Bits & Bytes

COVID-19 SCIENCE: As the tweets suggest, there’s a lot of total crap being circulated about the Wuhan Coronavirus. The article linked below (h/t Bob) has the clearest, least politicized information I’ve seen.

In case you don’t go read the article and look at all the pretty graphs … he makes a good case for the likelihood that total U.S. deaths with this outbreak will be in the 3,000 range. By comparison, that’s about how many people die in auto accidents per month. And it’s half the number of babies who die in abortions per month.

• https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/

CARING FOR OUR ELDERS: If you’re at the store and see any elderly persons in line, invite them to cut in front of you. Many of them are frightened and we need to take care of them.

BE SMART: Be safe – President Trump urged Americans to avoid traveling for the next 15 days, and to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people. He also said to avoid eating in restaurants and bars, and to work or engage in schooling from home if possible.

• https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487863-trump-urges-americans-to-avoid-gatherings-of-more-than-10-people

WUHAN CORONAVIRUS: Confirmed cases worldwide = 182,424.

Recovered = 79,433.

Died: 7,155.

Cases in China have leveled off. Ours are still rising. Some are doomsaying that the U.S. is going to get a lot worse, but I think we can be hopeful. Spring is right around the corner and that’s when the annual flu season always ends, cuz viruses don’t like warmth or sunshine. Plus, we’re all going to be good little Do Bees, right?

• https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
• https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/why-coronavirus-will-not-take-hold-in-america-like-it-did-in-italy-and-south-korea

SWINE FLU: “One might think the H1N1 virus pandemic was relatively mild since life proceeded as usual for most Americans, rather than the zombie apocalypse we are now living through.” – Brian C.Joondeph, MD – One would be wrong.

In the United States, Swine Flu caused 60.8 million illnesses, 273,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths.

Granted, we likely haven’t yet seen the Wuhan Coronavirus peak here, but come on. We haven’t even hit ONE million sick.

And even more to the point, the current pandemic is almost exclusively killing people who could just have easily died of the seasonal flu, pneumonia, or any of their underlying illnesses.

The H1N1 Swine Flu deaths were among the YOUNG and HEALTHY.

Personally, I think the Obama administration did a piss poor job of handling the Swine Flu epidemic. And the lapdog media is doing an even worse job now in handling the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic.

• https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/remember_the_h1n1_pandemic_i_dont_either.html

MEDIA MALPRACTICE: As my Dearest keeps muttering, it is evil to politicize a disease. – CNN Business calls the Wuhan Coronavirus “a pandemic unprecedented in modern times.” That’s absurd.

Never mind that its less lethal and less widespread than the Swine Flu of 2009.

The truly unprecedented modern pandemic happened in 1918-19, when the Spanish Flu killed between 20 million and 50 million people worldwide, including more than half a million in the U.S.

So far, the Wuhan Coronavirus has killed fewer than 7,000 worldwide, including about 75 Americans. Meanwhile, somewhere between 22,000 and 50,000, Americans have died from this season’s flu.

• https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/16/panic-never-helped-any-pandemic-and-wont-start-now/

BIDEN: Joe Biden’s first “virtual town hall” was marred with technical gaffes and confusion, and ended after only five minutes. At one point, Biden apparently forgot he was live and walked out of the shot.

• https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/03/biden-virtual-town-hall-the-confused-ramblings-of-a-perpetually-confused-candidate/

NeverBiden: In the 2016 election, a significant number of Bernie Sanders supporters either stayed home, voted for Jill Stein, or even voted for Trump. They didn’t like Hillary Clinton, and they felt betrayed by the Democratic party.

Something similar is already taking shape again. #NeverBiden, #WriteinBernie and #DemExit2020 hashtags are trending on Twitter.

• https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/03/never-biden-movement-growing-among-bernie-supporters/

MICHAEL FLYNN: New documents provide more evidence that Trump-haters screwed him over.

• https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/yates-other-obama-doj-officials-sounded-alarm-about-fbis-treatment

PRAYING: A parish priest in Italy wrote to his parishioners that celebrating Mass in an empty church made him sad. He asked them to send him photos of their faces. He printed them out and taped them to the pews.

RECONCILIATION: Drive-through confession.

• https://churchpop.com/2020/03/16/priest-offers-drive-thru-confessions-amid-church-lockdown-for-coronavirus-precautions/

ABORTION: [:50] – Joe Biden talks about how important his Catholic faith is to him. He also brags about his 100% rating from NARAL and insists that a woman has the right to choose to abort at any time, for any reason, and taxpayers must be forced to foot the bill.

But The Catechism of the Catholic Church is unequivocal. Life does, and therefore legal personhood should, begin at conception.

“The embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.”

Also, “the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.”

• https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/03/16/for-a-devout-catholic-joe-biden-sure-seems-proud-of-his-naral-rating-and-abortion-stance/
• http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm

ABORTION: It’s so weird that the people who can fight a right to privacy (and therefore to abortion?) in the penumbra (i.e., shadowy areas around the clear text), cannot find a right to bear arms in the clear text of the exact same document.

TOLERANCE: [5:40] – Prager University provides clarity on what “tolerance” actually means vs. what the Left has tried to twist it into.

GRAMMY NOTES: Mama Buzz and I were talking about God’s permissive will. She followed up with this text – “Just clarifying something … I don’t think God is inflicting this on us. I was thinking more along the lines of God taking this opportunity rather than inflicting. He always triumphs and its amazing to see the good things that abound out of life’s trials!”

I replied, “God’s permissive will re: suffering … Keeping in my teensy human mind the undeniable fact that He created EVERYTHING, whereas I could easily hold my entire brain in my two hands LOL … God is all loving and all powerful, so somehow when evil we didn’t bring on ourselves through our own sin harms us, he has lovingly allowed it in a more than ‘oh well, what can you do’ way.

“I got a clue into this idea the day you first got vaccinated. I didn’t just helplessly stand by while the doctor stabbed you; I made the appointment, held you down, and paid her for it. But when you got sick, I also didn’t just helplessly stand by; I gave you Tylenol and rocked you and sang to you until you slept it off and felt better.

“As I was holding your feverish little body, I thought about how far your infant mind was from my adult mind and how there was no way you could understand immunology even to the limited degree I do, yet how tiny the distance from my mind to yours compared with the distance from my mind to God’s.”