The Politics of COVID
In April of this year, I wrote a blog post entitled “Coronapocalypse.” Back then, I suspected that the Corona virus pandemic was overblown reasoning that politicians, scientists and the media didn’t have enough data and were being super cautious with policy. Six months later, the data indicate that the pandemic is definitely overblown but the reasons for the hype have changed. For months now, certain “health” authorities, the political class and their media hand maidens have relentlessly promoted a fearful narrative about the COVID-19 pandemic as if the daily count of new cases were a major public health emergency.
Small businesses have been steadily diminishing in the U.S. economy for years, but COVID has thrown gasoline on this house on fire. According to the Census Bureau, in 1989 companies with less than 100 workers represented 40% of employees of all U.S. businesses. Newly released data show that as of 2018 that had fallen to 33%. The government lockdowns have forced thousands of small companies out of business while larger companies have largely survived and, in many cases, even prospered. Public companies like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have taken advantage of record stock market levels fueled by Federal Reserve money-printing to raise hundreds of billions in new equity. The Fed should just eliminate the middleman a.k.a. the stock market and just deposit new money into their bank accounts. Meanwhile, small business is getting crushed and their employees are forced onto the government dole to survive. The government COVID policy will cast a pall over the U.S. economy for years to come in the form of reduction in competition for larger firms and limiting workers’ ability to secure higher pay and further eroding their share of the economy. The danger is U.S. economic power will reside in fewer hands, reducing the innovation and entrepreneurship that have helped drive the country’s success for two and a half centuries.
At last week’s presidential debate, the most important statement made by Mr. Biden was: “You can’t fix the economy until you fix the COVID crisis.” That means, “Virus first, economy second.” So does a diverse country with 330 million people have to put their lives on hold indefinitely until a Joe Biden-sanctioned scientist says the coronavirus is “fixed”? With Biden becoming increasingly likely to win the election next month, people should take seriously his calls for more lockdowns in coming months should the coronavirus “spread.” Recently, Biden told ABC News, “I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” a statement that begs several questions. Let’s start with “which scientists?”. Some are in favor of lockdowns (which will be at the top of Google’s search engine) and others are strongly opposed (much harder to find on Google).
The Evidence
There obviously is much to dissect in Mr. Biden’s words, so let’s take a look at the data. According to the CDC, COVID has an IFR mortality rate of 0.003% for 0–19 years, 0.02% for 20–49 years, 0.5% for 50–69 years, and 5.4% for 70+ years. This is translated to: If you are 69 years old or less, you’re 99.5% sure of NOT dying from COVID if you contract it. For the 10% of the population who are at real risk of death, we can focus solutions on them rather than shut down the entire economy. And yet all you hear in the mainstream media is the fearful proclamation of “rising infection rate” and “number of cases” as if they were the daily Vietnam war casualties being reported by Walter Cronkite every day during that conflict.
How about this? Let’s just assume that the current 7.8 million total infections in the United State is wrong by an order of magnitude and it’s really 77 million because there are so many more asymptomatic people walking around infecting people, most of whom will also be asymptomatic. Once you are infected, you acquire the antibodies which now protect you from the virus. Acquiring the antibodies is like wearing a full body mask because you are immune. You can neither contract nor spread the disease. This natural process is called “herd immunity” and we should WANT it badly. In fact, I think we should open special clinics where you can contract COVID so that you can become immune. You’d be doing society a favor. And yet the mainstream media portrays herd immunity as a gruesome draconian method that should be avoided at all costs.
Instead, we must wait for vaccines which artificially imitate this natural process by introducing a small theoretically safe amount of the virus to trigger production of anti-bodies. Yes we are on record pace for creating a vaccine but how long before it really is available to the entire population and what happens if it is only 50% effective as many vaccines are? The CDC estimates it could take another year or more for vaccines to become widely available. Can we wait another year to begin the process of returning back to some semblance of normal. What will be left of our economy and how much new government debt will be added by then?
You’d think this relentless cycle of lockdowns would prompt our government leaders to rethink their policies, but that isn’t the case in the US and around the world. Governments in Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand and elsewhere are returning to lockdowns after an increase in new infections. Meanwhile, the Swedish infection rate clearly is falling, both in absolute terms and relative to other countries that have followed strict lockdown procedures. In fact 22 of the 31 EU countries had higher infection rates than Sweden. If the mainstream “experts” were right, Sweden should be a catastrophe given they have carried on with their lives not wearing masks or quarantining. We see the mainstream media ignoring the Sweden story while continuing to promote the “lock-down-or-else” narrative.
