Category: Business

The taste these bureacraps got of nearly unlimited power overrode their mental ethical limitations -if they had any in the first place- and has let the inner dictator hiding just under the surface of their personality come out in all its glory. We should be thankful that this has occurred at at time when we have a president in office more business minded and attuned to the economy (the cure can not be worse then the disease) than political.

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

CDC Director Robert Redfield gave an interview to the Washington Post on the Wuhan virus panic and he made it clear, as have other so-called public health authorities that these people really have no intention of letting us getting back to our lives and they have willing allies in the national media.

Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.

“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”

“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said.

Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.

Seasonality, explained: What warm weather could mean for the novel coronavirus
President Trump has said warm weather could slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, but experts explain it’s too early to know if the virus is seasonal. (John Farrell, Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)
In a wide-ranging interview, Redfield said federal and state officials need to use the coming months to prepare for what lies ahead. As stay-at-home orders are lifted, officials need to stress the continued importance of social distancing, he said. They also need to massively scale up their ability to identify the infected through testing and find everyone they interact with through contact tracing. Doing so prevents new cases from becoming larger outbreaks.

Asked about protests against stay-at-home orders and calls on states to be “liberated” from restrictions, Redfield said: “It’s not helpful.” The president himself has tweeted encouragements of such protests, urging followers to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

First, let’s strip away some of the bullsh** the Washington Post is trying to peddle. Even the worst hit state (at least according to its own numbers which are highly suspect), New York, was never short of hospital beds, respirators, ICU beds, or staff. In fact, the major overflow facilities represented by the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, and the Javits Center have seen only a handful of patients. Across the country, the number of deaths is at record lows. Below is a data table from my post If Wuhan Virus Is So Bad, Why Are Deaths So Low?

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

This is the same data graphed

CDC Director Lays the Groundwork for Perpetual Lockdowns and Social Distancing and Economic Depression

NOTE: the last week’s data from this year drops precipitously because the data were only 58% complete when I downloaded the dataset. The x axis is not labeled because I’m too lazy to manually insert the labels, they are available on the table.

By itself, this is no big deal. There is no human intervention that is going to eradicate the Wuhan virus, it is part of the North American ecosystem forever. Of course, there is going to be a ‘second wave’ and a ‘third wave’ and a ‘fourth wave’ and an ‘nth wave.’ But this statement does not exist in a vacuum. Let’ go back a couple of days to an interview given by Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Center for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the key architects of the national response to the Wuhan virus (read Dr. Fauci Decides He Is Galactic Commander and Warns That Protests Will Delay Reopening the Country). In that post, I cover his statements to the effect than an early opening would create a larger ‘second wave.’ But there are two other equally important points. First, the tests being bought from all sources, like the 500,000 my own RINO governor purchased from South Korea, aren’t terribly reliable. As the entire strategy for opening the country is predicated on widespread testing, this seems important. The other point was that there is no evidence that having had and survived Wuhan (which is probably something that 99+% of the people with it do) gives you any immunity. That is entirely consistent with the finding of more than 30 mutations of Wuhan virus, the corollary to that being that there will be no vaccine for this virus.

So, no immunity and no vaccine. What does that mean? It means the people who foisted this disaster upon us are going to try to make us go through lockdown and ‘social distancing’ and all that other crap again in November and again in March. Forever. They have to push for that because if there is a ‘second wave,’ which there will be, and we don’t shutdown again, then they are going to have to answer some very tough questions as to why we did it this time. And they don’t have any answer to that……..

More and more people are getting the cluebat upside the head informing them about globalism and the fragility of the international supply chain.

Donald Trump: Coronavirus Exposed Dangers of Supply Chains Dependent on China

President Donald Trump said Saturday the biggest lesson of the coronavirus crisis was that the United States should not rely on China for their supply chains.

“We’ve learned a lot about supply chains,” Trump said. “We’ve learned that it’s nice to make things in the U.S., I’ve been saying that for a long time.”……

 

 

North Dakota Governor Issues Guidelines to Reopen State May 1: Statement

NEW YORK (Reuters) — North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum issued guidelines for reopening the state as soon as May 1 in a statement issued late Wednesday, according to a statement from his office.

Ohio Governor Announces Economic Reopening Starting May 1

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was one of the first governors to start closing down his state when the coronavirus hit, but now he’s offering one of the first economic reopenings in the nation.

 

Neumeyer: “This is the Perfect Storm! Governments Have Put Themselves Into a Corner”

Keith Neumeyer recently sat down for an interview with Crush the Street and made it clear that mints are being overwhelmed by the demand for silver. Neumeyer also opined on the government’s response to the pandemic saying “governments can’t keep businesses closed.”

