Why Data on Coronavirus Sucks

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By Peter Zeihan on March 27, 2020 @ Zeihan on Geopolitics

Throughout media of all forms, we are hungry for information on coronavirus. Some of this is a flat out are-we-doing-better-or-worse-than-they-are, but most of it is simply to try to put what we know into some sort of context that is relevant to our lives.

None of us have much luck with that.

In part it is the nature of data collection during crisis period. Most health care professionals are more interested in saving the life in front of them than typing data into a spreadsheet. But mostly it is because all data is a product of its local circumstances:

In China, even before one considers political motivations, the system strongly discourages the passing on of bad news. As concerned as the Communist Party is with its international image, it is far more concerned with domestic popular responses to continued negative news. That and the Chinese government has a, shall we say, fluid relationship with data. And yet to this point data out of China is still the only large data set on coronavirus infections we have.

I’ve been waiting for some time for South Korea – a country with a great health care system and a strong respect for the application of science. Unfortunately, their “epidemic” is nothing of the sort.

Until very recently, half of South Korea’s cases could be traced back to a single megachurch. It’s very useful as a cluster study and wow does it underline the impact of early, wide-spread testing, but it really isn’t the sort of broad-reach dataset that involves multiple regions and age groups that I was hoping to be able draw conclusions from.

Even “worse” most of Korea’s cases at that church involved young people. Their preponderance in the data skews Korea’s mortality data down significantly, so don’t fool yourself. The Korean experience to date of low mortality is not attainable for the United States because it hasn’t been a true broad-based epidemic.

Data out of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are similarly less than useful as their systems were so strongly proactive that none of the three ever really had epidemics to study.

Next up is Italy, where the local health system was simply overwhelmed unexpectedly. By the time the Italians realized what was happening, hospitals were overflowing. That prevented meaningful testing regimens anywhere outside of the hospitals themselves. Since the virus tends to trigger more severe cases in older patients, only about 10% of Italy’s confirmed cases were in people under age 40, while 70% are among those over age 50. That’s hardly representative.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Italy’s data shows a death rate far above that of anywhere else. Italy is only now – in the fourth week of their epidemic – doing any significant testing outside of hospitals. So don’t overly fret. While South Korea’s low mortality figures are not America’s future, neither are Italy’s high ones.

All these countries’ experiences hold lessons for all of us, but what they do not hold are clear points of comparison. All the data must be absorbed within the context of which it was produced, in addition to being understood at a specific moment in time. (For the purposes of this post, the data in question is all from March 26.)

We still don’t have a reasonable understanding of the American data because we simply don’t have enough, but we are getting there. As of March 27 the United States has the results from over 500,000 tests, but as of March 19 we had only completed 100,000. The US is only now beginning to get its first look at viral penetration in its primary centers of inflection – and only its primary centers of infection. Testing will continue to increase rapidly both in number and in geographic reach, but kinks in the supply chain remain. Progress will not be in a straight line.

Which means the best comparative data the United States is likely to get before the epidemic washes over the country will be out of Spain and France, a pair of countries who had enough forewarning to begin at least some sporadic testing before their health systems were hit hard. Their data may be the best available, but as their epidemics are likely to occur no more than two to three weeks ahead of America’s, there will not be much time to parse and draw lessons from it. And none of it will be of use to New York City, which appears likely to suffer its heaviest caseloads right along with the Spanish and French.
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The Plan

By Rich Kozlovich

Just like Stalin always had a five year plan to prevent starvation, so too must the Democrats have a plan to fix pandemics.  Don't they?

What’s would be in the Democrats plan?  Will it be the same plan they adopted when they did nothing regarding the pandemics during the Obama administration?  That was mostly doing nothing while talking big, which pleased the media to no end.

But, I’m sure they have a plan.  Maybe one just like Obamacare. That was the plan Nancy said had to be passed in order to see what’s in it.

Their pandemic prevention and reduction plan must be in the planning stages, and once the planning stage is complete, they will have some idea what can be done, or if anything should be done. Until then, the current plan is to attack Trump for doing something, undermine the nation’s economy, and refuse to agree to anything unless their left wing agenda is adopted.

However, once the plan is in print, they can promote the plan. A plan based on science. It will fix global warming, it will ensure abortion on demand, it will give billions to their followers, it will be a multilateral, multigenerational, multigender, multicultural, race based plan.

Do you like some of the things Trump is doing? That’s okay, since they will say they will do those things also, but they’re going to change those things and do them better. Or, maybe nothing at all. Especially if actually doing something puts the nation back to work without nationalizing America’s businesses.

How will they do that? That’s being planned by brilliant minds. It’s ever evolving, ever changing, fully attuned to the latest philosophical flavor of the day in order to please everyone, and most importantly, to please the most radical party members, assuring Democrat party rule.

Their own Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, will keep you all updated, on the Black Plague, or whatever the current crisis is. Really, he’s right on top of this.  Joe knows all of this is because of Global Warming, fracking, anti-abortionists, racism, homophobia, immigration and not enough taxes and regulations.

They will do more, much more, with much more, even if it means doing nothing. But make no mistake about this. The plan cares about the average American. Of course, just because Stalin’s plans starved tens of millions of Russians to death doesn’t mean the Democrat plan will be that bad.

You know how much they care about the American people

Coronavirus, the Europe Guide

by Peter Zeihan on March 26, 2020  @ Zeihan on Geopolitics

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In the age of coronavirus, Europe’s near-term future is bleak.

European headlines in coming weeks will be about coronavirus deaths. In large part the issue is demographic. Coronavirus is far more likely to kill those over aged 60. The average European is approximately a half-decade older than the average American. Only the Japanese are older.

Specifically, Italy hosts the world’s second-oldest population, while Germany ranks 5th. Meanwhile, many of the “new” European countries in Central Europe are not all that much younger, while also lacking German- or Italian-quality health care. Others, Ireland, Greece and Spain come to mind, have had to deal with financial crisis by cutting services. Services like health care. The United Kingdom, courtesy of the dual forces of Brexit and coronavirus, are seeing many health care professionals who are not UK citizens but who were able to work in the UK during the Kingdom’s EU membership, fleeing back to their home countries at the worst possible time.

  

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The demographic issue will hurt Europeans on more than simply mortality figures.

People under 45 tend to be a society’s big spenders. They buy cars and homes. They go to university. Such consumption is what drives most modern economies. But not in Europe. Europe’s young cadre is thin and getting thinner by the year. Most European countries – Italy and Germany most notably – have already aged to the point that any sort of demographic rebound is now impossible. They simply don’t have enough people who could even theoretically have children. There certainly aren’t enough people of the right age demographic to drive a consumption-driven rebound.

