Calvin Lapp on the three things the Amish don't like

There’s three things the Amish don’t like: that’s government – they won’t get involved in government. They don’t like the public education system – they won’t send their children to education.  And they also don’t like the health system – they rip us off.  Those are three things that we feel like we’re fighting against all the time.  But those three things are part of what COVID is.

~ Calvin Lapp, Amish Mennonite, "How Amish Communities Achieved 'Herd Immunity' Without Higher Death Rates, Lockdowns, Masks or Vaccines," The Pulse, November 25, 2021

Rand Paul on vaccine mandates

You want more people to choose vaccination?  So do I.  You want to lesson vaccine hesistancies?  So do I.  You want to have that happen?  Quit lying to people about naturally acquired immunity.  Quit lording it over people, acting as if these people are deplorable and unwashed.  Try persuasion instead of government cudgels.  Try humility instead of arrogance.  Try freedom instead of coercion.  Most of all, try understanding that there's no more basic medical right than deciding what we inject into our bodies.

~ Senator Rand Paul, "'Do You Have A Science Degree?': Rand Paul Mocks Becerra's Qualifications To His Face," YouTube, 2:10 mark, October 1, 2021

Jeffrey Tucker on herd immunity and the World Health Organization

Herd immunity is a fascinating observation that you can trace to biological reality or statistical probability theory, whichever you prefer. It is certainly not a “strategy” so ignore any media source that describes it that way. When a virus kills its host – that is, when a virus overtaxes the body’s ability to integrate it, its host dies and so the virus does not spread to others. The more this occurs, the less it spreads. If the virus doesn’t kill its host, it can hop to others through all the usual means. 

When you get such a virus and fight it off, your immune system encodes that information in a way that builds immunity to it. When it happens to enough people (and each case is different so we can’t put a clear number on it, especially given so many cross immunities) the virus loses its pandemic quality and becomes endemic, which is to say predictable and manageable. Each new generation incorporates that information through more exposure. 

This is what one would call virology/immunology 101.  It’s what you read in every textbook.  It’s been taught in 9th-grade cell biology for probably 80 years.  Observing the operations of this evolutionary phenomenon is pretty wonderful because it increases one’s respect for the way in which human biology has adapted to the presence of pathogens without absolutely freaking out. 

And the discovery of this fascinating dynamic in cell biology is a major reason why public health became so smart in the 20th century.  We kept calm.  We managed viruses with medical professionals: doctor/patient relationships.  We avoided the Medieval tendency to run around with hair on fire but rather used rationality and intelligence. 

One day, this strange institution called the World Health Organization – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – suddenly decided to delete everything I just wrote from cell biology basics.  It literally changed the science in a Soviet-like way.  It removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website.  It took the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "The World Health Organization Oversold the Vaccine and Deprecated Natural Immunity," Brownstone Institute, August 29, 2021

Jeffrey Tucker on the Covid-19 lockdowns in Melbourne, Australia

This is lockdown ideology at work. It is tyranny without limit, at the expense of all human dignity, decency, and rights. The politicians make a desert and call it health. 

Like everywhere else on the planet, Melbourne will have to reach herd immunity from C-19 at some point. Those who deny that are risking not only liberty and health but civilization itself. 

Perhaps the other states in Australia will observe the destruction in Victoria and learn to take another path when the virus first arrives in their territory, as it surely will. Lockdowns are not science; they are brutality.

I cry for the once-great city of Melbourne this day. May there be justice. And may its future political leadership be granted some modicum of decency and wisdom.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "Madness in Melbourne," AEIR.org, August 4, 2020