Tag: pandemic

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general freedom The Draft

Why Not Ask for Help?

pandemic, shut down, epidemic, freedom, voluntary, covid,

“When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety,” Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, quoted an employee of Britain’s National Health Service. 

Horton agrees. It’s “a national scandal.”

But now things are looking up.

“[T]he British government asked people to help the National Health Service,” reports The Washington Post, “it called for a ‘volunteer army.’”

“The NHS is ‘rallying the troops’ for the war on coronavirus,” reads the NHS webpage, “with volunteers being called up to help vulnerable people stay safe and well at home.”

The results? 

“Within four days, 750,000 people had signed up,” The Post quantified, “three times the original target and four times the size of the British armed forces.” 

The newspaper story recounts several endearing tales of people inspired to serve their fellow Brits. And now the website’s sign-​up page notes recruiting has been paused — to process the applications.

That’s certainly not the tack taken by New York’s Bill de Blasio. “Mayor de Blasio today called on the federal government to institute an essential draft of all private medical personnel to help in the fight against COVID-​19,” informed the city’s website.

Sadly, the mayor wasn’t alone. At Foreign Policy, University of Massachusetts professor Charli Carpenter asked, “But why isn’t compulsory service on the menu of policy options right now?”

Why would a politician and a professor demand to conscript citizens of a free Republic? 

Without ever asking for volunteers. 

Meanwhile, ABC News notes that “[m]ore than 9,000 retired soldiers have responded to the U.S. Army’s call for retired medical personnel to assist with the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” and others are rushing to help. 

As free people are known to do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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pandemic, shut down, epidemic, freedom, voluntary, covid,

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ideological culture

The Great Divide

Virus, corona virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarianism,

The current pandemic panic and crisis, Brian Doherty noted in Reason, “is a harshly vivid example of Americans’ inability to understand, fruitfully communicate with, or show a hint of respect for those seen to be on other side of an ideological line.”

Mr. Doherty, who profiled me in his book Radicals for Capitalism, calls the two major positions “Openers” versus “Closers.” 

They do not trust each other, and their respective policy prescriptions — opening up society to normal commerce versus keeping it closed, under lockdown — are poles apart. 

Doherty doesn’t mention how we treat experts. Virologists, medical doctors and epidemiologists also form ranks on both sides, and these experts sure seem to be talking past each other, too.

Which seems neither professional nor scientific.

Doherty concludes by asserting that, even after obtaining answers to questions regarding “the disease’s spread, extent, and damage” or coming to an eventual conclusion regarding “the long term damage to life and prosperity the economic shutdown is causing,” we must admit that “human beings of goodwill and intelligence might come to a different value judgment about what policy is best overall.”

Sure. But, looking over the divide as he presents it, I am afraid I see one side — the Openers — concerned about a broad number of possible disasters (economic dislocation and even mass starvation in addition to illness and death) while the other — the Closers — obsessing about fighting a disease about which there remains limited knowledge and little agreement.

The Openers seem a whole lot more open to diverse considerations.

Including the possibility that freedom might result in a better collective response than orders issued by mayors and governors and the president. 

Which strikes me as more like Common Sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Virus, corona virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarianism,

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First Amendment rights media and media people

Who’s Banned What?

Facebook, censorship, protests, corona virus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

Has dissent about pandemic policy been outlawed? 

I mean, “for the duration”?

Well, no. 

The Internet displays every possible view of policy and epidemiology, expressed with every possible degree of temperateness or intemperateness.

Yet we are indeed seeing signs of indifference to freedom of speech even when that speech cannot entail breathing a coronavirus on anybody.

According to CNN, Facebook told the network: “Anti-​quarantine protests being organized through Facebook in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska are being removed from the platform on the instruction of governments in those three states because it violates stay-​at-​home orders.”

Online posts “violate stay-​at-​home orders”? 

Who knew? 

Obviously, a protest that violates social-​distancing rules (if it does) is not the same thing as a communication about the protest.

