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

drinking excess deaths

Drinking and Excess Deaths in lockdown

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These are deaths wholly attributable to alcohol, which means that at least 27.4% more of our fellow citizens have drunk themselves to death thanks to the imposition of curtailment of individual freedom. Males die more frequently – twice that of females. Mental disorders and accidental poisoning events were present but played a small part in adding to the tally. Most of the deaths will have been habitual heavy drinkers who found refuge by increasing their daily intake. 

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Soviet health care

The Sovietization of Medical Care 

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The further we move away from health care as essentially a doctor/patient relationship, with freedom of choice on all sides, and the more we allow central plans to replace on-the-ground clinical wisdom, the less it looks like quality health care and the less it contributes to public health. The Soviets already tried this path. It did not work. Health-care by modeling and data targeting: we tried it over the last three years with horrible results. 

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fear uncertainty and doubt

Humanity Must Move Beyond Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

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FUD first brought about by a crisis in health, cascaded into loss of faith in government, in the people around us and sometimes in ourselves. Three years is too long a time for FUD to be considered a crisis, but when a crisis is not resolved, loss of hope is the outcome. Many people have lost work, friends, health and even their lives as a result. 

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war on doctors

The War on Doctors and Patients

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The suppression of doctors’ freedom to advise and treat patients began early in the pandemic. Promising alternative courses of treatment, such as generic drugs like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, were shouted down by false news narratives. Media companies took their cues from public health agencies, which exaggerated concerns over people using medicines to treat COVID in ways that were not intended and against medical advice. Positive clinical data was ignored.

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future of journalism

The Grim Future of Establishment Journalism 

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The professional liars have won. Newsrooms have been eviscerated because Google and Facebook took all the advertising revenue, and the spin merchants in business, government and nonprofits have almost limitless resources. If journalism – as opposed to commentary in blogs, websites, social media, and online channels – is to have a future, a new approach is needed.

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Totalitarianism

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

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We might still have food on the shelves — though of worse quality and at much higher prices. We might still have the ability to move and work and travel, but heavily circumscribed, always at risk of canceling and always with papers showing the number of needles in your arm, or your scarred heart tissue. Nobody is torturing us (yet anyway) and for the most part we have some semblance of rights and freedoms remaining. ut we’re closer to that horrific totalitarian world today than we were, say five years ago.

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vaccine passport

The Impending US ICD Vaccine Passport and Its Unconstitutionality

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The government itself—through the CDC—has determined that vaccination status is not of policy importance. There can thus be no compelling interest for the government to forcibly collect this information against the wishes of the population, even were it not stigmatizing. So much more so after the government has spent the last two years publicly demonizing unvaccinated people for their rational and legitimate personal health choices.

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Yoga NPR

Yoga Could Lead to Non-Compliance, Warns NPR 

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A Yoga teacher named Guru Jagat held in-person maskless Yoga classes in defiance of local stay-at-home orders, practices NPR cites as proof that she lost her mind. The author of the NPR article makes a series of unfounded claims about Yoga. In doing so, the author finds herself entangled in disinformation and reductionist arguments against Yoga and Hinduism. 

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N95 fail to stop spread

Why N95s Fail to Stop the Spread

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By examining the hypothetical best-case scenario, we can better predict if a given measure will have a mitigating impact on the identified hazard. For N95s versus output, particle- to- PFU ratios, and MID for SARS-CoV-2, best-case scenario of hypothetical perfect capture of matter that these apparatuses are neither designed nor approved to capture shows them to still be non-mitigating for this hazard, and recommendations for their use should be immediately reconsidered. 

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