Historian Phillip Magness, among the signers of this week’s letter, noted recently that the Times has quietly edited its material again to remove the claim that 1776 is not the true American founding—and amazingly the Times’ prize-winner is now saying that she never made the claim.
Sadly, as long as demand for air travel remains so deflated, there’s no way to avoid airlines restructuring and slimming down their payroll. Subsidies provided through the cover of payroll programs aren’t necessary to protect an industry that could restructure through bankruptcy. Airline bankruptcies aren’t the equivalent of an airline collapse. They can continue to fly safely during the process where a judge imposes a stay on creditors’ claims and gives the airlines breathing room until consumers are ready to come back.
Jenin Younes defends the great Great Barrington Declaration from its critics. A slice:
Critics of the Great Barrington Declaration correctly observe that we will not be able to prevent every death from coronavirus among the vulnerable. But their argument rests on the false assumption that preventing coronavirus deaths is more important than anything else, and while efforts can be made to mitigate collateral damage, in the end all must give way to this overarching goal.
Wall Street Journal columnist Danial Henninger is, sadly, correct that Joe Biden is very likely “the shutdown candidate.” Here’s his conclusion:
As of Wednesday, some 3,700 medical and public-health scientists had signed the Great Barrington Declaration calling for a more balanced approach, which would allow “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”
Donald Trump and most Republican governors would sign that declaration. Joe Biden and the Democrats would not, ever. If Mr. Biden wins—throwing in as well his intention to raise taxes amid the pandemic should Democrats gain control of the Senate—the return of the U.S. to economic and social normalcy is going to take a very, very long time.
George Will understandably applauds Matt Ridley’s 2020 book, How Innovation Works. A slice:
It is serendipitous that the new book by Ridley, who has a keen sense of serendipity’s role in scientific and (hence) societal advances, arrives during the pandemic. “The main ingredient in the secret sauce that leads to innovation,” he writes, “is freedom. Freedom to exchange, experiment, imagine, invest, and fail.” The vast and lingering damage done by the global lockdown will include governments’ opportunistic expansions of their controls of almost everything, and an increased tendency of people to look to government for shelter from all uncertainties.
