MATT MARGOLIS:

“…Despite claims by the mainstream media and the Democratic Party that the United States was “ill-prepared” to handle the coronavirus pandemic and that actions by Trump administration made us vulnerable, the United States was actually ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in a study by Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) published in late 2019.

The United States’ Global Health Security Index score was 83.5/100, the highest overall score of 195 countries. The United Kingdom came in second with a score of 77.9. Italy, which has experienced significant difficulties in handling the outbreak in their country, scored 56.2. Iran, which is also struggling to handle the pandemic, scored 37.7.

The Trump administration has been the target of a significant amount of misinformation being disseminated by the Democrats and the mainstream media designed to undermine confidence in the administration’s handling of the pandemic, including false reports that Trump “dissolved” the White House pandemic response office and that Trump cut funding to the CDC and NIH.

Despite these false reports, Trump’s approval ratings have improved in the past few weeks, and his response to the pandemic has the approval of 60 percent of Americans, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The Global Health Security index “was developed with guidance from an international panel of experts from 13 countries, with research by the Economist Intelligence Unit. More than 100 researchers spent a year collecting and validating publicly available data,” the Washington Post reported last year…”

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Worth clicking over for the whole thing, but behind a paywall.

Walter Russell Mead:

“…That a majority of the electorate is this deeply alienated from the establishment can’t be dismissed as bigotry and ignorance. There are solid and serious grounds for doubting the competence and wisdom of America’s self-proclaimed expert class. What is so intelligent and enlightened, populists ask, about a foreign-policy establishment that failed to perceive that U.S. trade policies were promoting the rise of a hostile Communist superpower with the ability to disrupt supplies of essential goods in a national emergency? What competence have the military and political establishments shown in almost two decades of tactical success and strategic impotence in Afghanistan? What came of that intervention in Libya? What was the net result of all the fine talk in the Bush and Obama administrations about building democracy in the Middle East? . . .

On domestic policy, the criticism is equally trenchant and deeply felt. Many voters believe that the U.S. establishment has produced a health-care system that is neither affordable nor universal. Higher education saddles students with increasing debt while leaving many graduates woefully unprepared for good jobs in the real world. The centrist establishment has amassed unprecedented deficits without keeping roads, bridges and pipes in good repair. It has weighed down cities and states with unmanageable levels of pension debt.

The culture of social promotion and participation trophies is not, populists feel, confined to U.S. kindergartens and elementary schools. Judging by performance, they conclude that people rise in the American establishment by relentless virtue-signaling; by going along with conventional wisdom, however foolish; and by forgiving the failures of others and having their own overlooked in return.

The blame game playing out over how the president has handled the coronavirus epidemic reflects the dynamics of this struggle. Mr. Trump’s establishment critics want a narrow fight over the dismal trail of bluster, evasions, missed opportunities and failed predictions that marked the president’s approach to the virus earlier in the year. Like many criticisms of Mr. Trump, these arguments against him are by and large correct and significant and it is part of the proper job of a free press to make them.

However, Mr. Trump’s supporters are not comparing him with an omniscient leader who always does the right thing, but with the establishment—including the bulk of the mainstream media—that largely backed a policy of engagement with China long after its pitfalls became clear. For Americans who lost their jobs to Chinese competition or who fear the possibility of a new cold war against an economically potent and technologically advanced power, Mr. Trump’s errors pale before those of the bipartisan American foreign-policy consensus.

The establishment’s massive, decadeslong failure to think through the consequences of empowering Communist China and creating a trading relationship that, among other things, left the U.S. dependent on Beijing for pharmaceuticals is a much less excusable and more consequential error than anything Donald Trump has done in 2020—and it has a direct bearing on the mess we are in…”

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SUPERCUT!

Biden Coughs, Acts Confused, Throughout ABC/CNN/MSNBC Interviews pic.twitter.com/GuSA1Fsxst

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 24, 2020

Public Service Notice:

Do not ingest fish tank cleaner under any circumstances.

Or any grade of gasoline for that matter.

And avoid media pundits from now on who pushed this gross & dangerous distortion.

Thank You. pic.twitter.com/bYz5fWUtxU

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) March 24, 2020

This sounds like a wrong-headed, terrible decision.

Bill Dentzer:

“…Gov. Steve Sisolak has signed an emergency measure to safeguard the threatened supply of two drugs being hoarded for possible use in the treatment of COVID-19.

The governor signed the emergency regulation Tuesday on the recommendation of the state Board of Pharmacy.

The drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and are being studied by the FDA for possible use in patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

In a letter to the governor, the Pharmacy Board noted that the safety and the efficacy of the drugs “have not been established” in the treatment of COVID-19 and that “an emergency exists due to the hoarding and stockpiling” of the drugs.

