April 1, No Fooling

COTTonLINE does not post April 1 spoofs. T. S. Eliot's "cruelest month" brings quite enough problems this plague year without us adding to the burden. Hang in there, friends, with any luck we'll look back on this as one of life's unique experiences.

Going Our Own Way

As we wrote two days ago, the DrsC are more likely to experience contagion when traveling by plane or cruise ship - close quarters being the operational mechanism. When we travel in our private vehicle or stay home, the odds are much more in our favor.

Very simply, the issue is how tightly we are packed in with others. Public transportation is a serious contagion risk factor.

Victor Davis Hanson writes in National Review about the relative lack of Covid-19 cases and fatalities in California. He develops a conspiracy theory of his own, arguing the Golden State may have gotten (and gotten over) coronavirus last fall and developed a "herd immunity." Perhaps he is correct.

Occam's razor suggests a simpler answer; relatively few Californians utilize public transport on a daily basis. Metro San Francisco is virtually the only place in CA where doing so is even feasible for most people.

The DrsC had two elderly aunts who lived in SF their whole lives and never learned to drive a car. Among Californians this made them near-unicorns, real oddities.

As native Californians, we've joked that to be born here is to pop out with an ignition key in your hand. Driving is our birthright. As we grew up the important milestone in one's life was not voting age or alcohol purchase age, but age 16, when one got a driver's license.

We hear this is less true today, but Californians are still a people on wheels. Few CA cars have more than 2 occupants, and many are solos. Natural social distancing - it has to have positive health consequences, compared to strap hanging on a crowded subway car or bus, contributing to the shared miasma.

A Conspiracy Theory

Here is a conspiracy theory I haven't seen elsewhere, and frankly I'm a bit surprised. My theory is that fear of the pro-democracy uprising in Hong Kong caused China to release the Covid-19 virus and cover it up until relatively wide-spread. Perhaps I'm imagining causation and intention where coincidence is the operational mechanism.

For most of 2019 Hong Kong experienced public unrest and demonstrations which the CCP wasn't able to suppress effectively. Since the pandemic outbreak those expressions of discontent have largely disappeared, primarily because they were based on massed (mostly) peaceful demonstrations which are the antithesis of social distancing.

Having noted the above "coincidence," I did a web search and found a couple of commenters on reddit.com who've had the same notion, here and here. My web search, at least, turned up no widely available media sources posing this hypothesis.

I don't claim it is true, I have no insider information. I do know that China's long history teaches that holding the large and heterogeneous nation together is an almost superhuman task, rarely successful for long.

The historical norm is for regions to break off, under the leadership of locally dominant warlords. Those who would lead an undivided China are always aware of this tendency, though rarely able to resist it for more than a few decades. Clearly it is on the minds of those who have held onto power in Beijing for the past 70+ years.

The Enthusiasm Edge

Political news isn't completely MIA, an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds Democrats support Biden, but without much enthusiasm. A more key finding is this:

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who prefer Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the nomination, 15% say they’d back Trump over Biden in the fall.

Something like 12% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump in 2016.

The poll finds those who prefer Sanders are 42% of "Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents." My back-of-envelope calculation suggests that slightly in excess of 6% of all "Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents" will vote for Trump instead of Biden.

In a 50-50 nation, that 6% looms large, maybe large enough to swing the election for Trump. Trump also has the enthusiasm edge.

Perhaps the Democrats’ biggest risk is under the surface, in Trump’s big advantage in backers who are “very” enthusiastic about supporting him. Strong enthusiasm for a candidate can help boost turnout on Election Day, a must-have particularly for Democrats, who rely more on motivating less-frequent voters to come to the polls.

There’s déjà vu in these results: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in largely the same position four years ago. She, too, had a slim lead among Democrats for the nomination and ran essentially evenly with Trump among registered voters. And she lagged in enthusiasm, with a low of 32% very enthusiastic in September 2016. Biden is 8 points under that mark now.

Reminder: Like two other low-enthusiasm candidates - McCain and Romney - Hillary Clinton lost.

FDA Emergency Use Authorization

Newsweek reports the Food and Drug Administration has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for treatment of the symptoms of Covid-19 in hospitalized patients.

