From Cafe HayekCafe Hayek – where orders emerge - Article <[email protected]>
Subject The Latest from Cafe Hayek
Date January 5, 2022 2:34 PM
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Journalism: Yesterday and Today

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 05:36 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
HT Jonathan Darrow






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Some Covid Links

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 03:57 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Marty Makary decries the Covid
hysteria now rampant on college campuses. Three slices:

Universities are supposed to be bastions of critical thinking, reason and
logic. But the COVID policies they have adopted — which have derailed two
years of students’ education and threaten to upend the upcoming spring
semester — have exposed them as nonsensical, anti-scientific and often
downright cruel.

..

Students are the lowest-risk population on planet Earth. Over the last six
months, the risk of a person in the broader age group (15-24) dying of
COVID or dying with COVID (the CDC does not clearly distinguish) was
0.001%. All or nearly all of those deaths were in a very specific subgroup:
unvaccinated people with a medical comorbidity. But despite Georgetown’s
strict vaccination, masking, testing and quarantine requirements, the
university announced late last month that all events, “including meetings
with visitors, will need to be held virtually or outdoors.”

At Princeton University, fully vaccinated students are not allowed to leave
the county unless they’re on a sports team. They’re also testing all
students twice a week, usurping the scarce testing supply from vulnerable
communities for low-risk young people.

..

But despite all evidence, fear of Omicron is driving more harmful policies
imposed on society’s lowest-risk people.

One knee-jerk reaction to the more mild Omicron virus has been to push
boosters on young people, despite no supporting clinical data and serious
concerns of myocarditis complications. That’s exactly why FDA’s expert
advisers voted against boosting young people by a 16-2 vote on Sept. 17.
(Just yesterday, the FDA ignored their recommendation and approved the
Pfizer booster for kids as young as 12.)

Current data actually tip the risk to benefit analysis in favor of not
boosting young healthy people. A recent Israeli study in the New England
Journal of Medicine noted zero COVID deaths among double-vaccinated people
16-29 years old without a booster. You can’t lower a risk of zero any
further with a booster. But the risk of myocarditis in young people is
quite real.

A new study published last week by Kaiser Permanente Northwest researchers
found that as many as 1 in 1,860 men 18-24 years old developed myocarditis
after the second shot.

Schools like Emory, Tulane, Wake Forest and Johns Hopkins, my own
university, which are requiring boosters in healthy young people, are
venturing into uncharted waters. They are risking health complications in
young people for the sake of beating back mild and asymptomatic infections.

Covid Derangement Syndrome continues to spark the demonization of some
children in Britain.

Dave Seminara got Covid on a cruise and would gladly cruise again. Two
slices:

In Belize, our guide, Israel, told us that the country was still paralyzed
by fear of the virus. Bars and nightclubs have been closed for nearly two
years, and a nationwide 9 p.m. curfew remains in effect. Masks are
mandatory, even outdoors or in a car with family members. Police issue $250
tickets for mask violations and social gatherings. Schools nationwide,
public and private, are still virtual: “They say they’re hoping to start
hybrid instruction in August 2022.”

..

Our elder son and I got sick near the end of the cruise, and within a few
days of disembarking my wife also tested positive. The least mask-compliant
member of the family was the only one to avoid infection. When friends
heard we had Covid, many assumed our symptoms were mild because we’d been
vaccinated. That was true of my wife and to a lesser extent our son, but
not as much for me. I recovered at home, but I suffered from fever and
general weakness for two weeks even after a monoclonal-antibody infusion.

So why would I cruise again? For one thing, I know plenty of people who
have contracted Covid while barely leaving home. For another, a cruise is a
delight. You’re part of a floating slice of Middle America. At sea, I was
reminded of our national flaws: obesity, gluttony and ignorance of other
countries. But I also saw our appealing attributes: generosity, kindness
and openness.

