The Confusion of Liberty and License, Part 2

Fake libertarianism is almost as common on the political left as it is on the right. Consider Christian Parenti's long review of Covid policy: "How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy," published by the Grayzone Project last year.

We should note right at the start that Parenti has previously authored a critical book on the U.S. prison industry called "Lockdown America," so he is in a good position to know the difference between real and imaginary repression, which he unfortunately fails to keep distinct in his article.

What grabs one's attention from the start is Parenti's propagandistic terminology. He refers to PUNITIVE vaccine mandates. Why punitive? By definition a mandate means there will be consequences for failing to adhere to it. So is Parenti opposed to all mandates? He doesn't say.

He criticizes INVASIVE vaccine passports. What makes them invasive? Is it invasive to require we show a driver's license in order to legally operate a car? Parenti doesn't give an example of what he would consider a non-invasive passport.

He refers to SOCIALLY DESTRUCTIVE lockdowns. Though less important than other measures (contact tracing, N95 masking) restricting human movement (i.e., "lockdown") is a legitimate pandemic response measure. The most destructive aspect of "lockdowns" in the U.S., was the failure to offer replacement income, as other developed countries routinely did. Parenti makes no mention of this, in preference for pretending that Covid 19 is no big deal. 

Elsewhere Parenti condemns UNSCIENTIFIC and OPPRESSIVE lockdowns. But there was nothing unscientific about the idea that restricting human movement to flatten the curve of cases would help keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Nor was there anything inherently oppressive about trying to lock down until an infection wave subsided. Again, the objectionable part was the lack of replacement income, which was unjust, and guaranteed that lockdowns wouldn't be adhered to.

Parenti calls out RADICALLY UNACCOUNTABLE CENSORSHIP by large media and technology corporations. As opposed to what? Moderately accountable censorship? He gives the impression of trying to bolster a weak argument with meaningless adjectives.

His claim that the "lockdowns" and mandates constituted "unprecedented levels of repression" is frankly absurd.  Cell phone data show that lockdowns never really occurred in the U.S., and no legal consequences were imposed for this failure to obey. Repression consists of beatings, incarceration, torture, murder, and the like. It's laughable to include Covid policy on that list, especially the weak version practiced in the U.S.

Parenti smears dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky, claiming that Chomsky advocated letting the unvaccinated go hungry, when in fact Chomsky stated the opposite: that if they ran out of resources while isolating themselves, then the state would have to step in and help them. Note that Chomsky claimed that they should be helped even though they were committed to harming others (by remaining unvaccinated and continuing to publicly circulate).

Parenti implicitly assumes that unvaccinated people have no obligation to help slow the spread of Covid 19 so as not to overwhelm nurses and doctors (workers!) and crash the public health system, preventing everyone from getting health care for whatever ailment. What could possibly justify such a unique entitlement?

Only on censorship does Parenti offer a reasonable take. Censorship is wrong in principle and the state obviously has a large enough megaphone to be heard above the anti-vaxxer din, not to mention that it controls public education, which in a democracy should mean that the general population already knows how to separate propaganda from fact. But this quite obviously is not the case, as many people exercise their freedom irrationally by promoting effectively pro-virus viewpoints.

Parenti refers to a Covid consensus in Cambridge, Brooklyn, Bethesda, and Berkeley as though these were immunological research centers responsible for our understanding of Covid. But they are not. However objectionable liberal attitudes may be in these cities, it is scientists around the world who are responsible for our knowledge of Covid, not affluent liberal ideologues.

Parenti downplays masking while deploring the plight of delivery workers whose health and even survival was put at risk by the LACK of a sound mask policy. N95 masks properly fitted work. They should have been stockpiled in the hundreds of millions long before Covid appeared on the scene. But they weren't, because "just in time" production refuses to maintain an inventory that does not contribute to short-term profit. Parenti omits mention of this important point.