Why was it possible to do this so quickly? Because the behavior of the drugs in human subjects is known, including side effects, dosing levels, and interactions with other medications. The drugs are in current use for malaria and some auto-immune diseases.

Evidence concerning the drugs' efficacy is, at present, contradictory with good results reported from France and poor results reported from China. Candidly, for different reasons I view neither nation as a source of reliable information.

The use of these pharmaceuticals became controversial after President Trump expressed optimism about their potential in the Covid-19 context. Of course TDS sufferers would question it if he claimed aspirin is useful therapy for normal headaches or moderate exercise is an aid to general good health.

Mahalo and Aloha, Five-0

Our household has watched the “new” Hawaii Five-0 for several years. Never our favorite program but an okay one in a sea of dreck. Now the most recent episode reveals that next week’s program will be the finale, not merely of the season but of the series.

I’m not surprised, the program had more or less run out of gas and was revisiting old tropes ad nauseum. It was noted this was their 10th season, and if anything it has seemed longer.

The program had the best theme music on TV, because it recycled the surf-sound theme from the original way back in 1968. One thing I won’t miss is the bickering between McGarrett and Danny. Scott Caan’s character got old almost immediately.

The show’s demise marks the passing of a great opportunity for Asian actors, bikini-clad extras and tropical scenery. Whatever else it was or was not, the descriptor “picturesque” always fit..

Natural Social Distancing

The New York Times runs a story of rich Europeans heading for their second homes in the countryside to escape the Covid-19 pandemic, echoed on msn.com. Don't be surprised if Americans do likewise, many New Yorkers have been reported going to Florida. Leaving town has been a smart thing to do to avoid disease for at least several hundred years.

The DrsC live in rural settings most of the year and drive a distance that ranges between 7 and 16 miles to get our mail, groceries, and fuel. Social distancing describes our life. The exception to rural living is when we're on a cruise ship, something we normally do twice a year for 2-4 weeks each time (N.B., our spring cruise this year, to Hawaii, has been cancelled).

Cruise ship life resembles urban life. Small, densely clustered cabins, restaurant meals, shared dining tables, elevators, crowded theaters, night club-like bars with entertainment - it's the urban luxury hotel experience. And no surprise, when we do catch a cold or get a cough, it is normally on shipboard. This has happened often enough that I've considered refusing to cruise but realized the other DrC would just leave me home.

The Covid-19 pandemic could enhance the desire to escape urban living, and telecommuting makes that choice possible for increasing numbers of professionals. The best part - a trend to rural living will drive urban planners bonkers.

Our Inflection Point

Writing at The Hill, Grady Means looks beyond the Covid-19 pandemic and asks what will post-pandemic America look like, how will it differ? He doesn't claim to know for sure where we're headed, but poses some interesting possibilities.

The pandemic has made the shift to online retail permanent and decisive. Medical and legal professionals, bankers and nearly every other service sector have learned to work from home, suggesting a permanent, low-overhead model for many. Distance learning will grow and there will be more focus on telemeetings, as the structure of work changes.

Telemedicine, distance learning, emergency response, telecommuting, even tele-socializing will all expand after this crisis.

America may be shifting toward what Trump might call “nationalistic globalism.” All of this, in the end, is a huge blow to U.S.-China trade relations.

Biosecurity will be on everyone’s mind. Other types of security will move to the fore, including cybersecurity, grid security (EMP hardening), emergency response and communication systems, and dominating space.

Our early 21st century has found its "black swan" event, its inflection point. We have to step up and, in words I used in a quite different context nearly 50 years ago, "Cope, damn it."

Reconsidering the Market

Normally, I favor market mechanisms over central planning, hands down. OTOH, the current Covid-19 challenge makes us consider some of the market's drawbacks in a challenging world.

Market forces tend to cause one to procure things from whoever will produce them to an acceptable quality level and timeline most cheaply. We've been following that model with China, a nation whose behavior indicates they view us both as a major customer and as a hostile rival for world hegemony. Perhaps we should rethink this policy.

Much of what we purchase from China is things we can do without, things which we use for a season or a year, wear out, and discard, like t shirts and toasters. Things we consume but could substitute for, or produce ourselves. I have no problem with our continuing to purchase them from the lowest bidder, often China.

