Really! Life Must Go On - Seriously!

Q&A on the Wuhan Virus

4/29/2020 - Ann Coulter Townhall.com

As you can well imagine, my mailbox has been overflowing with questions about the coronavirus from precisely ZERO readers. So I decided to write my own questions. I know this is what you would be asking if you were not standing in line, outside, 6 feet apart, to purchase a quart of milk.

What do you think of the media's coverage of the Wuhan virus?

It's like a nonstop "War of the Worlds" broadcast, which in 1938 panicked more than a million Americans into believing Martians had landed in New Jersey, sending people fleeing to the mountains, loading their shotguns and barricading their homes. And that was a single radio broadcast!

Today we have nearly all of media -- which I notice are doing fantastically well during the crisis -- terrifying the public about an apparently indestructible, omnipresent virus.

You don't think the China virus is as dangerous as they say?

Well, it is a virus capable of eliminating all human life, which would be bad, but not all bad because then you'd never have to see another TV commercial with some company saying they consider you "family."

So you think it's safe to start lifting the stay-at-home orders?

Of course. I ask again: What was the purpose of telling everyone to stay home? Aren't we all Wuhan-free now? More than 90 percent of the country has been self-quarantining for more than a month. Either we had it and didn't know it, or never had it at all. But in any event we don't have it now.

Or was that whole stay-at-home mandate just for fun?

What about threats of a resurgence?

Luckily the hospitals are half-empty, waiting for the gusher of coronavirus patients.

So we do nothing?

No, not at all, but now that 90 percent of us are Wuhan-free, these are the only things we need to do:

1) A real immigration moratorium, like this country had from 1924 to 1965. (I'd also recommend that the other 49 states shut down flights from New York, but I'll leave that up to them);

2) Concentrate all protections on the elderly/immunocompromised;

3) No more handshaking, and liberal use of surgical masks in confined spaces.

Other than that, WE'RE DONE NOW.

But we know virtually nothing about this virus: why it kills, what stops it, how it's transmitted.

Actually, we know one very important thing: By total serendipity, the Wuhan virus mostly kills people over the age of 70. Nearly 80 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are of people over 70 years old.

What about Italy? About 80 percent of the dead were over 70. That sounds a little callous.

Not at all. It's a stroke of good luck! We'd be lucky if the virus targeted any specific group -- the nearsighted, left-handers, golfers -- because that would allow us to concentrate protections on that one group.

But it's doubly good news because the Wuhan targets people who are mostly out of the workforce anyway. And we already have their names and addresses! How about the feds send a box of masks along with Social Security checks every month?

How will you get Democratic governors to go along with that?

Liberals can triple down on all their fascist stuff -- as long as it's limited to the vulnerable.

Over 65? You need a note from the governor to leave your home!

Fine! But let the rest of us get back to work.

Why haven't they done this already?

Because that wouldn't have the effect of wrecking the economy before the election.

Apart from the election, why would the media want to impoverish the nation?

1) Reporting on disasters is fun!

2) Their ratings are terrific -- and, of course, they're still being paid.

3) Liberals enjoy controlling people, especially with enragingly nonsensical rules.

I thought Trump was the authoritarian!

No, he's the lazy, narcissistic blowhard. Liberals are the authoritarians.

The shutdown is airport security for the whole country. Nineteen Muslim immigrants flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and suddenly little old ladies from Oklahoma had to be goosed at airports. We have to be safe!

A horrible Chinese virus sweeps the planet, which is devastating to older people but virtually harmless to the young -- and the entire country has to be shut down. We have to be safe!

What about polls showing a majority of Americans want to keep the restrictions in place?

The media have frightened gullible suburban woman into a state of hysteria. (Talk about whipping up your ignorant base!) Kids could basically mainline coronavirus and they'd be fine. But soccer moms don't want their kids going back to school.

Whether it's rational or not, people aren't going to go out like they used to.

My entire life, liberals have said, "Don't like abortion? Don't have one." "Don't like pornography? Don't look at it." And so on.

I say: "Don't want to leave your home? Don't leave your home!"

So you recommend going out again?

Sure, what's the worst that could happen? Sure, you could die, but you probably won't.

