Lockdowns were neither prudent nor essential. It’s not as if government officials considered the collateral damage to be inflicted on the economy, society, and health by the lockdowns and then rationally concluded that the benefits of locking down outweighed these costs.
Lockdowns Were Anything but “Prudent and Essential” Read More
Liberalism unleashes human flourishing and creativity better than any other path in history. But any theory built around the sovereignty of the individual inevitably bumps up against human weakness and human frailty as well.
The past two decades have witnessed the increasing divergence of two schools of thought within global public health. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent pandemic preparedness and response (PPR) agenda have brought these to a level of vitriol, dividing the public health community. Health is a basic human need, and fear of ill health is a powerful tool for changing human behavior. Ensuring the integrity of public health policy is therefore critical for a well-functioning society.
A Reevaluation of the Pandemic Preparedness and Response Agenda Read More
This period of our lives has shattered the hopes and dreams of millions and billions of people, and practically buried the ideal of freedom as an anachronism in a new age of corporatist totalitarianism. The neo-Hegelians in our midst condescend to us and say that this is just how things are and there is nothing to be done about it. This is not true.
Professions have become managerial cartels. Governing bodies are their godfathers, permitting only proper people and perspectives. Their purpose is not to ensure public access to a variety of professional opinions. Instead, they seek to herd people into “correct” attitudes and behaviors. Propaganda is not evil, but merely a tool to facilitate right results.
the 1984 “Chevron Deference” SCOTUS opinion is the keystone in the arch of current administrative law. And like a keystone, if the “Chevron Deference” were to be successfully challenged and significantly revised by SCOTUS (functionally pulling the keystone out of the arch), the power and integrity of the entire administrative state structure would be compromised and the strength of the unelected fourth branch of government may fall, thereby restoring balance between the remaining three (Constitutional) branches of government.
People were told when and where they could shop, the hours during which they could shop, what they could purchase, how close they could get to others, and which direction they could move in by following arrows on the floor. Governments also stepped into nations’ bedrooms to dictate with whom we could and could not be intimate.
If we really are looking at something along the lines of 1914, history should absolutely record what immediately preceded these awful days. Governments of the world turned vast resources and attention to the grand project of unprecedented scope: the universal mastery of the microbial kingdom.
Science is about probabilities. When I consider the odds for the various possible explanations, I have no doubt that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak in Wuhan and that the virus was manufactured there. The cover-up of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is the worst in medical history. This will stand as a pillar of shame in the coming centuries.
Origin of COVID-19: The Biggest Cover Up in Medical History Read More
Pandemic restrictions were an unmitigated failure, and the evidence base against the politicians and “experts” who imposed them and demanded compliance continues to grow. And it raises some substantial questions about holding those responsible accountable for their actions. Especially as mask mandates return in certain parts of the country, with hints of more on the way.
Another Tacit Admission That COVID Mandates Were a Disastrous Mistake Read More
The effect of this conflation of safety and health, and of the attendant mass submission to technical solutions to identified health threats, is that our well-being is nurtured at the level of cohorts and not of individuals. When any one of us stays safe we increasingly acquiesce in the sacrifice of our individual welfare at the altar of one or other computer-modelled universal benefit, of which we can at best merely partake but which is fundamentally indifferent to our flourishing.
The threat of voluntary lockdowns should lead lockdown sceptics to cast their net beyond the institutions of the State and bring them to confront the harder-to-limn, bottom-up drivers of lockdown like parental socialism. They need to find ways of addressing our collective self-infantilisation and to reemphasize the value and importance of free agency.
