The Democrats, on the other hand, are clearly focused on using this crisis as a kind of payday for their various client groups, especially non-white minorities, and Leftist activist groups, and unions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced her own emergency coronavirus stimulus bill last Monday, leading angry Republicans to argue that much of the proposal contained a progressive wish-list unrelated to the crisis including:COVID-19 has thankfully accelerated discussions about the need to become more supply chain independent from China. Several multinational corporations with manufacturing based in China, having already considered diversifying their supply chains because of the U.S.-China “trade war,” are now likely to further and extend their plans. Apple, for example, intends to move some manufacturing of its products (including Air Pods and Apple Watches) to Taiwan.In Washington, members of Congress have used the outbreak to call for scaling back U.S. reliance on China, especially for prescription drugs, medical supplies, and other resources considered to be critical to national security. Roughly 80% of base pharmaceutical ingredients (BPI) and 92% of antibiotics are made in China, a hostile global rival. Hopefully, the West will reject Huawei’s push to infect our telecom infrastructure. It’s surprising that “we” allowed Wall Street and Walmart to get away with off-shoring our manufacturing capacity. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t bring these high value-add facilities back on American soil or Canadian soil for that matter. Why make Taiwan or Vietnam great?





For what? A wage arbitrage trade from thirty dollars an hour with benefits and pensions to thirty cents a day, that’s what. Making billionaires out of a few at the expense of the rest of us. That looks short sighted in hindsight. We have turned a blind eye to China’s failure to abide by the rules of the WTO; the illegal militarization of the shoals in the South China Seas or what I prefer to call the North Philippine Sea, which are now bristling with SAM sites and 10,000 foot runways for nuclear bombers, effectively creating stationary aircraft carriers; the illegal subsidization of state-owned enterprises including strategic organizations like Huawei, the tip of the PLA spear (which stole IP from Northern Telecom and forced one of Canada’s biggest enterprises out of business and into insolvency); the use of slave labour and recycling of their crony-capitalist cash through our real-estate markets; so much so that our children are forced out of their own markets and prices completely disconnected from local economies.



Before this is over, Canada should close the birth tourism/anchor baby industry serving the Motherland in the Lower Mainland, cancel their Passports and ban all Confucian Institutes. Let’s also close down the 7 new Visa centres that Mr. Hussen opened across China. We don’t need any more Chinese people to prosper. In addition to over-capacity and deflation, China is now exporting global pandemics on a fairly regular basis. They are predictable and therefore preventable. The West should demand reparations and debt forgiveness.



Viral Healthcare



The outbreak of COVID-19 is projected to test Western healthcare provision to the limit. It’s been particularly interesting that the outbreak in Italy has effectively led to systemic failure and broke the health system in Lombardy, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Before the outbreak, it was

The Lombardy healthcare system, characterised by quality and efficiency, is a model of reference both in Italy and worldwide…Lombardy has 56 University Departments of Medicine, 19 IRCCS (IRCCS means an institution devoted to excellence in clinical care and research) which represent 42% of the national total, 47 Institutes and 32 Research Centres. As a result, Lombardy and in particular Milan have always attracted the most renowned physicians in every field of expertise. As far back as 2003, a Library of Congress



Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is the leader of Ethiopia’s Maoist Party. I am of the view that he postponed the declaration of a “pandemic” for more than 40 days, under pressure by the Chinese Communist Party. Similarly, the rebranding from Wuhan flu to COVID 19 wasn’t a coincidence. There is a considerable movement, led by the World Health Organization, to stop naming diseases and pathogens in general, after places, and to re-name those that have customarily been so named.



We’re working with poor quality and quantity of data, from which all kinds of contradictory things can be deduced. There doesn't seem to be any international standards for data reporting, either. Germany's reporting a mortality rate of 0.3 percent. Italy's reporting 7.9 percent? And 70% of Italian victims are men?



And what, by the way, is the rate of false positives? Here are few other questions I have:

How exactly does the virus spread?

How can the contagion be slowed down other than by social distancing?

What is the share of asymptomatic carriers?

Are they contagious? How much?

What are potentially treatments while we wait for a vaccine?

