By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 22 March, 2020
[The following in the submitted article, not the newspaper's edited copy.]
The Enemy
Communist China learned well the lessons of her generals over the millennia. All of the strategy and subterfuge currently at play has been described in collections such as “The art of war” by General Sun Tzu. Communism has cemented the philosophy of patience and cunning because the government has total control over everything; the economy, news media, internet censorship, elections, and healthcare where the state profits by harvesting the organs of “condemned” prisoners that are then sold for transplant into wealthy westerners.
Now, we are at the mercy of a virus which apparently originated in Wuhan, China. There has been conjecture about the virus being a product of the probable germ warfare center at Wuhan, but there is also a “wet market” located nearby. A wet market is the standard throughout Asia even though most countries have “outlawed” them. The quotes around the word outlawed are there because crime cartels largely control them and pay off/threaten local officials to keep them open.
When the outbreak was discovered by the Communist Chinese government, in December, it was kept quiet. This terrible act will likely cost tens of thousands of lives worldwide.
Between the short time the outbreak was discovered and our government was made aware and took action by closing travel form China. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Americans had traveled back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, not knowing that they might be infected and be infectious.
The Disease
Multi-cell organisms like you and me have DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) as the “instruction manual” in each of our cells. A strand of DNA looks like a two-strand helix connected by nucleotides. Before the reader’s eyes glaze over, let’s simplify this.
DNA is much more complicated than RNA (Ribonucleic acid). RNA has only one strand of nucleotides instead of the more complicated two-strand DNA.
Viruses are very simple in comparison to animal cells. Virus genetic codes are simple RNA strands
What appeared to have happened in China is that an animal disease virus, probably from a bat, made the jump to a human.
The Pandemic was on.
By now, we are all aware of the travel and meeting restrictions, school, restaurant, and business closings. And of course there is the run on groceries, especially toilet paper. [One wonders if, in a future pandemic, if the symptoms are severe diarrhea instead of respiratory issues, will people then hoard Kleenex?]
The epidemiology of what is now officially called COVID-19 is still not completely charted out. It seems to induce upper-respiratory discomfort first; runny nose, sore throat, and fever. But then the killer function may kick in with a form of pneumonia that is extremely difficult to treat in that it clogs the lungs with thick mucus. The elderly and those with immune system issues are most vulnerable.
Another factor is uncontrolled migration. Italy and parts of Europe are paying dearly for political correctness in accepting migrants willy-nilly from all over the world. In fact, even after the pandemic was acknowledged Italian officials encouraged citizens to hug Chinese as a symbol of solidarity. And, evidently, stupidity.
So, we stop flights from China, Europe, U.K. and Ireland, and the Democrats still do not want to secure the Southern Border. Last week, President Trump closed the Canada and Mexico border crossings to non-essential travel. Good!
The shelter-in-place order is almost certainly to come soon to Texas. No half-measure will be effective.
We are all familiar with X-Y graphs. So here is an easy explanation what this battle to control the spread of COVID-19 is truly about. A vertical axis of the graph represents the units of hospital facilities available. This number is not easily increased, although measures are being taken to do so.
The nasty part is the number of infections represented by a line from the origin and marching right, along the horizontal axis time line. As the number of cases increases, the number of cases rises.
If the infection line crosses the hospital unit line, we are in Italian-style trouble, without enough beds to serve the ill.
Italy has so many infections that is no longer treats – turns away – all patients over 60 years of age. Let that sink in a moment.
We absolutely MUST control the rising number of infections, because past that point the mortality rate skyrockets.
The Politics
So far, President Trump has done a superb job in managing this dire crisis and marshalling the leadership, brain power and resources to meet the challenge head-on.
It is disturbing to see the games being played by the Democrats, especially Speaker Pelosi by throwing pet project funding into the initial bill for pandemic relief. Why is millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood pertinent to fighting a pandemic? Imagine any member of Congress, let alone the Speaker, pulling such nonsense after the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941. Shameful.
Another inexplicable attitude is that of the press with their hectoring questions at the daily Pandemic briefings. Trump’s tone has changed at these meetings and rightly so. In this emergency, he should not be seen as combative, so he has become much more of a calming figure.
It was interesting to watch the first several press briefings where some of the reporters tried to lure him into angry arguments. It did not seem to work. While there were many testy exchanges, the funniest was when an ABC reporter asserted that calling COVID-19 the “China Virus” was racist. His brief and devastating reply was simply: “It’s from China.”
This pandemic is just the beginning.
The Next War
Always pay attention to what your enemy says. In the last two weeks, The Communist Chinese Government threatened two things that have been largely ignored by the press. One threat was blatant; to disable our South China Sea Naval Fleet with a nuclear detonation-created electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). Yes, they threatened a nuclear attack. Then, they threatened to kill Americans by stopping exports of the pharmaceuticals made in China for the U.S. That would be crippling as 90% of pharma sold in the United States is made in China.
It was proposed over the weekend that China should forgive all debt as reparations for the unleashing of this virus and the cover up that exacerbated the spread all over the world. However, there must be a coalition of nations to execute that policy. Note: The corrupt United Nations was not mentioned.
Does anyone think that it might have been bad strategic planning to let that dependence on China to have happened in the first place. One has only to look at previous administrations and congresses to find the answer to that. It was the lazy way to do business.
President Trump is well aware that fighting the pandemic is absolutely the first priority. Following that, securing the U.S. both in military might and economic power must take hold or we will find ourselves victim of lazy, corrupt politicians and predatory foreign enemies again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nZ4mw4mXw&fbclid=IwAR1UXCTZM09_Sq9ywLARFMjLBfONFCzGxtNdpuoutp3gcSzwn5BM6HETHxw&app=desktop