The world's greatest hot bar located at the Harris-Teeter supermarket in New Hanover Square in Wilmington closed today "until further notice."
This is war. I've had it.
It's one thing to shut down airlines, cruise liners, shops, restaurants, dog parks, government offices, and factories, it's quite another to cut me off from my salmon and prime rib.
This reaction to the China virus has gone totally insane.
The more you learn, the more you know, and, hence, the more you have to say "No" to what we are doing to the global economy and society. The mortality rates on this virus thing are falling as we get more and more data. The initial horrendous mortality hype was based on a relatively small "N," just like a bad political poll that seeks to tell you national trends by polling 325 people on the phone in Manhattan--ask Hillary.
As the testing expands, and the number of "infected" people grows dramatically, the overall mortality rate falls. Surprise! Not. The denominator gets bigger and the size of the fraction goes south . . . It seems as though the mortality rate will prove about that of any flu or other epidemics/pandemics we have had in recent years.
Perhaps, I am right? The horror of that thought . . .
We have shut down the economy all over the world in a fit of mass hysteria. More people will die from that, than from the Chinese disease. It appears (that word) Trump's initial skeptical stance seems to have proven right. Unfortunately, in my view, he got stampeded by the "experts" and the media's low rent Jeremiahs into freezing the economy.
The further we go down this rat hole, the harder to crawl our way back.
But . . . there is a growing realization that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for fomenting this hysteria by lying and trying to cover up the existence of the virus; as we all know, the cover up is often worse than the crime. So, if there is a bright spot to all this, we will re-evaluate our relationship with China and the insane policies that made China the center of the world's manufacturing. Delink from China: that should be our motto for years to come, yes, delink.
Back to cleaning my guns. Haven't fired my new Ruger 57 or my new STI Staccato. The suffering I have endured . . .
The problem is that, once people figure out they've been had, no one will believe the "experts" the next time, when it could really be necessary.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that it has been way too easy to shut the country down and - call me suspicious - I worry when the dems start to side with Trump. If it is this easy this time, what will be the excuse that is used the next time to take away our rights? It's a very slippery slope.
Governor Pritzger has shut down Illinois. This is becoming appalling. He is claiming that he has a choice of saving peoples lives, or their livlihoods. But, since you can't have a livlihood, if you aren't alive, he will destroy Illinois' economy.
ReplyDelete*If* the Diamond Princess numbers are taken at their last snapshot, this virus is significantly more deadly than influenza but not nearly as deadly as portrayed in media reports.
ReplyDeleteI'm concerned that we don't know the final disposition of cases for those who were infected on that boat. Many assumptions have been made, yet the people there were scattered throughout the world.
There is a lot of this which really sounds hoaxy, for sure.
There will be no accountability for it either. It will be "we made the right call at the time", the same as Dan Rather's "fake but accurate" Killian memo excuse.
I have *no* problem with the government warning people against passing around a virus.
I have *very little* problem with the government shutting down its various overstuffed non-essential agencies over it.
I have *some* problem with forced business closures.
But I have a *big* problem with this martial law crap in California.
Advise people that the hospitals could be overrun if too many people get sick with this at once, as appears to have happened with Italy and Wuhan. But inflating the numbers... it's the same crap as global warming: "They have to take us seriously, so we'll twist the knobs on our projections to make it appear so dire that the people will *have* to take us seriously."
I dunno... still keeping to ourselves until this blows over... looking for a time to jump into the stock market.
- reader #1482
Actually the most recent stats on the Diamond Princess indicate that it is milder than the flu. 83% of the people on board the ship did not get it, even though they were quite exposed.
DeleteCheck out this article: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/the_diamond_princess_a_floating_chinese_virus_palace_provides_suggestive_data.html
reader #1482...that time to jump in is called "now".
DeleteI've been "nibbling" on my positions, adding 5, 10, 30 shares here and there. Preferred shares of solid outfits, eg. DLR, are yielding 7+%.
DeleteMy guns are already clean and all my brass is loaded. Guess I'll have to go empty some brass in the morning.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the news, I occasionally drift into this horrible fantasy:
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in a bunker below Bejing's Forbidden Palace, President XI is giving one of his subordinates the Mao Memorial Award for exceptional service.
