Two weeks ago I was the only person in the grocery store in my neighborhood with a mask. People looked at me weird and moved away from me. (A bonus!) As the days ticked by, a smattering of customers began wearing them-- and some serious masks. I was happy. By yesterday, the mask-wearers were a majority. Three of the four cashiers were also wearing masks, although when I attempted to compliment one of them, he barked at me that:
1- the store made the employees buy their own masks2- the [selfish, stupid, igornant] customers who aren't wearing masks [yet] are putting everyone else-- particularly workers-- at risk
BINGO! Now people walk away when they see a shopper without a mask! When will the moron-"president" order up enough N-95 masks so that governors can tell people that no one is allowed in any store without a mask? Until that happens we're not being serious about the shutdowns and first tentative steps towards flattening the curve.Politico reported on Sunday that the president of France told the Prime Minister of the U.K. that he was prepared to shut down the Chunnel and all French ports to the U.K. -- basically England's border-- if the U.K. didn't take more restrictive measures to contain the coronavirus. Boris Johnson responded by finally closing schools, shutting down all pubs and restaurants and asking people to stay home-- along with decent incentives for laid-off workers. Those are baby steps towards doing what has to be done-- a 100% mandatory, enforced shutdown-- like a 5 on a 100 scale... but it's a start. Trump isn't even close to that yet. The man has terrible instincts beyond selfishness, greed and accumulation.Over the weekend, Reuters reported that "Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China. The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help."If you've been watching the daily Chris Martenson podcasts I've been posting ever day for a month, you already knew that the rosy reports coming out of China are mostly hype and that the numbers and information China shares-- at least publicly-- are devoid of any semblance of transparency and likely as false as the nonsense Trump spouts. Chinese media outlet, Caixin reported earlier this month that the big recovery is all a ruse: Lights Are On but No One’s Working: How Local Governments Are Faking Coronavirus Recovery. Yuan Ruiyang and Isabelle Li wrote that "Local companies and officials are fraudulently boosting electricity consumption and other metrics in order to meet tough new back-to-work targets as the spread of Covid-19 in China wanes, a Caixin investigation has found."
As new coronavirus cases in China slowed in recent weeks, local governments in less-affected regions pushed companies and factories to return to work, typically by assigning concrete targets to district officials. Company insiders and local civil servants told Caixin that, under pressure to fulfill quotas they could not otherwise meet, they deftly cooked the books.Leaving lights and air conditioners on all day long in empty offices, turning on manufacturing equipment, faking staff rosters and even coaching factory workers to lie to inspectors are just some of the ways they helped manufacture flashy statistics on the resumption of business for local governments to report up the chain.Electricity consumption data has regularly been used as a proxy for the business resumption rate when reporting to Beijing, and to the public.The East China province of Zhejiang has been lauded as a prime example of the nation’s industrial recovery from the coronavirus outbreak by China’s top economic planner, which reported on Feb. 24 that its work resumption rate was more than 90%.Nevertheless, a civil servant in one district of the provincial capital, Hangzhou, told Caixin that from Saturday plants were instructed to leave their industrial equipment idling for the whole day, while offices were told to keep computers and air-conditioners running, when Beijing began checking the resumption rate by examining power consumption figures.Caixin has chosen not to name the district to protect the identity of the civil servant, who could face repercussions for revealing the information publicly. But reached by phone, one company insider in the district said they saw such directives in multiple corporate WeChat groups. Another said they received the order too, but their operations had already resumed two weeks prior, and its production lines were in normal operation by Feb. 29. Another executive said they were not informed of the electricity use target, and said they