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Some Covid Links

Posted: 19 Feb 2022 04:08 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
David Henderson finds some merit in Janet Buftons criticisms of the
Canadian truckers protest, but his is nevertheless a more favorable take
than hers on the protest.

Here are Nick Gillespies sensible thoughts on the Canadian truckers protest.

About recent authoritarian events in Canada, J.D. Tuccille writes:
Apparently the rule of law doesn’t matter if Justin Trudeau doesn’t like
your peaceful protest. Two slices:

Emergency powers, threats to freeze the finances of peaceful protesters,
and smearing critics as terrorists—it has to be China, right? But no, its
our neighbor to the north, under a leader with a bad case of China-envy.
For all the world to see, a panicky Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is
throwing a tantrum over protests against restrictive pandemic policy that
warns us how quickly an established democracy can lose its mind. Its an
advertisement for the value of cryptocurrency and other means of escaping
the reach of the financial police state.

..

Srinivasans comparison of Canada to totalitarian Venezuela may be more apt
than Canadians like. Trudeau got into trouble in 2013 for praising the
ability of Chinas basic dictatorship to act quickly, as he now can under
the Emergencies Act. He may have inherited the sentiment from his father,
Pierre Trudeau, who not only invoked the War Measures Act, but openly
admired thugs such as Fidel Castro.

We see evidence of the Trudeau familys long love affair with the worlds
autocrats and tyrants, Mark Mike noted in a 2018 Macleans magazine piece.

Also decrying the actions of Canadian strongman Justin Trudeau is the
Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. A slice:

The truckers protest against vaccine mandates, vilified by Mr. Trudeau as
“racist” and “violent,” has been peaceful, but not every peaceful protest
is legal. Blocking roads and border crossings disrupts lives and commerce.
Government’s job is to maintain public order while respecting civil
liberties.

Canada has failed on both scores. For weeks authorities tried to wish away
the problem. When that failed, Mr. Trudeau overreached, invoking new powers
before Canadian jurisdictions had tried to enforce existing law. Ottawa
police chief Peter Sloly was a progressive reformer. He criticizes the
“reactive enforcement model” of policing, and when truckers took over his
downtown, he failed to react. Mr. Sloly resigned Tuesday.

On Thursday Ottawa police, with provincial and federal help, finally came
out in numbers, blocked highway exits, set up a perimeter and checkpoints
and arrested blockade leaders. All of this could have been done under
existing law. On Friday police began mopping up the protests methodically,
with occasional scuffles and use of pepper spray. This too could have been
done, albeit differentiating between the lawful and unlawful, and without
threatening media with arrest for covering the action.

Ramesh Thakur adds his wise voice to the discussion of Canadas truckers
protest. Two slices:

The Freedom Convoy is the largest, longest and noisiest honkfest of a
demonstration against a Canadian government in decades. It has laid bare
the stark reality that lockdowns are a class war waged by the laptop class
on the working class, by the cultural elites on the great unwashed outside
urban centres and by the virtue-signallers on independent free thinkers.
The world’s emoter-in-chief solemnly intoned in Parliament on 9 February
that the truckies were ‘trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and
our fellow citizens’ daily lives’. That he himself has been guilty of all
three charges for two years testifies to lack of self-awareness.

..

The narrative seems to be collapsing fast inside Canada. Trudeau’s own
Liberal MPs have begun to attack his confrontational handling of the
protests as divisive politics that’s pitting Canadians against one another
instead of providing a roadmap out of the pandemic. Polls show around half
of Canadians expressing sympathy and understanding for the truckers’
concerns and supporting an end to all Covid restrictions – even if most
don’t support the protests. Five provinces have announced a rapid lifting
of restrictions like vaccine passports and mask mandates. These
developments might also be influencing other governments to begin
dismantling increasingly unpopular restrictions. Who’d have thought that
the country best known for its law-abiding and phlegmatic population would
lead the world in trumpeting the message: we are done with Covid
restrictions, mandates and government running our lives.

Ella Whelan is dismayed by the silence of so many progressives as tyranny
erupts in Canada. A slice:

But as real, material authoritarianism raises its head in Canada, many of
those same laptop bombardiers keen to call out fascism wherever they see it
seem conspicuously silent. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau might not exactly be
Mussolini, but his decision to invoke the Emergencies Act against
protesters in the nation’s capital is a watershed moment. With these new
powers, Trudeau is effectively able to wage war on thousands of truckers
and supporters camped out in Ottawa.

Deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland smiled and chuckled as she told
reporters that the law change allowed banks to freeze the accounts of
protesters without any need for a court order, adding that vehicle
insurance for anyone involved in the convoy could also be suspended. The
interim police chief in Ottawa told a press conference last night that the
police were working with social services to “remove” children from the
area as many of the truckers are accompanied by their families (pictures
of trucker-installed bouncy castles and play areas were circulating over
the weekend).

In short, the Canadian government has granted itself the power to strip
citizens of their money, their transport and their kids. Several organisers
have been arrested, despite the fact that bar a few fringe incidents, the
vast majority of the thousands-strong convoy has maintained a peaceful (if
disruptive) approach to getting their voices heard.

Just imagine the uproar that would ensue if Trump had taken children from
Black Lives Matters protesters who took to the streets after the murder of
George Floyd, or Boris Johnson had used the banks to starve out the
costumed climate-changer obsessives who took over Trafalgar Square before
the pandemic. You don’t even have to imagine it when visiting Kenosha amid
the riots and protests of 2020, Trump said “these are not acts of peaceful
protest but really domestic terror”.

In response, CNN ran analysis which argued that Trump’s naming of
protesters who disagree with him as terrorists “puts him in the company of
the worlds autocrats”. The T word might not have spilled out of Trudeau’s
mouth just yet, but his use of the Emergencies Act (last invoked by his
father 50 years ago to combat a real terrorist threat) allows his
government to broaden the Terrorist Financing Act, shutting down the
fundraising sites used by the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy”.

Kate Andrews laments this reality: Covid has made politicians like Justin
Trudeau power crazy. A slice:

It’s becoming a case study in how much control governments wield over the
technological systems we’re building – not to mention a reminder that the
definition of an “emergency” often comes down to what is giving politicians
a headache at any given time. The powers Trudeau has invoked will allow his
government to cripple politician dissenters, with plans to stop just short
of using the military to act as police officers (an act Trudeau says he
wants to avoid, though a statement from the Canadian Armed Forces insisting
it would be playing no such role raises questions over who tipped him
against the move.)

But there’s another lesson from Trudeau’s increasingly heavy-handed
approach to the protesters: the period in which government decrees were met
with little to no resistance is coming to an end. Between Covid and
lockdowns, politicians have spent two years growing increasingly accustomed
to citizens doing, more or less, exactly as they say. Even being told to
stay home, forgo loved ones’ funerals and stay away from family and friends
was met with begrudging acceptance for far longer than most governments
expected people to comply. Politicians like Trudeau have perhaps enjoyed
that power a bit too much, and have forgotten that the art of governing is
based on winning over hearts and minds, not cracking down on dissent with
tactics that – if they were coming out of a country like Russia or China –
we would not hesitate to categorise as dangerous overreach.

Canada’s Prime Minister has also forgotten the fundamental principles that
underpin a strong economy: free enterprise thrives because it’s voluntary.
People’s desire to work, trade and mutually prosper off of each other’s
contributions is what enhances prosperity. As much as lockdowns may have
given politicians like Trudeau a taste for decrees, no leader can force
people to return to work if they don’t want to do, or work in a way they
don’t feel comfortable with, and expect to get the same results.

Reasons Jacob Sullum reports on the paucity of evidence that mask mandates
had an important impact during the Omicron surge. A slice:

Masks have been the most visible part of Americas pandemic response, but
one of the least consequential, science journalist Faye Flam writes in a
Bloomberg Opinion essay. The states with mask mandates havent fared
significantly better than the 35 states that didnt impose them during the
omicron wave. Rhode Island, where I live, has had a mask mandate since
mid-December; nonetheless, we saw our January surge rise far higher than
any other state. Theres little evidence that mask mandates are the primary
reason the pandemic waves eventually fall—though much of the outrage over
lifting mandates is based on that assumption. Many experts acknowledge that
the rise and fall of waves is a bit of a mystery.

The Editorial Board of the New York Post warns against the insanely
cautious CDC. A slice:

Even if you discount this insanity, the CDC can’t keep its own COVID story
straight. It caused months of chaos with its back-and-forth recommendations
on masking and other hygiene theatrics. And its forthcoming “update” is
clearly motivated by politics, not public health.

