The Patriot Post® · Monday Short Cuts

For the record: “There is nothing speculative or theoretical about the murderous efficiency with which new diseases can burn through societies encountering them for the first time. … The horrors of pandemics have been documented and depicted often. Yet while climate activists have been forecasting world-ending doomsday scenarios since the 1960s, the apocalypse never seems to materialize. … Worrying about the devastation of an active viral epidemic is not merely a matter of ‘trusting science’ or ‘waking up’ to an inconvenient truth. Plagues are real. They have erupted with deadly effect in the past, just as Covid-19 is erupting in the present.” —columnist Jeff Jacoby

Observations: “My question about hunkering down is, when does it end? For how long are we expected to defer travel, avoid public events, and hole up in our homes? Will conditions be any different a month from now? I don’t think so; why should they be? Two months? Three? Curve-flattening, by its nature, will go on for months, at a minimum. Maybe warm weather will bring a temporary respite, but a conscious strategy of minimizing many forms of economic activity, for months if not years, will inevitably magnify the virus’s impact on our economy.” —John Hinderaker

Political futures: “I’m sure there are those who will pretend otherwise, but there’s little question that for anyone watching last night’s Democrat presidential debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders with an open but discerning mind, there was but one conclusion to be drawn: the thought of either one of these two men in the White House is beyond foolish.” —Peter Heck

Social isolation: “Do you have a parent? Do you have a grandparent? Do you want to be the vector that carries that disease to them? Do you know anybody and love anybody who’s older and might be frail? You don’t want your last memory of that person being that you gave them the virus that killed them. You’ll kick yourself for the rest of your life if you did that.” —New York Times reporter Donald McNeil Jr.

A total lack of self-awareness: “Have been talking to lots of Trump supporters across the country these last couple of days, and the disdain for and distrust of the media right now is worse than I’ve seen at any point throughout this presidency.” —New York Times reporter Elaina Plott

Non compos mentis: “It’s great that everyone is coming together around this crisis. But people are in crisis everyday. 500 mil [sic] Americans go bankrupt from medical debt every year. 68 mil are un or underinsured. We’ve been in a state of emergency. We need a president who acts like it.” —Bernie Sanders’s press secretary Briahna Joy (The U.S. population is roughly 330 million.)

And last… “Democrats shut down Congress for a sham impeachment when Donald Trump was shutting down travel from China…saving American lives. And they had the audacity to call him xenophobic at the time.” —Charlie Kirk