I think there is more than spying or hacking that caused the Trump administration to close down the Chinese consulate in Houston last week.  That consulate has been around for decades and I am sure they have been doing spy work for just about as long.  So now they are accused of hacking into research facilities.  It seems to me they can do that from anywhere in the world.  I think Trump said hackers don't have to be from the Russian government, they can be doing it from the basement.  So why can't the Chinese do the hacking from the basement of their family homes?

I think Trump is trying to do anything to deflect his handling of the pandemic, economy and racial tension.  Calling it the China virus, defending confederate flags, sending federal troops into cities are all his tactics to try to reverse the poll numbers.  If he only works as hard at solving real problems as he does of dividing people and making people angry, the country would be better off.

Of course, China is going to retaliate every time Trump does something.  They closed the American consulate in Chengdu.  Is this going to be the end of confrontation?  Not even close.  As the election gets closer and Trump gets more desperate, he may try to provoke China into greater confrontations.  I am afraid he is may try to provoke military actions, probably in the South China Sea,  If China responds, which it will have to, it will be extremely dangerous.  Trump may do this because when there is military conflict, the nation tends to rally behind its leader.  He may try this in a desperate attempt to steal the election.

I didn't wait for the Trump conference because I knew there wasn't going to be anything that would be helpful in fighting the pandemic.  He said that wearing masks was the right and patriotic thing to do.  It would be much more helpful if he said that four months ago.  I do wonder what those non journalists at Fox will be saying about the pandemic now.  Is it still a hoax to defeat Trump, according to them?  Now that their incompetent leader has admitted he was wrong, at least while  reading from a script,  will these fake journalists continue to mislead the American people?

On the subject of testing the president a lot, I don't have problems with it.  The president certainly should be tested more than athletes.  Even if everyone at the White House is tested a lot, it is still lot less than all the professional and college athletes who are being tested.  But how can you justify not providing federal funds to get more testing, as the administration is suggesting, if you believe it is important that YOU and others around you need the tests?

You must have missed my comment from the last blog where I talked about federal agents attacking and arresting protesters in Oregon.  I talked about hiding data and using secret police were the exact same thins that the U.S. accuses of China all the time.  So is Trump taking us into a dictatorship?  The letter I found from Xi to Trump is not so fake after all.

Did you see the navy guy who was beat up by federal agent in Portland?  They swung batons at him and broke his arm.  He was just standing there and asking them who they were and why they were there.  I thought he must be a young guy.  It turned out he is at least in his 50s and was a navy veteran.  He is one tough dude.  After they beat him with the baton, he just stood there!  I would be on the ground, crying in pain.  He is very brave.  But if he was black, they probably would have shot him!

I agree that it will get ugly if troops are sent into Chicago and other cities like Detroit.  As I said above, the protesters will be more black in those cities and the agents may be more likely to shoot as opposed to using batons.  It maybe worse than what happened in the south, Watts and Detroit in the 1960s.

Soccer has started, NBA players are in Orlando practicing, MLB is getting ready to start in a couple of days.  So it seems that things are going well with the restart of professional sports.  The thing is, all these players are getting tests for COVID-19 frequently, sometimes everyday.  The results are coming back quickly as well, certainly no more than one day.

Meanwhile, here in California and elsewhere, people who are trying to get tested for COVID-19 have to be in line for hours.  Then it may take a week or more for the results to come in.   Isn't there something wrong with our society where healthy, young millionaires are treated so much better than elderly folks or people with health issues so that billion dollar industries can keep going?

Florida, which is now the epicenter of this country, is hosting all of the basketball and soccer teams.  California has five teams in MLB, which has no bubble.  The players will be going home to their family after games and after traveling to other cities.  I just don't see how this is reasonable.  Toronto, which along with Edmonton, is hosting the NHL.  But Toronto refuses to let the Blue Jays play in Toronto.  Does that make much sense even though the NHL is a bubble so there is less traveling?

Back to the guy who is defecting blame for the pandemic, Trump.  Trump bragged about acing a cognitive test.  He was called out by Chris Wallace on Fox.  I have administered such a test to patients in the past.  It is to rule out dementia, not an intelligence test.  So unless you have dementia, you should ace the test.  Trump kept telling Wallace the test is very hard.  When Wallace showed one of the question of identifying an elephant, Trump said the last few questions were difficult.  No they are not.  The questions test things like the date, time and place.  I think most third graders would ace this test.  The fact that Trump keeps saying this is a hard test shows his dishonesty and narcissism.

Chris Wallace is not the liberal that his father was.  But I am surprise how hard he went after Trump, debunking his lies such as Biden signed to defund the police and the U.S. has the lowest mortality rate due to COVID-19.  At least a few Republicans are tired of all the BS that Trump is putting out there. 

One day after the Trump administration told the country's hospitals to report COVID-19 data to the HHS instead of the CDC, some data are not available already.  The missing data so far are hospital and ICU occupancy from the virus, healthcare worker staffing and PPE status.

When the announcement came out about the change of reporting, I thought to myself that it looks suspicious.  Since the HHS is under the control of the administration, can they falsify the data to make things look better?  I would think that they can't possibly get away with that. could they?  Well, the three types of data missing would all be alarming.  Occupancy in ICUs are rising, healthcare workers in many states are stretched thin, and PPE problems were never addressed adequately.  So all these would be embarrassing to Trump.  But by not reporting these, it just highlights the problems.