It’s definitely not science-based. The risk to kids from COVID is,
statistically, near zero. The total US death toll for under-18s in the
entire pandemic so far is about 800. That’s out of almost 1 million dead.
And a big chunk of the young people who died had other health problems.

Here’s the plain truth: COVID is very dangerous to the elderly and those
with underlying conditions. But its mortality rate outside those groups
doesn’t justify anything like the world-altering precautions the CDC
demanded.

The Editors of the Telegraph urge the British to move on from Covid for
good. A slice:

Then there is the continued risk aversion of some local authorities,
schools and hospital trusts. Already, some public sector leaders have made
it clear that they intend to keep some protocols in place for longer –
seen, for example, in Sadiq Khan’s insistence that masks be worn on the
Tube. This cannot be allowed to continue. The point of living with Covid is
that individuals should make their own minds up about the level of risk
they are prepared to accept. That is impossible if arms of the state still
feel entitled to tell people what to do.

Martha Fulford, J. Edward Les, and Pooya Kazemi advise parents to beware of
misinformation about the risks that Covid-19 poses to children. (HT Jay
Bhattacharya) Two slices:

Media reporting on COVID has been replete with doom, gloom and hysteria. A
research report by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that
American media coverage of COVID has a significant negativity bias, with 91
per cent of stories by major U.S. media outlets being negative in tone,
versus 54 per cent for major non-U.S. sources and 65 per cent for
scientific journals.

This negativity bias is very apparent when it comes to coverage of COVID in
children. While the death of a child is always tragic, stories of pediatric
COVID deaths are often sensationalized by media outlets and elevated above
other more common causes of death in this age group. Some media outlets,
even when they admit that COVID deaths are rare in children, stoke an
atmosphere of fear by running hyperbolic stories about such conditions as
Long COVID, suggesting that large swaths of children with a history of a
SARS-CoV-2 infection are condemned to a life of disability.

..

Some of the most sensational media stories relate to Long COVID, a term
used to describe persistent symptoms after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Definitions for Long COVID include over 200 symptoms, many of which are
nonspecific and also common among kids who have not been infected with
COVID. Media coverage would have parents believe that Long COVID affects 15
to 25 per cent of children who are impacted by COVID. But a careful and
unbiased analysis of the published medical literature shows that Long COVID
is uncommon in children. A recent meta-analysis on the topic, conducted by
some of the world’s foremost pediatric experts, concluded that “the
frequency of the majority of reported persistent symptoms was similar in
SARS-CoV-2 positive cases and controls (i.e. children who were not
infected).” Another review paper came to similar conclusions. And, the
largest study ever published on the topic was just released in the European
Journal of Pediatrics; it concludes, “Long COVID in children is rare and
mainly of short duration.”




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Quotation of the Day

Posted: 19 Feb 2022 01:15 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
is from page 150 of Ludwig von Mises’s 1951 essay “Profit and Loss,” as
reprinted in the 2008 Liberty Fund edition of Mises’s 1952 collection,
Planning for Freedom:

An entrepreneur earns profit by serving the consumers, the people, as they
are and not as they should be according to the fancies of some grumbler or
potential dictator.




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Tyranny In Canada

Posted: 18 Feb 2022 10:48 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
How will those of you who deny the reality of Covidocratic tyranny justify
this fact?: Canadas House of Commons is being prevented today from holding
a session to debate strongman Justin Trudeaus power grab, and the reason
given for this blockage of a parliamentary session is nothing other than
strongman Trudeaus power grab.




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A Canadian Pilot Pleads for Resistance to Covidocratic Tyranny

Posted: 18 Feb 2022 10:17 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
Please watch this video. (HT Alan Russell)






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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Spending other peoples money"

Posted: 18 Feb 2022 06:45 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
My January 25th, 2012, column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is the
second of a two-part series on the dangers of government borrowing. You can
read my column in full beneath the fold.

(more)




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Some Covid Links

Posted: 18 Feb 2022 03:33 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
Vinay Prasad explains how the CDC abandoned science. Two slices:

Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance,
pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This
research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support
the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers
are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such,
these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of
this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a
growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks
entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into
subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford
to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than
ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.

..

