The COVID-19 outbreak isn’t over yet, but we’ve reached a turning point: American politicians and bureaucrats are beginning the tricky process of trying to simultaneously walk back their predictions of catastrophe, while awarding themselves the credit for those predictions not coming true, and avoiding the blame they deserve for inciting headlong irrational panic.
Tag: history
After the Pandemic: Back to School, or Forward to a Better Future?
One major silver lining in the United States is that the nation’s patchwork of government-operated daycare centers / day prisons / drone worker boot camps, aka “public schools,” have temporarily shut down as part of the effort to slow the spread of the disease.
Neither Pandemic nor Panic Supersede the First Amendment
I double-checked, just to make sure. Neither the First Amendment nor either of those US Code provisions include an “unless someone jumps up and down and screeches that there’s an emergency” exception.
By The Time We Notice We’re Hungry, It May Be Too Late
There’s a non-trivial chance that Americans are rushing headlong into a horror we haven’t seen since the Civil War — mass starvation — or, at the very least, malnutrition on a scale we haven’t suffered since the Great Depression.
Congress Declares Itself Non-Essential
Around the US, “essential” workers are going to work everyday and doing their jobs, COVID-19 pandemic or not. Factory workers are producing things. Truck and delivery drivers are transporting those things. Grocery store employees and food service workers are making sure food reaches our tables. Congress, not so much.
Decarceration: COVID-19 is Opportunity Knocking
On March 23, 14 US Senators from both major political parties asked US Attorney General William Barr and Michael Carvajal, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, to “transfer non-violent offenders who are at high risk for suffering complications from COVID-19 to home confinement.” The question: If the prisoners in question pose no threat of violence, why were they sent to jail or prison in the first place?
What’s the Worst Thing?
I don’t think it’s death. Death sucks, and the drive for life is good. But inability to make peace with the utter inevitability of death can lead a person to things worse than death.
COVID-19: What Would Rosie The Riveter Do?
Our politicians are thoroughly enjoying their extended Mussolini cosplay holiday, but their “lockdown” orders and such are merely feeding their egos, not starving the virus.
Costs of Government Action on Coronavirus
No, they are not endangering society, nor will they be the cause of millions (or even dozens) of extra deaths. People who are “downplaying” coronavirus are serving an important purpose. Besides disarming the panic-bomb, I mean. What they are doing is acting as a drag chute to slow down runaway government overreach.
Who’s in Charge Here?
The first stage of panic (and second and third) is to scramble around looking for someone to follow. Many of us followed others into bars, but clearly most followed hoarders of toilet paper and hand sanitizer into all the dollar stores, the drugstores, and the supermarkets. But the thing that is now most scarce is information. Human beings continue to query “whadya know?”, but the answer is still “not much, you?”