Sunday, August 16, 2020

What Will Not Recover: Government

What Will Not Recover: Government
Excerpt: ...this might account for why “14 Days to Flatten the Curve” has stretched to five months in which the Bill of Rights has been a dead letter, many are still locked out of their gyms, we can’t go to the movies, and we are forced to dance around each other in public spaces as if every person might be carrying a deadly pathogen. No society can function this way, not if it desires prosperity and peace. Why do the lockdowns and restrictions still last? Governments around the country never had an exit strategy. They locked down with no sense of what would be next, either for the policy or for the virus. If infections go down, they credit the lockdowns, in which case they cannot unlock. If infections are still high, that’s also a case for locking down. If the virus isn’t there, that’s yet another case for locking down. If coercive stringency is the way to control and finally suppress the virus (impossible), there is no exit strategy except for the arrival of a vaccine, which itself doesn’t promise lasting immunity, if we even get a safe one. We are besotted with these public health authorities and government officials who made a terrible, life-wrecking error. They can’t admit it because the devastation has been so complete. [There’s a lot of truth in Jeff Tucker’s article. I don’t agree that governments “never” get anything right, though I’d go along with “seldom.” The response–world-wide, not just in the USA–by shutting down entire countries is without parallel in human history. NOTHING like this has ever been done on such a wide basis. I’m personally in the highest risk group (as are many of my closest friends and relatives), but I can’t help thinking we’d have been better off to ignore the “pandemic” and just take our chances as humans have done since the beginning of recorded history. Yes, some of us–perhaps even more than we’ve already had–would’ve died, but the survivors would’ve both been stronger and had a much clearer path forward. No one has ever suggested this disease, or any other, would or even could wipe us off the face of the globe.  Humans are even harder to kill than rats and experience shows that rats will survive almost anything (they might even be the back-up team if humans do fail). Our governments–at ALL levels–have a lot to answer for. Perhaps we can remind them of this in November. I added emphasis. Ron P.]

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