She’s been putting out an entertaining newsletter for a while. Here‘s her latest.
Weiner’s Laptop
Will we ever know what was actually on it?
Not unless there’s a thorough housecleaning at the FBI.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I’m sure there are a lot of people at the bureau happy to have a pandemic to keep this out of the news, not that most of the media would want to report on it anyway.
Meanwhile, In Potential Future Catastrophes
Good progress in validating an asteroid-deflection code.
I’ll have a lot more confidence when we get out there and establish some ground (so to speak) truth.
Space-Age Gas Stations
Isolation thoughts from Lileks.
[Update a while later]
We went for a drive on Saturday into Manhattan Beach, where the beach (like all LA County beaches) was closed. It was a ghost town, with just a few people walking around, and we could have parked almost anywhere. The most surreal thing was to see The Kettle closed. That restaurant has been 24/7 for decades. They’re not even doing takeout, just shuttered.
BS Receptivity
This is amusing. I suspect that purchasers of “essential oils” are more likely to be receptive to phrases like “Hope and change.”
[Monday-morning update]
Related: The woman who idiotically ingested aquarium-tank cleaner and poisoned her husband was a prolific donor to Democrat causes.
[Bumped]
Picard
I haven’t been watching the series because a) I wasn’t a subscriber, b) I’m not that big a Trek fan and, c) Picard was the worst of all of the Enterprise captains (and don’t pollute my comments section with your garbage opinions to the contrary). But Ed Driscoll has been watching it so you don’t have to, even though they’ve made it available to non-subscribers for isolation.
Antibodies
New York is starting to trial them for treatment of the virus.
If this works, it’s good news on at least two fronts: It will help save lives, and it would indicate that getting infected and recovering does confer immunity.
[Monday-morning update]
Germany is going to issue certificates of immunity. We should be doing this as well, once we get the antibody testing going; it will allow people to go back to work. Knowing who has antibodies will be even more important than knowing who is infected.
[Bumped]
It’s not for detecting antibodies, but Abbot now has a device that can detect positive for the virus within five minutes, and all clear in fifteen. Would have been nice to have it a couple months ago, but better late than never.
[Update late morning]
None of this is new, but it’s nice to see it laid out in one place.
We really need an antibody test ASAP, because that would allow those immunized (assuming that it confers immunity) to go back to work. As noted above, it may be that in order to work in or eat at a restaurant, at least for a while, one will have to present their papers.
[Update a couple minutes later]
WW III is a war against infectious diseases.
We’ve been at war with them since the beginning of civilization, but we’re developing much better weapons now.
[Update just before noon]
We have a difficult five weeks ahead of us. Also:
To Paraphrase Rumsfeld, You Go into a Crisis with the President You Have
“I realize complaining about President Trump’s Twitter feed is like complaining about the existence of rain in Seattle. But in recent days, as the country has faced a worsening viral epidemic that has claimed an increasing number of lives and brought commerce to a halt, the president has found time to repeatedly tweet about how great the television ratings of his briefings are, made up a new nickname for the governor of Michigan, retweeted Gateway Pundit’s claim that ‘Fox News fired Trish Regan for telling the truth about President Trump,’ — this was over her ‘Coronavirus Impeachment Scam’ segment — boasted about how high his poll numbers are and how the Washington Post is understating his public support, declared that the U.S. government would not pay for the security protection of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and also retweeted a two-year-old tweet from Florida governor Ron DeSantis about Andrew McCabe. He tweeted that he was thinking about instituting a quarantine of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which is probably the perfect way to get people to leave a particular area in expectation of a quarantine. A few hours later Trump announced, via Twitter, that a travel advisory was sufficient.
Perhaps most egregiously, President Trump tweeted that he had ‘much respect’ for Chinese president Xi, who is probably more responsible for this worldwide pandemic than any other human being on earth.
This president cares about what he chooses to care about, and he prioritizes what he prioritizes, even amidst a global pandemic that is killing several hundred Americans per day and stands as the greatest challenge to this country in at least a generation. We will have to get through this with a president who simply cannot stop obsessing over television ratings, what’s being said about him on television, Fox News personnel moves, whether governors are giving him sufficient praise, minor decisions involving the royal family, and how nice the leader of China is.”
[Early-afternoon update]
Yes, we should random test the general population ASAP.
Tom Coburn
RIP.
I’m glad that someone cared about government waste, but I always found his annual book a little frustrating, because he would go after some tiny pointless study, as though that was where the problem was. He often seemed to have an instinct for the capillary.
[Monday-morning update]
John Fund remembers the indefatigable fighter against government spending.
[Bumped]
Europe Was Not Ready
…and it may never fully recover.
And get ready for more exits; Italians are burning the EU flag.
I think that this is probably the most significant European event since the end of the war. The project, and the conceit of globalism in general, is coming apart at the seams.
[Update a few minutes later]
But wait! There’s more: Calls in France to “buy French.”
Hydroxychloroquine
The FDA has issued an authorization for emergency use.
That’s nice, considering how much we’ve been fighting red tape since this started. But early results have been encouraging. Italy and France have been not just allowing, but prescribing it.
[Update a while later]
No, Dan Diamond at Politico, there is not “scant evidence.” But you just keep being garbage.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s not enough that we have to fight the virus; we have to continue to fight the FDA.
I agree with Glenn: “The thing is, Trump can intervene in these things, but there’s still delay, and there’s only so much a President can do to chivvy along the bureaucracy. I think he should announce that he’ll have a team of managers from outside government evaluate the performance of the FDA, CDC, NIH when this is over, with those found to have under-performed to be sacked.”
Bureaucracy can be just as deadly as a virus. The good news is that all of this is feeding the public’s desire to drain the DC swamp.
They’ll get to have a say in November.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Trump is slashing red tape again like he was 39.
[Update late morning]
Speaking of garbage journalism, read the latest from Treacher: “I can’t even imagine what poor Yamiche Alcindor from the PBS NewsHour is going through right now. It really puts my own petty concerns into perspective.”
I have to say that one of the people in whom I’ve been most disappointed in terms of TDS is S. E. Cupp. I used to have a lot of respect for her.
[Update a few minutes later]
[Noon update]
To get back to the original post topic, a doctor in New York has successfully treated almost 700 patients with no failures.
This might really be the magic bullet. If it’s prophylactic, the key is to ramp up production immediately, to get the economy going again.
[Update mid afternoon]
This could have saved a lot of people a century ago; let’s hope it helps now.