The point of this blog has been to find and promote a better life for our people. Individual liberty is the foundation of this quest. But what if I failed to notice we have already lost much of this underpinning? Instead of liberty, is fear is ruling the day? This fear may seem overwrought, but it is beginning to keep me up at night.
If you think I’m just foolish, please ask yourself some questions. You might find you’re in the same boat.
Are you afraid something you said, wrote, or was pictured in the past will surface and cost you big? We hear about someone losing their job or forced to resign because they uttered a single word. Still, it was the wrong one: a photo or video wearing something not in line with today’s dominant culture—a teenage tweet with no intent to hurt costs a young girl her cheer leading scholarship. A reality host is stepping down for a gracious comment about a young lady who once went to an antebellum party.
Are you worried about a reduced local police force will make you a victim of a crime? Almost all big-city police forces are having trouble filling their ranks. Police are retiring or leaving for suburban or smaller town forces in record numbers is resulting in rising crime in the cities
Are you afraid to express your opinions in all social settings or color them for fear of offending? Many people are avoiding social interactions where people with different political, race, or ethnicity are present.
Do you feel no matter where you get your information, you’re not getting the whole story? More and more, it seems the news is more about telling you what to think rather than helping you understand.
Over 100,000 unaccompanied children will arrive at our border this year. We have no place to put them. When the new administration dumped Trump’s border actions, including our agreements with Mexico, did they take a moment to consider what might happen? Whatever the Biden brain trust calls it, a crisis has developed out of nowhere. A solution won’t come quickly without backtracking to what worked under Trump. Instead of taking things slow and sure, Biden reversed the safeguards, inviting a tidal wave of people on our Southern border.
This calamity was foreseeable. Much of the new administration’s problems arise from the same flaw, lack of preparation. One of the primary reasons put forth for electing Biden was competence. Joe and those around him knew what they were doing. It appears they don’t.
The first indication of lack of Biden bunch homework is the ignorance of Project Warp Speed. Biden, his crew, and media allies were relentless in their criticism of the Trump vaccine rollout. Proudly declaring they would get 100 million doses in people’s arms in their first hundred days. The Trump administration reached the Biden rate by inauguration Day. This week we’ll have administered 100 million doses from the standing start December 14th. A quick check of the calendar shows this is well under 100 days. Embarrassed, the new administration quickly upped its aspirations to 1.5 million shots a day. Our average for the last seven days is north of 2 million. Biden can’t get a handle on what’s going on.
As I pointed out in the last post, the U.S. and U.K. are way out in front of vaccinating people (see chart below) among larger nations. Former assistant HHS Secretary in the Trump administration, Adm. Brett Giroir, pointed out that this success is 99% due to the Warp Speed Program’s initiated before the administration change.
Asked at a press briefing whether the Trump White House deserves credit for our vaccine success, press secretary Jan Psaki replied, “I don’t think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died of this pandemic,” According to Psaki, the multitude working tirelessly bringing about life-saving vaccines in record time and getting them into peoples arms at world-class speed deserves no praise only blame for every death.
Michael Avenatti, Andrew Cuomo, The Lincoln Project, and Anthony Fauci have enjoyed media adoration. At a certain point in history, each had regular access to the cameras of CNN and MSNBC, among others. The common thread is they willingly and forcibly attacked Donald Trump. Overlooking their feet of clay, opinion leaders in the media lauded their courage to take on the vile Trump. Avenatti and Cuomo each elicited talk of a Presidential Run. Portrayed as Republican stalwarts, the Lincoln Project members put honor above party loyalty in the media’s eyes.
Instead of awaiting his next appearance on CNN, Avenatti is looking forward to his sentencing for his felony conviction. He’s facing up to 40 yrs. Cuomo is still on T.V., but to explain why he put Covid infected patients back in nursing homes and then covered it up. A far cry from his Emmy-winning Covid updates. Beyond concealing one of its key members’ perversions, everyone wants to know where the Lincoln Project’s money went. Were they washed-up grifters looking for a big payday? The media never asked.
People are probably shocked at the inclusion of the near-sainted Dr. Fauci in this infamous group. After all, isn’t the good Doctor the embodiment of “Science.” in this pandemic? The media has undoubtedly made this a bedrock of its reporting. Readers of this blog, especially the series on COVID-19, know I don’t share this adoration.
The permanent medical bureaucracy charged with protecting us from epidemics early on dropped the ball when COVID-19 made its debut in China. They never pushed to into Wuhan to obtain the facts. The World Health Organization(WHO) hadn’t sounded the alarm. The likes of the C.D.C., F.D.A., and Dr. Fauci instead downplayed the risk. On February 29, 2020, Dr. Fauci informed us, “No need to change lifestyle ,yet.” When Pres.Trump banned flights from China in Jan. 2020, these medical experts opposed the move.
