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"The Harmful Consequences Are Grotesquely Disproportionate to Any of the
Purported Benefits"

Posted: 19 Apr 2021 04:37 AM PDT
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(Don Boudreaux)




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Dr. Roger Hodkinson delivers a powerful case against the hysterical
overreaction to Covid-19.






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Some Covid Links

Posted: 19 Apr 2021 03:40 AM PDT
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(Don Boudreaux)




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Jay Bhattacharya was a recent guest on the Tom Woods Show.

Jeffrey Tucker is impressed with Sunetra Guptas 2013 book, Pandemics: Our
Fears and the Facts. A slice from Tuckers essay:

Dr. Gupta, I suspect, wrote this book to familiarize readers with the
normalcy of pathogens, and to explain why it is not likely that an entirely
new and deadly disease will arrive to wipe out large swaths of the human
race. She had solid reasons to doubt that there was a case for panic. In
all human experience, taking on germs and minimizing their threat took
place with marginal steps toward better therapeutics, medical attention,
better sanitation, vaccines, and, above all else, exposure. Much of this
text is about exposure – not as a bad thing but as a hack to protect the
human body against severe outcomes.

With computer viruses, the way to deal with them is to block them. Our
operating systems must remain perfectly clean and free of all pathogens.
For the machine to work properly, its memory must be pure and unexposed.
One exposure could mean data loss, identity theft, and even machine death.

Despite what Bill Gates seems to believe, our bodies are not the same.
Exposure to milder forms of germs works to protect us against more severe
forms. The cell memory of our body is trained through experience, not by
blocking all bugs but by incorporating the capacity to fight them off into
our biology. This is the essence of how vaccines work, but more than that,
it is how our whole immune system works. Pursuing an agenda of
zero-pathogenic exposure is the road to disaster and death. We did not
evolve that way and we cannot live this way. Indeed we will die if we take
the route.

Writing in the Telegraph, Charles Walker, MP, applies the logic of
supporters of vaccine passports to obesity. A slice:

The Government’s own research shows that 63 per cent of adults in England
are overweight and 27 per cent of all adults are obese, with a BMI above
30. The cost of this fat epidemic to the NHS and wider economy is put at
£27 billion a year. How many lives could be saved and improved with this
£27 billion? It is clear that by sucking resource away from deserving
illnesses and social causes, the obese kill those of a healthy weight.

But at last change might be possible. In the same way that people will soon
have to prove their Covid status, we could also be at the stage where
technology could be deployed to monitor people’s obesity status. Such a
breakthrough would finally allow the state to restrict the overweight’s
access to certain dining facilities and high-calorie foods.

Think of it. Upon entering a restaurant, the business could scan a mobile
phone app that showed your BMI. Those within the healthy range could order
what they wished off the menu, while the overweight could be restricted to
ordering size-limited portions. As for the obese, they could be asked to
settle for a salad or simply invited to leave.

Cancer research ‘could be delayed by two years’ due to coronavirus
pandemic. (TANSTAFPC There Aint No Such Thing As Free Protection From
Covid.)

Covidocrats love their power. A slice:

As states around the country lift COVID-19 restrictions, Oregon is poised
to go the opposite direction — and many residents are fuming about it.

A top health official is considering indefinitely extending rules requiring
masks and social distancing in all businesses in the state.

The proposal would keep the rules in place until they are “no longer
necessary to address the effects of the pandemic in the workplace.”

Michael Wood, administrator of the state’s department of Occupational
Safety and Health, said the move is necessary to address a technicality in
state law that requires a “permanent” rule to keep current restrictions
from expiring.

Sinead Murphy reveals the horrors of public-health policy grounded in the
sweet-sounding but evil notion that Nobody is safe until everyone is safe.
A slice:

As we embark on our second Covid year, the sentiment is chilling.

‘Nobody is safe until everyone is safe’ is the latest phase in the capture
of virtue that has been the most profound effect of Covid.

At first, we were asked to keep our distance. Other people, for whose sake
we do most of the good things we do, were put beyond our reach. We no
longer held the door for the next person to pass through. We no longer
offered to carry an old lady’s shopping. We stopped shaking one another’s
hand and patting each other on the back. We no longer hugged.

Almost all of the ways in which we knew how to be good to each other were
paused; the bonds of mutual support were severed.

