A Brief History…

It is quite unlikely that the election fraud can be reversed before Biden is sworn in. I don’t expect any of the nonsense the left has been predicting if that occurs. Trump will leave office peacefully but will not attend the “inauguration,” which will probably be “virtual” anyway.

What will he do next ? He is the titular head of the Republican Party, and the choice of 98% of the 75 million voters who supported him. He got 10 million additional votes this year compared to 2016.

<a href=”https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/why-the-future-is-trumpist-1.php”> Here is one observation.</a>

Trump may or may not purposely dominate the political scene in the background as Teddy Roosevelt did from 1909 – 1912 and then run again in 2024, but I argue that Trumpism will dominate the scene for a long time to come, and that any successful GOP presidential nominee will need to be a Trumpist. I go further, in fact, and believe the shuffling of the issue map and the realignment of voting coalitions are as substantial as FDR and the New Deal—and it took FDR four terms to effect that change.

I don’t see Trump running again in 2024. He will be as old as Biden is now and, while he is a good deal healthier than Biden is, the party will need new blood to carry on. What then?

<a href-=”https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/12/trump-bows-to-reality-asks-confidants.html”> This does not seem realistic. </a>

“I received a call from President Trump last week. We chatted about the election briefly [and] he made it clear that he wasn’t giving up on fighting for a second term,” said Eric Bolling, a Sinclair host and friend of the Trump family who appeared on Trump’s reality TV show years ago. “I mentioned to him that I believe whatever happens with the legal fights, he would emerge as the biggest media personality on the planet. Trump has a clear opportunity to be a media mega-personality post-presidency.” 

“I think an Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice revival would be a humongous hit,” Bolling added. “This iteration would be ratings gold for whomever is fortunate enough to get the reboot.”

That is the least likely possibility, in my opinion.

What else?

I’d rather see Trump get involved with something like Newsmax or just generally working to increase the conservative footprint in news media. Since Fox News has become sort of like the Justice Roberts of the news world, there’s a very real opportunity to capture a very large and underserved audience. And with the tech monopolists brazenly practicing story suppression for the Dems, it’s more important than ever.

That is a thought. How about this ?

In my opinion Trump should get together with someone like Vince McMahon and invest in something like Parler, expand the platform to take on twitter and facebook simultaneously. I’d bet taking them down a peg or two would be two would be very satisfying to him, and it would be a huge platform if it worked.

There is a good chance that he will be blocked on Twitter after he leaves office, although Twitter would be foolish to do so financially. Parler is an alternative, as iWe is an alternative to Facebook. I have joined both but not used them significantly. I never joined Twitter and have used Facebook mostly for baby pictures and the like.

Would he stay in the hotel business ? His kids have been running much of that the past five years and , while some like Ivanka might have political ambitions, I don’t see him getting back into development. My personal opinion is that the consequences of the virus and the insane reaction by Democrat Mayors and Governors have killed many cities. New York City is bleeding emigrants.

It will be interesting to see if he chooses to supervise the transition of the GOP from a corporate, Chamber of Commerce, party to a populist one. I think that is coming and he is the likely one to lead it. Third parties do not do well in our binary system. The old Republican Party, and many of its stalwarts, like Mitch McConnell, seem out of date, if not beholden to China. Ross Perot and Sarah Palin were warnings ignored. The Tea Party was an attempt that failed because they (we) lacked leadership. Obama went after the Tea Party with every department of the federal government weaponized. It resembled the assault on Trump the past four years in intensity and motive.

What if the country starts to separate? If the leftist radicals behind Biden try to enact their agenda, their real agenda, we could see a cold Civil War. They would be foolish to pick a hot one with the segment of the population that is comprised of most military veterans and which owns 350 million guns. A book written about such a peaceful separation is <a href=”https://www.amazon.com/America-3-0-Rebooting-Prosperity-America%C2%92s/dp/1594036438″> “America 3.0” and might be timely.</a>

I wrote <a href=”https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RWZ5R2E9JPJS5/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1594036438″> a review of it at the time. </a>

The analysis of American history is worth the price of the book and the time to read it. I wish the recommendations for recovery were more likely to be adopted. There are some excellent points about future trends, as in medicine for example. I like some of the suggestions for defense policy. The whole thing is a nice exercise in predicting the future. I just wish it would happen that way. I previously reviewed George Friedman’s  The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century . I think I like this one better and highly recommend it.