How about Hydroxychloroquine that the President supports and has been vilified for?

How long does it survive?

On what surfaces?

Can those “recovered” get back to work and when?

How do we test for those antibodies quickly and efficiently?

Will we all have to wear masks in public spaces as they do in some Asians cities?

How do different social distancing measures impact the transmission rate?

What’s their cost?

What are the key comorbidities?

What are tracing best practices-and how Orwellian?

How reliable are our tests? The whole area of testing for the virus is an embarrassment. The CDC and the FDA, given the task of creating and distributing tests, failed. They disagreed on a multi-test versus a single-test and in the end, it cost them 3 critical weeks. That is bureaucratic bungling at best and at worst, incompetence. No sense in pointing fingers now but heads will roll. South Korea tests ten to twenty thousand people a day; the U.S.A. was testing two thousand on a good day. The government of Taiwan attempted to warn the U.N led WHO of the deadly potential as far back as December 2019, but Ghebreyesus failed to share Taiwan’s findings with the rest of the world.



Michelle Malkin



At nearly $7 billion, notes Malkin, the CDC's annual budget is more than 200% larger than it was two decades ago. In 2007, Sen. Tom Coburn's fiscal audit of the agency discovered vulgar expenditures including CDC syphilis prevention funds spent to host a "safe-sex" event with a



Despite the flood of money, the agency been caught flat-footed The outbreak of COVID-19 is projected to test Western healthcare provision to the limit. It’s been particularly interesting that the outbreak in Italy has effectively led to systemic failure and broke the health system in Lombardy, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Before the outbreak, it was remarked that:As far back as 2003, a Library of Congress report cited Lombardy as having the highest concentration of Chinese immigrants in Italy. Our media refuses to tell us this fact today—or any day. It appears that there are roughly 300,000 Chinese Nationals working in the leather, garment, textile and fashion industries in the region. Lombardy is quickly learning that there is nothing more expensive than cheap Chinese labour.Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is the leader of Ethiopia’s Maoist Party. I am of the view that he postponed the declaration of a “pandemic” for more than 40 days, under pressure by the Chinese Communist Party. Similarly, the rebranding from Wuhan flu to COVID 19 wasn’t a coincidence. There is a considerable movement, led by the World Health Organization, to stop naming diseases and pathogens in general, after places, and to re-name those that have customarily been so named.We’re working with poor quality and quantity of data, from which all kinds of contradictory things can be deduced. There doesn't seem to be any international standards for data reporting, either. Germany's reporting a mortality rate of 0.3 percent. Italy's reporting 7.9 percent? And 70% of Italian victims are men?And what, by the way, is the rate of false positives? Here are few other questions I have:The whole area of testing for the virus is an embarrassment. The CDC and the FDA, given the task of creating and distributing tests, failed. They disagreed on a multi-test versus a single-test and in the end, it cost them 3 critical weeks. That is bureaucratic bungling at best and at worst, incompetence. No sense in pointing fingers now but heads will roll. South Korea tests ten to twenty thousand people a day; the U.S.A. was testing two thousand on a good day. The government of Taiwan attempted to warn the U.N led WHO of the deadly potential as far back as December 2019, but Ghebreyesus failed to share Taiwan’s findings with the rest of the world.Michelle Malkin notes that the U.S. Center for Disease Control is a bloated federal government agency with a long history of incompetence, fraud, secrecy, mission creep and shady alliances with both social justice causes on the left and private corporations on the Big Business right.At nearly $7 billion, notes Malkin, the CDC's annual budget is more than 200% larger than it was two decades ago. In 2007, Sen. Tom Coburn's fiscal audit of the agency discovered vulgar expenditures including CDC syphilis prevention funds spent to host a "safe-sex" event with a porn star , CDC HIV/AIDS prevention funds spent on a transgender beauty pageant, and $45 million in CDC funding spent on conferences featuring prostitutes, protests and beach parties.Despite the flood of money, the agency been caught flat-footed on outbreak after outbreak . They squander untold millions on other health threats in favor of pushing gun control and nanny state hobby horses (TV violence, helmet laws, video games, anti-bullying campaigns and explicit sex education, for example). The CDC has one primary job—Disease Control—but has managed to botch it without ever learning from past failures.

