Paul Jacob covers the big stories of the week, in the vlog version of the podcast:
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Michael Levitt
There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.
Professor Michael Levitt, as quoted in “Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential,” by Freddie Sayers, May 2, 2020. Levitt is Professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Levitt also said that “I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake.”
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Stanley Kubrick
Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.
Quoted by Christiane Kubrick, in “After Kubrick,” The Guardian (August 18, 2010). See also “The Shining — Kubrick’s Gold Story,” Part Two, by Rob Ager.
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Cure and Consequences
“As the nation enters a third month of economic devastation, the coronavirus is proving ruinous to state budgets,” the Associated Press reports, “forcing many governments to consider deep cuts to schools, universities, health care and other basic functions that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.”
Notice the breezy attribution to the pandemic of the devastation caused by governments’ reactions to the pandemic.
Official tallies have it that COVID-19 has killed over 80,000 Americans. And it will kill more. But state government revenue is nose-diving “because government-ordered lockdowns have wiped out much of the economy and caused tax collections to evaporate.”
Why make much of this fine distinction between the disease and the response?
Because it is easier to control our response than it is a disease.
The people we elect are supposed to understand such things.
But, do they?
The fact that this is a political as opposed to medical predicament is clear: “Now state finances are in peril regardless of the actual number of infections.”
And note: a few states aren’t going to experience the problem nearly so badly: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas. Why? These states have done pretty much what Sweden has done: avoided lockdown orders and treated the disease like a health problem and not a political opportunity to flex their “leader” complexes.
No matter how we reacted, the pandemic was going to be devastating. But generally cures shouldn’t be worse than the disease, and we should wonder whether our politicians’ lack of understanding here is indicative of a co-morbidity … of the “body politic.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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James Mill
It never ought to be forgotten, that, in every country, there is ‘a Few,’ and there is ‘a Many’; that in all countries in which the government is not very good, the interest of ‘the Few’ prevails over the interest of ‘the Many,’ and is promoted at their expence. ‘The Few’ is the part that governs; ‘the Many’ the part that is governed.
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Union, disunion
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State.
Nine years later, to the day, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s independence and neutrality were affirmed in the Second Treaty of London.