I was not optimistic about their suggestions in 2013 but then world has changed markedly since then. We could end up with a country that has blue crusts on each coast. The rest solid red. Chicago is a blue island that is failing. Maybe Canada would take them.

A new virus emerged in Wuhan, a city in China known for a bioweapons lab and a “live market” where people buy and eat bars and other wild animals. As it happens, there is a family of viruses, which include the SARS virus, also called Severe acute respiratory syndrome.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during the 2003 outbreak. Of these, 774 died. In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of SARS-CoV infection. All of these people had traveled to other parts of the world where SARS was spreading. SARS did not spread more widely in the community in the United States.

This occurred in 2003 and was limited to Asia with a few travelers.

Another similar virus was called MERS virus or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is viral respiratory illness that is new to humans. It was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread to several other countries, including the United States. Most people infected with MERS-CoV developed severe respiratory illness, including fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Many of them have died.

Both of these viruses had high mortality rates for those affected. SARS had a mortality of 774 of 8,098 people worldwide or 9.6%.

MERS mortality was higher at about 33%. It is limited to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

The new virus is related and seems much more infectious, similar to influenza, but has a lower mortality rate

SARS-CoV-2 has close genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses, from which it likely originated.[10][11][12] An intermediate reservoir such as a pangolin is also thought to be involved in its introduction to humans.[13][14] From a taxonomic perspective SARS-CoV-2 is classified as a strain of the species severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV).[1] To avoid confusion with the disease SARS, the WHO sometimes refers to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19” in public health communications.[15]

There is speculation that the disease is caused by a virus that might have escaped from the Wuhan bioweapons lab, either in a bat that was the subject of experiments or via another vector, perhaps an infected employee. Bat viruses have been of great interest because, while they cause disease in humans, they appear not to harm bats.

Bats that are naturally infected or experimentally infected do not demonstrate clinical signs of disease. These observations have allowed researchers to speculate that bats are the likely reservoirs or ancestral hosts for several CoVs. In this review, we follow the CoV outbreaks that are speculated to have originated in bats. We review studies that have allowed researchers to identify unique adaptation in bats that may allow them to harbor CoVs without severe disease. We speculate about future studies that are critical to identify how bats can harbor multiple strains of CoVs and factors that enable these viruses to “jump” from bats to other mammals

Possibly research into this phenomenon led to the outbreak.

The virus is an RNA virus, and is an enveloped, non-segmented positive-sense RNA viruses.

Coronavirus virions are spherical with diameters of approximately 125 nm as depicted in recent studies by cryo-electron tomography and cryo-electron microscopy [2,3]. The most prominent feature of coronaviruses is the club-shape spike projections emanating from the surface of the virion. These spikes are a defining feature of the virion and give them the appearance of a solar corona, prompting the name, coronaviruses. Within the envelope of the virion is the nucleocapsid. Coronaviruses have helically symmetrical nucleocapsids, which is uncommon among positive-sense RNA viruses, but far more common for negative-sense RNA viruses.

The receptor at cell level seems to be the ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; mCEACAM, murine carcinoembryonic antigen-related adhesion molecule.

Treatment with Remdesivir, a Nucleotide analog, has been effective in the first case report.

at a period consistent with the development of radiographic pneumonia in this patient, clinicians pursued compassionate use of an investigational antiviral therapy. Treatment with intravenous remdesivir (a novel nucleotide analogue prodrug in development10,11) was initiated on the evening of day 7, and no adverse events were observed in association with the infusion. Vancomycin was discontinued on the evening of day 7, and cefepime was discontinued on the following day, after serial negative procalcitonin levels and negative nasal PCR testing for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

On hospital day 8 (illness day 12), the patient’s clinical condition improved. Supplemental oxygen was discontinued, and his oxygen saturation values improved to 94 to 96% while he was breathing ambient air. The previous bilateral lower-lobe rales were no longer present.

Chloroquine has also been reported to be effective in treated the pneumonia.

Early data from clinical trials being performed in China has revealed that chloroquine phosphate could help treat the new coronavirus disease, Covid-19.

Chloroquine has so far showed no obvious serious adverse reactions in the more than 100 participants in the trials.

The previous post has a photo of riots in Germany that laps over the margin so I am adding this post to push the other down.