Posts published in “National Newspapers”

Biden’s Generals Are Fighting the Last COVID War

By Red Jahncke on Nov. 9, 2021

Biden’s Generals Are Fighting the Last COVID War

Biden Administration generals are fighting the last war. Last Thursday, they mandated that large businesses and health care facilities require that their workers get vaccinated for COVID-19.

The next day, Pfizer announced an antiviral pill to treat the virus. Pfizer’s pill is 89% effective. A Merck antiviral pill for COVID-19 (with only about 50% effectiveness) is already in use in Britain.

COVID-19 treatment pills destroy any vestige of logic or justification for Biden’s vaccine mandates.

No matter how someone contracts the virus, these pills prevent serious illness – hospitalization and death. With double lines of defense against the coronavirus – vaccination, and, now, these new antiviral treatment pills – mandates have become unnecessary.

Last Saturday, the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay of the Biden business mandate, saying it raises “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”

Quite apart from the legal issues, the mandates ignore science and logic. The logic of vaccine mandates has always been weak and self-contradictory insofar as their implied purpose of protecting vaccinated people from unvaccinated people. If vaccines are effective (95% effective in Pfizer’s case), then, vaccinated people face little risk from unvaccinated people.

If the vaccines are ineffective, then why should anyone get them?

The Greatest National Security Threat by Any Analysis – Climate or Military – is China

By Red Jahncke on Feb. 16, 2021

The Greatest National Security Threat by Any Analysis – Climate or Military – is China

President Biden has issued a flurry of executive orders related to climate change, including one designating climate change a national security threat andone rejoining the Paris Accord.

The primary security threat by this new climate-change name looks the same as the leading national security threat in traditional terms: China. The totalitarian Communist dictatorship is responsible for almost 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

China’s emissions are not only the world’s most, but they are increasing every year. U.S. emissions are about half as much and have been decreasing for over a decade.

Prescription Drugs: Overcharged Americans Are Subsidizing Europe’s Socialist Medicine

By Red Jahncke on Dec. 8, 2020

Prescription Drugs: Overcharged Americans Are Subsidizing Europe’s Socialist Medicine

President Trump finalized a "most favored nation (MFN)" or "best price," prescription drug pricing rule on Nov. 20. The goal of the MFN concept is to deliver fair drug prices to Americans. The MFN best-price concept mandates the same price for Americans and wealthy Europeans, who have been paying about one-third of what Americans pay. It does so by empowering Medicare to require drug sellers to give it the "best" (lowest) price charged any other buyer.

December 8, 2020

The MFN construct does not diminish drug company profits, which fund critical R&D and discovery of new life-saving drugs. The concept does not impose government-set prices upon drug manufacturers, who would be free to set whatever price would maximize sales and profits.

While there is controversy as to whether the just-finalized rule genuinely implements the concept, the MFN approach should be followed. Opponents of the rule should work to improve it, not oppose it.

Biden’s “I’m not Trump” campaign did not produce a mandate to govern

By Red Jahncke on Nov. 14, 2020

Biden’s “I’m not Trump” campaign did not produce a mandate to govern

“The Only Good Thing About Donald Trump Is All His Policies.” So proclaimed an opinion column headline in 2018. The converse might be said of apparent President-elect Joe Biden. He may be likable but he offered little vision and said nothing about policy in his victory speech a week ago— nor much during his entire campaign.

November 14, 2020

Biden, so far, is defined by who he is not: Donald Trump.

Biden’s message consisted almost exclusively of a still-life image of safe sequester in a well-disclosed secure basement location.

Biden claims a mandate, but his prime raison d’etre will depart 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 20. Then what?

Will Poll-Shy Cops Put Trump Over the Top

By Red Jahncke on Nov. 2, 2020

Will Poll-Shy Cops Put Trump Over the Top

THE question in the 2020 presidential race is whether the polls are missing “hidden” Trump supporters, just as they did in 2016.

November 2, 2020

If they miss again, a big part of the overlooked population may be the nation’s 800,000 cops. Randy Hagler, President of the Fraternal Order of Police in North Carolina, the largest police union in the state, says, “I never answer poll calls. If I do by mistake, I hang up right away. I think most police do the same.”