were running at about one-fifth of normal capacity, with only a small proportion of machines in use.Hangzhou’s target was for corporate electricity consumption that day to hit 75% of what it was on Jan. 8, and that it should return to at least 90% of that by March 10.The real resumption rate in one industrial park in Hangzhou over the weekend was 40%, the civil servant estimated, far below the 75% target.The district official pointed out China is further subsidizing electricity costs as a way to incentivize businesses to resume, and said many companies would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials.Insiders told Caixin that in some cases, rather than giving companies direct targets, local governments assigned quotas to local district officials who were then directly responsible for meeting them. Those officials would regularly visit the companies, prodding them to resume production in the guise of expressing “care and support.” That pressure is likely what drove them to switch on their machines.Zhejiang Provincial Government Deputy Secretary-General Chen Guangsheng boasted to press on Feb. 24 that a segment of manufacturing plants in Zhejiang reported a work resumption rate of 98.6%, and service enterprises 95.6%. More than 99% of the coastal province’s companies with annual export value above $10 million had resumed business, the provincial leader said.A company in Wenzhou, a major commercial center in the same province, confirmed it had received a designated power consumption target equal to half of the level before the outbreak, and had been running its air conditioners all day long to meet the goal.Zhejiang is not the only place where the reality on the ground is said to deviate from government figures.In the small industrial city of Botou, some 230 kilometers (143 miles) south of Beijing, Caixin found factories reported by the local government to have reopened their doors had not in fact resumed production.The head of one told Caixin that despite reports up the chain, the local government’s unwillingness to risk an outbreak meant it had not actually restarted. “The local government still forbids factories to actually resume work,” the executive said. “We have returned to the offices, but production has not resumed at all.”He further said the Botou government asked him to falsely report the number of employees who had returned to work, and even went so far as to directly coach workers about how to lie if they received calls from inspectors.Prolonged suspension of production had led to the loss of technicians and business orders, he added, because some of the company’s peers in other parts of China had resumed manufacturing ahead of them.Replying to Caixin’s request for comment on Monday, the Botou government said at least 228 enterprises in the Botou area had resumed business, but some companies might have said they did not because while they were registered as having resumed, they may not have been prepared to immediately commence production. They said companies were permitted to resume normal business after reporting to the local government, but could only begin operation after officials confirmed virus control measures were in place.A source in a smaller enterprise in Botou told Caixin companies have been allowed to resume production after meeting certain virus containment requirements, but face the further logistical issues as many rural roads remain blocked. Without a way to get raw materials in and send products out, there’s not much point in businesses returning to production.Open data from Baidu Maps shows overall traffic flow inside the Botou city over the weekend was still less than half of the average last year, after two weeks of slow recovery starting from Feb. 18.
Yesterday, Forbes reported that "Over the last several weeks, the Chinese government has, on one hand, kicked out Wall Street Journal reporters for their coverage of the outbreak; blamed the U.S. military for bringing the virus to Wuhan; and demanded U.S. media in Beijing that has locals on staff to cut them loose... For weeks, many in the “decouple” camp-- those who would prefer it if U.S. multinationals made their chemical mixes and widgets at home, or at least somewhere in the Americas instead of in China-- felt that the outbreak has forever changed China’s role as global manufacturing hub. That was before the Western world, the buyers of most of the products made to export out of China, got even more sick than the Chinese. For the moment, they're not exactly in condition to make things at home."
