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Well, At Least Theyre Reducing Their Prospects of Being Exposed to Covid-19

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 09:43 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




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One of my very dearest friends lives in a northern Virginia neighborhood
with lots of children in elementary school. My very dear friend is also a
singularly wonderful cook and a thoughtful neighbor. A few days ago, she
offered to cook crepes this weekend for the neighborhood children.

But then my friend received a request from some of the parents: ‘Please
serve the crepes outdoors.’

What? asked my friend.

‘Please serve the crepes outdoors,’ the parents repeated. The parents
elaborated: ‘We aren’t so much afraid of our kids catching Covid from you,
or from each other, and suffering illness from it. But we want to reduce
the chances of our kids becoming infected with Covid. Any student who tests
positive for Covid must then stay home – that is, away from school and out
of physical classrooms – for ten days. And we don’t want our kids missing
any more school.’

(The school district for this northern Virginia neighborhood does not
follow the CDC recommendation of keeping unvaccinated Covid-positive
schoolchildren home for a ‘mere’ five days. Being hyper-Progressive –
meaning, ridiculously theatrical about all things Covid – this school
district demands that Covid-positive schoolchildren stay home for ten days.)

My friend – who is a paragon of good sense – refused to prepare and serve
the crepes outdoors. The reason for her refusal is that it is bitterly cold
this weekend in northern Virginia, with actual daytime high temperatures
consistently below freezing, and with snow and ice from Friday still on the
ground.

Ponder the absurdity of parents being incited by Covid-hysterical school
policies to be willing to subject their young children to the discomforts
and dangers of socializing and dining outdoors in below-freezing
temperatures in order to avoid any increase in the chances that their
children will be exposed to a pathogen that is virtually harmless to these
children. It’s utter madness.

Everyone who joined so mindlessly in the Covid hysteria – everyone who
refused to put Covid’s dangers in perspective – everyone who treated Covid
as a danger categorically worse for everyone, regardless of age, than many
of the countless other dangers that we humans incessantly confront (usually
without a second, or even a first, thought) – every one of these people
played a role in creating and fueling this sort of madness, as harmful as
it is irrational.




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Some Non-Covid Links

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 09:33 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal ably defends the unjustly
embattled Ilya Shapiro. A slice:

The hilarious part is that, after she [Washington Post columnist Ruth
Marcus] lambastes Mr. Shapiro (and us), Ms. Marcus ends up agreeing with
most of our point. “Would I be more comfortable if Biden hadn’t been quite
so explicit? Yes. Partly because it carries an aura of unfairness to
announce that no one will be considered who does not meet an announced
racial test,” she writes.

So it’s okay to use a racial test for judges as long as it’s not explicit,
but anyone other than Ruth Marcus who criticizes the explicit racial test
is “racially tinged.” What she’s really saying is that conservatives are
right in their criticism but only liberals can say so.

Also writing wisely on the unjustified and undignified faux rage from the
left against Ilya Shapiro is Eugene Volokh. A slice:

Now the phrase lesser black woman is a bad way of putting this, but it
seems to me pretty clear that it was just a poorly chosen way of saying
less qualified black woman. And that strikes me as an eminently legitimate
criticism of Bidens position, though as it happens one I dont share. I
think we should be having more debate about this subject, especially in law
schools, rather than less; and I certainly dont think professors or center
directors should be fired for expressing such views (as some having been
saying should happen to Shapiro).

President Biden had pledged that hed select a black woman for this seat (he
said hed appoint a black woman to the Court, and this is likely the one
vacancy that hell be able to fill in this presidential term). This is to
say that he has limited himself to roughly 7% of the population. That makes
it highly unlikely that whoever he picks would objectively—I take it
Shapiro means based on professional qualifications apart from race and
sex—be the best of the progressive picks for the spot.

