We’re beating it. We’re beating the Coronavirus.
On second thought, let’s call it the Chinese Virus after the place it originated and the communists whose stupidity and mendacity inflicted it upon the world. If the Spanish deserve credit for a virus that didn’t even start in their country, then the Chinese surely deserve credit for one that did.
The virus is well past its peak in Europe, especially in hard-hit Italy and Spain. America is a week or two behind the European infection and death curves due to President Trump’s prescience and courage in imposing travel bans which were widely mocked at the time by TDS sufferers, some of whom later became Chinese Virus sufferers. But in America, too, it’s leveling off and will soon decline.
And now, early results of treatment with a bioengineered drug are very promising. The drug is inconspicuously named Remdesivir and was invented and made by a biotech company improbably named Gilead.
Gilead is a quintessential American tech company. It was founded by a graduate of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Harvard Business School who teamed up with other brilliant docs from Caltech, Harvard and elsewhere. Its scientific advisors have included an American Nobel Prize winner and its board included Donald Rumsfeld and George Shultz.
They named their company in honor of a place referenced in the bible and other ancient texts as the source of a medicinal “balm of Gilead.”
Early private funding was by a Silicon Valley venture capital company. Gilead soon went public in 1992. Since then, its shares have soared over 10,000%, and the company is now worth over $100 billion.
It’s only 33 years old but its work and innovation have already propelled it into the ranks of Big Pharma, an industry that people love to hate until they need a new life-saving medicine.
We’re beating the Chinese Virus in the nick of time. Projections that up to two million Americans would die drove us to lock down the country. As a result, we’ll permanently lose tens of thousands of small businesses. Retirement savings are devastated.
People who seek and obtain authority can be counted on to wield it arbitrarily and tyrannically when given the opportunity. And so petty tyrants are spreading like contagion.
A father is arrested for playing catch with his daughter in an empty park. Police try to apprehend a jogger on an empty beach. Drive-in Easter services are declared illegal and worshippers are ticketed.
While the Chinese puzzle how to become more like America without giving up the iron-fists of their police state, certain American politicians puzzle how to become more like the iron-fisted Chinese. They delight in the lock down, and relish their authority in enforcing it.
Or maybe they think an America in pain is an America that will vote against the incumbent president this fall.
That incumbent is President Trump. Defying the lock-downers, this week he announced a plan to reopen America. The reopening happens in phases in different locales depending on the local circumstances. The feds will supply data, but the decisions and implementation are up to state governors and local mayors.
Decisions will thus be made by decision-makers close to the people. The Founders called this “federalism” and it used to work well.
In a classic Trump move, he picked a fight with Democrat governors beforehand over who had the authority to dictate the openings. With his usual bluster, Trump insisted that he did. Suddenly discovering federalism, the governors insisted that they did.
In the end, Trump gave the governors the authority they demanded, though the Feds will still supply the data and the non-binding guidelines. That was the outcome Trump desired all along, I suspect, and his fight with the governors was only to bait them into the position he wanted.
Or Trump might have picked the fight because he just enjoys fighting. You never know with Trump, and that’s the way he likes it.
Imagine the Chinese politburo: “Trump inscrutable!”
But what’s even more inscrutable to the Chinese is the economic engine, technological innovation and pluralistic, entrepreneurial culture of America. China has over a billion hard-working, underpaid people but is smothered under a stultifying authoritarian regime and monolithic culture.
Until that changes, China will be good only at copying and manufacturing American products because they have dirt cheap labor. But they will never produce real innovation, brilliant physicians, creative companies or risk-taking investors. They will never produce a Gilead.
And so yet again, for at least the third time in modern history, it will be America that will save the world from murderous authoritarians. It’s what we do.
It will entail the help of Gilead and other American companies that create, innovate, problem-solve, risk-take and (gasp!) profit. The Chinese unleashed a plague – the Chinese Virus compounded by a coverup. But Trump is unleashing something more powerful – American dynamism.
We’ll win. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
the Aspen beat 
Excellent article! Right on!
Good read on the situation, Glenn!
A few weeks ago, I subscribed to a website called the Neighborhood Digest, which provides a forum for people in a particular area (Carbondale, in my case) to discuss local issues, most of which are very minor, such as somebody looking for a babysitter. But the web site is hosted by an organization in San Francisco, and recently sent out a message to all participants to “be nice” and only refer to the virus by its technical name of Covid 19, and not refer to its place of origin for fear of offending anyone (presumably, anyone of Chinese ancestry).
I sent them the following reply, which is similar to what Glenn said here:
“The Wuhan virus started in China, quite probably as the result of inhumane, barbaric practices in markets selling wild animals for food. Then, the news of it was suppressed by the Communist Party on the grounds of its “right” to arrest people allegedly spreading “unfounded rumors.” The ability of the U.S. to respond to this pandemic – as well as other international crises that could occur – has been severely limited by our excessive dependence on critical equipment manufactured in China.
