Russell Roberts's Blog, page 290
April 6, 2021
Some Covid Links
The [Washington] Post nevertheless says “experts…agree” that rising infection numbers are largely due to “a broad loosening of public health measures, such as mask mandates and limits on indoor dining,” along with “increased spread of the more transmissible [virus] variants.” The evidence so far does not seem to support that theory.
Mask mandates and stricter restaurant rules manifestly did not prevent daily cases from rising in five of the six states that the Post mentions. Other states that still require masks, including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington, likewise have seen increases in new cases, some of them sizable, since March 1. In the 18 states that do not require face masks, cases are falling or flat everywhere except Florida, which has seen an uptick since mid-March.
…..
If you believe that government-imposed restrictions play a crucial role in reducing the spread of COVID-19, you will be inclined to blame relaxed restrictions for case increases, as the Post does. But when that assumption does not match what is happening, maybe it should be reconsidered.
Robby Soave exposes the appalling inaccuracies in 60 Minutes’s hit-job on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. A slice:
A 60 Minutes story on Florida’s vaccine rollout accused Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor, of making a corrupt deal with Publix to distribute the vaccine. CBS reporter Sharyn Alfonsi noted that the grocery chain donated $100,000 to DeSantis’ election campaign and suggested the lucrative vaccination contract was a “pay-to-play” scheme.
It’s an accusation that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny: For one thing, Publix—like many large corporations—gives money to both Republicans and Democrats. But more importantly, the decision to have Publix coordinate vaccination was not even made by the governor’s office. According to Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, it was his offices that recommended Publix. Moskowitz, a Democrat, has said that Publix was the best store for the job, since it has more than 800 locations across the state.
Indeed, when Alfonsi cornered DeSantis at a press conference and asked him about Publix, he gave a lengthy explanation that largely undercut her claims. He pointed out, for instance, that it wasn’t true that Publix got the vaccines first: CVS and Walgreens had already been contracted to coordinate vaccination for long-term care facilities. Here’s a transcript of what the governor said….
Remarkably, CBS cut this portion of DeSantis’ response.
Omar S. Khan details the price of perpetual panic. Two slices:
And yet there has seemed an immunity to evidence since the onset of this malarkey (the hyping of a serious virus into an existential panic), and a disquieting appetite for economic suicide that has malingered too long, as if economic and social suicide will somehow appease the insatiable “Virus Gods”.
…..
How is locking down a planet justified for, at worst, a relatively tame risk primarily to those at or past normal lifespan, and how does it justify destroying the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of adults and children at virtually no risk? This question has to swell to a catechism. It is unanswerable. No one in over a year, on the “anti-life” (orthodoxy, “go with the science” and listen to Big Brother and Uncle Tech and Aunt Pharma, brigade), has ever come close to even confronting it. It is Easter weekend as I write, and this reminds us that it is time, to at least be open to resurrecting plain thinking and deferring to data over dogma.
James R. Rogers argues that lockdowns imposed burdens without benefits.
What’s striking is not just the overwhelmingly negative response but the genuine rage on display from this normally phlegmatic readership. And it’s not just Tories – from the growing revolt across the political spectrum it seems that, whatever your leanings, there’s something in the concept of government-issued health certificates that viscerally offends.
…..
Human rights experts like Adam Wagner have been vocal about the tendency of “temporary” powers to stick around long after promised “sunset clauses” (many of the emergency powers brought in after 9/11 are still there). The new technology and efficient databases entailed by vaccine passports make it even less likely that they would simply vanish after a year.
Ethan Yang looks at American courts and the lockdowns.
More alarming is this part in their summary: “Whilst the impact of Test Trace Isolate (TTI), mask wearing, hand hygiene, and Covid security on R is difficult to quantify, it will be vital to emphasise the importance of normalising and ensuring adherence to all measures even after ‘full lifting’ is achieved.” In other words, they have no idea if masks, TTI and the Orwellian-named “COVID security” (which I assume is social distancing and all the niggly little rules that busybody managerial types love) actually have any effect, but they are going to insist they become part of everyday life anyway.
The models assume – and the Imperial group advocates – that masks, TTI and “COVID security” remain indefinitely after June. They mention no end date. They seem to want to make this a new normal that lasts forever. This is typical out-of-touch, irrational and neurotic behaviour from SAGE. As we know, if everything returns to real normal, SAGE members lose their celebrity status as advisers and all that comes with it. An advisor will always advise that you need more advice and keeping masks, TTI and “Covid security” allow them to do just that.
