Victor Davis Hanson of National Review Online asks questions linked to the coronavirus panic.
There are a lot of known unknowns and paradoxes in these times of uncertainty. Here are a few.
1) Trump is criticized as both “racist” and “xenophobic” in his condemnations of the “Chinese” virus, while he’s also criticized for “appeasing” President Xi when he makes friendly references to their coronavirus chats. How can Trump be both? …
… 2) The media hype the increased number of cases (the denominator) without much attention to the number of deaths (the numerator) caused by, or perhaps mostly by, the virus. The numerator, however, is not increasing daily at a rate that’s commensurate with the denominator, despite a number of important other extenuating criteria:
a) Those seeking tests are mostly those with some sort of malaise or exposure, and yet they test overwhelmingly (so far) negative, perhaps at rates, depending on locale, of 80 percent to 90 percent negative (an increasingly not widely reported fact), and thus they may underrepresent percentages of the infected in the general population. …
… 3) The highest case numbers and deaths, as one would imagine, so far are in bicoastal, highly populated states, marked by either media and entertainment centers, numerous Chinese visitors and residents, or high-tech and financial nexuses — such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Washington State. …
… Broadcasting from a studio or writing a column in New York, or living in Malibu or Beverly Hills, or working as a blogger-coder in Menlo Park, or working for Amazon in Seattle must affect a person’s perceptions and provide him greater exposure, compared with others who are in between such places — at least so far.