Manufacturing alarm at the very moment an age or other demographic cohort
is targeted for vaccination has become a pattern for the CDC. On May 10,
2021, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the 12- to
15-year-old cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine. On June 11, the CDC
published a study in MMWR claiming to demonstrate rising hospitalization
among this age group; widespread media coverage of the study quickly
followed. But the absolute rates for this age group were, in reality,
amazingly low: Less than 1.5 per 100,000, which was lower than they had
been in the previous December. Meanwhile, a safety signal was being
investigated—myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle—which was
more common after the second dose, and reported to be as frequent as 1 in
3,000-6,000, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Other countries
became reluctant to push two doses within the standard 21- to 28-day
timeline for these ages. By July, the U.K. had decided against pushing
vaccines for this cohort, a decision that was walked back only slowly.

Charlotte Cuthbertson writes about Martin Kulldorffs diagnosis of the
detachment of public health from science.

David Henderson decries the tyranny that now is strangling Canadians.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board reports on the terrible, maniacal
harassment inflicted by Covidians on supporters of Canadas Freedom Convoy.
A slice:

After GoFundMe shut down the crowdfunding effort for Canada’s trucker
protests, and before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers
to freeze, without court orders, bank accounts linked to the protests,
supporters turned to a small website called GiveSendGo.

The Christian crowdfunding platform had received more than $8.7 million
from individual donors intended for the “freedom convoy” opposing Canada’s
vaccine mandates. On Sunday GiveSendGo was hacked and shut down by
political opponents, who exposed the names, emails, locations and other
personal information of 92,845 donors. Public harassment followed.

On Feb. 5, the owner of Ottawa’s Stella Luna Gelato Café made a $250
donation to the protest. When this became public, callers threatened to
throw bricks through her store window. She ordered the shop closed. On
Tuesday she recanted her support for the truckers to the Ottawa Citizen
newspaper.

Twitter users are posting names, jobs and locations of donors—from
corporate executives and civil servants to masseuses and taekwondo
instructors. One account doing the “doxxing,” itself anonymous, clarifies:
“If you disagree with the views of businesses listed here, do the Canadian
thing: Do not patronize them, or write a sternly worded letter. That’s it.”
Harassment will follow anyway, but even if not, do we need more boycotts?
Liberals boycotting right-wing real-estate agents and conservatives
boycotting left-wing graphic designers?

Major news outlets in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. are contacting the
donors, asking them to justify their contributions. Many donors feel
pressure to recant or desist from further financial expression of their
views. For many journalists, that is no doubt the goal.

Our gentle neighbor to the North rushes toward grim authoritarianism so
reports Reasons Brian Doherty. Two slices:

As Canada tries its best to keep donations of cryptocurrency from helping
protesters against the countrys vaccine mandates on truckers, as detailed
by Reasons Liz Wolfe, the Canadian Bankers Association has announced its
intention to make sure that those associated with the protests are
thoroughly locked out of all traditional financial services as well.

..

What Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government is trying to do here, with
the obedient collusion of the banking sector, is far beyond acceptable
business as usual for a Western government; it is vile authoritarianism, in
service of a policy goal of little objective importance given the existing
Canadian rate of vaccination, and it ought to destroy both the moral and
actual authority of his regime.

Among those reflecting wisely on the tyrannical actions of Canadian
strongman Trudeau is David McGrogan. Two slices:

Justin Trudeau’s confrontation with the Canadian truckers may be the single
most significant event of the Covid pandemic – not because of its eventual
outcome, whatever that may be, but because of what it symbolises. It
captures, in perfect microcosm, the tensions between the competing
imperatives of the age: freedom versus security; the rule of law versus
flexible ‘responsive’ governance; the priorities of the workers versus
those of the Zooming bourgeoisie; the need for real-world human interaction
and belonging versus the promises of splendid online isolation; the
experiences of the common man, who knows where it hurts, versus those of
the professional expert class, who know nothing that cannot be expressed as
a formula.

More than all of that, though, it gives us a lens through which to view a
much deeper, much older conflict of much larger scope – one which underlies
not just the struggles of the Covid age, but of modernity itself. On the
one hand, the state, which seeks to make all of society transparent to its
power. On the other, alternative sources of authority – the family, the
church, the community, the firm, the farm, and the human individual herself.

..