Kate Dunlop endorses Dr. Kamran Abbasi’s proposal – published in the BMJ – for a Nuremberg-style trial for the ‘leaders’ and their top advisors who, in the name of protecting humanity from Covid-19, subjected humanity to Covidocratic tyranny. A from Dunlop’s piece:
Any such investigation is highly unlikely, given the stranglehold that the elites have on our lives, but if such a miracle were to occur, investigators would want to look closely at Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock,and other ministers in the Cabinet. Members of Sage, led by Professors Whitty and Vallance and their communist pals, would certainly be in the frame, as would Neil Ferguson.
(DBx: I actually do not favor such a trial. The theatrics would overwhelm any substance, and the precedent set would be dangerous. But I confess that it’s gratifying to imagine such an opportunity for reckoning. At least in the English-speaking world, key defendants would include Neil Ferguson, a ‘scientist’ whose reckless and wildly mistaken predictions are responsible for deranged panic and untold depredations. Also in the dock would be Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Jacinda Ardern, Daniel Andrews, Bill Gates, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.)
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 103 of Thomas Sowell’s splendid 1981 volume, Markets and Minorities:
While public spirit and self-sacrifice have characterized some statesmen, to expect this to be the sole or dominant incentive among political decision-makers as a whole is to ignore thousands of years of human history.
April 5, 2021
Trying to Understand the Silence
In the Spring of 2020 the mainstream media and most elite voices were already primed by their aggressive hatred of Donald Trump to lay the blame for any amount of suffering from Covid squarely on Trump. In their minds, Trump’s failure to have the national government do even more than it did to restrict freedom in the name of fighting Covid is the major source of Covid’s spread among Americans.
The reality here doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the U.S. President has no constitutional power to unilaterally lock down a country in any way similar to how Boris Johnson locked down Great Britain, or how Gov. Gretchen Whitmer locked down Michigan and how many other governors locked down their states.
It doesn’t matter that Trump – foolishly, in my view – gave a prominent perch to pro-lockdowners Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx to convey out-of-context, and sometimes even intentionally false, information about the disease. It doesn’t matter that a great deal of evidence has been assembled showing that lockdowns have little or no impact on the spread of the coronavirus.
It doesn’t even matter that Trump did indeed issue a long series of truly idiotic claims about Covid. He was so despised that no matter what he did or said (short of “I resign immediately”), he was destined from the start to be cast as the villain upon whom the blame for Covid must be pinned.
Further fueling the Trump-is-to-blame narrative is the perceived association of people on the political right in general, and of Trumpians in particular, with hostility to science. This essay isn’t the place to explore the justice of this association; I here make only three summary points. First, what many people on the political left treat as settled science is, in fact, not. Second, many people on the political left are no less wont than are people on the political right to ignore science – especially, but not only, economic science – when doing so furthers their political ends. Third, what ultimately must determine how trade-offs are made is not, and cannot be, science; instead, it’s human value judgments. While public policy should be informed by science, public policy cannot possibly be determined by science. Anyone who says or suggests otherwise understands neither science nor society.
None of the above matters. What matters is only that Trump was associated, whether accurately or inaccurately, with opposition to lockdowns and other restrictions imposed in the name of combating Covid. This association is bolstered by the fact that there is more resistance to lockdowns and mandated mask-wearing in red states than in blue states. Because Trump and the Republican party today are also assumed to be at the “unscientific” pole of American politics and ideology, the illogical conclusion is drawn that Covid lockdowns and restrictions – perceived as being anti-Trumpian – must therefore be pro-science and, hence, rational and justified.
And so I suspect that many now-curiously-silent friends of liberty refrain from speaking out in opposition to lockdowns because these individuals fear that to do so would be to position themselves as Trumpians.
I suspect that many of these now-curiously-silent friends of liberty genuinely believe that right-wing opposition to lockdowns and to Covid hysteria is itself sufficient proof of the worthiness of Covid lockdowns and of intense fear of Covid. Others of these friends of liberty might harbor silent doubts about the lockdowns and Covid hysteria, but are reluctant to publicly express these doubts out of fear that they’ll be perceived as being Trumpian Neanderthals.
Of course, each now-curiously-silent friend of liberty has his or her own unique set of reasons for remaining mute in the face of the ongoing appalling assault on liberty. Undoubtedly, my ‘allergic-to-anything-Trumpian’ explanation offered here doesn’t explain the silence of everyone. Some silent individuals sincerely (if, in my mind, inexplicably) do believe that Covid-19 poses such a uniquely grave threat to humanity that we have no good alternative to allowing the state to lock us down, to mask us, and to otherwise restrict our activities for as long as the state determines is necessary – no questions asked.