Apparently, Facebook is a willing functionary of whichever state governments will instruct it to carry out their censorship. Tyler O’Neil opines that “it is disconcerting that Facebook would work with local governments to remove pages organizing protests against them.” 

Yes, indeed.

But such reports have been disputed. Facebook may be acting on its own. For example, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says that his office “did not ask Facebook to remove pages or posts for events promoting lifting the provisions of the Governor’s stay-​at-​home order.” Nebraska also denies making such a request. 

Which version of the story is true? 

Which is worse? 

Both are creepy.

I just hope that this muzzling-​speech-​just-​to-​help thing doesn’t start spreading like a virus.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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Facebook, censorship, protests, corona virus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

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ideological culture political economy

The “Failure” of Capitalism?

bully, economy, Covid, corona virus, Wuhan, epidemic, pandemic,

“As the lock-​downs come to an end,” writes economist Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan, “it will be expected by many — including many not on the political left — that the economy will pick-​up at about where it was before the lock-downs.”

Mc Kiernan thinks a popular misconception will get in the way. 

Those who see the economy as “a kernel of processes that take inputs and produce outputs based upon purely technologic considerations” will let this techocratic model cloud their thinking. Viewing this “kernel” as producing not only “everything necessary to maintain itself” but also, and more importantly, a surplus that they treat as a zero sum affair — requiring the State to redistribute — they will regard the re-​start as if a mere flipping on of a switch.

But the economy is not something to be un-​plugged and plugged back in, and the lock-​down super-​quarantine was not a mere interruption of service. It was a huge blow that will demand uncountable adjustments. Those quite necessary adjustments may seem random, even wild, and because of this those on the “political left” will, Mc Kiernan predicts, do what they always do: “diagnose the failure to restore the economy quickly as ‘a failure of capitalism.’”

In other words, the bully knocks the victim down, stomps on him, and then taunts him for not getting up right away. 

Still worse: those taunts will become excuses for more kicking and stomping. And the flailing economy will be seen as all the more justification for more of the bully-​boy Big Government policies that caused the “failure.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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bully, economy, Covid, corona virus, Wuhan, epidemic, pandemic,

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free trade & free markets too much government

Viral Michigan

Gretchen Whitmer, pandemic, corona virus, covid, epidemic,

Michigan is a state divided.

While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has become a veritable dictator, in her stated desire to curb the contagion, the infection and death rate in the U.P. (which stands for “Upper Peninsula”) would look like a success story … were anyone to believe that her policies deserved credit.

But to some extent, “social distancing” is just society-​as-​usual for rural Yoopers.

Whitmer’s stay-​at-​home orders are the most restrictive of any of our states. All public gatherings are shut down, as are most stores and shops, though lottery sales are still allowed. And enforcement has not been slack, as Reason informs us: “Police stopped landscaper Brandon Hawley for carrying on with his business, although he lives in the northern city of Alpena, which confirmed its first COVID-​19 case on Saturday.”

Not on board with every one of the governor’s executive orders are four sheriffs in westside counties of the main part of the state. They have proclaimed they will not be enforcing every single one of her edicts. “While we understand her desire to protect the public,” they wrote in a joint statement, “we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority.”

And Michiganders have started to rebel, with the state experiencing our nation’s largest protests.

So far.

Recognizing that the state has the third highest coronavirus death count, though most are in the southeastern part of the state, does this menace justify the governor’s restrictive measures?

Well, that will be an ongoing debate in Michigan — as elsewhere.*

The perception of costs will grow rapidly as negative results from the shut-​down become more numerous and more obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The most startling report shows the virus forming the same pattern of contagion and lethality everywhere, regardless of “mitigation” measures (as Dr Anthony Fauci dubbed them), i.e. shut-​down or no shut-​down. Meanwhile, a few contrasts: the 2017 – 2018 flu season was quite bad, with 80,000 deaths, including “high severity across age groups”; the U.S. coronavirus death count hasn’t hit half that yet, which is worth keeping in mind as projections of the contagion’s extent and death rate plummet in most models.

