Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Tuesday, May 5, 2020.

Happy birthday, Nani Buraha. I am John Pajor. It's the editor of Commentary Magazine with me as always senior editor,

Aby Greenwald Hyab. Hi John.

I'm the writer Christine Rosen. Hi Christine. Hi John.

And associate editor, no, Ross Man, hi Noah. Hi John. Okay, so guys, there's been a lot of confusion over the last

24 hours about what the White House is or is not projecting in terms of long term mortality from the coronavirus. Is it

60,000? Is it 100,000? Is it going to be 200,000? Are they relying on a on a on a discredited projection system that said that it was going to be 100,000?

And now says it's going to be 130,000 is the White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett saying that the virus's mortality rate will reach zero on May 15th using a

estimation basically from a graph and calculator and all of this is just creating more smoke and less

Enlightenment and and we are we are back in the conversation according to which if you are a supporter of the notion that we need to reopen the country later sooner rather than later that you are a

murderer and the latest person to suffer this these things and arrows about Rages Twitter.

And then we have to open up the country and we have to acknowledge that there will be increased death if we do so but we have no choice.

For saying something like this, he was pilloried for, you know, I don't know, has been pilloried for 18 hours. People saying, you know, he should go first, he should go to restaurants first, he should, you know, serve people at nursing homes, whatever, which is

the lowest kind of ad hominem response to something like this since I don't see any reason to think that he's not saying that he could go first.

You know, where then he would mind going first just that he's saying let's face the, let's face the realities here.

Right. I mean, let's face the realities and the realities are getting pretty stark.

So I'm going to give you my line and then no one Christine has had similar swing yesterday I went out in Manhattan. It's a Monday, right?

So Monday is a sort of resupply time generally speaking for goods and services and products after the weekend.

And so around noon I went out to three different stores on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where generally speaking there is stuff and looked for paper towel and toilet tissue and at a face values and beyond, which is a bedbath and beyond knockoff store at a Dwayne Reed where I had gotten paper towel the week before and at a health food store somewhere near me.

There were no paper products to be had on a on a Monday when you would think with no traffic going through the Lincoln tunnel and you know that basically there would be resupply restocking and then I read as Noah did that.

Crogers is rationing meat Wendy's is eliminating hamburgers and certain parts of the region because they don't have enough meat and you start thinking about the supply chain you really start think that we are moving into it a place in which there are going to be widespread shortages in the United States of of pretty un exceptional products.

And that is what the you're going to kill everybody if you even think about emerging from this until every until no one is at risk of dying that is where we are headed perhaps I'm not an expert on the supply chain issue there's obviously supply chain issues with China which is a different issue from meat inside the United States you know the world's largest producer of

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