We have 1 weeks and 2 days and we will, as Mike Pence said, “largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.” 

Trump having now gone the herd immunity approach is urging every state to give their people freedom.  Some people in the United States have a warped idea of freedom. They believe it means they can do whatever they want. So they pick up their silly guns and stand in front of state houses asking that they be allowed to wander around freely without masks and without practicing social distancing and to gather wherever they please.

Trump is for this. He presses the people to do this. He though takes precautions that anyone who comes near him must be tested, the people in his office must wear masks, many of them are tested daily. Trump says he must be protected but has no concern for others urging them to do what is dangerous for them.

As for freedom, you don’t see these people protesting speed limits. Isn’t that a government restriction? Nor do they protest other laws governing operation of their vehicles such as not running red lights, wearing helmets on motor cycles, paying insurance and registration fees.  Why shouldn’t I in a free country just be able to take a car and drive it as I see fit.

I noted before that using the number of deaths as a statistic had its problems. That is the states could fool around with classifying the reason the person died. For instance, take Russia which has an abnormally low death rate compared with any other country in the world. We find out that they usually report as the cause of death for a person who dies of Covid-19 the underlying cause such as heart condition, diabetes, or pneumonia. There could easily be the same things happening in some of the states which would give them a lower death rate.

I’ll keep looking at those figures assuming that some states are accurately reporting the death  figures but I will also looking at the number of reported positive cases. Again using Russia as an example, it has shown itself incapable of speaking the truth since the 1917 Revolution, it seems reporting the number of positive cases is something that it appears to be doing properly. I figure that perhaps that give us a better idea of what is actually happening in the states since the incentive to fudge the figures is not there.

Monday evening doing the statistics on the coronavirus I noticed that Italy was no longer among the top four countries for reported cases of Covid-19. The United States was first with 1,346,723 positive cases and 80,352 cases; Spain was in second place with 227,436 positive cases and 26,744 deaths; the UK was in third place with 224,332 positive cases and 32,141 deaths; and Russia was now in 4th place with 221,344 positive cases and — now wait for this — 2,009 deaths.

The way that figures out percentage-wise is the death rate in the United States is 5.97%;  in Spain it is 11.76%; in the UK it is 14.33%; but in Russia it is 0.91%. When I first looked at the Russian death rate being so low I thought the Russians were only counting the people who accidentally fell out of windows, which as we’ve seen is an unfortunate problem the Russians seem to have.

Sweden has reported 26,670 cases and has 3,256  deaths  a 12.21% but it is running with a modified herd immunity approach to its population. Norway, next door, in many respects quite similar to Sweden which did have people quarantine in their homes has had 8,132 cases and 224 deaths or a 2.75% rate bu it had 3,000 less deaths.

One thing I’ve never been able to wrap my head around is why Trump and his administration, especially Pompeo, are pushing the idea that the Covid-19 virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. I thought it was pretty well settled that it came from Wuhan, China, so why not leave it there. It’s a virus from China, or as Trump used to call it the Chinese virus before he was slapped down by Chinese leader Xi for doing it.

But no, Pompeo has come out with the statement that that there is “enormous evidence” to support the idea that coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, not in a market.  Unfortunately this enormous evidence is not shown. We are suppose to take his word for it.

That’s like the reversal by the Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey  who had unpaid experts advising him from Arizona State and the University of Arizona on opening his state up in a manner consistent with medical and scientific expertise recommendations. He is visited by Trump. What happens next? He tells the experts he is going to go with a different model.

I get some crazy responses from people who seem to read only the Boston Herald and probably watch only Fox news. I know they believe Trump when he says the news is fake but then they go ahead and believe the real fake news:  Fox, the Boston Herald, and some new TV broadcaster One America News. 

The Herald is under the control of Digital First Media a newspaper conglomerate. When it first acquired it, immediately cut jobs by 30%, retaining in its employ 175 of the 240 or so people working there. Digital First Media is owned by Alden Global Capital a hedge fund co-founded by Randall D. Smith.

A Wikipedia report on him states: “He is married to Barbara Stovall Smith, and they own seven houses in the Palm Beach, Florida, area through limited liability companies.^] Smith is known for his use of offshore companies.^”   As expected, “co-founder Randall Smith gave $50,000 to Donald Trump’s “Trump Victory” fund. The same day, his wife Barbara gave exactly the same amount.”  I have to call him a real  man of the people.

We have 2 weeks and 2 days and we will, as Mike Pence said, “largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.” It gives an example of how little the White House knows what is happening with respect to Covid-19.

As I pointed out, I believe Trump had now gone the herd immunity approach urging every state to open up the economy as fast as they can. Since then we’ve seen that the CDC directive on how to approach the opening  deep sixed by the White House.

The last great pandemic we had was in 1918 but that seemed to have gone away sometime in 1919. I’d doing a little research into it to see how was it that happened.

They are working for a vaccine by the end of the year. Then there is this: “There are some viruses that we still do not have vaccines against. We can’t make an absolute assumption that a vaccine will appear at all, or if it does appear, whether it will pass all the tests of efficacy and safety.” My best guess is that they will, as is shown in this report out of Hong Kong,  come up with some drug or combination of drugs like in the case of HIV that will lessen the killing power of Covid-19.

Reading about the advent of the Civil War I have a feeling that what is happening in our society today is similar to what happened back at that time.

That brings to mind the saying in the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10: “What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.”

I turn to Wikipedia to refresh my recollection. It starts off: “The Know Nothing, formally known as the Native American Party and the American Party from 1855 onwards, was a far-right nativist political party and movement in the United States which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, and xenophobic movement, originally starting as a secret society. The Know Nothing movement also briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply “I know nothing” when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name.”

Crux Now has summarized a recent telephone conversation between Trump and about 600 Catholic Church leaders including the New York City Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the Boston Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, OFM, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland, chair of the USCCB committee of Catholic Education,and others. After reading that I pose the question which is the headline of this post.

Trump in a fifteen minute opening speech described himself as “the best president in the history of the church.”The article notes: “the president’s most frequented theme in his opening remarks was that of his commitment to pro-life cause, saying that it has “been at a level that no other president has seen before, according to everybody.”” He told how he was the first president to address the annual March for Life and how he opposed funding for NGOs that provide abortion related services. Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights should disqualify that party from any Catholic votes: “If you want to see your values reflected in policy, there’s really no choice. You have to not only vote the Republican Party, but you have to help get them elected.”