TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
U.S. Retaliates After Iran Picks a Fight
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loose lips liar-Joe Biden,
the Manchurian Virus Candidate
By Selwyn Duke
{ americanthinker.com } ~ If one didn’t know better, he could think that China unleashed the Wuhan virus upon the world purposely to get their man, loose lips liar-Joe Biden, elected president. Jumblin’ loose lips liar-Joe is their man, too... It’s not just that the disease will assuredly cause economic distress as people’s lives and commerce are disrupted; it’s not just that no matter what President Trump does, the EneMedia will portray his response to the disease as lacking. Never mind that Barack scumbag/liar-Obama apparently spread disease throughout our nation by shipping sick illegal-alien minors throughout the country. Enterovirus D68, anyone? It’s also that the Wuhan virus has now become a handy excuse to limit debates and Jumblin loose lips liar-Joe’s personal appearances. Health is the concern, you see Biden’s mental health, that is. Heck, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) even suggested that his party “shut” down the rest of the primaries and debates. The idea is to coronate Jumblin’ before his brain completely shuts down. But don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, lucid or senile, loose lips liar-Biden is for certain the Manchurian virus candidate. There’s a reason why Forbes wrote last summer that “loose lips liar-Joe Biden Is The Only Man Who Can Save China In 2020” and why the “announcement of his campaign alone was enough to encourage Beijing suddenly to take a harder line on trade negotiations with the Trump administration,” as Senator Tom Cotton recently wrote at National Review. It’s that unlike “many other Democrats, he takes its side, reliably,” writes Cotton. Certain other Democrats take China’s side only unreliably. For example, as senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the ‘90s, loose lips liar-Biden made sure China got most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership the latter in 2001. “Wherever a brake might have been applied — by placing human-rights or labor conditions on most-favored-nation status, for example — loose lips liar-Biden voted the measures down and lobbied other senators for Beijing,” Cotton informs. “Unfortunately, China and loose lips liar-Biden got their way, and American workers are still suffering from it.” While we should have withered Beijing on the vine instead of creating a monster thanks, Richard Nixon, loose lips liar-Biden compounded earlier mistakes and continued feeding the dragon. In fact, even as China’s fascist regime yes — with its market reforms, it’s as “communist” as commie-Bernie is capitalist grew in power and Xi Jinping strengthened his dictatorial hold, loose lips liar-Biden continued lobbying for increased trade and more intimate ties. Just consider that while standing next to Xi in 2012, loose lips liar-Biden rationalized that competition from China was good for us. Yet millions “of American jobs were disappearing as he spoke,” Cotton reminds us, “and the militarization of the South China Sea was just around the corner.” What’s for sure is that, call it “competition” or collusion, the relationship was very good for the loose lips liar-Biden family. Oh, and if you’re guessing that there’s a Hunter in this story, go to the head of the class....
Pharma as Partner, Not Punching Bag
by DAVID SHAYWITZ
{ /thebulwark.com } ~ After listening to politicians—particularly those on the left—relentlessly vilify biopharmaceuticals companies, it was a welcome contrast to see President Trump at the White House last week recognizing the private sector as a critical... invaluable partner in our national efforts to combat COVID-19. I’ve long championed the essential role of industry in driving promising, but preliminary, science into transformational medicines. Writing over a decade ago with the late Dr. Tom Stossel, we called out the coterie of reliably reflexive critics we termed the pharmascolds—a group whose numbers, and influence, have dramatically expanded in the ensuing years. Today, most correct-thinking academics—not to mention nearly every politician from the dink/liar-Warren-ish side of the spectrum—dutifully critique the biopharmaceutical industry as greedy and craven. This is happening even as more and more of the most talented faculty members decamp for the private sector sometimes startups, other times, established companies. Why? Because they want to participate more directly in the pragmatic implementation of exciting science. In addition to my own career in and around biopharma R&D, I’ve recently been afforded an unusually personal look into the role of industry in the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife, also a physician-scientist, is a senior executive at Gilead and has been working relentlessly to evaluate whether remdesivir, an anti-viral therapy the company originally developed for Ebola—it wasn’t especially effective—might prove more useful against the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. While anecdotal data, as widely reported, may be encouraging, robust clinical trials are required, and my wife and her colleagues are working literally day and night in order to deliver a clear answer. While Gilead’s medicine may be closest to the clinical applicability, they are hardly alone: Companies across the industry are racing to develop and evaluate potential treatments, often as part of consortia with academics, which is a win-win proposition. Meanwhile, other companies are working on potential vaccines: The innovative biotech Moderna seems to be out in front, reportedly using a proprietary artificial intelligence-based approach to select the part of the virus that will most effectively goose our immune system. The first subject in the first Moderna clinical trial was just dosed on Monday... http://thebulwark.com/pharma-as-partner-not-punching-bag-2/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTnpBME9EQTRaRE0zWlRsaCIsInQiOiI4V3NESVgrRnFHbnlzTlBRM3J0cjJ3R3ZteWt6VG5lb09GTTFZOVJHNlhZdVRMQ0JXMDE3ZHdvRzhvQ1E1eEtQSXJEVEtWa2k3bDRoU1wvUHNNY1hkVGFHWk51TEFtdno0ems5d3dVV1JGM2tuS2pQNjNOMnJ3ZkVkazFHY05aNCsifQ%3D%3D .