Which makes mitigating the economic damage of coronavirus structurally impossible. The sort of consumer stimulus which is the backbone of consumer-focused, anti-recession efforts in the United States simply wouldn’t work in Europe. On the whole, the European Union has aged into being little more than an export union. And in a time of global travel restrictions and virus-forced collapses in income and consumption, there just isn’t anyone to export to. All Europe can do is shelter in place, pray their health systems hold, and wait for the world to restart. So long as the coronavirus is impinging activity anywhere, a sustained European economic recovery is impossible.

But even if Europe had a favorable population structure, it lacks the institutional structure to hold the line against the virus anyway. It comes down to money.

Having its own currency enables the United States to print however much money it wants to risk, using that money to fund its own deficit spending. Neither W Bush nor Obama nor Trump would ever be confused with fiscal conservatives, but even now at the very beginning of the process we are seeing spending bloat unprecedented in American history – even at the height of World War II. By the second week of April, the Americans will have pumped over $2 trillion in financial relief into their system, or roughly 10% of GDP, in addition to monetary stimulus of a volume that stuns the imagination. The current spending wave has already seen the Federal Reserve hoover up over $1 trillion in securities, while the federal government is putting up to $1200 into the hands of the vast supermajority of American adults, with a $500 kicker for each child. Nor will this be the last such infusion. Expect another one sometime in the summer.

Europe lacks that sort of power and flexibility.

Part of the network of treaties that underpin the common European currency mandates not only fairly strict deficit ceilings (although those ceilings were suspended over the weekend) but far more importantly the Maastricht Treaty on Monetary Union took monetary responsibility out of member governments’ hands. European states can’t print currency. If they want to deficit spend, they have to raise the funds themselves. That takes time. That takes investors willing to put their money into governments’ hands.

Now technically, the European Central Bank can expand the money supply, and it will, but there are two problems. First, Europe never truly recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. Eurozone interest rates have been negative for years. What about unconventional measures? Much ballyhoo has been made in the United States about how the Federal Reserves purchased scads of bonds to prop up markets, purchases which peaked at just shy of 25% of GDP at the height of the financial crisis. The ECB’s balance sheet as of January 1, 2020, after a decade of calm and before coronavirus erupted, was twice that in relative size. It isn’t clear the ECB has much ammo to use here, conventional or unconventional.

Second, any ECB action raises the issue of whose bonds will the ECB buy? Will it be the country with the most likely chance of repayment (Germany), or the country facing the worst health crisis today (Italy), or the country likely to see the highest death rate (Spain), or the country in the worst financial position (Greece)?

Every time the Europeans face any sort of question that bridges the monetary and the budgetary, the eurozone finance and prime ministers have to meet to hash out their disagreements in marathon negotiating sessions that take days (if not months). In times of calm this is a questionable system which often borders on the comical. In times of crisis it is really really really really stupid.

It shows in the outcomes. During the 2008 financial crisis the Americans did more mitigation in three weeks than the Europeans did in nine years. This time around, the Americans did more in 48 hours than they did during the entire financial crisis.

The funding America’s Small Business Administration made available to provide bridge financing for America’s small businesses is a case in point. On day one $50 billion was unleashed, with another $350 billion to be available by April 1. The EU has no such established facility. Individual European governments are scrambling to raise the necessary cash for their own small businesses. Weaker EU states are unlikely to be able to raise the requisite funds without raiding their already rickety banks. With quarantines in place, entire countries shut down. Add in Europe’s far less flexible labor market and a workforce which remains wedded to old-style set-location facilities means European firms have more need for bridge financing than American ones, yet even Europe’s capacity to provide that financing is far lower.

Europe today is just getting going with its Rube-Goldberg-like-decisionmaking machine, and this time around coronavirus quarantines prevent the European leadership from even meeting in person to hash out a plan. The only European leader with gravitas, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is in isolation due to potential coronavirus exposure.

Which means “Europe” cannot be part of the mitigation process.

That leads us six places, none of which are good. First, European investors know all this and they aren’t flooding their money into European assets. Instead, it’s a massive flight to US dollar assets. Expect the USD to continue to rise throughout the crisis.

Second, an exception to that rule will only increase the light between the various European governments. Germany, unlike most of Europe, has steadily whittled away at its debt levels to the point that pre-crisis there was a shortage of high-quality, low-risk government debt on European financial markets. With Germany loosening the purse strings, investors will purchase German debt. It is the bulk of the rest of Europe that’s likely to be shunned. Deep, visceral splits between how the Germans and the bulk of the Union viewed finance existed before coronavirus.

Debates on the topic are already taking on the stench of desperation. On March 25 the leaders of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Belgium and Greece (aka countries who consistently find balancing their checkbooks difficult) called upon the EU to issue a joint debt instrument to deal with coronavirus. Germans are likely to have a different opinion.

Third, when the scale of the capital flight and budgeting shortfalls becomes apparent, when European governments realize the money they need to try to save their systems is leaving, they will take action. Expect strict European capital controls at all levels. (China of course already has capital controls. Expect them to intensify.)

 

Fourth, the controls won’t be nearly enough. Even if the Europeans could prevent capital from leaving, raising capital to fund emergency spending the old-fashioned way isn’t as quick or effective as the American method of simply flipping the switch on the printing press. Firms would fold in the thousands, and the damage will not be limited to the small players. To stave off the subsequent economic and cultural carnage, expect mass nationalizations throughout European economies. Unsurprisingly, the French are already discussing the mechanics of how to manage this. Peugeot, Renault and Airbus have already indicated they will fight the process (although they’d still love help with recapitalization and operating costs).

Fifth, this is likely the end of “European” manufacturing. The European manufacturing system, especially the German manufacturing system, is based on the free movement of goods, people and capital across borders. That simply isn’t possible in an environment of national quarantine, capital flight, capital controls and nationalizations. Post-crisis things will still be made in Germany and Bulgaria and Sweden and so on, but not all that much is likely to be the result of a multi-national European supply chain.

This is doubly problematic in the short term as most European countries lack even small pieces of the medical supply chain. While the US can retool and China can get back to work, many European states simply don’t have anything within their borders they can use.

The dream of Europe was that open borders would enable Europe to have economies of scale of the Chinese or American type. But these are still separate countries, and the utter inability of the EU to ride to the rescue leaves individual states more or less on their own at the worst possible time. Germany, for one, is a major exporter of medical equipment, and it has already barred exports of many coronavirus-related materials. Even to its EU partners. Many Europeans already resent Germans’ unwillingness to share their wealth. Imagine how refusal to share medical equipment will go over once the death toll gets seriously scary.

Sixth, this is the end of the European economic and social model, and it risks being the end of “Europe” as an entity.