Parenti says we "should be encouraging workers to unite and fight the bosses for better conditions," but arbitrarily opposes this to requiring masking, vaccines, and physical distancing," as though Covid posed no risk to working people. Has he not heard of Amazon union organizer Christian Small? Small successfully organized a union in the most hostile environment precisely because he objected to Amazon's not protecting workers against Covid while management protected itself.

Parenti claims that "Big Pharma has thoroughly captured our public health agencies." Not true. Far more Big Pharma applications are rejected than accepted by the FDA. Rejections carry with them substantial economic costs that Big Pharma would obviously prefer to avoid. So if Big Pharma is in full control, why doesn't it have a 100% approval rate on its applications?

Parenti claims Anthony Fauci has a "dangerous conflict of interest" in that he is allowed to receive royalties for patents on top of his salary. But this is a bad example. Fauci gets roughly $18,000 a year  in patent royalties, while his government salary was $434,312 in 2020. It's difficult to see how this is evidence of corruption.

Parenti claims public health pronouncements have been contradictory, but the examples he offers don't bear that out. Do not wear masks, do wear masks. The first statement was made at the start of the pandemic, when personal protective equipment was in extremely short supply for doctors and nurses and Fauci wanted the few masks that existed to go to them. (The focus of Parenti's critique should have been on the decades of neo-liberal cutting of public health budgets prior to the pandemic, which left pandemic preparedness in such a dismal state). Do wear masks was said later, when the contagion had gathered momentum. In any event, Parenti entirely misses the main point, which is that the quality of masks is what counts, not whether or not they should be worn. Obviously, they should be. Properly fitted N95s widely worn would have saved countless lives.

The vaccines stop the disease, no the vaccines merely blunt its lethal edge. Scientists might quibble about Parenti's wording here, but that aside, the first message came out as the data on Delta was still coming in, while the second message was for an era of increasing contagiousness. But with all variants the vaccines have reduced transmissibility vis-a-vis remaining unvaccinated. Parenti makes no mention of this.

Parenti chides Noam Chomsky for allegedly taking at face value Covid data provided by "Big Pharma," but does not counter Chomsky's observation that an international network of scientists replicating each others' published results is the actual source of Covid data, not a faceless cabal of shills and sellouts dedicated to corrupt enrichment.

Parenti claims that "the young have very little to fear from this disease, while the old face very real risks." He seems not to have considered the fact that the young are related to the old, and killing Mom or Dad or Grandpa with Covid while one's own case remains asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic is very definitely something to fear. Furthermore, if only the old have anything to fear, then why has life expectancy fallen by almost three years in the United States over the past two years? If U.S. life expectancy is 78 years (Parenti's figure), then Covid deaths of the very old cannot account for a decline in life expectancy. In order for there to have been such a decline many middle aged and younger people also had to have died of Covid. (See Roni Caryn Rabin, "U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Again in 'Historic' Setback," New York Times, August 31, 2022)

Parenti claims that "lockdowns also kill" and "have wreaked massive destruction," specifically that delayed medical care due to over-focus on Covid produced an increase in non-Covid deaths. Intuitively this seems reasonable, and fortunately we have solid data derived from investigating the possibility. According to Israeli statistician/economist Ariel Karlinsky, co-author of an international study of Covid and excess deaths, the graph of reported Covid deaths in the U.S. is almost identical to the graph of excess deaths for 2020 and 2021, meaning that virtually all excess deaths in this period were Covid deaths, not deaths caused by lockdown or some other factor. Karlinsky also found no evidence that Covid deaths were misclassified deaths from other causes, as Parenti suggests may have been the case. Karlinski found evidence of under-reporting Covid deaths (Russia, Egypt, Byelorussia etc.), but not over-reporting. (See Karlinsky interviewed by Professor Greg Tucker-Kellog on Biotech and Bioinformatics with Professor Greg, You Tube, May 14, 2022)

Parenti defends the fatalistic Great Barrington Declaration, which called for isolating the elderly while letting everyone else go about their business as though there were no pandemic, letting two thirds to three quarters of the population quickly get infected, which inevitably would have produced much higher hospitalizations, deaths, and long Covid cases, even at a 1% death rate.