And we’d agree with him. At some point, even if restrictions are never lifted, people will leave their homes to look for work. Humans cannot be locked up house arrest for much longer, and have already been asked to endure too much. Neumeyer said “already they [the government] are destroying small businesses…” and “governments can’t prevent everyone from going bankrupt.”

Unfortunately, the big corporations will be fine and come out even bigger as the small businesses go under and are no longer able to stay in business. This is crony corporatism at it’s finest. Neumeyer says the government has overreacted and caused massive damage that cannot be undone.

Albuquerque gun shop plans to defy governor’s order and reopen

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.- A gun shop in Albuquerque plans to reopen despite a Public Health Order from the governor that says non-essential businesses must close through April 30.

Louie Sanchez, owner of Calibers, said the order is an over-reach by the governor.

“So, we at Calibers have decided that we are going to open up with social distancing on our range,” Sanchez said. “And you know what, we’re going to take this fight back to her. We feel that unless, somehow, she got a magical power to take the Second Amendment out of our constitution, that we have the right to open up.”

Several groups, including the NRA, are suing the state over the Public Health Order-– claiming it’s a violation of the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit states, “Uncertain times are precisely when fundamental rights — like the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense — must be protected.”

Sanchez claims his business helps keep the community safe.

“We are indeed doing education courses, just one person, one trainer at six feet social distancing,” he said. “And we’re allowing for military and law enforcement to utilize our ranges.”

A spokesperson for the governor said Calibers’ gun range is only allowed to stay open for law enforcement– and by appointment only.

The governor’s office released the following statement in response to Calibers: [emphasis mine]

The state has taken and will continue to take an extremely broad view of what is considered non-essential to public health amid this pandemic. Gun stores are hardly the only entity having to adapt as we work to stem illnesses and prevent deaths. No one is happy about closing in-person business in our state – no one, including the governor. But it is inarguable that the only way we get through this pandemic with the fewest number of deaths that we can manage is to limit travel outside of the home to the greatest extent possible – and while we as an administration unequivocally support the constitutional right to purchase a firearm, we recognize that right does not correspond to a right to congregate in a store and infect neighbors and workers and public safety officers amid an unprecedented global pandemic.?“ Nora Meyers Sackett, spokesperson for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham

No, an incipient economic collapse will determine when.
If people don’t start getting back to work, and soon, the definition of ‘safely reopen’ won’t be what some doctors think it means.
The cure must not be worse than the bug.

Dr. Fauci: ‘Virus Is Going To Determine’ When U.S. Can Safely Reopen

OAN Newsroom- According to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the coronavirus task force, the virus is ultimately going to determine when the nation can safely reopen.

In an interview Tuesday, he suggested the capability to efficiently carry out contact tracing and get people who are infected out of circulation has to be in place when the country reopens.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director also said assuming all infection curves are going to be down in two weeks from now is “overly optimistic.” The health official emphasized controlling the spread of the virus will be key to restarting the economy in communities like New York City.

“I think how you reopen, if you want to use that word, the economy in those communities is going to depend a lot on the ability to contain what we know will happen,” he stated. “I’ll guarantee you, once you start pulling back, there will be infections…it’s how you deal with the infection that’s gonna count.”

Trump to Make Key Announcements on Reopening Economy This Week: Kudlow

President Donald Trump will make a number of “key, vital” announcements about reopening the U.S. economy in the next day or two, his top economic adviser said Tuesday.

“In the next few days, he will be making some very important announcements regarding those (social-distancing) guidelines,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told Fox Business Network.

“We want to get folks back to work,” he added. “We want to do it as quickly as possible. It has to be safe. It has to be driven by the data from our health specialists.”

Kudlow, when later fielding questions by reporters in the White House driveway, reiterated his conviction that within a few days, Trump would announce the guidelines on reopening the economy.

A reporter asked Kudlow what COVID-19 case metrics the administration would be looking at as decisive in making the determination to open the economy.

“It’ll be data-driven,” Kudlow said of the decision, adding that “the process is heavily dependent on data and we’ve always said that.”

 

Economic Illiterates Are Running Amok

One particularly terrifying consequence of the Chinese Bat Soup Virus that is not yet getting the attention it deserves is how this situation is making already stupid liberals even dumber, especially when they sound off about economics. In the wake of this pandemic, we’ve been subjected to a series of mind-numbing insights from the pinko blue check brain trust that reaffirms the clichéd but true observation that our elite is anything but elite. Leave it to our liberal betters to take a bad situation and seek to make it exponentially worse.

