Reinke Faces Life

What Not to Do https://cafehayek.com/2020/04/what-not-to-do.html

I responded with an analogy that I stole from my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold (and which will appear later today at Cafe Hayek as a “Bonus Quotation of the Day”): America’s experience with the coronavirus no more implies that we should abandon globalization than does a power outage at your home imply that you should remove yourself from the electricity grid.

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Folks have to understand “comparative advantage” and the division of labor.

Our current problem is with the Gooferment’s FDA. (Delaying the various “miracles” in process by confusing diktats.)

Let’s get back to free market capitalism and “honest money”!

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The attached article is interesting. It seeks to dis middle America. Meanwhile the once golden state is hemorrhaging residents, is strangling businesses, (they are moving to places like Texas and Florida), is overly dependent on a wealthy class based in San Francisco and LA for tax revenue, and the state has a pension shortfall, kept off the books somehow, of over 1 TRILLION dollars.

Source: Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’, Columnist makes the case that Cali isn’t a disaster

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California should secede!

CAL-EXIT!

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The crucial decision Trump will make is to choose the exact moment to reopen the country and the economy, without igniting a new spike in the pandemic that induces despair and causes a panic.

The president’s aides in charge of the medical crisis want the longest delay possible. His economic and political advisers, fearing Trump could be forced to run as Herbert Hoover did, at the nadir of a new depression, want an earlier decision to start opening up the country.

Action cannot long be delayed if we are to survive the medical crisis only to endure a longer and more costly economic crisis.

Source: Trump’s Presidency Hangs on One Decision, by Pat Buchanan – The Unz Review

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I’d roll the dice and say that DJT45 has NOT handled this crisis well.  (Primarily thanks to the media and the entrenched politicians and bureaucrats!)  So he has to restart asap and just hope the economy comes back like gangbusters.

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Also Monday, upon learning of Kaline’s death, ESPN did what it does best. It busied itself taking unwarranted, dishonest credit for breaking the news as per another of its force-fed, transparently self-promotional “confirmations” — as if anyone other than ESPN cared who “broke” such a story so much so that it would conflate and confuse credit for it.

Source: ESPN’s dishonest credit taking includes MLB Hall of Famer’s death

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ESPN takes credit for other people’s work?

That’s disgraceful.

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In accordance, engineer Brandi Gerstner used an X-Acto knife and a screwdriver to reverse the pump’s suction function so it expels air, rather than taking it in, reports WBALTV. She even rigged the impromptu breathing instrument so that it pumps air in accordance with medical oxygen intake standards.

Source: Engineers convert breast pumps into ventilators amid coronavirus-related shortage

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Let’s hear it for the “injineers”.

First CPAP machines converted; now breast pumps.

Great adaptation!

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Aging Holocaust survivors now have the chance to record their memories in a way that will allow future generations to literally ask them about their experiences, and see and hear their answers. 60 Minutes reports, Sunday.
— Read on www.cbsnews.com/video/project-lets-people-interview-holocaust-survivors-even-after-their-deaths/

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What a great innovation!

NEVER FORGET!

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But a review of three months of public comments by public health officials, news personalities and liberal figures show they made similar comments as those skewered by The Daily Show video but have escaped similar critique.
— Read on justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/news-media-liberals-mock-conservatives-early-pandemic-comments-they

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Two different standards? No kidding!

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This post appeared first on Daily Reckoning . “Failure to comply with this order will result in a $5,000 fine and up to one year in prison…” We woke this morning to this menacing threat. It came issuing from the loudspeaker of a prowling police cruiser.

Source: Urgent Questions

*** begin quote ***

The Case of the Diamond Princess

Dr. Ioannidis cites the case of the cruise ship Diamond Princess:

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with COVID-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05–1%.

That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A populationwide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies…

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year.

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Died. (Sorry to hear that!)

BUT did they die WITH the virus or BECAUSE of the virus.

This is a GIANT difference!

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People and politicians in the US are reacting very differently to the coronavirus pandemic—it all depends on the state you’re living in. South Carolina has recently come under fire after some people on Twitter shared photos of Americans who aren’t staying at home and are ignoring the social distancing advice.

Source: 31 Pics Of People Not Avoiding Contact In South Carolina Illustrate The First Stage Of A Tragedy

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Well it seems that there’s a lot candidates for the next Darwin Award.  Clean out the human pool for the “stupid” gene.

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The coronavirus epidemic may leave the economy in tatters, but economies grow back. What about Americans’ constitutional rights?

