Articles

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

The Children We Call Our Leaders

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Social engineering appears doable only to those persons who, seeing only a relatively few surface phenomena, are blind to the astonishing complexity that is ever-churning beneath the surface to create those surface phenomena. To such persons, social reality appears as it does to a child: simple and easily manipulated to achieve whatever are the desires that motivate the manipulators.

The Children We Call Our Leaders Read More

What Is the Value of a Covid Test? 

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

If you tested yourself on a random day when you had no symptoms, your one test would probably say “You’re Negative,” and that wouldn’t change your behavior at all. Such a negative test used with a low pretest probability of being positive is like firing a bullet haphazardly into the fog, long before you see the whites of your enemy’s eyes with a low pre-shot probability of hitting anyone. 

What Is the Value of a Covid Test?  Read More

The Mass Betrayal of Trust 

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The world that the lockdowns and mandates, and all that is associated with them, unleashed is dark, corrupt, duplicitous, dishonest, dangerous, tribal, and pervaded with nihilism and a loss of moral clarity and a resulting criminality both public and private. How easy it turns out to be to shatter trust, to disable a functioning social order, to spread corruption from person to person, institution to institution, to the point that the center no longer holds!

The Mass Betrayal of Trust  Read More

China’s Culpability for Lockdowns Does Not Depend on the Lab Leak Theory

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Part of the problem is that much of the evidence refuting the lab leak theory comes from scientists on the political left, who’ve so thoroughly debased themselves on this subject. It’s testament to the CCP’s dark sense of humor—riddled throughout the response to Covid—that they were able to convince the left it was woke to support the even-more-ridiculous theory that Covid came from some poor Chinese shopkeepers in Wuhan’s Huanan market selling pangolins.

China’s Culpability for Lockdowns Does Not Depend on the Lab Leak Theory Read More

Early Warnings of Non-Covid Mortality

Already in 2020, There Were Signs of Increased Non-Covid Mortality

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Second-order effects on mortality were not measured in real time like SARS-COV2 cases. Why? What we measure matters. What we don’t measure might actually just matter even more. Months and years later we are still accounting for how the Covid-19 response disrupted life and cost lives in many other ways we simply chose to ignore.

Already in 2020, There Were Signs of Increased Non-Covid Mortality Read More

Sorry, Kids: We Were Wrong

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The road to healing and rebuilding ahead is still long, but as a first step we must take responsibility, admit that we have lost our way, and ask our children for heartfelt forgiveness. At the same time, we must direct massive resources toward our children in order to repair the harm of the past two years, in both the socio-emotional and the educational spheres.

Sorry, Kids: We Were Wrong Read More

I Cannot Believe It’s Come To This

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

We’ve never lived in Texas, in fact I’d never even been to Texas when we finally decided to bail out of New Jersey, during “Omicron.” Before that, I don’t think my husband thought I was serious about moving. But my intuition had been telling me for months, many of them, that this wasn’t the place for me. I feel betrayed. 

I Cannot Believe It’s Come To This Read More

Compassion Unhinged: The Robespierres of Lockdownism

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

For the Robespierres of lockdownism, the object of pity became those “vulnerable” to Covid, and set against this “more touching calamity” the needs of other classes – chiefly children and the poor – were held to count for little. Indeed, the members of those classes could be visited with all manner of cruelties given the bigger goal the lockdown proponents hoped to achieve.

Compassion Unhinged: The Robespierres of Lockdownism Read More

Stay Informed with Brownstone Institute