National Catastrophe - Hysteria & Panic - not the Virus

The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History

5/5/2020 - Dennis Prager Townhall.com

The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have been an enormous mistake strikes many -- including world leaders; most scientists, especially health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their faith in these people -- as so preposterous as to be immoral. Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to open up as "the party of death."

That's the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature.

But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, "mistake" and "evil" are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. 

Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.

The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem "essential" has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.

The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation -- double last year's figures. According to WFP director David Beasley on April 21: "We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries. ... There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself" (italics added).

That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Foreign Policy magazine reports that, according to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, marking the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and the U.S., the eurozone and Japan will contract by 5.9%, 7.5% and 5.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, across South Asia, as of a month ago, tens of millions were already "struggling to put food on the table." Again, all because of the lockdowns, not the virus.

In one particularly incomprehensible act, the government of India, a poor country of 1.3 billion people, locked down its people. As Quartz India reported on April 22, "Coronavirus has killed only around 700 Indians ... a small number still compared to the 450,000 TB and 10,000-odd malaria deaths recorded every year."

One of the thousands of unpaid garment workers protesting the lockdown in Bangladesh understands the situation better than almost any health official in the world: "We are starving. If we don't have food in our stomach, what's the use of observing this lockdown?" But concern for that Bangladeshi worker among the world's elites seems nonexistent.

The lockdown is "possibly even more catastrophic (than the virus) in its outcome: the collapse of global food-supply systems and widespread human starvation" (italics added). That was published in the left-wing The Nation, which, nevertheless, enthusiastically supports lockdowns. But the American left cares as much about the millions of non-Americans reduced to hunger and starvation because of the lockdown as it does about the people of upstate New York who have no incomes, despite the minuscule number of coronavirus deaths there. Or about the citizens of Oregon, whose governor has just announced the state will remain locked down until July 6. As of this writing, a total of 109 people have died of the coronavirus in Oregon.

An example of how disinterested the left is in worldwide suffering is made abundantly clear in a front-page "prayer" by a left-wing Christian in the current issue of The Nation: "May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake."

"Merely inconvenienced" is how the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister and president of the North Carolina NAACP, describes the tens of millions of Americans rendered destitute, not to mention the hundreds of millions around the world rendered not only penniless but hungry. The truth is, like most of the elites, it is Barber who is "merely inconvenienced." Indeed, the American battle today is between the merely inconvenienced and the rest of America.

Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stated, "There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

To the left, anyone who questions the lockdown is driven by preference for money over lives. Typical of the left's moral shallowness is this headline on Salon this week:

"It's Time To Reject the Gods of Commerce: America Is a Society, Not an 'Economy,'" with the subhead reading, "America Is About People, Not Profit Margins."

And, of course, to smug editors and writers of The Atlantic, in article after repetitive article, the fault lies not with the lockdown but with President Donald Trump. The most popular article in The Atlantic this week is titled "The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump." The elites can afford to laugh at whatever they want. Meanwhile, the less fortunate -- that is, most people -- are crying.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, "No Safe Spaces," came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

America is Listening!

Mr. President, Stop Listening to the D.C. Swamp Politicians, Deep-State Bureaucrats and Ivy League Eggheads

4/12/2020 - Wayne Allyn Root Townhall.com

Mr. President, I'm one of your biggest supporters. Few have worked harder or longer to elect, support and reelect you. Every day I praise you in speaking to my large and growing audience on national radio and TV, and through my nationally syndicated newspaper column. My audience loves and supports you. We have your back!

Do you know who doesn't have your back? The Ivy League eggheads; the Washington, D.C., swamp-dwelling politicians and bureaucrats; and the deep-state doctors surrounding you. No one elected Dr. Anthony Fauci president. No one elected Dr. Deborah Birx, Surgeon General Jerome Adams or hapless Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, either. And for good reason. They care only about being loved by the media, using big government to solve every problem and never saying something for which they might be blamed. 

They're not my president. ... You are! 

The academics and deep-staters just pass the buck. They have scared Americans to death with worthless, flawed, worst-case computer models that never work in the real world. Thank goodness the buck stops with you.

As anyone with common sense can see, the doctors and bureaucrats are giving you bad advice. The sad truth is they don't care whether their advice destroys this economy, this country and the great American middle class. Most are big-government-loving liberal Democrats who don't understand the U.S. economy or appreciate the brave business owners of America.