When we start single-sourcing things from China without which we cannot easily survive or thrive, like semiconductors used in military applications or antibiotics or rare earth minerals, we hand our primary opponent a weapon it can easily deploy against us. This we must not do.

Suppose it is the case China will sell these essential items to, for instance, Peru or Ireland or Chad more cheaply than we can produce them in North America. So what? Many nations with few international responsibilities can buy from the lowest bidder, or maintain a lame military, and in doing so run little risk. The U.S. cannot, we have too much to lose, our responsibilities are too great.

I begin to see in several of his comments that the trans-ideological truth of this strategic dilemma has impressed itself upon President Trump. It is my hope that, after the pandemic crisis is past, he will undertake a revision in U.S. make-or-buy policies with preserving our national independence of action as a primary goal.

Plague Diary

Today we get to venture off our mountaintop as the other DrC has a routine medical thingy - nothing to do with Covid-19. While in town we can collect our mail, which has been accumulating in the PMB. Staying home gets old after a few days, more so than I realized would be the case.

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I’ve been wondering when TP and other paper products - tissues, paper towels - will once again be routinely available in markets? Will their reappearance be the signal that the panic is over? I suspect I will view it that way. Somebody should start a pool for predictions of the first routine, non-rationed, non-intermittent availability of TP.

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During our 2 months in SoCal we watched the entire 8 seasons of Game of Thrones, most evenings seeing 2 episodes. It was our first experience with GoT.

During the quarantine we’ve been rewatching it, seeing things we missed on the first pass because we didn’t recognize their significance as they were happening. One thing that strikes me on the second pass is the unremitting nastiness of life in the feudal period. Only the 1% lived anything approaching what we think of as a reasonable life.

After rewatching GoT Season One we’ve had to take a break and see some lighter stuff. Unremitting Middle Ages grimness was getting depressing as a companion to today’s nightly plague news.

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Will Covid-19 will make Americans pay attention to the annual death rate from flu-like illnesses? It turns out we’ve been ignoring it in much the same way we ignore the thousands of highway fatalities each year, as something that almost always happens to unknown others. Having experienced flu several times in a long life, I know it is no joke and thoroughly unpleasant.

An Attention-Getting Event

Michael Auslin of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University writes for RealClearPolitics that China's cover-up of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan province may well be seen by historians as marking the clear beginning of a new Cold War between the U.S. and China. I believe Auslin oversimplifies.

I see parallels between the role of the current pandemic situation vis-a-vis China, the role of the Berlin blockade in formalizing the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, and the role of 9-11 in formalizing the U.S.-Militant Islam Long War. Let me explain.

In each of these cases, the conflict was already ongoing. Cold War with the Soviets began as hostilities ended in Europe, during the Truman administration. The Long War with political Islam dates back at least to the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. You could even argue it dates back to "the shores of Tripoli" the Marines sing about, which happened during the Jefferson presidency. And our conflict with China has flickered off and on since the Korean War.

What all three events have in common is that they captured the attention of everyday Americans who pay little attention to what happens overseas until it affects them personally. Each of these was a wake-up call to the American man-and-woman-in-the-street.

You can argue, as Auslin seems to, there is no Cold War, no Long War, until everyday Americans recognize it has begun. For those of us who pay attention to overseas happenings, it isn't that simple or clear-cut. These things build up slowly until a splashy event gets the public's attention. Covid-19 may well be that attention-getting event with China.

More Plague Diary

I cannot track down where I read it but someone commenting on the high Covid-19 mortality rate in Italy noted the following. The statistics show most of those deaths were the elderly who were sick already with more than one pre-existing condition.

This person then wrote we'll need to compare the death rate of this year with previous years to determine if Covid-19 actually caused deaths that would not otherwise have occurred. His/her point was that many who may have otherwise died of pneumonia (aka "the old man's friend") or flu are being listed, fairly or unfairly, as Covid-19 fatalities.

Therefore, to the extent to which the 2020 Italian death rate exceeds the average of the previous 5 years death rates, to that extent Covid-19 was something extraordinary and dangerous. Their further point: it may be that we've overreacted or perhaps not, when available the data will answer the question.