For example, Sally Kohn – oh, you know where this is going – offered an astonishing observation just as the Democrats were obstructing the vital relief our small businesses desperately need:

“I’m really tired of reading how business owners are “forced” to layoff workers. No one made them do that. They *chose* to do that. Not saying it isn’t a hard choice, during a hard time, but to say they were *forced* obscures their agency AND casts owners/CEOs as the victims.”

If that hasn’t plunged your IQ to new depths, consider ever-dumb Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), who tweeted out this brainstorm:

“We need to cancel rent until this crisis is over.”

Wow. Her economics advice is even worse than her relationship advice……….

Are you people stupid? What the unholy hell are you thinking? When there is no income, what do you expect a business owner to pay his employees with? IOUs? Monopoly money? Feelings?………

Because that whole thing about cash flow? No, it’s not a thing. It’s a myth! It’s just an illusion for those tuxedo n’ top hat-sporting fatcats who run the local pet stores and such use to fool the proles into believing that there’s not some bottomless well o’ cash these tycoons can draw upon forever.

Yeah, these bigwigs are claiming they are running out of money, but Sally sees through their web of deceit! But in a way she is right – it is kind of a choice. Of course, the choice is bankruptcy or layoffs. And either way, those employees are out of a job.

But the real tragedy would be if people might see “owners/CEOs as the victims” even though they are victims too.

You wonder if people can be this dumb and then you go on Twitter and yeah, people can absolutely be that dumb…………

Our economy is interconnected. You don’t pay rent, so your landlord doesn’t pay his loan and all those people who used to manage the property. All those guys he used to pay, his bank, the gardener, the power company. Now, they can’t pay anyone anymore. And pretty soon no one can pay anyone anymore. Congratulations! It’s a depression!

Now, we have focused on how these people are saying stupid things, and the underlying assumption is that they are stupid. But is that why they seem to be rooting for disaster? You’ve already seen progs looking on the bright side – at least this economic carnage will end up owning Drumpf!……..

Stupid? Evil? A bit of both? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that no matter how much these half-wits pipe up on Twitter, they can never, ever be allowed anything like real power lest we go full Venezuela.

 

Sometimes the clotheads at ATF manage to get their act together

Feds allow for drive-up gun sales to ease dealers’, buyers’ coronavirus worries

In a concession to the coronavirus, gun dealers can now offer their own version of take-out service.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, in new guidance to federally licensed firearm retailers, said Friday that dealers can provide drive-up or walk-up service to reduce health risks posed by the coronavirus.

The guidance was issued, the ATF said, in response industry questions about how business transactions could be restricted following the declaration of a national health emergency.

Licensees “may carry out the requested activities through a drive-up or walk-up window or doorway where the customer is on the licensee’s property, on the exterior of the brick-and-mortar structure at the address listed on the license,” the ATF said in a Friday bulletin.

Transactions may not be carried from “a nearby space” that is not part of the dealers’ property unless they are participating in qualified gun shows.

Larry Keane, general counsel for the firearms industry trade group National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Friday that the organization raised the issue with the ATF more than two weeks ago as dealers sought to navigate various government orders limiting business activity.

[Texas] GOV. GREG ABBOTT: Executive order to reopen businesses expected next week.

AUSTIN, Texas — At his third press conference of the week, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas businesses can expect an executive order from his office next week, with plans on how to begin reopening the state’s economy.

Abbott says he has been in constant contact with President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin to discuss how to proceed with beginning the process of allowing businesses to open up again.

“We have a desire to make sure it’s done in a way that it’s safe, understanding that if everyone were to rush the doors and go back into the job market overnight, we would see an outbreak of COVID-19 all over again. That’s exactly why I’m issuing the executive order next week establishing what the statewide standards would be in the coming days about what the approach is. These are standards we’ve been working in conjunction with the White House on,” Abbott said. “We will focus on protecting lives, while restoring livelihoods. We can and we must do this. We can do both.”

This announcement came hours after Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick said on a town hall call with the Texas GOP that he would like to start opening businesses back up by the first week of May.

Abbott says Texas will continue taking cues from the White House.

“We will be learning in more detail in the coming week what the approaches will be by the White House for the United States of America, both with regard to economic revitalization but also doing so in ways that maintain public health and safety,” Abbott said.

This affects Shootists Holiday ’20.

New Mexico gun groups sue governor over closed gun shops and shooting ranges

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, became the focus of a lawsuit Friday after her statewide emergency shutdown orders included firearms retailers, manufacturers, and ranges.

