Sort Of A Good News / Bad News Situation

As I discussed on my show on Saturday, I see potential good and potential immense bad coming from the Covid19 epidemic. It’s almost like one of those cartoon characters, with an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other, trying to convince the character of their next action.

Good Angel

On the one hand:

The Bad Angel

  • Progressive politicians are seeing an opportunity to exercise the Emanuel Commandment (“Never Waste a Crisis”), and they’re running with it
  • For a brief moment, it seemed like identity politics might fall ill with coronavirus.  But not so much.  

Let’s all give the good angel a boost, shall we? 

58 thoughts on “Sort Of A Good News / Bad News Situation

  1. Articles like this in the Atlantic give me hope.
    thehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/consider-possibility-trump-right-china/609493/

  2. So we are all sheltered in place to keep the COVID-19 Virus infection from overwhelming our ICUs and healthcare system. Some of the most vocal proponents of this are also the same people who advocate open borders and free healthcare for illegal aliens. Wouldn’t free healthcare (and ventilators) for the world overwhelm our system just as much (and faster), if not more? I’m hoping some of the do-gooders might develop some critical thinking skills as this thing runs its course.

  3. Yup! Arnzen Arms in EP was pretty crowded on Saturday when I went to Menards. In fact, has been busy all week, according to a friend of mine that works at Menards. He said a couple of days, he saw lots of people waiting outside to get in, because there were too many people in the store. I wonder if the management at Dick’s Sporting Goods are regretting their stupid decision to stop selling guns and ammo? Of course, I think think it’s stupid to own guns. They are scary!

  4. I don’t know Mitch, I just can’t see people actually listening to the sjw’s anymore, not after what we will have been through. Oh they will try, but will it work? Not as much as it used to.

    And the governor out here in Cali has talked bout this “opportunity” to restructure gummint, but as I have mentioned before look at all the lefty crap that has proven unhealthy. I think a bunch of progressive politicians stepping up and say “we can make things better” is going to fall on deaf ears.

  5. Predictably, I saw a headline on an op-ed stating that Trump was using the pandemic to drive his own agenda, under the “never let a crisis go to waste” philosophy.

  6. There is clearly a lack of open and honest debate around the compromises that society is making: delaying the pandemic spread and potentially saving lives of elderly and sick citizens versus a disruption to life, society and economy never seen in times of peace.

    The argument of “whatever it takes” and life being “invaluable” are clearly hypocritical: society and democratic governments have decided since the beginning of history to sacrifice health and life expectancy to the benefits of other things such as personal freedom, technological advancement, leisure and other. Otherwise we would dedicate 10x more budget to healthcare and medical research than we do today.

  7. Until there is widespread testing and tracing with rapid and accurate results, there can be no recovery.

    This system needs to be planned now for the day restrictions are lifted. Yet we hear almost nothing about it from our political leaders. What’s the plan?

  8. The plan is to keep restrictions in place until Early Voting begins in November.

    From now until November, virus death numbers will be manipulated. “Estimated” and “Presumptive” deaths will be added to actual confirmed cases, to maintain the panic.

    Every state, county and city will issue increasingly restrictive and contradictory commands. Businesses, unable to navigate the maze of ever-shifting requirements, will fold. Millions more will go on unemployment. Bankruptcies and foreclosures will skyrocket. News media will blame all of it on Trump.

    Even as voting occurs, the news media will subtly electioneer for Democrats by speculating whether the voters will punish President Trump for the blood on his hands and the Worst Economy since the Fall of Rome.

    The day the election recounts end, Democrat politicians will announce we’ve flattened the curve as much as possible and from now on, we’ll allow confirmed case numbers to rise in order to achieve herd immunity. Some people will die, yes, but we can’t afford to bankrupt society by spending billions on end-of-life care for those who are going to die anyway. The media will praise their Brave and Courageous Leadership.

    You read it here first.

  9. When Biden spoke on Sunday of vote-by-mail, he’s thinking a few months ahead.

    Trump’s still trying to catch up with the thinking from January.

  10. Nicolas Taleb’s follow-up book to _The Black Swan_ is _Anti-Fragile_. Anti-fragile things, tangible and intangible, grow stronger when stressed.
    Suppose that China’s much greater control over the actions of its individual citizens makes it more successful than the US at containing the covid-19 virus. The same lack of central control over individual citizens may make the US bounce back faster than China, even with less success at combating the virus itself. We don’t set the rules for resiliency, we don’t even know what they are, but we will know when we have failed to be resilient. So far we are holding up pretty good.

