From the right: Why We’re Not Making Masks
Despite “a dangerous shortage of special protective masks” amid the pandemic, a group “trying to make such masks in the United States” has “run up against serious regulatory barriers,” reports The Washington Free Beacon’s Charles Fain Lehman. The Open PPE Project “cannot even begin” to produce N95 masks because “federal inspectors remain under-resourced and stuck at home under a federal ban on nonessential travel.” Worse, the Centers for Disease Control told project workers that approval could take 1 ¹/₂ to three months. The best answer: “granting high-quality university laboratories temporary authority to conduct quality testing” — a change, Open PPE Project engineer Matt Parlmer argues, the White House should OK quickly.
From the left: WHO’s Deadly Politics
A “surreal exchange” between a reporter and a World Health Organization official “lasted all of one minute. But for Taiwanese people, it summed up a lifetime of gaslighting,” notes Wilfred Chan at The Nation. Asked if WHO would let Taiwan rejoin, Bruce “Aylward’s face twitched. He blinked for several seconds,” then claimed he couldn’t hear the question — and ended the call. “When geopolitics dictate health policy,” Chan writes, “the most serious effects are rarely just economic.” The world is “paying the price” for WHO cutting off the island, at China’s behest, “from its global information networks.” WHO ignored “early warnings from Taiwanese officials” who visited Wuhan and learned (before Beijing admitted it) that the coronavirus could be transmitted between humans. Taiwan, Italy and America confirmed their first cases within days of each other. But only “Taiwan has so far avoided mass deaths.” WHO’s “absurdity” has “consequences that should be measured in human lives.”
Libertarian: A Myth About Our Drug Supply
At Reason, Eric Boehm debunks the much-cited “shocking statistic” that 80 percent of America’s drug supply comes from China. In reality, that figure traces to a federal report based on FDA data that says only: “Nearly 40 percent of finished drugs and approximately 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) are manufactured in registered establishments in more than 150 countries.” (The chart at left shows the true distribution.) Note, too, that the FDA “only tracks manufacturing facilities — not the supply chains of specific drugs.” Truth is, “no one can say with any certainty what percentage of America’s drugs come from which foreign countries.”
Urban desk: Honor the Heroes, Not the Hustlers
New Yorkers recently gave “a public show of support” for “those on the front line” against the pandemic,” including police — but, Robert L. Woodson Sr. observes at The Hill, it’s “too bad” that it took the pandemic to remind us of how valuable cops are. Just a few months ago, after all, some of those now cheering police “sat back” silently during the New York City water attacks, while “the race grievance industry,” including groups like Black Lives Matter, have shown “widespread disrespect” for law enforcement for years. Post-pandemic, he urges, let’s defend cops against “the race hustlers and guardians of grievance, just as they came to our aid when we faced death and destruction.”
Culture desk: RIP, #MeToo
Alyssa Milano famously protested against Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court hearings, demanding we “believe survivors.” But on Sunday, scoffs The Spectator USA’s Stephen L. Miller, she spoke about “sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden” and said she’d “remain loyal to her endorsement of Biden,” claiming a “belief in due process (all of a sudden),” though she’d previously “demanded ‘Zero Tolerance’ ” for men accused of sexual assault. “The rules of holding powerful men accountable to alleged victims no longer apply when it’s Her Guy,” snarks Miller. By ditching her principles, she’s produced “her movement’s death warrant.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