Some other individuals might be drawn into silence for reasons that I can’t begin to guess.
Some Covid Links
Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins writes about the fourth wave. Two slices:
The good news is that herd immunity is starting to take hold. This does not mean no Covid. It means less Covid. Less Covid overall means less chance of the next trillion-to-one dangerous mutation. Google the words “herd immunity” and “influenza” and running off the page will be evidence that herd immunity has never been taken to mean a disease stops existing. Flu still kills children by the dozens or hundreds in the U.S each year. If our testing is missing 80% of cases, the current fourth wave is equivalent to a medium-severity flu season.
…..
The trip from novel pathogen to familiar one is not a day at the beach—but it means that Covid will become one of those subliminal risks (like dying of the flu) that humans manage best by mainly removing them from their minds.
We are witnessing the birth of what you might call the ‘biosecurity state’, a new world in which politicians and the scientists who advise them decide that suppressing disease is more important than the human freedoms we take for granted.
We have made huge progress in fighting Covid-19, with a 90 per cent drop in the rates of hospitalisation and death. The crisis, if not completely over, is by any reasonable measure now close to its end.
…..
We are witnessing the birth of what you might call the ‘biosecurity state’, a new world in which politicians and the scientists who advise them decide that suppressing disease is more important than the human freedoms we take for granted.
We have made huge progress in fighting Covid-19, with a 90 per cent drop in the rates of hospitalisation and death. The crisis, if not completely over, is by any reasonable measure now close to its end.
Sir Patrick envisages that scientists will advise governments when to ‘release’ citizens from restrictions, regardless of the vaccine success. The citizens don’t get a say.
What, then, are the supposed justifications for preventing us enjoying our ‘old’ freedoms? Foremost is the colourful claim that letting the virus circulate risks new mutations
It is increasingly clear, however, that even the current Covid variants of concern – from Brazil and South Africa, for example – are unlikely to defeat the vaccines, despite the many and repeated claims by mathematical modellers (who are not, I should point out, experts in genetics).
We would be better listening to California’s world-leading La Jolla Institute for Immunology, which recently concluded that new variants seem less dangerous than previously feared.
Britain is no longer a free country. See also here.
Randy Holcombe explores the why and how of vaccine passports. Here’s his conclusion:
There are many problems with the idea of COVID passports. First, because a vaccine is not required, they would compromise people’s liberty by pressuring them into getting one. Second, despite promises that such a system would not compromise individuals’ medical and other records, the necessity of linking the vaccine information with one’s individual identity always opens this risk. Third, if required by the government, this overreach would extend the power of the government to collect personal information and track individual behavior. As long as the vaccine is not mandatory (which is how it should be), nobody should be required to disclose whether they have had it.
Great Barrington Declaration co-author Sunetra Gupta debates Gabriel Scally on the question “Is eliminating Covid-19 worth it?” A slice from Prof. Gupta:
Those pursuing a safe public health goal must consider all the costs associated with their policy and, in the case of infectious disease, understand the natural history of the pathogen. Not all pathogens are the same; elimination is a realistic goal for measles, where vaccination confers lifelong immunity and is the only way of preventing deaths in childhood.
Covid-19 belongs to an entirely different category. Immunity is not lifelong and re-infection is common, even though subsequent reinfections rarely lead to disease. It would be foolish to expect vaccine-induced immunity to last longer than natural immunity—as many vaccinologists know from bitter experience. To achieve elimination through repeated vaccination and draconian restrictions would require investment on a scale that would dwarf anything we allocate to the many other pressing public health problems.
The good news is there is another solution. The vaccines have shown high efficacy against severe disease, and the indications are that this will hold for new variants. By using them to protect the vulnerable and letting natural immunity accumulate among those who are not especially at risk, we can avoid the unconscionable collateral damage caused by indefinite suppression, while also minimising Covid deaths.
Elimination is neither feasible nor necessary.
Here’s an instance of one of the more heartbreaking realities of the Covidocracy’s tyranny. (HT Phil Magness)
Three cheers for this brave pastor at a small church in Canada – a pastor who is spot-on in both style and substance. (HT Phil Magness). This is how everyone should treat agents of the biosecurity state:
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 179 of Richard Epstein’s magnificent 1995 book, Simple Rules for a Complex World:
An open market prevents any group from being shut off. Conversely, legislation allows any victorious coalition to push its opposition to the limit.
