Jeffrey Tucker on Trump's legacy of lockdowns

I'm getting a sense that people are finally realizing the unbearably obvious: it was Trump who approved the lockdowns that kicked off all this wreckage.  It's a tragic tale but it's reality.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, tweet, September 23, 2022

Michael Senger on Xi Jinping's lockdowns

Mass lockdowns of entire countries as a technique for fighting disease sprung into the world’s consciousness on the order of Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who fomented a global propaganda offensive targeting Western governments and media.  Within weeks, the WHO, an organization that once devoted itself to fighting disease and which has sadly become a tool of Chinese foreign policy, promulgated lockdowns into global policy through a series of press conferences that showed a complete absence of analysis or logic. 

The world has been fighting a virus from China with a public health policy from China that transforms the world into China.  But if the national security community has noticed this bizarre development, they haven’t said so.  Instead, their preoccupation has remained largely unchanged since February 2020.

~ Michael P. Senger, "The Masked Ball of Cowardice," Tablet Magazine, August 21, 2021

Tom Woods on Covid restrictions in New Mexico and Iowa

The great Ian Miller has another devastating chart.  We were told that New Mexico was doing so well because it had "listened to the science."  Then when Iowa lifted its restrictions, we were told it would be a disaster area.  Well, here's what the death numbers look like for the two places: 

I wonder if the media will follow up on this story!

So much of the narrative is falling, and yet the suppression of dissident voices -- voices that have been right! -- persists unabated.

~ Tom Woods, February 8, 2022

Tom Woods on learning to live with Covid

We learn to live with [the flu], in exactly the same way that we will obviously have to learn to live with COVID.  We can't shut down all of society in a monomaniacal battle against one thing.  There will be horrific consequences.  At the very least, that's an eminently defensible view, and one held by some of the best scientific minds in the world.

~ Tom Woods, October 7, 2020

John Tamny on the root cause of supply chain shortages

Look back to Adam Smith.  I think it's fairly basic here: his opening pages are about a pin factory.  A man alone in a pin factory could maybe produce one pin per day, but a man working with several coworkers where everyone was specializing in that same pin factory could produce tens of thousands.  

So you think about something unsophisticated like that and then consider airplanes and computers and toys.  Imagine the global cooperation of billions of workers entering into trillions of different contractual arrangements over the decades on the way to this global supply and then a political class that thought it needed to guide us away from a virus decided to shut down the most sophisticated the world had ever known.  Is anyone surprised that we've got shortages right now?  

The shortages are a statement of the obvious, but what's offensive is when we call it supply chain shortages or inflation.  No, this was central planning.  This was the imposition of command and control where there had been freedom before.  Let's be very clear about what happened: the political class - Republicans and Democrats and everyone in between - caused this when they went for lockdowns as a virus mitigation strategy.

~ John Tamny, "Key Takeaways from the Annual Stansberry Conference," 43:40 mark, November 4, 2021

Jordan Schachtel on the lassez faire approach to the coronavirus

There’s something about human nature that causes people in power to want to “do something” when faced with an unknown problem.  Yet sometimes, doing nothing is better than “doing something.”  When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more evidence is emerging that the laissez-faire approach to the issue — at least on a governmental/”public health” level — was the solution all along.  The path chosen by Sweden, Belarus and a select few nations — which put the power in the hands of individuals to make their own health choices, instead of imposing draconian government edicts — appears to have won the day.  With almost two years of data now in our hands, it sure seems that the ruling class has a lot to answer for.

~ Jordan Schachtel, "Freedom Won the Lockdown Battle," Brownstone Institute, September 28, 2021

Robert Blumen on the futility of economic stimulus

The US economy does have an excess of unemployed workers, empty storefronts, and idle resources of all kinds.  Why not give it a go?  A bit of stimulus could not hurt. 

Not. So. Fast. 

...The problem is not a pricing problem. The problem is that businesses have been prohibited from operating...  Resources are not priced out of the market.  People and businesses are instead banned from producing. This is a problem that pricing cannot solve because the transactions are not allowed.  Venues can legally operate only at a reduced capacity at which they are not profitable.  We have a “making it illegal to produce things” problem.  And stimulus can’t do anything about that even if you are stupid enough to be a Keynesian.