  11. Joe, the people with the most immediate control over your local economy amid covid-19 restrictions are governors and mayors, not Trump.
    In Kona they had 4 (four) tourist arrivals yesterday. There are about 11,000 available hotel rooms on the Big Island. If travel restrictions are not eased by November, it will indeed be the worst economy since the Fall of Rome.

  12. The Little Weasel is back to bad troll and moreover electioneering for Biden who had this to say this weekend on the Spanish flu of 1917- er, 16:
    : “We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and … correct the public health.”

    Yeah, thinking ahead.

  13. MP – the restrictions can’t be eased, because the numbers are so bad.

    Well, they’re not. But they should be. So they will be, same as campus rape and homelessness and hunger in America: Democrats and the media will simply make up stuff, proclaim it as fact and blame it on Trump.

    When dealing with Liberals, the thing you’ve got to remember is Truth is not the same to you as it is to them. To you, Truth is objective, verifiable, documented fact. To them, Truth is whatever advances the revolution.

    We have always been at war with Eastasia.
    There are no American tanks in Baghdad.
    We have no new cases of COVID-19 in China.

    That’s how Emery can make contradictory posts without turning a hair, how the New York Times can contradict itself within a single issue, how Democrats can call Trump racist for imposing a travel ban which he should have imposed sooner.

  14. I’m saying the restrictions won’t go on, because they can’t go on. Each occupied hotel room on the Big Island generates about $300/day in visitor spending. Around 10,000 are occupied during normal times. That is $3,000,000 per day spent on an island with a population of 150k. The eruption of Kilauea in 2018 dropped occupancy rates down from the 90% rate to about 70%, and that was considered a major economic hit. Businesses closed and never reopened. People lost their jobs and homes.
    The current situation is worse by several orders of magnitude. If people are unable to work here, they will go elsewhere, probably to the US mainland. The chaos produced by an economic shutdown benefits neither Republicans nor Democrats. It is more likely to produce a Trump or a Sanders than a Jeb Bush or Joe Biden.

  15. I’ve been in touch with a carpenter, a builder and a painter all of whom have been forced to stop work not because they can’t keep socially distant on site, but because their supply chain has closed. Two of them had applied for loans. The carpenter told me that his bank finally acknowledged receipt of his application and that they were processing 20 per day. They’d had over 18,000 so far.

    His question to me was what was he going to do in the coming weeks when his money ran out? I suspect many who comment on these pages aren’t too worried about not being able to pay the grocery bill in a week or two in spite of governments best intentions. And I suspect it is this economic reality that will force the end of society’s acceptance of a lockdown.

  16. I’ve been in touch with a carpenter, a builder and a painter

    Jesus, Diotisalvi and Michelangelo, right? If you’re gonna be known as a degenerate liar, at least be known as a BIG degenerate liar, Lo_IQ_Em.

  17. Forget telling the future, Biden’s mental state has deteriorated so far that he cannot tell what happened in the past. It was just February when he criticized Trump for announcing the Chinese travel ban — now he says Trump waited too long to announce a Chinese travel ban.

  18. Great covid-19 timeline (from another source):
    Jan 14, WHO declared no evidence of human-to-human transmission of virus.
    – Jan 31, Trump bans travel from Wuhan, press cites “experts” claiming it is counterproductive.
    – Feb 1, Florence holds “Hug a Chinese Person Day”.
    – Feb 4, President Trump dedicates part of State of the Union Address to the Coronavirus issue
    – Feb 9, NYC holds Chinatown parade with assurances of no danger from the mayor
    – Feb 23, 1st evidence of community transfer within U.S.
    – Feb 24, Pelosi says to shop more: “‘Come to Chinatown … come join us”
    – Feb 25, Mardi Gras was held with few people sounding warnings
    – Feb 26, Pence takes over task force, daily briefings begin.
    – March 1, just 42 confirmed cases in U.S.
    – March 3, NYC mayor encourages New Yorkers to go to the movies.
    – March 5, NYC mayor rides the subway to assure people it is safe to do so.
    – March 11, WHO acknowledged a covid-19 pandemic.

