COVID-19: Year of lunacy in review
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| A person, who appears to be in a home setting, wearing a mask while talking to someone in a video conference, also wearing a mask. Maybe they were afraid of catching a computer virus. This is almost certainly a staged photograph, but what a great illustration of the insanity this year has been. // photo by Edward Jenner |
This article may be periodically updated as new information comes out. Only information that (potentially) contradicts previously published information and claims will be indicated.
It has been nearly one year since the governments across the United States started issuing decrees, forcing people to stay in their homes, wear masks, and shutter their businesses and livelihoods. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone have died from the novel Coronavirus.
At the same time, the responses to the pandemic have resulted in countless suicides [see update on 4/9/2021 below], outbreaks of other diseases, and famine across the world. While news outlets and politicians have had a laser-like focus on the virus, the results of the government-imposed measures have largely been ignored, by comparison.
The Atlantic published an article with the headline of "There are no libertarians in a pandemic" (in which the article made zero references to libertarians), to which Eric Boehm fired back with his own article of "There are only libertarians in a pandemic" (where he actually talks about libertarians in pandemics). Peter Goettler of the Cato Institute even argued that "there are more libertarians in a pandemic". I received some emails from friends asking if the pandemic shook my "faith" in libertarianism. No.
It was already pretty, as early as February, clear that governments were the primary ones responsible for all of this.
Made in China
Man, everything is made in China these days!
The Chinese Communist Party, while giving a short bout of freedom of speech as the news of the virus started to spread, quickly censored all talk of the virus, quelling news outlets, social media, and even healthcare professionals from releasing any information to their patients. In a deleted interview, Chinese doctors weren't even allowed to wear gear that would protect them from a virus, citing the government's concerns that it would spread fear throughout the populace. Hospitals running low on equipment couldn't even request more resources and have been met with deleted posts and accounts for their pleas for help on Chinese social media sites.
While even US news outlets swallow the official death count coming from the CCP, of 4000 and change, even in the fall, many with more functioning senses of skepticism didn't bite. There were (now censored) news articles out of China that talked about hospital wards being overwhelmed with patients dying from the virus. Funeral homes suddenly had very long lines. Sightings of cremation urns loaded on trucks, as well as urn orders, while controlling for "normal" death rates, have provided an estimated death count from COVID-19 in the tens of thousands, for Wuhan alone, by March of the year.
Among those censored was doctor Li Wenliang in Wuhan, one of the first trying to warn the world of this virus. As Li attempted to warn others in the medical field in Wuhan about this new virus, the police silenced him from "spreading rumors". Shortly after, Li died of COVID despite being only 34 years of age, due to being exposed to a "superdose" of the virus. His death brought about a surreal amount of anger from Chinese citizens, in a country where dissent is typically dealt with harshly by the government.
While China did not notify the World Health Organization until December 31st of 2019 and the WHO didn't publicly acknowledge the virus until January 5th, there is evidence to suggest that the virus had been spreading since late summer or early fall of that year, judging from satellite imagery of hospitals. It is unlikely that such a surge in hospital visits for months went unnoticed by the CCP.
China has been extremely restrictive on the investigation front, preventing researchers and investigators from going into Wuhan to investigate the virus's origins, while its state-run media ran wild conspiracy stories that claim the US caused and spread COVID-19. Even in January 2021, over a year since the World Health Organization was notified of the outbreak, China is still blocking foreign investigators and researchers. At the same time, the CCP has positioned itself as the savior, instead of the ones originally responsible for the pandemic in the first place. Although they more or less state the obvious that the CCP is engaging in revisionist history and fabricating narratives to bolster their image, this Harvard paper tracks some good data showing this.
The World Health Organization, headed by China-backed Tedros Ghebreyesus, repeatedly praised China for its transparency and handling early in the process, despite China deploying policies and tactics such as destroying evidence of the virus in December of 2019. Could the fact that Tedros's home country of Ethiopia received billions of dollars from China have anything to do with this? Why else would China push for someone who has no medical training and actively associate themselves with brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe, if not to have someone as chair who they can control? China's influence in the WHO to further its own interests was particularly highlighted in a bizarre interview with Canadian physician, Bruce Aylward, an assistant to Tedros, where Aylward repeatedly refused to even acknowledge Taiwan's existence.
oh. my. god. pic.twitter.com/GAwEj5yvT0
— wilfred chan (@wilfredchan) March 28, 2020
Comin' to America
While the WHO reported the virus on January 5th, it wasn't until almost two weeks later that the CDC began implementing airport screening. The WHO didn't declare a global emergency until the 30th and the White House suspended the entry of foreign nationals the day after. Many have called the US response far too delayed and they're right about that, in more ways than they know. But it's far from certain that Democratic leaders would have performed much better, with some like Joe Biden criticizing travel restrictions after they were issued.
Nevertheless, the virus may have already been brought to the United States by the time the WHO announced it early in January. Although it certainly would have helped, I don't know that it would have been possible to completely restrict the virus from reaching the states even if the travel ban occurred the day after the WHO announcement, thanks to the obfuscation by the Chinese government. It's easy to look back and criticize, but it's tough for me to blame either side of the aisle for the positions they were taking at the time, given the limited information they had. But what occurred after was a public ballet of sheer government incompetence across all levels, while shackling people who were in a position to respond to the virus.
The earliest known hit was the state of Washington, with the first reported case on January 21st. This was particularly fortuitous. Dr. Helen Chu, with the University of Washington, was an immunologist that was doing research on the flu. She already had a method in place that would be able to monitor and trace infections in communities, a method South Korea utilized to great success in the early days. All she would have to do was to repurpose her flu tests for this new strain.
What was not fortuitous was that the FDA, the monstrosity of a government regulatory agency, still exists. This is an agency that has consistently drawn the ire of libertarians, for years, decades even, even prior to 2020, for its ridiculously long and onerous approvals process as people die waiting. So this isn't some unique "Trump's FDA" or anything. This is standard procedure for the FDA. Dr. Chu's testing kits were repeatedly denied by the regulatory body.
In a brilliant show of civil disobedience, a month later, her team began testing anyway and found people positive for the virus, even from people with no recent travel history, suggesting the virus was already widespread. Who knows what could have been prevented had they not been bogged down for a month in bureaucratic red tape nonsense.
Soon afterward, despite this valuable information uncovered, they were directed to cease testing. The CDC, it was claimed, would soon come to the rescue.
The CDC came, but it did not rescue. It was developing a testing kit and sought to retain a monopoly on testing kits. It also provided bizarre guidelines that were so strict that even a sick person who had visited Wuhan could not be tested until local health officials reached an agreement with the CDC to grant an exception for his case. He was tested positive.
The CDC did develop a testing kit, but it arrived 46 days after the World Health Organization's directions for creating a test. Large amounts of defective testing kits were shipped out. Thailand scientists rolled out testing within hours of the WHO instructions and Dr. Chu could have had testing rolled out by around that time. The CDC, for whatever reason, decided to pursue a different and more complex testing design which created massive delays, all the while denying academic institutions and private parties from developing their own testing kits. It is unclear who issued this direction, but that very fact points to a failure of leadership from the Trump administration.
Still, tasking a single group of people, no matter how intelligent they may or may not be, is asking for trouble. One agency, led by one person, cannot possibly have the expertise needed to make decisions for every unforeseeable circumstance. Even if the person in charge happened to be the best expert in the world, it's still far worse than a decentralized network of groups working to solve the problem. The government imposing its own strategy upon the people inherently creates a single point of failure, and when it does as it does often, it fails spectacularly, leading to many deaths. By the time the CDC had finally released testing kits, testing and contact tracing had likely ceased being a possible method to stem the infections, given that the number of cases had grown too large to manage in this fashion.
These delays were not isolated to just Dr. Chu, as fellow epidemiologist Alex Greninger also waded through the massive bureaucracy and red tape that was the FDA, delaying his testing kits for half a month. His emergency application to the FDA required not only an email but also hard copies as well as a version saved on a CD or thumb drive as if it was the year 1998. The FDA responded not with an approval, but for additional cross-testing with other coronaviruses, an odd thing to ask for during an emergency.
Likewise, Dr. James Lawler wanted to test a group of people traveling from Wuhan who was quarantined in an Air Force base in early February. The CDC denied him permission to do so, stating worries that the potential test subjects might feel coerced into the tests. Instead of doing the reasonable thing, and allowing Lawler to ask them for permission to do tests, the CDC flat out ordered him to cease all contact with the group. Not too long after, the CDC delayed in testing cruise ship passengers, completely mismanaging the situation.
New York had its own single point of failure in Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo had ordered over 4500 Coronavirus patients to be shuttled from hospitals to nursing homes, where the most vulnerable population, for just about any virus, reside. The virus spread like a Californian wildfire through nursing homes, killing thousands of people. Cuomo defended the decision and later reversed the decision while deflecting the blame to the Trump administration, despite exceedingly few states doing the same thing, with several doing the exact opposite in forbidding hospitals from shipping Coronavirus patients to nursing homes. In true CCP fashion, Cuomo would, in several months' time, release a book with self-praise of his handling of the pandemic while deflecting blame to other parties. Then in late January of 2021, a report was released, saying the state-issued statistic of nursing home deaths was underreported by as much as 50%.
Even the wildly diverging viewpoints on mask-wearing have been fueled by governments. The CDC and WHO have offered contradictory mask guidance, with the CDC recommending everyone wear one and the WHO recommending healthy people only wearing one if taking care of someone who is infected. But the CDC's advice conflicts with its own advice from just two months prior, as well as Surgeon General's plea for the general populace to stop buying masks, confusingly stating both that they're not effective for the populace but at the same time highly effective for healthcare workers. I presume he meant that masks are much more needed in high infection areas, but that's not what his statement inferred. At the same time, a former FDA director issued guidance that everyone should wear a mask.
In May of 2021, the CDC cited to Congress a study that says outdoor transmission of COVID-19 was "less than 10%". This was their justification of issuing guidance to wear mask outdoors. Their interpretation of the numbers were completely wrong. The cited study was not a meta-study as the spokesperson claimed, but was rather a review of studies. One of the authors said after the hearing that the study was actually one that concluded people should be outdoors more. The less than 10% figure was stated as such because one study with high transmission figures in Singapore likely miscategorized transmission as outdoor when the construction workers that caught the virus were likely in enclosed spaces at the time. The actual outdoor transmission figure is closer to 1% to less than 0.1%. Whether the CDC was being intentionally misleading or completely incompetent is left to the imagination of the pandemic spectator.
It's understandable that as understanding progresses, guidance would evolve, but the forcefulness of each proclamation without any modesty, especially with the weight of official government titles behind it, fuels binary public fervor. Now everyone who wears a mask is an idiot and everyone who refuses to wear a mask is a murderer.
Around the world
Perhaps the best response in the world has been Taiwan, a country that neighbors China (that's right, Xi, I said country) and isn't even a member of the World Health Organization, due to pressure from China. Taiwan had been the "beneficiary" of suffering through SARS and H1N1, fresh in the minds of its citizens. Taiwan had early border closures, an early wide deployment of testing, effective contact tracing, and quarantine of people who tested positive. Despite having an incredibly dense population, by October, there were only seven deaths in a population of 23 million. By contrast, Los Angeles County alone, with a less dense population of 10 million, has had nearly 7000 deaths at around the same time.