Coronavirus Comes for Europe
by Guy Millière
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Italy's healthcare system is in a state of almost total collapse. As of today, 31,506 people in Italy have been infected with the coronavirus; of which 2,503 people have died. The numbers continue to grow... Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors have to choose which sick person to save and which sick person not to save. The country has almost completely shut down. Many businesses are running in slow motion or have stopped. Prisoners are staging uprisings. Millions of people have been ordered to stay home and are allowed out only briefly to buy food. Most shops are shut. All public gatherings are prohibited, even funerals. Big cities look like ghost towns. No other Western country has been so severely affected by the pandemic as Italy. Why? First, Italy has an aging population. The median age of Italians is 47.3 years; one in four Italians is over 65. In addition, the country's birth rate is extremely low: 1.29 children per woman. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Italy was a dying country. Sadly, the virus has accelerated the process. Second, the authorities and medical personnel apparently underestimated the danger. Although the Italian government had suspended flights for days from China and Hong Kong from January 31, Italian doctors were saying that the illness was just a "bad flu". On March 9, an epidemiologist, Silvia Stringhini, wrote: "The media are reassuring, the politicians are reassuring, while there's little to be reassured of". Third, the Italian health system is in appallingly bad condition. There are not enough intensive care units and, as everywhere, the possibility of a major crisis simply was not anticipated. In Italy there are 2.62 acute-care hospital beds per 1,000 residents by comparison, the number in Germany is 6.06 per 1,000 residents. The Italian health system is entirely run by the government. A public health care service SSN, Servizio Sanitario Nazionale pays the doctors directly, limits their number, and sets the maximum number of patients they can treat per year (1,500). Government-run healthcare always ends up being about the government trying to cut its costs rather than to help its citizens. Private clinics do exist, but represent only a small part of the care offered the public system represents 77% of total health-care spending. The only country in Europe where the figure is higher is the United Kingdom, where the figure is 79%. Public hospitals must manage shortages, and when an exceptional situation occurs, rationing care leads to horrific choices. A recent report by Siaarti (Società Italiana di Anestesia Analgesia Rianimazione e Terapia Intensiva) bureaucratically offers "ethical recommendations for admission and intensive treatment in exceptional conditions of imbalance" and speaks of "consensual criteria of distributive justice" to justify not treating certain patients and leaving them to die... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15752/coronavirus-comes-for-europe .