•  Europe’s demographics make consumption-led growth impossible, even as coronavirus blocks export-led growth.
• The Americans were backing away from the global security rubric that makes Europe’s export-led growth model possible before coronavirus, and the virus is only accelerating America’s turning-inward.
• Europe lacks the institutional capacity to manage crisis response.
• Europe lacks the financial capacity to cope with the crisis, much less apply the sort of financial fire-hose the Americans did almost reflexively.
• Dealing with the virus’ spread has already forced the Europeans to abandon the free movement of people.
• Dealing with their financial shortfalls will force them to abandon the free movement of capital.
• Dealing with mass nationalizations and the loss of export markets will force them to abandon the free movement of goods.

That’s three of the four freedoms upon which modern Europe relies. The fourth freedom – movement of services – was largely something that only the UK cared about, and the Brits are gone.

There is one possible “solution” to these problems: drop the euro.

If the Maastricht Treaty were abrogated (or at least suspended) and national control over monetary policy reintroduced, individual European countries could then engage in unlimited quantitative easing, both to mitigate the current crisis and to help manage the subsequent damage and recovery. This would (obviously) hold (many) downsides, but if the goal is to have the necessary capital required to address the current crisis, this is the only path I see that still results in salvaging Europe’s current economic and social structure.

In theory, once coronavirus was in the rear-view mirror, Europe could go through the process of re-merging their currencies (perhaps this time without basket cases like Greece). Yes, I realize this would be monumentally messy, but we’re already in a world where economic and financial norms are in abeyance. Most of contemporary Europe’s “messes” require extensive multi-national negations. This “plan” has the advantage of countries doing things themselves.

Regardless of the path forward (or down) coronavirus is just the beginning of Europe’s problems. Demographics, economics, financials, supply chains, none of it works under coronavirus – and coronavirus is going to be with us until we either get a vaccine, herd immunity or mass serological testing, none of which is particularly likely to happen in 2020. Even then, it is far from clear that Europe has we know it can reconstitute in the world after coronavirus. And never forget that all Europe is not created equal. Germany is not France is not Italy is not Poland is not Sweden is not Portugal is not Romania.

An end to the concept of “European” being singular represents more than simply the return to the norm of European history, it removes one of the central pillars of the world we know. That cascading failure and the reordering to come will be a subject in subsequent installments in our Coronavirus Guides series.

And now the pitch: the Coronavirus Guides are our primer documents, intended not to finish the discussions of this or that topic, but to launch them. Contact us at Zeihan.com/consulting to inquire about rates and scheduling options for teleconferences, videoconferences and in-depth consulting calls.

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China Boomeranging

Its bad behavior in the wake of COVID-19 will leave it in its weakest global position in memory. And the U.S. will emerge stronger.

By Victor Davis Hanson March 17, 2020

Sometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously given the similar Chinese origins of the prior toxic SARS coronavirus and the resources of a Level 4 virology lab nearby.

Yet the government initially hid all that knowledge from its own people in particular and in general from the world at large. Translated into American terms, that disingenuousness ensured that over 10,000 Chinese nationals and foreigners living in China flew every day on direct flights into the United States (Washington and California especially) from late November to the beginning of February, until the Trump travel ban of January 31.

All this laxity was also known to the Communist apparat in Beijing, which must have been amused when Trump was roundly damned by his liberal critics as a xenophobe and racist for finally daring to stop the influx on January 31 — the first major leader to enact such a total ban.

Yet, no thanks to the Chinese, America, so far, has been comparatively lucky — despite the grave risks of damaging a multi-trillion-dollar economy with the strictest quarantining, isolation policies, and social distancing in its history. Half the country lives in the interior away from ports of entry on the coasts. Medical care, sanitation, hygiene, and meat markets operate on different premises than in China, the supposed fated global hegemon. Transparency in a consensual society together with a free-market economy is encouraging tens of millions of citizens to work in tandem and independently to figure out creative ways to ameliorate the epidemic, politically, medically, socially, and economically. The result is that as of mid-March, the U.S., the world’s foremost immigration destination and among the most visited of nations, had suffered fewer virus fatalities than some European countries a fifth or sixth of its population size.

No doubt when mass testing begins, the figures of known cases will soar, and fatalities will rise. Yet while we know pretty well the number of Americans who have died from the virus, we have in truth little idea of how many now carry it or how many have recovered from it, without knowing what sickened them or even whether they were ostensibly sick at all. In other words, the rate of new cases identified by testing may exceed the rate of new deaths, apprising us of a more precise — and perhaps lower — degree of viral toxicity. Whereas annual flu toxicity is adjudicated by modeling case numbers, and by sophisticated and learned guesses at the number of likely infections, so far the death rate of the coronavirus is calibrated a bit differently — apparently predicated both on known deaths and known cases. When we make facile comparisons between the flu and coronaviruses, they may prove valid, but for now it’s still wise to remember that annual flu cases could be fewer than what is guessed at through modeling each year, and corona infections may be higher than the current known numbers of confirmed positives. The former reality might mean that the flu is at times a little more lethal than we think and the corona virus a little less deadly. That is not to suggest that most strains of flu are as lethal as the coronavirus, only that for the vast majority of Americans the current U.S. COVID-19 case-to-fatality ratio of 2 percent may eventually prove less, and influenza’s commonly cited 0.01 lethality rate may prove higher. In any case, 98–99 percent of Americans may well recover from the coronavirus — a rate that is not typical of most of history’s plagues.

The realities are paradoxical: If the coronavirus infects as many Americans as an average flu strain, then ten times more Americans could die — mostly over the age of 65 — even as the vast majority of all Americans will not. Statistics change hourly, but the CDC as of the afternoon of March 16 reports that there are currently 3,437 cases of known coronavirus infections and 68 deaths attributed to the virus, or about two deaths per 100 infected — the majority of them again likely over 65.

To the degree that we are suffering death and economic hurt from COVID-19, we can also attribute the toll to the Chinese Communist Party. Had it just called in the international medical community in late November, instituted early quarantines, and allowed its own citizens to use email and social media to apprise and warn others of the new disease, then the world and the U.S. would probably not have found themselves in the current panic. The reasons China did not act more responsibly may be inherent in communist governments, or they may involve more Byzantine causes left to be disclosed.

Add in the proximity of a Level 4 virology lab nearby Ground Zero of COVID-19, which fueled Internet conspiracy theories; the weird rumors about quite strange animals such as snakes and pangolins birthing the infection in primeval open meat markets stocked with live animals in filthy conditions in cages; and pirated videos of supposed patients dropping comatose in crowded hospital hallways. With all of that, we had the ingredients of a Hollywood zombie movie, adding to the frenzy.

Plus, 2020 is an election year — echoing how the 1976 swine flu was politicized. The Left and its media appendages saw COVID-19 as able to do what John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe, the Mueller team, and impeachment could not: destroy the hated Trump presidency.

China will rue what it begat.

