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The reported militarization of Wuhan’s P4 Lab has raised new questions about the origin of the Covid-19 virus and the apparent cover-up that has occurred since it was first made public.

Following the removal of the most senior health officials in Wuhan yesterday, Chinese State Media has just reported that Chen Wei, China’s chief biochemical weapon defense expert, is now to be stationed in Wuhan to lead the efforts to overcome the deadly, pneumonia-like pathogen.

According to the PLA Daily report, Chen Wei holds the rank of major general, and along with reports that Chinese troops have started to “assist”, it strongly suggests that the PLA has taken control of the situation.

As Epoch Times reports, before this latest report, Chen’s military rank and specialization was not widely known. She was first interviewed on Jan. 30 by the state-run China Science Daily. In a second interview the next day, she predicted that the outbreak in Wuhan would let up over the next few days, but could worsen again soon…

“We need to prepare for the worst-case scenario, find the best solutions, and be ready to fight the longest battle,” she said.

Amid constant propaganda from CCP officials, and widespread censorship, many – including US Senator Tom Cotton – have wondered if the virus was bio-engineered, and was ‘leaked’ from the lab (which just happens to be located at the epicenter ofg the virus).

The militarization, and bringing in of China’s foremost bio-weapons expert raises the question once again of whether the Wuhan Strain of coronavirus (Covid-19) is the result of naturally emergent mutations against the possibility that it may be a bio-engineered strain meant for defensive immunotherapy protocols that was released into the public, most likely by accident since China’s rate of occupational accidents is about ten-times higher than America’s, and some twenty-times more than Europe’s – the only other regions with high-level virology labs.

A new report – a product of a collaboration between a retired professional scientist with 30 years of experience in genomic sequencing and analysis who helped design several ubiquitous bioinformatic software tools, and a former NSA counterterrorism analyst – suggests that this possible mistake may have been precipitated by the need to quickly finish research that was being rushed for John Hopkin’s Event 201 which was held this past October and meant to gameplan the containment of a global pandemic. Research may also have been hurried due to deadlines before the impending Chinese New Year – the timing of these events point to increased human error, not a globalist conspiracy.

Beijing has had four known accidental leaks of the SARS virus in recent years, so there is absolutely no reason to assume that this strain of coronavirus from Wuhan didn’t accidentally leak out as well.

Given that this outbreak was said to begin in late December when most bat species in the region are hibernating and the Chinese horseshoe bat’s habitat covers an enormous swath of the region containing scores of cities and hundreds of millions people to begin with, the fact that this Wuhan Strain of coronavirus, denoted as Covid-19, emerged in close proximity to the only BSL-4 virology lab in China, now notoriously located in Wuhan, which in turn was staffed with at least two Chinese scientists – Zhengli Shi and Xing-Yi Ge (both virologists who had previously worked at an American lab which already bio-engineered an incredibly virulent strain of bat coronavirus) – the accidental release of a bio-engineered virus meant for defensive immunotherapy research from Wuhan’s virology lab cannot be automatically discounted, especially when the Wuhan Strain’s unnatural genomic signals are considered.

Zhengli Shi notably  co-authored a controversial paper in 2015  which describes the creation of a new virus by combining a coronavirus found in Chinese horseshoe bats with another that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice.

This research sparked a huge debate at the time over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.

As Nature.com reported in 2015, the findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say.

But other virologists question whether the information gleaned from the experiment justifies the potential risk. Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells.

“If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says.

In October 2014, the US government imposed a moratorium on federal funding of such research on the viruses that cause SARS, influenza and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome, a deadly disease caused by a virus that sporadically jumps from camels to people).

“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” agrees Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. 

Ebright and his co-author also conceded that funders may think twice about allowing such experiments in the future.

“Scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue,” they write, adding that discussion is needed as to “whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved”.

Previously, scientists had believed, on the basis of molecular modelling and other studies, that it should not be able to infect human cells. The latest work shows that the virus has already overcome critical barriers, such as being able to latch onto human receptors and efficiently infect human airway cells, he says.

“I don’t think you can ignore that.” 

Which brings us to perhaps the most notable finding. 