Pentagon Preparing Navy Hospital Ships Mercy, Comfort for Coronavirus Response
By Sam LaGrone
{ news.usni.org } ~ The Pentagon is starting the process of activating Navy hospital ships USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) as part of the Defense Department’s domestic response to the spreading COVID-19 virus... USNI News has learned. “We’ve already given orders to the Navy… to lean forward in terms of getting them ready to deploy,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters on Tuesday. The ships will now begin the several days-long process of bringing aboard medical staff and equipment ahead of deploying along the East and West coasts, a defense official confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday afternoon. Two sources told USNI News that the idea was for the ships to provide relief for coastal hospital systems, with the ships taking on non-COVID-19 cases and allowing the hospitals to focus on the most critical patients suffering from the virus. The Pentagon also has extensive equipment for erecting field hospitals in addition to the hospital ships, but those facilities are optimized for trauma cases, with several beds close together, and not for infectious patients. “So one of the ways you could use field hospitals, hospital ships or things in between is to take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases, to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases,” Esper said. On Monday, Joint Staff surgeon Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs gave more details on how the ships could support civilian hospitals. “If, for example, a community has a large outbreak and there’s a need for emergency room support or trauma support, a hospital ship is perfectly designed to do that,” Friedrichs told Politico on Monday. “It’s hard to get the hospital ship to St. Louis, but along the coasts, it is an option to use.”... https://news.usni.org/2020/03/17/pentagon-preparing-navy-hospital-ships-mercy-comfort-for-coronavirus-response?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=05e9c47c74-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-05e9c47c74-231491269&mc_cid=05e9c47c74&mc_eid=3999f18767 .
The Prisoner Dilemma in the Age of Coronavirus
by Alan M. Dershowitz
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ The US has more prisoners than any Western democracy. Because of our overly long sentences — even for non-violent first offenders — many are old and infirm... We also have many presumptively innocent defendants in jail awaiting trial, and many others awaiting appeal. It is inevitable that there will be outbreaks of coronavirus in prisons and jails, as, in the past, there have been outbreaks of other contagious illnesses such as Legionnaires disease. Other institutions of confinement, such as nursing homes, have also experienced quickly spreading contagions. Once an outbreak occurs, the options will be limited. It is unlikely that contagious inmates would be released; they would probably be quarantined in the prison, which may mean solitary confinement. Nor will there be sufficient medical staff and equipment to treat them. In the event of an outbreak, guards and other staff are likely to refuse to come to work, thus raising the risk of violence among prisoners. The time to act, in order to prevent these bad outcomes, is before there are outbreaks. A prison sentence, or the denial of bail, are not supposed to be sentences of death or disease. Steps should be taken now to reduce the risks not only to prisoners but to those who come in contact with them in prison or upon release. Among these preventive steps should be the following: allowing elderly non-violent prisoners who are near the end of their sentences to be sent home; those who still have considerable time to serve should be temporarily furloughed to home confinement, subject to increased punishment if they violate the strict conditions of the furlough; pre-trial and pre-appeal defendants should be allowed to remain at home unless they pose a threat of violence; imprisonment of sentenced non-violent defendants should be deferred from month to month as we monitor the spread of the virus; summonses should replace arrests in most non-violent cases; fines and other non-custodial punishments should be more widely imposed as long as custody poses life threatening risks; other creative amelioratives should be considered. It is generally not a good idea to emulate the actions of Iran, but it is interesting to note that the repressive Islamic regime has reportedly released approximately 80,000 prisoners most of whom probably should never have been imprisoned in the first place. Not known for their compassion, the mullahs probably made this decision as a public heath measure calculated to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, which has plagued Iran... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15753/coronavirus-prisoners .
Can America's Public Health
Elite Survive the 'Boomer Flu'?
