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National Review Online Contributing Editor Rob Long is in for Jim today. Rob and Greg relish FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s Twitter demolishing a Chinese officials boast of a free Chinese society by listing numerous regime critics and whistleblowers he would like to see “undisappeared.” They also unload on Obamacare figure Ezekiel Emanuel for suggesting that we can’t go back to normal until we have a vaccine 12-18 months from now, with Rob pointing out Emanuel is now making the exact opposite argument he made a decade ago. And they discuss the bizarre politicizing of hydroxychloroquine, with some media seeming eager for the drug not to work just so they can say President Trump was wrong.
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I move that Rob Long should permanently replace Jim Geraghty.
Rob’s response to the first martini was a bit confusing, but he was golden after that.
Geraghty ran over your dog, is that it?
Nooooo. I need a Jim (and Greg) fix every day!
Rob Long can be critical of Donald Trump without losing his mind.
Jim Geraghty … well, let me give you an example. He wrote a trenchant article, chronicling the Chinese government’s serial prevarications about COVID-19.
But he had to, he simply had to, he could not resist — taking swipes at Donald Trump in the process.
Jim shares that pathology with Jonah Goldberg, among others. Although Jim’s case seems less severe.
Hmm. Debatable.
I think Jim has a tendency to go after, not just Trump, but Republicans and conservatives in general, putting on an air of “more in sorrow than an anger”.
A recent example was when he attacked a Republican governor for saying, after consulting with his medical advisers, that he had not known persons who are asymptomatic can still spread COVID-19.
Later the same day I read an article in New Scientist, which indicated this was an active area of research right now; i.e., whether this form of transmission really happens, or is just theoretical.
Can’t most contagious diseases, also be contagious before showing symptoms? But maybe the point was whether this particular one, can be. Anecdotally it seems to be established though, given the numbers of people who get it without knowingly contacting anyone who was obviously infected.
Here’s Discover magazine’s newsletter, a day or two ago:
As recently as early February, the World Health Organization stated that viral transmission from asymptomatic people was likely “rare,” based on information available at the time. But a growing body of data now suggests that a significant number of infected people who don’t have symptoms can still transmit the virus to others.
The bottom line being that Jim Geraghty’s attack on a Republican governor, for not knowing in advance what the scientific consensus would eventually be, was unfair.
Or maybe he figures a Republican governor should be smart enough to not trust WHO either?
You mean, the Governor should have distrusted the WHO then, but should trust it now, now that it says asymptomatic carriers are significantly infectious, after all?
If I read Jim Geraghty correctly, he will probably have trusted the WHO both times, and bashed any Republican who disagreed with so respectable an organ of the international establishment!
Well just because it is now apparently representing reality, doesn’t mean it is current respectable, or ever will be. It just happens to coincide with the facts, at this time. Maybe something like, even a Chinese-controlled WHO is right twice a… year?