Lujan Grisham issued the shutdown orders for all nonessential businesses by March 24 and extended the closures through April 30. The list of essential businesses did not include firearms retailers, manufacturers, or ranges.

Four days after the first deadline, on March 28, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum supporting firearms and ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges as part of its “essential critical infrastructure workforce” advisory list during the COVID-19 virus response effort. However, the New Mexico order did not change.

The Mountain States Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit challenging the Lujan Grisham’s closure order for gun retailers, repair shops, and gun ranges on behalf of a group of plaintiffs that includes the National Rifle Association, Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and New Mexico Shooting Sports Association — along with various gun retailers and several individuals: Robert Aragon, a lifelong public servant, Zachary Fort, a concealed handgun license holder and NMSSA president, and Anthony Segura, a licensed firearms instructor.

New Mexico passed a law last year mandating that nearly every firearm sale or transfer be completed by a federally licensed dealer. The plaintiffs argue that the governor has shuttered access to all of those dealers by closing their physical locations that and the closure of brick-and-mortar sites is unconstitutional.

“The government has no duty to protect you, and coronavirus-related impacts to law enforcement could be significant, so times like now are precisely when people must be able to acquire self-defense tools to defend their lives and homes,” FPC President Brandon Combs said. “We are proud to participate in this important case to defend the people’s right to keep and bear arms against government abuses in New Mexico.”

The lawsuit was filed one day after the Virginia Citizens Defense League led a group of gun rights activists to file a temporary injunction against Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam for shutting down indoor gun ranges in Virginia as part of his statewide stay-at-home order.

 

Virus-Panicked Liberal Gun Buyers Are Getting Angry When They Discover Their Own Gun Control Laws.

I was chatting with a friend of mine recently and the topic of gun sales came up. My friend’s father owns a gun range near me and she said he’s seen a huge amount of liberals coming in to purchase weapons in recent weeks.

How does he know they’re liberals?

“They’re shocked to discover they can’t just walk out of the store with a gun.”

We’ve all heard about gun sales skyrocketing recently, but I hadn’t considered some of the tangential effects of the phenomenon until I spoke to my friend. Not only are many liberals suddenly learning to love their Second Amendment rights, many of them are finding out that the gun control narrative in this country — as repeated loudly and often by Hollywood and the mainstream media — is a complete lie.

So, I contacted my friend’s father to ask about what he is seeing personally at his own range these days. Gregg Bouslog runs On-Target Indoor Shooting Range in Laguna Niguel, CA. It’s where I taught my son to shoot and where I’ll teach my daughter once the chaos lifts. He says that while others are stuck at home while the economy grinds to a halt, he’s been working nonstop at the range as the applications for background checks and permits are stacking up daily. Bouslog claims he hasn’t done business like this since the days of Obama.

As the owner of an indoor shooting range and gun store here in California these past 14 years we have never experienced such a huge demand for firearms and ammunition – even higher than the famous Obama rush of 2012/2013.

While it’s nice to see some businesses flourishing in these scary times, Bouslog says that safety has been a huge issue at the range, as many first-time buyers seem to have gotten all of their notions about guns and gun safety from television.

We tried to look at just who the new firearm purchasers were and we believe that more than 60% of these individuals were first time buyers. I can’t describe the amount of fear in my staff as we had the buyers show proof of safe handling as part of the purchase process as required by law. You have never seen so many barrels pointed at sales staff and other customers. It was truly frightening. We had to keep stopping the process to give quick safety lessons. We are adding many more basic classes in the coming weeks and encouraged these buyers to please attend. We hope they do.

This isn’t hard to believe. As a gun-owner who formerly abhorred the Second Amendment, I can personally testify to the fact that most people who believe they are anti-gun are actually just anti-stupid. They just don’t realize they’re projecting their own stupidity onto law-abiding gun owners. They imagine that we gun owners are just a bunch of yahoos out here combing our mullets, waving our guns around to look sexy while we look for anything or anyone to shoot at any time. They have no respect for the power of a weapon and treat them accordingly, which is what Bouslog is witnessing firsthand at his range. We gun owners, of course, take safety, care and precautions quite seriously. These are ingrained in the culture of gun ownership.

While the safety of the employees at the range is a very serious matter, the most amusing and annoying part for the staff has been watching these first-time buyers discover just how stringent gun laws in California really are, including one of our newest laws requiring background checks before buying ammunition. Bouslog says it’s a bridge too far for the people who have been told their whole lives that it’s easier to get a gun than an abortion.

More than a dozen of these buyers (men and women) actually thought that since they filled out and signed everything, they could just walk out and go home with the firearm. Several actually said they saw how easy it was to buy a gun on TV and why did they have to fill out all these forms.