I don’t want to make light of what is a very serious situation but this was the choice our political leaders faced: Drive the economy off a cliff or “geezers on gurneys.” Either do a full-court press on social distancing, or face scenes of hospital parking lots and school gymnasiums filled with hundreds of geezers on gurneys, coughing their lives away because we don't have the staff or equipment to help them. We stand on the shoulders of those geezers and it would be unconscionable not to do anything and everything possible.



Given the likelihood of that appalling spectacle, you can't blame them for what they are doing. Will it prove in the end to have been unnecessary? Will we have destroyed our economies for nothing? Possibly, but if we do, the massive stimulus will re-ignite it quickly and from cabin fever will emerge a remarkable recovery. The underlying data is, questionable although there is clearly an exponential rate of growth in the number of new cases. Case, case, case. Cluster, cluster, cluster. BOOM!



According to the dire estimates of the Imperial College of London—whose assessment I am following—excepting those with underlying medical conditions, the new coronavirus is far less deadly than the seasonal flu to anyone under 60 years old. It’s no worse than the 2017-18 flu season for those in their 60s. But it's five to 10 times deadlier than the regular flu for those in their 70s and 80s, respectively?!



A Novel Hypothesis

There is another important development in the story that is worth noting. It appears that people who are being hospitalized and who are likely to “crump” are much more likely to be those who have co-infections with COVID and influenza, particularly if they have no comorbidities or are not old. This may explain why Italy, which basically does not vaccinate the elderly, is getting hammered. France may be worse and is seeing significant numbers of younger patients being hospitalized.



In the US and Canada, we vaccinate the elderly first and foremost, the young (6-17yrs.) second, then 50-65 yrs. The lowest rates of flu shots are for people from 18-49 (roughly only 25-30 percent of people). Coronavirus just might be permitting “opportunistic” infections to get us. There is a case report from China of co-infection that shows that these patients experience severe symptoms and require ventilators as a proof of concept. In the bureaucratic bungling and false positive problems with the test kits, CDC and WHO, at least in America, as mentioned earlier, have opted for a single COVID 19 test. That may prove to be a critical mistake.



This hypothesis can be quickly testable using big data analytics on large databases of patients, such as Kaiser-Permanente’s. I’m not sure if there are there any legal or regulatory roadblocks.



Among all the unknowns possibly the most important is what happens in the Fall? H1N1 developed a second, more severe leg of infection after going dormant in the summer. If we can get a handle on things these over next few weeks, and the warmer weather causes the virus to quiesce, although that too, is a stretch, with maybe just a mild resurgence in the Fall, we'll be able to ride out the economic consequences and get the economy back on track in a year or two, as we did after the 2008 meltdown.



Viral Capital Markets

Just days ago, JPMorgan projected that a recession will hit the US and European economies and by extension Canada, by July, with US GDP to shrink by 2% in the first quarter and 3% in the second, and Eurozone GDP to contract by 1.8% and 3.3% over the same periods. Other estimates are emerging that suggest contraction will be far deeper than that. Sudden cessation of economic activity through quarantines, event cancellations, social distancing, and the almost complete shutdown of the tourist industry will have both immediate and longer-term consequences for national economies. Many commentators have been using the “D” word. These same commentators are also suggesting that Crude Oil could go negative. Surely, we’re close to peak pessimism.



It’s easy to argue that this is potentially worse than the 2008-09 credit crisis. That bear market dropped roughly 54% from top to bottom. As a counter point, however, there are different “types” of bear markets. 1) A “Structural Bear”- where there are structural imbalances in economies such as financial bubbles and a subsequent deflation. 2) Another type of bear market is “Cyclical.” A cyclical bear market would be caused by rising interest rates leading to a recession and lower profits. 3) The current bear market is described as “Event Driven” where there is an exogenous shock to the system often described as a “Black Swan.” Historically, going back to the twin depressions in the mid-19th Century, “Event Driven” bear markets find a bottom, on average, within 6 months; and typically drop 30%. Cyclical bear markets can take 2 years to bottom and Structural Bear markets, 4 years. On Friday March 20th, 2020, the Dow had dropped 32.7% from it’s high on February 21st. On the following Monday morning it was down roughly 35%.



