Articles

Brownstone Journal Articles, News, Research, and Commentary on public health, science, economics, & social theory

Government’s National Security Arm Took Charge During the Covid Response

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HHS – the agency designated by statute and experience to handle public health crises – was removed, and FEMA – the agency designated by statute and experience to “help people before, during and after disasters” like earthquakes and fires – was put in charge. But the pandemic planning document was not updated to reflect that change or how that change would affect the Covid response.

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What Happened to the Idea of Progress?

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Like people, paradigms get tired, mostly because the humans that work within them, as Kuhn suggested, increasingly lose touch with the problems that originally elicited in them the intense and sacrifice-laden drive to create urgently desired new things. But humans aren’t always very good at recognizing when they have begun going through the motions. This is especially so with those in the thrall of a purely linear vision of time in which the perennial reality of intellectual and spiritual regression is afforded no legitimate space. 

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We Must Have Accountability

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The current crop of failed fearmongering virus prophets coupled with the low-uptake of boosters is stark and terrible reminder that the institutions that prided themselves on public health damaged the public trust more than anything else. Your trust should be in the bedrock of our Constitution, not in some self-endowed title of “science.”  Public trust in our institutions is sinking and it will require a public trial of our policy decisions to right the ship.

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The Selfish Collective

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A truly prosocial approach would not shut out all other goals and insist on one way forward. It would take into account the different priorities and viewpoints of various factions or individuals, approach them with respect, and ask how to best facilitate some sort of harmony among their needs. Instead of prescribing behavior onto others it would advocate for dialogue and open debate, and it would celebrate differences of opinion. 

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Osterism Won’t Prevent March 2020 From Happening Again

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Oster’s implicit claim that next-to-nothing was known about SARS-CoV-2 – and therefore all the pointless, unethical, and illegal things people were forced to do are understandable – isn’t the pathway to healing, because it’s dishonest. Inexplicably, she denies that, from the get-go, we knew Covid’s stratified risks and the harms of coerced interventions.

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The Book We Need and Only Justin Hart Could Write 

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Hart is one of the few intellectuals who was correct about the whole hullabaloo from the very beginning. Therefore he doesn’t need to embark among some silly dance in which restrictions were fine in the beginning but later became too much. Nope: he kept his wits about him the whole time. Thus does he have the credibility to write without apologies. 

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Science Misconceived: How the Covid Epoch Wrecked Understanding

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The pandemic along with the slogan, “Trust the science” has altered the desired perspective from one of healthy skepticism to blind acceptance. Such non-critical acceptance of any data, let alone research occurring at “the speed of science,” should give pause. Science moves forward when objections are made and hypotheses are fine-tuned, not when agreement ensues simply because an authority has decreed it so. 

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Bravo, Elon!

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Twitter’s phony “content moderation” operation was not unique, but symptomatic of a much broader perversion of corporate management throughout Silicon Valley and much of corporate America, too. In a word, the stock market was so fantastically over-valued owing to the Fed’s egregious money-printing that executives were given leave to pursue their political and ideological hobby horses on a whim, rather than keep their noses on the grindstone of profit and loss.

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