Mark Alexander · Mar. 2, 2020

Starting the week off on the wrong foot, after the first reported U.S. coronavirus deaths, The Washington Times’s editorial page editor, Ethan Epstein, published a breathless hyperbolic warning about the COVID-19 flu variant — a case study of Beltway media groupthink that promotes pandemic panic.

According to Epstein, “Americans have done so much screaming at each other to avoid panic over the novel coronavirus that they’ve arguably grown complacent.” (Gell that to the equities markets.) He then goes on to affirm the actions being taken in other countries: “China … has locked down tens of millions of people and virtually shut down its economy, the world’s second-largest. Japan has closed schools for a month. In France…the Louvre was closed. Switzerland…won’t allow gatherings that draw more than 1,000 people. … Two decades after 9/11, many Americans once again seem to think ‘it can’t happen here.’ But as we’ve learned more than once, it can.”

So, let’s shut the country down?

Will COVID-19 be the next catastrophic attack on America, “The BIG One”? As I have noted previously, it might result in another bad year for U.S. influenza deaths, but nobody can actually project that right now. What is certain, however, is that the “pandemic fear and panic” are great political fodder for Democrats hoping to crash the U.S. economy … and thus President Donald Trump’s reelection.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and their Leftmedia publicists continue to foment fear, it is having the desired dire consequences for the economy. By undermining consumer and business confidence, and thus the equities markets, Democrats are playing fast and loose with the job stability of all working Americans and their families. Pelosi said, “The market drop is disturbing,” but I can assure you that she and her Democrat ilk are high-fiving each other in private, knowing that what is bad for American workers is bad for Trump’s reelection prospects.

The immediate effect of the disgraceful Pelosi/Schumer fear and panic tag team is that the net worth and retirement plans of all middle-income families is taking a big hit, and so is breadwinner job stability.

To put the current viral flu threat into perspective, according to the latest 2020 CDC influenza report, in the U.S. the flu season we are now in has already resulted in 29 MILLION diagnosed cases, 280 THOUSAND hospitalizations, and more than 16 THOUSAND deaths. And this is a good year — in one year this past decade there were 63 THOUSAND flu deaths in the U.S.

So, why haven’t Pelosi, Schumer, and Democrats across the country called press conferences to draw attention to each of the other 29 million cases and 16 thousand deaths — and the MSM dutifully reported each one? Because those deaths have no value as 2020 political fodder.

Democrats are proficient at never letting “a good crisis … go to waste,” as they demonstrated back in 2014 with the Ebola pandemic threat. At that time I wrote, “Democrats thrive on manufactured crises, and the current endless loop of hyperbolic rhetoric about the ‘Ebola pandemic’ from all corners of the 24-hour news recyclers” was a good example. Of course, Barack Obama was president then, so blaming him was not part of their politicization of the epidemic.

But that was then. It’s a presidential election year and with nothing else to defeat Donald Trump, betting on a flu pandemic and blaming Trump for it seems like an easy sell.