  19. Nicely written MP

    emetic, facts in your face: refute with FACTS or shut the hell up

  20. Well, kinlaw, if you wanted to, you could put in dates on the timeline when Trump downplayed the lethality of the virus, but that doesn’t really help the Trump haters, because it would show that Trump was behind the curve no more than anyone else, and for the same reason: he was getting conflicting advice from public health people and political advisers.
    Political advisers are important, regardless of party. They are there to advise on the political reaction to public policy. In democracy you need political advisers. In authoritarian regimes, you don’t.

  21. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 04.06.20 : The Other McCain

  22. Great Covid-19 timeline (from another source):

    Trump, Jan. 22: The president tells CNBC that “we have it totally under control” and “it’s going to be just fine.”

    Trump, Jan. 24: Trump praises and gives thanks to China for its efforts to contain the coronavirus, and adds: “It will all work out well.”

    Trump, Jan. 30: Trump says at a rally in Michigan: “We think we have it very well under control.”

    Trump, Feb. 2: Trump goes on Sean Hannity’s show and claims: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” Trump extols our “tremendous relationship” with China, and adds: “We did shut it down, yes.”

    Trump, Feb. 10: Trump claims that “a lot of people” think the coronavirus “goes away in April
    with the heat,” adding that we only have “11 cases,” and that “we’re in great shape.”

    Trump, Feb. 26: Trump claims the media is conspiring with Democrats to hype the coronavirus to rattle the markets. Trump also says the coronavirus is “going very substantially down, not up.”

    Trump, Feb. 27: Trump hails his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, and while he does reveal a hint of uncertainty, he says: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.

    Trump, Feb. 28: Trump shouts at a rally in South Carolina that Democrats’ criticism of his response (which proved entirely accurate) is “their new hoax.”

    Trump, March 9: Trump dismissively compares the coronavirus with flu, claiming flu kills tens of thousands annually and that “life & the economy go on.”

    Trump, March 10: Trump again hails the “great job” he’s doing on the coronavirus, and declares: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

    Trump, March 13: Asked about the administration’s epic failure to ramp up testing, Trump declares: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

    Trump, March 17: After all that, Trump preposterously proclaims: “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

    Trump prioritized his political fortunes and re-election campaign over data given to him by medical experts and his own intelligence reports from January and February which warned about a likely pandemic.

    Trump’s excuse: “Who are you going to believe — me or those fake intelligence reports?”

  23. Re: SBA loans

    This is funny: The SBA loans are actually grants by the government as long as companies don’t lay off workers. But now that the Fed buys the loans/grants off the balance sheets of the banks, the government would have to pay the grants/ loans back to the Fed. Yet, at the end of the year, the federal reserve usually transfers its profits back to the U.S. Treasury (aka U.S. government) or it reduces its own balance sheet. So if the Fed does not choose to reduce its balance sheet at the end of the year and pays the profits to the Treasury, then the central bank (rather than the government) will effectively have paid grants to the tune of 350 billion dollars to U.S. businesses by inflating its balance sheet with no increase in public debt. I guess such things are possible if one has a global reserve currency.

    Hopefully this allows Wells Fargo to get their loans off the books and continue lending. As punishment for their fake account scandal, they were slapped with an asset cap, and they stopped making PPP loans after 24 hours because they claim to have hit the cap. Since most banks are only making loans to their existing customers, this left many businesses high and dry.

    The stupidest thing is these loans are supposed to be forgiven, so they’re mostly a grant, not a loan. But GOP orthodoxy means the funds need to be laundered through the private sector, hence the complete disaster of a rollout.

  24. See, Emery, that is where your TDS pops in and you can ignore anything else you write. You mention Trump in EVERY SINGLE ONE of your points. Most human beings do not think that way. In fact I predicted what you would do in my 9:08. You are obsessed. You are not thinking like a rational person. No person, not even Trump, exists for you to hate. This is not healthy for you.

  25. One thing you could do, Emery, is look at your adjectives. They represent a value judgment, an attempt to convey your emotions to the reader (who does not care about your emotions).
    My timeline was an attempt to convey information. Yours was an attempt to convey your emotional state.
    You think like a woman.

  26. Again, you are allowing your emotions to dictate your thoughts;
    Trump prioritized his political fortunes and re-election campaign over data given to him by medical experts and his own intelligence reports from January and February which warned about a likely pandemic.