DBx: Or, as Steve Horwitz writes, “In Politics, Everyone has to Eat the Olives.“
April 4, 2021
Covidocractic Tyranny
On March 10th, 2021, visiting George Washington University professor Leana Wen, M.D. – who is also a medical analyst for CNN and a columnist for the Washington Post – told CNN’s Chris Cuomo the following:
But I think that there are many more people, millions of people who, for whatever reason, have concerns about the vaccine, who just don’t know what’s in it for them. And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-Pandemic life. And the window to do that is really narrowing.
I mean, you were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states are reopening. They are reopening at a 100 percent. And we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status. Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine?
So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden Administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, “If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are all these freedoms that you have,” because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway.
(A clip of Dr. Wen delivering her appalling argument to Bro. Cuomo is here.)
Two days earlier, on March 8th, 2021, Dr. Wen offered similar advice in her WaPo column:
As more states lift restrictions, the Biden administration has a narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination. It can suggest to states, for example, that businesses do not need capacity limits for fully vaccinated people, but if businesses are not checking vaccination status, they should still limit capacity indoors. Interstate and international travel should require pre-travel testing and post-travel quarantine, which would be waived for people with proof of vaccination. Yes, there’s a risk that those vaccinated could still be low-level carriers of the coronavirus. That risk is offset by the greater risk of waiting: At some point soon, everything will be fully reopened anyway, and there will be no carrot left to offer.
To have our best chance of achieving herd immunity and ending the pandemic once and for all, vaccines should be presented as the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. Time is running out for the CDC and the Biden administration to embrace this approach.
It’s come to this, my fellow Americans. A prominent “expert” – one who is a personality on a major international television network, a columnist at one of the country’s most prominent newspapers, and a professor (if apparently only now visiting) at a major U.S. university – recommends, with no evident hesitation or embarrassment or shame, that each of us Americans be compelled to purchase our freedom by getting a Covid vaccine. Freedom, in this woman’s view, is the “carrot” that will lure us little rabbits to submit obediently to vaccination.
Sickening.
Please do not mistake me for being a so-called “anti-vaxxer” (a term much misused and misapplied these days). Just as I don’t fear Covid, I don’t fear the Covid vaccine. A few days ago I got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine and at the end of this month I’ll get the second dose.
But now I’m feeling somewhat ashamed of myself. I agreed to get the vaccine not because I fear Covid. I sincerely don’t fear it for myself; and since at least late last April, I have never feared it. Given my age, slimness, and good health, I learned early on that, while of course there’s a small chance that I will be cast into oblivion by Covid, the risk that Covid poses to me is too small to rise to a cause of concern.
I agreed to get the vaccine only in order to be able to go about my life as normally as possible in these deranged times, including to be able to visit my son in New Hampshire. My son, although still only 23 years old, does fear Covid. He fears it for himself somewhat and, bless his heart, for me much more. He’s aware that my assessment of the risks posed by Covid differs greatly from his assessment.
Agreeing to get vaccinated in order to secure my son’s fret-free approval for me to visit him is not what I’m ashamed of. Instead, also factoring into my decision was the recognition that, once vaccinated, I’ll have an easier time flying, dining out, and otherwise avoiding the obstacles that I fear will be imposed by the Covidocracy. This part of my motivation to get vaccinated is what I’m now ashamed of – now that I’ve encountered Dr. Wen’s charming “carrot” analogy.
I’m ashamed of my chasing this carrot. I’m ashamed of behaving like one of the lab rats that people such as Dr. Wen supposes Americans to be. I’m angry that a fellow American thinks of liberty as something that each American possesses only by permission of the state, and only then if that American behaves as our betters demand. And I’m beyond-mystified that so few of my fellow libertarians and classical liberals are up in arms about Dr. Wen’s and many other similar proposals by pundits, professors, and politicians to have our liberties crushed by the Covidocracy. Remember: you are not free if you must first secure the permission of the state to act as you’d like.
Prof. Martin Kulldorff on Covid-19
Here’s a new interview with Great Barrington Declaration co-author Martin Kulldorff.
Some Non-Covid Links
Juliette Sellgren’s just-released podcast with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley is superb.
George Will writes brilliantly about taxation, cronyism, and the duplicity of the political class. A slice:
Now comes the pesky question of how to pay for the progressive agenda. Or, more precisely, how to pay the huge price of the minority portion of the agenda’s cost that will be financed by taxes rather than money creation or borrowing. Borrowing means future generations pay, but as has been said down the ages, what has posterity ever done for us?
