The world is changing at a pace not seen in years, and it is no time to become captives of fear despite the real and immediate dangers we face.

The Wuhan virus and the ensuing panic, at least for a few more weeks, have stagnated the economy and scared global financial markets, accompanied by both collateral, and independent and simultaneous, bad news.

Rumor- and panic-mongers predominate; the rational and reasonable are written-off as naïve and out of it. Hundreds may die in the US, but millions who will not are terrified into anxieties and sleeplessness that they will.

Such deaths are terrible, yes, but let us now focus on a number of silver linings emerging from this crisis.

[Note by JW – please see the must-read comment on this editorial by Mark Skousen below]

Financial markets paused their slide Thursday (3/19), but no one should think this rolling economic calamity is over. If this government-ordered shutdown continues for much more than another week or two, the human cost of job losses and bankruptcies will exceed what most Americans imagine.

This won’t be popular to read in some quarters, but federal and state officials need to start adjusting their anti-virus strategy now to avoid an economic recession that will dwarf the harm from 2008-2009.

The costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don’t mean federal spending. We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue but that isn’t true of millions of small and mid-sized firms.

Want to know why the U.S. economy is in free fall?

Why restaurants and bars are closing, putting millions out of work, and why the airline industry is facing possible bankruptcy? Why schools across the nation are shutting down, leaving students to fall behind and parents without safe places to send their children everyday?

Why the stock market is plummeting, wiping out the retirement and college savings of millions of Americans? Why the elderly are isolated in nursing homes and tens of millions who don’t have the option of teleworking have no idea how they will pay their bills?

Answer: Because China is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.

As nations across the world struggle to contain the Wuhan coronavirus, they should realize it is also long past time to quarantine the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The people of China must understand that their future under the Communist Party is as outcasts, lepers, pariahs – isolated and quarantined by the civilized world. If that is not the future they want, the time to rise up and overthrow the Communists is now.

The future of China is warehouses stuffed full of rotting and decaying goods no one will buy, accounts filled with money they can’t spend, travel instantly blocked at the first sign of pandemic because that’s the only responsible way for the world to handle the Communist Party.

China is far too opaque, far too dismissive of basic human rights, to be welcomed into reputable international organizations as a full member. The CCP corrupts every organization it joins. It should be expelled from all of them, or relegated to observer status only.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a battle; For Tweedledum said Tweedledee Had spoiled his nice new rattle. Just then flew down a monstrous crow, As black as a tar-barrel; Which frightened both the heroes so, They quite forgot their quarrel.

^{—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland}

But these two old codgers are beyond grumpy; they are both tethered to the already done or distant past.

Like Lewis Carroll's Tweedledum and Tweedledee, these two curmudgeons are barely distinguishable from one another but for their sheer idiocy. No American who watched their Sunday night debate will be inclined to vote for either of them.

With fear and panic spreading across the land and threatening to take down the economy, Trump is facing the greatest test of his presidency. Although battle-hardened by brutal fights with Democrats, the biased media and foreign adversaries, he is presented with problems of a different magnitude with the coronavirus.

It is a global menace that has declared war on America. Thankfully, the President left no doubt that he is all in on the battle against this deadly scourge. Now effectively a wartime president, Trump’s repeated assurances of victory were music to the ears of a rattled nation.

Why, when Joe Biden's mental decline is so obvious, are so many former Obamaphiles pledging their spurious support for the man?  Something's up.

It is beyond clear that Biden is not up to the job. This fact cannot escape the notice of Susan Rice, James Comey, John Brennan, et al., all those conspirators who tried so treasonously hard to destroy Donald Trump.

They surely know better than most that Biden is a dead man walking.  So why the all-out campaign to support his candidacy?  Hmmm.

They must have a plan.