The majority of these first timers lost their minds when we went through the Ammo Law requirements. Most used language not normally heard, even in a gun range. We pointed out that since no one working here voted for these laws, then maybe they might know someone who did. And, maybe they should go back and talk to those people and tell them to re-think their position on firearms – we were trying to be nice.

Most were VERY vocal about why it takes 10 days minimum (sometimes longer if the DOJ is backed up) to take their property home with them. They ask why do I need to wait 10 days if I need the protection today or tomorrow? We pointed out again that no one working here voted in support of that law.

They really went crazy when we told them that for each firearm they had to do the same amount of paperwork and they could only purchase ONE handgun every 30 days. Again, we didn’t [vote] for that law.

We had people cuss at us and stomp out when we explained that secondary identification had to be part of the paperwork, as they felt insulted that what they had wasn’t good enough. We have a number of Yelp reviews calling us names and other things about how bad we are because of this whole new buyer rush

Again, I truly hope for the safety of those range employees in the face of so many uninformed and incurious first-time buyers. That being said, I find this whole situation fascinating. So many things in our economy and way of life are shifting monumentally these days. Could the gun control battle be one of them?

I discovered the idiocy of my anti-gun beliefs once I decided to learn about them firsthand. The Hollywood mystique immediately fell away and I was imbued with a new respect for weaponry and the people who dedicate their lives to weapons safety and serving and protecting the Second Amendment. You can’t know how bonkers our gun control laws are until you go try to buy one yourself.

There are a lot of people like me out there right now — first-timers and Second Amendment haters who feel like a hypocrite for wanting a gun for protection. Like I did, now they are navigating our convoluted gun laws for themselves and discovering that it is just not possible to walk into a store, buy a gun and leave with it in your pocket.

As these revelations begin to spread among our liberal brethren in the state of California, will we see a shift in gun laws and support for anti-Second Amendment legislators? Only time will tell, but it will surely be an interesting question to ponder in the coming months and years.

The 3 Big Questions Nobody Is Answering

This week, according to members of the federal government, and state and local governments, Americans have begun to flatten the curve in the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The excitement was muted—after all, trends can easily reverse—but real. Americans have abided by recommendations and orders. They’ve left their jobs to stay at home; they’ve practiced social distancing; in many places, they’ve donned masks.

The result: a reduction in expected hospitalization and death.

According to the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model most oft cited by members of the Trump administration, the expected need for hospital beds at peak outbreak was revised down by over 120,000, the number of ventilators by nearly 13,000, and the number of overall deaths by August by nearly 12,000.

Here’s the problem: We still don’t know the answers to the key questions that will allow the economy to reopen.

First, what is the true coronavirus fatality rate? This question is important because it determines whether certain areas ought to be open or closed, whether we ought to pursue—Sweden style—a more liberalized society that presumes wide spread, or whether we ought to lock down further.

We’ve seen case fatality rates—the number of deaths divided by the number of identified COVID-19 cases—but both the numerator and the denominator are likely wrong.

We don’t know how many people have actually died of the coronavirus. Some sources suggest the number has been overestimated, given that classification for cause of death, particularly among elderly patients, can be variable. Some sources suggest the number is dramatically underestimated, since many people are dying at home.

Even more importantly, we have no clue how many Americans actually have the coronavirus.

Some scientists suggest that the number of identified cases could be an order of magnitude lower than the number of people who have had the coronavirus and not been tested. That would mean that the fatality rate is actually far lower than suggested, even if the transmission rate is high.

Secondly, what are we expecting in terms of a second wave? The institute’s model simply cuts off in early August. It does not predict how many people will die in a second wave.

This is the most important problem because experts maintain that the virus is seasonal, which means we are likely to see more serious spreading in the fall. And that means we will be faced with either renewed lockdowns for large swaths of the population, with wide-scale testing and contact tracing, or with the realization that we will have to isolate those who are most vulnerable and let everyone else work.

Which raises the third question: What exactly can we do?

Are we capable of rolling out tens of millions of tests over the next few months—and compelling people to take tests regularly, since the virus is transmittable while carriers are asymptomatic? Can we create a contact tracing system for 330 million Americans—and are we willing to submit ourselves to one?

One thing is certain: Things cannot continue as they have been.

Americans are not going to stay home for months on end, and they certainly will not do so on the basis of ever-evolving models, especially as statistics roll in that look like the lower-end model estimates in terms of death and the upper-end estimates in terms of economic damage.

