Tag: Covid 19

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general freedom local leaders

Cancel Freedom?

Covid, lockdown, Christmas

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s message “couldn’t be simpler,” he offered last week: “It’s time to cancel everything.”

Gee whiz, that is simple.

The mayor’s order “prohibits public and private gatherings of people from more than one household and states that all businesses in the city that require people to work on location must stop operations. Walking, driving, travel on public transport, bikes, motorcycles and scooters are prohibited, other than for those undertaking essential activities,” Fortune reports. 

Walking alone; riding a bike — really?* 

Thankfully, folks are still permitted to play golf, tennis and pickleball. But … unless the course or the court is in your back yard, wouldn’t it remain illegal to travel there? Or to play with someone not living with you already?

Governor Gavin Newsom made similar demands, only over even more folks — and with less credibility — after flouting his own previous mandates. His regional order affected “some 33 million Californians, representing 84% of the state’s population,” to be locked down in their homes until after Christmas.

Restaurant owners are going to court to challenge the constitutionality of the governor’s lockdown. “We can’t close our businesses,” restaurant owner Angela Marsden told Fox news’ Neil Cavuto. “We need to stay open to survive this.”

And what about “following ‘the science’”? 

“For the second time in five days,” explained SFGATE​.com, “California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not provide evidence that businesses ordered to close during the state’s new stay-​at-​home order are actively contributing to the spread of the coronavirus.”

Lacking legal authority and defying science provide more than enough reason for outright defiance. “At least seven counties say they won’t enforce the mandates,” NBC Nightly News informed. “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department will not be blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle against Riverside County residents,” announced Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Defying tyranny is simple, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* As I noted months ago, the scientific data correlate Vitamin D deficiency with serious and deadly cases of COVID-​19. Therefore, telling people to stay inside, thereby avoiding sunshine, a major source of the vitamin, is not good advice. As an order with threats of enforcement, it is something even worse.

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general freedom too much government

A Tyrant’s License

Covid, virus, epidemic, US Flag, lockdown

The “lockdowns” are not how a free society would handle a contagion.

Free people might advisedly wear masks and physically distance themselves from others when they are especially vulnerable to an airborne disease, or they themselves show some symptoms.*

But free people take risks, too, and accept responsibility for risks taken. And they go about trying to improve their lives generally, in society.

In society, via commerce. 

Furthermore, free people would also change their behavior based on good information freely discussed.

What they would not do is engage in bullying to suppress information, cheer on institutional debate suppression, or mandate abridgments to other’s liberties on the basis of personal or sectarian opinion.

That is, they would not do what we do now.

And, perhaps most importantly, free people would utterly condemn leaders who lied to them, or who took special privileges by flouting their own mandates, enforced on the rest of us.

We’ve sure seen a lot of this latter.

The latest case is that of Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler, who has been caught in one of those grand hypocrisies that show the panic to be mostly political opportunism: he had recorded his early November message to “stay home if you can” after attending his daughter’s wedding with 20 guests and then taking a getaway trip with a party of eight.

“This is not the time to relax,” he warned, however. “We may have to close things down if we’re not careful.”

Recorded in Mexico, I guess that “social distance” allowed him the gumption to deliver a threat: if you don’t self-​quarantine, I will quarantine everybody!

Except, of course, himself.

Freedom is not just something for our rulers. Liberty with an exception clause is spelled “L‑I-​C-​E-​N-​S‑E.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* By wearing masks and gloves these two groups would signal to others to give them some distance. Not virtue-​signaling, but well-​mannered responsibility signals. The healthy people, though, would take the risks of the disease because, after all, we face a million risks every day, from automobile injury to cancer.

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general freedom national politics & policies

Lockdown Mania, Winter Phase

lockdown, America, USA, Master locks

New Mexico, along with many other states, is going into lockdown. 

“The rate of spread and the emergency within our state hospitals are clear indicators that we cannot sustain the current situation without significant interventions to modify individual behavior,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is quoted in her office’s press release. 

“The public health data make clear,” the governor asserts, that “more aggressive restrictions are not only warranted but essential if we are to prevent mass casualties. Without the compliance and cooperation of New Mexicans statewide, we do not need to imagine the bleak public health calamity we will face — the images from El Paso the last few weeks, from New York City earlier this year, and from Europe at the outset of the pandemic will be our fate in New Mexico.”

The report from The Hill did not interrogate the claims, just repeated the planned massive intervention and accepted the statements as fact.

Contrary to all this assertion, the evidence that lockdowns help remains worse than murky. European states that locked down tightly early in the year are experiencing this second or third “wave” worse than those that did not go full-​on “mitigation.” The classic case is Sweden, which infamously resisted lockdown mania. Using the best test of success, “excess mortality,” Sweden is doing remarkably well. 

Sweden’s a problem for lockdowners, who avoid fair comparisons and … are devoted to spin. On the same day, Business Insider and Reuters covered the same story, with these headlines:

Sweden has admitted its coronavirus immunity predictions were wrong as cases soar across the country.

Second wave, same strategy: Swedish COVID-​19 czar defiant despite surge.

