Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

Answering the coronavirus: exponential American innovation

Know-how, free-market innovation, yay!

America has long led the world in innovation, and the coronavirus won’t change that. Indeed, US inventors and entrepreneurs are rising to the occasion, jumping in to fill urgent needs.

With ramped-up testing the best way to discover who has the virus and so learn what the fatality rate really is, the news from Abbott Laboratories couldn’t be better. The Food and Drug Administration gave emergency-use approval to Abbott’s new test, the fastest available at the point of care: It can deliver a positive result in five minutes and a negative result in under 15.

Good.

Pope Francis warns of ‘a viral genocide’ if governments put the economy before people amid coronavirus pan demic  | America Magazine

Francis, in his pontifical wisdom — nah, he must know it carries no water in this discussion — positions the economy and saving lives as enemies.

But that’s a chump’s choice. He says putting economy first is putting people to death. What does he think the economy does?

My God, ignorance such as this in highly placed people in such presumably holy places. Spare us, O Lord! (But this last would never find a place in the prayers of the people at mass.)

Chinese ‘wet markets’ reportedly open back up for business, ready to sell bats and dogs for human consumption

Buy ’em butchered on the spot. Yum yum.

Medicinal too:

Wet markets have long been criticized for being unhygienic and cruel to animals. Animals such as bats, lizards, and toads are sold as medicine to treat common ailments. Cats and dogs are sold and butchered on the streets.

Not in Andersonville, where they are brought up in luxury.

Scientists have yet to pinpoint what started the coronavirus, but some speculate these markets played a role due to their unsanitary conditions.

Hence the “Chinese virus,” of course.

“You’ve got live animals, so there’s feces everywhere. There’s blood because of people chopping them up,” Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which works to protect wildlife and public health from emerging diseases, told the Associated Press last month.

It happened in Wuhan. Happening, that is.

via Chinese ‘wet markets’ reportedly open back up for business, ready to sell bats and dogs for human consumption

Infectious Disease Experts Don’t Know How Bad The Coronavirus Is Going To Get, Either

As Chicago Daily News theater critic Dick Christensen used to say after reading early editions of the Tribune for its reviews, these sources don’t tell us nothin’!

One of the most pernicious parts of the COVID-19 crisis is how uncertain everything is.

Researchers and officials cite statistical models that estimate infection rates, death counts and when things will go back to normal, but those estimates are changing rapidly.

And as the forecasts bounce around, so do the rest of us living through the crisis. How can one feel settled when the future feels so volatile?

We can’t.

via  FiveThirtyEight

Does Dr. Fauci talk too much?

If, as he says below, “any estimate could easily turn out to be wrong,” why is he taking seriously the estimates he reports?

He called worst-case scenario projections of more than a million U.S. deaths “very, very unlikely” and said any estimate could easily turn out to be wrong. He said he was certain that the number of confirmed infections would continue to rise much higher.

He’s probably a good man in his field — compared to whom? we must always ask — but is he a bit long on the commentary? Is it dangerous to get between him and a camera or microphone?

via WSJ

Leftists rage, but Trump is the people’s choice . . .

. . . again.

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Could one of the more controversial decisions made in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis have set the stage for Donald Trump’s leadership moment?
Like most if not all other polling series, Pew Research sees Trump hitting the peak overall approval rating of his presidency, albeit a lower peak than in some other series.
While his approval is driven by partisan division, just as in yesterday’s ABC News/Washington Post poll, Trump’s boost is attributable to gains from some surprising demographics:

For the rest, go to Hot Air . . .

Report: Thousands of urns shipped to Wuhan, where the virus is supposedly under control

What’s wrong with this opening statement about ChiCom honesty and openness?

If you can’t trust a totalitarian government waging a ruthless propaganda war to tell the truth about the extent of the epidemic within its borders, who can you trust?

Come on, you see it, don’t you? OK, I’ll tell you. It’s the “who” in the question! “WHOM”!

OK, that said, other than that, there’s NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!

Add this to the growing pile of circumstantial evidence that China’s coronavirus problem isn’t as well in hand as they’d like the world to believe.

They kicked out American reporters shortly before announcing that cases in Wuhan had dropped to zero, presumably to choke off the flow of accurate information about the true state of the spread.

On the day that number was announced, reports to the contrary were already trickling out on social media:

Etc.

Read all about ChiCom perfidy — with its sidebar, unnecessary, taken for granted, about U.S. mediums all agog about how BAD we are at containing the virus —  here, at Hot Air.