We need transparency and honesty from our scientific experts—we need to know what they know, what they don’t, and when they hope to know what they don’t.

We’re grown-ups, and we’re willing to follow their advice. But they need to start answering serious questions, or they will fall prey to the same lack of institutional faith to which all other American institutions seem deeply prone.

U.S. economy should be able to reopen on ‘rolling basis’ – White House adviser Kudlow

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Thursday said the U.S. economy should be able to reopen “on a rolling basis” over the next month or two.

“The next month or two, we should be able to restart at least on a rolling basis,” Kudlow said in an interview on Fox Business News. “Our intent here was, is to try to relieve people of the enormous difficult hardships they are suffering through no fault of their own.” (Reporting by Jonathan Landay Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

We need that reopening plan PDQ

US weekly jobless claims jump by 6.6 million, bringing three-week total to more than 16 million.

Jobless rolls continued to swell due to the coronavirus shutdown, with 6.6 million Americans filing first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

That brings the total claims over the past three weeks to more than 16 million. If you compare those claims to the 151 million people on payrolls in the last monthly employment report, that means the U.S. has lost 10% of the workforce in three weeks.

Feds loosen virus rules to let essential workers return

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a first, small step toward reopening the country, the Trump administration issued new guidelines Wednesday to make it easier for essential workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 to get back to work if they do not have symptoms of the coronavirus.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced at the White House that essential employees, such as health care and food supply workers, who have been within 6 feet of a confirmed or suspected case of the virus can return to work under certain circumstances if they are not experiencing symptoms.

The new guidelines are being issued as the nation mourns more than 14,000 deaths from the virus and grapples with a devastated economy and medical crises from coast to coast. Health experts continue to caution Americans to practice social distancing and to avoid returning to their normal activities. At the same time, though, they are planning for a time when the most serious threat from COVID-19 will be in the country’s rear-view mirror…….

Under the new guidelines for essential workers, the CDC recommends that exposed employees take their temperatures before their shifts, wear face masks and practice social distancing at work. They also are advised to stay home if they are ill, not share headsets or other objects used near the face and refrain from congregating in crowded break rooms.

Employers are asked to take exposed workers’ temperatures and assess symptoms before allowing them to return to work, aggressively clean work surfaces, send workers home if they get sick and increase air exchange in workplaces.

Fauci said he hoped the pandemic would prompt the U.S. to look at long-term investments in public health, specifically at the state and local level. Preparedness that was not in place in January needs to be in place if or when COVID-19 or another virus threatens the country.

“We have a habit of whenever we get over a challenge, we say, ‘OK, let’s move on to the current problem,’” he said. “We should never, ever be in a position of getting hit like this and have to scramble to respond again. This is historic.”

Even the new guidelines will not be a foolproof guard against spreading infection.

Recent studies have suggested that somewhere around 10% of new infections might be sparked by contact with individuals who are infected but do not yet exhibit symptoms. Scientists say it’s also possible that some people who develop symptoms and then recover from the virus remain contagious, or that some who are infected and contagious may never develop symptoms.

‘Prepping’ doesn’t mean hoarding. It means being proactive enough to do what you can so you’ll have almost all you need on hand.

Supply Chain Disruptions in the Firearms Industry.

There’s a wonderful video of economist Milton Friedman (no relation) discussing how no single person makes a pencil. His point was to show that demand for a product causes people all over the world to perform seemingly unrelated tasks that result in a seemingly simple and inexpensive product being made. The same is true of pretty much everything relating to firearms, optics, accessories and most every product you use.

Between private conversations with firearm, ammunition and optic manufacturers over the past two weeks, along with public information disseminated by major gunmakers, I am fairly certain a major disruption in the supply chain for those products and likely many more is coming, and coming soon.

There is no gun manufacturer that makes every single part or raw material that goes into their finished products. While I can’t say for certain, I’d wager this is true of almost every consumer good on the planet. For example, no gun company makes the steel they use to make barrels or the raw polymer used to injection mold frames—they purchase those materials from third parties.

Moreover, many manufacturers use OEM sourcing to provide significant parts of their finished products, and the overwhelming majority buy at least some component parts like springs from outside sources. Therefore, while firearm manufacturing may be declared “essential” in many states currently under stay-at-home orders to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, unless every part of the supply chain is deemed essential, at some point the supply of parts will run dry and it will be impossible to finish assembly of the final product.

The same is true of ammunition, optics, holsters, slings—literally everything you might need for your guns. While ammunition manufacturing may be allowed to continue because it is essential for personal and national security, is the recycling of lead from used car batteries considered essential in every state? What about the mining and refining of copper or the production of cardboard needed for boxing the finished ammo? That’s just scratching the surface of ammo manufacturing.

