Coronabits and Pieces

by Laura Rosen Cohen
Laura's Links
March 24, 2020

https://www.steynonline.com/10145/coronabits-and-pieces

If only all Chinese coronavirus conversations could be this cute.

Hello one and all and welcome to another edition of Laura's Links, sadly once again heavy on the reporting about the Murderous Barbarian Chinese Communist Wuhan Coronavirus. As for me and my house, we have been doing alright under the circumstances. The main mantra in our abode is to be grateful that everyone we love is well and focus on that because everything else is secondary. It is still very upsetting not to be able to be in physical proximity to a certain number of loved ones due to geographical distance, immunity status and age, because I'm a big hugger. Paradoxically, keeping a distance from some of the people we care most about is an expression of love. Not an easy time. Look what the evil Chinese regime has wrought.

I've been working remotely, cooking, cleaning and homeschooling. But being housebound does give one time for thought. And I'm thinking that many things can be true at the same time. The Wuhan virus can be very dangerous for certain humans, and others not. It is also true that Western economies cannot survive complete shut downs and that some of this shut-down may be decadent and overblown. It is also true that political and ideological lines are being drawn. Understand that the political left never rests. The political left will never agree to a ceasefire because they are serious only about power, and having power over your life, but not about your life. Alinsky said never let a good crisis go to waste. So look very carefully at who and what the left is rooting for.

We in the West are at war. Nobody really wants to talk about it and nobody wants to be at war or fight a war, or lose their life in a war, but we are at war with several evil regimes simultaneously whether we like it or now. The dangers to our planet are ideological and physical and they are centred in China, Iran and Russia. As I started to think more about this, I saw this from Shadi Hamid and would urge you to consider what we are saying and the lines that are being drawn.

Over the week, the indefatigable Prophet Mark Steyn tried to buoy our spirits with a live Q&A full of truth – but not downers – and some other assorted coronabits here and there.

Mark said en passant in the Q&A that one of the simple pleasures of life that he never thought he would miss because of Wuhan flu was the Eurovision song competition. I myself have never considered Eurovision a pleasure (whatever floats your boat, dude), but I do get his drift. Mark, chin up! I'm sending you a video of Israel's rep, an extremely talented Ethiopian Israeli hottie: Eden Alene. You're welcome! Sending virtual hugs your way. Now let's take a look back to the week that was.

North America

Forty states report fewer than five deaths. Is the big wave set to come? Or not?

Is the risk of a recession, another Great Depression, worth the lockdowns? President Trump is clearly considering this very point right now.

A smidgen of good news in Canada. Finally.

Murderous Barbarian Chinese Communist Wuhan Coronavirus:

Silver lining? Is the spread slowing?

We are in this mess because of decisions made by the Chinese communists.

The Holocaust didn't kill them. The Chinese communists did.

Via Kathy Shaidle, another charming aspect of Chinese culture. Savage, evil ghouls.

Background on the Chinese "Wet Markets" (important – watch the whole thing).

And was the "Spanish flu" even Spanish? Apparently not.

The situation is Europe is very dire.

Are certain drug combinations helping?

Why are there so many deaths in Italy?

The virus that shames China, new video from Pat Condell. The Chinese communists are enemies of humanity – absolutely. Sinful, evil thugs.

Chinese propaganda offensive chugs along. Why should we ever trust the Chinese with anything?

Evidence over hysteria (long but read the whole thing).

Israel and Jews:

Interesting, Pope Francis calls upon Catholics to keep the Sabbath.

Accepting the Yoke of Heaven in Israel.

Katie Hopkins on the jihad against the Jews in France.

Getting closer to G-d through sacrifice.

Middle East:

Remember the little Syrian boy who drowned fleeing Syria, and the photo that set off the tsunami of migrants making Europe great again (NOT)? An update.

Human Grace:

Kindness among the human wreckage.

Twin babies discuss the coronavirus.

Meet the Shopping Angels.

Friendly whale not into the whole "social distancing" thing.

Creative humans innovate in times of crisis, in a time of choiceless choices.

Safe safe and well, one and all.

If you're a member of Mark Steyn Club, do chime in in the comments to let Laura know what they think of these stories, or any others from the past week. (Laura's Links is also our weekly open thread, so we'll look the other way on the "no going off topic" rule). If you're not yet a Mark Steyn Club member and want to get in on the fun, get yourself or a loved one a membership here. For in-person revelry and review with your fellow Mark Steyn Club members, get in on the upcoming Mark Steyn Cruise by booking yourself a stateroom for our Mediterranean voyage alongside Douglas Murray, Conrad Black, Michele Bachmann and Mark Steyn himself.