A genetic analysis of the spike-protein genes – the exact region that was bio-engineered by the UNC lab in 2015, where Zhengli Shi and Xing-Yi Ge previously isolated a batty coronavirus that targets the ACE2 receptor just like this 2019-nCoV strain of the coronavirus does – indicates an artificial and unnatural origins of the Wuhan Strain’s spike-protein genes when they are compared to the genomes of wild relatives.

Instead of appearing similar and homologous to its wild relatives, an important section of the Wuhan Strain’s spike-protein region shares the most genetic similarity with a bio-engineered commercially available gene sequence that’s designed to help with immunotherapy research. It is mathematically possible for this to happen in nature – but only in a ten-thousand bats chained to ten-thousand Petri dishes and given until infinity sense.

And so, as the report goes on, a scientist who’s been prolifically involved with studying the molecular interaction of coronaviruses and humanity, spending decades and millions of dollars, and having even helped build a hyper-virulent coronavirus from scratch at UNC – just so happens to be working at the only BSL-4 virology lab in China that also just so happens to be at the epicenter of an outbreak involved a coronavirus that’s escaping zoological classification and whose novel spike-protein region shares more in common with a commercial genetic vector than any of its wild relatives

However, most recently, as an increasing number of global experts questioned China’s initial official story that this came from the food market in Wuhan, Zhengli Shi hurriedly wrote a new report, claiming instead of the initial findings that the novel virus came from a bat in Yunnan, the Chinese chrysanthemum. She said that this was a new discovery that she had worked hard for several years, and coincidentally wrote a paper after the outbreak and published it in the famous international academic journal Nature.

Which all seems like a very sudden about face for someone who had been working on bio-engineering the exact virus for decades…

The reason why #CCP held on releasing info about #CoronavirusOutbreak
is that they were waiting for Dr. Shi Zhengli’s paper to be published at Nature so that they could claim bat is the origin. #COVID2019
中共推遲公佈 #武汉肺炎 疫情 是為等石正麗提交論文https://t.co/Su5odFacas

— 曾錚 Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferatntd) February 12, 2020

Giving further credence to the idea that the Wuhan Strain was bio-engineered is the existence of a patent application that looks to modulate a coronavirus’ spike-protein genes – the precise region altered by Zhengli Shi at UNC to make a hyper-virulent strain of coronavirus, and whose alteration and adaptation would explain the Wuhan Strain’s unusual behavior as discussed above.

Given the above facts, either:

• A coronavirus spontaneously mutated and jumped to humans at a wet market or deep in some random bat cave which just so happened to be 20 miles from China’s only BSL-4 virology lab, a virus with an unusually slippery never-before-seen genome that’s evading zoological classification, and whose spike-protein region which allows it to enter host cells appears most like a bio-engineered commercial product, that somehow managed to infect its first three and roughly one-third of its initial victims despite them not being connected to this market, and then be so fined-tuned to humans that it’s gone on to create the single greatest public health crisis in Chinese history with approaching 100 million citizens locked-down or quarantined – also causing Mongolia to close its border with its largest trading partner for the first time in modern history.

• Or, Chinese scientists failed to follow correct sanitation protocols possibly while in a rush during their boisterous holiday season, something that had been anticipated since the opening of the BSL-4 lab and has happened at least four times previously, and accidentally released this bio-engineered Wuhan Strain – likely created by scientists researching immunotherapy regimes against bat coronaviruses, who’ve already demonstrated the ability to perform every step necessary to bio-engineer the Wuhan Strain 2019-nCov – into their population, and now the world. As would be expected, this virus appears to have been bio-engineered at the spike-protein genes which was already done at UNC to make an extraordinarily virulent coronavirus. Chinese efforts to stop the full story about what’s going on are because they want the scales to be even since they’re now facing a severe pandemic and depopulation event. No facts point against this conclusion.

And, following tonight’s huge jump in reported cases and deaths…

…we thought the admittedly doomsday-ish conclusion from harvardtothebighouse.com seemed worthwhile noting:

“Simply and horribly, this is likely to become another Chernobyl or Fukushima – a catastrophic illustration of mankind’s hubris and intransigence clashing with Nature, as fate again reaps a once unimaginably tragic toll.”

