Don's Tuesday Column (column had be corrected to change all use of "Hunan" to "Wuhan"; I must have had the Chinese restaurant on the mind)

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/17/2020

         Institutions, core values, everyone hit

Very few of us will actually catch the “Wuhan flu,” or coronavirus/COVID-19 to the word/pc police. According to George Orwell’s “1984,” I or anyone calling it “China virus,” “Asian flu” (I forgot, we already get flus shots for that), or “Wuhan flu/virus” would be charged with “double plus bad think” and get re-educated. However, just like past flu bugs named for place of origin—swine, Lyme, Ebola—it started in Wuhan, China.

We are home-confined after picking up throat/bronchial colds from our renter next door while collecting rent; it’s that easy to be contaminated. It’s an unfortunate, necessary strategy; we avoid breathing on healthy people and avoid exposing our weakened immune system to worse bugs. Been through it before; such bad things come to an end, to be forgotten.

Much will not—and should not—be forgotten about this year’s “pandemic,” which is sadly different from past ones, else there would be immunizations and cures “on the shelf.” We are obviously in an early stage; countries like Italy are coping with more widespread outbreaks that could happen in America. It puts the protective measures—cancellations of public events, schools, un-patronized businesses and travel carriers—in stark perspective. Tehama GOP’s annual fundraising dinner has been postponed from its original March 28 date at the Vets Hall.

Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown banned gatherings of more than 250, raising questions about the necessity of cancelling a Redmond Sports and RV show the day before it started with an expected 20,000 attendees and vendors relying on $5 to $7 thousand in income. Deschutes County has exactly 1 positive Wuhan flu case. A long-planned Republican candidates forum was cancelled.

My own suspicious mind considered that Democrat Brown was well aware of the miniscule public health threat from those events. However, she had an opportunity to punish the “red” or Republican part of the state, whose Republican state representatives foiled the Oregon version of “climate change” laws by not showing up for law-making sessions in Albany, OR.

Past influenzas provide conflicting guidance. The 1918 “Spanish flu” (ironically first detected in Kansas but called “Spanish” for the millions that died in Spain) prompted cancelled events in St. Louis but not an annual parade in Philadelphia. Philly had a horrible spike in cases and deaths but not St. Louis.

In Barack Obama’s first term, the H1N1 (or Swine) flu spread unabated from April through October, 2009, when Obama finally declared a “state of emergency” prompting proper measures. Before and after his emergency declaration, until the flu disappeared (they all do or so I read), tens of millions were infected, hundreds of thousands were hospitalized and some 13,000 died (1,000 from April to October). Aside from those suffering from catching that flu, everyone’s lives went on as normal; parades, celebrations, schools, sporting events, rallies, festivals and commercial events suffered no interruptions.

Researchers and investigative journalists might inform Americans of those facts but at the time the media/political class was in thrall of America’s first black president with his signature Obamacare proposal. Neither then nor now can we be given discouraging words for Obama’s tenure—at the time, news media had little interest in covering things detrimental to the public’s opinion of their “light bringer” President Obama, particularly a public health failure on his watch.

Now, the narrative is flipped. Every act, statement and effort by President Trump and his experts is called either overreach (travel restrictions which have historically proven effective) or inadequate (the shortage of coronavirus testing kits that resulted from prior FDA and CDC regulations, not incompetent Trump efforts). Hypocritically, Joe Biden trashed Trump while copying Trump’s responses.

Look up “A Tale of Two Pandemics: Media Downplayed Swine Flu Outbreak Under Obama,” at Issuesinsights.com. In “PolitiFact’s big fat Corona Lie,” you can read how, instead of pronouncing the truth about Obama’s H1N1 response, PolitiFact jumped at the chance to cover-up for Obama and call it a lie. You can read how even CNN reported the millions infected, 20,000 hospitalized and 1,000 deaths (pre-10/2009).

Also, “COVID-19 is terrifying—as a weapon of political propaganda. The Wuhan Panic is a textbook case of the Rahm Emanuel principle that you never want a good crisis to go to waste,” Spectator.us. It’s been called “Trump’s Katrina.” “Trump’s Chernobyl: Media Wuhan Virus Hysteria Stokes Public Panic. It’s clear that corporate media can’t be trusted to provide accurate information about an issue of public concern, they don’t care about public health or the economy,” Thefederalist.com, 3/11.

Consider the disingenuous talking point that Trump disbanded a sub-agency of the CDC involved with foreign health depts. In spite of that irrelevant action, Trump’s CDC reached out to China, the origin of the Wuhan virus. “If President Xi would have allowed what President Trump asked for — to let in our scientists, our doctors, our researchers — at the very beginning in January, we probably could have contained this in China,” Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said. Instead, the Chinese lie that we created the virus.

Has the CDC budget gone up or down? Per hhs.gov, “Full-Time Equivalents” line: 2016=11.8B; 2017,2018=11.9B; 2019, 2020=11.3B; 2021=11.5B. So, down over 5 years. “Program Level”: 2016=12.1B; 2021=12.6B. So, up over 5 years. Spare us further budget blame-game minutia.

To repeat: “AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness,” 2/26. Believing what Dems and their mouthpieces say is accepting “distortions” for truth. Bookwormroom.com: “Coronavirus and the pernicious effect of the media’s lies about Donald Trump; The media’s lies…are destructive, even as Trump does his best to slow the disease, allowing time for cures to be developed.”

“The media is irresponsibly sensationalizing the Coronavirus by leapfrogging over the facts into the saga. Mass media corporations are instigating fear, and politicizing the fallout,” Sarah Hoyt, Victorygirlsblog.com. “Politicizing Coronavirus Will Cost Dems the House,” by David Catron, is spot on.