To be sure, its of course possible that a black woman would be the most
qualified candidate. It just isnt very likely, the same way that its
unlikely that youre unlikely to get the objectively best person for any
position if you announced that you would choose someone whose first name
starts with D (also apparently about 7% of the population). Indeed, a
common argument in favor of nondiscrimination in employment—and in favor of
taking affirmative steps to broaden the pool of potential applicants—is
that by artificially narrowing the pool of applicants (or even by failing
to correct for existing narrowness of the pool) youd be missing out on some
of the best candidates.

(DBx: I describe the rage of the left against Shapiro as faux because it is
abundantly clear from the context what Shapiro meant by his choice of
words. To interpret his words as reflecting racist sentiments is to
willfully misinterpret him it is greedily and opportunistically to slander
and libel Shapiro in order to score political points. Shapiro owed and owes
no one an apology; the apology is owed to Shapiro. While we can all look
back on nearly every phrase weve uttered or written and, pondering further,
discover better ways to word our thoughts, there is no justification for
holding anyone to a standard of perfection in communication. Again, an
apology is owed to Shapiro by those who willfully and recklessly slander
and libel him.)

Juliette Sellgren talks with Todd Zywicki about the 17th amendment.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy warns of the
dangers of unleashing the rent-hungry dogs of antitrust on so-called Big
Tech. A slice:

But for all the talk of protecting consumers, antitrust cases are rarely
about that. Long before becoming famous for his failed nomination to the
U.S. Supreme Court, Robert Bork won plaudits for his 1978 book, The
Antitrust Paradox. Bork demonstrated that during the first 80 years of its
existence, antitrust was used to stifle competition and protect powerful
incumbent firms from innovative and often smaller rivals.

Research done since then reveals that the original goal of the 1890 Sherman
Antitrust Act (and subsequent statutes) wasnt competition in the first
place. The real goal was to protect politically powerful producers from
market competition.

If Sen. John Sherman—after whom Congresss first antitrust act is named—were
really a friend of competition, he wouldnt have staunchly supported the
McKinley Tariff, which Congress passed a mere three months later. It was
one of the largest tariff hikes in U.S. history and was meant to insulate
powerful businesses from their rivals.

And so it goes today. Those who demand a revival of antitrust regulation to
promote competition may not realize that theyre inciting a revival of
cronyism to suppress competition.

David Henderson is reading the Lord Acton Mandell Creighton correspondence.

Nick Gillespie talks with Corey DeAngelis about how the K-12
government-schooling monstrosity is today (thankfully!) suffering much
self-inflicted damage.

Eric Boehm explains that todays supply-chain web woes will not be solved
with massive subsidies. A slice:

The White Houses solution to this crisis is, no surprise, to throw a lot of
money around. In addition to the $52 billion in direct subsidies for
chipmakers, the bill would spend another $45 billion on grants and loans
meant to address vague supply chain issues and another $7 billion to help
develop 10 technology hubs around the United States. (Read Adam Thierer, a
senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, on why top-down investment
meant to create a Silicon Valley in every state is folly.)

But the semiconductors are central to the whole thing. And before lawmakers
vote to hurl $52 billion at chipmakers, they ought to ask two important
questions. The first is: Do they need it?

They clearly dont. Last year, when Intel announced plans to build a new $20
billion fabrication facility in Arizona, CEO Pat Gelsinger said the project
would not depend on a penny of government support or state support. (Though
he immediately followed that comment by saying that of course we want
incentives and it appears that Congress is prepared to dutifully provide
them.)

Theres also a ton of private sector investment flowing into semiconductor
manufacturers right now—equity markets, it turns out, are much more
efficient at identifying and fulfilling a need than government subsidies
are—and the big chipmakers are not short on cash. The Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the worlds largest chipmaker, reported record
profits last year. As of September, Intels net profit margin for the past
decade was more than 15 percent.

In fact, Intel announced plans just this week for at least two new
manufacturing facilities in Ohio. Samsung and the TSMC have also announced
plans for U.S.-based factories. Thats not the sort of thing that industries
and companies in desperate need of government aid tend to do—though they
will surely be happy to receive taxpayer funds if Congress makes the offer.