Meanwhile, a controlled study of lockdown mitigations using obedient Marines found: quarantines don’t control the spread of the disease.

Nevertheless, politicians seem hellbent on lockdowns, something they know how to do … whether it helps or not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

For a New Normalcy

Covid, virus, epidemic, test, government

Science writer Ronald Bailey argues that the best path to “a New Normal” can be found by rolling out home COVID-​19 tests. But notes they are illegal.

Bailey’s November piece in Reason magazine informs us that “biotech startup E25Bio, diagnostics maker OraSure, and the 3M Co., are working on and could quickly deploy rapid at-​home COVID-​19 diagnostic tests.”

These tests work, he says, “by detecting, within minutes, the presence of coronavirus proteins using specific antibodies embedded on a paper test strip coated with nasal swab samples or saliva. Somewhat like at-​home pregnancy tests, the antigen tests change color or reveal lines if COVID-​19 proteins are recognized.”

So why not go ahead with these antigen tests? Well, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t allow it. Bailey quotes a Harvard epidemiologist: “Until the regulatory landscape changes, those companies have no reason to bring a product to market.”

Regulatory blocking and kludge are just one reason this is not possible.

But if you — or for that matter, Mr. Bailey — think that this problem can just be solved with a Trumpian executive order or a quick legislative fix, there are reasons for doubt.

Our whole system is government-​rigged. And, as Ludwig von Mises made clear in Bureaucracy, clunky slowness is not just a bug of such systems. It’s the feature. 

And it’s a bad feature. 

It’s why many of us oppose regulation by bureaucracy and prefer a rule of law and competition within markets to supply the regulation that businesses need.

Which suggests to me that the best way back to normalcy is not through a quick government fix but by nixing government fixes more broadly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Marco Verch

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The Really Slow Fast COVID-​19 Test

virus, Covid, mask, testing

A rapid test for COVID-​19 that you could perform in homes, workplaces, and classrooms would be less accurate than the best slower tests. But even somewhat accurate fast tests would help many to cope with the disease more effectively.

If necessary, asymptomatic persons who test positive could be retested by another method while staying isolated. If test-​takers have already exhibited COVID-​like symptoms (but also bad-​cold-​like symptoms), a quick positive result means that they could more quickly start appropriate treatment.

An easy, rapid test would be a godsend in situations where it is advisable for people to be retested continually.

In late August, Abbott Labs announced that production of a credit-​card-​sized, “$5, 15-​minute, easy-​to-​use” test is being increased “to 50 million tests a month.” The U.S. has approved its mass-​scale use.

Hooray! Another positive development in efforts to cope with a scourge that is not the Black Death but not just-​the-​flu either.

Not so fast. 

Great as far as it goes, but as FEE writer James Anthony notes, this is only one approval of one test produced by one company. And the test can be performed only at “point-​of-​care” sites able to flourish special regulatory approval. So not at every workplace, classroom, or home. 

Yet, according to Abbott, the test delivers results “in just 15 minutes with no instrumentation.” 

Sounds like mere lay persons like you and me would have to . . . follow instructions. 

Like governments should follow ours … and get out of the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies

A Glossary for Our Times

Trump Derangement Syndrome, TDS, Covid 19, infection, virus, meme

Reminder: SARS-​CoV‑2 is the name of the virus that is said to cause COVID-19.

Scientists and doctors are still learning about the novel virus and the new disease. Much of the information is uncertain, in part because it has become politicized, making it hard to navigate both medical and political subjects.

Making sense of the data or the arguments is more difficult because people confuse the terminology. The virus is not the disease, the disease is not the virus, though by metonymy, we do swap terms. Don’t let a mere figure of speech fool you.

As awful as COVID-​19 is, in America, more citizens are affected negatively by the virus popularly known as TDS. 

Perhaps we should call it TDS-​2016, since the three letters stand for “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Though the mind-​virus (meme) was rampant from the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, the illness is not the meme itself. The illness, or behavioral syndrome, is how host brains process the meme. And it did not really set in as a disease until Trump got the Republican nomination. That’s when Democrats stopped laughing so hard and began to take Trump seriously.

And drive themselves crazy.

As with COVID-​19, the worst cases depend upon co-​morbidities. In TDS-2016’s case, co-​morbidities include a sense of entitlement (that your side must always win); a denial of culpability in ramping up political polarization (in such things as the corruption-​challenged candidacy of Hillary Clinton); and in flirting with other memes (such as “democratic socialism” and “wokism”).

As we approach Election Day 2020, TDS-​2016 will only grow. The meme itself has proven resilient. We appear not to have reached herd immunity yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Definitions:

meme n. 1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. 2. a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

metonymy n. a figure of speech featuring the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing.

herd immunity n. a key concept in epidemiology where the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease within a population that results when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals become immune to the disease, through exposure by infection or vaccination: the level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity varies by disease but ranges from 83 to 94 percent. [Discussions of SARS-​CoV‑2 and COVID-​19 that do not mention herd immunity can only have limited value.] 

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