| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #28 Written By Stephen Moore 1) Nancy’s Blue State Bailout Stalls Pelosi may introduce language as soon as today, but the prospects for quick floor action are fading. Democratic leaders are now saying their won’t be any floor vote until Friday “at the earliest,” which in Washington-speak means next week: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/house-punts-return-friday-248864 Meanwhile, Mnuchin said on CNBC yesterday: “I think it’s very clear there is not going to be bipartisan support that bails out states from previous problems.” Let’s hope the White House holds firms on that point and keeps their line in the sand on no bill without a payroll tax cut. Isn’t $2.47 trillion in COVID spending enough? 2) White House Takes the Lead on the Nursing Home Crisis Hotline readers know that COVID is primarily a nursing home disease, and the media seems to have discovered it over the weekend. Now the White House has taken definitive action on top of last week’s CMS announcement that they will survey all long-term care facilities nationally to produce uniform national data. On a call with governors, Vice President Pence and Deborah Birx yesterday recommend routine testing of all nursing home residents, who now account by our estimates for about 52% of all COVID deaths. Greg Abbott of Texas was the first to announce a plan to do so and we expect most governors to follow. This is a welcome shift in the national focus from the low-risk general population being irrationally locked down to where the real risks are. https://apnews.com/1a169a537c6fb7f9ab824c49a6757b0c 3) Democrats fear life as normal; Republicans not so much A poll taken earlier this month for CNBC by the pollster Change Research demonstrates how divisions over the coronavirus go beyond differences between Red and Blue states. When asked whether a series of activities were safe “right now,” the responses from Democrats and Republicans were striking. Going to dinner at a restaurant was viewed as safe by 70 percent of Republicans and only five percent of Democrats. Flying a commercial airliner was rated as safe by 46 percent of Republicans but again only five percent of Democrats. Mass transit use was ranked safe by 40 percent of Republicans and only two percent of Democrats. https://www.changeresearch.com/post/states-of-play-battleground-wave-4 Those are some of the biggest gaps between parties we’ve ever seen, and they in part explain why the debate over reopening some states is so intense. 4) But whatever they tell pollsters, Americans are increasingly voting with their feet Apple mobility data shows people have emerged from lockdown, whether their local dictates have been removed or not. Data from Sunday shows the U.S. was just shy of pre-lockdown mobility levels, off just 4% compared to the low of -60% on Easter Sunday. https://www.apple.com/covid19/mobility The fundamental reason those crazy doomsday models were wrong is that individuals will act rationally in their own self-interest. If there’s a nasty bug around, they don’t need to be ordered to lock themselves in their homes to wash their hands, keep their distance from sick people and generally exercise caution. That’s why transmission rates naturally fall. The pickup in mobility is the best real indicator that the threat is subsiding and people are ready to get back to business as usual. 5) Where COVID Is – and Isn’t Each color represents one third of the country’s COVID deaths. Maybe the green areas never should have locked down?  6) The Collapse of Mass Transit Numerous academic studies have shown that crowded and often filthy subway cars and buses were a major source of coronavirus transmission. But ordinary people didn’t need to wait for those conclusions in order to abandon public transit. The Washington Post reports that “data from Moovit, an urban mobility app with 750 million users, shows that ridership on all varieties of mass transit — including buses, trains, subways, light-rail and bike shares — plunged more than 80 percent in major U.S. and European cities.” In New York City, the decline was 91 percent, and it was 95 percent in Washington, D.C. Parts of Asia experienced a similar drop, although the Chinese regime is now trying to entice commutes back on to subways by highlighting people who boast they are strong enough to stand during long journeys and “touch nothing.” That’s one piece of propaganda no one should touch. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/05/08/subways-trains-buses-are-sitting-empty-around-world-its-not-clear-whether-riders-will-return/ 7) Lockdowns kill We mentioned yesterday that given the exceptionally broad definition of COVID deaths used by the CDC, any difference between the headline COVID deaths and excess mortality represents not an undercount, but the death toll of lockdown and panic — denied medical care, untreated heart attack and stroke, suicide, abuse, and the like.Right on cue, the CDC released its first excess mortality study. It looks at NYC from March 11 to May 2 and finds that 5,293 (22%) excess deaths that were not tested or presumptive COVID. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-casualties-idUSKBN22N2H3 This is in line with what we’re seeing from the United Kingdom, which has a more mature dataset. Even the lockdown loving liberal Guardian ran an item on over 8,000 non-COVID home deaths from people unable or too scared to get needed medical treatment: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/08/more-people-dying-at-home-during-covid-19-pandemic-uk-analysis And the BBC — the BBC! — ran this remarkable 12-minute segment on how wildly wrong the Imperial College model that drove the U.K. and U.S. lockdowns was, that lockdown deaths now more than 30% of total U.K. excess mortality, and could soon surpass COVID deaths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXJSJbzelJ8 8) Elon Musk Channels Atlas Shrugged And Restarts His Engines Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw down an Atlas Shrugged-style challenge to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s economic lockdown yesterday. He tweeted:  Tesla’s Fremont electric car factory has been shut down since March 23. Last week, Newsom allowed some factories to reopen but said counties could keep any ones they wanted to shut. Musk insists he has created strict safety guidelines for his plant, but that Alameda County officials refuse to recognize “plain common sense.” Over the weekend, Musk vowed to immediately move Tesla to Nevada and California and sell all of his homes in the Golden State. Fremont Mayor Lily Mei certainly doesn’t want the only auto plant left in California to move. She urged county officials to work with Musk: “I am growing concerned about the potential implications for our regional economy.” If Musk were to pack up and leave he would escape California’s crushing top income tax rate of 13.3 percent. CNBC estimates that Musk could save hundreds of millions of dollars. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/11/elon-musk-could-save-billions-in-taxes-if-tesla-moves-its-headquarters.html “That’s why you see all these wealthy tech guys moving to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe,” Daniel Morris, an accountant to many Silicon Valley executives, told CNBC. “You just have to make sure you don’t go back to California frequently.” Governor Newsom doesn’t want to see Musk go; he made comments later in the day expressing confidence that the differences between Alameda and Tesla can be worked out. 9) Why are we so slow to open schools?France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Quebec opened schools yesterday. Denmark opened them weeks ago. Iceland and Sweden never closed. Germany is reopening this month as is Australia. The UK is set to open schools June. So why other than Montana and Idaho (kudos to them!) are U.S. states ignoring the overwhelming evidence that children are extremely unlikely to get sick or infect others with coronavirus? Readers of the Hotline know all the studies and the evidence. Readers of Wired Magazine probably not. Which makes this article remarkably helpful: “We are in a peculiar situation where we have a president and a segment of the population rabidly rooting for a full opening of society. At the same time, another segment wants everything to remain closed until we have vaccines, effective treatments or mass testing and contact tracing in place—none of which seems likely to appear on the immediate horizon. In the middle, with rare exceptions, governors across the nation appear to be considering action on every front except schools. This policy doesn’t make sense logistically or medically. And considering the negative effects it has on children, it doesn’t make sense ethically, either.” https://www.wired.com/story/the-case-for-reopening-schools/ 10) Anti-Hero Of The Day – Governor Murphy, Again Yesterday, we lowered Governor Phil Murphy’s rating on opening up New Jersey’s economy to an F minus. Today, we learned that might be too kind. https://www.njspotlight.com/2020/05/sweeney-we-need-more-info-on-governors-borrowing-plan/ Senate President Steve Sweeney, like Murphy a Democrat, has serious questions over whether the governor’s emergency borrowing plan to pay the state’s bills is constitutional. He worries it seeks authorization for both short-term borrowing and long-term bonds that could extend out as long as 35 years. Sweeney has asked for details and explanations but hasn’t gotten any. “We’ve been asking for weeks – weeks,” Sweeney has told reporters. Murphy has resisted calls to reopen many businesses he closed as “nonessential” back in March. Once open, they could start generating taxable economic activity. But Murphy says massive borrowing is instead needed to avoid massive public-worker layoffs. But his borrowing would go against a 2004 state Supreme Court decision that bond proceeds can’t be considered as “revenue” to balance the state’s budget. Some state legislators may file a lawsuit to block Murphy’s borrowing binge. Meanwhile, Murphy insists his plan is “constitutionally feasible.” But last Friday he declined to answer a question if he had sought an official legal opinion from the state Attorney General on the matter. 11) Hero Of the Day – American Ingenuity Mitchell Olson may not have invented a better mousetrap, but he has figured out a way to get comfortable masks into the hands of thousands of Americans using his 3-D printer. In March, Olson was approached by a neighbor of his in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She said her nursing shifts were uncomfortable due to awkwardly-fitting masks that hurt her ears. He quickly worked out a new design and turned out five masks. Soon word got around that his masks really were better. He filled an order from South Dakota nurses working in virus wards in New York City, and after that orders came flooding in. Now the social media consultant has a sideline – making thousands of masks and is shipping all over the country. He has also diversified and is now making nasal swabs used to test for COVID-19. “The benefits of 3D printing are that it’s so flexible in that it can serve as a temporizing measure while the more traditional manufacturers can ramp up their capacity to meet demand,” University of Nebraska Medical Center Dr. Jesse Cox said. https://www.klkntv.com/south-dakota-man-helps-nebraska-make-covid-19-testing-supplies/ 12) Quote of the Day — Lockdowns Forever “If the Chicago Tribune thinks that everything is going to go back to completely normal without us having a very effective treatment or a vaccine, they’re just dead wrong.” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker 13) Governor Pritzker’s reopening plan, the best summary is from the Babylon Bee https://babylonbee.com/news/governor-unveils-innovative-37-step-plan-to-reopen-state-over-the-next-10-years |
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