As Professor Neil Ferguson warned, “we’re at the eary stages of a global pandemic”

CORONAVIRUS: Professor Neil Ferguson states on the COVID-19 Outbreak “We’re at the eary stages of a global pandemic” (BBC News)#covid19 #coronavirus #coronavirusoutbreak pic.twitter.com/FzVVhO1U3T

— 24/7 Crisis News LIVE ☢ (@livecrisisnews) February 12, 2020

 

Let’s hope he is wrong.

Authored by Peter Van Buren via TheAmericanConservative.com,

Sorry Sanders supporters: your guy might be well-meaning, but like everyone else he has no practical solutions. 

Bernie, et al, imagine there exists some means to redistribute wealth, most likely following the economist Thomas Piketty, via a progressive tax on the rich. Just talking about that may be enough to scare the wealthy into putsching a corporate Democrat in Bernie’s place yet again, despite his human shield of nose-pierced volunteers. But even if Sanders were to win, it would not be enough to change America. It’s a reality problem.

The reality of wealth is that the gap between most Americans and those who sit atop our economy continues to grow. During the two decades after 1960, the real incomes of the top 5 percent and the remaining 95 percent increased at almost the same rate, about 4 percent a year. But between 1980 and 2007, incomes diverged, with those at the bottom seeing annual increases only half that of those at the top. Then it got worse.

Lower savings and hyper-available credit (remember fraudulent Countrywidemortgages, ARMs, and usurious re-fi’s?) put the middle and bottom portions of society on an unsustainable financial path that crashed into the Great Recession of 2008. Yet America’s top earners’ wealth still grew; the one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth, as the stock market recovered, while the bottom people became poorer, as their missing homes did not. Their wealth, such as it was, was a Potemkin vision, held in the form of houses they didn’t actually own. The recession represented the largest redistribution of money in a century. How did the rich pull this off?

It came down to the reality of possession. The wealthy own stock and real estate, not just personal homes. Yet just under half of Americans own no stock (the wealthiest own over 80 percent of all stock, along with 40 percent of America’s land). Markets over time go up and those who own parts of them do well. A rising tide lifts all yachts, as historian Morris Berman observed. People who do not own homes have to rent them from those who do. Owners can raise rents anytime they want more money. 

It can be hard to comprehend the sheer level of wealth possessed by the rich: Redfin figured out Bill Gates could buy all of the real estate in Boston. Candidate Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, could pick up Anaheim. Google’s Larry Page is able to buy Boca Raton. Never mind yachts; they can buy whole cities.

It is the reality of the system. Walmart associates make minimum wage. Most of them are nowhere near full-time, so their take-home pay is well below the poverty threshold. Employer-assisted Obamacare, such as it is, only kicks in after one works 20 hours a week or more, so following the implementation of that policy, most employees were cut to less than 20 hours, meaning they had to juggle multiple jobs to live and still did not have health care, as qualifying hours are not cumulative.

Walmart can pay low wages, creating a new status known as working poor, without having to see workers literally starve on the job, because their employees receive $2.66 billion in government poverty assistance each year. That works out to about $5,815 per worker, or about $420,000 per store. 

Food assistance is also key in profiting from income inequality. According to one study, in a single year, nine Walmarts in Massachusetts received more than $33 million in food stamp dollars spent at their stores. In two years, Walmart received about half of the $1 billion in food stamp expenditures in Oklahoma. Overall, 18 percent of all food benefits money nationwide is spent at Walmart. That’s about $14 billion.

So let’s Robin Hood the wealthy, Bernie, Elizabeth, and others say. After all, Jeff Bezos’ net worth is $109 billion. But that’s everything he has, not just the 6 percent tax Elizabeth Warren wants him to pay. The net worth of the entire Forbes 400 is under $3 trillion. That’s everything they own. The reforms Warren has proposed to address economic inequality will cost us some $20 trillion. The gap has gotten too big to raise everyone up.

But you have to start somewhere, right?

Given that America’s largest companies already pay little to no tax, it is unclear how such a system could ever be enforced in the long run, given that the wealthy will just offshore their money. Taxes still leave in place other factors driving economic inequality, including inheritance laws (money is immortal. The children of rich people are born rich and unless they get really into hookers and blow, will inevitably get richer. They almost can’t help it) and the ability of the wealthy to control wages and the availability of jobs. Unions are increasingly a thing of the past and automation threatens jobs daily. The rich decide when to pull the trigger on touch screens in fast food restaurants and deep-six cashier jobs. And never mind the mass extinction that driverless delivery vehicles will bring on, to say nothing of the one after that when advances in AI crush entry-level coding jobs.

