Killer App

Trump, Xi, CCP, GOP is the title of a series of posts I ran about a year ago, pointing out some of the ways that Trump and Xi are alike, and CCP and GOP are alike.

We know that Mr. Xi and CCP wasted about six weeks at the early stages of the crisis.  This no doubt cost lives in China, as people died at home without being tested.

We know that Trump has wasted more than six weeks, since he knew about the virus from early in January when China informed WHO.   This waste of time has cost lives in the US, and is going to cost a lot more, as doctors and nurses work without a "safety net," preventive measures are ignored by Trump, people die from overdose on hydroxychloroquine and GOP derides the pleadings of the scientists and doctors.  The bungling will force the use of the "death panels" hypothesized by the GOP in Obamacare debates.  In overwhelmed hospitals, doctors will be forced to triage virus patients.  Public health and safety cost money, and Republicans say we can't afford it.

So let’s help in the election.  Let’s remind all Americans in our high-tech information age that the GOP has developed a killer app for the American people.  Call it Trump.  By June or July, Americans will have realized how true that is.

 CCP and Mr. Xi’s Learning Disability

Two full months into the Covid-19 crisis, we see where Mr. Xi’s crackdown on communication and openness has taken him.  He is himself in no danger, but CCP runs into a conceptual wall with free flow of information. That is a disability – a learning disability – for CCP and China now.

For leaders, information does not want to be free - in US or China

Masks of the Red (Cross) Death

You remember the Edgar Allan Poe story - The Masque of the Red Death

Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.

“Abandon all hope” is how I titled a recent post on the response of Wuhan people to the virus.  The title was based on the stories I was hearing, both live and through wechat groups.

Update at January 30 - regarding the doctor who was disciplined for sharing information on the virus with his wechat group - there are now eight doctors in Wuhan who have been so disciplined.  In at least one case, the information sharing was among a wechat group of doctors involved in treating the infection.  You know the phrase, "No good deed goes unpunished."  No doubt these doctors -involved as they were in fighting this disease, without break for days - forgot the cardinal rule I mentioned below in the original post - "no one should comment without knowing all the facts."  Only the government can know all the facts.