Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Is President Trump Reading EPJ?



Early on July 10 (6:29 AM ET to be precise), I wrote a post calling for President Trump to pull a  John Cowperthwaite.

Cowperthwaite claimed that while the financial secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971, his greatest achievement was, as recounted by Marian Tupy,:
Of all the policies that we discussed, one stands out in my mind — if for no other reason than because it is so thoroughly counterintuitive. I asked him to name the one reform that he was most proud of. "I abolished the collection of statistics," he replied. Sir John believed that statistics are dangerous, because they enable social engineers of all stripes to justify state intervention in the economy.
I wrote in that post about the crazed reporting that is going on around COVID-19:
Trump should have abolished the collection and reporting of COVID-19 statistics long ago. He should have declared that the collection and reporting of COVID-19 data was a national security issue.
And later in the day on July 10, Trump pretty much did that.

The New York Times just found out and is losing it:
The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the virus. But the Health and Human Services database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions...News of the change came as a shock at the C.D.C., according to two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. 


Perfect, as I pointed out in the original post, a large part of the problem with the ongoing panic is these numbers that are being released on COVID-19 infections that the anti-Trump media is distorting. Stop making the data public and you go a long way in solving the problem.

Is President Trump or someone close to the president reading EPJ?

Nice job guys.

-RW


4 comments:

  1. I have not even considered voting in 20 years. Trump is inching towards changing that. He needs to do one more thing and I will put on a MAGA hat. He needs to sign an executive order banning government officials from enforcing any mandate on masks and any covid related safety protocols promoted by the cdc.

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  2. Masks becomes saturated with moisture after about 3 breaths, then any benefit to capturing the moisture droplets is gone.

    The moisture/droplets just then proceed on again from the mask.

    Surgical masks are to prevent blood/body fliud from splattering up into your mouth from a patient.

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  3. My first laugh of the day: "The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized..."

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  4. Lol...to Capn Mike...and...congrats Mr. Wenzell on your recommendation being adopted!!!!

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