young Czechs have never heard of Christianity. They are curious. They are open to it in ways that most of the young adults in my country would never be — they are too well “vaccinated” against it.

It’ll be interesting to see how things turn out and on what time scale. There will be need to build “home monasteries”. But I’m hopeful. God sometimes works in mysterious ways. And if it’s already time for parousia – Maranatha!

UNITED KINGDOM – JULY 15: Kodak advertisement, 1956. (Photo by Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL/Getty Images)

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The Gift Of Classical Christian Education

Surprised and delighted to see this essay extolling classical education appearing in the Jesuit magazine America. Why surprised? Because classical education has been associated with conservative Christians, especially conservative Protestants. Matthew D. Walz doesn’t mention that — wisely — but makes a case that the Catholic Church ought to be at the forefront of the classical education revival, instead of bringing up the rear. Excerpts:

During each of the past two summers, I have conducted a daylong seminar with administrators and teachers of a Catholic parish school who are adopting a classical curriculum and culture. And last summer I helped run a weeklong seminar with teachers from various schools in a Catholic diocese whose bishop is aiming to infuse his schools with a more classical character. Courage and joy permeated these seminars—courage to “think outside the box,” to cut against the grain of the ruling conventions regarding elementary and high school education; and joy that arises spontaneously when teachers realize they are building themselves up in a manner that enables them to nourish their beloved students with wholesome food for mind and heart. As for myself? Simply put, I’ve been humbled and inspired by their courage and joy.

A recurring question I have asked myself, especially right after a lively discussion during one of these seminars, is: Why not classical education? It is a question that I, as a Catholic, address in my imagination primarily to bishops and those in the church who determine curricula and influence the culture of Catholic schools—although I consider it a question that anyone dissatisfied with the current state of elementary and high school education might ask.

There is a growing conviction among many educators that implementing a classical educational model, little by little and step by step, is the way to go. It has found a home in a host of private, religiously affiliated schools across the country, and it has spread more expansively by means of public charter schools, especially in states like Arizona and Texas whose state legislatures are friendly to such endeavors. What perplexes me, though, is not why Catholic diocesan schools are at the back of the line in the classical education movement, but why they aren’t at its very head.

Indeed, given the depressing statistics about the decline of Catholic education in our country, this is a puzzle. After all, the church’s own educational heritage is at stake.

More:

While finding the move to a classical model challenging, these same administrators and teachers are happily surprised by how reinvigorating it is. Indeed, classical education has always been reinvigorating for teachers and students alike. The reason is simple: A classical education aims to be a human education, period—as full a human education as one can manage. In other words, it engages students and teachers in every dimension of their existence, at every level of their humanity—spiritual, intellectual, moral, psychological, emotional and physical.

Or, to make the same point differently, a classical education puts students and teachers in touch with the whole of reality in its truth, goodness and beauty. Thus it is integrative; it unites students and teachers in their shared humanness, enabling them to engage the wholeness of human experience and, therefore, to become more whole themselves. It also reveals that what is true is good and beautiful, and that what is good is beautiful and true.

More:

Simply put, conventional education is flat; it has become two-dimensional. Conventional education attempts, on the one hand, to transfer (perhaps “download”?) information to students for the sake of passing tests and, on the other, to produce skills in students for the sake of getting a job. Such activities are not humane—nor, it turns out, even very human.

What is information, after all? What are skills? Information is mere truth, naked truth—which usually means the ugly truth. Along similar lines, skills are mere arts, naked arts—which usually means tedious arts. Skills are arts bereft of virtue because they have been separated from the discipline of contemplation.

By contrast, classical education enables students and teachers to garner information and skills within their proper and elevating contexts. Students and teachers alike, as human beings, are called to seek beauty-clothed truth that calls them to goodness and to develop virtue-infused arts that grow out of contemplation.

Read the whole thing. It’s great, and it’s inspiring, not only for Catholic readers.

