Tea at Trianon: A Surge in Virus Cases

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, June 27, 2020

A Surge in Virus Cases

At the border. From Daniel Horowitz at The Conservative Review:

We were told that the governmental interest in ensuring that hospitals aren’t overrun with too many COVID-19 patients was so strong that it superseded the Bill of Rights. All businesses had to be shut, masks must be worn, church services had to be canceled. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in upholding California’s ban on church services, “When those officials ‘undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ their latitude ‘must be especially broad.’”

The very first action one would expect a government to undertake to stem the tide of a virus is to not purposely admit people sick with acute cases of the virus from countries with substandard health care. Cross-border travel is not a fundamental right like free movement within the country and from state to state or the right to earn a living, assemble, and worship. Plus, cross-border travel is the ultimate super-spreader.

Amazingly, at a time when politicians and media figures are pushing more lockdowns because of a rise in cases in some states, they fail to inform you that the biggest factor driving the most serious rise is coming from Mexico and is taking place in our southwest border counties. Thus, they are using the malfeasance of our government, which did not fully lock down the border, as a pretext to lock us all down within our own states.

As I’ve noted in recent days, most of the spike in cases is coming from the discovery of more cases through mass testing, antibody tests, multiple positives for one individual, reporting anomalies, universal testing of non-COVID-19 hospital patients and a new way of reporting “probable” cases. This is why, across the country, we are still seeing a decline in ICU admissions and fatalities. Most of the new cases are among younger and healthier people who are largely asymptomatic. However, there is one place where we have been seeing a spike in serious cases and even deaths since May: the border counties of California, Arizona, and Texas. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: The increased exposure of young people to one another in public places is certainly where the increase in cases centers. However, the deaths have not increased because contracting this virus is not a death warrant in most age groups. But whatever numbers it takes to re-enforce the lockdown and the continued failure of American businesses is acceptable in many quarters. I do not want to intimate that this is political, but is it? If it is related to focusing on President Trump's 'failure' in containing the spread of the virus, and placing the blame on him for everything else that goes wrong in this Country, than one has to wonder.; June 27, 2020 at 12:10:00 PM EDT