Tagged: pandemic

Random Reflections on Where We Are Today

To despise and vilify millions of fellow human beings as one’s enemy and a force to be defeated and eliminated, on the basis of disagreements about practical matters, is implicitly to despise and vilify oneself. For who among us has not significantly altered his own beliefs and attitudes over the course of adulthood, such that his own past views and statements might strike...

Checkpoint Normal

Governments around the world are well along the path toward forcing all places of employment to monitor their employees or potential employees for vaccination status; forcing all private gathering places, such as restaurants or theatres, to restrict access to their businesses (i.e., their private property) to people with “their papers” in order; and forcing all individuals in and out of the “health care...

Two Things to Wonder At

What was the democratic world fifteen months ago? Clearly, it was not what it appeared to be, even to the most hardened skeptics and cynics. It is one thing to believe, as the skeptics and cynics did at that time, that most men, if push came to shove, would choose comfort over freedom, and would succumb to promises of security at the expense...

The Bubble Test

What post-Soviet progressives have gradually learned, and what anti-totalitarian observers from Tocqueville to Huxley understood long before them, is that oppression maintained with hard walls will be short-lived. For hard walls, precisely because they are so overtly rigid, are vulnerable. Men locked within those walls naturally convulse at restraint so bluntly asserted. They will not produce, thus gradually rotting the oppressive power structure...

How many have you killed?

Among the many pernicious effects of the worldwide panic over The Pandemic that Ate a Planet, few are as disturbing as the ease with which public authorities and media propagandists have been able to turn ordinary citizens against one another, effectively raising a universal lynch mob prepared to publicly destroy their neighbors at the drop of a virus-infected hat. Here is a news...

Headlines I Nearly Read Today

Trump admits he hid the virus because he thought it would only kill Democrats.

COVID-19 invades the brain, makes victims feel like they have a bad flu.

Biden promises if elected, he will mandate private isolation chambers for all Americans.

Polls show Biden now leading Trump by triple digits.

COVID Context

I just finished reading an interesting medical study published in October, 2019, regarding annual flu mortality rates. Given its currency and subject matter, it would be precisely the sort of study that would be getting cited by the news media and government health authorities, if those entities had an interest in providing useful context against which citizens might evaluate the COVID-19 pandemic for...

How I Feel Today

A few hours ago, I concluded an e-mail reply to a reader about COVID-19, experts, “flattening the curve,” and the abuse of statistics, with this exhausted summary: “I’m getting tired of this story, since there is nothing left to save here, no one left to persuade, and no benefit to be had from muttering common sense into the ether. Slaves want to be...

Random Thoughts on Coronavirus and Death

In recent years, it has become a popular part of the vernacular to say, in a variety of situations, “This will not end well.” This melodramatic expression should now be edited for the coronavirus pandemic, to “This will not end.” Several weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion, grounded in firsthand reports and hard evidence, of the fact that in many jurisdictions,...

Dr. Fauci Maps Out Your Future

Today, America’s Lord and Master, “Dr. Fauci,” is making a plea for Americans to continue taking his word as gospel truth forever and ever, and to sacrifice every iota of dignity and self-government they ever thought they deserved, even though it is now ridiculously obvious that he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about, and has been dead wrong about every...