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@cliffordbrown: You, sir, are a national treasure.
Should be a journalist.
At least he is certainly willing to do a bit of research work.
Meanwhile, Ricochet’s Main Feed promotion mechanism can help rectify the situation a bit.
Ricochet can and should become a go-to source as a 21st Century version of the period journal for the reading public, with smart content from poetry, though photography, music, food, technology and, yes, politics near and far, local to global. We have the collective knowledge, and the writing skills for the format. IMHO.
The Colonel is a contributor and can be promoted as fast as he wants to be, or he can do it by member recommendation.
So, the takeaway is that a country that is a breeding ground for viral infections is also better prepared than average to deal with outbreaks?
Right Angles, please don’t insult the man.
It may be that this particular one is, which should be at least minimally reassuring.
How you gonna get the scoop if you waste time with facts?
Lots of practice can’t hurt. Well, yeah, it hurts, but you also get more effective.
At least those who survive do.
I think that anytime you have very large numbers of people living in close proximity, in a hot and humid environment, you have the potential for a multitude of diseases to fester, mutate and become (at least locally) an epidemic. So the fact this regularly happens should not be an indictment, its just nature.
As Clifford said above, add in large numbers of animals or bush meat to the mix.
Possibly. But I think the US media’s interest in China is partly due to admiration for their muscular infrastructure policy – all those wonderful trains! – and the top-down planning that accomplishes big national initiatives without being tied down by the Lilliputian floss strung by NIMBYs and conservatives.
India has no such purchase in the journalist’s mind. It provides no instructive model for enlightened authoritarianism.
PS I was informed today on Twitter that cocking an eyebrow Spock-like at “wet markets” is racist, so adjust your speech accordingly.
That’s right, US Leftists: Admire China instead of India.
You know, the country that has greater economic freedom than India according to the Index of Economic Freedom. Yeah, that country.
OK. So now consider the components of the metric you cite, and the priorities that metric actually reflects. Do tell.
Couldn’t tell you. I have very little clear idea of their methodology, though downloading Excel documents from the Heritage Foundation website might give you the information you need.
It may be that India scores better in some key areas but worse in corruption. Just a guess.
Anyway, the point is that US Leftists as described by Lileks–no doubt a bunch who want less economic liberty than China’s 58.4 percent–very likely do not know the facts, or do not know what to do with them.
The smart money is on overblown panic, as that bet always pays,
Steve Hayward interviewed a Wuhan resident for his Powerline blog podcast. The resident pointed out that nearly all coronavirus fatalities have been among the aged. He didn’t go into great detail about the sanitation and living conditions of Wuhan Chinese, but they’re surely not comparable to American Standard (<—- see what I did there?).
He is a journalist. @cliffordbrown should get his own Sunday morning talk show on Fox . . .
The PowerLine crew does great work. That podcast prompted my initial thoughts on the matter.
China’s only biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facility is located in Wuhan, just 20 miles from the food market at the epicenter of the outbreak. Interesting is that the first two people infected didn’t have contact with the market.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it
The quickly constructed hospitals can provide a means not just to care for and isolate the sick, but also are a convenient location for China’s top viral scientists to study the effects of the disease and various countermeasures.