Within limits, overreaction is probably safer than under reaction. I'm not arguing for, or personally taking, half measures.

Exurbia: The New Hotness

COTTonLINE's favorite demographer, Joel Kotkin, weighs in with an article for Quillette in which he celebrates the death of the obsession with urbanization, a demise he believes the Covid-19 pandemic will only accelerate. His assessment of where we are now:

Developers became adept at building cities—even in the tropics—but it seems clear they have not been able to stop the revival of old hygiene problems. This is particularly true in China, which has undergone extraordinarily rapid urbanization. Behind the impressive setting of China’s high-rise cities, many urban residents, particularly some of the 200 million migrant workers, live in overcrowded neighborhoods with poor sanitation and drinking water.

Even once clean Western cities are passively developing ways to incubate pestilence. Homeless encampments are on the rise throughout Europe, but the problem is most acute in American cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. These informal settlements attract rats and all sorts of diseases, some of which, such as typhus, are distinctly medieval and arguably far more dangerous than COVID-19.

Once held up as a grand ideal, the megacity is increasingly losing its appeal as a way of life. (snip) Even without government assistance, and often in the face of opposition from planners, dispersion has continued to characterize Western cities. This pattern is well-established throughout Europe, Canada, and Australia and is particularly evident in the United States where, since 2010, nearly all population growth has occurred in the urban periphery and smaller cities.

And his hope for where current trends, with luck and Covid-19, could take us:

Dispersion might offer a sunnier scenario, with people spread out across different regions. Property would be far less expensive and accessible to the middle classes. Larger living space could be ideally configured from home-based work that would bring back the family-oriented capitalism of the early modern era. Rather than bringing us to a high-tech Middle Ages, we could use this crisis to develop a new and more human economic and social model that combines a cosmopolitan outlook with a better, and safer, way of life.

I like the sound of the possible future Kotkin describes. Maybe it is the current situation's silver lining?

Plague Diary

Nothing like a pandemic to drive politics off the front pages, eh? A couple of months ago we were all involved with politics, then it went away. Will it return? Only if/when the pandemic subsides.

So many things are on hold - politics, sports, school, work (for many), vacations, weddings, etc. A truly life-and-death situation tends to put other things into perspective, as in “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And guess what, it’s mostly small stuff.”

Apocalyptic fiction has been popular ever since Nevil Shute’s On The Beach. I wonder what living through the experience - vicariously or for real - will do to demand for this niche genre? Maybe nothing.

Noting New Orleans is a new Covid-19 hot spot, some writers have indicated this shows warm weather will not cause it to pull back. I disagree, the average highs and lows during Mardi Gras are cool enough for the spread of most flu-like diseases, of which Covid-19 is one. NOLA doesn’t start to get hot until May.

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Later ... Wow, I normally pay attention to the four ‘corners’ of the calendar, the two equinoxes and two solstices. This pandemic has so swallowed the news cycle I let the spring equinox slip past unnoticed and unremarked. Allow me to correct that oversight.

This year the spring equinox, the day on which there are 12 hours each of day and night, occurred on March 19, and yes, that is early. The last time it occurred this early was 124 years ago in 1896, per The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Why is this so? CNN reports:

It involves how leap years, leap centuries, the Gregorian calendar and the speed of the Earth's rotation don't precisely align and how and when we make periodic adjustments to sync things up as much as possible.

Welcome to springtime, let’s hope we all survive it. Our current situation doesn’t inspire the customary spring optimism, does it?

Fauci Would Try Chloroquine

Lucianne.com links to a Breitbart Politics article which includes the transcript of a radio interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci who has been on TV with President Trump every recent evening explaining the medical/ epidemiological view of Covid-19. Dr. Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

CHRIS STIGALL:If you’re a doctor listening to me right now and a patient with coronavirus feels like they want to try [Chloroquine] and you’re their doctor, you’re not Anthony Fauci the guy running the coronavirus task force, would you say ‘alright, we’ll give it a whirl’?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Yeah, of course, particularly if people have no other option. You want to give them hope. In fact, for physicians in this country, these drugs are approved drugs for other reasons. They’re anti-malaria drugs and they’re drugs against certain autoimmune diseases, like lupus. Physicians throughout the country can prescribe that in an off-label way. Which means they can write it for something it was not originally approved for. People do that all the time, and it really is an individual choice between the physician and his or her patient as to whether or not they want to do that.