*** Given the likelihood of that appalling spectacle, you can't blame them for what they are doing. Will it prove in the end to have been unnecessary? Will we have destroyed our economies for nothing? Possibly, but if we do, the massive stimulus will re-ignite it quickly and from cabin fever will emerge a remarkable recovery. The underlying data is, questionable although there is clearly an exponential rate of growth in the number of new cases. Case, case, case. Cluster, cluster, cluster. BOOM!According to the dire estimates of the Imperial College of London—whose assessment I am following—excepting those with underlying medical conditions, the new coronavirus is far less deadly than the seasonal flu to anyone under 60 years old. It’s no worse than the 2017-18 flu season for those in their 60s. But it's five to 10 times deadlier than the regular flu for those in their 70s and 80s, respectively?!There is another important development in the story that is worth noting. It appears that people who are being hospitalized and who are likely to “crump” are much more likely to be those who have co-infections with COVID and influenza, particularly if they have no comorbidities or are not old. This may explain why Italy, which basically does not vaccinate the elderly, is getting hammered. France may be worse and is seeing significant numbers of younger patients being hospitalized.In the US and Canada, we vaccinate the elderly first and foremost, the young (6-17yrs.) second, then 50-65 yrs. The lowest rates of flu shots are for people from 18-49 (roughly only 25-30 percent of people). Coronavirus just might be permitting “opportunistic” infections to get us. There is a case report from China of co-infection that shows that these patients experience severe symptoms and require ventilators as a proof of concept. In the bureaucratic bungling and false positive problems with the test kits, CDC and WHO, at least in America, as mentioned earlier, have opted for a single COVID 19 test. That may prove to be a critical mistake.This hypothesis can be quickly testable using big data analytics on large databases of patients, such as Kaiser-Permanente’s. I’m not sure if there are there any legal or regulatory roadblocks.Among all the unknowns possibly the most important is what happens in the Fall? H1N1 developed a second, more severe leg of infection after going dormant in the summer. If we can get a handle on things these over next few weeks, and the warmer weather causes the virus to quiesce, although that too, is a stretch, with maybe just a mild resurgence in the Fall, we'll be able to ride out the economic consequences and get the economy back on track in a year or two, as we did after the 2008 meltdown.Just days ago, JPMorgan projected that a recession will hit the US and European economies and by extension Canada, by July, with US GDP to shrink by 2% in the first quarter and 3% in the second, and Eurozone GDP to contract by 1.8% and 3.3% over the same periods. Other estimates are emerging that suggest contraction will be far deeper than that. Sudden cessation of economic activity through quarantines, event cancellations, social distancing, and the almost complete shutdown of the tourist industry will have both immediate and longer-term consequences for national economies. Many commentators have been using the “D” word. These same commentators are also suggesting that Crude Oil could go negative. Surely, we’re close to peak pessimism.It’s easy to argue that this is potentially worse than the 2008-09 credit crisis. That bear market dropped roughly 54% from top to bottom. As a counter point, however, there are different “types” of bear markets. 1) A “Structural Bear”- where there are structural imbalances in economies such as financial bubbles and a subsequent deflation. 2) Another type of bear market is “Cyclical.” A cyclical bear market would be caused by rising interest rates leading to a recession and lower profits. 3) The current bear market is described as “Event Driven” where there is an exogenous shock to the system often described as a “Black Swan.” Historically, going back to the twin depressions in the mid-19th Century, “Event Driven” bear markets find a bottom, on average, within 6 months; and typically drop 30%. Cyclical bear markets can take 2 years to bottom and Structural Bear markets, 4 years. On Friday March 20th, 2020, the Dow had dropped 32.7% from it’s high on February 21st. On the following Monday morning it was down roughly 35%.

It’s estimated that seventy-two thousand factories and roughly 22 million jobs moved to China from the United States over the last 3 decades, leaving a wasteland of despair, alcohol and drug abuse, shorter life expectancy, plunging birth rates, soaring suicide rates and lives without dignity.