Wuhan

More and more people, I suspect, are padding about muttering lines from Psalm 13: 'How long, O Lord,...How long must I take counsel in my soul/ and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?' These are good questions. As of April 9, 2020, however, we do not have a reliable answer. You might think that the reason we don’t have an answer to these questions is because we don’t really know the insidious strength of the enemy, the new coronavirus that, with the help of the Chinese back in December and January, has made its way around the world, sickening hundreds of thousands, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson on down. I think that is only part of the answer.

The exact origins of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, remain unknown. We know only that it began in the Wuhan province in China, but the Chinese Communist party has gone to great lengths to obfuscate the full picture of its initial spread. Journalists should be clamoring for this information. ​But, for a large section of the American media, who have engaged in China apologia over the course of the past few months, challenging China or by proxy the World Health Organization is completely off limits. ​Last week, Sen. Tom Cotton told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that 'we need to get to the bottom' of where the virus came from.

'Never let a good crisis go to waste.' When Rahm Emanuel said that during the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, his Machiavellian cynicism was instantly recognized as the calling card of the new breed of Democrat that he and his boss, Barack 'Bring-a-gun-to-the fight' Obama, embodied. We saw it then, when the gargantuan pseudo-stimulus package stimulated little apart from the federal debt, and we are seeing it again now as Democrats hold up an emergency spending bill (also gargantuan) in order to fill it with profligate and politically tendentious provisions.  As Rep. Jim Clyburn put it,  'This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.' Rahm Emanuel could not have put it any better.

The president delivered an address last night about the Wuhan flu, aka novel coronavirus, aka (if you want to sound scary/scientific 'COVID-19'). The speech was brief, but to the point. It outlined a number of practical steps that the administration has taken, and would be taking, to slow the spread of the disease, help those who contract it, and — just as important—rescue the market from the panic that has surrounded this malady. The wretched Jim Acosta, court jester on CNN, complained about Trump calling the virus ‘foreign’ and his identifying the source of the virus as China. That was 'smacking of xenophobia' said the babbling head.