The single most significant factor is that financial growth via capital ownership (what the rich do for money) always outstrips wage growth (what the rest of us do for money). Getting richer by owning stuff is always a better deal than trying to get rich by working for wages from the people who own stuff. Even if a magic wand were to somehow reset society, the nature of capitalism would soon set things back on the path to income inequality.

Rich people get money through capital gains, via assets they buy cheaply that become worth more over time (until slavery was replaced with the minimum wage, human beings were also considered a form of capital asset—seriously, check with human “resources” where you work). That’s why a short-term downturn that’s bad for you (you lose what you have, like a home) is ultimately good for most of them (downturns are discount buying opportunities for those with spare money). It’s why the stock market troubles that uninformed people wish for will not make Trump go away. Math!

The only hope lies in the reality of politics, right? Over large swaths of the earth, there are no elections. In some of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East and Asia, there is not even the pretext of anyone choosing a government. Most governments are controlled by family ascension, not unlike the Middle Ages. In more modern places, corruption and manipulation control things, as power and wealth work together.

Such is the case now in the United States. According to the once-prescient Lawrence Lessing (who has since lost his mind to Twitter and TDS), thanks to concentration of wealth, 132 people in the U.S. essentially control elections. They do so by donating—just that handful of people—over 60 percent of Super PAC money. Those 132 represent 0.000042 percent of the total number of voters; most other contributions to candidates are small, many below $200. It sounds nice when a candidate talks about this, but it diffuses power even as you think he owes you something now. That’s because it’s impossible under such circumstances for government to create laws against the interests of the wealthy; after all, they work for them.

The reality is there is no answer, no solution. That’s because things are working more or less as they are supposed to. From a certain perspective, income inequality means things are going according to the rigged rules. The system is designed to squeeze wealth up into a smaller and smaller group of hands. A byproduct is the creation of more and more poor at the bottom. It is the inevitable endpoint for a society set up to fund the wealthy via capital appreciation by paying low or stagnant wages to everyone else.

To say it can’t be is to ignore the last time it sort of was, one king in one castle sustained by tens of thousands of serfs living in sloven conditions, with feudalism the dominant force. A very, very few owned most everything of value. The 99.999 percent majority—serfs then, valued Target associates now—worked for whatever the feudal lords allowed them to have.

It’s very American to believe there are always answers, that there are not forces stronger than change at work, especially in an election year. Yet if you’re still looking for those answers—solutions—well, you’ve gotten to the end of the article.

We’re not quite sure the Chinese have the right idea for containing the climate of disease and virii coming out of their country. After all, what good is wearing a surgical mask on a flight when you have crammed several dozen dead birds into a bag for a 10 hour plus flight to the United States?

That’s exactly what happened two weeks ago: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, seized a bag of dead birds that was being carried in the luggage of an airline passenger traveling from China to Washington D.C. on January 27.

The birds were packaged in a bag that had cartoon images on it and was seized at Dulles Airport from a passenger, who was arriving from Beijing, according to the NY Post. The passenger claimed that the birds were “cat food” and that he was planning to bring them to Maryland after his flight.

Birds from China are (obviously) not allowed in the U.S. for fear of spreading the avian flu. The birds were “destroyed by incineration” with approval from the USDA. 

Casey Durst, director of field operations for the agency’s Baltimore field office said: “Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists continue to exercise extraordinary vigilance every day in their fight to protect our nation’s agricultural and economic prosperity from invasive pests and animal diseases.”

“These dead birds are prohibited from importation to the United States as unprocessed birds pose a potentially significant disease threat to our nation’s poultry industries and more alarmingly to our citizens as potential vectors of avian influenza,” he concluded. 

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The House of Representatives in the state of Virginia is quickly ramming liberal legislation down the throats of innocent people.  They have passed an “assault weapons” ban, which would criminalize thousands of people who haven’t committed a crime.

On Tuesday, Democrats continued their quest to disarm the civilians and advocate for a series of gun control measures in what has become the epicenter of the nationwide gun debate.