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55 Reader Comments

Andrew A • Mar 29, 2020 at 20:12

For those like me who really enjoyed the VOX Youtube presentation on the "Wet Markets":

I was bothered by the Google Earth screenshot at 0:41s which showed a place that didn't fit in with the footage in the rest of the story. After some research, it appears that VOX was fooled by Chinese electronic maps that use a falsified coordinate system. The false coordinates show the wrong location when projected onto a correctly positioned satellite image.

The satellite image of the Wet Market, and the epicentre of the Wuhan flu is actually here:

30° 37.1869' N, 114° 15.416' E

Remember that Google Maps projects falsely positioned maps onto correctly positioned satellite imagery. The deception of Chinese authorities knows no bounds...

Fran Lavery • Mar 26, 2020 at 11:28

That's one way you make it through the quarantine! Have a pillow fight to make the time pass and chant "go away germs"! Where do you ever get these darling bits?

Laura Rosen Cohen

Fran Lavery • Mar 26, 2020 at 14:48

I have my sources...

Lowell Walker • Mar 25, 2020 at 22:55

I always look forward to your links, Laura. Keep them coming.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Lowell Walker • Mar 26, 2020 at 08:55

Thank you, Lowell. That's great to hear!

Susan Thomas • Mar 25, 2020 at 13:49

The article you linked on why so many Italians have died from the Covid-19 virus lists several factors, but leaves out at least one major item. As Newt Gingrich said Tuesday from Rome, where he and his wife are living because she is the ambassador to the Holy See: "None of us, at least I didn't know that there were 100,000 Chinese [people] living in northern Italy and that many of them come from Wuhan and that there was a flight between Milan and Wuhan." I have seen this for myself. When my husband and I lived in Lucca (Tuscany) through three winters (2010-2013), our Italian friends showed us the illegal "sweat shops" in Prato & elsewhere, in which illegal Chinese immigrants make the so-called "Italian" products such as purses, bags, etc. that are sold as "Gucci" brand or whatever, with a tag reading "Made In Italy" (yeah right!--made in Italy by "slaves" working for the bosses who brought them into the country). These fake goods are then sold on the street by other illegal immigrants, usually African, who gather up their wares in the blanket on which they're displayed and scamper away at the "minder's" warning signal that police or other officials are approaching. So the Chinese population extends from Lombardy at least as far south as Tuscany, where we saw them with our own eyes in various cities, including Florence. These are not people who would readily report to health officials or check themselves into hospitals if they were ill. Couple this with other factors, such as the elderly Italian population (second only to that of Japan) and the other things mentioned in your linked article, plus (1) a culture in which there are big, close families and small, close neighborhoods in which people live, socialize, and mingle in the piazza, on the sidewalk, in the coffee bars, and walk for hours arm-in-arm during the evening passeggiata; (2) the normal "social distance" in Italy is more like 12 inches rather than 3 feet, with a lot of physical contact; and (3) this is not Japan, where people politely obey rules— in Italy, they simply Do Not: é cosi!

Brian W.

Susan Thomas • Mar 25, 2020 at 19:04

Susan, You have amplified eloquently and in great detail what I referred to in my earlier comments here (Mar 24, 2020 at 20:46). Coincidentally, we stayed in Lucca (our second stay in that lovely town) last Fall, and even on that earlier visit noticed the numbers of Chinese. We've seen the ubiquitous Africans selling leather goods in Italy for years, but never put two and two together until now. Grazie mille!

Laura Rosen Cohen

Susan Thomas • Mar 26, 2020 at 08:59

Hi Susan thanks for that first hand information. I've quoted this a lot over the years but it seems apt here as well, the Holocaust scholar Michael Marcus said (about people who knew what was happening at the camps in real time), that there's a very big difference between "knowing it" and "getting it".

A great many people knew exactly what was happening in Italy. But did they get it? Do they get it now?

Don Reed

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 26, 2020 at 11:37

As always, Laura, thank you.

Humor:

My wife is long gone from the office, now working from home in our basement library. And so am I.

"We just received your company's guidance memo about office romances. We'll have to stop meeting like this."

Her response was unprintable, yet, somehow, quite dignified.

Not having been a TV stock market watcher in her office preceding this Brave New World, she is now becoming acquainted with the new faces on CNBC, having calmed down after her initial panic after looking at the big screen and assuming that I had turned on "The View."

