Other nations are watching an exponential increase in coronavirus infections. South Koreareported 505 new cases in a single day.
Japan has closed all schools nationwide for the month of March. In Iran, the Vice President has coronavirus, so do several Members of Parliament. Saudi Arabia has shut down pilgrimages to Mecca.
Here in the U.S., we have our first coronavirus case of unknown origin; it's not linked to travel. That's an ominous sign. We will certainly have many more. Currently, California is monitoring 8,400 people for signs of the virus.
The world is panicking over this, and there's a reason for that. In China, the virus has already killed more than 2,500 people -- but that's only if you trust China's numbers, which no sober person does. The actual number is likely much higher than that.
But that's just the beginning of what we don't know. We're not really sure how coronavirus spreads. We don't know what the mortality rate is over large populations, especially as health services become overstretched -- and they will.
At this state, we're not even sure where it came from. But there is something we do know and it's this: A lot of the people who should have been preparing to defend us from this have not been doing that.
It's our policymakers who cannot resist making everything ideological. Their main goal is not keeping you safe ... No, their real interest is getting richer and more than that, feeling good about themselves.
The CDC, which is America's main line of defense against infectious diseases seem to be caught off guard by it. The Center bungled the testing rollout for coronavirus. That means that still only a few hundred people in America have been screened for it.
So what was the CDC doing instead? Well, it was doing a lot of things. According to information from openthebooks.com, two years ago, CDC gave Georgia State University three-quarters of a million dollars to study social determinants of health in a diverse neighborhood in Georgia. What did they learn from that experiment? Nothing that helps us fight a rising pandemic.
Another $300,000.00 CDC grant funded to look at how an American Indian tribe in Washington State could improve health outcomes by eating traditional foods. Go to the CDC's website sometime. It includes an exhaustive section lecturing parents on how to properly administer timeouts. One suggestion from the CDC puts toys in timeout instead of children.
Who is in favor of this garbage? Nobody, really -- least of all the many good people at the CDC, and there certainly are. In fact, you've got to think the overwhelming majority of doctors and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are there because they passionately want to control and prevent diseases.
It's not their fault. It's our policymakers who cannot resist making everything ideological. Their main goal is not keeping you safe. If it was, they wouldn't be letting rapists out of prison and pushing weed on your kids. No, their real interest is getting richer and more than that, feeling good about themselves. Protecting America does not make them feel good about themselves, it makes them feel guilty.
Counting by race. If there was ever a time to drop that dumb and dangerous tick, it's now as a global epidemic bears down in our country. But they can't stop doing it, and they won't.
When President Trump imposed even mild travel restrictions on China last month, they attacked him as a bigot, as he pointed out Wednesday night.
President Trump: Had I not made a decision very early on not to take people from a certain area, we wouldn't be talking this way, we'd be talking about many more people would have been infected.
I took a lot of heat. I mean, some people called me racist because I made a decision so early and we had never done that as a country before, let alone early.
So it was a, you know, bold decision. It turned out to be a good decision.
CNN, meanwhile, attacked the administration's Coronavirus Task Force as "another example of Trump administration's lack of diversity." As if the color of the doctors matters -- it does not matter at all.
A month ago, CNN warned that the real threat of coronavirus was racism against Asians. During Wednesday night's presidential press conference, Wajahat Ali of The New York Times complained that the presentation was "only one woman on stage surrounded by nearly nine white men."
Again, counting by race. If there was ever a time to drop that dumb and dangerous tick, it's now as a global epidemic bears down in our country. But they can't stop doing it, and they won't. Because in the end, they care more about identity politics than they care about your life.
Presidential biographer Jon Meacham summed it up about as crisply as a man could when he explained that his "greatest anxiety" about coronavirus is that it might damage the global diversity agenda.
Jon Meacham: It seems to me that my greatest anxiety aside from the impact of the virus itself is we're living in an age of xenophobia.
And it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where blame is cast on some country or group of people if this becomes worse.
More afraid that blame might be cast than afraid that millions might die -- that's it right there. That's the attitude that has left us vulnerable to coronavirus.
Whatever weird guilt trip these people are on ought to be left to them and their psychiatrists to sort out -- and it will take a while. But under no circumstances should they be anywhere near power. People will get hurt if they are because they don't care.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Feb. 27, 2020.