The 51-48 vote in the House of Delegates moves H.B. 961 (the assault weapons ban) to the state Senate. Passage among senators could be in jeopardy, however, as Democrats only have a two-seat majority, meaning they can only afford to lose one vote should all the Republicans oppose the bill.  But don’t assume it’s passage won’t happen.  Taking away guns is essential for tyranny. But the propaganda is all about safety:

“This legislation, just like other bills passed by the House this year, is intended to make Virginians safer every day,” House Democrats said in a statement after the vote. –Fox News

This is to make tyrants safer against those they want control over. This is obvious to anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of history.

Virginia has become ground zero in the national gun debate as Democrats have made gun control the cornerstone of this year’s legislative session after capturing a full majority for the first time in two decades.

pic.twitter.com/C6gpAMB1I1

— scott jackson (@sjbr549) February 11, 2020

Fully prepping for tyranny is difficult because it takes relying on history for evidence of just how far humans will go to enforce laws on those who haven’t done anything wrong.  But if the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are any gauges, Virginians could be in big trouble.

Just days ago, we reported about a major inventory glut in the Chinese auto market due to the effects of the coronavirus on an industry that has already been mired in recession for months.

Now, auto industry executives are admitting that the virus could “wreak havoc” on sales and production for the first quarter, according to the Asia Times. Automakers across the country have been forced to cancel sales targets and offer subsidies to hold over dealers during the outbreak.

The coronavirus has now killed over 1,000 people (if you are to believe the CCP’s likely understated numbers) and more than 40,000 people are now confirmed to be infected in China.

Accordingly, traffic to showrooms has collapsed across the country since late January. A China Automobile Dealer’s association poll shows that dealers predict a drastic drop in sales of 50% to 80% this month, compared to February 2019. 70% of dealers have said they have seen “almost no customers” since the end of January. 

Volvo has announced same day subsidies totaling about $1.42 million and BMW has cancelled dealers’ sales targets in February. It has also said targets for March will be “flexibly set”. Ford and Hyundai have simply decided not to assess the sales performance of their Chinese dealers in Q1. 

The CADA said auto sales “show a cliff-like decline”. 

Recall, we also reported just days ago that average inventory levels were at 62.7% for January, according to the China Automobile Dealer Association. These numbers are far above the standard 50% level that is considered normal in the industry. 

This follows China’s Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, saying in mid-January (prior to the coronavirus outbreak becoming severe) that the industry still faces “big downward pressure”.

At the time, he predicted sales of just 25 million units for the year. We obviously think that this number could wind up being materially lower. 

Recall, sales for 2019 totaled 25.769 million units. Sales of just 25 million units – an optimistic prediction in our eyes – would mark a third straight year of declines for the world’s largest auto market regardless.  

We noted in December that NEV sales plunged 42% in November after Beijing backed away. The government is ostensibly dedicating all of its efforts to deal with the country’s ongoing outbreak, and so Beijing has not revisited its comments about EVs yet, and we are already halfway through Q1 2020. 

China did say, however, it is going to “maintain support” for NEVs, without getting into too much detail. Miao also said he’s confident that the country will ensure “stable industrial production in 2020” while phasing out “zombie firms”. 

There may have been some spooky foreshadowing in those words from mid-January, as almost every business in the locked down major cities of China now looks like a “zombie firm”. 

All those clueless hacks who warned us for years not to trust China’s economic data yet were so gullible to believe any coronavirus pandemic “data” released by Beijing are going to look pretty damn silly right about now.

Hubei just released its latest round of coronavirus outbreak figures, and in a clear confirmation of the ‘conspiracy theory’ that China had altered the way it was reporting Covid-19 deaths and cases – clearly in order to suggest that things were improving and you should go back to work, while ideally buying stocks, the province at the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic just came clean and the numbers are stunning.

The number of cases exploded by 14,840, resulting in a total of 48,206 cases, including 13,332 clinically diagnose cases:

This also means that JPM, which earlier today was delighted by how far the infected case load is from its “pessimistic” forecast…

… will have to dramatically change its narrative.

So what happened?

Recall that on Monday we published “This Is How China Is Rigging The Number Of Coronavirus Infections” in which we explained that China on Feb 7 moved the goalposts by changing the definition of the term “infection” and that “going forward patients who tested positive for the virus but have no symptoms will no longer be regarded as confirmed.“

Well, it appears that a few days later, China changed its mind and has reverted to the original definition of “infection” while also including “clinical diagonisis” to determine if a new infection had take place. This is how Hubei explained the change:.