Laura Rosen Cohen

Don Reed • Mar 26, 2020 at 14:49

Unprintable but dignified?!?!That's FABULOUS.

I like her already.

Josh Passell • Mar 25, 2020 at 06:49

First they came for the Kuomintang (1930), and I did not speak out because I was not Kuomintang (also, I hadn't been born).
Then they came for the victims of the Yan'an Rectification Campaign (1941-45), and I did not speak out because I still hadn't been born, and also because who can tell the players apart without a scorecard?
Then they came for the landed gentry (1947-52), and I did not speak up because they couldn't hear me over there--and still not born!
Then they came for the supposed "counterrevolutionaries" (1951-53), and, yep, I said squat.
Then they came for more counterrevolutionaries (Sufan Movement, 1955)--sill mute, still unborn.
Then they encouraged intellectuals and other critics to express their views of Mao and the Party (Hundred Flowers Campaign, 1956-57), only to punish them for doing so. Me, nada.
Then they followed the purges of the Hundred Flowers Campaign with the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957-59), and....I still said bubkes.
Then (don't they ever get tired?) they launched the Great Leap Forward, extinguishing the lives of tens of millions of people, and I said plenty (being a fussy baby), but was anyone listening? Oh no, not to me. You just go on with your genocide, never mind little old me.
Then they came up with the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and I did not speak out because I was more concerned with the fates of the Detroit Tigers, New York Mets, New York Knicks, Boston Bruins, and Robinson family on Lost in Space. So sue me.

I figure you all can take it from here: suppression of Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong protestors, intellectual and territorial thievery, etc., etc. In another thread, I wrote that if I couldn't say something nice about the CCP, I'd say nothing at all. I'm grateful to a helpful Wikipedia article that did all the talking for me. After the better part of a century of mass extermination, what's a half-million fevers and dry coughs? The tens of thousands who have died barely make a rounding error in death toll of the Great Leap Forward. Hope that brightens your day.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Josh Passell • Mar 25, 2020 at 10:10

They also came for the female babies. Just thought I'd drop a bit more sunshine into your post...

Lowell Walker

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 25, 2020 at 22:59

I remember that. Didn't realize Josh was so much younger than me. That's okay, though. I'm not one of those who thinks the younger generation knows nothing. I'm always pleasntly surprised when they know more than me.

Don Reed

Lowell Walker • Mar 27, 2020 at 03:32

"I'm always pleasantly surprised when they know more than me."

Thanks for the remainder. Now I'm even more depressed than usual. Time to go see another "Joe Biden Basement Presidency Campaign" video tape to cheer me up (!).

Don Reed

Josh Passell • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:22

Splendid contribution about a gruesome history about which very few concern themselves.

David Coats • Mar 25, 2020 at 03:15

It seems from reading through your many links, Laura, (and, whew!, that was a lot of reading! Good reading. But a lot!) that one of the greatest causes of death in this pandemic is proving to be government healthcare. Big Government and its crown jewel, Nationalized Healthcare, has led to a shortage of doctors, beds, and equipment, and to a growing plague of deadly bureaucrats. It is reported in Italy where government healthcare is just about the only option that due to these shortages those over 60 are being denied access to respiratory machines, yet it is those over 60 who need them most. Classically predictable.

Give me liberty or give me death! Perhaps we who are over 60 and choose liberty in the midst of the Coronapocalypse will discover death is also our prize, but at least we will freely make that choice and not some bureaucrat whose idol of worship is the Bureaucracy.

The world's last best hope was built in the cradle of liberty by independent risk-takers who understood a key principle of economic freedom - the higher the risk the greater the return. Turning this nation over to bureaucrats now, or anytime for that matter, is a recipe for a death far worse than WuFlu... unless, of course, one is truly Godless.

Laura Rosen Cohen

David Coats • Mar 25, 2020 at 10:57

Hi David, I think that you definitely have a pointt. But all the roads lead to leftism and tyranny. It's clear that if the Chinese government had shared information rather than disappearing the brave doctors reporting on this illness, the world would be in a better state right now. Also that if Italy had not been more focused on not being raaaacist against Chinese people (see Mark's comments about the Hug A Chinese Person initiative), or countries being raaaacist by banning flights from China as well, we would be able to manage better even within nationalized health care systems (see Israel for example-flights were banned, very serious confinement measures were implemented early to prevent a collapse of the national health care system).