~ Robert Blumen, "Why Stimulus Does Not Stimulate," Mises.org, June 15, 2021

John Tamny on how the free market would have handled the coronavirus differently than government lockdowns

If there hadn't been any kind of lockdowns, I think it's a safe bet to say that Disney, a big American business, would've shut down its theme parks.  Now why could it have done that?  Because as a good business with a good track record of treating its shareholders well, it could've gone to investors and said, "we are going to step aside briefly to see where this virus is going; we don't want to risk our brand on becoming known as a super-spreader."  Ok, fine. Small businesses, let's assume they have less access to capital.  So they would've probably said, "we can't risk being shut down even for a day; our margins are so razor thin, we've got to be operating at 100% no matter what."  Well, good, you need both.  The small businesses became businesses in the first place by figuring out the needs of customers in some way.  They would've had to evolve.  They would've had to innovate to meet the needs of customers who perhaps had been changed or perhaps fearful, and in doing this they would've created crucial information for the Disneys of the world about how to evolve in a new kind of environment.  So you needed, as always, millions of different businesses trying millions of different things rather than forced one-size-fits-all for everyone simply because it robbed everyone of the information necessary about how to fight this, how to evolve. 

You have the cruise industry, this wildly prosperous industry, that's still trying to get permission to be back in operation.  Don't we want to know what they would've done if they'd been left alone?  The ships would be sailing by now and they would've figured out ways to meet the needs of a different customer base we never even learned.

[...]

Imagine companies that have billion dollar ships that are quite literally amusement parks/hotels/entertainment centers on the water.  They figured out how to grow to meet the customers' needs in staggeringly brilliant ways.  Imagine what they could've done if they'd been free to say, "hey, look, you love your customers; the last thing you want to do is create a scenario where your customers get sick or die.  Do what you have to do to stay in operation."  I wish we could've seen what they came up with, but of course we can't.  They're not allowed to operate to this day.

~ John Tamny, "The Economic Fallout of 2020," The Tom Woods Show, April 8, 2021

ABC News: Texas Rangers to fully reopen for home opener

The Texas Rangers are scheduled to make a bold move for their home opener Monday that has some medical experts and President Joe Biden concerned. 

Globe Life Field in Arlington will be the first Major League Baseball stadium to reopen at full capacity -- roughly 40,000 seats -- since the pandemic began. The move comes a month after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ended the state's mask mandate and asked businesses to reopen fully, citing declining COVID-19 cases and vaccination numbers.

~ ABC News, "Texas Rangers to reopen stadium at full capacity despite COVID-19 case numbers," April 4, 2021

Leana Wen on tying reopening freedoms to vaccines

But I think that there are many more people, millions of people who, for whatever reason, have concerns about the vaccine, who just don’t know what’s in it for them.  And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-Pandemic life...  We have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status.  Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be?  How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? 

So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden Administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, “If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are all these freedoms that you have,” because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway.

~ Leana Wen, M.D., George Washington University professor, medical analyst for CNN and columnist for The Washington Post, March 10

( As quoted by Don Boudreaux, "Covidocractic Tyranny," Cafe Hayek, April 4, 2021.)

Jim Grant on risk tolerance and life's tradeoffs

I am seventy-four years old and every day I get out of bed I am beating the odds.  The idea of suspending ordinary living pending the arrival of a vaccine is absurd.  Still worse is the forced suspension of the lives of people seventy years younger than I.  My grandchildren, for instance.  “We can’t sacrifice our children out of our own fear,” said Dr. Scott Atlas in so many wise words. 

Life is a matter of tradeoffs.  And early on people would plague you if you held this view in public by saying, “You mean to tell me that you are willing to trade off profits for human lives?”  Well no, I’m willing to trade off risks, and it’s what we all do, whether we realize it or not, whether we can express this or not.  We are all, at least subconsciously, living according to our tolerance for risk.  We look both ways or no, we don’t look both ways.  We scrupulously observe fifty-five miles an hour or we are young and quick and bold and drive seventy-five miles an hour and probably not run a risk to ourselves or others.  So people by and large, not exclusively and not entirely, but people by and large know these things about themselves.

~ Jim Grant, "Bulls, Bears, and Beyond: In Depth with James Grant," The Austrian, Jan-Feb 2021

Douglas Murray on California Governor Newsom's unmasked Napa Valley dinner

As photos of the gathering emerged, it has further transpired that the Governor was joined by two high-level members of the California Medical Association. The $400 per person menu included a starter of “Oysters and Pearls” followed by “Sole aux Crevettes” and Braised Veal. All of which must have left a delightful taste in the mouth of the Californian leader, various medical authorities and assorted lobbyists, but leaves a rather less pleasant aftertaste with pretty much every other resident of California.

