But more of this, faster:

BREAKING: There is an anti-malaria drug called Hydroxychloroquine that looks to be highly effective at treating Coronavirus.

Initial tests show that on a dose of 600mg, 90% of infected COVID-19 patients tested negative in just 6 days. pic.twitter.com/XXDamhYmvn

— Michael Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) March 18, 2020

It may turn out all for naught. But on the other hand, a very timely advance like that – almost deus ex machina, if not a maguffin – would be a wonderful break for the economy, wouldn’t it?

On the slower and steadier front – US Health and Human Services will waive HIPAA regulations for “Telecare” consultations, even for HIPAA infractions committed “In good faith“:

Secretary Azar:

“Thanks to the Public Health Emergency I declared in January, more older Americans will be able to access healthcare they need from their home, without worrying about putting themselves or others at risk during the COVID-19 outbreak. Providers will be allowed to use everyday technologies to talk to telehealth patients, more telehealth services will be covered for millions more Medicare beneficiaries, and providers will be allowed to offer these telehealth benefits to Medicare beneficiaries at a lower cost than traditional services. From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, President Trump has been knocking out every bureaucratic obstacle possible that stands in the way of a rapid and effective response. We are grateful to the hard work of those across HHS who put together these actions, and we’re grateful to American healthcare providers for working to take advantage of these options and continue their heroic work serving patients during the outbreak.”

What a week: liberals buying guns, people appreciating going to work, kids wanting to be back at school?

I’ve been saying for years – after a disaster, everyone becomes a conservative. Who knows?

First prediction: there will be a Coronavirus vaccine.

It may arrive sooner, it may arrive later. Probably somewhere in between. I have no idea.

But it’ll come rom a country with a relatively free market for healthcare. The US? Norway? Germany? I don’t know – but it’ll be someplace that hasn’t nationalized healthcare.

Feel free to mark my words on this.

Beyond that ?

Last week on Twitter, Scott “Dilbert” Adams wrote:

In the next two weeks we will witness a breathtaking degree of human ingenuity. It’s starting to bubble up now. The most capable among us are now fully engaged. That virus doesn’t know what’s coming for it. #WuhanVirus

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 13, 2020

The shortage of ventilators is the thing that’s terrifying people. The stories from Italy about doctors choosing who lives and who dies are pretty mortifying, especially if you have older relatives and family with lung conditions.

So people are innovating:

The doctor stresses this is a last ditch measure – to be used in cases where doctors are making life or death choices among 2-4 people at a time.

But it’s a start.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, spring break regulars are crowding beaches, bars, and other vacation hotspots along the gulf coast.

Many of them, being 20 somethings and ergo knowing everything, I have heard that people in their 20s always recover, and rarely get sick, from Covid19.

So they cavort about the gulf coast and the south Atlantic, doing what 20 somethings (who can afford to travel to the gulf coast for spring break, which for some reason was never something I or anyone I knew could actually do, and when the hell did this actually become a thing?) on vacation tend to do; hang out in bars, hang out in crowds, and jam together like a colony of penguins.

I saw the footage from Florida, South Padre Island, and New Orleans showing throngs of drunken, loudmouthed, teeming hordes of addlepated bobbleheads. The footage didn’t focus on the bartenders, hotel workers, Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts and retail and hospitality workers in the area, of course. But they will be catching the virus from the throngs of idiots they serve.

And, inevitably, passing it along to their friends, significant others, similes, people in stores – You know, the usual epidemic thing.

And inevitably, the virus will get past to the other great population along the gulf coast; retirees. People in their 60s through 90s. The people who are far and away the most susceptible to the ravages of Covid 19. 

Sorry to say, I am afraid there’s a solid chance of absolute carnage along the gulf coast. I hope I’m wrong.

But it appears Florida’s governor is more than a little concerned, himself.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On Friday, when Minnesota had 14 cases of the virus, Governor Walz announced schools would remain open because health care workers needed daycare so they could go to work and fight the virus.

 On Sunday, when Minnesota had 35 cases of the virus, Governor Walz closed the schools except for children of health care workers who need daycare so they can go to work to fight the virus.  Everybody else’s kids, stay home. But not to halt the spread of the virus – no, it’s to give administrators time to figure out how to teach kids who aren’t in school. 

Basically, this is another “in service” week, when teachers and administrators try to recreate the wheel that Phoenix University already invented, what every home-schooled parent already uses: distance learning.

Now.  In the middle of the pandemic.  Now, you start thinking about the possibility of doing something different.  Now, after all those years of criticizing and belittling home-schoolers as ignorant and fearful racists, afraid their kids will catch cooties from The Other; now, you’re adopting their methods without admitting they were right all along.

Joe Doakes

Public institutions, like education, or if nothing even more subject to “not invented here” syndrome than the private sector.

But since we are talking about revising “progressive” assumptions about the world?

Perhaps jamming everyone into “high density housing” isn’t the best strategy for (and yes, progressivism is in the midst of corrupting this term as well) “Resiliency”..

I’m trying to imagine people in long rows of apartment buildings, “socially isolated” from their neighbors but unable to escape them, either.

Some people say “the Coronavirus is a very real thing, and it’s going to kill a lot of people, and we’re past the point of no return on a whole lot of misery already [more later today], and we really need to clamp down on social interaction for a while to try to get it under control and save a whoooole lot of lives”.

Others say “The media and left (pardon the redundancy) are using this as one of the crises that Rahm Emanuel told them never to waste, to try to undercut the Administration, draw attention away from the dumpster fire that is their endorsement process, and jam down funding and civil rights restrictions they favor”.

Still others: “Our bureaucracy – which was started neither by Trump nor Obama – has completely crapped the bed on things like developing and distributing tests. And our “elite” media, which seems to be increasingly a PR firm for the establishment, hasn’t done jack to hold them, or the creeping socialism that has presided over this catastrophe, accountable – which is supposedly their mandate”.

Which is correct?

Why choose? They’re all correct.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed (late last week):

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control recommended elderly patients stock up on medicine in case the virus causes a supply chain disruption.

I called my pharmacy to stock up. The insurance company won’t let me, it’s too early, I still have pills left.

Yes, but I’m trying to get ahead of the supply chain disruption. I need a refill now. Plus stay on my existing refill schedule. This 30 days supply is just to put in the back pocket for emergencies

The doctor is reluctant to write the prescription, since I already have one and an additional 30 days supply now does nothing to solve the supply chain problem, it’s simply empties the warehouse and moves the problem forward in time.

The experts recommend it, she doesn’t want to write it, he doesn’t want to pay for it, and they don’t want to fill it.  Gee, I can’t imagine why the public is confused about who to believe, and in a panic over what to do about it.

Looks like I’m going online. How do you spell metformin in Mexican?

Joe Doakes

While some of the administration’s moves on regulation over this past few days have, perhaps helped this, the bureaucracy – private and especially public – has not covered itself in glory so far during this crisis.