Bauer: Signs of Hope Begin to Appear in the CoronaVirus Fight

If there's further economic collapse, I suspect some on the left will welcome it

By Gary Bauer

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — You'd better buckle up folks. The president continues to say we need to get the country back to work as soon as possible, and that America can't remain closed for much longer. But the left is setting impossible standards, insisting that we can't reopen the country as long as there is even one more person getting the virus. 

If that mentality prevails, it will cause the economic collapse of the country, which I suspect some on the left would welcome.

All over the country, hospitalizations and deaths are well below what multiple experts and their models had predicted even a week ago. Don't get me wrong – we're not out of the woods yet. But there are many "green shoots" in the battle being waged against the coronavirus.

Consider these developments:

• At the end of March, there were 1,427 new hospitalizations in New York. On a more recent Sunday, there were 358 hospitalizations – a 75% drop.
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeatedly said in mid-March that New York would need at least 100,000 new hospital beds. But one of his aides said April 6th they may need just 20,000 to 30,000 beds.
• The first week in April, Gov. Cuomo warned that he would order the National Guard to seize ventilators anywhere they could find them in New York. A week later, Cuomo suggested the situation is now no longer so drastic. "There is no hospital that needs ventilators that doesn't have ventilators.There is no hospital that needs PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that doesn't have it," said Cuomo.
• Four weeks ago in mid-March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a shockwave through the country when he announced that 56% of his state – more than 25 million people – would be infected in eight weeks. We're more than half way through that time period, and so far there are just over 15,000 cases, slightly less than the 12 million Newsom predicted at this point. 
• In fact, Gov. Newsom is now so confident the outbreak has been contained, that earlier this month he announced he's sharing excess ventilators with other states.
• In Italy and Spain, two of the hardest hit nations, there are clear signs that the worst may well be over.
• Two U.S. companies are now clinically testing possible Covid-19 vaccines. If the tests go well, we will be able to prevent people from getting sick if the virus reemerges next winter.
• While the media are emphasizing the problems in the rollout of the small business loan program, as of yesterday the Small Business Administration announced all the funding had been allocated to already processed loans. 

All of which is to say that those predicting nothing but gloom and doom appear to have overestimated the severity of the outbreak, while simultaneously attacking the president for not magically knowing last December what was about to hit us. Some experts are saying that for the foreseeable future we may have outbreaks in various "hotspots." If that happens, put those "hotspots" on lockdown. 

But we cannot keep the whole country shut down for months, which is what the left and some media commentators (who're still drawing their multimillion-dollar salaries while the rest of American Shelters-In-Place at home,) are demanding.

Media Malfeasance

Watching the nightly press briefings as the president takes an hour (or sometimes more) of questions from hostile reporters leaves one with the impression that the media are more interested in fighting the administration than the coronavirus.

If anyone else were president right now, every media outlet and every commentator would be saying to any critics,