~ Douglas Murray, "The great lockdown hypocrites," UnHerd, November 20, 2020

Emma Elliott Freire on the impact of the Covid rules on children

Articles about the impact of the pandemic on children tend to focus on the education they have lost due to school closures. But it is also worth noting that children are witnessing repeated violations of their innate sense of fairness. This may well leave them with a sense of mistrust towards institutions and authorities. Is COVID-19 going to raise up a generation of libertarians?

~ Emma Elliott Freire, "Why COVID Kids May Grow Up To Be Libertarians," FEE.org, October 13, 2020

Symphony violinist describes post-Covid concert dystopia

A symphony orchestra in the Midwest who shall remain unnamed recently rolled out their virus protocol for rehearsals and performances. A serology test upon arrival into town. Chairs separated by 6 ft, and the eradication of stand partners (any musician can tell you of the difficulty this deviation-from-the-norm causes). Absolutely no shifting around of any equipment or it must be re-measured and readjusted by the stage manager. And -- of course -- our issued N95 masks. Wind players are allowed to remove the mask when the instrument actually touches their lips...how benevolent. 

The kicker: The concert was performed outdoors in a baseball stadium to avoid all the dangers of the concert hall. Due to 20mph winds and rain, we performed only a Mozart overture before being sent home.

It was a rough weekend for an outspoken libertarian. Incensed, I returned to my hotel room after the first rehearsal and composed a 1000-word op-ed to the New York Times and a few other publications closer to my hometown of Kansas City. The self-explanatory title: "No, It's Not 'Better Than Not Playing.'" 

No one accepted my writing. Why would they? It doesn't suit the arts-world narrative of "mask up, stay safe, protect your fellow musicians." 

I am in incredible disbelief that virtually no one else in my industry is willing to speak out against this madness. It is crippling our livelihoods, and they ignore the root of the problem. 

Following this gig debacle, I have made the sad decision not to take another restricted playing opportunity until the hysteria has died down. Enough is enough. We're not making music anymore, we're following draconian orders -- usually mandated by some higher-up authority who clearly has no concept of how musical ensembles operate. 

I digress. Thank you for being an arts supporter. Thank you for speaking reason and balance and sanity into the void -- even if it doesn't reach as far as my statist compatriots in the orchestra field. 

Musically yours, 

A disgruntled symphony violinist

~ Email to Tom Woods, October 22, 2020

Dr. Scott Atlas calls lockdown "a luxury of the rich"

This lockdown is what I would call a luxury of the rich. This is really a class problem here where the affluent elites don't understand what the president understands, which is people need to work, the working class needs their jobs, children need to go to school, and it's very harmful to do otherwise. 

~ Dr. Scott Atlas, interview with Laura Ingraham, Fox News, October 7, 2020

Tom Woods on lockdown selfishness

Part of the natural order is that parents make sacrifices for their children, not the other way around. If vulnerable people want to isolate themselves, and I can understand why they would, then they should do that. But as I am going through middle age it would never occur to me to make those demands of young people. Never. Because I would think that that was selfish. Selfish of me. That when I was young, I got to experience all these things, all these irreplaceably beautiful moments of youth. But you can't have them to keep me safe. 

No, I'll stay safe by following precautions and limiting my contacts. But you go out and enjoy the one life you get. That's what a good and decent human being says. That's what an unselfish person says. 

~ Tom Woods, "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia," 44:20 mark, Mises Institute speech in Jeckyll Island, Georgia, October 8-10

Tom Woods on obedience to the scientific priesthood

So of course no expert can tell if the costs are worth the benefits because no expert can know your value scale. So when people say, "we need to listen to the experts," as they urge us to dismantle everything that makes a society function and brings people joy, they have no idea what they are talking about. This is a philosophical question, not one that a scientific source would have the standing to answer. Unfortunately science, for some people, is not an ongoing search for the truth, and whose findings can help us make good decisions, it's a kind of priesthood. And whatever scientists tell us about anything, no matter how far removed from their areas of expertise, these people will obey. And the dangers of that should be obvious.

~ Tom Woods, "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia," 38:00 mark, Mises Institute speech in Jeckyll Island, George, October 8-10

Bob Rodriguez on state and local government responses to the coronavirus

Q: I would like your input on how state and city governments have responded. What do you see were the biggest mistakes and where were there any successes? 