It is no reflection on the intelligence or morality of most Chinese people to point out these facts so that the U.S. can take measures to wean ourselves off of our dependence on critical materials from mainland China (as distinguished from Taiwan) and other countries that are adversarial or simply unreliable.
Since you apparently prefer a child-like policy of “being nice” and not saying anything critical of the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (abetted by years of U.S. trade policies) that are the cause of this catastrophe, then you have no business claiming yourselves to be some sort of journalists — even in providing a forum on local issues that only simple-minded people believe to be unrelated to global ones.
Since I apparently can not use your forum to discuss anything that might be construed as “critical” of anyone, you can remove me from your e-mail list, and continue to enjoy life with your heads in the sand.”
Excellent. Any response from them? Perhaps to early for thier minds to wrap around truth? Or admit the truth?
They are wrong about the virus name, it is actually SARS-CoV-2. The illness from the virus is CoVID-19, just like AIDS id the illness from HIV.
This is just hateful and Trumptarted , please stop abusing the keys on your typewriter , or whatever.
Why is it hateful?
Why is it “Trumptarted”?
Indeed, what does it even mean to be “-tarted”? Like a tart?
Anyway, asking Miles for specific examples and evidence is futile. He thinks everything he says is self-evident.
Dr Beaton, The real beauty is all those people with smart phones seeing a leader and leaders of a country determined to protect their people and the interests of their country. If they fail, the people get to vote them out. If they succeed, they get voted out. Hopefully, Trump will be begin the process to make a permanent end to Globalism and appeasing unelected bureaucrats and dictators.
China has over a billion hard-working, underpaid people but is smothered under a stultifying authoritarian regime and monolithic culture.
How much are Chinese workers paid? And how much should they be paid? Who is buying all these luxury cars in China and fancy European fashion accessories?
We hear about Tian Amen square all the time but the Branch Davidians have been swallowed by the amnesia hole. Just how monolithic is the Chinese culture? It seems that there are big regional differences in cuisine in China, isn’t it possible that there just might be some variations in other things as well? Of course, in the US there’s no evidence of an authoritarian regime. The experience of Maria Butina proves that. The lucrative “asset forfeiture” program is also an unmistakable sign of Yankee freedom.
NailHeadTom sure nails it this time. Just ask The Uighars when they get freed from the concentration camps. Or the Hong Kong Activists who got arrested yesterday. China is far more free than we are her in the US. And that Authoritarian Regime here sure stifles criticism. I never hear an angry word about Trump around here. Oh and Wuhan Virus certainly wasn’t started in Wuhan. Behind the mask he’s wearing, NailHeadTom can’t keep a straight face either..
Stupid much, or are you a Kung Flu carrier with a boiling brain?
Republicans TRiUMPh Over Adversity 😊🇺🇸💪🏼👍🏻 > DemocRATS🐀🐀🐀PELOSIng Their Honor And Minds🤪
https://www.forbes.com/sites/camianderson1/2020/04/19/why-do-women-make-such-good-leaders-during-covid-19/#3396b18742fc
Countries like Germany, New Zealand, Iceland and Finland (all with women leaders) fall into this category. In states like California, which also acted relatively quickly, the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, the first black woman to ever hold that office, took action days before the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles (both men).
So many women acted first—and made the bold and unpopular call to shut down life as we knew it in the face of a truly invisible enemy—that I wanted to understand what we could all learn beyond the usual tropes of women being more emotionally intelligent and motherly. I didn’t think this could be entirely chalked up to their people skills, ability to engender trust and communicate empathetically. So, I turned to social scientists and people who write about leadership, human behavior, and gender differences to dig deeper.
I Am seeing it this weekend. Real Americans are tired of this made up crisis/panic designed to destroy a duly elected president as a last ditch effort
U gonna get your ZZZAS handed to ya dems.
Hi Glenn – having suffered through two years of life in Aspen back in the early ‘aughts, you certainly have my sympathy. I had to go to many charitable functions as part of my job, and the one thing that stood out for me in the many dialogues with the local denizens was their belief that they were really “global citizens,” and not US citizens per se. I had to stifle the urge to punch them out right on the spot, and couldn’t imagine them saying anything like that with a straight face back in the Midwest.
The left gets its rocks off by putting airs that they’re better than whomever they happen to be around. If these people lived in France, they’d be the same way about the French. It all springs from basic insecurities.
That’s why recent studies show they have mental illness and emotional problems at double the rate of conservatives.
https://www.prosperity.com/rankings
Fark the Kung Flu, fark the media.
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