We also had a chance to see that Covid insanity and tyranny aren’t confined
to our shores. We were reminded that anyone can catch the virus.

A letter in the Wall Street Journal:

The analysis in Peggy Noonan’s “‘West Side Story’ and the Decline of the
Bijou” (Declarations, Dec. 18) and the letters (Dec. 27 and Jan. 3) about
movie theaters is astute, but it omits one additional nail in the coffin:
mask mandates. Spending several hours wearing a mask isn’t everyone’s idea
of leisure, particularly when you can stay home and stream the movie. Some
of us vote with our feet.

Julia Weinberg Rafsky

Philadelphia

Covid Derangement Syndrome, and the tyranny that it fuels, haunt Quebec:

Quebec Premier François Legault has imposed a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew to
battle the spread of COVID-19. Legault has also barred gatherings at
private homes. Only caregivers and people who live alone will be able to
enter other households. He has also banned inside dining at restaurants.

Jacob Sullum describes Bidens abominable vaccine mandate for workplaces as
a national vaccine mandate in disguise. Two slices:

OSHAs rule, which it published on November 5, demands that companies with
100 or more employees require them to be vaccinated or wear face masks and
undergo weekly virus testing. When Biden announced that policy in
September, he presented it as part of the administrations plan for
vaccinating the unvaccinated.

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle called OSHAs mandate the ultimate work-around
for the Federal govt to require vaccinations. White House Chief of Staff
Ronald Klain retweeted Ruhles comment, reinforcing the impression that the
rule aims to reduce the overall impact of COVID-19 by pressuring Americans
to get vaccinated.

But OSHA has no such authority. Officially, its rule is an emergency
temporary standard (ETS) that is necessary to protect employees from a
grave danger in the workplace.

..

That is not the only puzzling distinction drawn by OSHA. According to the
governments data, middle-aged workers who are vaccinated face about the
same COVID-19 risk as younger workers who are not vaccinated. According to
OSHA, however, COVID-19 poses a grave danger to the latter group but not to
the former.

It certainly looks like the Biden administration is trying to disguise a
general vaccine mandate as a workplace safety measure. The Supreme Court
will ultimately decide how convincing that disguise is.

Matt Welch exposes more misinformation spread by Biden about vaccination. A
slice:

Of particular interest was the presidents insistence on continuing to call
it a pandemic of the unvaccinated, a slogan that was unwise in July, untrue
by December, and unbelievable at a time when the positive case rate in a 62
percent fully vaccinated country just reached an all-time high.

Those who are fully vaccinated, especially those with the booster shots…you
can still get COVID, but its highly unlikely, its very unlikely that youll
become seriously ill, Biden said, accurately. But then: This continues to
be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

If the pandemic indeed no longer applies to me, my family, and the vast
majority of people I know (about half of whom seem to have contracted COVID
over the past month), then I have a couple of follow-up questions,
beginning with: Why on earth is my vaccinated 6-year-old, all the
vaccinated kids in her class and after-school, and all her vaccinated
teachers and supervisory staff, being forced by state law (influenced
directly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to wear masks
all day long? Kids, knock on wood, continue to be by far the least
COVID-vulnerable demographic; and kids who are vaccinated even more so.
Who, precisely, are we protecting with masking requirements in 100 percent
vaccinated environments?

Matt Welch also wonders if Democrats can keep schools open during omicron.

Mark D. Levine tweets

Hospitals & EMS in NYC are more strained now than at any point since spring
2020.

One reason: too many people calling 911 or going to ER with only mild covid
symptoms, or just wanting a test.

FDNY is pleading again: Do not seek emergency care unless you face a true
emergency.

which prompts this follow-up tweet by Phil Kerpen: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)

We should figure out who incited this hysteria and hold him responsible!

Martin Kulldorff tweets:

What competent epidemiologists knew in March 2020 should now be obvious to
all. Covid cannot be suppressed. Lockdowns just postpone infections and
prolong the pandemic while causing collateral damage on public health and
education.