Rodriguez: I would ask, “What has been the economic loss caused by government, be it federal, state or local?” Their actions killed the economy. There was a lot of talk about following the science. Remember when Dr. Fauci said, "We have to shut down because we have to bend the virus curve downward so we don't overwhelm the medical care system." Then it morphed from getting the curve down to having a vaccine. The goalposts keep getting moved. This has become very political. Once I saw the data that was coming out, both here and abroad, back in April, I viewed myself as not being much at risk. Even though I'm nearly 72, I'm very healthy. I don’t have any comorbidities or anything like that. I view the perceptions of risk from the virus as being vastly overestimated by a large proportion of the populace, especially among the primary working class people between the ages of 21 and 55. 

The government, be it federal, state, and local, used a blanket approach rather than a targeted one. We effectively killed the economy to protect a small percentage of the population. I viewed it as very bad policy. I've been traveling around the country since April. I take appropriate precautions. I couldn't believe the airfares. As an example, I flew from Reno to Dallas to have lunch, do some business, and then flew on to LA, all first class, for $217 on American Airlines. Nobody was on the flight. I considered flying one of the safest places to be.

There have been a lot of mistakes made. But, you can't really second guess these people to a great extent. They were dealing with something they weren't prepared for. You have to give some a “get out of jail free” pass. But for others, I have my reservations. In Northern Nevada and Lake Tahoe, we've taken a far saner approach, and people are a lot happier here than they are in Manhattan Beach, CA, where I have a second home.

~ Bob Rodriguez, "Bob Rodriguez: We are in a Rolling Depression," by Robert Huebscher, Advisor Perspectives, September 7, 2020

Tom Woods on the insanity of 2020

I have no idea what is going to happen in the world even in the near future, much less ten years from now. Imagine being at a point where you positively long for Bill Clinton, and that's where we are now. 

We turn on the TV (mistake #1) and a reporter is seriously telling us that protests are "mostly peaceful" while buildings burn directly behind him, on camera. If you and I protested something and one of our signs had a misplaced semicolon, the news would breathlessly report on the rise of fascism in America.

Just the other day the President Tweeted something clearly true: we don't shut the country down for the flu. We learn to live with it, in exactly the same way that we will obviously have to learn to live with COVID. We can't shut down all of society in a monomaniacal battle against one thing. There will be horrific consequences. At the very least, that's an eminently defensible view, and one held by some of the best scientific minds in the world. Twitter attached a statement saying that this is ordinarily the kind of Tweet they'd remove, but that in the public interest they're keeping it up. 

Today a senior writer with the Washington Post tried to debunk the claim that for some groups the flu is more deadly than COVID -- but in order to do so he had to use CFR figures for one and IFR figures for the other. This is a top person at one of our top newspapers. 

NPR just ran an item on how dangerous schools are, even though every bit of data we have, from all over the world, tells us the exact opposite. 

Three months ago, Washington, D.C., reached numbers indicating that it should have been at phase 3 of reopening, but it's still in lockdown limbo, indefinitely. 

They told us 15 days to slow the spread. It's day 205. They said we could have our lives back when we got a vaccine -- as if that were a guarantee. Now they're saying we can't have our lives back even with a vaccine. 

Joe Biden -- the man leading in the polls -- promises more of the same. Lockdown forever. Your countrymen are begging to have their life savings depleted and be confined to their homes -- or at least that's what the poll numbers seem to suggest. 

To call this insanity wouldn't come close to the scope of what's happening here.

Tom Woods, October 7, 2020

Jenin Younes on media coverage of the coronavirus

[T]he media’s dereliction of duty is beyond evident.  As [Karina] Reiss and [Sucharit] Bhakdi observe, broadcasters and the press became “servile mouthpieces of the government” and never “critically questioned” the “disturbing images and frightening numbers."  Incidentally, a letter recently published by 200 Belgian scientists similarly criticized the media: “[t]he relentless bombardment of numbers, unleashed on the population day after day, hour after hour, without indicating those numbers, without comparing them to flu deaths in other years, without comparing them with deaths from other causes, has induced a true psychosis of fear in the population.  This is not information, but manipulation.” 

As an avid consumer of the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR, I can attest to the media having operated no differently in the United States.  Apart from a few pieces in early March that questioned the wisdom of the course we had set upon, there was no serious discussion and no debate, at least in the left-leaning media, and anyone who dissented from the prevailing view was and continues to be dismissed as stupid or selfish.  Early on, and without any nuanced analysis, Sweden was deemed a failure.  The public has been beset by such terror, driven by anecdotes often presented without context, that it has become virtually impossible to dispel these many misconceptions using facts, figures, and logic.

~ Jenin Younes, "Disease Panic vs. Medical Reality," AIER.org, September 28, 2020