While it may not have been "perfectly" libertarian (there's no such thing), it has been far more libertarian than most countries have exhibited. At first glance, border closures may seem unlibertarian to those not more familiar with the nuances in the philosophy, but open borders is not an inherent necessity of the ideology. Though there are absolutists, libertarians generally believe in the free flow of humans, but typically recognize the necessity of blocking some people for either security precautions or, in this case, epidemiological reasons. The libertarian credo of Taiwan's quarantines of positive test subjects may be arguable, but what is not arguable is that it is far more libertarian than the US's model of quarantining everybody who isn't an "essential" worker, regardless of their test result (if they were even able to get a test). Quarantining a sick person is an interesting libertarian intellectual exercise and it is arguable that a sick person with a known deadly disease is potentially initiating violence upon people he or she comes in contact with. The common case study before COVID has been Typhoid Mary, though Typhoid has a significantly higher fatality rate than COVID-19.
Similarly, in the early days, South Korea had handled the early stages exceptionally well with rapid testing, contact tracing, and high levels of transparency. Despite a major outbreak at a church, its strategy seems to have worked well. South Korea had managed to avoid widespread lockdowns and even travel restrictions, relying instead on voluntary social distancing. In December, South Korea started considering lockdowns, thanks in no small part to certain South Korean churches where its evangelicals refuse to follow common sense. But that they had gone this long without, and is today, still one of the dramatically lesser impacted countries, still deserves to be noted (note: the link uses live data; at the time of writing, South Korea is in the lowest quartile of deaths per 100k).
Likewise, Japan had a low fatality rate in the spring of 2020 compared to most countries and had a very lax policy response with optional measures, without even shuttering its borders. The conditions didn't seem good for Japan. It's an aging population living in extremely dense areas, with people highly dependent on public transportation. Those in favor of harsh lockdowns took to the papers when Japan's Coronavirus levels didn't level off as quickly as some neighboring countries, with dire predictions of entering an "explosive phase". Then the case rate died down.
The low infection death rates in Asian countries, compared to others, has been interesting (barring China and North Korea due to suspect statistics). There have been many guesses as to why, but none have seemed to stand out as particularly persuasive. Some say that natural mask compliance was the reason. I can attest, having been to various Asian countries, face masks do tend to be common, even during normal times. But this doesn't seem to have any consistent backing. Denmark, for example, has had low case counts early in the pandemic, and yet Danes during the same time, have had very low mask usage. Yes, Denmark had early lockdown measures, but Japan didn't. There are countries that have had high (maybe not as high as Japan) mask usage and lockdowns, but have had significantly worse death rates. It is, therefore, unlikely that high mask usage can singularly explain it, even if it did help. Is it their personal hygiene? Perhaps it had something to do with it. When I visited Japan, it was excessively clean there. China? Not so much. But it is a respiratory illness, spread primarily through the air, with studies stating that surface transmission is potentially much lower than previously thought. Some think genetic differences or exposure to different viruses as a population in the past, may make Asians more resilient to the virus, however, some other studies seem to indicate a higher risk in Asians. The claim remains controversial, but it would be interesting to see the death rates of non-Asians in Asia and the death rates of Asians in other countries. Statistics suggest that Asians in the United States have much lower rates of contracting the virus and similar hospitalization and death rates as whites, but I suspect other factors like living situations and socioeconomic statuses have a greater impact on these numbers than race itself. Controlling for these factors would be crucial to make any real sense of the numbers.
To compare some of these Eastern Asian countries to reduce variables, The Philippines may have been the country in Asia (excluding China and North Korea) that had instituted the most severe lockdown and have had the #2 highest compliance in the world for wearing face masks outside, even more than Japan. By late summer, it was the worst-performing country in Southeast Asia (discounting countries with suspicious numbers). Vietnam has perhaps the second-best performance in the region, and they also have not had any nationwide lockdown, opting instead for voluntary distancing and shuttering of businesses. They did close borders early and require strict quarantine measures for those traveling into the country, similar to Taiwan. They also did lock down certain select small clusters that have seen infections, although it's not clear to me what exactly that entailed. From the report, it seemed like they just kept residents from leaving the general area.
In Europe, Sweden has been a particularly interesting follow, including the ebb and flow of certain groups utilizing it as an example. Early on, Sweden was a shining example to hold up. A country with no lockdowns and an extremely low case rate. Then Sweden's case rate started to rise beyond its Nordic neighbors and the pro-lockdown people started holding them up as an example. Then their case rate plummeted and the anti-lockdown people started using Sweden as an example again. And around we went.
Reality, as it often is the case, has been far more complicated than "Sweden good!" or "Sweeden bad!" While Sweden's numbers are indeed higher than other Nordic countries, as anti-lockdown people suggest, why is that the benchmark? Is there something inherently variable reducing among Nordic countries where viruses exclusively transmit a certain way in that geographic region? Nearby Belgium and the UK have both had much higher numbers than Sweden. Why are those excluded from the comparison list? Is it because they both have had lockdowns, but still have far worse numbers than Sweden and want to cherry-pick the comparison? Possibly.
Yes, the cultures are more similar among those countries, but it's not like they're congruent. I also don't know of an argument that points to any specific cultural differences that result in significantly differing virus transmission rates compared to their neighbors. As Johan Norberg points out, data collection varies greatly between the Nordic countries. Sweden will count all people that have COVID-19 at the time of death, regardless of how the person actually died, whereas Norway counts it as a COVID death only if it's proven that the virus was the actual cause. Additionally, the way Swedes house their elderly is vastly different than its neighboring countries. In Sweden, the elderly are housed in massive nursing homes, where the centralization causes far higher infection rates in the most vulnerable populations. As it turns out, half of the COVID deaths in Sweden were from nursing homes and 90% of those that died were over the age of 70, with some reports going as high as 70% from nursing homes with an average expected remaining lifespan of 5-9 months. The fact of the matter is that Sweden, despite being one of the only countries in Europe that did not lock down, is in the middle of the European pack as far as deaths go, not some giant outlier with people dead in the streets as some have tried to make them out to be. Notably, the models from the Imperial College of London predicted 100,000 deaths in Sweden by July and ICUs overrun if they didn't adopt UK's lockdown strategy. Sweden built emergency pop up ICUs but ended up not needing them. In July, Sweden's COVID deaths stubbornly stood at 5,700, and at the time of writing, at 8,279, or 81.30 deaths per 100k. They weren't even close. Ironically, UK's death rate today stands at 106.57 per 100k. If lockdowns were such a surefire thing, one would expect Sweden to be at the very top of the European death rate ranking, not in the middle.
Italy was a country particularly hard hit early on and today remains near the top of the COVID death rate lists. It was one of the first countries to lock down and with great severity, outside of China. It seems like a lifetime ago now, but their lockdowns started in late February in hard-hit regions, with checkpoints in the streets and blockades forbidding people to leave the region. Obviously, this didn't work out very well as cases spread like crazy. The lockdowns may have caused people in certain regions to flee the area, causing more spread than there may otherwise have been without a strict lockdown. To be fair, Italy does have an aging population, but if we look at Japan, they fared far better, with lighter government touches and an even older population.
Interestingly, Belgium is the country that is at the very top of the COVID death rate country rankings and yet, there is oddly little chatter about them among policy discussions. Is it because they have had strict lockdowns and people who want lockdowns don't particularly like that data point? Perhaps. There seems to be a few excuses, including political fighting, high population density, relaxation of the rules, and counting deaths as a COVID death if a doctor suspects COVID was involved. All of these excuses fall flat if we're comparing Belgium to countries that lacked lockdowns. Belgium isn't exactly unique in political division. Have they seen the fistfights in the Taiwanese parliament? Population density, while it may be high, isn't uniquely so, as the neighboring Netherlands has a higher population density than Belgium, which the article appears to exclude for whatever reason. It also has lower densities than South Korea or Taiwan. Relaxation of the rules, while they may have done it for a brief period, still does not account for why they are uniquely hard hit, especially compared to other countries that didn't even impose any restrictions nearly as harsh as Belgium had. Statistical data gathering, while it may be in contrast to several countries, does not count COVID deaths any more liberally than Sweden, as stated above.
As a counterpoint, many lockdown proponents point to countries like New Zealand, citing that lockdowns have resulted in lower COVID deaths. But is this a causal relationship or merely a correlative one? Given that many countries with lockdowns have not had similar results, it may be the latter. Some others, with a more Republican bent, have argued that New Zealand did well because of their high social trust. But Sweden has an even higher social trust and their results have been mixed. It could be that New Zealand has a very low population density or that they shut down borders early. As far as I know, no definitive causal link had been established or if there is really any way to tell how many lives were saved compared to the lack of a lockdown. Even so, if we assume that lockdowns prevented numerous deaths, it is only a success if we singularly focus on COVID-19 death prevention. Taken as a whole, the picture is not quite so clear, with nearly a third of the entire New Zealand population reporting increased levels of anxiety with nearly half of the young adult population suffering from mental health declines. The New Zealand economy sank the most since the Great Depression and though the economy bounced back following several more lockdowns, the effects the people will feel on the ground will likely last years, with negative interest rates and stimulus fueling a ghost recovery. According to New Zealander Fergus Hodgson on a Lions of Liberty episode, more tourist-centered towns like Queenstown are empty and will likely remain so for a while, as tourism is at a stand-still, except for privileged exceptions for the aristocratic class such as actors. Even if we count New Zealand as a data point for lockdowns, one, or even a small handful, of examples hardly makes a case that lockdowns definitively slow the infection spread, especially if for every one example, a counter-example can be named.
Perhaps the most catastrophic is what is occurring in Africa, where there is even less discussion of policy. The countries in Africa generally instituted lockdowns, but its death rates have been low, even in places where lockdowns and facemask mandates were generally ignored. The reasons for low death rates have likely more to do with the age of the population than any policy, where the median age is below 20, far below more developed countries. The majority of the catastrophe isn't coming from COVID itself, but rather the governments' responses to it. While lockdowns may cause suffering like depression and financial hardship in first world countries, destitute countries instituting lockdowns could result in famine. Gret Glyer, the founder of DonorSee, spoke with Tom Woods about what's going on in Africa and he is very worried that after making great strides over the decades, poverty will have a resurgence with child mortality on the rise again for the first time in 30 years. He very well may be proven correct in the next few months. Africa's horrific tragedies due to lockdowns are covered in a bit more in detail in the Lockdown Results section below.
Taking in the global picture as a whole, there is scant evidence that stringent, broad lockdowns are definitively the best way forward. Countries that did not impose lockdowns like Taiwan are among the lowest affected countries while some others that did not impose lockdowns like Sweden are somewhat high, but not near the top. Countries that did impose severe lockdowns range from not terribly affected to some of the worst-hit. China, of course, is ranked as not severely affected on the Johns Hopkins list, but that's because they use government data, which China obviously manipulated. At the same time, African countries imposed strict lockdowns and had high death tolls from the lockdowns and low death tolls from COVID. The lack of even any clear overall correlation, much less causation, between lockdowns and COVID deaths seems to indicate at best, a low rate of efficacy of lockdowns, but what appears to be a constant is adverse effects from the lockdowns.
US Idiocracy
Watching events unfold in the past year has been what I imagine watching a show at Robot Restaurant in Tokyo while tripping on acid would feel like. It's just nonsensical policy followed by blithering political talk followed by people doing completely illogical things followed by claims of following the science while having very little scientific rigor.