This would have been justified, Parenti says, on grounds of cancer, heart attack, and stroke prevention, since overreaction to Covid prevented timely screenings and early medical interventions that in non pandemic times are routinely carried out. But, as already noted, the expected increase in deaths from such causes was not confirmed by the study of excess deaths, the gold standard of mortality data. Furthermore, Parenti nowhere indicates how swamped hospitals could have simultaneously handled Covid surges and all of its other normal obligations as though no pandemic were occurring.

Lost in all of Parenti's claims about what should have been is any recognition of the fact that when huge numbers of people are falling sick at the same time, the health care system cannot function properly, society cannot function properly, and people inevitably die who ordinarily might live. In other words, it is absolutely pointless to demand a return to normality in the midst of highly abnormal circumstances.

Parenti repeats the anti-vaxxer talking point that the Covid vaccines are "leaky," "non-sterilizing" vaccines, finding fault that once injected in the bloodstream they don't miraculously prevent virus from lodging in one's nose. But how could any vaccine do that? Polio vaccines don't make transmission impossible either, but they do prevent paralysis, a rather important achievement one would think. But no.  Parenti only grudgingly concedes that Covid vaccines "lower the probability of hospitalization and death," (by 90%, a stat Parenti chooses to leave unmentioned). (See "French study of over 22m people find vaccines cut severe Covid risk by 90%," The Guardian, October 11, 2021)

Instead, he worries about things like vaccine disruption of menstrual cycles (which has been demonstrated to be real, but slight), linking to anecdotal claims of such disruption including the passing of "golf ball" size blood clots. Seriously?

Parenti criticizes the granting of immune liability to pharmaceutical companies, but fails to provide the reason for doing so. Contrary to much mythology, Big Pharma does not like to produce vaccines, as pandemics last only a few years and lawsuits alleging vaccine harm are guaranteed, whether valid or not. In a scientifically illiterate society like the U.S. this means being bogged down in expensive litigation for years, with scientifically illiterate lawyers convincing scientifically illiterate juries to award gargantuan judgments whether or not a complainant's injuries actually had anything to do with vaccines. Big Pharma prefers the more stable and profitable path of dedicating itself to producing medications that people will need more or less permanently. Who in their position wouldn't?

Parenti suggests that raw data entered into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is somehow a useful indication of vaccine injuries, though anyone can report a false or imaginary injury into the system, and many anti-vaxxers do. Until the claims are investigated - a process that often lasts years - no valid conclusions can be drawn even about an individual report, much less about thousands. Parenti claims that "despite its limits, (VAERS) sends signals that are deserving of further investigation," without noting that that is exactly what they receive.  

Parenti erroneously suggests a parallel between long Covid and long term adverse effects from the vaccines. But long Covid is a reality, whereas adverse effects from (non-live) virus in a vaccine occur in the short term or not at all. The short term effects have been noted, and are far less serious than the effects from catching the virus unvaccinated.

He also erroneously suggests a parallel between "bodily autonomy" in abortion rights with the right to refuse a vaccine. But the two cases are dramatically different. A woman's decision to have an abortion will not affect anyone else's bodily health. The decision to remain unvaccinated and continue circulating in public maximizes the infection rate, affecting countless others.

Parenti laments "the public health response to Covid and the left's inability to offer a critique of it," but in fact the Left has offered such a critique, just not the "populist" critique favored by Parenti. (See Legalienate blog post for August 3, 2022 "Left Economists on Covid Policy"). The crucial elements of a proper policy response are an effective infrastructure of test-and-trace, firmly enforced physical distancing, and high quality masking in public (N95s). And, of course, vaccines. 

But dogmatic insistence on an illusory "personal liberty" to do whatever one likes heedless of the consequences for others is simply not part of the formula.