The governor’s order prohibits the prescribing and dispensing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for a COVID-19 diagnosis, requires the appropriate prescription coding for their “legitimate medical purposes,” and limits prescriptions to a 30-day supply.

“At this point in time, there is no known cure for COVID-19 and we must not withhold these drugs from those who need them,” the governor said in a statement. “The best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to stay home for Nevada, not to stockpile these drugs.”…”

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"Are you at all concerned, as President Trump said, we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself?"

"We have to take care of the cure that will make the problem worse no matter what"

Um, what? pic.twitter.com/VylTvzO3Tw

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 24, 2020

Trump approval rating at all-time high: Poll

60% approve of Trump’s handling of virus.

Trump’s press briefings on his administration’s response to Coronavirus have been successful, too successful. The Democrats and the media perceive political exposure from public approval of the President’s handling of the crisis. Democrats and the media perceive the President’s press briefings as the instrument through which the President has achieved public support. Media for the last few days have been floating the idea that Trump’s press briefings should no longer receive nationwide coverage. Yesterday, media pulled away from the President’s briefings after about 20 minutes. Joe Biden tried to enter the public discussion on Coronavirus  response and flopped badly. Today, Cuomo’s press briefing turned from friendly stream of consciousness discussion to pointed political attack on the Trump Administration. This is inline with Democrat’s maneuvering in the senate on the virus relief bill.

Whatever political unity that existed -and it was not that much- with respect to the country’s virus response is quickly evaporating. Another few days and unity will be gone. It will be replaced by rabid partisanship and political attacks.

With Trump discussing the end of draconian shut downs and normalization of virus response, Democrats realize the virus will pass, Trump will have been successful, Biden will have deteriorated, and the likelihood of defeating Trump in November grows smaller and smaller. Democrat complaints and demands will increase in volume and shrillness as their ability to squeeze political capital from the crisis goes down.

Senator @tedcruz on Democrats blocking the coronavirus relief bill:

"One of the reasons I think Senate Democrats are so willing to engage in this is that they expect the media to be utterly complicit in their cynical gamesmanship." pic.twitter.com/XdUkTYvw0r

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 23, 2020

Nobel Laureate Data Scientist – ‘It’s leveling off, we’re going to be fine’…

Uh, @BuzzFeed? This guy didn't "self-medicate" with "a drug," let alone the same drug Trump touted. He drank fish tank chemicals because there was a similarly named ingredient. pic.twitter.com/2CfhBNiCia

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) March 24, 2020

I have said it over and over again since the Coronavirus pandemic developed, but it is worth repeating again, the media in this country is a disgusting joke.

Jeff Colyer and Daniel Hinthorn:

“…Hydroxychloroquine is a common generic drug used to treat lupus, arthritis and malaria. The medication, whose brand name is Plaquenil, is relatively safe, with the main side effect being stomach irritation, though it can cause echocardiogram and vision changes. In 2005, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that chloroquine, an analogue, could block a virus from penetrating a cell if administered before exposure. If tissue had already been infected, the drug inhibited the virus.

On March 9 a team of researchers in China published results showing hydroxychloroquine was effective against the 2019 coronavirus in a test tube. The authors suggested a five-day, 12-pill treatment for Covid-19: two 200-milligram tablets twice a day on the first day followed by one tablet twice a day for four more days.

A more recent French study used the drug in combination with azithromycin. Most Americans know azithromycin as the brand name Zithromax Z-Pak, prescribed for upper respiratory infections. The Z-Pak alone doesn’t appear to help fight Covid-19, and the findings of combination treatment are preliminary.

But researchers in France treated a small number of patients with both hydroxychloroquine and a Z-Pak, and 100% of them were cured by day six of treatment. Compare that with 57.1% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, and 12.5% of patients who received neither.

What’s more, most patients cleared the virus in three to six days rather than the 20 days observed in China. That reduces the time a patient can spread the virus to others. One lesson that should inform the U.S. approach: Use this treatment cocktail early, and don’t wait until a patient is on a ventilator in the intensive-care unit.

A couple of careful studies of hydroxychloroquine are in progress, but the results may take weeks or longer. Infectious-disease experts are already using hydroxychloroquine clinically with some success. With our colleague Dr. Joe Brewer in Kansas City, Mo., we are using hydroxychloroquine in two ways: to treat patients and as prophylaxis to protect health-care workers from infection. . . . As a matter of clinical practice, hydroxychloroquine should be given early to patients who test positive, and perhaps if Covid-19 is presumed—in the case of ill household contacts, for instance…”

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MCCONNELL: "We were this close. But then, the Speaker flew back from San Francisco. Suddenly, the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this left-wing episode of supermarket sweep."

Timeline below shows why PELOSI owns this obstruction https://t.co/zzYm9xYynD pic.twitter.com/hxBG2j0frp

— Jeremy Adler (@JeremyAdler) March 23, 2020