As mentioned above, the US government bureaucracies completely bungled the initial stages of the virus spread. That by itself would be bad enough, but they did not even allow private parties and academic institutions from actually performing.
What followed was an endless sequence of events just as bizarre and head-scratching. 2020, how much do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
Early on, as lockdowns were starting, a paddleboarder in Malibu was out in the ocean, by himself. I mean, really by himself. He was the only one out there. He was distancing more than anyone else in sight. Until the police showed up. He was arrested and taken into a police station where he was placed within close proximity to a bunch of other people. Local news outlets were quick to point out that waves send particulates into the air long distances. Okay, but context. Don't forget context. To reiterate, he was the only one out there. So, the dilution of the particles would be such that the chances of infection would be astronomically low. If the closest person, hundreds of feet away, coughs, think of how diluted the virus would be by the time it reaches him. It would be incredibly unlucky for him to either get or transmit even one virus particle in this specific fashion, much less an infectious dose. In a jail cell, however? Much higher chance.
No, it gets better.
A few days later in Mississippi, the police went out to a church gathering to disperse the crowd gathered to hear Sunday service. Reasonable? Well, those gathered were people in their own cars, with their windows up, listening to the service broadcast to their FM radio, where the pastor was preaching inside alone, into a low powered FM transmitter and an online streaming service. The people were distancing just fine until the police showed up and started interacting with everyone there, handing out $500 citations. Whereas previously, there was essentially no interactions between people, the police showed up, potentially carrying the virus from car to car. One of the members of the congregation pointed to the Sonic Drive-In 200 yards away, where two dozen cars were gathered in the exact same fashion, but eating, with several presumably also listening to the radio, and having to actually interact with an employee bringing food out. Nope, that's perfectly okay. I guess the church just needs to serve food out to the cars and then it's safe, according to the mayor's policies.
No, no. It gets even better.
Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, may have proven to be the dullest knife in the already dulled out governer knife drawer that includes Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. So this honor is a major accomplishment, as it's a really low bar to Limbo under. She clubbed, not sliced, together a policy that put COVID positive and COVID negative patients in the same nursing home. This is after Andrew Cuomo had already done this in New York and we all discovered just how disastrous that was. In a poorly thought out executive order, she banned certain items like gardening supplies in big box stores, leading to home improvement stores roping off sections of their stores. So people who are there anyway and need to pick up some things, simply aren't able to do so even though it posed zero additional risk. Further, the order made it exceedingly difficult for people who wanted to distance themselves from the grid by doing things like growing their own food at home, forcing them to instead make more trips to the grocery store. In the same executive order, Whitmer banned travel between houses, even if the same household owns both houses. That means if a family lived in a condo in Detroit and had a summer home out in the woods, they would not be permitted to travel to the summer home to increase their distance from other people. One could say it would prevent people from cities infecting other regions in the state, but as evidenced from Italy a month or so prior to the executive order, where they actually set up wide-scale roadblocks, this can easily have the opposite effect as it encourages even more people to try to escape. Either way, this would be nearly impossible to enforce. Under pressure, Whitmer reversed these orders a few weeks later. The state Supreme Court ruled months later that she had violated her constitutional duty in her executive overreach.
Remember that huge fuss early on about New York needing ventilators? It turns out ventilators were overused in Coronavirus treatments. Governor Cuomo and his sycophants demanded 30,000 ventilators, but it turned out the state really only needed 5,000. Not too long after the demand, New York gave away ventilators to other states.
Speaking of panic buying, the Army Corp of Engineers spent over $660 million to build field hospitals across the country to handle the surging Coronavirus cases. That and the lockdowns were deployed with the battle cry "flatten the curve!" Well, nearly four months into the pandemic, most of these pop up hospitals never treated a single patient. Some have argued that there weren't enough doctors and nurses to fill these hospitals, but as the article states, the hospitals already in place did not overflow. Did we really need to wreck the economy and throw $660 million down the toilet?
All of these occurred before George Floyd was killed. And governments were just getting started.
Before and after he was murdered by the police, conservatives and libertarians protested the lockdowns, though oftentimes for very different reasons. Angela McArdle, a Libertarian Party member in Los Angeles County, organized protests for libertarians due to its infringements on freedom, though she didn't seek to band with conservatives due to their weird conspiracy theories of the virus being a hoax. These protests were met with resistance, with the left calling the protests "killing grandma". The Raleigh Police Department, in a since-deleted tweet, that "Protesting is a non-essential activity", apparently with no reflection upon what the First Amendment says. Then George Floyd was killed. And the left, along with libertarians, protested the killing with no sense of irony from the left. We were largely glad that the left had finally come around to our side. Then the protests, largely orchestrated by the left, turned into riots, which we knew would be completely counterproductive, crushed our hope for there being real advances on the police brutality front. Regardless, these protests were suddenly "necessary" with even health officials that before had said any kind of protest was going to kill a bunch of people. Who knew? The virus has a politically ideological bent. It'll only spread if people are protesting lockdowns, but it won't if people are protesting police brutality. To be fair, the health experts said this cause is "worth it". What? Who are they to decide? Having insight into the transmissibility of the virus gives them special insight into what activities are worth the risk? Given that many of these health experts who were saying protesting was worth the risk were actually protesting "systemic racism" while clearly oblivious to the fact that not long before, Tony Timpa, a white man was killed in nearly the exact same fashion as Floyd, shows that no, they do not know what is worth the risk or not as they didn't even understand the issue they were protesting. Why is it "worth the risk" for people to riot in a cause they had given no more than five seconds of thought before this incident, completely misunderstanding the root causes, while it's "not worth the risk" for people who were getting financially eviscerated by lockdowns to protest those lockdowns? These health experts were saying, just weeks before, that it's so important to socially distance that people have to stop earning an income to feed their children. There is, of course, no answer for this because the value and risk thresholds are different for each individual and group. To me, protesting (not rioting) both are important. Maybe some other protest, hypothetically, for some other reason may not be "worth it" to me, but there is no reasonable metric for me to declare its value onto the people protesting.
Then as counties began to slowly loosen restrictions over the summer, Zach Weismuller pointed out (around the 5-minute mark) that in LA, beaches started opening up, but they continued to keep the parking lots closed, resulting in people parking illegally on the streets, generally creating a nuisance for people. Peter Suderman joked that "science" tells us that the distance cars park from beaches affects viral transmission. I had my own run-in with these nonsensical closures when we traveled to the Mojave National Preserve, where we found that while the trails were open, the parking lots were cordoned off, forcing us to hike half a mile to the trailhead. Good thing they cordoned off that parking lot. Otherwise, we may have caught the virus from the nearest person three miles away. In the same haphazard closures that make no sense department, Matt Welch the same Reason Roundtable podcast linked above, outlined how Mayor Bill de Blasio closed parks in New York City. Then, after some backlash, he decided to close down some streets where children can play. Including streets adjacent to those closed down parks. Because that makes total sense. Since we're riding this logic train, I suppose the next step would be to open the park greens to vehicular traffic. Oh, wait, no. The next logical step, according to de Blasio, was to address the daycare shortage caused by closed public schools by using empty public school buildings that housed 1.1 million students as daycare facilities to house 100,000 children, while keeping schools closed.
Speaking of public schools, Anthony Fauci finally realized that public schools are not much of a vector of transmission and the schools should be opened up. Something Rand Paul, a physician as well as a senator, had been saying for months, to Fauci's opposition. Still, even in November, de Blasio shut down schools again despite having extremely low transmissive rates. Schools across the country had refused to reopen due to teacher union opposition. Data has shown that whether schools reopen or not have little correlation with actual safety, but a high correlation with teacher's union power over the districts. If we take a look at the demands of some teacher's unions, we find gems such as a moratorium on charter schools, wealth taxes, and Medicare for All. Yeah, a moratorium on charter schools will totally improve workplace safety for teachers. I'm sure it has nothing to do with preserving power for the unions. And all that wealth left untaxed sure creates superspreader events that target teachers. Predictably, due to the abject failure of the public school system in this pandemic, a large number of parents are pulling their children from public schools and into charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. As a result, public school funding is declining and some districts are facing major layoffs. I bet your taxes won't go down despite the decreased public school usage and funding.
Across the country, several jurisdictions decreed that bars that don't serve food cannot open. Restaurants and bars that do serve food can open. So if Moe's Tavern only slings beer and whisky, "YOU'RE KILLING GRANDMA!" But if Moe's Tavern slings beer and whisky alongside a soggy sandwich, "Totes safe!" This is the level of intelligence we appear to be dealing with. Even if the argument is that eating is essential and getting wasted is not, what do these politicians think will happen? They'll just start crowding the establishments that do serve alcohol and food, resulting in less social distancing everywhere.
Here's another government big brain idea: curfews. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom issued curfews during Thanksgiving, which I'm pretty sure most people simply ignored. Curfews were a fairly popular thing, internationally as well as domestically. The data to support this policy is nonexistent. So we have to rely on logic and reasoning. And the arguments for curfews are extremely weak and rife with the complete inability to consider how people adapt to these policies. The thought behind curfews appears to stop at "if venues close early, people won't gather outside a certain time." Of course, just thinking about it a little more and one would quickly realize this would just force people to complete their errands and tasks crammed into a shorter timeframe. Gyms, for example, a venue not deemed an exception to the curfews, would just force people who would otherwise work out at midnight or some other off-hour to socially distance, to work out within the arbitrary 5am to 10pm window. What would this do? Crowd the venues during open hours, creating more opportunities for viral transmission. While some of the arguments do state that people tend to get intoxicated later at night, causing people to be less careful, this isn't what the curfews are addressing. The curfews are broad, sweeping rules that create more harm than good.
COVID numbers in the US were potentially inflated where 94% of recorded COVID deaths have included additional conditions or causes of death. I suppose this isn't that uncommon for other causes of death either, but there are instances of heart attack victims and someone dying in a motorcycle accident that were officially recorded as COVID deaths. A doctor in Florida thinks that more than 40% of reported COVID deaths may have been misclassified. Likewise, some think COVID deaths have been undercounted due to the lack of available testing, which even if correct, as covered above, is a problem the CDC and FDA created.
Late in the summer, the Trump administration through the CDC, decided to ban landlords from evicting tenants. The name of the governmental agency is the Centers for Dwelling Coercion. Wait, let me check my notes. Nope. Centers for Disease Control. Why are they issuing regulations on rent and tenancy? Since the regulation only regulates properties with tenants in certain income brackets, it can't be due to the spread of the virus, which would have a host of its own problems. This, then, is regulation in an attempt to "protect" tenants that were adversely affected by the government lockdowns. Once again, the government creates this massive problem, bad things happen, and now they force people that had nothing to do with it to help them rectify the problem. Unsurprisingly, landlords who struggle to make ends meet including those in marginalized communities, are really stuck now, with non-paying tenants on their property that they're now forced to pay the mortgage, property taxes, and maintenance on.
An LA restaurant owner had her outdoor dining patio shut down by the government while rubber-stamping a giant temporary dining patio for a movie company 50 feet away from her own. Let this be a lesson, small businesses. You need to spend millions on lobbyists and political connections to be protected. Don't have that kind of money? The government doesn't work for you.
