Tweet [1]
James Bovard details some of lockdowns’ devastation of democracy and liberty [2]. A slice:
Britain unleashed some of the most absurd restrictions. In June, it prohibited couples who live in different homes from having sex indoors [3]. The Independent (U.K.) noted, “People who have sex outside can be punished under pre-existing laws on outraging public decency and indecent exposure.” Steve Watson reported in January for Summit News that British cabinet ministers “ have privately debated preventing people from talking to each other [4] in the street and in supermarkets, and even preventing people from leaving home more than once per week, and introducing curfews.” British vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi fretted, “I’m worried about some of the pictures I’ve seen of social interactions in parks, if you have to exercise you can go out for exercise only.” Apparently, a national vow of silence is necessary to fight Covid. Summit News noted, “Police are also demanding new powers to force entry into the homes of suspected lockdown violators.” Former British Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption complained last month, “Foreign travel is being prohibited, turning us into a hermit island [5] on the basis we cannot know what mutations may be lurking out there. The logic of these policies is that we must be locked down for ever simply because the world is a dangerous place.”
New Zealand has imposed four separate lockdowns in its pursuit to banish the virus from the island, repeatedly placing residents in the capital city under house arrest. In October, the government announced it was creating “quarantine centers” for anyone who tests positive and refuses to obey government orders. One Twitter wag scoffed, “New Zealand went from gun bans to concentration camps [6] in less than a year.”
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy decries the deranged attempt to create a zero-risk society [7]. Here’s her conclusion:
Finally, perhaps the greatest cost of the policy reactions to COVID-19 is that it will have left Americans believing that governments can and must do anything to achieve a zero-risk society. That mindset means spending trillions of dollars on any bills that pretend to protect us from adversity. But it also entails a worrisome tolerance for intrusive policies, such as vaccine passports, daily symptom surveys in schools, a permanent mask mandate in planes, and many other forms of hygiene socialism, regardless of the merits of these policies.
Yet, as economist Steve Horowitz recently wrote to me on Facebook, “The reality is that we can never achieve” a zero-risk society, and “the costs of trying to are enormous, in terms of both material resources and human freedom.”
Test and trace is illiberal, ineffective, and absurdly costly [8].
I’m honored to have been a recent guest on the Rod Arquette Show [9].
Here’s a reflection on Covid Derangement Syndrome and the terror and tyranny it fueled [11]. A slice:
When the dust finally settles on this era of Covid-induced hysteria, the voices of the world’s media, politics and popular culture will most likely seek to spin this significant chapter in our lives as having been an inspirational tale of human resilience and unity.
They will say that despite being locked within the jaws of a deadly pandemic, millions of acts of sacrifice and charity ensured that society was able to adapt to every challenge put before it, and we will emerge as a stronger, better people having endured such suffering.
Except, that won’t be true because the enormous bulk of this suffering hasn’t come from the trail of death Covid-19 has left behind; no, it has come directly from the political decisions made in reaction to it. Draconian rulings inflicted on the citizenry by seemingly caring politicians and their covid-fixated advisors. From the comfort of their satisfying salaries and life-long pensions, making decisions which throw the bulk of the working population onto furlough or benefits. We have become but cannon fodder to be expended in the hubristic war on covid.
A virus with a high survival rate has not been the cause of millions of people losing their jobs in pubs, theatres, or airlines. This virus has not been the cause of family businesses closing and livelihoods destroyed. Government policies have. Crippling restrictions which have inflicted maximum damage on these businesses have been the cause.
When we look back from a time in the future, we will see that assisting the government in their hubristic policies has been the mainstream media who have been the architects of hysteria and fear. They blame covid for the economic and social fallout we are facing, rather than blame the politicians and themselves who enabled it. The pandemic has not largely brought out the best in humanity, despite the media focus on doorstep clapping and brightly coloured rainbows whilst ignoring the old being forced to die alone in nursing homes. This time has brought out the worst in humanity, it has been an exceptionally cruel period of human history, and whereas it lacks the sickening, unique violence of the 1940s, a callous disregard for life persists.
Phil Magness reports on yet another pro-Covid-lockdown hypocrite [12]:
Eric Feigl-Ding has been one of the leading proponents of lockdowns and the ZeroCovid movement since last spring. Over the summer he was tweeting that his own kids could not go back to school until we ended the pandemic, presumably through lockdowns. He has spent the last several months arguing against school reopenings, and for the reimposition of more lockdown measures.
Well it turns out there’s a twist. Feigl-Ding is married to health policy analyst Andrea Feigl, an Austrian citizen. Last November, Mrs. Feigl tweeted out about how they had moved their kids to Austria from Washington, DC in order to allow them to resume in-person schooling while their US schools remain closed.
Mrs. Feigl has since deleted her twitter account after this was discovered last night.
Fauci embraced the Chinese propaganda, emphasizing the importance of Wuhan-style lockdowns to “suppress” the virus.
“To emphasize something that both of us said; if we do not completely suppress this, we will continue to be challenged by variants which have a way of coming back to bite us,” Fauci said.
“We have been successful in the past by global cooperation with smallpox, with polio, with measles. There’s no reason in the world why we cannot do the same thing with COVID-19 by a combination of cooperative public health measures and the application of science,” he added.
(DBx: Can someone point me to the best accounts of humanity’s lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and testing-and-tracing taken in the fight against polio, smallpox, and the measles? My poor memory needs to be refreshed.)