As regular readers know, my kids attend Sequitur Classical Academy in Baton Rouge. It’s a non-denominational classical Christian school. The student body is heavily Protestant, but there are Orthodox kids there (mine), and Catholic kids there too. I’ve heard Catholic parents say that their kids are getting a more authentically Catholic education there than at the city’s Catholic schools. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that I’m thrilled by how much my kids are learning. Tonight I was reading to my two who are still at Sequitur (the oldest is now in college) from Tom Holland’s great new book Dominion, a history of how Christianity made the Western world. We are early in the book, in the long chapter where Holland discusses ancient Greece. He’s explaining the world into which Jesus Christ was born. I stopped from time to time to make sure the kids understood some philosophical concept, and I discovered that they already knew this stuff. They’re 16 and 13! I didn’t encounter this material until college, but they already know it, because they attend Sequitur.

Honestly, I don’t know why parents aren’t falling all over themselves to give their kids this kind of education. At Sequitur, there are no sports teams, no cheerleaders, no school band, and no proms. But there is Aristotle, there is Homer, there is Cicero, and the Church Fathers. I was watching my 13-year-old daughter the other night reading a book about the early Church. They’re talking about Polycarp, and Irenaeus of Lyons, and Ignatius of Antioch. I didn’t even know who these men were until at least my thirties. My daughter is in eighth grade.

If you live in the Baton Rouge area, there’s one more day left this spring where prospective families can come check the school out, to see if they want to enroll their kids this fall. I don’t normally do advocacy like this, but I really, really believe in classical Christian education, and want to spread the good word. Here’s a link to the website. For more information, e-mail admin — at — sequiturbr — dot — com

 

 

By the way, here’s a link to some cool YouTube videos talking about Sequitur’s mission. And here’s a video of the Grammar School (lower school) at Sequitur, starring my wife Julie, who is the head of the Grammar School:

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‘The Plague’ Book Club.1

Hello to readers who accepted my invitation to read the 1947 Albert Camus novel The Plague together, and discuss it. I expect to cover the book in four or five posts over the next week to 10 days. I will start each post by saying how far into the book the discussion that follows in that particular post will go, so people looking to avoid spoilers can do so.

I am using the Stuart Gilbert translation, which seems to be the English standard.

The approach I’m taking is not a formal one. I am not a literary critic. I’m interested in reading Camus’s story in light of the coronavirus pandemic that is just taking hold around the world. The Plague is a fictional account of an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Oran, a port city in Algeria, in the 1940s. I’m curious to see how the various characters react in the face of a deadly disease that sweeps their city. What lessons does this novel hold for us today, in our situation?

This post is going to cover Part One of the book, which entails chapters one through eight.

Part One sets the stage for the drama. Camus describes the city of Oran as thoroughly unremarkable, a fairly dull place where people spend their days going about their business. Excerpt:

I’ve never read the novel, so I’m experiencing it like the rest of you, for the first time. This passage seems important to me, somehow. The plainness of Oran, and the mediocrity of its people and its way of life, signals to us that the people are not prepared for the immense moral drama that is about to overtake the city. Then again, who ever is? Camus says that they are “completely modern” in that they don’t ever think about life beyond the everyday.

That is about to change. The main character in the novel, Dr. Bernard Rieux, is a 35-year-old physician who, when we meet him, is sending his sick (though not with plague) wife off to a sanitarium for rest. M. Michel, the concierge of their apartment building has set himself the task of finding out who is leaving dead rats in the building. The old man is certain that some kids are pranking him. As Dr. Rieux makes his daily rounds, we meet other characters: Raymond Rambert, a journalist in from Paris to investigate conditions among the Arabs; Jean Tarrou, an outsider who arrived in the city for unclear reasons; Father Paneloux, a Jesuit; Joseph Grand, a good-natured city clerk who is tall, thin, missing many of his teeth, and who lives an austere life of disappointment; Cottard, Grand’s mysterious neighbor, who, when we meet him, has just tried and failed to kill himself.