In this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial, “Covid-19 — Implications for the Health Care System,” denouncing “dangerously incompetent” leadership in Washington on the pandemic and all but endorsing Joe Biden for President. In an effort to keep pace with the fashionable support of Black Lives Matter, the article goes on to say, “Disparities in access and health outcomes are entrenched features of the U.S. health care system. They reflect a history of racism and discrimination that permeates society generally.” The editorial recites the government’s well-known failures in managing the coronavirus, such as the initial struggles to roll out testing and hand out enough protective equipment. I don’t disagree with that, but the authors go on to praise China’s virus management, conveniently ignoring its early cover-up and manipulation of the World Health Organization. Why are American elites so mesmerized with authoritarian control? The article then hit the U.S. for late and inconsistent quarantines, without considering the public-health and economic costs of lockdowns. And what are the solutions offered by this coterie of elites who careers have rotated from academia, government, philanthropy and the health care industry? Basically, it’s single payer healthcare, or Medicare for all where the federal government is in charge of everything. Now there’s some out-of-the -box thinking. This thinking may go down well in the right circles, but then please don’t complain if half of America suspects that science is increasingly politicized.
The official COVID narrative is also sharply at odds with a growing community of voices from hundreds of doctors, virologists and epidemiologists. To date, more than 3,700 medical and public-health scientists have signed the Great Barrington Declaration calling for a more balanced approach, which would allow “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.” Once I learned about this consortium of scientists from prestigious institutions around the world, I signed the declaration on-line and I would urge you to do the same. Just Google “Great Barrington Declaration.”
If we have learned anything in the past eight months, it should be that that lockdowns have questionable benefits that are hard to prove, but they impose huge economic, health and societal costs which everyone can see for themselves. The notion that we can just close schools, businesses, churches and sports venues—with the unemployed being compensated with printed money—until someone develops the magic vaccination and not suffer huge consequences is as whimsical as the idea that if California bans fossil fuels, its wildfires will disappear. The financial and emotional stress that comes from lockdowns are harmful to both our physical and mental health and the evidence is all around us.
So why are people promoting this false COVID narrative?
The incoherence of the policies enacted by the political class, supported by their experts and media, has now become obvious and it just further erodes the public trust in American institutions. How can seemingly intelligent people remain so stubbornly attached to a narrative that’s so obviously flawed? And it’s not just America. Around the word, it’s the same thing everywhere: All COVID, All the time, with nonstop fearmongering and calls for compliance with increasingly silly measures. If it is not science and logic that’s informing the public health measures, then what is it?
Fear is the weapons grade persuader as Doonesbury creator Scott Adams says in his 2018 book, “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter”. Scott gives us a primer on manipulating people through suggestion. The purpose of Ruling Class induced fear is to increase dependence on government and eliminate the alternative, self-reliance and locally grown solutions to endure and thrive. Social distancing keeps you from being with your family and neighbors. Face masks isolate you from engaging with a new face, making a new connection to grow and strengthen your community. Not wearing a face mask quickly identifies you as a non-conformist to the authorities. Government is force training these behaviors and COVID is a preparatory step for the conditioning needed to enforce subservience.
In a nearly unreported development in June of this year, Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, considered the last tyrant in Europe, publicly rejected a $940 million line of credit from the International Monetary Fund. He rejected it because the IMF conditioned the loan on Belarus imposing a strict COVID lockdown policy and a curfew. It's very odd that the IMF would offer loans to a nation while setting conditions that severely hurt that nation’s ability to repay it. Apparently, a number of other nations received similar offers from the IMF or the World Bank. We only know about the COVID conditions only because Belarus disclosed it publicly. Significantly, Lukashenko mentioned on several occasions that the IMF negotiators wanted Belarus to do “like in Italy.” Other nations and governments who accepted the money may have quietly agreed to the conditionality which they never disclosed to the rest of the world.
As of April 2020, 85 nations have requested financial assistance from the IMF. Deeply in debt and with severely damaged economies, most governments worldwide needed loans, making them prey to the dictates of money power. To secure the needed funds they may have agreed to shutting down their economies, restricting their population’s freedom of movement, creating police state-like contact-tracing structures and closing down the schools. It makes me wonder how often this happens and goes unreported.
