Category: Covid-19

Lockdowns – Part 2

In the previous post on lockdowns (July 25th), I made the ethical/moral argument against lockdowns. In this part, I make the economic argument against lockdowns.

The economy is a complex set of interlocking activities undertaken by an arbitrarily large collection of individuals and collectives attempting to achieve their self-selected ends as best as they can given the limited means at their disposal and their imperfect understanding of how to realize those ends. Continue reading “Lockdowns – Part 2”

Current Covid Hysteria

“Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” That’s a truth that Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) — the great English poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer — appears to have articulated long ago.

The vested interests of the few and the credulity of the masses conspire to kill whatever is the relevant truth. The war against the Chinese Covid-19 virus is no exception. The fake and the false have reigned with little opposition. Unsurprisingly, it’s the masses’ inability to reason and ignorance that is to blame for this misfortune. That sounds elitist but it is an unavoidable conclusion. Continue reading “Current Covid Hysteria”

Pathogens in One Lesson

GalaxiesLockdowns are a terrible idea. This of course goes against our “common sense” but the problem is that we are not equipped by nature to have the correct common sense. On top of that, our naïve common sense is distorted by the media and politicians. They are in the business of selling panic to people so that they obey their commands.
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It is hard to unlearn a lesson that has been repeated for years. If it took 20 years to push a wrong idea into some’s head, the idea cannot be expelled from the mind in 20 minutes. That is why “allah hu akbar” is so tenacious. They repeat it 5 times a day since birth. By the time a Muslim grows up, AHA is part of his DNA.
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For over a year now, the peddlers of panic have been pushing their agenda. It’s hard not to be influenced by their reality-distorting propaganda. But it is possible to see through their bullshit.
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The truth — as far as humans are able to discover some part of it — is accessible, provided one is open to reason. Fortunately, we have almost instantaneous access to what domain specialists and experts understand to be true. We have to rely on them and are better off for their expertise. Unfortunately, social media has poisoned the well by the constant barrage of senseless forwards of idiocy. In that cacophony, the quite voice of reason gets drowned. Continue reading “Pathogens in One Lesson”

Is a vaccine a public good?

Prabhudesai asked: Is a vaccine a “public good”?

In economics, goods that are non-rival (consumption of the good by someone does not decrease the amount available for others to consume) and non-excludable (no one can be prevented from consuming) are called pure public goods. By that definition, clearly a vaccine is not a pure public good.

A good that is non-rival but excludable is called a “club good” — a large park in a gated community, for example. A good that is rival but non-excludable is called “common pool” — a pasture for grazing cattle with no fences, for example. 

Continue reading “Is a vaccine a public good?”

Don Boudreaux on “Covid Tyranny”

tyranny-brancoDon Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek makes very important points:

A government that acts without rules, that consistently changes course in favor of exercising ever-more and longer-lasting power, and that now refuses to publicly state guidelines for ending its unprecedented assault on ordinary human liberties is tyrannical. I don’t see how this word fails to accurately describe today’s British government – as well as many other governments across the globe. Continue reading “Don Boudreaux on “Covid Tyranny””

Lockdowns Kill Tens of Millions

The Wuhan ‘flu aka Covid-19 has killed a heap of people but the lockdowns imposed by governments have turned a bad situation into a catastrophe that will eventually kill more innocents than the two world wars combined did in the past century. I am not a fan of government on days that end in a y but the idiocy of shutting down nearly all activities is, to use the proper technical term, batshit crazy even by the extremely retarded standards of governments.

At some time I hope there would be the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials and the leaders of these countries tried for “Crimes against Humanity.”[2] Those crimes were motivated by the sole purpose of grabbing more power and wealth from the public, regardless of the cost. Mass murderers of the last century — Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, King Leopold, Yahya Khan, et al — cannot hold a candle to those in power today. Look at the numbers —

Internationally, the lockdowns have placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation, 80 million children at risk for diphtheria, measles and polio, and 1.8 million patients at risk of death from tuberculosis. The lockdowns in developed countries have devastated the poor in poor countries. The World Economic Forum estimates that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.[1] Continue reading “Lockdowns Kill Tens of Millions”

Tom Woods on The Covid Cult

Tom Woods is a brilliant speaker. Engaging, funny and entertaining. Besides, he makes sense. Lockdowns are a bad idea, as I wrote in my previous post, A Most Expensive Hoax.

[Addendum: YouTube has taken down that video. You can watch the video at Tom Wood’s site.]

The Chinese virus has done a whole lot of damage and a lot of people — mostly elderly — have died. But the death toll has to be put into perspective. Here’s a graph of monthly deaths per million population from Jan 1851 to July 2020. Note the 1993 Beijing flu killed a whole lot more than the Wuhan flu (Covid-19). (Click on the image to embiggen.)

A Most Expensive Hoax

The Seen and the Unseen

Every action has not one but many effects; of these many effects, only some — perhaps one — are intended, and others are unintended; some of the many effects are beneficial and others are harmful; some are immediate, and others delayed; some are foreseen and others not; some are known and others unknown; some are evident and others not. The world is complicated because things are connected and interrelated, and what happens in one part affects other parts, and all sorts of things are happening all the time and therefore it is hard to fully understand the consequences of any large-scale intervention.

The world in which actions have only intended, beneficial, immediate, foreseen, known and evident effects is not the world we live in. In our world, actions also have effects that are unintended, harmful, delayed, unforeseen, unknown and concealed. What does that imply, though? Should one do nothing in the face of uncertainty and risk? No. It means that one should have the humility to not presume to know what’s best for the world and be very hesitant to command others to do one’s bidding. Continue reading “A Most Expensive Hoax”

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