HMM: “We report the case of a cohort of 2500 French patients treated among others with methylene blue for cancer care. During the COVID-19 epidemics none of them developed influenza-like illness.”
Archive for 2020
April 8, 2020
LEGITIMACY? THEY’RE A GANG OF CORRUPT INCOMPETENTS WHO RULE AT BAYONET-POINT: Beijing unnerved by alleged US attempts to undermine Chinese Communist Party legitimacy.
Related: Time to put China on lockdown for its dishonesty amid coronavirus crisis.
CBS MORPHED INTO SHUTTERSTOCK SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Another ‘Editing Mistake?’ CBS News Again Airs Italy Hospital Footage in U.S. Coronavirus Segment.
NEVER LET A PANDEMIC GO TO WASTE: Joe Biden: Coronavirus Is an ‘Opportunity’ for ‘Structural’ Change on Voting, Climate Change.
SETON MOTLEY: America First v China Virus Globalism: We Must Foster Domestic Food Manufacturers. I’m sensing a sea change in attitudes.
BERNIE LOST BECAUSE HE’D ALREADY WON:
It was harder for Bernie to win on a tide of economic anger in 2020 than it was in 2016. If he could again run in 2024 (aged 82), after the post-pandemic crash which seems increasingly inevitable, perhaps he’d rediscover his mass appeal. The Sanders campaign of 2020 was slicker, more professional, more intelligent in appeals to minority voters. But the radical, revolutionary edge of 2016 was not as strong.
In a roundabout way, though, the Bernie of 2020 lost because he’d already won. He’d already created the revolution that other Democrats now must pander to if they are to have a hope of winning. Before Sanders’s 2016 run, Medicare-for-All was a dangerously subversive idea. Now every Democratic candidate supports it, one way or the other. It’s often said that Bernie has ‘dragged his party to the left’. That’s not exactly right. What Bernie did, like Trump, was expose the rift between the party’s voters and its leadership. This is in turn has forced the Democrats to come up with ever more inventive ways of speaking his language without fully committing to his agenda. Joe Biden’s policy platform is indeed very similar of Sanders’s. On Medicare, Biden may take a more gradualist approach, but it’s the same stated end-goal.
Based on its craptacular teaser intro, hopefully no one will be tuning into the rest of the show:
(From Power Line’s most recent “Week in Pictures.”)
THE WASHINGTON POST MORPHED INTO THE BABYLON BEE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Sitting on a throne of skulls, Mitch McConnell confirms his 8,999th judge. I thought the New York Times had the lock on Mean Girls snark, but the Post, with this column by Alexandra Petri is catching up fast:
Once there had been other things to do with this power that might have helped people in their brief spans on the globe. Those things were all gone. All that remained was vacancy, and Mitch McConnell was determined to fill it with judges.
What was a judge? Where would the judge sit? What would the judge uphold or overturn? What did any of it matter? It was not even very clear what he was confirming, except that he was confirming something and would continue to do so even after the sun burned out and the whole world was cast into ice and shadow.
“Just one more,” Mitch McConnell hissed. “No vacancies. Leave no vacancies.”
The Fates gave up spinning and measuring and cutting the threads of human lives. Perpetual motion machines wound to a halt. The world tree Yggdrasil cracked and a great serpent swallowed the Earth. Mitch McConnell continued appointing judges. This would be his life’s result. This would be his legacy.
Conan, what is best in life?
IN MEMORY OF TERRY KATH, and when his band was good.
AT AMAZON, deals in Movies & TV.
CONRAD BLACK: Trump’s Leadership in Pandemic Paves Way to Reelection.
The president has done an excellent job of mobilizing the private sector, kicking around companies that he thought were being sluggish (General Motors) or were profiteering abroad at the expense of the safety of Americans (3M), and he invoked the National Emergencies Act and ignored silly tweets from the Democratic hecklers on the sidelines such as Hillary Clinton, and explained the law generally only needed to be referred to for targeted companies to comply; not to be specifically enforced. Again, he left his critics talking to themselves.
It is generally recognized that his experience as a businessman (the first serious businessman ever to hold that office) has been of great value in marshaling private sector collaboration—something that was especially helpful in getting Abbott Laboratories to move swiftly in developing a test that could be administered anywhere by almost anyone and produce results in 15 minutes.
This shut down the next wave of criticism that had become audible: that the president should carry the can for the backward testing facilities and antiquarian methods the country possessed.
Well into March, all tests had to be sent to Atlanta for evaluation and could only be made in hospitals by appointment. This was obviously completely unacceptable for a pandemic and Abbott Laboratories rendered a great service as well as producing a valuable product that the president could take some credit for and in any case enabled him to dodge this bullet.
Fauci and others have been at pains to emphasize that the president’s suspension of direct flights from China on January 31 and from Europe on March 11 has saved a large number of American lives, and a cautionary shot has been discharged across the bow of the Democrats with recollections of putative presidential candidate Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling the suspension of flights from China “hysterical and xenophobic,” and “racist.”
Trump has admirably mobilized the natural desire of Americans to rise to a national challenge, part of which is generally a rallying behind the leader, as long as the leader knows how to lead.
Don’t get cocky, kids. As much as you might wish otherwise, this thing is nowhere near over.
STOP THEM BEFORE THEY REGULATE AGAIN: The FDA Graveyard. For decades, the FDA’s archaic rules have been delaying medical progress and consigning tens of millions of Americans to an “invisible graveyard.” Now a very small part of the graveyard has suddenly become visible: the people dying of Covid-19 because of one bureaucratic obstruction after another to providing tests, masks and other protective equipment.
WORST PRESIDENT EVER: How Woodrow Wilson Let Flu Deaths Go Viral in the Great War.
MAYBE WE SHOULD GO FOR GERMAN HEEL-CLICKING: Dr. Fauci Says He Doesn’t Think Americans Should Ever Shake Hands Again to Prevent Spread of Coronavirus.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: California Sheriff Insists ‘This Is Not a Police State’ After Vowing to Arrest People Without Masks.
EXPERT ON ONE RELIGION SPECULATES ON ANOTHER: Pope Says Virus Is Nature’s Response to the Climate Crisis.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Hot New Concealed Carry Gear for Warm Weather.