Gretchen Whitmer, pandemic, corona virus, covid, epidemic,

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general freedom international affairs moral hazard

WHO’s Daddy

WHO, Trump, corona virus, Covid, pandemic,

China and its lapdog, the World Health Organization (WHO), face increasing global anger over having initially hid the person-​to-​person spread of coronavirus, which has killed a staggering 126,000 people worldwide. So far.

Still unrepentant, Beijing and the WHO have continued to butcher the truth — even in petty ways. 

Late last month, a Hong Kong reporter asked a WHO official to comment on how successfully Taiwan had responded to the pandemic. The official pretended he couldn’t hear the question. Then, when the reporter offered to repeat it, he insisted they move on. 

WHO could provide such a cocktail of cowardice and disingenuousness?

Yes! 

Of course, the last refuge of such scoundrels is to hurl utterly bogus allegations — to play the victim and change the subject. Enter WHO Director-​General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who last week made the ridiculous and completely unsubstantiated charge that the Taiwanese government was instigating racist attacks against him on social media. 

Discriminated against by the United Nations and WHO for years, upon China’s insistence, the Taiwanese reacted on social media with their usual grace, sense of humor and a smart promotion of their island’s great food and beautiful scenery, using the hashtag: #ThisAttackComesFromTaiwan. 

As explained yesterday, Taiwan is a friend. China and the WHO? Not on your life.

That’s why Americans of all political persuasions (and so many others across the globe) cheered President Trump’s announcement yesterday that the U.S., the largest donor to the World Health Organization, would suspend its financial support.

“So much death has been caused by their mistakes,” Mr. Trump said.

Sadly, I fear Trump is wrong about one small part: “mistakes” seems far too generous a word for what WHO and its dastardly daddy, China, have done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Friends & Enemies

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

When times get tough, you learn who your friends are. 

Take the United States’ relationships with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. The island nation sports a population roughly the size of Australia’s, about 24 million; just across the Taiwan Strait, what we used to call “Red China” holds the world’s largest number of people.

Like the United States, Taiwan has a democratically elected government that recognizes basic human rights such as freedom of speech. What do the Taiwanese want from us? They’re hoping for a military ally, one capable of deterring the free-​speech-​squelching, democracy-​detesting Chinese communist state from making war on them.

In this pandemic, already nearly 24,000 Americans have died from COVID-​19 and over half a million have tested positive for the virus that appears to have originated in Wuhan, China. Worldwide, nearly 2 million souls have contracted it and, by the time you read this, more than 120,000 of them will have perished.

Excluded from the World Health Organization (WHO) at China’s insistence, Taiwanese medical professionals nevertheless managed to warn the international community on December 31, reports the Financial Times, that “its doctors had heard from mainland [Chinese] colleagues that medical staff were getting ill — a sign of human-​to-​human transmission.” 

Yet, on January 14, the WHO tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-​to-​human transmission.” Six days later China publicly informed the world that this virus could be spread from human contact.

“A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did,” notes Axios, “the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”

Thanks for the warning, Taiwan. Thanks for nothing, China.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Taiwan has also generously provided N95 face masks to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, even while facing continued military provocations from China. 

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

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general freedom too much government

Tyranny Resurrected

Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

Right after 9/​11, much overkill was directed at the unsuspecting.

Friends of the Dumb Joke Brigade told dumb jokes when everybody was On Edge. It soon became clear that tasteless jocularity had morphed into an actionable offense.

And should anyone on September 12 have had the temerity to sit in a theater studying credits when all others had filed out? Heaven forfend! What schemes might the nonconforming cinephile be plotting alone in the dark?

Twenty years later, we’re at it again. 

We can argue (we do) about which social-​distancing strictures are properly enforceable in our efforts to slow the pandemic. 

