Jeffrey Tucker on mass panics and rationalizing cruelty

At the end of every mass panic, people work very hard to find ways to justify whatever cruelty, barbarism, and brutality they perpetrated or justified.  Any excuse that comes along.  That's already happening now.  It will be years before honesty returns.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, tweet, April 6, 2020

Jeffrey Tucker on the coronavirus panic

Consider this. On Thursday March 26, [New York governor Andrew] Cuomo dared question the orthodoxy that has wrecked countless businesses and lives. He revealed what actual experts are saying quietly all over the world but had yet not been discussed openly in the endless public-relations spin broadcast all day and night.

[...]

It’s true that anyone following the unfolding fiasco and the gradually emerging data behind it knows that Cuomo is right. The response has not been modern and scientific. It has been medieval and mystical. The theory behind the policy has been nothing but a panicked cry of run and hide before the noxious gas gets you. Lacking reliable data – which is the fault of the CDC and FDA – we replaced knowledge with power.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "We Were Wrong: So Sorry That We Ruined Your Life," AIER.org, March 28, 2020

Jim Grant on the panic of 2020

That the central bankers do not always control events, but that events sometimes overwhelm the central bankers, is one lesson of the panic of 2020.

~ Jim Grant, "Biggest hearts, lowest rates," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, March 20, 2020

Houston Mayor: "The world is not coming to an end"

The world is not coming to an end.  But if it is all that bottled water and toilet paper you are buying will not get used.

~ Sylvester Turner, Houston Mayor, tweet, March 16, 2020

Gary Barnett on the economic damage from the coronavirus panic

This flu-like virus will soon end in my opinion, but the massive economic chaos created out of this structured pandemic will linger for many years. Actually, this could change the entire world economic outlook, and due to measures implemented without thought or caring, could destroy many families, and bring much more poverty, famine, and death than any virus ever could have achieved.

~ Gary D. Barnett, "When the Coronavirus Scare is Over Armageddon Will Remain," LewRockwell.com, March 16, 2020

Gary Barnett on the coronavirus panic and loss of liberty

If the people allow a takeover of their lives due to this panic, they will not only have lost their liberty and all they own, they will have also lost their sanity.

~ Gary D. Barnett, "Panic Will End But Tyranny Will Not," LewRockwell.com, March 14, 2020

Allan Stevo on trusting coronavirus experts

Now, more than ever, as more people get fearful, as the media stokes that fear, as the grocery store shelves get more empty, as the government steps in to say they are here to help, the more vital it is than ever to trust your BS detector.

~ Allan Stevo, "Suddenly Everyone is a Coronavirus Expert," LewRockwell.com, March 13, 2020

Dr. Drew Pinsky on the coronavirus panic

A bad flu season is 80,000 dead. We’ve got about 18,000 dead from influenza this year; we have 100 from corona. Which should you be worried about, influenza or corona, 100 versus 18,000? It’s not a trick question.  Look, everything that’s going on, with New York cleaning the subways and everyone using Clorox wipes, and get your flu shot, which should be the other message, that’s good, that’s a good thing. So I have no problems with the behaviors.

What I have a problem with is the panic and the fact that businesses are getting destroyed and people’s lives are being upended. Not by the virus, but by the panic.  The panic must stop, and the press, they really, somehow, need to be held accountable, because they are hurting people.

~ Dr. Drew Pinsky, "Dr. Drew says press should be 'held accountable' for coronavirus panic: 'They are hurting people,'" The Washington Post, March 10, 2020