In Washington, Trump has gone from “the hysteria is a hoax” (denial) to “China has to pay for this” (anger) in America’s newfound coronavirus stages of grief.“The world is paying a very big price for what they did,” Trump said, referring to his claim that Chinese officials did not fully share information about the outbreak after it began in Hubei.“It could have been stopped right where it came from,” Trump said at a White House news conference.Clearly, Trump sees all of this as China’s fault. We all know perception is greater than reality.This is as much Italy’s fault. And France’s at this point as it is China’s.Why? Because Italy was zipping people in and out of Hubei textile mills during the height of the outbreak in February. Unwise, to put it kindly.After the China cases were cured here in the U.S. following travel bans, we were bringing in people from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan; people who had mingled with European travelers.Then new cases began popping up from Americans who had been to Italy. Others mingled with European business travelers, like those in attendance at a Biogen conference in Massachusetts.It spread like wildfire from there, running through the community, leading two of America’s most important states-- New York and California-- to place its residents in stay-at-home quarantine.With Trump having no problem finger pointing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday that China would be “compelled to take further countermeasures” if the U.S. continued down the “wrong path”, which should be taken to mean blaming China.The feud between the world’s two biggest economies comes at a bad time. The U.S., and the world, could uses China’s help here. Do they even want it?As Brian McCarthy, chief strategist for Macrolens, a big picture investment research firm in Stamford, Connecticut put it on Friday in a note to clients, you know it’s bad when even the Washington Post is backing Trump on the China bashing.In an op-ed titled titled, “This virus should be forever linked to the regime that facilitated its spread” WaPo columnist [and far right freak best known as a Bush Regime torture advocate] Marc Thiessen posed this question to readers:“Want to know why the U.S. economy is in free fall? Why restaurants and bars are closing, putting millions out of work, and why the airline industry is facing possible bankruptcy? Why schools across the nation are shutting down, leaving students to fall behind and parents without safe places to send their children everyday? Why the stock market is plummeting, wiping out the retirement and college savings of millions of Americans? Why the elderly are isolated in nursing homes and tens of millions who don’t have the option of teleworking have no idea how they will pay their bills?”The answer: it’s the Chinese communist party’s fault.When doctors from Wuhan first discovered the new SARS strain in early December, Hubei leaders put a muzzle on them. They censored their social media posts, deemed them all rumor mongers, and arrested them.One doctor, named Li Wenliang, died of February 7, shortly after being released by a Chinese court that exonerated him and returning to his hospital to help patients with COVID-19.On March 18, the National Review, called the new coronavirus “Xi’s disease.”“We do not blame the Chinese people for the fact that a novel coronavirus cropped up in Wuhan,” their editors wrote. “We blame the government in Beijing for making the problem dramatically worse by trying to cover it up.”China is a big country. Provincial leaders have power. It might not have been Xi who ordered the doctors to be censored. It is just as plausible that it was the handiwork of local Party bosses. Xi has since ordered the firing of a few of them already.If the most grim predictions of how this pandemic spreads through the world are correct, then more than half of Californians catch the bug, according to governor Gavin Newsom; and nearly two-thirds of Germany, according to chancellor Angela Merkel. If so, we have a long way to go. Like millions of more people to go. China would appear almost unforgivable if it shakes out like that over the next 12 months.Some Senators, led by the likes of Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio have proposed legislation to bring certain supply chains back to the U.S. and out of China.For Arkansas Republican Cotton, it’s the inputs used to make pharmaceutical drugs, including over the counter medications like Tylenol.“It's time to pull America's supply chains for life-saving medicine out of China and make the Communist Party pay for contributing to this global emergency," he said last week.Picture this: the trade war was like Trump taking a massive ice pick and driving it into the ice, Xi Jinping standing on the other side. The ice cracked. Water leaked through. It’s not so solid anymore. The ice sheet isn’t necessarily thin, but it’s no longer safe. You wouldn’t take your kids ice fishing on it, or take the truck out for a spin with chained tires.Now there are dozens of Trumps, of all sizes and strength, doing the same. Their power is not as great; their influence maybe a lot less, but they are hacking away nonetheless. There will be ice drift here and there.None of this means that China is doomed, of course.China is changing. It is no longer dependent on exports. Its workers are smart and the country seems to have no shortage of capital, despite rising debt loads that scare the likes of Xi and some on Wall Street.The next big semiconductor chip maker may very easily be Chinese.The next Celgene or Amgen may very well be Chinese.They’re not going to go back to stitch and sew factory work, and $1 a day makers of Happy Meal toys. Those days are done. But so are the days of China being the indispensable manufacturing nation.Need ventilators? China has them.Need surgical masks? Well, we’ve got to call our factory in China and hope they don't need them for their own people.Need some drug? All the ingredients are mixed in China.Want to go green? Most solar panels are made in China. Wind turbines, too.
