History articles feature analysis of historical context in relation to censorship, policy, technology, media, economics, and social life.
All Brownstone Institute articles on the topic of history are translated into multiple languages.
More than two years since the lockdowns of 2020, the political mainstream, particularly on the left, is just beginning to realize that the response to Covid was an unprecedented catastrophe
Lockdowns: The Great Gaslighting Read More »
Altruism has a dark pathology that has driven some of the worst acts on humanity ever recorded. One maladaptive altruist can wipe out disruptive advantages of opportunity by manipulating innovators and mavericks into cooperative followers.
Parochial and Pathological Altruism Read More »
Karma is already turning on the whole gang of coercive totalitarians here and abroad. While the virus is invisible, the people who dreamed up and enforced lockdowns and mandates who wrecked the country are highly visible. They have names and careers, and they are right to be very worried about their futures. First step: apologize.
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word Read More »
In an explosive new report from the Wall Street Journal, leading health officials began offloading stocks at truly unprecedented rates in January 2020—well before the COVID-19 emergency was declared—with officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services selling 60% more stocks in January 2020 than average over the previous 12 months.
US Government Officials Dumped Stocks Prior to Lockdowns, Report Shows Read More »
In the new study, which is currently undergoing peer-review, Prof. Ioannidis and colleagues found that across 31 national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccination era, the average (median) infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was estimated to be just 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years and 0.095% for those aged 0-69 years.
How Deadly Is Covid? A Major Study Defies Conventional Wisdom Read More »
It is not remotely plausible that “learning disabilities” have a physiological connection or influence on the pathological course of covid infection or disease, certainly not en masse that would show up as a stronger safety signal than both age and obesity. The proposition that an otherwise perfectly healthy individual with a learning disability is at a higher risk from covid than your 83-year-old grandma is so absurd that it should call the entire study into doubt.
How Can Severe Mental Illness be the Deadliest Covid Comorbidity? Read More »
Did anyone really believe on the eve of the sixth lockdown that it would last only as announced? Or did we all suspect another lie? This is a much harder lesson to take – it opens up uncomfortable lines of enquiry such as “what else did /do they lie about?” From there it is a short step to demanding that there be accountability for the lies – and further, that every future announcement is challenged.
Small Steps Toward Truth and Justice Read More »
It was never remotely realistic for any government to expect every single person to get vaccinated, especially when the vaccine in question involved a novel genetic-based therapy. Thus, these proposals to impose draconian hardships on those who refused Covid vaccines would inevitably involve the state imposing draconian hardships on a sizable portion of the population.
The Demonization of the Unvaccinated: A Look Back Read More »
The global response to the coronavirus pandemic has revealed an ethical crisis in public health, in which the pre-pandemic norms of public health ethics have been cast aside. This has wrecked health, human rights and economies, whilst the people public health was supposed to serve it had to pay for its implementation, and will pay for its harms. It will be a long way back, and recovery will require public health to return to its servant nature, and leave the limelight where it caused such disaster.
A Big Picture Look at the Disastrous Public Health Response to COVID-19 Read More »
There is a strange way in which US lockdowns and disease panic miraculously healed the US/China trade rift that had been developing for the two years prior. Most “personal protective equipment” and especially masks used during the lockdown period in the US was imported from China in a deal between Trump and Xi, brokered by Trump’s son-in-law. Trade recovered, beginning with pandemic-related goods.
Why Your Mask Came from China Read More »
No one denies that thousands of New Yorkers died needlessly in March – May 2020. Now we know it wasn’t because the city’s ERs were overrun.
New York City’s Hospitals Were Not Overwhelmed in Spring 2020 Read More »
We’re already seeing prominent perpetrators and collaborators claiming to have, and to have always had, reservations about what happened. They are trying to create for themselves a revisionist backstory that absolves them from their abominable conduct. These perpetrators and collaborators cannot be redeemed without confession. That they must be forgiven is not in question, but apologies to and restitution for their victims are essential.
Australia Will Not Move On Until There Is Justice Read More »