Watch this video, folks. Sound on. pic.twitter.com/Oo6LMdmE1p
— Klavan Squarebeard, first of his name (@SpencerKlavan) December 4, 2020
New York continually and sporadically changed the rules for outdoor dining, causing restaurant owners to spend money in an inefficient manner and continually chase the changing rules. As winter arrived, they mandated roadway barriers to outdoor dining, provided "free" of charge, paid for by taxpayers, but there were hours-long waits for these "free" sandbags. Then they just eliminated outdoor dining altogether, wasting all their efforts anyway.
As businesses continue to be hit hard financially, the Long Beach city council decided it would be a good idea to mandate grocers pay their employees an extra $4 an hour, but only for grocers that have 300 employees or more nationwide and at least 15 employees in Long Beach. The logic is difficult to follow here. These city council members think that it is so important to look after the finances of the employees that they need to mandate hazard pay. But those that work at smaller stores? Screw them. So there obviously is some kind of concession by the city council that these mandates have negative effects, otherwise, why make this exception? This mandate obviously increases operating costs during a time that stores already are struggling to stay afloat. Sure enough, Kroger's closed two stores in response to the mandate, citing that the stores, already struggling, can't afford the 28% increase in labor costs. Unsurprisingly, other city councils nearby were undeterred by these results, moving forward with similar mandates. Biden, originally looking to more than double the federal minimum wage to $15/hour in a COVID bill, thankfully has backed off. For now, anyway.
The range of idiotic rules, regulations, and government actions are just endless and continue to erode public trust, already at all-time lows, in these institutions. If I were to outline them all, this would be as long as the omnibus bill.
Perhaps the smartest thing a politician or bureaucrat has said during this ordeal was Scott Morrow, a San Mateo County Health Officer, saying "I'm not sure we know what we're doing", in regards to changing human behavior. Yeah, no shit.
Eroding Public Trust
Not content to just issue contradictory and illogical edicts, politicians and bureaucrats have also been doing their best to say the stupidest things possible and be as hypocritical as possible.
The three governors that have perhaps been the most brutal in handing down edicts have been Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, and my own governor, Gavin Newsom. All three have had their own transgressions with their own dictates and rhetoric.
Andrew Cuomo, in November, waxed poetic about the importance of not gathering with family for Thanksgiving, speaking to New Yorkers like they were kindergarteners, but later let it slip in a radio interview that he was going to be seeing his elderly mother and two of his daughters over the holiday. Soon after the backlash, he publicly stated that he canceled the plans, saying he had lots of work to do, without actually acknowledging his hypocrisy. Then shortly after Thanksgiving, he sat in a press conference, crowing about how great of a leader he was during the pandemic, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary, but did not wear a mask, even though he and his aides were in a room so tight that journalists were restricted from the event.
Gretchen Whitmer, ordering draconian restrictions on businesses and individuals, was seen marching in a crowded protest in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. Never one to apologize, she defended herself saying that while they weren't always able to maintain social distance, they were all wearing masks. Yeah, well, she didn't tell businesses to stay open and wear masks, did she?
Gavin Newsom had perhaps the most egregious transgression of the three, earning him a lot of backlash and fueling the Recall Newsom movement. He was caught at a friend's birthday party at The French Laundry, the most expensive restaurant in the state, with several health officials and lobbyists, no less. To his credit, Newsom, unlike either Cuomo or Whitmer, actually did apologize in a weird politician-y way that exuded insincerity, but in doing so, claimed he was outdoors, though photos surfaced later that he was sitting in an enclosed patio. Sorry, that's not outdoors, especially in the context of a respiratory pandemic.
The next day. The very next day! San Francisco mayor London Breed dined at The French Laundry in the same enclosed patio that Newsom was in the day before. Had the gathering been in the city she's a mayor of, it would have been in violation of the lockdown orders she had implemented. I guess if it's in a different area code, it doesn't matter.
In San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi was caught on video getting her hair done at a salon, wearing her face mask in chin-diaper position, despite the government shuttering salons. In true Pelosi fashion, she not only refused to apologize, she blamed the salon that she had been going to for years, calling it a "setup". Her claims that she simply trusted the salon to know the rules are also bizarre. Who works in the government, anyway? If people tasked with coming up with these rules aren't expected to know them, why should the rest of us bother with them?
Likewise, the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, stated that "getting your roots done is not essential". Then she turned around and went to a salon for a haircut, despite salons being shut down. Of course, she defended herself saying the stylist wore a mask and gloves (so why can't other people get haircuts from people wearing masks and gloves?). She also offered another defense that she's "the public face of the city," implying that she has to look good while on television. Yeah, and other people are the face of their business or organization. Why would only the mayor receive an exception for this?
It seems like California politicians just can't stop going to swanky restaurants. Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted for a ban on outdoor dining. Hours afterward, she was found at Il Fornaio, an Italian restaurant. Not quite as swanky as The French Laundry. Maybe when she becomes mayor of Los Angeles. Her office released a statement saying she dined there before the restriction went into effect. Good to know that viruses don't spread until after politicians' dining restriction laws come into effect. She didn't even have the decency to wait a day before stuffing her Alfredo cream sauce covered foot in her mouth.
California again? I sure live in the state with the most tone-deaf, self-unaware politicians. Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, about a week before Thanksgiving, tweeted an Atlantic article talking about the importance of not spending time indoors with people outside your own household. Then the day before Thanksgiving, he tweeted to cancel big gatherings. The next day, on Thanksgiving, he gathered with eight individuals from five different households, two above the mandated limit.
Perhaps the most blatant "What were you thinking?" moment came from Austin mayor Steve Adler. In a recorded video message, he told Austin residents to stay at home at that it "was not the time to relax". It turns out that he recorded the video while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas with his extended family. Oh, come on! At least most of the other politicians had the courtesy to wait at least a few hours before violating their own dictates. And immediately before that, he had thrown a wedding for his daughter in Austin, which included guests from out of state. Oh, come on!! One of those would have been bad enough, but two, sequentially?? Was he actively trying to give his press secretary an ulcer? With the sparse amount of brain cells in his skull, I'm more surprised he didn't record his scolding video while lounging on the beach sipping on a pina colada with waves crashing in the background.
Denver mayor Michael Hancock agreed with Steve Adler, telling Denver residents to stay home over Thanksgiving. He also agreed with Adler that what he tells the lowly proles to do doesn't also apply to him. The day before Thanksgiving, he flew to Mississippi to see his family. While he was at the airport, probably already at his gate, his Twitter account posted "avoid travel, if you can." To be fair, he did say, "if you can." I guess Hancock would have spontaneously combusted if he didn't get on that plane? Good thing he traveled, then.
Pass the potatoes, not COVID.
— Michael B. Hancock (@MayorHancock) November 25, 2020
🏘️Stay home as much as you can, especially if you're sick.
💻Host virtual gatherings instead of in-person dinners.
❌Avoid travel, if you can.
🍲Order your holiday meal from a local eatery.
🎁Shop online with a small business for #BlackFriday. pic.twitter.com/acQpWs2Ism
Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser had Delaware on her list of high-risk states, and people traveling from there should quarantine for 14 days. Bowser went to Delaware to see Biden's victory speech and returned without quarantining. She defended herself by saying her travel was essential. Listening to a speech in person is essential? Has she heard of a television? Has she heard of video conferencing? Did she think one of the most popular words in the past year, "Zoom" was referring to a Mazda commercial?
Policies governing the amenities among the political class caused further distrust. It was discovered in San Francisco that while politicians have kept private gyms closed, the gyms located within government buildings, for the exclusive use of government employees and officials, have remained open.
Health bureaucrats, like politicians, were not able to escape themselves. Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist behind the Imperial College study that vastly overstated COVID death projections as well as pushing for lockdowns in England, was caught with a married woman visiting him in his home, in violation of the lockdowns he had pushed for. Anthony Fauci was photographed sitting right next to two people without wearing a mask and this brought a lot of criticism, but honestly, I thought this one was overblown. Photographs often capture one moment and it's easy for people to project that moment in perpetuity. There's little reason to suspect he didn't have his mask up for the majority of the time, and it's difficult to fault him for sitting next to his wife. Being so close to a close friend may be the closest thing he came to hypocrisy there, but it's not anything so egregious like the politicians above. Still, going to a ball game while ordering everyone else to imprison themselves indoors is, at least, a sign of a shitty leader. Then of course, as mentioned above, Gavin Newsom's soiree with health officials and lobbyists was roundly and rightly criticized.
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| Super elated Democrat, or Chinese bioweapon? // Getty Images via Marketwatch |
If you're wondering, right about now, why I haven't listed any Republicans yet, it's probably because Republicans generally have not advocated for lockdowns, at least with the same fervor as Democrats have. So there's not as much hypocrisy to be had. But fear not, the GOP is not without its own. The governor of Mississippi was one such example of a Republican who issued executive orders to limit gatherings. Then he turned around and handed out Christmas party invitations to numerous politicians across the state. On the other end of the spectrum, Marco Rubio, Linsey Graham, and Mike Pence are among the GOP politicians who have downplayed the Coronavirus in lockstep with Trump, but when the vaccine was released, were among the first in line to receive it, even in front of healthcare workers, people with comorbidities, and the elderly. Maybe stupidity is a comorbidity.
How do these politicians and bureaucrats think people will react to their actions? Do as I say, not as I do. Rules for thee, but not for me. If they're complaining about people not complying with their edicts and why trust in them is so low, they only have to look in the mirror to see why.
Even aside from the hypocrisy, some of the plain idiocy spouting from politicians' mouths do not help with public trust at all.
One of the bright spots throughout these government orders were some sheriffs refusing to implement lockdown orders, for example, four sheriff jurisdictions in New York. To whom Andrew Cuomo called, "dictators" and "violating his or her constitutional duty". What?? Cuomo issues executive orders, which is a fancy phrase for dictates, and he has the intellectual bankruptcy to call the sheriffs, who refuse to implement dictatorial edicts, dictators? Has Cuomo also not read the First Amendment in the US Constitution, where peaceable assembly is a guaranteed right, with no pandemic exception? Or how about early on when Cuomo said "if anything we do saves just one life..."? Oh, yeah? What if the saves a life and costs a life? What if it saves a life and costs two lives? What if it saves a life and wrecks the entire economy, plunging hundreds of thousands into poverty? That kind of rhetoric is just inherently unserious. Then Cuomo won an Emmy, maybe because the things he said and did were so stupid, they thought he had to have been acting. Being the leader of the state with one of the worst Coronavirus responses probably also helped, given all the drama that came out of that state. Then again, the Emmy organization does have a few busted bulbs in a series circuit. At least Cuomo's nursing home scandal is now causing lawmakers of both major parties to strip him of his emergency powers.
Bernie Sanders, early on, had it all figured out. If only we had socialized medicine. Yes, then we could have been like...Italy, one of the most hard struck countries back when he criticized the health care system for failing back during the Democratic primary debates. As time went on, data just kept proving him wrong. Belgium and the United Kingdom...both countries with worse death rates than the United States and both countries with socialized medicine. If his one-trick pony insistence was true, one would expect the United States and Singapore to be at the top of the list of deaths, and the United Kingdom and Canada at the bottom. But that's not what it looks like. There doesn't appear to be any kind of correlation at all. Even Joe Biden, at the primary debates, not one exactly known for his lucidity, was able to instantly point out Italy as an obvious counterfactual.