That is, it will come to appreciate fully that the supposed efficiency, ruthlessness, and autocracy of the Communist Party — what had so impressed foolish American journalists who once marveled at Beijing’s ability to enact by fiat liberal pet projects such as high-speed rail and solar industries — were China’s worst enemies, ensuring that the virus would spread and that China’s international reputation would be ruined.

The coronavirus could be the straw that breaks the proverbial back of the Chinese camel, stooped under the recent weight of a trade war with the U.S., the revelation of 1 million Uighurs in reeducation camps, the crackdown on Hong Kong democracy protesters, and news of the sprawling Chinese internal-surveillance apparat. The world is now both terrified and put off by China, and such anathemas will only harm its already suspect and misbegotten Silk Road neocolonial schemes.

Here in the U.S., COVID-19 will create bipartisan pressure to adopt policies of keeping key U.S. industries — such as medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and military applied high-tech — in America. Americans will not again wish to outsource the vast majority of their chemotherapy-drug, antibiotic, and heart-medicine production to a government that cannot be trusted and that sees such globalized output as a weapon to be used in extremis. Although we cannot see it now, spin-off effects from the panic and frenzy will eventually fuel more economic recovery. Oil prices are nearing record modern lows, ensuring cheap gas for spring and summer American drivers. Cheap mortgages and car loans likewise will spur buying, as will relief once the virus wanes and splurging ensue. It will be salutary for Americans to once again appreciate the value of muscular labor, as those who grow food, transport it, and provide us energy and sanitation while protecting us from danger, foreign and domestic, have allowed millions of Americans to stay home, sequestered and quarantined but safe with plenty of food, water, and uninterrupted sanitation and public safety. In these days of crisis, we should not forget that millions of often unmentioned Americans have made us the world’s greatest energy and most diverse food producer — a singular position that China, with over four times our population, envies.

Before the outbreak, China was trying to game its trade war in terms of how best to hurt the hated Trump administration. Ironically, its abhorrence only strengthened the U.S. in ways no one in the pre-COVID-19 days could have imagined.

Call it paradox, irony, karma, or even tragedy, but China emerges from its deceit about the coronavirus outbreak in its weakest position since its Westernization began under Deng Xiaoping. And the U.S., after some rocky months ahead, if it stays calm, will likely reemerge in its strongest state in memory vis-à-vis its rivals.

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. @vdhanson

Coronavirus in Perspective, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

I promised to get this out earlier in the week, but this has been a difficult article. I’ve had to check and re-check my information over and over again. Sorting it out and confirming the accuracy has been a real challenge.  I’ve found trying to present it in a readable. and reasonably short presentation to be mind boggling. That was the biggest difficulty, plus, there’s so much out here I found deciding what to include and how to correlate it difficult. 

I found an error in my first article (since corrected) where I said there were only four cases of Ebola in America, but there were eleven. The information I initially used was a bit misleading in the way the information was presented. However, only two did die, that remains true. But considering they predicted up to over a million cases and were really wrong, I think I can be forgiven.

What’s worse is I’m finding this pattern plays out in all the information about all the afflictions I’m highlighting. The numbers are all mixed. The more sources you read the more mixed they become, including all the information about this variety of coronavirus.

So, there may be some errors, and I’m sure there are, but they’ll be small, and won’t change the conclusions or the message, which is to demonstrate pandemics come and pandemics go. They’re never as bad as the experts predict, and no matter how severe they were, no one wanted to shut down the country until now.

We keep hearing how amazingly dangerous, and how infectious this version of coronavirus is, which there are 40 of them, with estimates and predictions that are frightening the public to the point of hysteria. Hysteria that’s created a new affliction called moronavirus!

How true is all of this doom and gloom we keep hearing and reading about? How does this compare with these other infectious diseases that afflict mankind yearly? Diseases that impact humanity worldwide, including America!

I’ll tell you what, let’s talk about them. Starting with:


Norovirus: Number nine on the chart.

Norovirus is considered a very contagious virus that causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, stomach cramps, fever, muscle pain and all round not feeling well.

Commonly called “flu-like” symptoms. It impacts people of all ages, and on average there are 20 million cases reported in the United States alone……every year! Furthermore, norovirus kills between 500 and 800 people……. every year! As for herd immunity, well, overall, we can’t really get herd immunity because there are so many types of norovirus.

Apparently, outbreaks are quite common, it’s quickly and easily spread through food, water, contact and contaminated surfaces. Norovirus runs its course from November to April. Whether you get it or not depends on your particular genetics.

Worldwide norovirus is in the top ten deadly infectious diseases, coming in at number 9, killing 548 people “each and every day” around the world.

Solutions regarding how to avoid it? The usual stuff we have been told to do for seasonal flu season. Practice proper hand hygiene, make sure of the water you’re drinking or cooking with, wash fruits and vegetables and cook everything, including seafood thoroughly, when you are sick do not prepare food or care for others, clean and disinfect contaminated surfaces, wash laundry thoroughly. But most importantly, if you’re sick, stay home. But no one suggested shutting down the country.

With some variations, this will be repeated as the “usual stuff” in this article.

Rotovirus: Number seven on the chart.

There are approximately three million cases in the United States every year with 95% of these cased infecting children five years old and younger, with the highest rate of incidence among children, infants really, between three to thirty five months old. It’s considered very contagious causing diarrhea vomiting, stool containing blood or pus, very high temperatures, lethargy, pain, dehydration, sleepiness or unresponsiveness, with 400,000 physician visits yearly.  With what most would consider “flu like” symptoms. But it’s deadly!

Rotovirus causes over 215,000 deaths a year worldwide, and because there are so many types of rotovirus, reinfections are not uncommon, and they can infect adults. It’s easily spread and remains infectious for weeks on surfaces that haven’t been disinfected. Two vaccines available but because there are many types of rotavirus, it's possible to be infected, and more than once, even if you've been vaccinated, although repeat infections are typically less severe. It’s number seven on the most deadly infectious diseases list. How to avoid this virus? The usual stuff, but no one suggested shutting down the nation!

Shigellosis: Number six on the chart.

Shigellosis isn’t a viral infection, it’s a bacterial infection, but it’s on the top ten deadly infectious diseases list at number six killing 1644 people worldwide every day, with infants and children being impacted the most.

It causes stomach pain, vomiting diarrhea, fever, blood in the urine, with 165 million cases occurring worldwide yearly, and 450,000 cases in the United States yearly. Often considered “flu like” symptoms.

As I said it impacts children mostly, especially those between six months old and five years old, but it has a ten percent mortality rate, and no known seasonality. Contaminated drinking water is the main source of infection, but in America we have treated water and yet still have 450,000 cases yearly, and has developed antibiotic resistance.

How to avoid it? The usual stuff, and make sure to drink bottled water when traveling and dispose of diapers properly. But no one suggested shutting down the country.

