Category: Pandemic Response

The Emergency Is Not Really Ending

Commentary The Biden administration has announced that it will end the public-health emergency on May 11, 2023. Why not earlier? Why not now? Because that “would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system.” What the heck? Yep, they are concerned that it will take time to “retrain [hospital] staff and establish new…


My First Anti-Lockdown Article From 2020

Commentary These days, many people are justifying the egregious government response to the virus based on the claim of ignorance. We just didn’t know and could not know, they say. It’s preposterous. It was obvious from early on, to anyone who cared to look, that COVID was a textbook respiratory virus and that lockdowns would…


Did China Make a Mistake by Ending COVID Restrictions?

Commentary Never forget that the New York Times kicked off disease panic in the United States in late February 2020, about a month after China had locked down Wuhan and violated its citizens’ rights to associate on a massive scale. Two weeks earlier, the World Health Organization sponsored a Western junket that was attended by…


Governments Doubled Down on Lockdowns After Evidence Proved They Were Ineffective: Professor

A newly released essay by Douglas Allen, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, examines why governments repeatedly used lockdowns during COVID-19 even after it became clear lockdowns were ineffective and “failed to isolate the virus and stop it from spreading.” Lockdowns were sustained with political support, suggests Allen, and lockdowns had “many winners.” He…


The Downfall of the Gurus

Commentary Scott Adams, creator of the insightful Dilbert comic strip, earned his status as an influencer not only from his acidic commentary on the bureaucratization of business life. He was also very early in noticing that there was something special about Donald Trump. There were moments back in the day when Trump was wizard-like, he…


The Censorious Scott Gottlieb Was a Major Influence on Lockdowns

Commentary The latest of the Twitter Files is reported by Alex Berenson, who was granted access to messaging systems from the times before Elon Musk took over. His first round of reporting concerns the role of Scott Gottlieb, who is a perfect example of an influencer who is technically outside of government but might as well be…


Lockdowns Deaths in 2020 Were 42 Percent of Excess Deaths

Commentary There were virtually no COVID vaccinations given in 2020 (0.8 percent of population, and only 18 COVID vaccine deaths reported to VAERS), which makes it an ideal year for analyzing excess COVID deaths vs. excess lockdown deaths, which I am defining to include all excess deaths above COVID deaths, including iatrogenic deaths, and all other…


How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives

Commentary From the beginning of the COVID panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights. What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very…


What Is Crimson Contagion?

Commentary The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already…


We Are Still Locked Down

Commentary Consider just how fortunate we are to have the Twitter Files. Every few days, we are seeing dumps of documents from the operations of Twitter before Elon Musk took over. This weekend’s release was especially shocking. It revealed a close and symbiotic relationship between the company’s management and the FBI, which employs 80 people…