Given that the press already noticed this, I am sure these three data will be reported soon.   But will something more sinister like under reporting of cases and deaths be next? 

So now ICE is saying that foreign students taking classes at colleges which will be online instead of in person, will be deported.  That is a grossly unfair rule.  The students have no control over a school's decision to shut down physical classes.  The students are already paying way more tuition than Americans and they will not be getting the full education they envisioned when they came to America.  Now they will not even be allowed to stay.  Some of them have already paid deposits for housing already.  

This whole thing is another way for Trump to appeal to his base of xenophobic Americans.  It is not only unfair but is detrimental to the country.  As mentioned the foreign students paying a much higher tuition.  Add to the housing, food and other expenses, they are a big contributor to the U.S. economy.  

The argument that the students are learning and taking technology from the U.S. and bringing it back home is absurd.  There are benefits to the students and their countries but many of them stay and make a big difference in America.  In fact, most STEM graduate programs in the U.S. will not function well without foreign students.  Silicon Valley would be in trouble without foreigners who stayed here.  There is a history of immigrants helping America.  We may not have been the first the get the atomic bomb without immigrants.

So as usual, Trump is blaming immigrants and foreigners for the country's ills.  He is not the first and will not be last.  But he has blame Mexicans for murders and drug problems in this country.  He is blaming China for his incompetence in his handling of the pandemic.

Of course, Trump doesn't just blame foreigners.   He also blames Dr. Fauci for the handling of the pandemic.  Really?  This from the guy who calls this thing a hoax and would suddenly disappear.  The same guy who thinks that he can detergents to get rid of the virus.  It is beyond crazy.

In the early 1960s, China was in dire poverty.  People were dying from the Great Famine.  There were not enough doctors or hospitals to take care of the sick.  The life expectancy was only 35 years.  Infant mortality was 200 per 1,000.  There was no money to throw at the medical problems.  China came up with an inexpensive stop gap solution.  It trained tens thousands of so called barefoot doctors and sent them out to the rural areas.  

These medical practitioners were called barefoot doctors because they treated patients who mostly worked in the rice paddies barefooted.  The practitioners did not have higher education, maybe barely finished high school.  They were taught simple western medicine along with traditional Chinese medicine.  They learned wound cleaning and infection control.  They learned and then taught good hygiene.  They learned to give the appropriate vaccines available at that time.

By concentrating on primary care, preventive medicine and vaccination, these barefoot doctors did a great job for the country.  By 1982, the life expectancy had increased from 35 to 60.  The infant mortality had decreased from 200 per 1000 to 34 per 1000!

Today with the COVID-19, we have over 130,000 deaths and many more who were treated in ICUs at a cost of thousands of dollars per day per patient.  As we have found, most of those who die or needed ICU care had medical conditions.  Diabetes, hypertension and obesity are some of the medical problems that make someone a high risk for complications from this disease.  Better primary care and preventive care would have decreased the number of hospitalization and deaths.

We spent more money on healthcare per capita than any industrialized country and get the worst results.  We spend a lot of money on expensive machines and drugs.  If we spend more and target primary care and prevention, we would do much better all the time, not just during this pandemic.  We can also do better by addressing the inequality of our system.

Of course, the general public has do its job as well.  It cost almost nothing to wear masks, social distance and wash our hands.  But many of us are not willing to do these simple, inexpensive things.  Many also refuses to take vaccines.  We end up paying for expensive treatments.  It is the old saying, pay little now or pay a lot more later.

Now that the pandemic is surging again, we must look at why the U.S. is doing so poorly.  Trump is obviously a big part of it.  It is too exhausting to go over all the things he has done wrong.  But what about the country as a whole?  How many of us are not doing the three things that would be most helpful:  frequent hand washing, social distancing and wearing masks in public?  I think I would have to give Americans a failing grade overall.  After what we have gone through and still going through, there are still many Americans who argue about beach closings, larger gatherings, and wearing masks.

We are doing worse than all industrialized nations.  Europe was in the same trajectory as us three months ago.  They have bottomed out in cases while we are rising again.  When China got things under control in Wuhan, people say that we can't do what China did.  We are a democracy and we can't lock everybody in the house like China did.   Well, Europe is free and they got out of trouble and are banning us from going there now.  We are nine times bigger than Canada but have 27 times the number of cases as Canada.  Why is this?

It seems that Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have followed the Asian examples and doing a much better job of social distancing and wearing masks.  There have been some exceptions like when Liverpool won the Premier League championship,  masks and social distancing went out of the window for a day or two.  But for the most part, there are little arguments about using masks or the rights of individual to not listen to medical advice as is the case in the U.S. 

Part of the problem, of course, is Trump and the extreme right in this country.  But other countries have conservatives also.  But those conservatives still follow the science.  Like the opposition in Canada is agreeing with the work of the health department there which is run by liberals.  So now all these countries are opening up and businesses are returning while we are shutting down again.

Starting with baseball in Asian to now soccer in Europe, professional sports are returning to many countries.  We are supposed to start soccer, baseball, hockey, and basketball this month.  Football, both NFL and college, is on schedule to start on time.  But I have my doubts.  Given the rising cases, I don't think the sports leagues are going to be able to finish their seasons, even if they start them.  I hope I am wrong.  But if I am right, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not following science and the examples of other countries.