Even in the United States, the president of Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, Neel Kashkari, said in a New York Times interview, the federal government should issue strict 4 to 6 week shelter-in-place orders “for everyone but the truly essential workers.” Kashkari advocated that the lockdowns should be as comprehensive and strict as possible and done aggressively, using “the testing and tracing capacity we’ve built…”
It’s important to understand that the ruling class and their media have an interest in the lockdown status quo, even if it means spreading propaganda. The COVID crisis has been a godsend for those who see constitutional restrictions that limit their authority as just obstacles to be overcome. Governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gavin Newsom of California, and Tom Wolfe of Pennsylvania have received fawning media coverage for grabbing authoritarian powers in their states. Whitmer unilaterally decided that the sale of garden seeds in stores was illegal while Cuomo’s decision to force the housing of COVID patients in nursing homes led to the deaths of thousands of people. In an effort to close the tax revenue gap resulting from the COVID economic shutdown, Governor Tom Wolfe is petitioning the Pennsylvania legislature to legalize marijuana to generate tax revenue. Imagine that. Keep the people sedated so they ignore what’s going on around them. I would encourage my audience to either re-read Aldous Huxley’s 1939 magnum opus, “Brave New World”, or watch the 2020 Prime Video series remake. Pass the Soma please.
Also, keep in mind that the real losses that Americans suffer because of the heavy-handed governmental response to COVID are permanent. History is full of examples where governments create crises or manipulate events such as natural disasters and use them as opportunities to expand state power. Tax withholding from your paycheck began in WWII, to fund the war. Withholding remains to this day. Even after a crisis ends, governments keep much of their newly self-granted powers that limit civil liberties with little or no concern for the people who seem happy to trade freedom for the illusion of security and comfort.
I think we already know how the “second wave” lockdowns will end. At some point, with the economies of countries in shambles, authorities will gradually lift some of the restrictions while demanding that people “voluntarily” engage in mask wearing and social distancing. Not long after the rules are relaxed, there will surely be a new surge of infections, as people long separated come together without having built up their immune systems. In case you haven’t heard, lack of sunshine, outdoor exercise and social interaction is not the natural state of humans.
With no other options, and because the governing class has declared lockdowns to be the only way to defeat the virus, there almost surely will be Lockdown 3 in countries where the politicians can get away with it. Whether the ruling class in the United States follows the same plan is an open question. We know beforehand that quarantining healthy people actually makes the long-term infection picture worse and that the starting and stopping of the economy wreaks havoc its of its own. In the end, shutting down much of social and business interaction, restricting worship services, and closing schools is ineffective in stopping infections, whether from the COVID-19 or some other pathogen. And yet, mandating mass restrictions seems to be a winning political strategy. COVID-19 is not the last pandemic that will hit the world, and when a new pandemic emerges, the political class will run the same old playbook.
Despite the myth that governing is about “solving problems” and “serving the people,” it is the rare politician who does not seek to expand the power of their party and themselves personally. We should not be surprised by this. It is human nature. Our ancient spiritual texts like the Bible, Torah, Koran and Mahabharata warn us about human limitations. It’s astounding how many of the “seven deadly sins” are in play with politics. I guess this is at the core of my discomfort with experts who, however well-intentioned, can never create the utopias they yearn for. Humans are invariably flawed and driven by self-interest. This drive to survive is at the center of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is why Karl Marx’s musings on a communist utopia could never be realized by the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and all the other countries who were seduced by this fantasy. China was smart enough to see the failed manifestations of Marx to have course corrected 25 years ago to institute a bastardized form of capitalism to temporarily save its people from the same communist oblivion. Even with this, China’s Achilles heel is the one-party authoritarian rule that crushes individual liberty to the point where the only way they can hope to keep up with the United States is to steal the intellectual property developed by our people.
It’s not hyperbole to say that the November 3 elections are the most important in our lifetime. I urge my listeners to separate the personalities and rhetoric of the presidential and congressional candidates and look at their party platforms. Any candidate who runs under a particular party platform signs up for all the ideas in that platform if they hope to secure the party support for their election. I believe that the very foundation of what America is, is on the ballot and the typical remedy of “we can throw the bums out if we don’t like them” could fade away depending on how we choose.