I have simple advice: 

A) Stop listening! B) OPEN THE DARN ECONOMY, AND DO IT QUICKLY.

I received the following email yesterday from a friend who is a small-business owner: "Not one soul asked me if I would sacrifice my entire business, which I have, in order to not take a chance of getting the virus. If anyone would have asked me, I would have said 'shoot me up with the virus, I'll take my chances in order to not lose my business and keep my employees on the job.' I have sacrificed for over 30 years to build my business. Overnight, I now have zip ... no income ... no business ... no employees ... nothing."

Let me tell you about Ivy League eggheads. When this dead-end kid from the Bronx borderline got to Columbia University, I was shocked to find my typical classmate was book-smart but dumb as a box of rocks, with no common sense and zero empathy for the common, hardworking Americans. 

William F. Buckley put it best a half-century ago: "I'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University."

Here's the tragic truth: We're dying out here, and not of coronavirus. Thousands of businesses are dying economic deaths. Hundreds of thousands of out-of-work employees are already financially dead. They have no idea how to pay for soup, butter, toilet paper or gas right now. 

Each day this week, we in Las Vegas have witnessed a 4-mile line of people waiting at a food distribution center for cans of food and one roll of toilet paper. Yes, four miles.

We're already in a Great Depression. The American people are losing everything -- including their dignity. 

The Ivy League geniuses you're taking advice from have destroyed the greatest economy in world history, in a month. Their computer models are horribly wrong. The world will not end, and millions will not die, unless you continue listening to them.

Listen to the American people who cannot pay for bread, soup, butter or gas. The shutdown of the economy is a fate worse than death. It's causing more long-term misery than any virus ever could. It's like using chemotherapy to defeat the flu. The disease is awful. But the cure will destroy America forever more. 

Keep listening to the doctors and Ivy League eggheads and we'll soon have more suicides than coronavirus deaths. 

It's time to make one of those tough decisions only a president can. Thank God it's you!

Here's a common-sense plan to save small business (and millions of small-business employees):

-- Stop listening to the government bureaucrats and those with fancy degrees but no understanding of business, or the real world. 

-- Stop paying them. Let them know what it's like to go without a paycheck. Don't pay Congress either. Use an executive order to declare all bureaucrats and politicians nonessential. Freeze their paychecks until we reopen the economy. Watch how fast they change their tune.

-- Put National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and CEOs who can tell us how and when to reopen the economy front and center at your daily briefings. And add a small-business leader to the stage.

-- Reopen our economy by May 1. Wait any longer and our economy will never recover from this man-made catastrophe. Tell governors to decide whether to comply or not. Maybe New York stays closed, but don't let New York hold the rest of the country hostage. 

-- Protect older and sick Americans. They can stay quarantined at home as long as needed. But most of the rest of us are willing to brave the front lines. Give us the choice -- as long as we practice social distancing, space out customers and wear masks. 

It's my life. I'll take personal responsibility, just as every Costco employee, supermarket cashier, UPS driver, first responder and hospital worker has been doing all along. We are a nation of risk-takers. Never forget that. It's our life. We should get to make the choice, not doctors and bureaucrats.

-- Double or triple the 2 1/2 months of payroll and bill protection for small business. Trust me, it's not enough. And provide the aid directly. Cut out the useless middlemen. Banks are not our friend. I can already see the money will not get to the small businesses that need it.

Lastly, Mr. President, declare a national income tax vacation for small business. A year off from taxes is the incentive we need to keep our businesses open, retain our employees and reinvest while the country recovers. Our income will be down dramatically for at least a year once we reopen the economy. We can't afford to pay half to taxes. We need to keep that money in order to survive for the next year.

Thank you for all you do. Thank you for your financial creativity. If you weren't in the White House, we'd certainly be finished as a nation. Thank God we don't have a President Fauci or a President Powell. You are the only one who can make the truly tough presidential decisions that will save the economy, small business, millions of jobs and the great American middle class. 

God put you in the perfect place, and it is the perfect time to ... stop listening to Ivy League eggheads and open the darn economy! 

Wayne Allyn Root is a CEO, entrepreneur, best-selling author, nationally-syndicated talk show host on USA Radio Network and the host of "The Wayne Allyn Root Show" on Newsmax TV nightly at 11 PM ET/8 PM Pacific.