Ebola Virus: Number 24 on the chart.

We had eleven cases in 2014. Two who contracted it from outside the U.S. who died, and two contracted it from within survived. It’s listed as number 24 on the chart killing 5.3 people every day. How to avoid it? If you travel to countries where they have it, you can’t! The mortality rate can be over eighty percent.  But no one thought shutting down the country was a solution. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) predicted a trajectory between 550,000 to 1.4 million cases by early the following year. What did they base this on? Computer modeling, but computer modeling is kind of like Game Boy science. You get out of it what you put into it."

SARS: Number twenty five on the chart.

SARS is a coronavirus, all of which are all zoonotic, starting in animals and migrating to people. It started in China and in 2003 infected a total of 8,096 people in 29 countries, with eight in the U.S. With an almost ten percent mortality rate, seven hundred and seventy four died but none of them in the U.S. The estimated word wide cost? Forty billion.

How to prevent it? The usual stuff, but no one suggested closing down the nation to prevent it.

MERS: Number twenty six on the cart

It’s called the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome for a good reason. In 2012 Saudi Arabia first reported it. It’s considered deadly with a thirty five percent mortality rate. The World Health Organization has counted nearly 2,500 cases of MERS in the Middle East and beyond, and more than 850 deaths. Very few in the U.S.

How to avoid, it? First, stay out of the Middle East, otherwise, the usual stuff, and no one suggested shutting down the country.

Swine Flu (H1N1): Not even on the chart.

Swine Flu (H1N1) may have killed as many as 6000 people in the U.S. and infected somewhere between 14 and 34 million people. Big spread there. Computer modeling? And estimated 63,000 to 153,000 were hospitalized. More computer modeling?

How to avoid it? The usual stuff, but no one suggested shutting down the country. And in point of fact, Dr Fauci, who's so hot to shut down America, “in September 2009, after millions had become infected with the H1N1 influenza and thousands had died, some of whom were young people and children, a relaxed and unalarmed Dr. Anthony Fauci told and interviewer, that people just need "to use good judgment."  As one of my readers pointed out, he's typical of so many of these academic doctors.  Big on quoting other's work but weak on practical advice, as in synthesizing a response for a patient.

So, there was no need to shut down businesses all over the country for what at this point was a much more deadly infectious disease than the China virus, AKA Kung Flu, the current coronavirus?

Did I get that right?

Annual Flu Season: Number eight on the chart.

“While everyone is in a panic about the coronavirus (officially renamed 1COVID-19  by the World Health Organization), there's an even deadlier virus many people are forgetting about: the flu.

 Flu season is hitting its stride right now in the US. So far, the CDC has estimated (based on weekly influenza surveillance data) that at least 12,000 people have died from influenza between Oct. 1, 2019 through Feb. 1, 2020, and the number of deaths may be as high as 30,000.

The CDC also estimates that up to 31 million Americans have caught the flu this season, with 210,000 to 370,000 flu sufferers hospitalized because of the virus.”

So, how do we avoid it? The usual stuff, but no one ever suggests we shut down the country, and remember, this is year in and year out, why aren’t they shutting down the country every year?

So, where does the world stand right now? This page has counters for each category, go here to see the changes, currently, at 10:52 AM EST, 3/26/20. there are 491,623 cases, 22,169 deaths, and 118,245 recoveries.




Pandemics come and pandemics go, and in the last 75 years none of them were Spanish Influenza, the Black Death, and this isn't small pox, all devastating pandemics, all lasting for years and returning regularly.  The only cure was individual and herd resistance. 

Will there be another truly serious pandemic in the future.  Yes.  Will we be able to predict it? No!  Will we be able to stop it.  Most likely not!  Will a lot of people die?  Yes. 

But until then, this isn't going to be one of them, and when this is all over we're going to look around and ask:  Was that it?  Was that all there was?  Did we destroy our economy for this? 

The answer will be yes!

The next installment will deal with those responsible and what the consequences will be for the world, especially China.  Nothing is ever as it appears with China.  There's always a degree of speculation when dealing with anything coming out of China.  As for any official announcement from their government; I just assume they're lying.  All that's left to determine is to what degree.  It's part and parcel of their social paradigm going back through the centuries being ruled by the emperors and Mandarins.

We really need to get that!

Please enjoy my conronavirus series:

• Coronavirus: It's Howard Zinn's Fault
• Coronavirus in Perspective     
• Coronavirus in Perspective, Part II

Coronavirus, civil liberties, and public health

March 23, 2020 By Jim Pfaff

There are situations that defy our ability to maintain the constitutional order we treasure. A nuclear attack. Terrorists who use our freedoms as cover for their war against us. A pandemic may be such a circumstance. Our executive branch -- federal and state -- must be empowered to act decisively in an emergency. Throughout the Cold War it was assumed that the president had the power to order a cataclysmic nuclear strike against our enemies without consulting Congress or a court. The launch window might be only a few minutes; please God, let us be strong enough that no rational power ever places us in this horrifying scenario.

But where are the limits in a crisis where potentially substantial loss of life is spread out across the population and over time? Our Constitution was written in an age when epidemics were frequent and deadly yet it includes no clause for coping with widespread sickness.

The coronavirus is not Ebola or smallpox – and we are told it is not some sort of bioweapon from a hostile power. Its ability to kill (4.4% worldwide [i]; 1.3% in the US[ii]) is not as certain and gruesome as Ebola (50% die) or smallpox (30% die). Many people with COVID-19 remain asymptomatic or had no more ill effect than a bad cold while other people die from this mysterious illness.

Meanwhile, government at all levels is taking action that is devastating the economy and wreaking havoc on individual lives. About 100 people die everyday in automobile accidents. Nobody has yet demanded a nationwide speed limit of 10 miles per hour. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing to our society, to our economy, to our people. The CDC says that about 34,200 people died of influenza in the 2018-19 flu season. We didn’t bring the entire United States to a halt. Does COVID-19 and government’s reaction establish an untenable precedent?

The effort to limit COVID-19’s toll is an admirable goal. The means by which this is done is questionable. All across this republic, governors are acting -- often without consulting state legislatures or courts – on the advice of unelected health bureaucrats. Sick and elderly people in hospitals and nursing homes are denied the comfort of loved ones. Governors have signed enabling acts to take over private property, to close workplaces, to restrict the movement of individuals (who have not even been tested for illness), even limiting how many guests one can have in a private home. Courts in Washington state suspended jury trials, potentially violating the Fifth and Sixth Amendment. In Ohio, the governor and the state health director postponed the state’s primary in the middle of the night, despite state law mandating that this is a legislative decision. The Bill of Rights is one of the most severely weakened victims of the Coronavirus panic.