With the deepening of understanding of new coronavirus pneumonia and the accumulation of experience in diagnosis and treatment, in view of the characteristics of the epidemic in Hubei Province, the General Office of the National Health and Health Commission and the Office of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine issued the “Diagnosis and Treatment Plan for New Coronavirus Infected Pneumonia (Trial (Version) “adds” clinical diagnosis “to the case diagnosis classification in Hubei Province, so that patients can receive standardized treatment according to confirmed cases as early as possible to further improve the success rate of treatment.

According to the plan, Hubei Province has recently conducted investigations on suspected cases and revised the diagnosis results, and newly diagnosed patients were diagnosed according to the new diagnosis classification. In order to be consistent with the classification of case diagnosis issued by other provinces across the country, starting today, Hubei Province will include the number of clinically diagnosed cases into the number of confirmed cases for publication.

Of course, the real reason for the original change as noted above was to give the impression that China was succeeding in containing the infection, which helped boost stocks – both in China and globally – sharply higher, and in the case of the S&P, to new all time highs.

As for the catastrophic revision, it may also explain why on Tuesday morning, China’s CCTV reported that Hubei province removed its two top health officials, namely health commission head Liu Yingzi and party chief Zhang Jin from their posts. Almost as if, in retrospect, they were caught hiding something…

And while China can now claim it wants to be more transparent (which is odd for a nation that is still refusing to admit the US CDC on the ground) and wants a more comprehensive definition of “infection” because it is suddenly so concerned about all those people it ordered to go back to work on Monday (with new cases now emerging in people’s workplaces forcing an immediate quarantine of all workers and co-workers), it somehow also changed the definition of “death”, because at the same time as the explosion in new cases, which clearly indicates that the pandemic is now clearly out of control, the number of reported deaths in Hubei alone spiked by 242 to 1,310 (we are still waiting for the official number of deaths across all of China which will likely add quite a few more cases to the Hubei total).

For those curious what the now completely discredited fake coronavirus data, reported by China until today with the sole intent of boosting risk assets was, here is the full breakdown. Naturally none of these numbers matter anymore following today’s sudden burst of Chinese truthiness.

In kneejerk reaction to the shocking surge in both new cases and deaths, Dow futures immediately plunged…

As did oil…

As is the yuan…

But at least gold is sharply higher:

Who could have seen that coming? The stock market wanted so badly to believe the Chinese data… bonds and commodities knew better.

Authored by Jeffrey M. Jones via Gallup

* * *

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sixty-one percent of Americans say they are better off than they were three years ago, a higher percentage than in prior election years when an incumbent president was running. In the 1992, 1996 and 2004 election cycles, exactly half said they were better off. In three separate measures during the 2012 election cycle, an average of 45% said they were better off.

The current results, from a Jan. 16-29 Gallup poll, echo record highs, measured earlier in January, in Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in their personal life and in their assessments of their personal finances.

Relatedly, 52% of U.S. adults say it is easier for them to “go and buy things in the stores” than it was three years ago, higher than in the 1992, 1996 and 2004 election cycles, when the figures were closer to 40%.

Americans’ perceptions of whether they are personally better off, and whether it is easier to buy things, appear to be influenced much more by their party leanings than by their economic situations. Sixty percentage points separate Republicans’ (89%) and Democrats’ (29%) assessments of whether they are better off than three years ago. Independents are essentially in the middle of the two groups, at 60%. Meanwhile, 64% of those in both upper- and middle-income households say they are better off, as do 49% of those in lower-income households.

The Republican-Democratic gap is smaller — 44 points — when people indicate whether it is easier for them to buy things than it was three years ago: 76% of Republicans versus 32% of Democrats say it is, as do 49% of independents.

The party gaps on the “better off than three years ago” question were much smaller in the past, partly because supporters of the incumbent president’s party were less upbeat about their situations than Republicans are today.

In addition to higher ratings among Republicans, today’s higher figures are also driven by more positive ratings among independents — 60% today, compared with ratings near 50% in prior years.