    Some medical experts, not all, warned of pandemic — late because the CCP hid vital data. WHO declared on January Jan. 14 there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. And you have no idea what was in the intelligence reports Trump was given in January & February. You are making things up to fit your TDS template. You are also mind-reading Trump, which is yet another indicator of derangement.

  27. I am pretty sure that you lost a butt load of money in the market crashes in March. I can’t think of where else the anger and hatred you express for Trump would come from. And then you might have lost even more by shorting the market when the DJIA was down at 19k. And that on top of a massive sell off the day after election day, 2016 that resulted in you missing the biggest bull market of the 21st century.
    Look at me, Emery. I am as cool as a cucumber. My plans for retiring on July 1st are undisturbed. I am the solid rock in a sea of chaos. You come off as a hysterical looney.

  28. The Federal Reserve can keep the market up, but not the economy.

    Remember the stock market and economy are not the same. The market can go up in a poor economy. Ideally though you want the market to go up in a strong economy. Otherwise the market is basically on life support from the Fed.

    I’m just glad we have a president that knew it was a pandemic before he knew it was a hoax and shut down some travel from China while not realizing China’s numbers may not have been totally accurate and we had such bad democratic governors plus Obama.

    Trump’s failure to ramp up testing is the prime reason this virus has gotten a huge leg up on this country. The reason Trump keeps mentioning his decision to impose travel restrictions — is because he can’t list anything else he’s done.

  29. Emery,
    The first tests for the virus were giving false positives. The tests had to be fixed, otherwise, what purpose does it serve to test 100,000 people? And, was he getting the proper information from the former Obamatards that are still running the CDC? Further, even healthcare workers were telling people that they didn’t need to get tested if they were not exhibiting symptoms or if they were exhibiting symptoms and having trouble breathing. And,a. considering that the symptoms of the Wuhan virus infection are similar to those of both a cold and the flu, how many people just treated their illness as such and didn’t bother even calling their doctors and b. If you were in charge, would you want to reassure the public to prevent panic or do like your heroes in the lame stream media do and encourage fear and panic?
    I think I speak for all of us on SiTD when I say, Thank God you’re not in charge of anything that can affect the population. We have enough Democrap dumb asses already screwing things up.

  30. So, once again, let’s panic the population more than the media already has. Releasing that information, at the time, would have caused a full blown panic. In fact, Emery, you would have been one of them. You are proving to be just like the media, Emery. You will bend every item to be right, so that you can try prove Trump wrong. The problem? What you post doesn’t mean jack to me. Four more years!

  31. When a pilot executes a beautiful, perfect takeoff roll, and then later flies into a mountain, does objectivity really require time discussing the takeoff?

    Title of memo: “To The President”
    It’s unclear if Trump ever read the memo. My guess is that Trump, who notoriously doesn’t bother reading his memos, never even opened his briefing book that day.

  32. Emery is building the narrative backward. It is a classic error people make with black swan events; there is no narrative that includes the inevitability of an event, the event surprises everyone, and once it has happened, you construct a narrative to make the event appear to have been inevitable. Works for Pearl Harbor, the Great Depression, World War One, and pandemics.

  33. On Feb 23, Trump was sent memo warning 2 million Americans could die from Covid-19.

    3 days later, Trump said, “we’re going to be pretty soon at only 5 people, and we could be at just 1 or 2 people over the next short period of time.”

    Re: “Pearl Harbor — black swan analogies”

    This is not a sneak attack by the Japanese. It’s not even a sneak attack by this virus. To me, it’s been like watching a slow motion car crash.

  34. If the president would have said on 2/26: “I have been given information that a pandemic is approaching. Be prepared for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths in the next few months.”

    There would have been panic, economic disruption, and social unrest to levels that previously only Hollywood could have conceived. And everyone on the left would be blaming him for exactly the opposite of what Emery is blaming him here.

    You can’t win a battle of logic when your opponent is swimming (drowning?) in emotion.

  35. Navarro was considered a quack economist by the people with TDS. Until today, apparently.

  36. @ Bill C: Common sense then would have told you. Could we end up this way? Should we be preparing.

    We all knew by mid February (at least) that this was gonna be bad. It didn’t take a medical degree to see it coming. And it’s not rocket science in how to combat it. Why Trump did nothing is a question that needs answering.