IOW, it probably won't hurt and it could help. Now I see where President Trump's optimism about Chloroquine comes from.

Actually, it appears doctors are Rxing Chloroquine in combination with Azithromycin, aka Z-Pak. A month from now we'll have a better idea if the combination works.

China’s Sub-Western Health Practices

Twelve days ago COTTonLINE wrote about China's "cultural indifference to microorganisms" and called China "an enormous Petri dish." At today's Instapundit, guest blogger Stephen Green writes:

We once might have smugly laughed off China’s wet markets as a Third World aberration, a medieval leftover, somehow still lingering around as a quaint vestigial bit of Chinese culture in a rapidly developing country. What we’ve learned in recent months however is that those wet markets are an even more serious security risk than Osama bin Laden looking for American flying schools from his computer in a secret location somewhere in Afghanistan. The viral threat emanating from China’s sub-Western health practices has at least an outside chance of killing more American civilians than soldiers have died in all of our wars.

COTTonLINE is happy to see others picking up this thread. The DrsC have repeatedly seen these risky practices in person, most recently in booming Shanghai ... they are no joke.

Plugging, Banning Equally Crazy

President Trump has been on TV saying nice things about the promise of anti-malarial drugs in treating the Covid-19 virus. Meanwhile Nevada's Democrat Governor Sisolak has banned their use in treating the disease in his state.

I'm not clear how either of these worthies knows anything useful about anti-viral drug therapies. The medical people who know won't say much, and we end up with politicians plugging or banning therapies ... how is this useful?

I am entirely disinterested in the views of either gentleman about matters on which they demonstrably know no more than I. At least President Trump has a cadre of qualified people to advise him on such matters. Does a NV governor? It seems unlikely.

Politicians pontificating about medical technicalities make as little sense as show biz freaks trying to instruct us about politics. Neither deserves an audience when they stray beyond their job descriptions which, for presidents and governors include exhorting us to follow safe sanitary practices and informing us about their activities to help the medical folks care for us.

Media, Lame Stream Division

Instapundit cites a highly biased CBS News story and characterizes it ... accurately. First, the CBS headline:

Arizona man dies, wife ill after taking drug touted as virus treatment: "Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure."

And Glenn Reynolds' characterization of this crappola story:

It’s not a “drug touted as virus treatment.” It’s fish tank cleaner, with warning labels, containing an ingredient that sounds similar.

Press: Want people to stop thinking you’re garbage? Stop being garbage. And CBS, you’re garbage for running this story with this headline. Absolute garbage. And you don’t care, and we all know why.

CBS is peddling propaganda, thinly disguised as news. I'm certain George Orwell didn't intend 1984 as a "how-to" book.

Tentative Good News, Continued

As a probable result of the House/Pelosi reversal described below, the Daily Mail (U.K.) reports the Dow industrials climbed 2000 points, its best day since 1933. Dysfunctional government is definitely not what markets wish to see.

John Hinderaker of Power Line writes:

One can only imagine how bad the Democrats’ polling must have been to cause such a hasty retreat. The Democrats had no one behind them except their most extremist supporters, like the New York Times.

I imagine people were asking Democrats, "Holding up government aid to pass the Green New Deal is worth exactly how many American lives? Does that include my mother?"

Tentative Good News

It appears Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats took considerable justified flak for their Green New Deal/pork-laden Covid-19 bailout bill. It is reported this morning at JustTheNews that Pelosi has backed down, they write:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she will attempt to pass the Senate's coronavirus economic stimulus package – putting aside the alternative, projected $2.5 trillion measure that she proposed.

The California Democrat said she'll try to pass the Senate's projected $1.8 trillion measure by unanimous consent, meaning House members can say yes without having to come to Capitol Hill to vote.

What we don’t yet know is whether the Pelosi “attempt” will be successful. One supposes any single firebrand House member could object and kill the supposed “unanimity.” Let us hope her “attempt” is not mere alibi creation, a real possibility.