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Friday, April 17, 2020

A Strange Lineup -- Growth and Freedom vs. Imprisonment and Despair

It has been a strange 24 hours since the new open America guidelines were issued by the White House.  The President and his team released the new guidelines for reopening the country at yesterday's corona virus briefing in DC.  Almost immediately, the media and the Dems drew the battlelines for the coming months.  Trump and the GOP are lined up to push for returning to normal as quickly as possible in a way that adequately safeguard the nation's health.  The left, however, is taking the line that we cannot have a return to life as normal if it means even one more death from the virus.  The President wants more open with people returning to work.  The left wants more testing with a long delay until people are allowed out of their homes.  The President and his team are pushing for growth and freedom while the left pushes for extreme caution in the name of health combined with imprisonment and despair.  It's a truly strange battlefield.

This positioning was easy to spot coming.  For the last two weeks, the left has been trying to deny reality and claim that Trump did nothing to fight the virus until it was just too late and that people died as a result of his inaction.  "There have been not enough tests" they screamed.  "There is no PPE" was another scream from the left.  "There are insufficient ventilators" was another favorite.  And the lack of tests and PPE and ventilators have all been piled on Trump.  Lately, the "experts" from the left told anyone who would listen that we could not open up until we had massive testing across the country with contact tracing to follow up on anyone found to be positive.  Sure, that argument on testing tends to look silly as the number of tests given passes the four million total, but that doesn't matter.  The left knows that their media allies will cover for them and repeat the "need" for all this additional testing.  Of course, this testing argument is still being offered today.  I've heard at least five times in the media today that the reopening push from the White House is irresponsible because we just don't have the massive testing apparatus.

Once again, the Left has not bothered to listen.  At yesterday's briefing, there was a great response to all the testing hysteria.  Dr. Birx explained that the CDC already has a system of tracking flu-like illnesses seen at medical facilities.  The instances covered by this system would include corona virus cases.  Since we are now in the summer season when there is no flu, this CDC system will function as an early warning system for any flare up in the corona virus.  It won't matter which people get tested; the system covers the entire country and doctors and hospitals are totally familiar with how it works.  It's a better system than the massive testing that the left has been pushing.  Even so, the Dems and the media are still pushing for the testing.  They haven't yet realized that their point is just wrong.

More important than a fight about testing though, is the overall fight between freedom and imprisonment.  Sure, there are going to be many timid souls who will want to stay home and hide rather than venturing back to work.  The number of such people, though, will decline quickly as others go back to work without bad consequences. 

Imagine, now, a late spring and early summer with some states with Democrat governors trying to keep everyone home and closed while other states are open and getting back to work.  There are going to be a lot of very restless and unhappy people in the shuttered states, not to mention extreme poverty for many.  I will likely play out very poorly for the Dems if they keep up this position.

Of course, there's a risk here.  If it were to turn out that states that open get hit with massive spikes in cases, then the result could be the exact opposite.  No one can guarantee either outcome, but I have to believe that the people on the task force would not recommend their plan to the president unless is had a high likelihood of success.

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