And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle so...

Don Reed

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:24

If your aunt had balls, the Astros would be stealing the signs and hitting her pitches outta d park!

The Houston Black Sox franchise is immensely grateful that the CV Fiasco has pushed them off the sports pages and into the Forever Forgotten Past.

Nicola Timmerman • Mar 24, 2020 at 23:28

I believe the father of the drowned Syrian boy was actually trying to get to Germany and get free dental care. But Canada and Harper were blamed.
There is a photo of a Quebec girl showing symptoms of the virus sleeping in a park near a hospital in Peru because she has run out of money waiting for the Canadian government to send planes to Peru in contrast to the swiftness of other governments. This photo should be the symbol of the incompetence of the Trudeau regime, but the media won't show it (it was published by a group called quebecois pris au Perou).

Don Reed

Nicola Timmerman • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:26

These events are going to create an entire class of people who, like the ousted French royalty exiled in England during Napoleon's reign, are going to have long memoires of how they were treated during this prolonged crisis. That is, if they manage to survive.

Fran Lavery • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:25

Working my way bottom to top this week! Loved the whale story. Love the Monterey Bay to Big Sur stretch. Happy memories touring that stretch. We saw a lot of seals and the most wicked looking gnarled old tree growing huge roots out of a cliff in a beachfront nature park south of Carmel. From photos squinting it's hard to tell which is tree top, which is root ball.

Kate Smyth • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:14

Interesting thread by Shadi Hamid. Just as devastating as the economic impact is the ideological one. The virus is authoritarian in origin (and propagation), and so are the measures to control it. It's a totalitarian virus in the most literal sense; Owen Morgan alluded to this in a Q&A question. Even when (if) the economic impact subsides, the tyrannous effects will persist. How did "leaders" of the "free world" in recent decades let it come to this?

PS. Excellent (if not sobering) Links as always, Laura. Pillow Germs!!!

Laura Rosen Cohen

Kate Smyth • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:37

Thank you Kate! I think the ideological discussion is only just beginning. And we will be instructed by our betters to shut it down. You take care down there.

Kate Smyth

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 24, 2020 at 22:59

You too, up there, Laura!

Your most important sentence: "The main mantra in our abode is to be grateful that everyone we love is well and focus on that because everything else is secondary."

So true!

Brian W. • Mar 24, 2020 at 20:46

Another excellent read, Laura. A little over a month ago Mrs. W. and I finished up a week in Northern Italy taking photos of the costumed and masked Venetian Carnivale celebrants. Three days after we left, Carnivale was shut down, the situation deteriorated drastically, and we watch the coverage from home with great interest and sadness.

We did notice a seemingly unusual number of Chinese on our trip, and idly assumed they were wealthy tourists who'd managed to escape travel restrictions.

I find it intriguing that the Daily Telegraph piece, "Why have so many coronavirus patients died in Italy?", never includes the fact that there are thousands of Chinese workers in the Florence area, and that some number of them would have recently returned from trips home celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Brian W. • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:54

Thank you Brian. As Mark often says, we are told not to notice. We are supposed to ignore our own factual observations in favour of the lies.

EThompson • Mar 24, 2020 at 19:56

Dear Laura,

I loved this post because it covered so many of the things that are infuriating me in the world and it helps enormously to know there are others who share my frustration. I especially related to the commentary on Italy, KHopkins on jihad and most of all, every single post on the evil, Machiavellian ways of the Chinese and their desire to destroy Western civilization.

It does help- more than you know- to be able to read such a cathartic post.

Many thanks,
EThompson

Laura Rosen Cohen

EThompson • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:34

EThompson you are most certainly not alone and I feel very blessed to play even a small part in the larger battle. Thank you for your comment. I really appreciate it. Mark Steyn empowers and inspires so many and I am truly privileged to have this space to share thoughts and ideas with his readers. My writer's cup runneth over.

EThompson

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 25, 2020 at 15:26

You are most welcome and look forward to reading more pearls of wisdom from you and Mark both!

Owen Morgan • Mar 24, 2020 at 18:53

I note that sunni muslim doctrine now proclaims that this is an infidel plague, from which the faithful are protected by islam's own intrinsic virtue. Before anyone objects that the experience of Iran tends to subvert, to put it mildly, that idea, you need to remember that islam is highly schismatic and the biggest division, that between shia and sunni, is almost as old as the mediaeval cult itself. As heretics, the Iranians, in sunni eyes, had it coming.