Holster makers, whether they use leather, nylon, Kydex (a polymer) or some combination thereof, face similar obstacles. I’m not aware of a holster maker that operates its own cattle ranch, slaughterhouse and tannery, for example.

We have already seen notices from Kimber and Remington that, owing to their businesses being declared non-essential in New York, their factories in Alabama lack certain parts to continue manufacturing. Even if New York comes to its senses and declares the respective factories in Yonkers and Ilion essential, some products will almost certainly remain impossible to complete because a spring maker in Florida or a chemical plant in New Jersey that makes coolant required to run CNC machines might be considered non-essential in those states.

Kimber’s President and COO, Greg Grogan, explained the situation quite clearly: “Just as many U.S. manufacturers are currently experiencing, Kimber’s external supply chain is undergoing challenges. Most of our suppliers are still operational but reduced employee attendance and delays in their own supply chains are causing disruptions. Kimber is substantially vertically integrated; therefore, we are much more reliant on our own factories for part fabrication rather than our external supply chain. However, having 98 percent of the components required to assemble and ship a firearm doesn’t get it done. That’s the reality at this unprecedented time.”

Remington has offered to retool its Ilion, NY, facility to make ventilators, which is a great example of gun makers again helping to keep people safe. Of course, that also means the famed factory won’t be turning out guns or gun parts.

I spoke with several other manufacturers about supply-chain concerns. Heckler & Koch USA told me that it is currently running its Columbus, GA, plant, but with fewer staff than normal to maintain social distancing requirements, which, according to Marketing Director Bill Dermody, “doesn’t maximize production capacity.”

The company is also closely monitoring developments in Germany, where its parent company is located and where many of the parts that go into its guns are made; disruptions in manufacturing or supply chains in Europe could affect production in the U.S.

Zev Technologies is also still operating and churning out significant numbers of guns, but it has had to constantly monitor and, in some cases, modify its supply chain owing to circumstances affecting its suppliers. According to the company’s VP of Marketing and Business Development, Dave Roberts, “Something that used to take one week to make is now taking two weeks, but everything is still being made.”

Hornady planned for ammunition sales to increase in 2020, according to Senior Communications Manager Neal Emery. “Overall, we were fortunate to recognize things early and get six months of important materials and products while we could. That’s everything from cardboard to printer ink to raw materials,” he said. “Demand spiked really fast this time. Faster than previous increases in demand over the recent years. We’ve done what we can to produce as much as possible while dealing with the hurdles the virus has placed in front of us.”

The big concern right now is that when any part of the supply chain is closed because of illness or attempts to curtail the spread of COVID-19, the downstream effects could be significant. When any single part of the supply chain shuts down, the disruption that causes will eventually result in the inability to build even those products deemed essential by the government.

Hopefully, most gun, ammunition and accessory manufacturers had enough raw materials and parts on hand to last them through however long it takes to resolve this crisis, minimizing any disruptions. Even more, let us hope the crisis passes as quickly as possible so lives can be saved, the country and the planet can get back to work and the disruptions to everyone’s world will cease.

I said earlier that the 2nd & 3rd order effects of this bug could end up being more serious than the bug itself. The disruption in the ‘Supply Chain’-Logistics– the business of moving things to where they need to be, can and is causing things like this to happen.

Wisconsin farmers forced to dump milk as coronavirus slams a fragile dairy economy.

About 7 o’clock Tuesday night, Golden E Dairy got the call that any dairy farmer would dread. They were being asked to dump 25,000 gallons of fresh milk a day because there was no place for it to go as the marketplace for dairy products has been gutted by the closure of restaurants, schools, hotels and food-service businesses.

An hour later, the family-run farm near West Bend opened the spigot and started flushing its milk into a wastewater lagoon — 220,000 pounds a day through next Monday.

It was surreal, said Ryan Elbe, whose parents, Chris and Tracey Elbe, started the farm in 1991 with about 80 cows and grew it into an operation that today milks 2,400.

“We thought this would never happen,” Elbe said. “Everybody’s rushing to the grocery store to get food, and we have food that’s literally being dumped down the drain.”

But the Wisconsin dairy industry has been dealt a harsh blow from the economy that’s been slammed by coronavirus shutdowns. About one-third of the state’s dairy products, mostly cheese, are sold in the food-service trade.

Dairy farmers, whose product is highly perishable, are seeing processing plants close or curb production, forcing them to flush their milk down the drain if there’s no other buyer.