Finally, how can we forget all of Trump's idiocy? Inquiring about whether injecting disinfectant or shining a powerful light inside the body would be a good way to go. Saying that COVID-19 is the same as the common flu. Claiming the US has more testing than everyone else. Also of note, no, Trump did not call the Coronavirus a hoax though many of his followers did. Thankfully, I don't think anyone was quite dumb enough to actually inject bleach into their body.
With all of the above, why would people that don't just happily swallow the fascistic government tendencies still trust them? Even ignoring historical events like the Tuskegee Experiments, after a year of the above, is it any wonder why Americans have low trust in government institutions? Is it any wonder why Americans would begin to revolt and exhibit civil disobedience?
Money, money, money. Money!
With, or perhaps, despite, all of the government delays, blunders, restrictions, and malfeasance, people wanted the government to do something.
That's what the government did. They did something. Twice in 2020, at least where people got direct checks. And we all paid the price for it while the rich and politically connected benefited.
The first round of stimulus called the CARES Act (if only they would spend as much time analyzing these bills as they do with trying to come up with cute acronyms), came in May and the House didn't even record a vote on it, putting it to a voice vote, despite Thomas Massie's objections. Democrats and Republicans alike called him every name in the book for taking that brave stance.
Since then, that stimulus was just bad news after bad news. Want to go back to see who voted on that bill and punish those who voted for it? Sorry. Voice vote. No record in the House. The senators unanimously voted to screw the American people under the guise of caring for them. The two senators that I thought might put up a fight, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, decided instead to not vote.
The bill was $2.2 trillion and people got a measly $1,200, income-restricted, of course. A pittance for people put out of work for several months. If people actually did the math on this, you could give every man, woman, and child in the US $7,000 with no income restrictions. In reality, only less than $300 billion would go toward those $1,200 checks. Where did the rest of the $1.9 trillion go? A lot to rich people. I mean, a LOT to rich people.
That tiny allotment that went to small businesses evaporated quickly. Most people probably think of the mom and pop restaurant down the street as the people benefitting from this portion of the Act. Nope. Most went to publicly-traded companies, with market caps up to $405 million.
But all politicians ever mention is the $1,200. You know, the part that makes up a little more than 0.01% of the bill?
The CARES Act worked out so well (for their connected wealthy campaign donors, that is) that in December, Congress decided to go again and stuff it into the omnibus bill. There's $325 billion set aside for small businesses. I wouldn't count on it to go any more smoothly this time around. $600 checks go out to people making $75k or less a year. A whole $600! For the trouble of being put in dire financial straights for months, people in California could pay for a week's worth of rent or maybe to buy a Glock. The airline industry gets yet another bailout to the tune of $15 billion and the wealthy airline stock owners rejoice. Another $7 billion goes to broadband access, whatever that means. I don't know how that helps with people getting back on their feet from the pandemic, and neither did your "representative" when he or she voted on it. $85 billion goes to public schools, despite those schools hemorrhaging enrollment to private schools.
Now the Biden Administration is pushing for a $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus bill because the politically connected keep calling for more debt piled up on the people of this country. In it is a $1400 check for everyone, presumably, income-restricted again. And again, that only accounts for less than 25% of the entire bill, if it's not income-restricted. Also included will be an extension of unemployment benefits, because I guess giving people pieces of paper with Ben Franklin's portrait on it is the same as economic production. State governments would also receive a bailout from the bill, so the ones that stalled their own economies and crushed their tax base would continue to receive a paycheck for continuing to put people out of business. Most of the bill is filled with pork that Democrats want in any given year instead of being directly related to COVID-19 relief.
Results of lockdowns
One of the major catalysts for the lockdowns across the world was the model done by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, predicting massive deaths without lockdown measures. However, none of the predictions came true, with some of the numbers being orders of magnitude off. The same team had the gall to proclaim victory with lockdown measures, saying they saved millions of lives, by comparing their predictions to actual cases. This, quite frankly, is a totally bullshit metric, as it completely ignores the reliability of the model's numbers. If we actually look at the model's numbers and compare them to actual numbers in countries that did not implement the recommended lockdown procedures, we find wildly divergent results. It predicted, conservatively, 96,000 deaths in Sweden by July 1st without mitigation, with a prediction that adding household isolation would reduce the death toll by half. Sweden chose to go without mitigation and by July, they only had 5,411 deaths, even with all of the factors working against them, as explained above. By December 31st, they had 9,816 deaths. They didn't even get their best-case scenario prediction in the same order of magnitude of reality. The model also predicted the following number of deaths in the countries that did not institute lockdowns: South Korea at 381,000, Japan at 1,400,000, and Taiwan at 212,000. The actual death toll in those countries from COVID-19, as of December 31st were: South Korea at 900, Japan at 4,380, and Taiwan at 7. Interestingly, the predictions for Canada (326k to 16k), the United States (2.7m to 360k), and the United Kingdom (600k to 74k), countries that did lock down, were far closer, as a percentage, to Ferguson's unmitigated predictions than the countries that actually went the "unmitigated" route. Excluding the Eastern Asian countries and looking just at Sweden, the study's margin of error was about the same as both the United States and the United Kingdom. These are numbers that make Harold Camping look like a veritable time traveler with impeccable credentials. Given that Ferguson's track record over time has been similarly horrendous, why did anyone ever listen to this guy? Despite the atrociousness of the predictions, as well as Ferguson's embarrassing, hypocritical scandal, governments continued their disastrous lockdown policies.
The talk of COVID-19 policy has largely been dominated by a singular focus on reducing its transmission to the exclusion of all other effects policy could have. This is a completely ridiculous way to consider any kind of action, let alone public policy, but that's what the politicians have done, as well as most media pundits. Just consider the actions you take in your daily life. If you were singularly focused on getting to work quickly to the exclusion of all other considerations, you would conclude that driving 150 miles per hour down the freeway, weaving between lanes, and crashing through the building lobby for the best parking space next to the elevator would be the appropriate course of action. But of course, we don't do that because we realize that kind of driving could easily cause fatal accidents, and crashing the car into the building every day would be prohibitively expensive. And yet, politicians decided to drive 150mph down the freeway and crash through the lobby. Likewise, in prudent public policy, if we singularly focus on reducing traffic congestion, we might think a prudent course of action would be to force every other business to close every other day. But of course, we don't do that because we realize that policy would wreck the economy.
So why is it that so many seem singularly focused on COVID-19 as if the world is a TV episode that airs on Adult Swim? Any kind of critical examination of the negative policies of mask mandates, lockdowns, and other public policy efforts are met with blind accusations of killing grandma.
Even looking at the results of the lockdowns, it is pretty clear that there is no apparent correlation between death rates and the severity of lockdowns. As covered above, from country to country, there is no clear cut correlation that the avoidance of lockdowns result in mass deaths, with some countries with the lowest levels of lockdowns faring the best and some countries with the highest levels of lockdowns faring the worst. More damning are the charts (and more charts, and more charts) that Ian Miller had created for Rational Ground, juxtaposing new cases with public policy date implementations such as lockdowns and mask mandates. If the lockdowns and mask mandates actually work, you would expect new cases to change course and decline not too long after the mandates were put in place. However, new cases don't appear to respond in the slightest to the mandates put in place. Ian Miller has additionally tweeted charts after charts showing no differences in COVID cases between states despite varying public policies, and comparing states such as Florida and California, where COVID has been comparable between them despite California instituting harsh lockdowns while Florida remained relatively open and with a much older population. These could be subject to cherry-picking. So let's take a look at Johns Hopkins's more detailed and more comprehensive charts. You'll find some closings that precede a drop in cases; you'll also find some openings that precede a drop in cases. Likewise, you'll find some closings that precede a rise in cases and you'll find some openings that precede a rise in cases. You would also find that just about every state has a rise in cases in the spring, a decline over the summer, and a spike in the winter, no matter how stringent a lockdown state it was. Similarly, data from South Africa showed that the changing lockdown levels have had no correlation with the COVID caseload. When Texas lifted its mask mandates and occupancy limits in early March of 2021, people went nuts, from Joe Biden calling it "Neanderthal thinking" to Anthony Fauci saying cases and deaths would surge, to Texas Democratic Party leaders saying it would result in a death wave. Fauci went as far as saying when public policy measures he has pushed is scaled back, there has "invariably" been a surge. As illustrated above, that is completely false, and it was false this time as well. Texas, two months later, has not seen a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, nor is there any evidence that the policy shift had even budged the numbers. The body of work as a whole doesn't appear to show much correlation between public restrictions and a decline or even a slowing of cases like one would expect if these were such important measures to take.
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| As Tom Woods likes to point out, if the mandates were not indicated, would you be able to tell where they are? More importantly, did Garcetti pray for more COVID cases, or fewer? // graph by Ian Miller for Rational Ground |
Mask wearing has also become a highly politicized issue. Some groups seem to think that wearing masks stop the virus dead in its tracks. Other groups seem to think that masks do nothing. From my own admittedly limited knowledge, it seems like both sides live in their own insular bubbles. There are studies and metrics that show mask-wearing can do quite a bit. Others show that mask-wearing doesn't do a whole heck of a lot. The benefits of mask-wearing are likely not as important as many are making it out to be. Certainly, it's not so important to assault and murder people for not wearing a mask. At the same time, the benefits of mask-wearing are likely nonzero, reducing the number of viral particles in the air, increasing the time it takes, even if slightly, depending on the type of mask, to take in or expel an infectious dose. Certainly, it's not so important to not wear a mask to assault and murder people for asking you to wear a mask. Above all, people on both sides could do well to keep in mind to just not be an asshole. If a store asks you to put on a mask as a condition to shop there, respect their private property and either put on a mask or shop somewhere else. If someone is social distancing, minding their own business, don't harass or assault that person. Just some common decency, people. The government and the media could help by showing studies and opinions from all sides instead of polarizing the issue, but that's probably too much to ask of them.
Okay, that covers personal mask-wearing. But what about masks on a macro level?
Rational Ground created an interactive chart that maps a New York Times survey on mask usage with cases. There may be an extremely slight decline in cases when mask usage is high, but it seems difficult for me to draw any kind of real conclusion from it aside from mandating it as policy instead of just asking people to wear masks is likely not a good idea. CDC Director Robert Redfield had said that the pandemic could be under control if everyone wore masks for 4-8 weeks and that it could be more effective than a vaccine (which, if that's true, why were so many saying we just need to shelter in place until a vaccine?). By August, mask compliance was at 85% and growing, but still, cases spiked as we headed to winter. Did the mask-wearing help? Maybe, at least a little bit. As much as a vaccine? Please.
Yet even if we ignore that these public policy measures appear to be ineffective, it is exceedingly clear that lockdowns don't have zero negative consequences. Due to lockdown measures, as libertarians have warned since the beginning, mental health has declined drastically. Suicides are up, drug overdoses are up, and domestic abuse is up, mostly among people in the lower socioeconomic spheres. Termed "deaths of despair", a study estimated 75,000 additional deaths from drug abuse or suicide during the pandemic. During the lockdown phases of 2020, anxiety, at its lowest, was over 27% up to 38% around Thanksgiving. Depression was at a low of 27% to a high of 31% around Christmas. By comparison, in 2019, anxiety among adults was 8.2% and depression was 6.6%. These lockdowns have been an absolute catastrophe to mental health. To be fair, some of that may be caused by fear and uncertainty of the virus itself, but the corporate media and politicians' incessant sensationalism certainly doesn't help on that end, either. Aside from adults, children have experienced significant mental health declines as well, resulting in suicides, from not being able to see their friends or go to school in person.
