I’d Be More Worried About Panic and Incompetence Right Now

We’re learning a lot about this novel coronavirus…and about ourselves.

For those who want government-run healthcare, we now know that it was a low-level bureaucratic decision to fly evacuees back to the US, without even telling the White House. The President had already decided we were not going to do it. Then he found out we already had done it.

Similarly, a bureaucratic snafu (someone following “CYA” protocols) let a COVID-positive patient shop at North Star Mall over the weekend.

Bureaucratic health care will fail more people in more countries over the next several weeks. I expect that America will hold up better than most.

If I get this bug, I want a highly-paid, highly-motivated go-getter treating me. Not a drone bureaucrat or “diversity hire”.

By contrast, most of the President’s instincts have been valuable: cancel flights from China in January, in an unprecedented preemptive move. Perennial critics from the WHO to the New York Times have had to “admit” that this was absolutely right.

Also correct is his longstanding call for less reliance on foreign (China) supply chains. It’s obviously in our national security interests to make more of our own medical supplies, antibiotics, masks and so forth, and/or to source them from a wider variety of nations.

Newt Gingrich and others are suggesting one-time tax credits to encourage the relocation of manufacturing out of China.

Odds are competition and capitalism will play the biggest roles in everything from a vaccine to innovative new treatments for those getting sick. There’s a lot of money in it. By the way, Israeli researchers claim to be close to a vaccine. What will AOC and the Squad, the boycott-Israel Democrats and candidates who skipped AIPAC have to say about that? Will Iran refuse an Israel-developed shot?

This weekend, people were hoarding water and toilet paper. Why?

By all means, take precautions, like washing your hands, and staying home if you’re ill. Avoid repetitive media coverage, too—stress weakens you. Even some people I work in radio with seem to have completely gone nuts demanding “preparations!” When asked, they can’t say what those should be.

Don’t just run around piling up supplies, in order to “do something”.

Here’s something to try: reason.

Many are noting a “weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries” (Spectator.org)

In recent years, people seem to crave a bogeyman. Our political and cultural leaders supply them plentifully: the climate, Australian bush fires, sunspots, asteroids, freak weather and now this.

It’s like we cannot accept that we live in the healthiest, most prosperous time in human history.

Every scientist I have heard talk about COVID sounds constructive.

The media voices of doom also happen to have the worst track record on predictions in recent years. Just something to think about.