The fact is that, sunni or shia, muslim practices are just about guaranteed to propagate any infectious disease. If you not only believe that your religion will, by itself, save your life, but also think that assembling in vast crowds, in order the better to profess that religion, is the way to go, you are maximising your chances of contracting the Chinese virus (or any other which happens to be going around).

There are fears that Israeli muslims may be rejecting precautionary measures, as supposedly applying only to Jews, and that a similar mentality may already have taken hold among segments of India's huge muslim population.

Kate Smyth

Owen Morgan • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:17

As Mark noted on-air, even ISIS is now up to speed: "Don't self-detonate. Self-isolate!"

Owen Morgan

Kate Smyth • Mar 24, 2020 at 22:05

Well, there are conflicting messages. ISIS has told its thugs not to go (return) to Europe, but other imams are extolling the faithful to use the virus as a weapon against the unbelievers.

Not for the first time, islam's messengers are sending out conflicting messages. Allah, himself, after all, had trouble making his mind up.

Kate Smyth

Owen Morgan • Mar 24, 2020 at 22:52

The low level jihad continues, too. Three people were stabbed in Melbourne (2 fatally; one put in ICU) in mid-March by a fellow named Mohammed. No motive. Completely senseless. Bizarrely, the perpetrator had reported being personally threatened by ISIS. Why he felt compelled to kill people is still unclear. Probable mental health issues. It barely made headlines.

You've heard it all before...

Owen Morgan

Kate Smyth • Mar 25, 2020 at 03:40

Yes, that one was a mystery which would have baffled Sherlock Holmes. No clues whatever. In the absence of any evidence, the police did absolutely the right thing to announce, right at the outset, that there was no terrorist connection. Of course, if they hadn't been irredeemable racists, they would have let him go, Trudeau-style, with ten million dollars in his pocket, rather than shooting him.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, someone called Muhammad (only very superficially similar to the name in Australia) conspired to join ISIS and to carry out "lone wolf" attacks in the United States. What an idiot! Didn't he know that "lone wolf" attacks are completely spontaneous and, by definition, cannot be plotted in advance? This Muhammad is a medical doctor, who has said emphatically he wanted "to kill and be killed," so I suppose that a good working theory for the police there might be that he finds the wording of the Hippocratic Oath to be a little ambiguous, or just culturally insensitive.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Kate Smyth • Mar 25, 2020 at 20:41

BAFFLING!!!

Don Reed

Owen Morgan • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:39

Of course, it's an "infidel plague." The Islamos lump in the Chinese with the rest of the humanity they depict and despise as "barbarians"; the Chinese are infamous for regarding ALL outsiders as "barbarians."

Hence the CV results; only ignorance could have propelled this mass-slaughtering virus around the world at such a rate.

First demonstrating their own complete disregard for the welfare of their own people (by nefariously trying to keep the outbreak under wraps), imagine the depth of the Chinese overlords' contempt for everyone else OUTSIDE of China!

Norm MacDonald once drawled the joke about Germany taking on... (pause for effect, as he does so well) THE ENTIRE WORLD (WWII).

Well, comic exaggeration for effect has now been rendered obsolete. No need.

Even Germany had allies (inept ones). China has now earned what has never existed before: The hatred of every single country on the planet.

The consequences of this are going to be Biblical. Old Testament Biblical.

Don Reed

Kate Smyth • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:55

There's nothing more useless than Islamic slogans (a close second were the "Empowerment" propaganda posters put up by the Obama vassals in the rust-belted, half-abandoned town of Berlin, NH, witnessed about four years or so ago).

All a waste of time. Their own moonshiners have stepped into the vacuum only made possible by fundamentalist stupidity, and are thinning out the ranks with their poisonous hooch (a collective event seen in our own country in the 1920s during Prohibition).

Owen Morgan

Don Reed • Mar 27, 2020 at 16:02

"First demonstrating their own complete disregard for the welfare of their own people (by nefariously trying to keep the outbreak under wraps), imagine the depth of the Chinese overlords' contempt for everyone else OUTSIDE of China!"

They don't differentiate. Communists don't have anyone they think of as "their own people," other than the members of the nomenklatura - and they want to kill most of them, too.

Kate Smyth

Don Reed • Mar 27, 2020 at 22:07

"The consequences of this are going to be Biblical. Old Testament Biblical."

That's it in a nutshell, Don. For now, China is getting away with it... "red-handed".