We may never know if this was a disease that leapt into life through the evolutionary process or if something nefarious was going on in a lab in Wuhan, or if just bad things happen sometimes. We do know the communist Chinese government remains totalitarian, willing to let many people die so it can hold on to the image of omnipotence that enables its grip on power. Through hideous malevolence or sheer incompetence, this is what totalitarian statists do, from Auschwitz to the Gulag, Chernobyl to Wuhan. The Xi Jinping regime is telling its people the U.S. is to blame. China must pay a price for its denial and dishonesty as this developed; openness and truth could have mitigated the spread of the disease. The blood of thousands is on their hands.

Undoubtedly America’s enemies are watching how we react, as a people and as a government, learning what shuts down the American economy. Freedom’s enemies are noting how easy it is to use fear of a barely understood illness to take away liberty..........To Read More.....

Time to Hold China Accountable for Unleashing Hell on the World

Communist regime engaged in a massive cover-up -- exposing the world to global pandemic and economic meltdown.    

Fri Mar 20, 2020  Ari Lieberman  132

Despite criticism from elements within the elitist establishment media and some radical progressives, President Donald Trump was correct to refer to the COVID-19 virus as a “foreign virus” or “Chinese virus.” Leading the charge of the president’s critics was none other than CNN’s Jim Acosta, who stated that reference to the virus as “foreign” may strike people as “xenophobic.”
In response, Fox’s Tucker Carlson accurately referred to Acosta as a “poisonous moron.” In fact, Carlson was being kind to Acosta, who works for an organization that has long abandoned actual journalism in favor of propaganda.

The Coronavirus, which has thus far killed at least 9,386 and infected 229,960 others, emerged from the city of Wuhan, which is the capital of Hubei province in the People's Republic of China. Chinese authorities were well aware that they had a pandemic on their hands way back in December but maliciously suppressed information about it.  Significantly, The Times of UK, citing a respected and independent Chinese publication, reports that in December Chinese labs identified the pathogen that caused viral pneumonia in patients infected with the coronavirus disease and described the pathogen as highly infectious. A regional health official in Wuhan ordered the compiled samples and related research destroyed. Chinese authorities belatedly acknowledged the highly infectious nature of the disease in late January.

When news of the Wuhan virus began to surface through desperate and often disquieting social media posts, the communist regime of the People’s Republic did what it does best and silenced those responsible for the posts by making them disappear. Needless to say, the regime deactivated their social media accounts as well.

China’s leader Xi Jinping does not handle criticism well. The latest victim of China’s crackdown on information is Ren Zhiqiang, outspoken property tycoon and government critic. After publishing an essay critical of the government’s handling of the outbreak, Ren Zhiqiang disappeared and has not been heard or seen since............To Read More....

Hillary’s Favorite Film is Turkish Gov Agitprop for Bin Laden Pal

Whitewashing anti-Semitim, Islamism, and hatred for America.

Thu Mar 19, 2020 Daniel Greenfield 13  

“If you haven’t seen The Dissident, I hope you will," Hillary Clinton told the folks at the Sundance Film Festival. The Dissident is Sundance's hottest documentary. It's also Turkish government propaganda.

Hillary's comments at Sundance exposed a chunk of the fake news problem surrounding The Dissident.  "We just learned about the pacing of malware on Jeff Bezos' phone, ironically technology created in Israel and sold to the Saudi government," she falsely claimed.

Despite these false claims made by the Washington Post, a paper owned by Bezos, which has spread conspiracy theories trying to blame the exposure of his affair on entire countries, the actual report when reviewed by cybersecurity experts found no actual malware of any kind on the billionaire’s phone.............

There are actual dissidents and actual journalists in prison in Islamist tyrannies like Turkey. But instead of telling their stories, The Dissident and its director, Bryan Fogel, turned to Turkey’s Islamist regime. Bryan Fogel claims to care deeply about human rights. He cares so deeply that he ignored the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Turkey, journalists, judges, professors, and Kurds, to lobby the regime to help him make a propaganda flick about Khashoggi. Nor is Fogel at all ashamed of toadying to Turkey..........To Read More.....

The Temporary Tradeoff Between Health Outcomes and Economic Outcomes

March 24, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve discussed a bunch of coronavirus-related issues, ranging from big-picture topics such as the proper role of government and the catastrophic downsides of excessive bureaucracy to more-focused topics such as how gun control puts families at risk, why laws against “price gouging” are misguided, and how government-encouraged debt makes the economy more vulnerable.

The crisis even led me to unveil a new theorem. And I also shared some amusing cartoons in hopes of lightening the mood.

The latest chapter in the coronavirus saga is that people are beginning to question how much economic damage we should be willing to accept in order to get the disease under control.

 

Public health experts argue that isolation and lockdown are critical if we we to “flatten the curve” so that new cases don’t overwhelm the ability of the system to treat patients (thus resulting in unpalatable forms of triage, with older and sicker patients set aside to die so that limited resources can be utilized to save others).

But if the economy is put on hold for several months, the economic damage will be catastrophic. At some point, policy makers won’t have any choice but to relax restrictions on people and businesses.
So how do we assess the costs and benefits of various options?

Eline van den Broek-Altenburg and Adam Atherly, both from the College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, explain the necessary tradeoffs.

While a growing number of people are starting to understand the message of the intuitive picture of “Flattening The Curve”, some health economists are starting to wonder how flat the curve should actually be for the benefits to exceed the costs. …how does the economic cost of the flattening fit into the discussion? …we use publicly available data to calculate the cost effectiveness of the flattening the curve. …When considering the value of a healthcare intervention to inform decision-making, benefits are usually measured in terms of life years gained, with the life years adjusted for the “quality” of the life (using standard formulas) to create a “Quality Adjusted Life Year” or QALY. …interventions in younger populations will typically yield more QALYs than interventions in older populations: because younger people have longer life expectancy. …Heath systems then compare the QALYs gained to the cost and calculate a cost per QALY gained. In the United States, interventions that cost less than $100,000 per QALY gained are often considered “cost effective,” although the precise number is somewhat controversial.

What you just read is the theoretical framework.

The authors then apply the model to the current situation.

…is the current “stay at home” and social isolation-policy, with school closed and businesses shuttered, cost effective using the standard health economics framework? …The years of life-gains are relatively straightforward. …statistics on the people who died of COVID19 in China and Italy are the best source of currently available data. …The average 80-year old in the United States has a life expectancy of about 9 years, suggesting that on average, a death averted will “buy” 9 extra years of life. …If we use diabetes as a reasonable proxy for the many chronic diseases, we would adjust the 9 years down to 7.8 years or QALYs. In other words: the average loss per person of quality-adjusted life years is 7.8. …This implies the pandemic, if unchecked, will lead to a loss of between 1.56 million and 13.26 million QALYs. …What, then, is the cost of the intervention of social distancing? One easy estimate would be to use the cost of the current stimulus bill before congress — 1 trillion dollars. This is likely an underestimate of the true cost, but is a reasonable starting place. …the cost per QALY gained from the current approach to be somewhere between approximately $75,000 and $650,000.