Justin Trudeau’s contempt for the truckers is therefore genuine and
profound. He sees in them not an obstacle to Covid policy or a potential
threat to public health. Not even he could possibly be so stupid as to
think it matters whether or not these people take their vaccines. No: he
identifies in them a barrier to forces in which his political future is
entwined – an ever-increasing scope and scale for governmental authority,
and the opportunities to buttress his own legitimacy that would follow from
it.

About the Canadian truckers protests, Kim Iversen tweets: (HT Jay
Bhattacharya)

Reasonable demands of a free people. In 100 years people will read about
this and look at all the hardcore pro-mandate people as unreasonable,
emotional and tyrannical.

Also reported by the Wall Street Journals Editorial Board is this bright
silver lining around the dark cloud of Covid hysteria: Enrollment in
government K-12 schools fell as enrollment in Catholic schools rose. A
slice:

Public school enrollment tumbled 3% last year. In December, National Public
Radio found that most of the 600 districts it analyzed from across the
country had a second year of declines. Many Catholic schools reopened while
public schools remained closed. In Arlington’s Catholic diocese, all 41
schools were in person or hybrid by fall 2020. They were rewarded with a 7%
enrollment increase of more than 1,100 students this year.

Insight from el gato malo. A slice:

of all the utterly discredited non-pharmaceutical interventions around
covid, perhaps none stands as pervasive in its application and as universal
in its failure as masks.

it was a flat out cargo cult belief set from the beginning and the
inefficacy of this purported intervention was known and knowable beforehand
and was confirmed, again and again, by all the emerging data.

the studies undertaken to “prove” efficacy were shams, lacked control
groups, used cherry picked data, fraud, and methodologies so hilariously
bad as to call into question the basic competence and honesty of those
pushing them. the CDC has been a disgrace.

and yet the intensity of the push for this meaningless mitigation ratcheted
ever upward. a certain class of person loved this, demanded this, needed
this. no data could dissuade their desire.

even those who gathered the data that proved so helpful in proving this
such as emily oster backed away from their own output because it so clearly
contradicted the narrative of their tribe. she, an ivy league economics
professor, disavowed her own discovery and flipped to team emotion.
(another dark day for the gato alma mater)

it was sad to see, but altogether predictable.

masks are signs of subjugation. they dehumanize. they alienate. and this is
WHY they are so attractive to so many.

this is why forcing them on kids to dominate them and force them into
compliance with state over self or even parents is such a high priority
goal for those that have collectivist plans for their futures. it
establishes precisely who is in charge.

masks are not about public health.

masks are about hierarchy.

they not only represent a high visibility in-group/out-group tribal marker,
but they have wonderous potential as a form of separating the powerful from
the powerless, the nobles from the commoners, the dictators from the
dictated to.

it has become the opiate of the classes.

Marc Siegel rightly criticizes those who refuse to let go of alleged
reasons for Covidocratic authoritarianism. Three slices:

The COVID pandemic may finally be fading as the case numbers drop
dramatically, but there are many who don’t want to let it go.

Virologists and public-health specialists who left their laboratories and
lecterns to pontificate publicly do not want to relinquish the rush of a
camera moment or the glamour of a satellite camera truck arriving outside
their door. Professors who were used to students falling asleep in their
classes suddenly entered a two-year hotbed of social-media warfare and saw
their Twitter follower numbers swell into the hundreds of thousands.

..

What isn’t valuable is continuing the restrictions far too long. What isn’t
valuable is the mockery and the pomposity, the self-appointed experts
calling out misinformation and marginalizing those who disagree on social
media and on the Internet. Clearly there is a value to vaccines,
therapeutics, masks, ventilation and rapid testing. But there is no value
to political strategies that are purely self-serving. There’s no value to
refusing to pull back the restrictions even as the numbers are dramatically
falling.

The public is tired, not just of the pandemic but of the way it has been
handled across the board, from the news media to the government, even to
our best scientists.

..

What we don’t need, and have never needed, is public-health scolding from a
starstruck scientist or vote-seeking politician. They are sure to hold us
back from assimilating COVID into our lives for their own purposes.

Douglas Murray reports on Covid-hysteria-inspired petty tyranny on
Broadway. Two slices:

On the way into the theater, bouncer-like staff screamed at us to form the
correct queues and have the right documentation ready. We appeared to be
visiting Azkaban, not Hogwarts. It was just the first of the evening’s
delights.