If polls are failing to capture the police, they are missing something hidden in plain sight. Every major police organization has endorsed Trump. Police groups nationwide have endorsed Republicans in overwhelming numbers at all levels of government. In this year’s 46 races for U.S. senate and governor, major police organizations have endorsed only three Democrats, including two whose Republican opponents have also received major police endorsements.

A Different Kind of Blue Wave

By Red Jahncke on Oct. 22, 2020

A Different Kind of Blue Wave

President Trump challenged Joe Biden in the first debate to name one police endorsement he’d received. Mr. Biden couldn’t—virtually all police organizations have endorsed Mr. Trump. Police groups are endorsing Republicans at every level of government, many for the first time and by overwhelming votes.

October 22, 2020

The nation’s largest police organization, with 355,000 members, is the Fraternal Order of Police. Patrick Yoes, the national group’s president, tells me every officer among the FOP’s membership has a vote. The process starts with officers voting at 2,100 local lodges, each of which votes at the state level. Then, at the national level, every state lodge casts a vote -- this year, unanimously for Mr. Trump.

Trying to protect everyone, we left the most vulnerable exposed to the virus

By Red Jahncke on May. 20, 2020

Trying to protect everyone, we left the most vulnerable exposed to the virus

In the Senate hearing last week on the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Tenn.) challenged the preternatural influence of Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), saying: "You are not the end-all.”

Paul was rude, but right. The nation has become transfixed by Fauci and his approach to the pandemic, which Paul described accurately as a “one-size-fits-all” policy. Almost the entire nation has been ordered to stay home and socially distance, and almost the whole economy has been shut down. You can’t get more one-size-fits-all than that.

It is a marvel that the nation has followed such a uniform policy in the face of a virus which afflicts different population segments in such wildly different ways. Over three-quarters of all serious cases and deaths have befallen people over age 65, who comprise only about 16 percent of the population. And it is just plain common sense that people with serious prior conditions would be at greater risk, and that transmission would be greatest in densely populated urban areas and residential settings. To offer a uniform policy is like a shoe store selling only size-8 shoes.

The dramatic imbalance was clear before the U.S. shutdown began. Data out of China and Italy were unambiguous that the virus attacked the elderly and spared those younger. Moreover, our first reported outbreak occurred at the Life Care Center nursing home in Washington state, i.e., among seniors in a dense residential setting.

Tragically, the U.S. has failed to protect precisely those population segments whose high risk was obvious from the start. While the damage already sustained – both in terms of lives and livelihoods – cannot be undone, it need not be compounded. From the start, many people saw a targeted approach without a total economic shutdown as a better approach – and they still do.

Unfortunately, partisanship has crept into the debate over the best policy, with Democrats supporting Fauci and many Republicans the targeted alternative. Let’s look at the targeted alternative -- not as presented by a Republican or a conservative but, rather, by Thomas Friedman, renowned opinion columnist for The New York Times, a generally left-leaning newspaper.

It’s Not Stimulus, If There’s Nothing to Stimulate

By Red Jahncke on Apr. 16, 2020

It’s Not Stimulus, If There’s Nothing to Stimulate

We should Re-Open The Economy The Same Way We Shut it Down: Here, There and, Then, Everywhere -- And Soon.

The Hill, April 16, 2020... It is not “stimulus” if there’s nothing to stimulate. With almost all states having ordered citizens to stay home and most businesses to shutter, the coronavirus “stimulus” bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump on March 27 is really a “bridge” bill -- a bridge to an uncertain future time when people can go back to work and businesses can reopen.

If the shutdown goes too long, some workers and businesses may not survive or be able to revive. If it goes too long, the $2.2 trillion may be exhausted in the “bridge” phase, leaving nothing for an actual stimulus phase. A prolonged shutdown based upon an “abundance of caution” may carry instead an overload of danger.

The president has reiterated a very general hope to restart the economy on May 1 and,, on Wednesday, he said some states may be able to open earlier. Other states have leapfrogged beyond that, however, and adopted much longer shutdown periods; Virginia, for example, has a shutdown order through June 10. That may make sense for some areas, most obviously the immediate New York City area; in others, particularly rural areas, it probably does not.