In a world in which shooting wars between nuclear powers would be pointless, some Chinese genius came up with a plan to win an economic war. Develop a test for a relatively minor flu-like virus which has been endemic for years. Then make a big fuss about a supposed "outbreak" in Wuhan, labeling a few regular deaths as being caused by the virus, and shut down whole cities. This would all be Kabuki theater, knowing that when the West tested for the virus, they would find it everywhere. Then the well-greased palms of Western media and politicians would naturally panic, mimic China's over-reaction, and tip the West into economic recession. In the final act, cash-rich China would step in and buy up what is left of the West's industrial base at low, low prices.
Xi smiles. The results of the first phase have far exceeded expectations! Now the West looks as if a barrage of neutron bombs had gone off -- the buildings still stand, but the people are gone, and the Western economy has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. Victory, without firing a single shot! And those easily-manipulated barbarians outside the Middle Kingdom still don't even realize they have been attacked!
Xi thanks his genius planner, and turns to the team primed to buy up the West's assets after markets have totally collapsed -- Gentlemen, it is time for vengeance on the English for their Opium Wars, and on the Japanese for their murderous occupation. You know what you have to do.
Stop with the bullshit about China. They're not responsible for anything. We are in shut down because our own leaders delayed and panicked.
ReplyDeleteChina lied and covered up in the best totalitarian, Third World tradition. They did it out of embarrassment and fear that their incompetence and lousy public health situation would make them a laughing stock. The ChiComs have been lashing out at the world, making threats and weird allegations to cover up their responsibility. Has the West over-reacted? Absolutely.
Delete"Has the West over-reacted? Absolutely."
DeleteWe can't do anything about what China's rulers choose to do or not do. Anyway, that is all water under the bridge now. This virus has escaped containtment.
In principle, we can do something about the over-reaction from our own politicians and bureaucrats. Let's focus on them.
I've been looking at the graphs posted on THE COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS AND ITS ECONOMIC IMPACT (UPDATED 20TH MAR.). For the last couple of months, and conclude that China has collapsed. Your thoughts?
Delete"Not responsible for anything"?
DeleteBS. Eventually the truth will come out. The virus was released from their Bio Security Lab in Wuhan; either accidentally or on purpose. It has nothing to do with bat soup.
When it comes to the current pandemic, China is responsible for EVERYTHING.
Ah, the experts....I've lost track, but weren't the hospitals supposed to be overrun with the sick and dying by this weekend? I do not know of one person with the virus but plenty of celebs and notables seem to have caught this bug. Interesting that.
ReplyDeleteAs others have noted, it is troubling to see how easily it has been to tank this economy and shut down the country. Experts. Experts told us the polar ice caps would be gone by now, Miami would be under water and the oceans boiling from Bad Orange Man or climate change or something. One silver lining has been the level of outdoor activity I see right outside my window. There is a significant uptick in runners, walkers, bikers so just maybe some good habits have been created. In our family we focus on strengthening our immune system naturally each and every day. Just maybe this lesson will be learned by a whole lot more folks with time on their hands to ponder why we shut down the world because experts told us the end was nigh. Headed outside to get some Vitamin D from the sun. Over and out.
Some positives to look forward to, arising from the situation we are in now. There has been a considerable run on toilet paper and Purell, but there also has been a run on firearms and ammo. These sales are almost entirely first-time buyers. Which means when the left comes back with more "Gun Control" talk, we can remind folks what was the first thing they wanted when they thought things were going south during the Corona virus.
ReplyDeleteI also feel that there is going to be a whole lot less resistance to moving a lot of industry back into the U.S. China will indeed pay an economic price for their custom to eat things that you really shouldn't eat.
Honesty would have let the PRC totally off the hook for this one. But when lying is in the official rules set, hiding comes naturally and minimization plays 'clean up'.
DeleteWhere honesty fails, accountability becomes required.
We'll be fine with China when it leaves the PRC behind in the dustbin of history textbooks lionized by western 'experts'.
- reader #1482
Speculating: Could the Trump administration's fusing CDC and NSC pandemic offices indicate, in light of Wuhan being the site of two Chinese biowarfare lans,that the US government may know some things that it doesn't want China to know that it knows?