So what’s the bottom line?

Here’s a graphic they prepared.


And here’s their explanation.

…the key variable is the expected number of deaths. A pandemic that is likely to lead to 1.7 million deaths can justify the enormous public costs. However, if the pandemic is in the lower end of the predicted range, then the public funds would have been more valuable if spent elsewhere. …Some claim it is impossible or even unethical in times of a crisis, to think about cost when lives are involved. But in a world of finite resources, it’s necessary to make choices. Why not use a framework that has been defended by governments and scientists for decades?

Richard Rahn, former Chief Economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is very explicit about the downsides of an economic shutdown for future generations.

Some government officials, politicians and commentators keep saying words to the effect, “we need to spend whatever it takes to stop the coronavirus deaths.” They, of course, do not literally mean the government should spend an infinite amount of money to save a life — because, if they did, we would not let people drive more than five miles an hour in order to save more than 35,000 Americans who die on the roadways each year. …What is missing in this discussion is what American taxpayers and workers in terms of job losses should spend to save each life… Such calculations are necessary for insurance companies to price their products correctly, and for all of those government agencies involved in health and safety to determine both the proper form and degree of regulation. …If we learn that a 35-year-old MD has unexpectedly passed away, we are likely to feel far worse about the tragedy than if we hear her 90-year-old grandfather has died.

That’s Richard’s conceptual framework.
Here are his calculations.

Let’s assume that the low-cost measures will result in 50,000 more deaths (which is almost certainly on the very high-side given the experience of other countries). If we value the average death at…$2,000,000 figure… (which is high, because of the advanced age of most of the coronavirus victims), then policies that cost taxpayers, and the hit to GDP, more than $100 billion are counterproductive. Even if you assume that my figures are off by a magnitude of three, the mitigation policies should not cost more than $300 billion — not trillions.

Jeffrey Polet, a political scientist at Hope College, also explores the adverse consequences of an economic lockdown.

A panicking public will produce bad consequences, and we are already seeing its destructive effects on our economy. …While the elderly and infirm are the most vulnerable populations, small businesses, low wage laborers, and less healthy social institutions are the most likely to succumb to the economic consequences of the reaction to the virus. …The result will be, as we already see, a call for more government programs to aid those made destitute by the government’s reactions. …collective overreacting has profound social, economic, and political effects. …Good leadership neither overreacts nor under-reacts but reacts sensibly. …Calling something a “pandemic” excites public fear, even if the majority of the population is unlikely to be either directly or indirectly harmed. …For many people in this country, the prospect of losing their business or their job is far more frightening and harmful than the prospect of getting infected with the virus. An already insolvent government is hardly in a position to get this economy up and running, particularly if its policies create massive economic dislocations. …One of the appeals of utilitarianism is that it actually provides a functioning calculus, however imperfect in implementation.

I’ll close with the observation that I want to err on the side of public health in the short run, though I confess I’m not even sure what that means in terms of public policy since we not only need to agree on how much a life is worth (an unpleasant number to consider), but also get a handle on how many lives might be at risk (a very speculative number).

The goal of today’s column is simply to point out that the tradeoffs are real and to applaud the people who have the honesty to write about the issue.

In the long run, we should all appreciate the overlooked point that there is no tradeoff between health outcomes and economic outcomes.

That’s because wealthier societies are healthier societies. Here are a couple of chart from an article I wrote for the Journal of Regulation and Social Costs way back in 1992.

I’ve written about this correlation many times, both as a general concept, and also when addressing specific topics such as the adverse impact of President Obama’s anti-growth policies (and I cited one of Obama’s top economic appointees, Cass Sunstein, who explicitly agrees about the link between health and wealth).

P.S. There’s a very amusing Remy video about health-and-wealth tradeoffs at the end of this column.

Arming China -- The Bill Clinton Connection

We even sold them our factories.

Thu Mar 19, 2020 Michael Ledeen  70  

Conversations on social media are beginning to stress the urgency of reconsidering our relationship with the People’s Republic of China. It was only recently that most Americans discovered that most of our pharmaceuticals are manufactured in China, and that the Chinese are in a position to withhold them during an emergency of the sort we now face.

Recent stories have documented Chinese espionage, including the bribery of top American biochemists at places like Harvard, that entailed the constant travel of U.S. experts between China and the United States. Given the short memories of American political leaders, these stories have made it appear as though espionage is of very recent vintage.

But it is not so. The United States has been arming China for more than 20 years.

In the Spring of 1997, Stephen Bryen and I wrote a detailed account in Heterodoxy, a magazine edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, dealing with American export controls of militarily useful technology. It was entered into the Congressional Record by Tillie Fowler, a Florida representative.

The theme of the account was how the Clinton Administration was arming China. Knowingly and deliberately.

It is often said that, in the world of advanced technology, embargoes or export controls cannot possibly work, because if they don't get it from us, they'll get it from somebody else.  This is false. To compete with the U.S. militarily, China has to get our technology, and, most of the time, that means getting it directly from us.

Steve and I knew that Bill Clinton and his foreign policy team were busily arming Beijing, which in turn armed “rogue nations” such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Remember this all happened about 25 years ago. We noted that, on the one hand, it did make sense to sell a very limited amount of advanced military technology to the Communist Chinese, for example devices for nuclear safety, or for certain military systems with important civilian applications, such as satellite launchers. But the Clinton Administration was not doing that. Instead, it was executing a deliberate policy—apparently one that had full approval from the top levels of the Administration, despite the vigorous opposition from government agencies and from individual officials infuriated at the flow of top technology to China. This often took the form of selling off some of our finest factories to China, at pennies on the dollar, and included our finest supercomputers and the key element to modern jet engines, which had been blocked for export to the Soviet bloc.

The Pentagon redefined supercomputers as “civilian” products, and some 46 of them, including IBM, Convex (later, Hewlett Packard) and Silicon Graphics, were sold, many of them to the Chinese defense industry, or being put to use in nuclear weapons design...........To Read More...

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: March 23, 2020

By John Droz, Jr. -- March 23, 2020

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy, environmental and education policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every two± weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Dirty Secrets About the CLEAN Future Act
“Clean, renewable” energy is neither
Renewable Energy Industry Seeks to Scam Public During Health Crisis
The Great Wind Delusion
The conflict between wind turbines and wildlife
Nuclear is the solution – and SMRs are the future of nuclear
Putin takes aim at US shale oil industry
McKibben Goes Over the Edge for His Rockefeller Benefactors
No, Michael Mann, You Aren’t Going to ‘Ruin’ this ‘Filthy Organization’
Short video: No Data Required
Petition filed to Appeal the EPA’s Endangerment Finding
Short Video: How Bad is CO2?
About Immigration: Life in Denmark- Real food for thought
EPA: Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science
Short video: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?