Macron is using massive state power to piss off untouchables.

Noah Carl reports on a study that drives another nail into the coffin of
the myth that Democrats follow the science and are generally more firmly
based in reality than are Republicans. A slice:

So, why does such a large percentage of the US population – 41% overall –
wrongly believe that vaccines provide more protection than natural immunity?

Well, it’s actually not surprising when you consider how many scientists
have denied or downplayed natural immunity to Covid. Recall last year’s
John Snow Memorandum, which stated, “there is no evidence for lasting
protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection”. (The
Memorandum was co-signed by CDC director Rochelle Walensky.)

People can hardly be expected to have accurate beliefs when scientists
aren’t giving them accurate information. At this point, a correction is
surely in order: ‘We got it wrong: there is evidence for lasting protective
immunity following natural infection’.

TANSTAFPFC (There Aint No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid)

Allison Pearson bemoans the Britains continuing Covid hysteria. Two slices:

Most children have either had Covid, been vaccinated or both, so they enjoy
superb immunity, but the poor kids will still be sent home for a week and
lose yet more learning because Hugo in Year 6 snogged someone on Boxing
Day. Or a teacher, almost certainly triple-vaccinated, tests positive and
goes off sick even though they’re not at risk of serious illness. In fact,
they’re perfectly fine. Meanwhile, more than 110,000 NHS staff – nearly one
in 10 – were absent on New Year’s Eve, with almost 50,000 of those said to
be sick or self-isolating at home because of Covid.

I hate to ask, but how many of them were actually, you know, ill? The
people I know who had omicron over Christmas variously reported a scratchy
throat, feeling tired, feeling “fed up because I can’t go out”, feeling
“roughly how I feel the day after several pints of Guinness”, or no
symptoms whatsoever. Yet each one of them had to self-isolate for seven
days.

What happens if it is acceptable not to go to work if you are perfectly fit
and healthy, have no signs of any illness but test positive? Economic
collapse, obviously – but our public health officials seem to think that’s
a small price to pay if it means three people called Mike don’t sneeze in
the office.

..

It’s no surprise to hear reports that some officers in the Covid War are
burning their uniforms and fleeing. They were only following orders, you
understand. Scientists with an eye on posterity are starting to distance
themselves from lockdowns, which will end up killing tens of thousands and
blighting many more lives than Covid ever did. “In a year or two, I
guarantee there won’t be a single scientist who admits to having supported
the closure of schools,” said one.

In his forthcoming book, The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific
Memoir(Sandstone Press, £16.99), Professor Mark Woolhouse, one of the
country’s leading epidemiologists, says that the theory outlined by Michael
Gove at a No 10 briefing that “everybody is at risk” from the virus was a
dreadful error. The lockdowns which followed were “morally wrong and highly
damaging”, says Prof Woolhouse. “We did serious harm to our children and
young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence…
We were mesmerised by the once-in-a-century scale of the emergency and
succeeded only in making a crisis even worse. In short, we panicked.”

Thanks are due to Prof Woolhouse for articulating what some of us have
known in our hearts for a long time. We panicked back then when we should
have protected the vulnerable and let the rest get on with their lives.
Shamefully, as the pandemic dwindles away, we are still doing the
headless-chicken thing. Crazy testing of healthy people on an industrial
scale (would we ever have done that for flu?), masks for schoolchildren in
class, vaccinating the young who already have superb natural immunity; none
of it will do any good, in fact, it will only drag things out. Which might,
I’m afraid, suit certain people rather well.




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Quotation of the Day

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 01:30 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
is from page 209 of Jagdish Bhagwati’s and Arvind Panagariya’s 2013 book,
Why Growth Matters:

Removal of poverty as an objective appeals to mankind’s noblest instinct:
empathy for the poor. On the other hand, dispossession of the rich reflects
mankind’s ignoble instincts: resentment and envy.




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