Kate Smyth

Owen Morgan • Mar 27, 2020 at 22:33

Oh - I nearly forgot, Owen: Against your theory about terrorism only being labelled as such in the context of an existing conviction etc, there was another Mohammed (or Mohammad) a few weeks before that - who was on a "counter-terrorism watch list" - who was beset by a case of unrelated homicidality in Brisbane (thwarted by police officers who were subsequently criticised by the victim's* family):

"The family* of a man shot dead by police in Brisbane's CBD on Sunday [February 23] says he had been suffering from schizophrenia for the last three years and didn't receive enough support. Mohammad Akram Bahram, 24, drove into the city armed with two knives before attacking two UK tourists, stabbing a 26-year-old man in the back."

"His sister told the ABC their family — from Logan south of Brisbane — was shocked by the news and didn't know what triggered Mr Bahram to go into the city armed: "He was an absolutely amazing person, you'll never meet anyone like him," she said. "He would give you the shirt off his back — that's how much of a kind person he was." "To have his life taken away like this is unjust," his sister added. "The police have gone about this the wrong way. They could have used tasers." "It was excessive [force].""

Yeah, Mohammad would give you the shirt off his back if he wasn't stabbing you in the back. He was that kinda guy.

Don Reed

Kate Smyth • Mar 28, 2020 at 01:59

Not for long.

Don Reed

Kate Smyth • Mar 28, 2020 at 02:00

A variation of the usual post-murder story in the U.S. tabloids: "He [the killer] was such a good boy!"

Don Reed

Owen Morgan • Mar 28, 2020 at 02:00

For some odd reason this does not surprise or shock me.

Owen Morgan

Kate Smyth • Mar 28, 2020 at 02:40

Obviously, part of this unreality derives from the fact that islam mandates mendacity, but there is possibly another element. I think that the Australian legal system is similar to the English one. My father, who was a lawyer in Liverpool, used to be exasperated by the way it was possible for a supposed character witness to enter the witness box and shamelessly lie that the accused had never been implicated in crime, even if the aforementioned accused had just got out of Walton gaol the previous Wednesday. May I assume that Australian lawyers exploit that loophole, too, on behalf of their myriad Mo's?

Kate Smyth

Owen Morgan • Mar 28, 2020 at 08:12

"... even if the aforementioned accused had just got out of Walton gaol the previous Wednesday."

Indeed. Lawyers are no doubt much the same. In the case of the Mo in question, the police shot him dead - and immediately announced that it was "not a CT operation" (despite the watch list). After which they were publicly berated and shamed by the family. Too easy!

Paul Nachman • Mar 24, 2020 at 18:32

I'll guess Laura would approve this 92-second rant about "distance learning" by an Israeli mother ...

https://twitter.com/siakordestani/status/1240505997895929858?s=12

... as an addition to "Human Grace" above. It's hysterical! Sound on, including lower right in the Twitter frame ...

Laura Rosen Cohen

Paul Nachman • Mar 25, 2020 at 20:48

That was a riot. It's even funnier in Hebrew. Sent it to Mr. C just now. LOL.

Michael Seth • Mar 24, 2020 at 17:51

Laura, one of the ways Dems are not wasting the crisis is by shutting down gun sales, declaring firearms dealers "non-essential" retailers (while usually giving liquor stores that special immunity). If we get through this intact, look for lots of woke governors and mayors to use the precedent to further their dreams of confiscation. Apparently our betters want us drunk, not armed.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Michael Seth • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:25

Yes they would like you broke, unarmed and totally anaesthetized.

Lowell Walker

Michael Seth • Mar 25, 2020 at 23:05

Our commissioner of agriculture here in Florida is stopping the process of attaining a concealed carry permit. "Never let a crisis go to waste".

Kathy Shaidle • Mar 24, 2020 at 17:50

"Human Grace" is always a welcome part of the week, but no more so than now!

I would add the elderly Italian priest who gave his ventilator to a younger man, then died soon after.

Laura Rosen Cohen

Kathy Shaidle • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:12

Thanks, Draidle and yes read about that priest today and it just tore me apart.

Jamie Marsh • Mar 24, 2020 at 17:46

The Axios timeline is devastating. They sum it up nicely: "Why it matters: A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited."

Laura Rosen Cohen

Jamie Marsh • Mar 24, 2020 at 21:11

Murderous thugs. Evil.

Don Reed

Laura Rosen Cohen • Mar 27, 2020 at 14:56

For which they will pay, I guarantee you.