David Bier makes a strong case for increasing H-2B guest-worker visas.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley reports that [b]efore the
pandemic, the economy grew in ways that mostly benefited low-income and
middle-class households. Another slice:

Part of what made the Trump boom unique, however, is who benefited the
most. The economy grew in ways that mostly benefited low-income and
middle-class households, categories that cover a disproportionate number of
blacks. In 2016 the percentage of blacks who hadn’t completed high school
was nearly double that of whites—15% vs. 8%—and the percentage of adults
with a bachelor’s degree was 35% for whites and only 21% for blacks.

These education gaps are reflected in work patterns. Blacks are
overrepresented in the retail, healthcare and transportation industries,
which provide tens of millions of working- and middle-class jobs. In 2019,
54% of black households earned less than $50,000 a year, versus 33% of
white households. At the other end of the income distribution, slightly
more than half of all white households (50.7%) earned at least $75,000,
compared with less than a third (29.4%) of black households. What this
means is that reductions in income inequality can translate into reductions
in racial inequality, which is what the country experienced in the
pre-pandemic Trump economy.

Between 2017 and 2019, median household incomes grew by 15.4% among blacks
and only 11.5% among whites. The investment bank Goldman Sachs released a
paper in March 2019 that showed pay for those at the lower end of the wage
distribution rising at nearly double the rate of pay for those at the upper
end. Average hourly earnings were growing at rates that hadn’t been seen in
almost a decade, but what “has set this rise apart is that it’s the first
time during the economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom
half of earners are benefiting more than the top half—in fact, about twice
as much,” CNBC reported.

The Biden administration is taking credit for the stimulus payments. They
should also accept blame for inflation so argues Gerald Dwyer.




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Some Covid Links

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 05:49 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
Nate Hochman, writing at National Review, decries Covid mission creep. Two
slices:

The terms and conditions of the biomedical security state continue to shift
under our feet. In a November 30 press conference, CDC director Rochelle
Walensky assured the public that “we are not changing the definition of
‘fully vaccinated’ right now,” with the asterisk that “as that science
evolves, we will look at whether we need to update our definition.” It’s
not clear what part of “the science” has evolved since then, but less than
two months later, Walensky told CBS that the CDC was introducing the term
“up to date”: “Right now we’re pivoting our language. If you are eligible
for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not ‘up to date,’ and you
need to get your booster in order to be up to date.”

These public-health proclamations, with their carefully ambiguous language,
seem designed to wave off criticisms as wild-eyed conspiracy theories.
Until, of course, they aren’t. In early November, Ron DeSantis was
“fact-checked” by the Independent for “falsely claim[ing] vaccinated
citizens without boosters could be declared unvaccinated and lose their
jobs.” Today, the British paper’s assurances that “the director of the CDC
says the Biden administration has no plans to reclassify vaccinated people
as unvaccinated if they don’t get boosters” seem a little less sure-footed.

..

The pandemic mission creep doesn’t stop there. My home state of Oregon has
opted to extend its mask mandate indefinitely. And recent months have seen
the masking regime expand beyond Covid, as public-health officials,
including Walensky herself, begin to suggest masks as a response to the
flu. Citing numerous experts, Yale Medicine informed its readers last week
that “COVID-19 is not the only reason to reconsider your mask. After a 2020–
21 flu season that has been described as one of the mildest ones in memory,
some experts were concerned about this flu season.” The article explains
that a Yale Medicine emergency specialist also urges adults to consider
wearing masks during flu season if they are at risk for or interact with
people who are vulnerable to complications from the flu. “Because the flu
hits you all of a sudden — you may feel fine even though you are
potentially contagious,” the doctor said, “then all of a sudden you have a
fever of 102.”