ReplyDeleteWe just have to make damned sure that once the "crisis" is over and we can return to our mundane lives of going to work and taking our families out to diner and Disney...That every single last one of the emergency actions the politicians have enacted (especially in Blue Commie States) get removed from the books and the Constitution reigns supreme again.
ReplyDeleteThe perfect event to seize power, then never let it go.
There are a few conversations and questions I'd like see happen. Let's revisit the wisdom of having critical pieces of our supply chain dependent on a country that doesn't have our best interest at heart. If any point has been driven home during this crisis it's that globalism is hugely flawed.
ReplyDeleteLet's examine why so many of these cooties seem to originate from the same area of the world every single year. Perhaps these open air wet markets need to be brought into the 21st century. Shut them down and shut down eating strange creatures. Doing so will limit the pathway for jumping species or whatever the latest excuse is.
There needs to be international pressure brought to bear on countries who continue to engage in bioweapons research. Enough. It's is a folly of epic proportions to think man can control these Frankenstein creations.
Can we jettison Nancy Pelosi? What a creepy ghoulish woman.
Bracing for the latest stock market meltdown. Thanks Nancy.
I believe decoupling from China is a major secrity concen--even though business links with th PRC have earned me a few extra dollars as a document translator and translation editor.
DeleteAs for the wet markets, I'm not so sure they're the problem; although they may be a complicating factor. In my years in the Far East, as both a diplomat and a private US citizen abroad, I've strolled through many a market where live poultry was being bought and butchered, some where they were selling bamboo rats and civets. I've eaten a number of very non-kosher creatures (a paternal great-grandfather was a shochet back in the Old Country) of the anything-that-turns-its-back-on-Heaven kind, yet my health has held up. I'm old enough to remember oler neighbors who went to parts of town in these United States to be sure they were getting glatt kosher, which involved on-site slaughter of the animal. Sure, a lot of such people died--usually of cancer or heart failure in rather ripe old age, and without spreading stuff to the rest of us. Also, when I was younger and had more sensitive taste buds, I noticed a positive difference between recently slaughtered and stored meat when I was living in Taiwan--a country that has apparently either gotten the COVID-19 under control or has decided it can absorb a bit of risk (while taking temperatures of school kids at the gate).
I'm with you on getting rid of the ghoulish Nancy Pelosi--but that's a call for the people in her district.
As for bioweapons, that indeed an important conversation. I would not put it beyond the Chinese goernment that this coronavirus leaked from one of their biowarfare labs in Wuhan, but I would not say this loudly without further evidence.
Read KarlDenniger's latest thoughts regarding the Wuhan flu progression and decide for yourself. For sure the .gov spokes-flaks and the chicom media aren't going to tell the true tale.
DeleteIt worries me that we are just sitting here, waiting for our "leaders" to give us money to survive. How pitiful is that. Fooey on them, we need to open up, stand up, and take our lives back from those who would be so careless with them.
ReplyDeleteI'm nearly 60 years old, and have never seen anything even remotely close to this level of hysteria in my lifetime. I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone or something: no one around me, my family included, seems to have the slightest skepticism about the narrative that COVID-19 is by an order of magnitude the largest threat to the human race in the past 100 years. Everyone accepts as Gospel that we are on the very beginning of the parabolic curve, and that shutting down all social interaction is a reasoned and prudent response. Sure, everyone should take reasonable precautions. Wash your hands frequently. Minimize social contact. Disinfect things regularly. Stay home if you have any symptoms. But closing down the entire economy? Even online, those expressing any sort of skepticism are immediately shouted down by those convinced that this is 100 times worse than, say, the swine flu eleven years ago. And the sad thing is, these actions are self-justifying: should this turn out to be a big nothingburger we will all hear about how awful it *would* have been if we had not tanked the economy.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you - I have never seen anything this nuts and have been around for polio, measles, H1N1, etc. I smelled a rat early on - it really helps to be skeptical of any bandwagon the mainstream media jumps on. From what I can see from the data, this thing is no worse than the regular flu, with the possible exception of high risk groups. But people bought into the WHO numbers initially and it is impossible to argue logic with them now. And, of course, reporters are mathematically challenged anyway.
DeleteDiamond Princess passengers are at 8 deaths, 100+ infections still unresolved, out of ~700 infections.
DeleteDunno how well that's being tracked, but it's the only reasonable source of numbers out there, if they are being accurately tracked.