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Nick Gillespie debunks the recent and inexcusably mistaken “highest single-day of COVID-19 deaths” report [2]. Here’s Nick’s conclusion:
The COVID-19 story is a tough one, with new information emerging all the time. But the media, never infallible in the first place, seem increasingly prone to running stories that are not even internally consistent but instead are a hodgepodge of anxiety and apocalypticism. Under such circumstances, it’s more important than ever to develop razor-sharp media-literacy and bullshit-detection skills. Whether or not a coronavirus vaccine ever arrives, but can at least inoculate ourselves against the more obvious failures of the Fourth Estate.
Bruce Yandle writes that the U.S. economy isn’t improving fast enough [3].
Ben Zycher applauds the Trump administration’s reform of Obama’s misguided methane-emissions rule [5].
William McGurn praises the courageous Jimmy Lai [6]. A slice:
Soon Jimmy will go to trial on charges from sedition to colluding with foreign powers. It’s utter rot, of course. If he finds himself facing prison, it is only because Communist China, for all its size and power, fears any Chinese who insists on speaking the truth.
In this way Jimmy might be thought of as Hong Kong’s Thomas More, the difference being that while King Henry VIII wanted More to speak up, Beijing wants Jimmy to shut up. In the more than two decades since Hong Kong was handed back to China, most Hong Kong elites have cut their consciences to accommodate their new overlords. Which leaves Jimmy Lai and his printing press as Hong Kong’s single most important counter to official propaganda.
Art Carden reviews [8] Steve Horwitz’s Austrian Economics: An Introduction [9].