Tag: coronavirus

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

It’s Over But It Isn’t

Covid, emergency, Dr. Fauci

Is the pandemic over?

On March 29, House Joint Resolution 7 passed with a 68 – 23 margin in the Senate: 47 Republicans and 21 Democrats voting Yea. Earlier this week, Joe Biden signed it into law.

But, as The Epoch Times explains, that resolution “states that the pandemic national emergency ‘is hereby terminated,’” but “does not impact the public health emergency, which is still scheduled to terminate on May 11.” 

But that lag — why terminate one (“national”) emergency footing and leave the other (“public health”) to linger for another month?

It’s worse than that, though. Back in September, President Biden told 60 Minutes that the pandemic was over, noting then that “no one’s wearing masks; everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”

The administration offers bureaucratic rationales for the lagtime. But its impact on you and me is said to be zero: “To be clear, [the] continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-​19,” explains a January letter from the Biden administration to Congress.

Repeat that: the continuation of the emergency declarations does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct. Which should have been true from the beginning, for the Constitution does not provide any powers to the general government over individuals on these matters.

Does public health really need another month of crisis … after acknowledging there isn’t a crisis anymore?

At least, there is a May 11th at the end of the tunnel.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Sue the Governors!

Trevor Burfitt

Expect a tsunami of lawsuits against state and local governments. The lockdowns, mask mandates, and other putative ‘mitigation efforts’ to combat the spread of SARS-​CoV‑2 and COVID-​19 demand a deluge.

The latest is Burfitt v. Newsom, filed in Kern County’s Superior Court of the State of California.

“The legal complaint,” explains Matthew Vadum in The Epoch Times, “seeks declaratory and injunctive relief for the constitutional violations it alleges have been committed by [Governor Gavin] Newsom and his officials, stating that the ‘lockdown was originally supposed to be only a temporary emergency measure. However, nearly seven months later it appears that, absent judicial intervention, there will never be a “reopening” to normal, pre-​COVID activity, despite incontestable facts — including California’s own data … showing that the lockdown is no longer warranted and is causing far more harm than good.’”

The plaintiff is Father Trevor Burfitt, who simply seeks to carry on the established rites of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Though churchgoers and other observant religious people are increasingly defiant, politicians are generally following New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lead. Cuomo says* his edicts apply regardless of religious affiliation: “the community must agree to the rules. If you do not agree to enforce the rules, then we will close the institutions down.”

But Cuomo’s “must” is actually iffy:

  1. The states of emergency do not pass the smell test, as the medical infrastructure the lockdowns initially were touted to defend are actually under scant stress.
  2. The basic right at issue here is beyond ecumenical, it is the freedom to peaceably assemble, which too many governors have attacked, though
  3. they have indeed been hardest on religious gatherings, despite being lenient with big box retailers, liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries and completely tolerant of ‘mostly peaceful protests.’

The biggest If, though, is what would happen were the litigation to fail. 

Citizen political action must join the litigation wave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Mark Tapscott quotes Cuomo’s bracing statement in The Epoch Times, “Silicon Valley Pastor Fights $220,000 in Fines by California Officials for Holding Church Services.”

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folly general freedom responsibility

Bath Tub Fails

Coronavirus, Covid, panic, risk

“Barely one in 1,000 Britons has died from coronavirus,” states Tim Harford, in U.K.’s Daily Mail, “and yet the economy is in cardiac arrest, Government debt has run into hundreds of billions and many parents are terrified of sending their children to school.”

Trying to put the pandemic in context with actual numbers, to assess realistic risk, Harford goes on to argue that “given the current low risk of infection, combined with the low risk from the disease, a 30-​year-​old is far more at risk from riding a motorbike, going skiing or horse-​riding — let alone sky-​diving, rock-​climbing or scuba-​diving — than from the virus.”

He makes the startling claim that a trek outside, with possible SARS-​CoV‑2 exposure, “is not much more serious than taking regular baths over a year.”

Harford makes many attempts not to minimize the danger, and assuage Brits’ past and present concerns, thus acknowledging that they weren’t exactly crazy, but in the end the situation is like this: “The prospect of bathtime tragedies has never shut the country down.”

People die of risky activities every day, and not just on slippery porcelain: we risk our lives on asphalt, staircases, and in the air. Yet we go on, plunging ahead.

Brave people, we?

Not now. The worldwide government response has been, with a few notable exceptions — Sweden and South Dakota, to name the two most famous for bucking panic and lockdowns and mask-​wearing mandates — a pitch to people’s fears.

Maybe in Britain thought leaders and statesmen have praised valor and fortitude as well as caution and individual responsibility. But in America, calls to courage have been few and far between.

Hey: I just noticed something, “panic” is contained within the word “pandemic”!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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international affairs national politics & policies scandal

WHO Don’t You Love?