By Alan Koczela
{ americanthinker.com } ~ We depend on experts for advice. We always have. This is understandable given our inability to effectively process and disseminate all the information that bombards us... Our minds are not supercomputers with software that sift and rank information in nanoseconds. We cannot psychically communicate our discoveries with the rest of the hive. Instead, we develop a system of experts that focus their efforts on different topics and tell us what they learn through various institutions, such as the media, the church, or the office water cooler. But what happens when our experts fail? The public health community’s response to COVID-19, aka the “Boomer Flu,” provides a cautionary example. Many have noted COVID’s terrible effectiveness in killing the elderly and infirm. However, what are the responses of our public policy experts? Quarantines, testing, and other proscriptions of minimal effectiveness and mass inconvenience. For example, the focus on testing is farcical. Granted, testing information is useful, particularly in developing programs for the next pandemic. However, what’s the benefit from testing for treatment of the pandemic? If I have a cold, my doctor tells me to self-quarantine. If I have the flu, my doctor tells me to self-quarantine. If I have any contagious disease, my doctor tells me to self-quarantine. Whether I have a confirmed or suspected case of the Boomer Flu, my doctor will tell me to self-quarantine. Healthcare professionals can still record information about suspected COVID-19 cases. When tests become available, the suspected cases can return for testing or someone could visit the suspect and conduct the tests. The focus on testing is a waste of time, and wasted time is something we can’t afford. Another example is our method of quarantining. In the U.S., a volunteer self-quarantine (“VSQ”) appears the method of choice. Yet, a VSQ is largely ineffective. Imagine a low-income parent who must work. Sick or not, this person will work. And, what type of jobs do these parents typically have? My guesses are janitors, warehouse workers, cashiers, or any low-paying job that involves close contact with the public. Financially distressed people with jobs serving the public suggest VSQs are a recipe for disaster. Yet, VSQs remain a cornerstone of our response. The above examples indicate the public health elite are largely clueless on what to do. Instead of instituting helpful policies, they’ve opted for the ol’ roust ‘em strategy. This strategy was once popular with law enforcement. For example, there’s an uptick in crime, so the police installed roadblocks, roust the poor and implemented responses that created the impression that the police were doing something. Of course, these policies looked good on TV, caused mass inconvenience, and were minimally effective. Our public-health experts have adopted such a response to COVID-19: lots of doctors on TV suggesting ineffective policies and often shifted the blame or the public’s attention to nonsensical issues, like the lack of testing supplies. The blame shifting and misdirection are designed to hide the public heath elite’s incompetence in developing strategies that make a difference. I know it is easy to complain. Any fool can quickly list the problems of the world. So, let this non-credentialed, occasionally employed deadbeat from Baltimore provide some suggestions. These proposals are based on the World Health Organization’s website, as well as the Italian experience. The reports indicate that COVID-19 deaths are primarily confined to those over 60 or people with underlying medical conditions. My modest proposals include: (1) Seal nursing homes, hospices, retirement communities and intensive care units (“ICUs”) by limiting access. Like the British, install field hospitals nearby. The field hospitals would only accept COVID-19 cases. Apart from freeing up hospital beds, this allows medical professionals to treat only those most at risk. In addition, create disinfecting areas for staff, where sterilized uniforms are provided. Also, ban everyone not a resident or staff, including families of the sick. Outside vendors would wear sterilized gear to limit exposing residents to COVID-19. Beyond the sealed area, the facility could create a non-contact visiting area with windowed partitions, and end-of-life rooms where families could say their last goodbye to loved ones....
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U.S. Retaliates After Iran Picks a Fight
Thomas Gallatin The U.S. military launched an airstrike against five Iranian-backed militia sites in northern Iraq late last week, killing an estimated three to four dozen militia members. The strike was in response to a rocket attack against U.S. and coalition forces earlier in the week that killed three soldiers, including two Americans and one British, and wounded over a dozen more. Following the U.S. strike Defense Secretary Mark Esper stated, “The United States will not tolerate attacks against our people, our interests, or our allies. As we have demonstrated in recent months, we will take any action necessary to protect our forces in Iraq and the region.” He also noted, “You don’t get to shoot at our bases and kill and wound Americans and get away with it.”
It appears clear that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not backed off his proxy-war efforts against the U.S. in Iraq and Syria even after the U.S. took out his top terrorist, Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In fact, he seems to be escalating matters.
As Tom Rogan at Washington Examiner notes, “Iran’s escalation also takes another form. Iran is now more resolute in expanding its nuclear program. Again, Iran knows that doing so risks Israeli or U.S. military action. But Khamenei has evidently decided to roll the dice in a last-ditch effort to blackmail America into sanctions relief. The supreme leader’s escalation-reflex is likely exacerbated in an Iranian interest point of view by the Saudi decision this week to boost its oil export scale and send oil prices plummeting. U.S. sanctions have annihilated Iran’s oil economy, so what little Tehran is still able to export is critical to the regime’s finances.”
To top it off, Iran is struggling with the coronavirus outbreak. It’s the typical mindset of tyrannical regimes: The people don’t matter, only the leader’s agenda. ~The Patriot Post
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