Brownstone Institute Policy articles feature opinion and analysis of global policy in news, economics, public health, public dialog, and social life. Policy articles are machine-translated into multiple languages.
Gigi Foster, professor of economics at the University of New South Wales, is author of The Great Covid Panic (Brownstone, 2012). She has been granting interviews all over Australia and New Zealand, in addition to other countries around the world. You can hear her views in this fascinating podcast.
This is why we need the freedom to make our own decisions on matters of personal health and safety. Otherwise, those who are so certain that their opinion is the correct one that they are willing to use coercive force to impose it on others run the risk of looking as foolish (and evil) as the witch hunters and eugenicists of generations past.
This is a pretty feeble report that seems to have been written with an eye on getting Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark – the chairs of the two select committees involved – on the BBC news rather than making a serious contribution to understanding what the Government got right and what it got wrong over the past 18 months.
The overwhelming desire of a terrified public for evidence of interventions that effectively eliminate the risk of infection will inevitably pressure scientists to provide that evidence. Ideally, an acknowledgement of this bias would result in increased skepticism from other scientists and media outlets, but that hasn’t happened
Individuals whose livelihoods and liberties are being deprecated and deleted need access to the scientific literature as it pertains to this virus. They should send a link to this page far and wide. The scientists have not been silent; they just haven’t received the public attention they deserve.
Children have now lost two years of progress in educational basics, and that is the least of it. They have been systematically trained in germaphobic paranoia to treat their peers and adults as pathogenic disease carriers whose presence is a threat rather than blessing. They have faced the demoralization that comes with constantly changing rules, instability of both home life and education, seen their houses of worship closed, and been coerced into a tedious life of endless screen time that is devoid of human warmth.
It’s tremendously sad to see a whole nation slip so far so fast into decline, as evidenced by the latest labor-market data that has profoundly impacted the most vulnerable. It is easily reversible but we seem to lack the wisdom and courage that would be required to turn this around.
This legal fight is important not only to set appropriate limits to vaccine mandates. It is also important for the future that—now in this crucial moment—we refuse to allow our institutions to set dangerous and unjust precedents. Today’s precedents could later facilitate even more coercive mandates and infringements on civil liberties by unelected officials, done during a declared “state of exception” or emergency that has no defined terminus—a dangerous precedent for a democratic society.
We have already seen many instances during the Covid pandemic where despite assurances to the contrary, things did not evolve as expected. It seems clear that we simply don’t know what is going to happen next, or what the consequences of our actions and choices will be. What is perhaps most troubling is that this acknowledgement has been almost completely absent from the rhetoric of our leaders and decision makers. It does not show ignorance or weakness to be honest about this reality, it shows wisdom and discernment.
It’s true that Biden does not have the power to impose that directly but he might have the power to order a regulatory body under his authority to write rules that amount to the same thing. And even if the regulatory agency never gets around to it, the perception that the order is real and enforceable is enough to cause the outcome he desires.
