WILLIAM BENNETT & SETH LEIBSOHN: Time for a Second Opinion.

We truly are shutting down America and harming a great many Americans, based on the worst fears that have not been true and are not on the horizon. We are scaring the hell out of the citizenry. A few additional statistics help counsel a lowering of our national temperature: The vast majority of deaths from the virus are of people over the age of 70 with underlying frailties. The focus on New York where, of course, most of the media is based, is also flooding and distorting the picture for the rest of the country. Of course we need to pay attention to ground zero, which is New York. But what happens there is not what is happening everywhere. For example, our most populous state, California shows 149 deaths, 11% of the total in New York. Texas, our second most populous state, shows nothing like the death toll in New York, with 47 deaths, about 3.5% of the total in the Empire State.

Read the whole thing.

THEY GOT THIS HALF-RIGHT: Colorado oil, gas regulators hit pause on new rules because of coronavirus.

But: “State agency says consideration of new rules should take place in face-to-face meetings; environmentalists say if rule-making delayed, so to should permit approvals.”

The Democrats in charge are anti-domestic energy, period.

BOEING: The Air Force’s Troubled Boeing KC-46 Tankers Leak Fuel Excessively. “The announcement comes weeks after the Air Force said it would not use the aircraft for aerial refueling missions except in a major emergency.”

C’mon, Boeing — this shouldn’t be so difficult. The Air Force got serious about in-flight refueling back in the late 1940s — with Boeing planes — and the KC-46 is based on the 767 which first flew almost 40 years ago.

BROKEN GLASS VOTERS: More Than Twice as Many Voters Are Enthusiastic About Voting for Trump Compared to Biden.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: After Complaints, Trump’s DHS Says Gun Stores Are ‘Essential’ Businesses.’ Looking at You, LA.

ECONOMICS: The Cost of Ventilators Just Skyrocketed — And New York Needs Thousands More. “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the price of ventilators has soared from less than $20,000 to more than $50,000.”

Cuomo said last week that New York state has roughly 12,000 ventilators, but will likely need as many as 40,000 at the projected height of the pandemic. But since no state will remain untouched by the virus, both states and the federal government are now jockeying for ventilators. And that’s pushing prices up.

“We’ve created a situation where you literally have hundreds of entities looking to buy the same exact materials basically from the same place, which is China, ironically enough,” Cuomo said.

“The ventilators are now over $50,000, if you can find them,” he added. “The ventilators didn’t change that much in two weeks. The prices went up because literally we are driving the prices up. But we need to give our front line, our health care professionals, the supplies they need. And we need to do it now.”

High prices will lead to increased supply which will lower prices. Cap prices and the increased supplies will never materialize. This is Econ 101 stuff, which confuses even supposedly intelligent people.

Next Up: The wisdom of making one badly-run country your sole supplier of seemingly everything.

SAVE THE PLANET. DRINK VODKA. An Unusual Climate Prize Hits a Coronavirus Snag.

In 2017, Stafford Sheehan handed a friend an unusual bottle of booze. He had made it himself — but not the usual way. A chemical physicist, Dr. Sheehan had invented a process to make alcohol from carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas associated with climate change, not cocktail hour.

“I said, ‘Hold on, you made this from carbon dioxide?’” recalled his friend, Gregory Constantine, who worked in marketing for Smirnoff. Now the two are in the vodka business, using Dr. Sheehan’s technology and marketing it as a way to fight global warming.

Their company, Air Co., was one of 10 finalists for a pair of $7.5 million prizes to be awarded this year to the teams that can devise the most profitable use for carbon dioxide, which causes global warming by trapping the sun’s heat when released into the atmosphere by power plants, cars and industry. The five-year competition, the Carbon XPrize, was designed to create a financial incentive to capture carbon dioxide and use it profitably, instead of releasing it.

However, just as the Brooklyn vodka makers — along with the nine other finalists from as far afield as Nova Scotia (stronger concrete), India (an ingredient in pharmaceuticals) and China (a plastics replacement) — were approaching the finish line, the competition has been delayed by the coronavirus crisis.

