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Brownstone Journal features in-depth articles, news, research, and commentary on public health, science, economics, social theory, and related policy issues — offering critical perspectives on institutional failures, government interventions, and threats to liberty.

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A Framework for Understanding Pathogens, Explained by Sunetra Gupta

If it is possible to mash together hard science, poetry, epidemiology, and sociology, it is this book. It is not a huge treatise but closer to an extended essay. Every sentence is pregnant with meaning. Reading it not only made my heart race but also caused my imagination to run wild. It’s both bracing and beautiful.

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Mises on Intellectual Obligation in Times of Crisis

We are not atomistic. We do not live in isolation. We live as a decentralized network of free people, cooperating together out of choice and to our mutual betterment. We owe it to ourselves and to each other to fight for the right to continue to do so, and to beat back any and every attempt to take that right away.

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The Trouble with Virus Eliminationism

The idea of virus elimination via government is a fundamental threat to all Enlightenment values. It is not scientific at all: serious scholars in this field have observed that virus suppression through force is impossible and foolish. If temporarily successful, it merely results in a population with a naive immune system that is more susceptible to a more serious disease later.

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Thoughts on the Pulitzer Prize for Covid Coverage

What a way to top off a year-and-a-half-long collapse of public confidence in once-respected institutions! The Pulitzer Prize committee has given its award for “public service” to the New York Times for its team of reporters working on COVID-19. Stunning. As much as I’ve doubted the credibility of the Pulitzer (certainly since the Walter

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The Day Anthony Fauci Rejected Excellent Advice

The letter was sent March 14, 2020, a Saturday, and the day after the HHS privately released what amounted to a lockdown order from the federal government. The Trump administration had already been talked into shutting down as much as it could and urging states to do the same. In some sense, then, the latter came too late. Regardless, Fauci ignored it (“Thank you for your note”) .

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