[edit 4/9/2021: A study came out that shows suicides in the US have declined slightly in 2020, back to approximately the 5-year average, a result that shocks me, given the evidence of skyrocketing mental health declines. However, the study shows a spike of nearly 20,000 in "unintentional injuries", that it says is driven largely by overdose deaths. It is unclear whether some of those overdoses were intentional, which would increase the suicide numbers. Additionally, the study does not differentiate youth suicides, which by all measures, seem to definitely be up, and adult suicides, nor does it take into account suicide attempts. Heart disease deaths have also increased substantially, as have diabetes deaths. Interestingly, influenza deaths, which I thought would decline, has increased slightly from the year before and generally steady with the five years prior. Although not congruent, the spread of the flu and COVID-19 are similar and it seems like the flu spread would be a decent control test to see how well these measures we have been forced to undergo have performed. Not particularly well, it would seem.]
Something else that I saw early on was the large decline of cancer screenings. My wife works as a physicist at a radiation oncology department. I thought people would get cancer whether there is a pandemic or not so her workload would not decline. Much to my surprise, her department's caseload plummeted very early during the lockdown, resulting in some furloughs. It turned out that many people were no longer doing regular cancer screening so these very treatable cases stopped. In December, they received an influx of advanced stage ENT cancer patients and have been getting busy as of January. I don't know how many would die and how many could have had treatable conditions had they done regular screenings, but ENT patients rarely come in waves. It's difficult to know how many excess cancer deaths will occur over the next few years due to these policies. Over in England where the National Health Service retains an absolute government monopoly on healthcare, people with cancer are not even guaranteed to get treatment, due to the pandemic. Nearly 2.5 million people did not receive cancer screening during their lockdown over hospital overcrowding concerns, despite the overcrowding never occurring in the spring (to critical levels anyway). Experts there fear otherwise preventable cancer deaths may result in as many deaths as the pandemic itself.
Interestingly, heart attack deaths have skyrocketed, more than double than in previous years because many people are not going to the hospital after experiencing symptoms. Additionally, lockdowns, which include the shuttering of gyms, have led people to a more sedentary lifestyle, which increases people's risk of a heart attack, not to mention weight gain, which is a comorbidity risk for COVID. The CDC in October estimated over 90 thousand additional, otherwise preventable deaths from cardiovascular, diabetes, and cancer illnesses, many due to the mandated shutdown of "non-essential" (whatever that means...I'd say preventing 90,000 deaths is pretty essential) medical services. The WSJ article goes on to highlight that a quarter of young adults have increased substance use due to the pandemic and that pediatricians have reported a rise in child abuse, accidental injuries, and stunted educational and emotional growth.
With respect to the economy, contrary to what many libertarian pundits seem to suggest, I don't think there was any way to avoid at least a slight economic downturn, even while avoiding lockdowns. However, I doubt it would be nearly so severe without lockdowns. Sweden, for example, may be one of the most damning examples against the libertarian thesis, though not nearly as bad as many would like you to believe. With its avoidance of lockdowns, it still had a contraction of 8.6% in GDP figures from April to June, the largest quarterly fall in 40 years. I don't particularly like using GDP figures as a measure of economic health since the figure includes government spending, it can be useful for a quick comparison with other countries, all else being fairly equal. Looking at the European Union overall, they had an 11.9% contraction across its constituent countries. So in comparison, Sweden economically fared far better, compared to its peers, by nearly 30%. Some point to Sweden's high unemployment rate over the past year, compared to its Nordic peers, citing it for its policy failure, but the unemployment numbers don't point to such a failure. When comparing Sweden's unemployment numbers between 2019 and 2020, we find that Sweden's delta is middle of the pack to faring above average, depending on the length of time, compared to other Nordic countries. However, I am not clear on each country's regulatory responses. For example, if Denmark (or Sweden, for that matter) had passed legislation banning or restricting the termination of their employees, this would create good or better short term unemployment rates, but create economic hardships down the road as it becomes more difficult to rebuild lost capital.
Why did Sweden's economy still contract despite not having any lockdowns? Simple. Some people feared the virus enough to voluntarily stay home and keep themselves safe. This includes the vulnerable, people living with vulnerable people, and, likely, the paranoid. This is normal human behavior and will adversely affect the economy. As such, it becomes understandable that unemployment had risen even without lockdowns. Further, Sweden has a very trade-dependent economy so when other countries lock down and import fewer goods, Sweden will tend to suffer as a result.
However, a key difference is that the poor and less fortunate would likely have done much worse had they locked down. A lockdown from the government means large swaths of people cannot work and produce, regardless of how much risk they face. In terms of employment, while it had still gone up in Sweden, there is a significant difference between it and other countries' unemployment numbers. Since the high unemployment in Sweden was due to voluntary resignations of their jobs versus other countries' forced resignations of their jobs, it stands to reason that Sweden's unemployment rates, even if high, resulted in less suffering. Those that needed a job to survive and provide for their families still had a fighting chance, while in other countries, the forced resignations (or layoffs), could result in severe poverty. I haven't, however, noticed a study that isolates for these variables.
Stateside, a study said in late August that 8 million Americans have declined below the poverty line, with 6 million over the summer. While the COVID and unemployment checks may have temporarily slowed the rate, no serious person thinks this is a sustainable policy. Printing money doesn't actually result in greater production. There has been catastrophic havoc wreaked on certain industries, causing many small businesses, particularly restaurants, to go out of business. By early December, more than 110,000 restaurants out of about 660,000 in the United States have closed their doors either permanently or for the long term. One in six restaurants have closed their doors. Many of these represent the livelihoods of a family destroyed. In California, restaurants have paid over $100 million in government fees for operation while being shut down by the government from normal operation. A judge ruled against L.A. county's outdoor dining ban, citing a lack of evidence that it would actually curtail the spread of the virus. Several restaurants began disobeying state orders in summer, but more and more have in winter, as people become more desperate and exasperated at the government orders and hypocrisy of those issuing those orders.
But what caused the economic withdrawal? The lockdowns or the virus? Despite corporate media widely reporting using rhetoric that it was the pandemic, there is evidence that it was mostly the lockdowns. The Mises Institute looked at previous pandemics in the United States with no lockdowns and found that while viruses may have caused, at least in part, minor economic pullbacks, they were nowhere near the scale that we saw in 2020. The United States as a whole saw a spike in unemployment from about 3.5% to 15% before coming back down to over 6% halfway through 2020, a substantial increase. While Sweden's anti-lockdowns performed on average to its peers, other countries with minimal lockdowns saw much smaller unemployment bumps. Taiwan, which mandated quarantines at its border, did not do broad lockdowns within the country and saw a "spike" in unemployment from 3.7% to about 4.15% before coming back down to 3.75%, barely moving the needle. Similarly, Japan saw an increase from about 2.3% to about 2.9% and still below their 2016 numbers. Still, one could say the virus impacted Taiwan and Japan less (doesn't this undermine their pro-lockdown sentiment?), and they may have a point. New Zealand had less impact with lockdowns and they didn't see as drastic unemployment bumps either, from about 4.2% to about 5%, a similar performance to Japan but worse than Taiwan. On the other hand, The Philipines instituted harsh lockdowns with poor results among its peers, though with pretty good results compared to the world at large, but its unemployment spiked from about 5% to nearly 18% before settling back down to a still nearly-double 9%. We can look inwardly to the United States to try to eliminate some cultural variables. A look among least stringent states (SD, IA, OK, ND, AL, SC, NE, UT, AR, FL) and comparing their unemployment numbers over time in 2020 to the most stringent states (NC, MA, VT, CA, CT, RI, ME, NY, NM, HI), according to Oxford University, we find the least stringent states fared much better than the most stringent states. The least stringent mostly more or less doubled their unemployment from January to September, with Alabama and Florida performing a bit worse than double, and South Dakota performing much better than double with Nebraska actually improving their unemployment rate slightly. The most stringent states couldn't figure out how to keep their unemployment rates from at least nearly doubling, with many states even tripling their unemployment rates, and Hawaii completely tanking the labor market, spiking from 2.7% to 15.1% (though honestly, a lot of that was probably due to a massive decline in tourism, still at least partially due to lockdowns in other states). These are pretty clear and striking figures showing much worse economic results from lockdowns than without.
A major indicator within the states of the efficacy, or lack thereof, of lockdowns, has been between Florida and California. While Newsom kept California in a stringent lockdown, DeSantis opened Florida back up. Despite a much older population in Florida with similar population densities, Florida has not had wildly differing COVID-19 results. Disney World in Orlando opened last summer to cries that it would result in bodies in the streets. That has not happened. Every Disney resort property around the world has opened back up, except for Disneyland in Anaheim, due to Newsom's orders. The closure doesn't seem to have prevented any viral spread, but it has decimated the economy of Anaheim. By December of 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had California unemployment at 9.0% whereas Florida was at 6.1%. One year prior, California was at 3.9% while Florida was at 3.0%, indicating a higher increase of unemployment in California through the pandemic.
While the financial fortunes of the average American fell, the fortunes of the rich, and particularly, the ultra-rich, have skyrocketed. How can this happen? Well, what do you think happens when politicians institute lockdowns? People turn to Amazon. Can't shop at the mom and pop shop on Main Street? Well, you can buy the exact same stuff they sell at Target because they're big enough to have a grocery department to avoid state-mandated closures. What do you think happens during the bailouts where the politicians talk about giving the average American a tiny check to keep them placated but give major corporations a gigantic check out of the average American's pocket? Politicians don't help you. They help the politically connected and the rich who are able to hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers.
Horrifically, while lockdowns in first world countries could create poverty and financial hardship, in third world countries, it easily creates famine and mass deaths from other causes, including diseases that are much worse than COVID (yes, those exist!).
As touched on above, the median age in Africa is 19.7 years while the median age in the United States is 38.4 years. As we know, COVID-19 is a virus that is far deadlier to people of advanced age versus a younger population. And yet, many countries in Africa still enacted lockdowns for extended durations, despite a much lower death rate from COVID.
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| In Burkina Faso, markets were closed, drastically reducing this family's income, causing the severe malnutrition of this one-month-old. // AP photo - Sam Mednick |
Unfortunately, the tragedies don't stop there. Governments' prioritization of the Coronavirus over other diseases such as malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis, have had disastrous consequences. Though the United States have low incidences of malaria and tuberculosis, the lockdowns around the world have resulted in major supply chain issues resulting in slow development and shipment of drugs and other life-saving prevention tools such as mosquito nets as well as medication. An estimate for a three-month lockdown with a 10-month gradual return is at 1.4 million excess deaths from tuberculosis alone. An estimate for a six month supply chain disruption from lockdowns could lead to half a million more HIV deaths. A worst-case scenario model predicts an additional 385,000 deaths from malaria as a result of lockdowns. Prioritizing COVID-19 over malaria in Africa is a completely insane policy, as excess malaria deaths in the continent will drastically overshadow COVID-19 deaths. This is not even considering the long-range impacts that will continue to ravage the poor populations for generations to come. This unraveling of years or decades of progress made against those diseases would take over $28 billion to mitigate, an unlikely sum to be realized.