The tedious fact is that there are only two ways to finance a government: present taxes and future taxes (counting the stealthy tax of inflation). Debt is taxation deferred.
Chris Edwards isn’t impressed with Biden’s infrastructure scheme.
Arnold Kling reflects epistemologically.
Steve Horwitz reminds us of an important truth about politics.
Christopher Barnard pleads for an end to the greenwashing of socialism.
David Hart makes available – free on-line – some of the works of the great Leveller John Lilburne.
Melissa Chen talks with Nick Gillespie about wokeness and radicalism.
Civil forfeiture laws allow police agencies to seize Americans’ homes, cars, and cash upon the suspicion that someone used the property in criminal activity—and without due process afforded to its owner. The courts file cases with odd names such as, “The United States Government v. a 2017 Ford Explorer.” The government targets the property—then forces owners to prove their innocence to get it back (and it’s a long and costly process to do so).
One need only do a little Google research to find endless appalling examples. In one Anaheim case, city and federal officials attempted to seize a $1.5 million commercial building after cops accused one of the owner’s tenants of illegally selling $37 worth of marijuana. Prosecutors ultimately dropped that case amid bad publicity, but California officials grab $100 million a year in such takings.
Here’s John Cochrane on defining inequality so that it can’t be ‘fixed.’
More Out-of-Context Covid Myth-Making
Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Editor:
Abdul El-Sayed’s case for tightening Covid-19 restrictions in Michigan is deeply flawed (“Here’s why Michigan’s covid spike is so scary,” April 2). First, he ignores powerful evidence – such as found in this piece by New York Times’s science writer John Tierney – that lockdowns not only have little to no effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but have health effects that are downright detrimental.
Second and worse, El-Sayed fails to compare the trend of Covid cases in Michigan – which had one of the harshest lockdowns and still has a mask mandate – to that of other states without mask mandates and that are otherwise at least as open as is Michigan now. Such comparisons undermine El-Sayed’s case.
Compared to March 1st, the 7-day average of daily new Covid cases in Michigan was, on April 1st, 333 percent higher. By contrast, Texas’s 7-day average of daily new Covid cases on April 1st, was, over the same time period, 52 percent lower. Readers will recall on March 2nd Texas governor Greg Abbott eliminated all statewide Covid restrictions.
Or look at Florida, a state (in)famous for its relaxed attitude toward Covid. Despite a slight upward trend over the past two weeks, it’s 7-day average of daily new Covid cases was, on April 1st, 2.4% lower than on March 1st. What about other states (in)famous for their relaxed attitudes toward Covid?
South Dakota did see a 20 percent rise in Covid cases over this time period, although the trend there over the past week has been downward. Mississippi enjoyed a fall in cases of 64 percent, and Oklahoma a fall of 55 percent.
Further, in all of these other states save South Dakota (which has seen a slight uptick) hospitalizations over the past month have fallen steadily, in contrast to the major uptick in Michigan’s hospitalizations. Finally, three of these five states – Florida, Texas, and Mississippi – have vaccination rates lower than Michigan’s vaccination rate.
Contrary to El-Sayed’s argument, failure to lockdown more tightly is not responsible for rising Covid cases.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Some Covid Links
Covid-19 tyranny is real. A slice:
It looks like something out of a tinpot tyranny. The church service was being livestreamed online. Halfway through, two cops appear and arrogantly walk to the sanctuary itself, the area around the altar. They then take over the lectern from the priest and issue a dire warning to the people who had gathered to commemorate the darkest day in the Christian faith – the trial and execution of Christ. ‘You need to go home’, an officer says. ‘Failure to comply with this direction to leave… could lead you to be fined £200 or, if you fail to give your details, to you being arrested.’
It feels chilling to hear such a bureaucratic threat being issued to people who are exercising their freedom of religion. There are so many disturbing things about this assault on a religious gathering. First, it is being reported that the church had taken the necessary measures to make itself Covid-secure. But even if it hadn’t, couldn’t the police have waited until the service was over before having a word with the priest, perhaps? Secondly, who grassed on these Catholics? Who phoned the police to tell them a group of people was marking the death of Christ? What kind of curtain-twitching, ratting-out country have we become?
