But liberals [that is, “Progressives”] and their public health friends don’t seem to want the pandemic to end—ever. Some lockdown advocates are warning that myriad new gene variants may be more infectious—though it’s unclear if they are—and could render vaccines less effective. They also warn that vaccinated individuals might still transmit the virus if they are asymptomatic (though the probability is low).
Ergo, pandemic restrictions must be maintained until we achieve herd immunity—which the experts also say may never happen because of new more transmissible variants and the potential for reinfection. This eternal public health crisis is unsustainable politically and economically. Washington can’t keep passing trillion-dollar spending bills with jobless benefits, food stamps, cash payments, rent subsidies and other welfare to help unemployed (and many gainfully employed) Americans. Forget the mental health toll on people who have been cooped up for a year.
But Democrats seem pleased they can use the pandemic to expand the welfare state. Some are now demanding recurring stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits tied to economic conditions. “This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads,” 10 Democratic Senators wrote to Mr. Biden this week.
Meanwhile, they are preparing a giant climate-infrastructure spending bill that they say is urgently needed to jolt the economy and save the planet. Behold how the Covid crisis bleeds into a climate crisis.
Paul Alexander, et al., are not impressed with the CDC’s study of mask mandates. Here’s their conclusion:
Trusting the science means relying on the scientific process and method and not merely ‘following the leader.’ It is not the same as trusting, without verification, the conclusory statements of human beings simply because they have scientific training or credentials. This is especially so if their views and inquiry have become politicized. Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard’s Medical School has recently commented on the present Covid-19 scientific and research environment by stating, “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”
Sadly, we must agree, that it’s not just that the age of enlightenment has come to an end, but indeed, that the science itself has been politicized and severely corrupted.
Here’s another victim of Covid Derangement Syndrome.
Philippe Lemoine makes the case against lockdowns. A slice:
Back in spring, I was in favor of lockdowns, but since then I have reached the conclusion that lockdowns and other stringent restrictions do not make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. I now think that, even with the information we had at the time, supporting lockdowns was the wrong call because even though I insisted that it was only a temporary solution and that we should be ready to revise our view as more evidence came in, I should have known that people would not and that lockdowns would quickly become institutionalized. However, in this post, I will not be arguing for this view. I only want to argue that, regardless of what should have been done last spring, the data we have accumulated since then show very clearly that, whatever the precise effect of lockdowns and other stringent restrictions, it is not nearly as large as we might have thought, so their costs far outweigh their benefits and we therefore should avoid them where they are not currently in place and start lifting them immediately where they are.