We should remember that the objective of the extraordinary stay-home measures was to “flatten the curve” of infection, not to eliminate it. Once the spread of the virus has been slowed to keep it within hospital and medical capacity, that goal will have been achieved and extreme measures should be lifted. In his daily briefings, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) has said the curve of infection appears to be flattening in the New York City metropolitan area, the acknowledged epicenter of the crisis.

As we approach the time to reopen the country, the larger question is how we should restart our economic engines. We should reopen the same way we shut down -- namely, here and there based on conditions on the ground but in reverse sequence, starting where conditions are the best. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams have said as much in White House briefings.

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The Double-Barreled Coronavirus Threat: Death by Virus or by Ensuing Economic Disaster

By Red Jahncke on Mar. 19, 2020

The Double-Barreled Coronavirus Threat: Death by Virus or by Ensuing Economic Disaster

The Hill, Thursday, March 19, 11:30amThe ultimate infection and mortality rate from the coronavirus (COVID-19) is unknowable at least for weeks, but the economic fallout is not. We appear headed into serious recession, if not depression. Bad economic times also affect public health and, ultimately, we might see more deaths from a deep economic decline than from coronavirus.

On Monday, China released its economic data for January and February, when COVID-19 erupted and the country went into lockdown. The data were much worse than analysts forecast: China’s factories slumped 13.5 percent, retail sales fell 20.5 percent and home sales plummeted 34.7 percent. This, in an economy that has experienced 9.4 percent average annual growth over four decades of uninterrupted year-over-year quarterly growth.

On Wednesday, Deutsche Bank forecast a full first-quarter Chinese GDP decline of 32 percent annualized. The bank predicted a second-quarter drop of 24 percent in Europe and 13 percent in the U.S. from first-quarter levels – a decline the Wall Street Journal said “would be the biggest in recorded history.” That is why the stock market has plunged more than 30 percent and U.S. Treasury interest rates have fallen to near-zero levels. (To avoid any confusion, Wall Street is an indicator; this is not to say it is in need of a bailout.)

In the face of such drastic economic damage and associated public health deterioration, we should consider how soon and why certain of the recently adopted shutdown measures might be lifted to prevent economic Armageddon.

The general construct and rationale for our extreme measures is to spread out over time the incidence of coronavirus infections, to keep it below hospital capacity. If illness spikes above capacity, there is no treatment available for many of the afflicted, and the mortality rate spikes as the untreated die. This construct has become known as “flattening the curve,” keeping the rising curve of coronavirus cases below a straight line representing medical capacity.

Why not increase that capacity? Most of the policy discussion seems to assume that hospital capacity is relatively fixed, but China built two hospitals in Wuhan in two weeks; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called on the Army Corps of Engineers to build new hospitals here. The sooner and the more we increase capacity, the sooner we may be able to ease some of the extraordinary measures and mitigate the coming economic recession.

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Bloomberg: Will The Candidate Measure Up To The Campaign Architect?

By Red Jahncke on Feb. 21, 2020

Bloomberg: Will The Candidate Measure Up To The Campaign Architect?

In the Democratic presidential debate Wednesday in Las Vegas, Michael Bloomberg the candidate badly underperformed Michael Bloomberg the brilliant campaign architect.

Architect will insulate candidate this time, preserving the hopes of many center-right Democrats that he can prevail over front runner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an ardent socialist whom they consider unelectable.

Before the debate, Bloomberg the campaign
architect had maneuvered Bloomberg the candidate into third place in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. Most likely, former Vice President Joe Biden’s epic collapse will soon leave Bloomberg in second place behind Sanders, setting up the showdown that is the predicate of Bloomberg’s candidacy.

Not being on the ballot guaranteed Bloomberg’s survival post-Iowa and post-New Hampshire, and it insulates him from paying the normal price, in Nevada and South Carolina, for his dismal debate performance in Las Vegas.

There’s no such safety net for the other candidates, who failed to carry out their necessary debate mission — namely, to slow a surging Sanders. Instead, they attacked Bloomberg and each other in a badly moderated food fight. For former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), this was a missed opportunity to revive themselves following disastrous finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

So, unless pre-publication polling is totally wrong, Sanders will win resoundingly Saturday in Nevada’s caucuses. A big Sanders victory means yet another defeat, and perhaps a fatal one, for each of the other candidates. That includes Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Ind., for whom it would create a serious loss of momentum going into South Carolina where his lack of black support is sure to be fatal.

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