Coronavirus Pandemic, Don't Panic, The Debate

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Coronavirus Pandemic
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is affecting most nations in the world. Germany announced today that it is sealing its borders. But I doubt that out of power political parties in most nations are so unashamedly trying to exploit the tragedy to destroy their political opponents as much as the American left and its media allies are doing right now.

For example, the CNN moderators began last night's Democrat debate with a lengthy segment on the virus outbreak. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spent the first half hour doing everything they could to undermine confidence in our government and score cheap political points on suffering.

In Bernie's case, he exploited the virus to push for outright socialism, repeatedly insisting that "Medicare for All" was the solution. In Biden's case, it was just pure demagoguery. (See below.)

Over the weekend, the administration team dominated by health experts continued to announce new initiatives and public-private partnerships, while providing the American people with as much up-to-date information as possible. For example, the first human vaccine tests will be administered today.

President Trump did his best to try to calm the growing signs of panic. There were fist fights in grocery stores over the weekend. So Trump brought in the heads of America's major grocery chains. They said that supply lines were fine but people have to stop panic buying. Trump shared this information, urged calm and told people there will be plenty of food.

Immediately, the media attacked him for sending mixed messages. It pains me to say this, but there are powerful people in the media who want panic because they believe this is the monster that can finally take down Trump.

For one brief shining moment last week, some outlets, including Fox News, appropriately started emphasizing the recovery rate from the virus. By Saturday that useful information was completely gone.

Will somebody please tell me why it is not a rational, responsible thing for the media to report the recovery rate? Doing so would help to minimize panic. The fact that the media are not doing it is beyond disgusting.

During Saturday's briefing, Surgeon General Jerome Adams blasted the media for focusing on partisanship and finger-pointing. He urged reporters to concentrate their efforts on providing "more stories about how people can protect themselves."

Here in the metro Washington area, the first three patients who were diagnosed with the virus two weeks ago have already recovered and are back at work. Why is that not major news?

The president and vice president have repeatedly stressed that for the overwhelming majority of people, this is not a deadly threat. From everything we see, that is exactly correct. Yet they are attacked for saying it.

Don't Panic
This is a time for everyone to be careful about what they read online, even if it sounds authoritative. The U.S. National Security Council issued a statement late last night debunking reports of a national lockdown. People were showing up at grocery stores in the middle of the night trying to get in.

One of the things the government is struggling with is our dependence on global supply lines. Donald Trump has been warning about this problem for decades. As soon as he took office, he tried to address that vulnerability, but he has been opposed by left-wing politicians like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

When Trump urged American CEOs to start thinking about getting their factories out of China and bringing them back home, he was mocked as a "dictator" by free market advocates, libertarians, Never Trumpers and media elites. He was right then, and the disruption caused by the coronavirus and China's subsequent threats have further proven the point.

HHS Hacked
As our nation is struggling to deal with this crisis, someone – Iran, China, Russia, ISIS – attempted to hack the Department of Health and Human Services over the weekend. The agency reports that a massive cyberattack was aimed at disrupting the government's response to the coronavirus.

Would you rather have Joe Biden or Barack Obama in office (here, here and here) when something like this is happening? Or the team we have now? That's easy for me to answer, and I suspect it's an easy call for most Americans too.

The Debate
Here are some of the "lowlights" of last night's Democrat debate. As I mentioned above, the coronavirus was a major topic of discussion. Virtually everything that Joe Biden said we should be doing the Trump/Pence Administration is already doing. The rest of his suggestions show beyond any doubt what a disaster the left will be when it gets back into office.

For example, Biden announced that in the first 100 days of his administration, no illegal alien in America would be deported for any reason.

Assuming that there is another outbreak of coronavirus next year, if Biden is in office we will have hundreds of thousands of people from Latin America pouring across our southern border because the newly-elected president has announced a de facto amnesty – a ban on deportations for the first 100 days.

Here's another example. The U.S. economy in general is taking a beating right now, and our energy industry in particular is struggling as Russian and Saudi oil floods the market in a price war.

What did Biden and Sanders say they would do to address climate change? They both promised to drive a stake through the heart of the American energy industry by banning fracking, among other things.

More than six million Americans are employed by various sectors of the U.S. energy industry. At a time when we are reeling economically, Biden and Sanders are promising to destroy millions of American jobs! Incredibly, the CNN moderators didn't blink at these wildly insane suggestions.

At one point, Biden and Sanders argued about whether Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union accomplished a few good things. Sanders wanted to argue that China has done good things too. Biden, who not that long ago defended China, suddenly started bashing China.

For whatever reason, Sanders pulled his punches. He could have said, "Mr. Vice President, you weren't bashing China when you took your son to Beijing and he left with a billion-dollar contract from the Chinese."

Lastly, any pro-life voter who thinks it won't make much difference whether Biden is president needs to think again. The alleged "moderate" Joe Biden told Bernie Sanders that he was all in on forcing American taxpayers to subsidize abortions. He said it was an essential part of his commitment to "public funding for all healthcare."

For the 20% of Democrats who claim to be pro-life, there is nothing "moderate" about Biden's pro-abortion extremism.

In the middle of a crisis in which we are worried about people dying, it is astonishing that the leaders of the Democrat Party are committed to ensuring that as many innocent babies as possible will die this year and next year and every year after that.
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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