COVID-19:Latest version: A Summary of Suggestions and Commentary for COVID-19
(Includes a one page doc: COVID-19: Prevention & Treatment Suggestions)
PLEASE PASS THIS ON WIDELY! 
 
Greed Energy Economics: Europe’s Green Suicide: Eleven Million Jobs At Risk From EU Green Deal
The Government’s energy policy could cripple global Britain
3± million seniors turn off heating as ‘they cannot afford energy bills’
Are wind farms better in theory than they are in practice?
Turbine battle heating up
Climate change activists calls for economic shutdown to decarbonize
Why Have Wind Energy Constraint Payments Spiked in 2020?
UK Govt Punishes Voters As Costly Climate Policies Drive Up Electricity Bills

Renewable Energy: Health and Ecosystem Consequences:The conflict between wind turbines and wildlife
What’s more important a lithium (for batteries) mine, or flowers?

Nuclear Energy:American Decade of Energy
One of the World’s Tiniest Nuclear Plants Is Coming to Idaho
Nuclear is the solution – and SMRs are the future of nuclear
US Federal Legislation Proposed: Nuclear Energy Research and Development Act

Natural Gas Energy:Putin takes aim at US shale oil industry
Price War on Oil Proves the Power of America’s Shale Revolution
Germany Proves How Essential Natural Gas Is – And The U.S. Must Supply
Study: Fracking Ban Could Cripple U.S.
The unholy crusade against gas appliances
“Fraccidents” Study Yet Another Case of Junk Science; More “Fracsearch”
Fracking in NM helps create jobs, lower carbon emissions
Hearing on LNG Terminal Plan for South Jersey
California Gas Bans Ensure Less Choice and Ever Higher Prices

NYS Energy:CLCPA Begins, But Some Advice Regarding the Baloney
Legislators, officials ‘outraged’ by Cuomo power site plan
Cuomo fast-track for green energy projects gets pushback on LI
Editorial: Push for more control of energy projects troubling
Editorial: Cuomo picks developers over residents in siting energy projects
Short video: Cuomo’s Shock Troops
Archive: Monsters on the Ridge
Before raising taxes, NY Democrats should check out these numbers
Governor’s energy proposal poses threat to municipalities
Erie County’s NY opposes Cuomo’s renewables push
Recommendations to Siting Board ‘a gut punch’ for Alle-Catt opponent

US Energy Legislation:Dirty Secrets About the CLEAN Future Act
US Marquee Energy Innovation Bill Stumbles on Senate Floor
Questionable new US Legislation: American Energy Innovation Act
It’s Time for Conservatives to Own the Climate-Change Issue
Biden goes extreme on fossil fuels
Bernie calls for federal takeover of electricity production

Miscellaneous Energy News:Renewable Energy Industry Seeks to Scam Public During Health Crisis
The Great Wind Delusion
“Clean, renewable” energy is neither
BP Caves to Green Pressure
Response to 2019 Energy Action Report to Reduce CO2 in Vermont
Short video: Wind turbine interference of TV signals
Short Video: EV Dream
Short video: Energy 101: Mining and Rare Earths
Why green hydrogen is key to the global energy transition
Water splitting advance holds promise for affordable renewable energy
Trump’s punt on offshore wind sparks lobbying blitz
Kitty Hawk (NC) offshore wind project moving forward
Virginia approves 100% clean energy legislation
US military squeezes wind energy development off California Coast
Green New Deal Fanatics Have No Concept of What They Propose

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:The Carbon Capture Con
McKibben Goes Over the Edge for His Rockefeller Benefactors
No, Michael Mann, You Aren’t Going to ‘Ruin’ this ‘Filthy Organization’
Short video: No Data Required
Is Manhattan About To Get Drowned By The Sea?
Trump wants prime-time climate science challenge — Happer
The Eco-Assault on Our Liberty
Scientist: There actually ARE ways to reduce global temperature
Wikipedia Airbrushes List of Climate Sceptic Scientists Out of History
The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices should “fact check”
Greta preaches many of the first Earth Day’s failed predictions
Why the DNC Doesn’t Want a Climate Debate

Manmade Global Warming — Miscellaneous:Eliminate fossil fuels now — U.S. “MAGICC” model says why bother?
Petition filed to Appeal the EPA’s Endangerment Finding
Short Video: How Bad is CO2?
SLR: Looking For Acceleration In All The Wrong Places
Can History Cast Doubt on the Evidence of Global Warming?
Even coronavirus couldn’t stop the climate madness
Democrats want climate action included in coronavirus aid
Zero carbon is a crime against humanity
Freeman Dyson, RIP
Archive: Dyson — Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society
Legal Gaps And US Elections May Turn COP26 Into Damp Squib
Archive: The Disgraceful Episode Of Lysenkoism Brings Us Global Warming Theory
New (short) Book: All What Matters: The Facts about Global Climate Genesis
Archive video: Debunking the “Simple Physics” Slogan About Climate Change
Study: How Much Human-Caused Global Warming Should We Expect with Business-As-Usual Climate Policies?
The Physician and ‘Climate Change’

Education Related:
Multiple new US arrests for China-sponsored academic stealing
American Higher Education: Beset with Problems, but Solutions Exist
What Colleges Can Do to Defend Free Expression
COVID-19 Can Kill Colleges as Well as People
COVID-19: Is It Academic Armageddon?
COVID-19 Presents New Challenges and Opportunities to Higher Ed
Modern Doomsday Cult Is Threatening the Mental Health of Millions of Children
How College Sports Turned into a Corrupt Mega-Business
Why Art Matters

US Politics and Socialism:Short Video: The Intolerance of Tolerance
The Communist Plan to Overthrow America from Within
Marxism a Nightmare, Not a Future
Sanders Not Alone in Willful Ignorance of Communist Realities
Archive: Globalization, Communism at Its Core
The long-anticipated death of the Great American Experiment
What Bernie and Greta have in common
Bernie’s Soviet Honeymoon Missed Marxist Miseries

Other US Politics and Related:The Democratic Disaster Just Got Even More Hilarious
Liberal-Funded Eco-Right Infiltrates CPAC, and Conservative Movement
About Immigration: Life in Denmark- Real food for thought
Banks Must Not Be Used as Pawns of the Left
21 words uttered by FISA court that changed the Russia collusion case

Science and Miscellaneous Matters:
Short video: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?
The Collapse of Intellectual Standards in Science
Greta: women equality and climate justice…
EPA: Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science (an update)
EPA Makes Big Changes To Rule Banning ‘Secret Science’ — Obama-Era Officials Rage
For Newsletter Archives, go here.