“I think that a lot of milk will all of a sudden be dumped. Everyone across the industry is feeling distressed now,” said Julie Sweney, spokeswoman for FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in Madison.

“Over the last several hours I have heard this is unfolding. There is definitely a strain on markets now. The whole consumption rate for milk is so much different than it was before COVID-19,” Sweney said.

“We need to figure this out now, not in the next couple of weeks,” Elbe said.

“I know many industries are experiencing hardship now. This is just the story of ours,” he added.

Normally, his family’s milk goes to a Kemp’s processing plant owned by Dairy Farmers of America. But that plant is full to the brim, as are many others across Wisconsin.

Some of the larger DFA members were asked to dump their milk this week because, as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, it could be monitored in their regulated wastewater lagoons.

“You can’t just dump milk in a field,” Elbe said.

There’s simply too much of it now, according to DFA based in Kansas City.

“This, in combination with the perishable nature of our product, has resulted in a need to dispose of raw milk on farms in some circumstances,” Kristen Coady, a DFA vice president, said in a statement provided to the Journal Sentinel.

These new owners aren’t buying for any other reason than the cluebat of ‘You are your own First Responder’ hit them upside the head.

Pawnshop owner sees increase in first-time gun buyers amidst coronavirus pandemic

While St. Clair County Sheriff Department numbers do not indicate an abnormal increase in individual gun sales, one pawnshop owner said he is seeing an increase in first-time gun buyers in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the first three months of 2019, the St. Clair County Sheriff Department recorded 1,714 individual guns purchased in St. Clair County, compared to 1,630 guns in the first three months of 2020. The sheriff department’s numbers do not reflect sales reported to city police departments outside the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

About 616 guns were purchased in March, compared to 447 in February. These numbers aren’t too far off from 2019, when 637 and 434 guns were purchased, respectively.

This content is being provided for free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. Please support local journalism by subscribing to the Times Herald at thetimesherald.com/subscribe.

Tim Daniels, owner of the Hock Shop in downtown Port Huron, said it’s normal to see an increase in sales around this time of the year because people are receiving their tax refunds, and many use them to buy big-ticket items like a gun.

However, for about the past six weeks, the increase in sales is larger than his gun/pawn shop would normally see, he said.

“We had this push and this concern for people defending themselves,” Daniels said.

He said he has recently seen a lot of first-time buyers. While he has noticed an increase in all gun sales, Daniels said buyers are especially interested in firearms that are simple to operate and are designed for self-defense.

“We’re seeing a step up (in sales) in entry-level firearms,” Daniels said, “firearms that are more basic.”……..

A spokesman from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Office said gun shops are not considered critical infrastructure under Whitmer’s stay at home order, which is in effect until April 13. However, pawnshops are allowed to operate under the order because they are considered financial institutions……..

Poll: 1 in 20 Households Bought A Gun In Response To COVID-19

A Newsy/Ipsos survey reveals how some Americans reacted to COVID-19 and the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic.

One in 20 households say they’ve bought a gun in response to the coronavirus outbreak. That’s according to an exclusive Newsy/Ipsos survey showing that many Americans have reacted to COVID-19 and the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic by buying or thinking about buying guns.

“I got a Glock. That seemed like a pretty reliable … very reputable weapon.”

Justin Orel is a web developer and former Marine living with his wife and newborn in Kansas City, Missouri.

“I thought about purchasing a firearm for a while. Never really was sure about it. Also I’m not like, I don’t know, a gun nut, or like, I don’t know, also usually more on the side of like heavier gun controls probably not a terrible thing like better background checks and things like that. … We were just like, well, maybe now is the time just in case, like, something crazy happens or people start losing their minds … Maybe better to have one and not need it than need it and not have it.”

Justin isn’t alone in that thinking. Newsy’s sister stations have collected a range of voices from across the country who have said it’s fear of the unknown during this pandemic that has driven them to purchase firearms.

“People saying that there’s gonna be food shortages. Breaking ins in houses. … It’s just really concerning.”

“I have a wife I love. I have four daughters I love — and they’re beautiful. So, it only makes sense to have some protection.”

“You don’t know what’s going to happen. There have been talks of shutdowns, lockdowns, statewide, nationwide.”

Additionally, our Newsy/IPSOS survey found that a greater number of respondents — one in 10 — have considered purchasing a firearm because of the coronavirus.

This information comes as gun and ammunition sales surged while coronavirus cases continue to grow. Ammo.com, an online ammunition retailer, reported a 777% increase in revenue between Feb. 23 and March 27. And according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association, the FBI saw a 300% increase in background checks on March 16th compared to the same day last year.