WHO, World Health Organization, Coronavirus, Covid,

“It leaves Americans sick,” tweeted Sen. Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, “and America alone.”

Feeling lonely? 

The Trump administration has officially informed both the United Nations and Congress that the U.S. will withdraw from the World Health Organization effective July 6, 2021. 

“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” the president asserted, and covered up critical information about COVID-​19, thereby enabling a very deadly worldwide pandemic.

And did so with the WHO’s help, he argues.

“Elements of Trump’s critique have resonated well beyond the White House,” notes the virulently anti-​Trump Washington Post. “Foreign governments and current WHO advisers have questioned why the WHO amplified false Chinese claims in the early days of the outbreak and repeatedly praised Beijing as the virus spread.”

Back in April, President Trump demanded the WHO agree to “substantive improvements” within 30 days. “We will be terminating our relationship,” Trump announced a month later, “and directing those funds” to other global health efforts. This week, it was made official.

Funds? The U.S. is the largest donor nation, providing 15 percent of the WHO budget — more than $400 million in 2019. The BBC reports, “The withdrawal will call into question the WHO’s financial viability.”

Of course, many Democrats, global health experts, and editorial pages attacked the move as “dangerous,” “likely to cost lives” and lead to a loss of U.S. “influence.”*

Influence? 

Those running the United Nations or its agencies cannot now ignore U.S. complaints. 

The threat of funding cuts? 

No longer are they mere bluster only for show.

Mr. Trump may feel lonesome … what other U.S. president would buck** the establishment to stop our tax dollars from flowing to an unaccountable U.N. agency? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “On my first day as President,” Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden pledged on Twitter, “I will rejoin the WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage.”

** Some have disputed the president’s constitutional authority to unilaterally withdraw from the WHO. “[T]he U.S. joined the WHO via a joint resolution rather than through the mechanism set out in the Constitution’s Treaty Clause, it is what is sometimes termed an ex post congressional-​executive agreement,” explains University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Jean Galbraith. “Presidents have withdrawn the U.S. from such agreements on a few prior occasions.”

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Bolsonaro’s Little Flu

CNN, Covid, Coronavirus, Bolsonaro,

“I know that nobody can recover from dying, but the economy not working leads to other causes of death and suicide,” said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro regarding his reopening of his country’s economy. “We have suffered very harsh criticism in this regard, but today it shows that we are right. The fact that I am infected shows that I am a human being like any other.”

Some of that strikes this reader as not well put, but there are two important points: shutting down commerce does lead to horrendous consequences, especially for the poor, and … President Bolsonaro — who is often characterized as a Brazilian Trump-​like figure — has been infected with SARS-​CoV‑2 and has COVID-​19, if in mild form.

He has taken hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, the much-​disputed treatment. 

The news report from CNN mentions his diagnosis and immediately follows it up with “after months of downplaying the virus.”

Now, downplaying threats is one way of handling them, for psychological reasons: sometimes the worst thing to fear is, as FDR said, “fear itself.” In the beginning, Bolsonaro called the virus a “little flu.”

“More than 65,000 people have now died of the virus in Brazil, according to figures released by the country’s health ministry on Monday,” CNN explains. “So far, 1,623,284 cases have been confirmed.”

That’s a 4 percent lethality rate — but that rests upon an under-​tested population, and CNN admits that “some local experts say the real number of people infected could be 12 to 16 times higher.”

Like so many major news reports, CNN does not describe the curve of coronavirus deaths, just says they’re up.

Apparently, good reporting has a high lethality rate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Rates that Matter

fear, Covid, Coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, propaganda,

Millions more Americans have been infected with SARS-​CoV‑2 than are considered “confirmed cases,”* at rates ranging from 6/​1 (Connecticut, early May) to 24/​1 (Missouri, late April), making the fatality rate of COVID-​19 much lower than feared.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust our news sources to be forthright about this.

The “death count” had been the pandemic’s repeated headline for months, Dr. Ron Paul noted yesterday, “all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about ‘cases’ and has always been all about ‘cases.’ Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant.”

There’s a reason for this re-​focus. Since peaking in April, deaths, you see, “had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.”

And the case number increases do look ominous, despite being almost innocuous: “This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more ‘cases’ you discover.”

And that is not the only change of spin regarding the pandemic, as Jeffrey Tucker dramatized on Twitter:

“Flatten the curve!”
“What does that do?”
“Pushes infections to the future”
3 months later
“There are new infections!”
“What should we do?”
“Flatten the curve!”

At Mr. Tucker’s stomping grounds, the American Institute for Economic Research, Gregory van Kipnis wrote last month that the “most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-​19 (COVID-​19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death.”

We have something to fear from the virus and its attack upon the respiratory system, but we have more to fear from fear itself.

That staple of propagandistic media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  A confirmed case is of a patient who has seen a doctor for symptoms of the disease and has tested positive with the diagnosis seconded and logged by scientists associated with a national health agency.

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