George Floyd Rebellion

“The police never stand up for us,” Mr. Green said, sipping on a beer. “With the Covid pandemic people are hungry and homeless. With no job, what do you expect? I think that’s going to happen to masses of people across this country. We could reach the point that it’s civil war.”

"Appeals for Calm as Sprawling Protests Threaten to Spiral Out of Control," John Eligon, Matt Furber and Campbell Robertson

Sinophobia

White House trade advisor and prominent Sinophobe Peter Navarro was interviewed yesterday by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. The interview provides a convenient encapsulation of Trump's reelection strategy of scapegoating China for the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States might be a faltering hyper-power, but it remains unrivaled when it comes to capitalizing on crises. By blaming China, the Trump administration hopes to dodge voter retribution in November at the same time braking the Dragon's global economic growth.

It is unclear to me how much blame can be ascribed to China. If patient zero was diagnosed on November 17 of last year in Wuhan, what do we make of the patient in France who was diagnosed on November 16?

Much too much is unknown about COVID-19. For instance, what are we to make of the spike in multi-system inflammatory disease among children?

At this point I don't think that we can rule out a man-made origin of the coronavirus. The mainstream press dismisses man-made origin, as Mike Baker did recently in "When Did the Coronavirus Arrive in the U.S.? Here’s a Review of the Evidence":

Dr. Bedford [of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle] said there was no evidence of genetic engineering in the virus, noting that it appeared to be a genetic outgrowth of a virus circulating among bats. It probably reached humans through an intermediate animal, such as a pangolin, he said.

“There’s no hallmarks of it having been manipulated in a lab,” Dr. Bedford said. “I think that’s definitive.”

He did not, however, rule out the possibility that some version of the virus being studied by scientists in Wuhan could have somehow escaped and spread from there. But he doubts that is the case. He said that the most prevalent theory about the virus’s origins — that it spread naturally among animals at a live animal market in Wuhan, then jumped to humans — was the most likely explanation.

But Kate Charlet's point in "The New Killer Pathogens" is that no such definitive statement is possible when it comes to genetic modification in a lab:

Ultimately, the power of these disincentives hinges on the ability to determine that an attack has occurred and to identify its source. For now, investigators looking at a pathogen in the aftermath of an attack would not necessarily be able to tell if gene-editing techniques had been used.

More Bad News on the Way

It looks like more bad news is on the way. "China, Germany, and South Korea have all reported substantial new outbreaks of COVID-19 after they eased lockdowns." Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is predicting that U.S. unemployment will grow even worse in the coming months. And the U.S. and its Five Eyes partners are using the pandemic to step up attacks on China, locking in the New Cold War 2.0, as the Dragon is shunted into the corral with the Russian Bear.

For all intents and purposes the shambolic Trump administration should be on its way out the door. The problem is that the Democrats are equally shambolic. Biden is a joke, and if he chooses the uniquely unappealing Kamala Harris as his running mate, don't be surprised if Trump can stumble into a second term.

Back to Work

Today I head back to work after a three-week convalescence. I'm not 100%, but I am feeling better. The lockdown is still in effect in Washington State. Governor Jay Inslee has promised to extend the lockdown when it expires on Monday, but he says he is shifting to a "phased-in" approach, which means that sectors of the economy will be reopened piecemeal.

May Day signals a back-to-work push. More than a dozen states are reopening. The question is how many coronavirus infections will result. Another question: Has the virus mutated to something less deadly?

Given my experience, I am skeptical that the virus has simply faded away after a couple months. COVID-19 is not to be dealt with cavalierly, as some states, like Georgia and Texas, appear to be doing. I expect to be in pain and my internal organs to be healing for next month or two.

What's most troubling about the back-to-work push is that there is still very little understanding how the coronavirus spreads. As The New York Times summarized in "What 5 Coronavirus Models Say the Next Month Will Look Like":

However good the modelers’ mathematical strategies may be, many of the descriptive facts about the virus are still unclear. Researchers aren’t sure about the rate at which people who become infected die, or about the rate of transmission to other people. They don’t know for sure how many people have already been infected and have some immunity to the disease — or how long that immunity will last. Even the count of coronavirus deaths itself is uncertain.

In other words, we know too little to lift the lockdown.

Maybe if lockdowns were lifted but strictly enforced mask and social-distancing requirements were implemented, then a return-to-work order could be justified.

Testing everyone doesn't appear to be on the horizon. Diagnostic tests need to be applied broadly to everyone -- both those with symptoms and those without (most who tested positive in the Ohio prison system were asymptomatic) -- but our public health system has nowhere near the ability to accomplish something like that. To date, there is no universally recognized, reliable antibody test. And even if antibodies are present, we don't know what sort of immunity those antibodies provide.

If you go out, wear a mask.