In other news, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says we're looking at an "extended period" of weak economic growth (read: a longer recession) and Congress should spend whatever is necessary and worry about deficits later.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson's government is refusing to release a detailed record of care home deaths to Reuters following an examination of data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) that showed at least 20,000 deaths in long term care facilities.
Finally, it looks like the Trump regime may actually be getting closer to imposing sanctions of some description on Chinese-owned companies in "retaliation" for the pandemic.
Trump tweeted his usual bollocks this morning, but members of his regime are sending signals that something may be brewing.
On Monday, Trump and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia directed the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board to halt plans to invest in Chinese companies. In a letter, Scalia wrote that the current plan to invest federal savings would place “billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
An accompanying letter from Trump administration officials warned that Chinese companies could face sanctions related to what the White House claimed were “culpable actions of the Chinese government with respect to the global spread of the [coronavirus]”.
On Wednesday morning, the FRTIB announced it would delay its plan to invest what would have amounted to about $4.5 billion in Chinese equities.
To say that Chinese companies in general -- not just technology companies like Huawei -- pose a threat to American national security seems like an escalation, but is it? After all, Trump has cited national security to impose Section 232 tariffs on things that couldn't possibly hurt anyone, like baby cribs and inflatable kiddie pools.
It remains to be seen what they'll do next, but whatever they do probably won't end well even if all they do is issue more threats.
Needless to say, we have no moral grounds or evidence to point a finger directly at the Chinese government and say they caused a pandemic. That evidence may or may not exist some day, but we don't have any right now.