Then, for the first time uncertain about how to do good, we were asked
to mask up. Not for our own sake. For the sake of the other person – I mask
for you, you mask for me. Being good to other people was returned to us.
But it was not quite like it had been before. Other people, still at a
distance, were now also without faces, and faces are so important in
arousing our pity, requesting our assistance, eliciting our smile. Virtue
had been readmitted, but for the sake of anonymous beings.

Great Barrington Declaration co-author Martin Kulldorff, writing in The
Hill, warns of the dangers of pausing the J&J vaccine. A slice:

With more than six million J&J doses administered, CVST is a very rare
adverse reaction at around one per 1 million doses, but that number is
misleading. The risk is higher for those under 50, who are better off
receiving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Even though many more patients
have received those vaccines, no CVST safety problems have been linked to
them.

The policy should be different for the older population, for which there
were no reported cases of CVST. To deny the J&J vaccine to older people is
neither desirable nor necessary. With a pause for all ages, the total
vaccine supply will decrease, delaying vaccinations and increasing COVID-19
mortality.

While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold
difference in the risk of COVID-19 mortality between the old and the young.
The older population – for whom this disease is particularly deadly – needs
this vaccine. We need to vaccinate them as quickly as possible, not only in
the United States but worldwide.

It may seem strange to have different vaccine recommendations for different
ages, but that is common.

(DBx: By the way, among the ad hominem arguments blasted against the GBD is
that its associated with anti-vaxxing. How does one square this piece by
Prof. Kulldorff with the implication that the GBD is either opposed to
vaccines or, at least, insufficiently enthusiastic about them?)




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Quotation of the Day

Posted: 19 Apr 2021 01:30 AM PDT
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(Don Boudreaux)




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is from page 101 of Thomas Sowell’s 2009 volume, Intellectuals and Society:

More generally, it is doubtful whether there are many if any individuals
in a free society who are completely satisfied with all the policies and
institutions of their society. In short, virtually everybody is in favor of
some changes. Any accurate and rational discussion of differences among
them would address which particular changes are favored by which people,
based on what reasons, followed by analysis and evidence for or against
those particular reasons for those particular changes. All of this is
by-passed by those who simply proclaim themselves to be in favor of change
and label those who disagree with them as defenders of the status quo. It
is yet another of the many arguments without arguments.




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How Deadly in the United Kingdom Was the Dread Year 2020?

Posted: 18 Apr 2021 05:45 PM PDT
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(Don Boudreaux)




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Wanna know just how deadly 2020 was in the United Kingdom, what with
Covid-19 and all? Unprecedented, right?! Off-the-charts, dontchaknow?! And
youd be correct! I mean, to encounter in the U.K. a year with as many
deaths per 100,000 as was experienced during the dread year 2020 you have
drumroll To. Go. Back. All. The. Way. In. Deep. History. To (wait for it).
2003. Yes! Truly so! 2003 the Dark Ages. There are people still alive
today who dont remember 2003! Thats how very long ago was that very
long-ago year!

Its a damn good thing that civilization in 2020-2021 was ground to a halt
that Christmas and Easter were cancelled that public protests were
prohibited that pubs were closed, churches shuttered, private gatherings
limited by the force of law, and school children caged in plastic bubbles.
Otherwise, the number of Brits per 100,000 who would have died in 2020
might might  have been what it was during the even Darker Ages of the
1990s. Whew!

Thank you, Saints Boris, Chris, and Matt!




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Robert Higgs on WWII and the U.S. Economy

Posted: 18 Apr 2021 07:25 AM PDT
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(Don Boudreaux)




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Here’s a letter to an undergraduate student who is writing a paper on the
U.S. economy during WWII:

Mr. W___:

Thanks for your e-mail and for reading Cafe Hayek.

You likely did encounter on my blog the argument that, contrary to popular
belief, the American economy was not rescued from the Great Depression by
World War II. This argument, however, isn’t mine. While I fully accept it,
this argument was developed and refined by the great economic historian
Robert Higgs.

And so research for your paper will be greatly enhanced by listening to
this 2008 EconTalk episode in which Russ Roberts talks with Higgs about the
many reasons for dismissing the notion that the Depression was ended by the
war. I strongly encourage you also to read, on the same topic, at least
chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Higgs’s 2006 book, Depression, War, and Cold War.

Here’s a bonus: Unlike most economists, Bob Higgs writes with remarkable
clarity and concision. You need not, therefore, let your past experiences
with slogging through impenetrable academic prose deter you from reading
Higgs’s important work.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Professor of Economics

and

Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at
the Mercatus Center

George Mason University

Fairfax, VA 22030




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