Policy

Policy articles analyzing social and public policy including impacts on economics, open dialog, and social life. Articles on the topic of policy at Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages.

WHO IHR human rights

Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide

By / / , , , , / 37 minute read / Articles
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The amendments to the IHR are intended to fundamentally change the relationship between individuals, their country’s governments, and the WHO. They place the WHO as having rights overriding that of individuals, erasing the basic principles developed after World War Two regarding human rights and the sovereignty of States. In doing so, they signal a return to a colonialist and feudalist approach fundamentally different to that to which people in relatively democratic countries have become accustomed. The lack of major pushback by politicians and the lack of concern in the media and consequent ignorance of the general public is therefore both strange and alarming.

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Soviet health care

The Sovietization of Medical Care 

By / / , / 14 minute read / Articles
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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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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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Totalitarianism

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

By / / , / 7 minute read / Articles
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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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game over lost

The Game Is Over and They Have Lost

By / / , , / 6 minute read / Articles
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The script has worn itself out. These tropes are now tired and ineffective. The fear pushers seem unaware that the message has lost its effect, but do not have anything else to offer. The tell is not that they publish articles like this. It is how much these pieces show that they don’t know that the game is over and they have lost. 

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Requiem for Jacinda Ardern’s Political Life 

Requiem for Jacinda Ardern’s Political Life 

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Ardern’s government, in an absurd overreach, also funded a nationwide effort to discredit critics of policy, labeling them terrorists. This has divided a formerly egalitarian society, instituting a Stasi-like snitch culture that encourages us to dob in a neighbour. Government Disinformation Project employees appeared on funded films aired on television labeling knitting, blond hair, braids, vaccine hesitancy, love of natural foods, Yoga, and yes, motherhood as signs of terrorism that should be reported to the intelligence services.

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Lockdowns Were Counterterrorism, Not Public Health 

Lockdowns Were Counterterrorism, Not Public Health 

By / / , , / 11 minute read / Articles
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Anyone who knows what our Covid response policy truly was is theoretically barred from revealing it. We do know the public health agencies were not in charge of the policy, and we know they were pushed out of their leadership role in coordinating and implementing the response. So Fauci et al. are technically correct if they claim no responsibility – although how they could in good conscience advocate such policies is another matter. 

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dystopia

Technocratic Dystopia Is Impossible 

By / / , / 16 minute read / Articles
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Grand utopias cannot be realized because, while imagination is unconstrained reality has limits. What is a dystopia other than the role of an NPC in someone else’s utopia? In this case, the utopia is the dream of psychotic elites who imagine that they can have the end products of mass cooperation without the open society that enables it. Much damage can be done in the attempt, but it is only a question of how far it can get before it cancels itself. 

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Biodefence Commission

A Manhattan Project for the Biomedical Security State

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On July 11, 2019, a think tank called the Biodefence Commission held a panel discussion entitled A Manhattan Project for Biodefence: Taking Biological Threats off the Table. The objective was to ‘create a national, public-private research and development undertaking to defend the United States against biological threats’. 

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