Inside the Lyric Theatre, they had tried to recreate the atmosphere of an
English boarding school. As a survivor of such an establishment, I can tell
you they did a grand job emulating the most sadistic aspects of such
institutions.

..

Soon a member of staff came to warn me that I had failed to pull my mask up
fast enough after my most recent swig of beer. As the show began, someone
with a name badge saying “Libby” came over and told off another member of
our group for failing to bring their mask up swiftly enough after sipping
another of the overpriced drinks the Lyric Theatre had just sold us.

As the show began, it seemed that Libby (a k a Dolores Umbridge) had
identified us as troublemakers. Flagrant sippers. After the lights had gone
low, I noticed Libby standing at the end of our row staring down it, hands
on hips. There she stayed, glaring through the dark.

Brendan ONeill denounces the masking double-standard. A slice:

The mask has slipped. Literally and metaphorically. On Sunday, at the Super
Bowl, in an LA stadium heaving with people, there wasn’t a mask to be seen
among the celeb set. The kind of self-righteous maskholes who have derived
enormous pleasure over the past two years from telling the plebs to mask up
went maskless to the game. Maybe they held their breath for three hours?
There was actress Charlize Theron, not a stitch of cloth on her face,
despite LA having a mask mandate. This is the same Charlize Theron who once
Instagrammed a pic of herself in a fancy mask alongside the words ‘Don’t be
an ass #wearadamnmask’. You see, it’s only you, the little guy, who has to
wear a damn mask, not people as important and beautiful as Ms Theron.

The flagrant mask hypocrisy of the Super Bowl celebs has got social-media
users hot under the collar, and with good reason. It seems that in the New
Normal only ‘the help’ wear masks. So there was the doyenne of woke
correct-think Ellen DeGeneres grinning for mask-free selfies while the
stadium ushers were masked up. Audience members for Ellen’s TV show are
still required to wear masks, too. Of course they are. We can’t have Ms
DeGeneres breathing in the fumes of non-millionaires. This is the new Covid
aristocracy – if you can afford the tens of thousands of dollars it costs
for a plush box seat at the Super Bowl, you can bare your face; if you
can’t, if you’re one of those folks who ekes out a living from servicing
the Super Bowl, then you must be muzzled. It’s fine for the rich to expel
their breath – it’s only the spittle and germs of poorer folk that must be
stifled.

It wasn’t only the likes of Charlize, Ellen, J-Lo and the rest who flouted
LA’s mask mandate (which stipulates that masks must be worn at
‘mega-events’). So did most of the 70,000 attendees of this clash between
the LA Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. There’s a positive element to this,
of course: hordes of people sensibly refusing to muzzle themselves at a
vast, joyous event that involves much eating, drinking, shouting and
cheering. And yet the whole thing still highlights the deranged double
standards of the masks issue. Schoolkids in LA are still muzzled in
classrooms while thousands of sports fans can chant and splutter as freely
as they like. As one observer put it: ‘Apparently Covid can’t touch you if
you drop five grand on Super Bowl tickets. But tomorrow morning,
schoolchildren – for whom Covid is nearly 100 per cent survivable – will
wear masks for eight hours. Science.’




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Quotation of the Day

Posted: 18 Feb 2022 01:30 AM PST
[link removed]

(Don Boudreaux)




Tweet
is from page 162 of F.A. Hayek’s profound 1952 book The Counter-Revolution
of Science, as this book appears as part of volume 13 (Studies on the Abuse
& Decline of Reason, Bruce Caldwell, ed. [2010]) of the Collected Works of
F.A. Hayek:

His [a merchant’s] special knowledge is almost entirely knowledge of
particular circumstances of time or place, or, perhaps, a technique of
ascertaining those circumstances in a given field. But though this
knowledge is not of a kind which can be formulated in generic propositions,
or acquired once and for all, and though in an age of Science it is for
that reason regarded as knowledge of an inferior kind, it is for all
practical purposes no less important than scientific knowledge. And while
it is perhaps conceivable that all theoretical knowledge might be combined
in the heads of a few experts and thus made available to a single central
authority, it is this knowledge of the particular, of the fleeting
circumstances of the moment and of local conditions, which will never exist
otherwise than dispersed among many people.




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