Janet Daley asks: “How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty?” Here’s her conclusion:
Then suddenly the questions became, should families be allowed to gather together, and, is it legal to have a sexual relationship with someone outside your own household? There must be very few (perhaps not any) tyrannies in modern history which have dictated such intimate things – at least not that survived long enough to be recorded. That, of course, might be part of the answer. These measures were always presented as temporary. Maybe all those generations of democracy have produced sufficient trust in government for populations to believe their assurances.
But there is a darker possibility. The conceit of enlightenment and its sacred values of individual freedom which modern democracies now believe can never be vanquished, which even saw off the communist dictatorships, can collapse into compliant terror – without a shot being fired.
Jeffrey Tucker writes that disease is the latest excuse for segregation. A slice:
Staying separate as a slogan has gradually mutated into a whole philosophy of life, one with a pernicious history and deeply troubling implications for social life. The idea that we can separate in order to stay clean has found its way into some of the more grim policies of our history, including eugenics, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and much more.
The vaccine passport adds to the idea that we – the rich, the privileged, the medically certified as clean – can gather with each other, while excluding the unclean, the poor, the uncertified, the unvaccinated. If we do this, we can live better healthier lives. Keep people apart, they say, and the pathogens can’t get to us.
If you think this is a caricature or an exaggeration, consider the recent writings of a person whom I would argue is the nation’s most influential lockdowner, Donald J. McNeil, Jr. He was the New York Times reporter most responsible for ginning up disease panic back in late February 2020. He has an authoritative-sounding voice. He has journalistic experience but no medical training. Still he seems to know what he is talking about, so when he predicted 4-plus million deaths in the US from SARS-CoV-2, people got very scared.
The Times gave him the platform he needed. He has since been fired from the Times, not for his preposterously irresponsible “journalism” but for saying an inappropriate word while on a Times-sponsored student trip to Peru in 2019. Since then, he has started his own Medium account. I’m glad for that because he can thereby reveal all.
As it turns out, the Times was restraining him. I wish there were more polite terms but now we can discover the real truth: what he favors would wreck life as we know it.
Sean Collins reports from Texas. A slice:
Well, it appears the Neanderthals in Texas got it right, and Biden is the one whose thinking is caveman-like. Now, three weeks after Abbott’s order to lift the mask mandate went into effect, the Covid situation has improved in Texas. New cases are down, to their lowest level since June. Hospitalisations have fallen to their lowest level since autumn. Death rates have plummeted. Furthermore, the outlook for vaccinations in the state appears bright, with a record daily number of people receiving shots. Adults of all ages are now eligible for a vaccine jab, a faster pace than many other states.
Have Biden and the media apologised for slandering Texas? And have they learned that lifting mandates on mask-wearing and removing other restrictions does not lead to Covid-spreading? Of course not.
Instead, Biden cited an uptick in new cases nationally to bang on again about masks. ‘I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate’, he said earlier this week. ‘Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.’ Biden’s plea came on the same day that CDC director Rochelle Walensky warned of ‘impending doom’. Holding back tears, she said: ‘Right now, I am scared.’
Overwrought emotionalism from the head of the CDC is not helpful, to put it mildly. Nor is a president insisting on state-mandated mask-wearing. Biden’s message implied that the latest increase in cases was down to states like Texas that have loosened restrictions on activity, but that is not true. In fact, the national increase was driven mainly by New York, New Jersey and Michigan – states that have imposed the most onerous of restrictions.
(DBx: In case you’re thinking that Collins published his piece way back on April 1st, and I’m publishing this post on the morning of April 4th, perhaps what he says about Covid cases in Texas is no longer true. Surprise! According to none other than the New York Times, daily Covid case counts in Texas continue to fall. The seven-day-average daily count on April 3rd is 3,224, which is 204 cases fewer than was this count on April 2nd, 443 cases fewer than was this count on April 1st, and 453 cases fewer than was this count on March 31st. This April 3rd count is a mere 44 percent of the seven-day-average daily Covid case count [7,259] in Texas on March 2nd, the day Gov. Abbott is accused of revealing his Neanderthalness by lifting state-wide restrictions. Deaths and hospitalizations have also fallen significantly in Texas over the past month. Collins is also correct to note that trends opposite those in Texas are evident in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.)
Jordan Schachtel explains how “How COVID-19 became a disinformation operation wrapped in a virus.”
Three – yes, three! – cheers for Julia Hartley-Brewer.
Left-libertarians: “How dare you compare vaccine passports to the history of eugenics, segregation, and similar atrocities! That’s an outrageous and offensive hyperbole, and they are nothing alike!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell (1927): “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
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