In addition to these tangible effects like lives lost and financial wellbeing ruined, there are plenty of intangible effects from these lockdowns. People couldn't say goodbye to loved ones at funerals. Fathers couldn't see their children born. Families couldn't see each other over the holidays, even if it may be the last holiday an elder may see. Grandparents kept away from their grandchildren, even if they were on their death bed. Some realize that there is more to life than a heartbeat and oxygen in your lungs.
In conclusion, governments pursued lockdown strategies based on models by someone who advises the UK and US governments as well as the WHO. It is unclear that heavy-handed lockdowns have even really saved any substantial or even moderate amount of people. We do know, however, that government actions have killed many and that government lockdowns have led to the deaths of huge swaths of the global population. Even if we consider the implausible claim that the government actions have saved the lives of millions, those lives are overwhelmingly toward the end of their lives. The average life expectancy in the united states is 78.7 years. Those in the US that have died involving COVID-19 (which likely include factors outside of the virus as the real cause of death) that were 65 years or older constitute 80% of all deaths from the virus. Those deaths under 25 years of age constitute less than 0.2% of deaths, most likely with comorbidities. On the other hand, the suicides, malaria cases, tuberculosis, and famine, affect people of all ages, some with larger effects on the younger population. So looking at all this in the best light possible for the lockdowns, we're trading the lives of people with their whole lives ahead of them for people who have just a few years left to live. It may seem crude, but this is the reality of the situation. If this is an outcome pro-lockdown people are happy with, I will trade them an old car (or even two) almost ready for the junkyard for their brand new car, any day.
Vaccine rollout
A few days after the election, news came out that Pfizer, then Moderna both had 95% effective vaccines ready to roll out, gaining expedited approval by the FDA.
Instead of using pricing and market signals to determine need and distribution, governments across the world set up bureaucratic distributions of the vaccine where they promptly bungled the rollout. The United States had a slow rollout, with the federal government, state governments, counties, and hospitals suffering from disorganization and conflicting priorities. Even the prioritization list is full of people that are not high need or high risk. The prioritization list, created by a board largely made up of health care professionals, has healthcare workers at the top. While it makes sense at first glance, it doesn't differentiate between different healthcare jobs. My wife, who works in radiation oncology in the back office and rarely sees the patients, was one of the first people to get the vaccine, ahead of even some doctors and nurses. Even their insurance billing specialist that works 100% from home was able to receive priority vaccination. Right on down to phase 1C, the priority list has gaping logical flaws that give many low-risk people priority over high-risk people. Educational support staff that includes people who stay home and talk to educators over the phone are prioritized. Lawyers and magazine editors are prioritized over the general public. Why? The lack of any pricing mechanism (with subsidies, if needed) creates this nonsensical, inefficient priority list.
Pfizer, late December, was sitting on millions of doses of vaccines in a warehouse, waiting for delivery instructions from the US Government, according to a release by the company. The FDA served to muddy the waters by releasing a statement saying that vials of the vaccine could contain 6 or 7 doses, more than the stated 5 doses per vial, while simultaneously outlining recommendations to avoid mixing vials to maximize dosage, for whatever reason. To make things worse, Cuomo, in his endless quest to be the worst COVID governor, issued threats of fines to hospitals both if they don't use all of their doses within a week at $100k, and if they vaccinate someone outside of the narrowly defined state priority list at $1 million. So if a hospital gets a no-show (as they always do) on the last day, they would become $900,000 poorer if they inoculate someone that's not on a bureaucrat's list. It would not be difficult to deduce that hospitals would opt to instead throw away a perfectly good vaccine, given its short shelf life after thawing. Surprise! That's exactly what happened. As a result of these hospitals bound by red tape, many states have had very low rates of vaccination as a percentage of how many vaccines they've been sent.
Elsewhere, vaccine rollouts had odd prioritization lists spearheaded by teachers' unions. Oregon decided to vaccinate teachers before the elderly, prioritizing people with many times lower chance of dying from COVID-19 in environments that don't appear to transmit the virus very well. In Maryland, a county gave prioritization to unionized public school teachers, who are having at-home instruction, over private school teachers who are having in-person instruction.
Some months after Oregon had been distributing vaccines, governor Kate Brown decided the best way to go was to create a centralized government website to register for COVID-19 vaccines. Right after this became mandatory, vaccinations ground to a near-halt, as the vaccine registration website crashed and many people were stranded, having to call in and be placed on hold for hours on end before they were hung up on. Maybe Oregon contracted with the same people that built the disastrous Obamacare website.
Private companies, with expedited and relaxed FDA approvals, produced a vaccine in record time while the centrally planned and socialistic distribution was bungled? Whodathunk?
Across the world, vaccine proliferation was often slow, including Canada, Scotland, France, and the rest of the European Union bloc. Britain, to its credit, was the first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine and began administering doses far earlier than other countries, including the United States, perhaps due in part to a response to its high infection rate as well as the discovery of a mutated strain of the virus. Israel has had a robust rollout, in contrast to many of the countries above, which has allowed more flexibility in administering the vaccines, allowing surplus doses to be administered to non-prioritized people. Sorry, Jacobin Magazine, who as usual, gets the story completely backward, the vaccine rollout speed had nothing to do with single-payer vs a capitalistic rollout.
Even as people around the world get vaccinated, media reports, as well as even CDC guidance, were that vaccinated people can still transmit the virus, despite evidence to the contrary that shows viral infections among the vaccinated declined dramatically.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was later linked to possible blood clots, resulting in several European countries ceasing to utilize the vaccine. However, of the 11 million doses administered to patients so far, there have only been five cases reported from that pool, meaning the governments that banned its use thought that in Dumb and Dumber, when Jim Carey's character exclaimed "So you're tellin' me there's a chance!" after being told of a one in a million chance, that it was a mathematical statement, not a joke. Worse still, none of those cases have provided a causal link. There is no doubt that overly cautious bureaucrats have, on net, killed more people than they have saved by suppressing the vaccine. Even worse yet, the FDA has not yet approved its use and the United States had purchased tens of millions of doses of the vaccine. Despite this, the Biden Administration has refused to export the vaccine doses to other countries that have approved the vaccine, where it could be used to suppress the spread of the virus with immediate benefits. Instead, they have been sitting in a warehouse stateside, still in shrinkwrap, as COVID-19 cases spike in other countries.
Censorship and media withholding information
With all the chants of "follow the science", one would think people would actually embrace the scientific method of constant inquiry with a continual critical examination of prior conclusions and data. Instead, those that chant this phrase, often do the opposite, actively trying to silence people that dare bring up any arguments counter to the dogma of political power. Large tech platforms such as YouTube and Facebook actively censor content that does not comply with their own set of "truth" written on their sticky notes below their monitor. This in itself illustrates how unscientific these people are, given that our knowledge of COVID-19 continually shifts over time. Several months from now, some of the information in this post will probably be outdated. This is how science works. We continually adopt new information and update our understanding based upon these discoveries. It's not like religious dogma that is frozen in time, willfully ignoring any contradictory discoveries, burning anyone at the stake who doesn't conform.
On an episode of the Tom Woods Show, NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller discussed the fallout from his class on propaganda, where he displayed studies on mask-wearing, some that show mask-wearing is beneficial, and some that show mask-wearing is not. He explained that looking at both sides of the issue is extremely important. A very reasonable take, and the one compatible with the scientific method. Well, one student took to Twitter to demand that he be fired, with some of Professor Miller's peers joining the fight against him, making up false charges along the way. The professor's administration decided to halt the course and distributed establishment-approved studies to the students in the class to read. The studies, of course, were all on the pro-mask side, already distributed to the students by Professor Miller, making it clear they were not interested in the scientific method, but rather, censorship. He later announced his plan to sue the university for libel.
Tom Woods himself, one of the best libertarians covering COVID-19, faced censorship from major tech companies, Google (via YouTube) and Facebook over his video "The COVID Cult". After 1.5 million views, YouTube took the video down, citing "misinformation". Facebook restricted it on the grounds that "fact-checkers" reviewed it as false information, despite all of his factual claims being cited in the video and his website. Then he did a fact check of the fact-checkers and did a pretty convincing job of stating his case. I have my doubts that his video will be revived on those platforms.
The ever-fascinating SoHo Forum hosted a debate between Martin Kulldorf, an epidemiologist at Harvard, and Andrew Noymer, a professor of disease prevention at UC Irvine. Kulldorf is the co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration that advocates for focused protection while Noymer is a signatory of the John Snow Memorandum that objects to The Great Barrington Declaration. A particularly telling moment, and probably an unintentional one, is when Noymer stated that his colleagues pleaded with him to not do the debate. Seriously? His colleagues, who presumably agree with him that "public health orders", his euphemism for lockdowns (which honestly, isn't a terrible opinion), feel like the stifling of open debate and discourse is the best way to resolve issues? Meanwhile, Kulldorf stated that another debate platform couldn't find another health expert to debate him. While not explicitly censorship, when one side wants to debate while the other side doesn't, it shows that the former is confident in their ideas while the latter is not. In my opinion, Noymer didn't do a particularly good job defending his position (I thought Kulldorf could have done better as well), but he deserves much credit for having the courage and intellectual integrity to show up, unlike his colleagues.
Free markets a lighthouse in a storm
Many proponents of government lockdowns seem to think that without the government telling the people what to do, people would still engage in normal non-pandemic behavior, but that just doesn't bear out in real life.
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| Squiggly lines go down before up-down dotty line. // graph from Public Discourse |
A coworker talked about how his dentist spent big bucks for a state of the art ventilation and filtration system, uncoerced by the state. Retail store checkouts throughout the country installed large plexiglass dividers and offered free sanitizing solutions at their front doors to reduce transmission between customers and employees. Many of those stores, particularly grocery stores, voluntarily scheduled senior hours where people more at risk could shop in a lower density setting, a policy with far more imagination, nuance, and efficacy than anything the government had implemented. Likewise, the preschool that my son (now) goes to, had begun setting up containment policies for the teachers, children, and parents, as early as January, before the WHO even declared a global health emergency and have had zero infections despite being open throughout the pandemic.
As we reflect upon the services that really helped keep us afloat, they were not "services" like the government handing out two thousand dollars or so as they kept everyone on pins and needles. It was almost exclusively from the private sector. We think of services like Zoom that exploded onto the scene, along with its numerous competitors like Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, and Jitsi. Services like UberEats, DoorDash, and grocery store delivery services helped those that are the most vulnerable to stay home. Amazon Prime kept up its two-day deliveries for those that needed supplies (drone deliveries, sadly, not yet widely deployed). Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and YouTube allowed everyone to keep our wits about us. Pfizer and Moderna developed the vaccines that eventually began distribution in December.
One of the most intriguing was distilleries and breweries pivoting and selling hand sanitizer as demand quickly overtook the markets, leaving store shelves bare. This was done all the while the FDA hampered their efforts with bureaucratic nonsense and tacked on a $14,000 fee for providing this valuable service before the Department of Health and Human Services "graciously" waived the fee in late December.
Rents in major cities also declined significantly, responding to lower market demand for these units. It wasn't any government bill that forced rents down. As a landlord, I offered a delay of payment early in the year to my tenant (which she turned down) and late in the year, voluntarily lowered their rent without it being requested. She is a good tenant and I don't want her to leave to another house. People often forget good tenants are worth their weight in gold and landlords will often consider this.