Source: A civil liberties pandemic – The Boston Globe

OUR HEALTH CARE system will eventually recover from the strain of the coronavirus pandemic. Our economy will recover too, notwithstanding the beating it is taking now.

Will our civil liberties recover?

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I don’t think so!

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Rhode Island has just over 200, and it has begun an aggressive campaign to keep the virus out and New Yorkers contained, over objections from civil liberties advocates.

Raimondo, a Democrat, said she had consulted lawyers and said while she couldn’t close the border, she felt confident she could enforce a quarantine.

Source: Rhode Island Police to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge

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Sounds like a violation of our Constitutional rights!

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Thursday, Mar 26, 2020Not to be overwhelming first thing in the morning, but I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. The good news? Today is Thursday, which means we’re pretty damn close to the weekend! The bad news? Today would have been MLB Opening Day, and does the weekend even really count in quarantine anyway?

Source: HQ AM/PM

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I doubt that any of the “sports” empires have any debt, so are at little risk of bankruptcy.  Not so for other businesses or individuals.  I think a lot of places will NOT reopen and individuals will be ruined for life.

Like those of the Great Depression, I think that people will be “scarred” forever.

Maybe some good will come out of this disaster.  Like thrift, Dave Ramsey advocates no debt .  Like savings, to have enough in your savings to enable you to continue living at your “burn rate”.  Like being prepared, the Mormons keep a year in their pantry.

One can only hope.

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Europe’s largest gold refineries have struggled to keep up because of the region’s widening shutdown. Valcambi, Pamp and Argor-Heraeus are all based in the Swiss region of Ticino, near the border with Italy. Local authorities announced in recent days that production in the area was to be temporarily halted.

Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Gold Bars in Short Supply Due to Coronavirus Disruption

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Gold in short supply is even going to be even “shorter”!

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“You’re going to get people furious, and they are,” Francesa said Tuesday while on the WFAN airwaves. “They’re going crazy everywhere. ‘How does he get elective surgery? I thought the hospitals closed elective surgery’ … And you know what? They’re right. The people are right.”

Source: Mike Francesa blames Mets ‘dummies’ as Noah Syndergaard surgery ignites coronavirus outrage

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Once again there are different rules for different classes.

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.” — George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0

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Probably a bluff. (From The Wall Street Journal) “I don’t have a need for an equity stake,” Mr. Calhoun (Boeing CEO) said in a Tuesday interview on Fox Business Network. “If they forced it, we’d just look at all the other options, and we have got plenty.”

Source: Boeing wants a bailout, But without giving equity to the government in exchange

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No bailouts, PERIOD!!!

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I believe we saw something highly significant today: The Let’s-Trash-Trump-and-His-Economy press are reporting today’s incident as though TRUMP did something wrong. When Trump announced Chloroquine works both to prevent and to ameliorate the symptoms of coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the massively commercially compromised National Institutes of Health promptly responded that it “hasn’t been clinically tested,” at which point Trump backed down and said it was “just his opinion.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-undercuts-fauci-on-whether-chloroquine-can-treat-coronavirus-2020-3?op=1

But guess what? The expert wasn’t right. It’s Trump who was right. Fauci is part of the conflicted, sold-out mob that moves endlessly through the revolving door between the NIH/CDC and Big Pharma, all anxious to create big profits by peddling a new vaccine (even “free” vaccines can be billed to and paid for by the gubbimint – including the ones that are only 40 percent efficacious and can cause more harm than good, which is a lot of them.)

Source: Vin Suprynowicz » Blog Archive » Who stood to gain by panicking the nation & shutting down our entire economy, over an epidemic that will likely kill fewer Americans than the ‘regular old flu’?

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DJT45 WAS RIGHT!

And, no one remembers that.

Sure he’s wrong a lot.  Maybe even he tweets a “whopper” from time to time.  (I think he uses Twitter to engage his opponents, like a cat chasing a red dot.)

But, the media is running “the sky is falling” 24/7.

I prefer a more reasonable, factual, less panicked media.

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Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said on “Fox News Sunday” that Republicans were to blame for an exemption in her order that allows places of worship to gather in groups of 50 or more during the coronavirus outbreak.

Guest host John Roberts asked, “One thing that kind of puzzles me is that you have limited groups of people to 50 or fewer yet, there is an exemption for places of worship. Why would a place of worship be any less likely to transmit diseases in a larger gathering than another place?”

Source: MI Gov. Whitmer Criticizes GOP for Failing to Ban Church Gatherings

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Perhaps some one should refresh their memory about the First Amendment.  You know the one about “freedom of religion”.  The Gooferment has no power to regulate churches.

Argh!

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