Assessments of U.S. International Standing Similar to Past Elections

The majority of Americans do not believe the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was three years ago — 38% say it is and 59% say it is not. The percentage who think the U.S. is as respected is no worse than in past election years, with only as many as 40% saying so (in 1992 and 2000).

Additionally, 51% say the nation is as safe and strong as it was three years ago, while 43% say it is not. These readings are similar to what Gallup measured in the 2004 and 2012 election cycles, but lower than in 1992.

As on the economic items, wide party gaps exist on the international items. Seventy percent of Republicans, but only 9% of Democrats, believe the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was three years ago. Thirty-two percent of independents hold this view.

Also, 76% of Republicans, 51% of independents and 22% of Democrats believe the nation is as safe and strong as when President Donald Trump took office.

Trump Given More Credit Than Obama for Economic Improvements

Sixty-two percent give Trump a great deal or fair amount of credit for improvement in the state of the economy in the past few years — more than the 51% giving former President Barack Obama the same level of credit.

In 2000, Americans gave Bill Clinton slightly more credit for the economy (68% great deal or fair amount) than they give Trump today.

In January 2018, Gallup asked Americans a similar question about Trump and Obama, albeit with a different question wording. At that time, more Americans gave Obama (56%) than Trump (49%) a “great deal” or “moderate amount” of credit.

The economy will likely be as potent an election issue as any other, but there is no dominant issue in the public’s minds. In December, the economy was among the top six issues that U.S. adults rated as “extremely important” to their presidential vote. The latest poll, which asked Americans to choose among those six issues as the single most important to their vote, finds 29% choosing the economy and 25% healthcare. Fewer indicated that immigration (14%), gun policy (13%), education (11%) or terrorism (6%) is their top overall issue.

Bottom Line

If Trump asks Americans whether they are better off than before he came into office, most would say they are. Trump also gets more credit for recent economic improvements than Obama does, though majorities give both credit.

Trump was clear during his State of the Union that he plans to make the strength of the economy a major focus of his reelection campaign. Given Americans’ generally positive ratings of the economy — including a 63% job approval rating for Trump on the issue — it is a sensible strategy. But with Trump’s overall job approval rating still below the majority level, the ultimate question is whether his economic success will mean more to voters than the more controversial aspects of his presidency.

Learn more about public opinion metrics that matter for the 2020 presidential election at Gallup’s 2020 Presidential Election Center.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works

* * *

Meanwhile, the impeachment totally backfired – as predicted.

Though all eyes are on the deadly coronavirus pandemic, another dangerous military close encounter just played out off Taiwan’s coast on Wednesday.

“Three U.S. Air Force planes, including two B-52 bombers, flew near Taiwan on Wednesday, the island’s defense ministry said, after Taiwan’s air force scrambled earlier in the week to intercept Chinese jets,” Reuters reports. 

The prior Sunday and Monday incidents involved Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) bombers and fighters approaching the self-declared Republic of China (Taiwan), before Taiwan scrambled its own US-supplied F-16 fighters to shadow the ‘invading’ aircraft. 

A senior US State Department official in the region called China’s behavior “completely inappropriate” and condemned the “aggressive act.”

Wednesday’s “response” by the Americans consisted in the following: 

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said one U.S. MC-130, a special mission aircraft based on the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, flew down the Taiwan Strait in a southerly direction on Wednesday.

The two U.S. B-52 bombers skirted Taiwan’s east coast, also in a southerly direction, the ministry added.

Beijing has been engaged in provocative “island encirclement drills” somewhat routinely over the past half decade, resulting in multiple close encounters with US and Taiwanese forces, especially in the air and water, especially the contested Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou pledged that such Chinese aggression will only “deepen cooperation with countries with similar ideals, including the United States, in response to the rising Chinese military threat.”

There’s little new here in such provocations and reactions, and counter-statements out of Taipei; however, Taiwan officials have tapped into a new argument sure to add insult to injury amid its ongoing standoff to assert territorial control in the face of much larger and more powerful China.

Reuters reports of a deeply provocative statement amid China’s worst crisis in years: 

Taiwan has urged China to focus its efforts on fighting the new coronavirus rather than menacing the island.

No doubt this will do little to east tensions, and will only exacerbate them, likely only giving further invitation for China to “save face” and attempt to show that its military is stronger than ever and remains ‘undistracted’ by the deadly and society-threatening pandemic in its midst.