Virus watch: We Know Everything and Nothing
At Spectator USA, Matt Ridley reviews the data on the coronavirus, explaining that we know its genome but can’t “figure out how it is spreading in enough detail to tell which parts of the lockdown of society are necessary and which are futile.” One “vital fact”: “Countries that did a lot of testing from the start have fared much better than countries that did little.” But why, since “testing does not cure the disease”? His theory: It “might have partly kept the virus from spreading within the health-care system,” since “it now looks like in many of the early cases, the disease was probably caught in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. That is where the virus kept returning, in the lungs of sick people, and that is where the next person often caught it, including plenty of health-care workers.” The good news: “If COVID-19 is at least partly a ‘nosocomial’ (hospital-acquired) disease,” the epidemic might fizzle out on its own, without lockdowns, “once it is under control in hospitals and care homes.”
Pandemic journal: COVID-19 Lessons
There’s still a lot we don’t know about COVID-19 — but, Glenn Harlan Reynolds points out at USA Today, a few things are clear. First: “Density kills,” with the virus “much more deadly in places like New York City or Boston than in rural settings.” Second: “Mass transit kills,” with studies finding “NYC subways were a ‘major disseminator’ of the coronavirus.” (“Less dense” Los Angeles proves both lessons: “Cars come with built-in social-distancing.”) Third: “Bureaucracy kills,” as “professional bureaucrats” put up “significant barriers to getting alternative tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration.” Last: “Censorship kills,” with China’s “lies and cover-ups” allowing the virus to flourish worldwide.
Campaign watch: Democrats’ Albatross
Joe Biden, argues Tribune columnist Victor Davis Hanson, assumed “liberal reporters” would “forget his lapses and ignore prior controversies,” including ex-aide Tara Reade’s sexual-assault allegations, but he “misjudged” the media, which “decided Biden was no longer worth shielding.” Biden’s candidacy, then, has become “an albatross” the party must “cut from its neck” — without “inciting the moribund” Bernie Sanders campaign. That’s Democrats’ dilemma: “Donors and operatives would like Biden to disappear”— but “they haven’t a clue about when or how.”
Libertarian: Canada’s ‘Arbitrary’ Gun Ban
Gun-control advocates are cheering Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ in the wake of a mass shooting in Nova Scotia,” notes Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. Yet Trudeau’s ban wouldn’t have “prevented the rampage.” The shooter “used black-market weapons to commit his murders,” while Trudeau’s order bans now-legal “assault-style firearms,” a category “distinguished from other guns primarily by aesthetics rather than power or function.” And he did it via “a decree that entirely bypasses” Parliament. This tells “law-abiding” gun owners that “the government you live under can turn against you at any time.”
History desk: Rewarding Revisionism
“Self-abasing historical revisionism received a significant cultural endorsement this week, when Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize,” observes Gerard Baker in The Times of London. Her 1619 Project essay arguing the American Revolution was fought to maintain slavery “represents so much of the West’s self-image these days.” It’s true that “US history is bound up in a history of repression and exploitation of minorities.” But to say without evidence “that its very foundational motivation was the persecution of those minorities is a conscious effort not to provoke academic debate but to inculcate the entire country, its people and its institutions in a continuing crime against humanity.” This “dominant narrative has helped create the political turbulence” of recent years, with populism answering with the message “You don’t have to be ashamed of who you are.” If we don’t “reverse this cultural self-loathing, voters will feel inclined to turn to those who defend all of their heritage — including its darkest parts — and in much more baleful ways.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board