But surely some lines inarguably should not be crossed.

I don’t refer to the lone paddle-​boarder or to the man who played catch with his kid in a park. I refer to parishioners who attended worship services at King James Bible Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi in their cars. Listened to the sermon on the radio in their cars. If the metal-​and-​glass shells in which attendees were encased couldn’t block the corona-​fumes, what the heck could?

Nonetheless, eight Greenville police officers showed up to distribute $500 fines.

The state’s governor discourages but has not banned drive-​in church services. It was Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons who has banned them.

The church is suing. Its lawyer, Jeremy Dys, says, “Americans can tolerate a lot if it means demonstrating love for their fellow man, but they will not … tolerate churchgoers being ticketed by the police for following CDC guidelines at church. This has to stop now.”

Beyond violating fundamental human rights, the city’s position also makes no sense.

Unfortunately, nonsense is, in these days of panic, not uncommon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

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national politics & policies too much government

The Ratchet Racket

ratchet, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic, law, regulations, government,

Various models and curves and soothsayers predict that the coronavirus will lay off as the summer sun waxes. And then rush back in the autumn.

So we should not look at just near-​term threats, but also look at cycles of contagion month-​to-​month, year-to-year. 

Yet, it is not just the dreaded coronavirus that must be seen over time. “Crisis measures are often ineffective,” writes Matthew Feeney, at Cato Institute, “and can survive the crisis they are implemented to counter.”

Because government power and interference tend to ratchet up with each crisis, there is a whole lot of reason to suspect that we will not go back to normal. Indeed, “the new normal” is now a catchphrase.

The quarantine shutdown has been, if not total, totalistic. Feeney acknowledges such extremist (he didn’t use that word) measures may sometimes be justifiable. But warns of that ratchet, of new powers given to government not devolving after the crisis.

Ted Galen Carpenter, also at Cato​.org, draws a “fundamental lesson” from the panic: “Americans need to resist the casual expansion of arbitrary governmental power in response to the current coronavirus crisis.”

The extreme measures of the shutdown — called by economist Gene Epstein “The Great Suppression” — should have been widely discussed before the contagion hit. Instead, they were discussed in meetings behind closed doors.

But most of us were already up to our necks in the political muck fighting off the everyday kludge of the old normal level of too-much-government.

You know, from the previous turn of the ratchet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ratchet, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic, law, regulations, government,

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media and media people

Another Contagious Disease

Senator Tom Cotton, media, coronavirus, Covid, epidemic, China,

“When Republican Sen. Tom Cotton speculated that the coronavirus outbreak might have come out of a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan,” Timothy Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner on Friday, “he was roundly pilloried, mocked, and chastised by politicians and journalists.”

“Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked,” declared a Washington Post headline. Only problem? What the Post’s “experts” debunked, if anything, was that COVID-​19 was man-made. 

That’s not what Sen. Cotton said at all. Cotton simply noted that the Wuhan lab did work with bats and coronaviruses and that this contagion may have come from that lab, possibly by accident.

“[I]t turns out that Cotton might have been correct,” informs Carney, “and the very expert the media used to attack Cotton as some kind of conspiracy theorist now admits as much.”

In his column last week for The Washington Post, David Ignatius quoted Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright, the “biosafety expert” used in earlier stories blasting Sen. Cotton, explaining that “the first human infection … could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker” — even noting that the Wuhan lab “provides only minimal protection” against such a dangerous event.

As Carney points out, “the idea that the virus accidentally came out of that lab may seamlessly move from ‘fringe opinion’ to respectable — even to consensus.”

“The first question,” argues Carney, “should be whether the folks who attacked that notion in February” — including The Washington Post and the Huffington Post — “will explain why they were unwilling to consider it.”

Media narratives — which Carney skewers regularly — are easy to come by. 

Objective news? Not so much.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Senator Tom Cotton, media, coronavirus, Covid, epidemic, China,

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