Only after the publication of the Imperial College’s model prediction of millions of Covid deaths in the U.S. did these worthies do a 180 to locking down the country. As cases appeared, we found shortages of P.P.E. The Bureaucrats bungled our testing to a degree we haven’t yet fully caught up. Those charged protecting us failed miserably. You don’t have to take my word for it. Take a look at Former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottenger on CBS’s Face the Nation. He details the failures of WHO and our bureaucracies.
Well, this has been a week. We got an acquittal in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Also, we received new C.D.C. guidelines for in-person schooling. President Biden announced how he would have enough vaccine for everybody by the end of July. He also claimed his actions would save us from Trump’s failures. All of this gave us some insight into the competence of the Biden administration. The signs aren’t good.
Knowing you’re going to lose a battle and attacking anyway may make for a stirring poem. Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” highlighted reckless bravery. It wasn’t a good idea then, and it’s foolhardy politics. There never was a chance of getting 17 Republican Senators to convict Trump. Why would you give the Ex-President a victory to lord over you? All it did was further divide the country along partisan lines. Wasn’t Joe all about bringing us together?
There was a win-win way out of the Capitol Riot mess if only Biden had the sense to see it. Republicans offered a censure rather than impeachment—a bipartisan measure condemning the departed President for his part in the rampage showing unity rather than division. A Gerald Ford moment is opting to focus on the National healing and needs instead of revenge. The Democratic left-wing might scream, but most of the nation would think of Biden as a bigger person.
Instead of asserting control of his party as all successful presidents have done, he allowed his party’s legislators to charge into “the Valley of Death.” Now Biden is faced with following the divisive impeachment with the highly partisan Covid Relief Bill. This massive legislation will lack any Republican input. It would’ve been far better to have a unifying action under his belt before pushing this highly partisan package. This sequence negates Joe Biden’s campaign promise to be a unifier. Worse, it upends his claims to competence.
Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, had a great tweet the other day, “In truth, the vaccination program, combined with the naturally acquired immunity of people previously infected with the virus, would probably get the U.S. close to herd immunity by the summer, even if Joe Biden spent the next six months just riding his Peloton.” His contention that the vaccine regime Biden inherited will tame the virus by summer received even more clarity. Johnson and Johnson asked for FDA approval for its vaccine this week. Already in use in the U.K. since December, the AstraZeneca vaccine could be approved shortly. Novavax expects to have its results by the end of the first quarter.
The U.S. has contracted for 100 million doses from each company. Johnson & Johnson requires only one shot, while the other two need a double dose. These vaccines maybe a little less effective than the two already in use but are much easier to distribute. They require the same handling as our seasonal flu shots so they can use the same widespread system.
As I said in my 1/24 post “Birth of A Lie’,” the Biden administration could only mess things up. Specifically, I warned against placing orders for much more of the two already approved hard to distribute vaccines. Sure enough, Biden ordered 100 million more doses from each for delivery starting in the summer. If any of the three new vaccines in the pipeline are approved, you will have more than enough doses to vaccinate every adult in the country by then. (at present, there is no plan to include children).
Given the success of the already-in-place vaccine distribution plan, leaving it alone is the best policy. Just incorporate the already contracted new vaccines as they come online. How do we know the current program is a rousing success? Biden’s goal was 100 million doses to be administered in his first hundred days. We were already on that pace by his inauguration. He now aspires to get to a 1.5 million a day rate by the end of the hundred days. We have already surpassed that rate. Having met all the Biden goals, the Administration must agree this is a success.
The press plays up the uneven and, in some spots, problematic vaccine rollout. Remember, this was from a standing start. The special considerations with the two approved products ruled out the distribution network we used for other vaccines. I always say, we have to ask, compared to..? Faced with the same problems, the European Union is far behind our shot rate.
There will be glitches and weather disruptions, but with more vaccines and supplies coming online, we can feel confident we will continue to outperform the Biden goals.
Those goals point to a different problem, the ignorance of the Biden team. By issuing desired vaccination goals already attained and claiming the pandemic here will worsen when improving, the Biden administration is at odds with the facts. “A 100 million doses in 100 days” is a good slogan but had no basis in reality. The nation recorded well over 2 million shots the last two days. The Biden low-ball shows a remarkable lack of knowledge of Operation Warp speed. Is it ignorance or politics?
The administration has claimed inadequate transition information from the previous administration, but the info is public knowledge. I can assure you I have never had a government briefing. Yet, I have the needed information to know what’s happening. Given what the Trump administration put in the works, we will be swimming in Covid vaccines by the end of June. Like the GameStop bulls, I found it on the internet. Here’s your pandemic update from Johns Hopkins:
To give the appearance of doing something, the administration announced a couple of actions. It claimed to be increasing vaccine deliveries, but the New York Times reported this was already in the works. Also, it will send a million doses to 6,500 pharmacies. This action might be getting ready for the Operation Warp Speed’s supported Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Without special handling, this one dose vaccine is excellent for pharmacies and other local distribution points. The J & J vaccine is on the verge of approval. If not, it’s just diverting doses from a system already able to inoculate 1.5+ million people a day.
Detour on the Road 