As public schools shut down all across the country, it was private schools that stepped up to the task and kept their doors open for those that really needed the service. As a result, private school enrollment has accelerated while public school enrollment has declined.
Now, where was the government when they weren't busy shutting down businesses, harassing people, and many instances, actively making things worse? When public school enrollments declined, did you get a rebate on your property taxes that pay for the schools? I didn't. California shut down restaurants but never bothered to rescind the food permits and license fees, in the thousands of dollars, until restaurants sued the state. National and State parks around the country were shut down. Did you get any refund from your income taxes (outside of a "stimulus" check that you will be paying for anyway)? I didn't, though privately-owned parks like ski resorts offered pro-rated discounts to their customers.
Even the early story about the two brothers that stockpiled hand sanitizer early for resale at a higher price really isn't as bad as the knee-jerk public reaction was to it. They speculated on the futures of a product and risked a lot of money on it. While it's commonly referred to as "price-gouging" from people that don't understand supply and demand, what their action effectively did, had they been able to carry it out, was to slow the hoarding of hand sanitizer, which during a pandemic, the standard retail price is FAR too low, resulting in mass shortages (which is what we got). At standard pricing, people in a panic will grab up more bottles than they need, exacerbating shortages. By scooping up supply early and selling it for more, they sent an early signal to the producers to ramp up production and distribution, while slowing the spiked demand, making people think twice about grabbing ten bottles for a family of two. Unfortunately, Amazon shut down their account and a state lawsuit froze the supplies for a month before the brothers settled to donate the entire supply. You can still think it's an asshole thing to do, and reflexively, I do as well, but a clear understanding of economics shows this to be not bereft of benefits. In the case of the pandemic, there is some evidence to suggest that deaths may have increased due to anti-gouging laws.
This isn't to say that individuals and the private sector has been completely angelic, even aside from the hand sanitizer stockpiling. No libertarians think the private sector is 100% good, pure, and intelligent. There are people that act recklessly. I had traveled to Vegas with my wife early summer when things were opening back up and more or less sheltered in place in a suite at the Cosmopolitan (cheap rates!). It was pretty sparse for the majority of the time we were there but on the last day, as the weekend loomed, it started getting crowded with people getting stupid with their carelessness. Drunk couples taking their masks off in crowded areas. Waitresses fixing their masks by reaching inside the mask to pull them up. The landlord of the office building my firm is in decided to lock the front doors during office hours "for our safety", forcing everyone wanting to go in to touch the same keypad and pull on the door handle.
Tech giants, while they have been good in some aspects, have been downright deplorable in others, actively censoring reasonable people, even citing credible studies, on their platforms. This kind of censorship makes people distrust establishments more and drives dissenting speech underground as the population gets more fractured since people no longer listen to one another. That was the exact opposite of what we needed, but on the bright side, it has significantly driven traffic to alternatives such as MeWe, Telegram, and Odysee.
Still, the collective negatives of private individuals and companies don't even begin to compete with the death and destruction as governments have wrought on the world while private markets have provided nearly every bright spot in the past year.
The political reopening
January of 2021 can be marked as the month of the grand reopening across the country.
Andrew Cuomo, business destroyer extraordinaire, after all of 2020 taking a disastrous iron-fisted approach toward the pandemic response, suddenly declared that "We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy..." Whoa! Suddenly, people's livelihoods matter! What happened with this sudden realization? When he said this on January 11, it was just before cases in New York even peaked, and way before a critical mass of vaccinations.
Gavin Newsom also lifted the shelter in place orders across the state in late January. While it makes more sense than Cuomo's intellectually bankrupt capriciousness, given the declining COVID rates, daily case rates are still significantly higher than any point pre-winter of 2020. There are also still counties that have critically low ICU capacities, much less the 15% remaining capacity that Newsom's original plan outlined. Newsom's withholding of data and strategy was so secretive, despite what he said in early 2020, that some state officials didn't even find out about the reopening until after it was already announced.
Newly minted president Joe Biden also suddenly reversed his tune, now saying "There's nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months." What?? Where did all the talk about lockdowns and mask-wearing go? Three days into the presidency and there's nothing to be done, despite all the campaigning about shutting the virus down?
It's fantastic and welcome news, but what changed all these politicians' hearts from utter destruction back to freedom? Was it the Coronavirus case rate plummeting? Well, new case rates had peaked in very early January in the United States, but when politicians' started talking about reopening, there was no way to tell if it was a minor blip or a trend. Either way, the daily case rate was still many times higher than what it was last spring. Was it because the vaccines were being issued? Maybe, but why didn't they allude to this last month? Was it because the federal regime change was about to happen? Hrm...
In another shocking twist, the New York Times wrote an article about student suicides. A great article. A fantastic article. An article that is at least five months too late. Some say better late than never. I say with news like this, being this late is journalistic malpractice. It highlights Clark County, Nevada, where there were 18 suicides last year, double what it was the previous year. That's one county out of thousands in the United States. Despite this troubling trend, various teachers' unions across the country still refuse to go back to work, imploring us all to wonder, "what would you say you do here?"
So what could we have done?
On an individual level, get outdoors and exercise (which states made difficult to do), maintain a good diet (which the CDC largely ignores), and socially distance (people actually staying home when sick has been a huge factor in decreasing transmission of all viruses). Wearing masks indoors and in crowded areas may also help, but the benefit disappears outdoors in low-density settings as well as voluminous or well ventilated indoor spaces. High-risk people should be protected to the extent they are comfortable with.
On a policy level, we need to recognize that people have different needs and tolerances for social and economic interactions. Some people do very poorly socially isolated. Some people are barely hanging on financially and need to retain the ability to earn a living. Others do really important work that may not be immediately clear to people outside their circles. People have the ability to gauge risk-benefit for themselves as well as the ability to prioritize activities that maximize values for themselves far better than anyone sitting in an ivory tower can. In this day and age, people who are at higher risk and determine for themselves that isolating is in their best interest can easily isolate themselves. Those that can't, like those in nursing homes, should be given special protection. Everyone else who is healthy should continue their lives as they see fit, so that people who need or want to, can isolate. Governments can help coordinate research and information, but given politicians' horrendous counterproductive messaging, they probably shouldn't even really open their mouths. Leave the distribution of information to decentralized networks of experts. Forcing these measures from a policy level is a great way to force millions of people into a box the size of a clown car and not expect something to give. Something will give, and it has been an absolute disaster across the world.
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| Human pods in The Matrix. Proven to reduce COVID spread to zero. Probably not a good policy prescription. // screenshot |
Despite the Cathedral's, as Dave Smith calls it, denunciation of The Great Barrington Declaration, it has been one of the better outlines of rational policy out there. It is a declaration authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, cosigned by over 13 thousand medical and public health scientists. The critics often focus purely on the herd immunity statements, but all seem to miss the statements that the prescribed lockdowns create large negative consequences in comparison to their Focused Protection policy prescription, where people with low risk continue their lives as people with high risk are protected.
Additionally, the panic of ICU bed shortages should highlight a failure in federal healthcare policy. It's not because we don't have socialized healthcare as Social Democrat politicians try to push, using the crisis as cover. It's Certificate of Need laws. These laws are almost never talked about, probably because it is a law where politicians collude with established healthcare providers for them to maintain oligopoly status in regions where the law is in place. In essence, the law states that in order to build new healthcare facilities like hospitals and ICUs, the entrepreneur must file an application with the state, proving that their service is necessary. Established healthcare providers may deny new entrants into the field. It's not difficult to see how this would create shortages, and thereby, higher margins for the existing hospitals. Imagine if Bob's Farmer's Market needed approval from Whole Foods, Safeway, Albertson's, and Sprouts to be able to open up a grocery store. Bob, who doesn't have an army of lawyers on his speed dial, will probably have better luck winning the lottery.
The virus does deserve a lot of the blame for people's suffering in 2020. No one disputes this. There's no point in writing a post calling water wet. But few, in the mainstream at least, seem to be earnestly discussing the horrors that government dictates have caused. When crafting policy, all effects must be considered. We do know that there are a lot of adverse effects from these orders so, on net, it appears that these strict governmental orders have resulted in a lot more human suffering than a more freedom-oriented approach would have.
There are no libertarians in a pandemic? No, the libertarian argument is the only one that can survive scrutiny in this pandemic.
Resources
Data and graphs showing COVID-19 statistics
Libertarian of the year for 2020 for all of the work on pandemic policy he did
Constant coverage on pandemic policy
Documents the effects that mitigation policies have
Blog and evaluation of COVID-19 statistics
Resolution on focused protection
Updates
- April, 2021: Texas COVID cases steadily decline, defying "expert prognostications
- June, 2021: Wuhan lab leak theory the most likely scenario, disproving earlier "fact checks"
- June, 2021: CDC's eviction moratoriums based on junk science
- July, 2021: Sweden's COVID cases hit zero despite little government intervention still, corporate media stops paying attention
- July, 2021: DC Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a new mask mandate and hours before it went live, celebrated a birthday party maskless
- August, 2021: Obama's posh birthday bash illustrates the ruling class versus the commoners' divide on COVID policy
- August, 2021: Cuomo undercounted COVID deaths (again), Florida did not undercount COVID deaths
- August, 2021:Bay Area reimposes mask mandate
- August, 2021: Oregon imposes outdoor mask mandate
- August, 2021: NYC discriminates against black communities with vaccine passports
- August, 2021: Mass protests in Australia
- August, 2021: CDC eviction moratorium finally struck down
- August, 2021: Denmark tosses all remaining COVID restrictions, populace maskless for a while now
- August, 2021: Rashida Tlaib slams Rand Paul for recommending civil disobedience then hours later, violates mask mandates
- September, 2021: Biden announces COVID vaccine mandate for workplaces to be written by OSHA
- September, 2021: In the US, 91% of all COVID news has been negative
- September, 2021: A stupid amount of people think COVID hospitalization risk is over 50%, mostly Democrats
- September, 2021: Half of COVID hospitalizations are mild or symptomatic
- September, 2021: NIH likely funded gain of research
- September, 2021: Lab leak theory dismissal from early 2020 now found to have major conflicts of interest
- September, 2021: London Breed owns herself on COVID policy
- September, 2021: Joe Biden, confused as to how vaccines actually work, thinks the vaccinated need to be protected from the unvaccinated
- September, 2021: Tom Woods releases his COVID Charts Quiz
- September, 2021: Contra Costa County vaccine mandate goes live
- September, 2021: DeBlasio creates hospital shortage by firing unvaccinated healthcare workers
- September, 2021: Newsom orders all students over 12 to be vaccinated
- September, 2021: Australia's police state begins violence on protesters
- October, 2021: Several studies show natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity against COVID
- October, 2021: In-N-Out refuses to comply with vaccine mandates
- October, 2021: Childhood obesity shoots up during the pandemic, just as it did with adults
- November, 2021: NIH admits to gain of function funding
- November, 2021: Fifth Circuit Court blocks OSHA's vaccine mandates
- November, 2021: CDC director falsely claims masks 80% effective
- November, 2021: Omicron variant discovered
- December, 2021: Omicron variant far less deadly
- December, 2021: Jared Polis declares end to state of emergency in Colorado