Gone is the sunny talk of a post-Covid America. On July 4, Biden declared
“independence” from the virus before a crowd of more than a thousand
attendees on the White House’s South Lawn. But as I pointed out earlier
this month, “universities across the country are pushing forward with
draconian restrictions, locking down campuses and quarantining students —
all of whom are fully vaccinated and boosted, in compliance with the
universities’ own requirements — in their rooms.” We’re not done with
virtual school yet. We’re not done with mask mandates.

On top of that, vaccine passports aredebuting in cities across the country.
Instead of “independence” from Covid, we are now facing perpetual
subjugation.

Steve Cuozzo deplores this reality: New Yorkers refuse to let go of COVID
restrictions — even as Omicron wanes. A slice:

New York Tough? New York traumatized is more like it.

Far from showing post-9/11 resiliency, Big Apple residents have curled up
fetal-style to protect themselves from nearly nonexistent COVID-19. Not the
foolish unvaccinated, mind you, but my fully, triple-vaxxed friends,
neighbors and everyone else.

New cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been in free fall for weeks,
according to the city’s Department of Health. The seven-day average of
cases, for example, plummeted from more than 43,000 on Jan. 3 to under
7,000 this week.

For the fully vaccinated, the death risk is near-zero: currently it is 1.54
deaths per 100,000 people, or .00154%. You’ll more likely be carried off by
Q: The Winged Serpent of 1980s New York schlock-movie lore.

No lectures, please about how easily the Omicron variant spreads. We’ve
only read about it since early December. Although my wife and I have
somehow dodged it so far, it’s infected my brother, my cousin, and
seemingly every other person I know on earth. But none was truly sick
beyond a day or two of fatigue and head colds. At least half who tested
positive never had symptoms.

But lots of liberal-leaning New Yorkers take their guidance from
politicians, lockdown-nostalgic media such as The New York Times and
“experts” who have not once been right. These mostly Democratic believers
in big government have embraced office- and crowd- avoidance — make that
life-avoidance — like a security blanket.

For them, nothing beats sitting home with Netflix and munchies, packing on
pounds and waiting for the next high school friend’s Instagram shots of
kids and cats to provide a mirage of normal human connection.

The “sheltering in place” spirit seems to take deeper hold every week.

“Covid theater” includes such idiocy as requiring restaurant-goers to mask
up during the ten seconds it takes to walk from an entrance to a table. And
the even worse rule that makes staff, but not customers, wear the damn
things all the time. Is anyone surprised that help’s so hard to find when
employees are treated like lepers?

Carrie Lukas calls on Fairfax County Public Schools to let schoolchildren
ditch masks.

Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel explains about the authoritarian now in
power in New Zealand that Saint Jacinda has made controlling Covid a myopic
moral mission, with no end in sight. A slice:

But now, as Omicron gently settles there, Ardern’s New Zealand has lost any
remaining halo of Covid superiority. It looks neither ‘compassionate’, nor
even ‘tough’ or ‘hardline’ but completely pathological. Mad. Bonkers.
Pitiable. And not without a whiff of totalitarianism.

You might think that a lefty as vocally committed to social justice and
human rights as Ardern would shy away from draconian curbs based on a
chimaera (zero covid). In the absence of a credible threat, it is a
strategy whose main effect would be to destroy people’s livelihoods and
will to live.

In fact, those who purport, like [Jacinda] Ardern, to be the most virtuous
and “inclusive”, the keenest on helping the marginalised, are often all too
comfortable playing fast and loose with the little people’s lives: and the
keenest on controlling everyone. They love power so long as it’s in their
hands and Covid has provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for grabbing
it.

..

But the most chilling aspect of Ardern’s monomaniacal leadership is the
complete lack of respect for borders – not their inviolability (she has
shown that aspect of them to be firmly intact) but their prison-like
oppressiveness.

Previously, it was possible to enter New Zealand, by winning a coveted slot
in a quarantine hotel, where you would be watched over by military
personnel throughout. But since the Omicron Nine, the country has now
closed itself to all travellers. Tourism was once New Zealand’s biggest
export, but too bad: the Dear Leader’s obsession with total control comes
first.

