Covid-19 and the "End" of Capitalism?

The financial indices are plummeting largely because Covid-19 may prove very disruptive. But they're also diving because the markets don't trust Donald Trump to provide the truth or to execize effective leadership.

It's a shitshow.

For example, yesterday Trump tells everybody things are just fine, and he doubles down today. But the World Health Organization issues the alert nothing is particularly fine. Covid-19 is a "very high" risk. Markets had begun to moderate after a scary morning until the WHO provided the truth that Trump doesn't want out.

The Trump administration constantly reminds that unfettered capitalism may not be an absolute good. For one thing, they clearly don't believe in unfettered capitalism with the way they manipulate markets and trade. But this week Health Secretary Alex Azar also refused to promise an affordable coronavirus vaccine.

We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can't control that price, because we need the private sector to invest.. Price controls won't get us there.

Oh. So with free markets and Covid-19, we're pretty much fucked, is that it?

Then there's yesterday's interchange between CNN Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta and Trump. Trump thoroughly demonstrated that he has no grasp of the public health situation and no desire to understand it. After all, it's inconvenient. First he gets things badly wrong. Then, confronted with legitimate medical information, Trump doubles down on his error. Covid-19 is twenty times more deadly than the flu: Trump says the flu is more dangerous. You can watch it as it happened.

So does it make you feel better that Mike Pence is now controlling the messaging from the CDC and other public health services? From the New York Times, NIH infectious disease expert Tony Fauci says he hasn't been "muzzled" but that he can't exactly speak freely either:

Today White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney goes to CPAC and suggests coronavirus is a hoax from media hoping the epidemic will "bring down the president." Here's the full Mulvaney quote:

The press was covering their hoax of the day because they thought it would bring down the president. The reason you’re seeing so much attention to [the coronavirus] today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. That’s what this is all about.”

In this context Secretary of State Pompeo won't even refute the claim that the coronavirus is a hoax.

It's all okay, though. At CPAC today we also saw the first proclamation of "Seven Mountains" dominionism in a major public forum, along with the notion that all our universities are churning out Marxists. For more on that, check out the incisive John Fea.