This essay by David Stockman is powerful and important. (It’s behind a paywall.) A slice:
Moreover, the commonly reported and highly aggregated facts are downright irrelevant and systematically misleading. For instance, the WITH-Covid mortality rate for the entire 328.2 million US population stands at 68.2 per 100,000 at present. But that’s an absolutely meaningless figure in the context of the massively variant rates among the population cohorts shown below:
WITH-Covid Mortality Rates, 42 Weeks Through 11/07/2020:
- 54 Years & under: 7.9 per 100,000;
- 55-64 years: 66.5 per 100,000;
- 65-74 years: 153.7 per 100,000;
- 75-84 years: 374.0 per 100,000;
- 85 years & older: 1,048.0 per 100,000.
Needless to say, the real danger is not merely the immense damage to both liberty and capitalist prosperity that has already been done. Far more insidious is the fact that the public health apparatchiks have been sainted by the MSM, and have acquired an apparently unquenchable taste for power and fame.
For instance, over the weekend Dr. Fauci made it very clear that America citizens essentially have no pre-existing rights or constitutional protections when it comes to this targeted medical problem, which the public health authorities have unilterally decreed to be a societal threat.
That is to say, your job is to OBEY a 79-year old windbag who doesn’t have a clue about how a constitutional democracy needs be governed or what it takes to keep the engines of capitalism functioning at even a tolerable level of prosperity:
“I was talking with my UK colleagues who are saying the UK is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit,” Fauci said during a panel with other experts in Washington, DC.
“I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you’re told,” he said, as first reported by CNBC.
…..
(HT my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy.)