As dead rats begin to show up all over Oran, M. Michel comes down with an agonizing disease, and dies. Within 10 days, rats are dying by the thousands, and people are starting to fall too. But the town fathers calm the populace:

This is false confidence. Later, an older, more experienced doctor quietly says to Dr. Rieux that he believes they are looking at the plague. Dr. Rieux reflexively resists this terrifying diagnosis. Camus says that this is normal. Everybody knows that war and plague are recurring facts of life, but everybody is surprised when they manifest. Camus:

This is the one paragraph of Part One that really jumped out at me. This is us, is it not? A friend texted me the other night to say that he has a feeling that nobody in America understands what’s about to hit us:

When you have lived for several generations in a powerful and wealthy country untouched by deep tragedy and awash in the deep-seated belief that you are both the Chosen Land and Master of Nature, the belief that everything is manageable becomes the biggest article of faith. And the biggest blind spot.

Today I went to pick the kids up from school, and on the way, heard that the Fed made a big interest-rate cut. As I write, the stock market is falling. It’s just a fact of life: interest rate cuts don’t matter when the problem is that there are no things to buy, because factories are idle, shipping is down, stores are closed, and nobody has money to spend.

I think of myself on the morning of 9/11, having just watched the south tower fall to the ground, wandering back towards my apartment in Brooklyn literally in shock (says my wife, who saw me when, dazed, I walked up to our door). I could not believe that such a thing could happen to us. We are the masters of our fate. We control everything. Right?

China is the richest, most powerful police state in the world, and it has been humbled by this disease. We still don’t know what the ultimate economic impact is going to be for that country alone. And what happens in China affects the entire world. If the disease had been fully contained in China, it would still be a blow to us. But now we’re going to go through some version of what China has been suffering all year. How should we have given a thought to anything like coronavirus?

Camus goes on:

Obviously coronavirus is not remotely as gruesome as the bubonic plague, but the point Camus makes here is relevant. “The plague” is something so theatrical and lurid in our imaginations that we can’t reconcile it with the the everydayness of our lives, “briskly refuting cruelty and pain.” My mom is 75 years old, and has COPD; I’ve been advising her to stock up (which she has done), and to do as much staying at home away from others as possible right now. She’s trying to do this, but it’s hard to react to a threat that is, for now, abstract. She said to me today that her high school class alumni group meets once a month for lunch, and she’s thinking that she ought to go on Thursday because one of the group is not doing well health-wise, with a long-term illness, and she (my mom) feels like she owes it to that friend to make the effort. I told my mom that none of those older folks should really take unnecessary risks of exposure right now, especially not the chronically ill friend. “I guess you’re right,” she said. I totally get where she’s coming from. The idea of a massive public health crisis, including quarantine situations, is something out of the movies. By the time we have our first confirmed coronavirus cases here in Louisiana, it will already have been spreading for a couple of weeks, most likely.

After I got the latest from Wyoming Doc today, about what he’s seeing — his office flooded with calls from people who have coronavirus symptoms, but no way to test them all, and his staff reduced because some have the same symptoms, and need to be at home — I texted my mom and told her that we are likely to see the same kind of thing here in the next couple of weeks. Reading Part One of The Plague really brings home how common it is to fail to imagine what an epidemic can do to us, and how that failure of imagination, plus bureaucratic denial, puts us all at more risk.

One last Camus quote about this. Here, Dr. Rieux has just been talking to Joseph Grand, who is such an ordinary person, kind of a sweet sad sack. Rieux concludes:

If you’re like me, you watched the video and read the stories about China in the grips of coronavirus, and it has all seemed so … foreign. It’s a strange quirk of human nature, at least in modern times: this kind of thing just doesn’t happen to people like us.

Except now it is.

Part One ends with the death toll mounting, and the city health authorities, and its government, finally agreeing that the truth can no longer be denied. The plague is in Oran. The city must be sealed off.

Comments are open. Please keep your comments restricted to Part One only. If you have not read The Plague, please do not comment, or if you feel that you must, keep your comments short. I reserve the right not to publish comments that might get the book discussion off track. This is not a thread for you to make general comments about coronavirus or the government’s response to it. This is a book club discussion.

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