Regarding Covid...from the get go.
Last weekend, The Times published a survey of pandemic recommendations from experts considering the possibility of another outbreak, and it looked to me as though in nearly every case even those taking the more aggressive side of the argument endorsed mitigation measures that were no stronger and often weaker or more caveated than those that had been put in place in 2020. They did so even though the hypothetical disease they were considering was both more transmissible and more deadly than the new coronavirus (and even though it also affected children and adults equally). That is, faced with a disease that would spread more quickly than Covid, kill more of those infected than Covid, with a mortality burden, compared with Covid’s, markedly rebalanced toward the young, they would vote, in general, to do less.
This isn’t a question limited to abstract, virtual-reality-style debates on op-ed pages and social media. In at least 30 states, The Washington Post reported last week, legislatures have already passed laws limiting public health powers in the wake of the pandemic. Most of the states are in Republican control, but not all, and the restrictions legislated so far are quite intrusive: in many cases, extending outright bans against health officials or governors from issuing mask mandates, closing schools or businesses, restricting large gatherings in places like churches, or testing or vaccine protocols. But what is most striking is how little consideration they give to the particular attributes of future outbreaks — treating a future disease that spreads like measles but kills one in five kids it infects the same as one that spreads like swine flu and doesn’t kill anybody. And stopping public health authorities from doing anything about any of them.
Stop and think about that for a second: As the country emerges from three years of death, disruption and suffering, dozens of states have decided not just that future mitigation measures should be carefully targeted and calibrated, or that they should be time-limited, or that they should always integrate trade-offs and cost-benefit calculations from the beginning. They have decided that the best way to prepare for those future diseases is to tie our hands ahead of time.
In both the United States and Britain, there is suddenly a front-and-center debate about the very earliest days of the
dnyuz.com
Of course, the writer is whining about it (you should read the whole piece - it is a hoot), but the fact is that the majority of Americans are waking up to the completely unnecessary authoritarianism imposed on us by "the experts."
Even The Atlantic has to admit how stupid "the experts" actually are:
Following Your Gut Isn't the Right Way to Go - The Atlantic
Of course, they too whine about it and demand that we continue to get on our knees and accept whatever bad advice they impose upon us.
I think it is hilarious how all these sanctimonious lefties are being forced to address just how badly they erred in demanding our fealty to the likes of Anthony Fauci, Gretchen Whitmer and Joe "beady eyed" Biden, all of whom could not have been more wrong in their Covid beliefs. This isn't rocket science - it is always ALWAYS better to err on the side of freedom and liberty. The people will get it right way more frequently that the pols (and their conflicted "experts").
The line forms on the, um, left, to stop by here and congratulate me on getting this covid situation correct from day 1.