  37. So, how many staff members wrote memos to Trump in January-February asserting that the coranavirus wasn’t a danger to the Health of Americans or the American economy?
    Show of hands, please?
    What, no one wants to go to Axios or the NY Times with that?

  38. Woolly wrote: “Navarro was considered a quack economist by the people with TDS. Until today, apparently.”

    It would be very funny, in an awful big piles of dead people way, if nobody listened to Navarro because Trump doesn’t listen to anyone who’s not fluffing him and everyone else had concluded Navarro is an unstable freak based on Navarro’s diligent efforts to be seen that way.

    When the foundation of your response argument twists the facts, it’s hard to believe the rest of of your comments about Trump’s ‘very big—very powerful response’

    U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html

  39. Emery,
    Like all of the sources of your talking points, both Axios and the WaPo are two hard left wing “media” sources that have literally invented stories against Trump. You give NO credence to you bullcrap memes by using them as your corroboration.

    Oh and I’m sure that you have irrefutable proof of your claim that “Trump who notoriously doesn’t bother reading memos”, by someone that is not a hater like you?

  40. You are becoming incomprehensible, Emery. No one listens to a crazy person.
    Say, how many “intelligence reports” from January & February said coronavirus was no big deal?
    What? The WaPo (which ran an ANTI-ENDROSEMENT hate article about Trum In October, 2016) didn’t want to write about those?
    You lack every capability required to analyze an issue and come to correct conclusions.

  41. … doesn’t it seem like all the Little Weasel’s comments (and the sources from which they are copied) are really just the overwrought complaints of teen-age girls with daddy issues? Emotional, illogical, contradictory, unhinged… man.

  42. This memo was dated Jan. 29, and after the memo, Trump said that no one could have predicted the devastating outcome–the outcome predicted in the memo.

    I’m going to use a negative space analysis. I submit that this memo was the cause of Trump’s public campaign against accepting the dangers of the virus for the following reasons.

    There is no way the contents of these two memo’s did not reach Trump’s ears. Trump is an authoritarian. Everything goes through him. He may not have have read it because there is strong reporting that he doesn’t read much of anything. Not reading also gives him an excuse to deny culpability. He often claims that he has’t read or seen this or that. It is much easier to deny what someone has heard than what someone has read because no documents were seen in his hands.

    What motivates Trump above all? Getting reelected because staying in power protects him from prosecution. The Mueller Report alone outlines several cases of obstruction of justice.

    Trump then truly understands the threat the virus poses. So he does what he does best and launches a two pronged attack.

    First, he claims its no big deal. He sells it as a liberal-media plot out to get him. He is, to some extent gambling that the virus will blow over. If it doesn’t, he can fall back on constructing a revised history about how he is the great virus fighter, which he is doing now. He is counting on his ability to keep his followers convinced the Trump is wining and protecting the nation. So far, most of them believe it. After all, Trump says that no one could have possibly seen this coming.

  43. This is the point where pure conjecture and cognitive error begins:
    —>There is no way the contents of these two memo’s did not reach Trump’s ears. Trump is an authoritarian.

  44. There is evidently a movement afoot, wherein people are traveling to their local hospitals, and reporting on the activity there. The consensus has been there are tumbleweeds blowing down the hallways. This anecdotal evidence is confirmed by the numbers of hospital workers that have been laid off.

    The degenerates are covering their story by reminding us that hey, sure they’re empty now, but that’s because we’ve cleared the decks for the “surge”. OK, I’m your Huckleberry. According to the Panic-Meisters, this is the week all hell will break loose…so far; crickets and tumbleweeds.

    Keep your eyes open, lads. The degenerates behind this panic have to come up with the goods, and they know it. When Armageddon fails to materialize, they’ll manufacture it; in fact, they already are manufacturing it. The CDC guidelines say (and I quote directly from the PDF), “It is important to emphasize that Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.” [Emphasis, mine]

    This is not how science works, friends. This is how Goebbels ran his shop.

  45. Put aside that this cam from Gateway Pundit, but the story is true. After they reported that the data was showing that hospitalizations were well below estimates, as are the death estimates, the site did remove the info.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/huge-covid-tracking-website-deletes-information-hospitalizations-icu-patients-tgp-reports-numbers-fall-bogus-model-predictions/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=daily

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