Speaking of the once-free country of New Zealand, consider this news: A
pregnant New Zealand journalist says she has had to turn to the Taliban for
help after being prevented from returning to her home country due to
quarantine rules. (HT Matthew Saywell). Heres more:

In a column published in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday, Charlotte
Bellis said it was “brutally ironic” that she had once questioned the
Taliban about their treatment of women and she was now asking the same
questions of her own government.

“When the Taliban offers you – a pregnant, unmarried woman – safe haven,
you know your situation is messed up,” Bellis wrote in her column.

New Zealand’s Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, told the Herald
his office had asked officials to check whether they had followed the
proper procedures in Bellis’s case, “which appeared at first sight to
warrant further explanation”.

New Zealand has managed to keep the spread of the virus to a minimum during
the pandemic and has reported just 52 virus deaths among its population of
5 million.

But the country’s requirement that even returning citizens spend 10 days
isolating in quarantine hotels run by the military has led to a backlog of
thousands of people wanting to return home vying for spots.

Stories of citizens stranded abroad in dire circumstances have caused
embarrassment for prime minister Jacinda Ardern and her government.

el gato malo plausibly predicts that one day, those brainwashed by the
branch covidians are going to realize what they have actually done here.
and they will never be able to look in the mirror again.

Kathy Gyngell asks if we are witnessing the rise of resistance to the
Covidocracy.

About yesterdays protest in Ottawa by truckers against vaccine mandates,
Martin Kulldorff tweets:

Truckers understand public health better than some public health officials.

For more on the truckers protest in Ottawa, see this report in the Daily
Mail: Justin Trudeau and his family flee Canadian capital Ottawa as up to
50,000 Freedom Convoy anti-vaccine mandate truckers arrive at his office
days after he dismissed them as a small fringe minority. A slice:

The movement received an endorsement Thursday from Tesla and SpaceX founder
Elon Musk, who tweeted, Canadian truckers rule and the movement has become
a cause celebre for many on the right of politics in the United States.

Flying the Canadian flag, waving banners demanding Freedom and chanting
slogans against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the truckers were joined by
thousands of other protesters angered not only by Covid-19 restrictions but
by broader discontent with the government.

There was an enormous clamor as hundreds of big trucks, their engines
rumbling, sounded their air horns non-stop. Estimates of the number of
truckers range from 10-20,000.

Closer to Parliament, families calmly marched on a bitterly cold day, while
young people chanted and older people in the crowd banged pots and pans in
protest under Trudeaus office windows.

Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble make the case, in the
Atlantic, against masks in schools. (HT my intrepid Mercatus Center
colleague Veronique de Rugy) Two slices:

Therefore, the overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask
mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask
mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered. In two of
these studies, this conclusion is undercut by the fact that background
vaccination rates, both of staff and of the surrounding community, were not
controlled for or taken into consideration. At the time these studies were
conducted, when breakthrough infections were much less common, this was a
hugely important confounding variable undermining the CDC’s conclusions
that masks in schools provide a concrete benefit in controlling COVID-19
spread: Communities with higher vaccination rates had less COVID-19
transmission everywhere, including in schools, and those same communities
were more likely to have mask mandates.

..

Over the past 21 months, slowly and with much resistance, the layers of
mythology around COVID-19 mitigation in schools have been peeled away, each
time without producing the much-ballyhooed increases in COVID-19. Schools
did not become hot spots when they reopened, nor when they reduced physical
distancing, nor when they eliminated deep-cleaning protocols. These layers
were peeled away because the evidence supporting them was weak, and they
all had substantial downsides for children’s education and health.

Roger Watsons sympathies are rightly with those who are crushed beneath the
Covid jackboot.

Fauci continues to prove that he is a political monster, wedded in no way
to any real science. (DBx: If humanity regains its good senses, Fauci will
be remembered by history as the quintessential arrogant, myopic,
power-lusting, and socially destructive bureaucrat. Fauci alone is a
powerful argument against the administrative state.)




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