Somebody needs to get this man his prize money or some grant money or a Nobel Prize or an Oscar or something — STAT!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Democrats Want You to Be Out of Work. “AOC is so devoted to the commie common good that she wants some of the only people in America who are guaranteed work to voluntarily give that work up for some union talking point.”

UGH: A food crisis looms as coronavirus forces farms to stay idle and countries hoard supplies.

Countries most exposed to a rise in food price inflation include those with elevated imports as a share of domestic food supply, such as the Middle East, China, Japan and South Korea, said Fitch Solutions.

Economies with weakened currencies, such as India and Indonesia are also exposed, as most commodities are denominated in the dollar on the international market.

As a big exporter, I expect we’ll be fine aside from some temporary disruptions as producers and distributors acclimate to the new-but-temporary normal.

WELL, YES: The Coronavirus Is Becoming A Public Relations Disaster For China.

Evidence came today in the form of two BBC reports, one of the U.K. government of Boris Johnson (who has COVID-19 now) saying there would be ramifications for China failing to share how they stopped the virus from spreading. One such punishment was getting rid of Huawei in their 5G program.

Over the weekend, the Daily Mail reported that the Johnson team doubted China’s SARS-CoV-2 infection count, which totals around 81,000, saying they were probably off by a factor of 40.

The wide spreading disease throughout Europe is turning people off to China in leadership positions who, only a few months ago, were fine with Beijing and thought the U.S. trade war with China was just Trump being Trump.

It’s almost as though he’d been right about China all along.

REGULATORY RELIEF: Trump Expected to Roll Back Fuel-Efficiency Standards on March 31.

BAD TIMING: Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods workers are striking.

FLASHBACK: The Obama-Biden Administration Repeatedly Sought Millions in CDC Cuts.

MEANWHILE, AT THE PJMEDIA MOTHERSHIP: Just Who Exactly Was ‘Fiddling’ as People Died, Madame Speaker?

That’s from Tyler O’Neil, and I just published this piece for our VIP members: Biden Campaign Stuck in Neutral While Two More Scandals Erupt. “I am the Captain America of reporting the bad news about Joe Biden: I can do this all day.”

I hope you’ll use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

NOT SO LONG AS IT WOULD INCONVENIENCE THE WRONG PEOPLE: Will we ever know what was on Anthony Weiner’s laptop?

HE ISN’T WRONG: Trump calls Pelosi a ‘sick puppy’ over coronavirus criticism.

MEMORY-HOLED: Bernie, AOC, Ilhan Omar Letter Asking Pompeo to Drop Iran Sanctions Amid Coronavirus Mysteriously Disappears.

WOW: Lab-in-a-box test can detect COVID-19 in 5 minutes. “The FDA has cleared the device for use during the pandemic.”

ONE MORE CLOWN? Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 30, 2020. “The no campaigning campaign continues, Biden gets #MeTooed, a rare Bernie victory, and A New Challenger Appears!”

NICE FOR THE NATIONAL SHUTDOWN, BUT DUBIOUS LEGALITY — I WONDER HOW LONG IT WILL LAST: Internet Archive offers 1.4 million copyrighted books for free online.

COMMUNISM KILLS: UK Believes China Might Have 40 Times More COVID-19 Cases Than They Admit.

Related: 5,000 Urns Shipped to Funeral Homes in Wuhan Raise Questions about China’s True Death Toll.

I HOPE NOT: Dr. Fauci Says Virus Death Toll in U.S. Could be 100,000.

A couple weeks ago I applied China’s death-rate-by-age-cohort to the US population, and came up with an absolute, unlikely-top-end, worst case of around 650,000 dead. So 100,000 isn’t impossible, but hopefully social distancing combined new treatments and mass-produced ventilators will keep the death toll far below that.

A BILL WHITTLE PODCAST: The Cold War: What We Saw | Cloaks and Daggers – Episode 9.

HMM: Poll: 15% of Sanders supporters will vote for Trump if Biden is nominee; 80% would back Biden.

This might just play out, given the strong anti-globalists sentiment among many Sanders supporters and Biden’s vote for NAFTA.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Bloated Bureaucracy Is Going to Have a Coronavirus Body Count. “Trump is basically in the position of an NFL quarterback who’s being blamed for two decades of management and franchise failures that preceded him.”