Contact Tracing

There have been close to a million diagnosed cases on COVID-19 in the United States ... and four antibody studies suggest that the real number of those infected might be as much as 14 to 50 times this number.

So, are we going to be able to contact trace at least 14 million Americans and then to the contacts so mentioned (5+)? I kinda doubt it. Just the number of those performing this contact tracing would be in the hundreds of thousands. Hiring and training this small army would take months, if not years.

Is this not just another red herring thrown into this process by those who put their politics ahead of our economy?

Fudd Wuckehs

Wascally Democwat wabbits weally want and wave when Wepublicans don't wepulse Wussians. These wude Democwats awe weliving the Wed Scahe of the cold wah by accusing Twump of colluding with the Wuskies. What wot! Twump hawdly knows Putin ... and besides it was Hillawy who attempted the weset with the Wussians just weeks aftah they had invaded the Ukwaine. Was she any less of a wascally wabbit than this Twump wed hehwing?

Red Herring

A friend recently sent me an e-mail about immigration reform in which he said: "making the desirable [illegal immigrants] citizens after exacting a measure of penalties is the way to go".  This to me is unrealistic and a Democrat-inspired red herring … which now is unfortunately echoed by many naive Republicans … such as Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.  Let me expand on the points I have made in a previous blog post (see: Carrying Water in Sieve).

Imagine that you are an illegal immigrant ... you work under the table, you don't pay income taxes, you get many social services: Medicaid, EBT card, Section 8 housing, an Obamaphone, etc. ... maybe even SSI.  You have a driver’s license but don't have auto insurance.  You even can vote and sometimes do.  Now would you step forward and let the government know who and where you are, lose some or all of your social benefits, pay your back taxes and penalties, commit to paying income and Social Security taxes into the forever future, buy auto insurance, learn English, and stand in line for citizenship?

I don't think so.  One can be sure that most illegal immigrants understand economic self-interest and the sorry state of our immigration-law enforcement.

I predict that the only result of the currently-proposed immigration-reform legislation would be that less than 25% of those to whom this reform is directed will actually come forward under its terms.  And I also think that most of its more restrictive provisions will be ignored by the Obama administration (i.e., border security expansion will not be implemented) … and the number of illegal immigrants will dramatically increase from the admitted 11 million today.

A piece of advice … don’t try to feast on a red herring.