Sickness Is The Health Of The State!

A hundred years ago in response to the horror of WWI, the great Randolph Bourne famously pronounced the truth that “War is the Health of the State.” Said Bourne,

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate co-operation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, the minorities are either intimidated into silence or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them to really converting them……

Other values such artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.

In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out.

A century later it appears that Randolph Bourne needs an update: Apparently, Sickness is the Health of the State, as well.

During the past 10 weeks, state control of economic and social life in America has erupted like never before. The stay-at-home and lockdown orders decreed by mayors and governors intrude into every nook and cranny of daily life, essentially subjecting tens of millions of Americans to house arrest and/or entombment in six-foot cylinders of social control.

The historic quasi-regimentation and suppression of dissent that occurred domestically during both world wars, for instance, pales by comparison.

The pretext, of course, has been that the coronavirus presents a dire threat to the very life and limb of the American public, and that exigent and invasive controls on individual action and daily commerce are necessary to stop its spread.

But that’s a gargantuan lie. The risk of death to an average healthy person under 60 years of age is no greater than that entailed in commuting 50 miles per day by car to work and back.

And besides, once a highly contagious virus gets loose among the general population— which the coronavirus had done long before Lockdown Nation was launched on March 13—its spread cannot be stopped, anyway.

In fact, it shouldn’t be stopped. When the virus is already out the barn-door and is relatively benign among 95% of the population which contracts it, the right course of action is to let freedom reign. That is, enable its natural spread among the healthy population and thereby foster the herd immunities that the human organism and social community have been deploying to combat such diseases for millennia.

Stated differently, the very high threshold of across-the-board threat to the health and life of the citizenry that would be required to suspend their liberties and pursuit of economic livelihood has not been remotely reached by the Covid. So what has and is still happening in Lockdown Nation is a case of grotesque and malign disproportion.

That’s evident enough in any random sample of the social controls and “nonessential business lockdowns” that have been hastily stood up coast to coast. But these excerpts from the lawsuit of an Illinois businessman capture the intrusive absurdity being foisted on the public as well as any:

I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.

Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family- owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.

We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.

If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.

Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.

These are just a few examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense. But this kind of arbitrary state invasion of economic and personal life is what happens when officialdom and politicians are green-lighted by an overpowering Big Lie.

In the case of Illinois, the state has its own bully-boy, Donald Trump wanna-be master of the universe in the state house. Governor J. B. Pritzker is the entitled scion of a brass knuckled family of Chicago business speculators who is used to getting his way, and has decided that it is his job job to quash the coronavirus—the rights of the state’s citizens and needs of the economy be damned.

But it is worth noting that the WITH Covid mortality rate in Illinois as of May 27 was just 40 per 100,000, which is only slightly above the US average and far below the level in hard hit states, where the apparent mortality rates are far higher.

It’s also about the same as Sweden, which hasn’t closed its schools, businesses and places of social congregation; and it is well above a variety of other US states and countries including Japan and South Korea, which have not employed anything remotely resembling the sweeping Lockdowns imposed by the state of Illinois:

WITH Covid Mortality Rates Per 100,000 (as of May 28)

· New York: 153;

· New Jersey: 128;

· Connecticut: 107;

· Massachusetts: 95;

· Rhode Island: 64;

· Sweden: 42;

· Illinois: 40;

· Georgia: 18;

· Florida: 11;

· Germany: 10;

· Texas: 6;

· Switzerland: 4;

· Russia: 3;

· Belarus: 2;

· Japan: 0.7;

· South Korea: 0.5 

Indeed, the sweeping range of mortality rates among these jurisdictions tell you that intrusive lockdowns designed to stop the virus’ spread don’t have much to do at all with actual outcomes. Public health measures in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Japan, Belarus and South Korea, for example, were not a fraction as intrusive and comprehensive as those in the state of Illinois.

Even then, fully 50% of the WITH Covid deaths in Illinois have been in nursing and other long-term care facilities—places outside the reach of the general public lockdowns, anyway.

So if you set aside the long-term care deaths, the general population mortality rate in Illinois is actually about 20 Covid deaths per 100,000. That’s only slightly higher than the year-in and year-out suicide rate of 15 per 100,000 and not even 3% of Illinois’ annual mortality rate from all causes of about 875 per 100,000.

So you have the worst of both worlds: The Illinois lockdowns do not account for its moderate mortality rates because if plenary lockdowns were efficacious, the mortality figures for New York and New Jersey would be drastically lower.

At the same time, destroying an economy and personal liberties and livelihoods on account of a 3% share of the state’s normal mortality rate gives the idea of overkill and disproportion an altogether new meaning.

To take another example, the WITH Covid mortality rate of 15.7 per 100,000 in Virginia is only a tad above its annual suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000.

But that hasn’t stopped its power-grabbing governor, Ralph Northam, from imposing a sweeping lockdown on the state’s residents, including an edict that after Friday all Virginians over 10 years of age will wear the Mask pretty much everywhere. As one acerbic critic rightly noted,

Or else! Gesundheitsfuhrers – health police – will do the enforcing, handing out misdemeanor fines and presumably Hut! Hut! Huts! to the non-compliant.

Needless to say, even as the state balloons with its puffed up health police, the private sector has literally imploded. With today’s weekly report on initial unemployment claims, we have now reached a milestone which was not attained even during the darkest moments of the Great Depression.

To wit, during the past ten weeks 40.7 million workers have filed for state unemployment benefits, a figure which is nine times greater than the worst 10 months of the Great Recession; and when you add in the 4.5 million workers newly eligible under PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance), the total is close to 45 million.

The total employed work force on the eve of Lockdown Nation in February 2020, however, was just 158.7 million. So, actually, 28.3% of employed workers in what was alleged to be the Greatest Economy Ever have now received pink slips, and in a ten-week flash of the eye.



Still, this needless calamity gets us to another avenue by which sickness have become the Health of the State.

After the Donald’s camarilla of malpracticing doctors green-lighted the Governors and Mayors to lockdown their economies in Mid-March and conducted daily coronavirus task force briefings which became the fodder for the MSM to generate hysteria among the general public, the Washington politicians experienced their own version of fear contagion. That is, they passed sight unseen a $3 trillion Everything Bailout which has literally eviscerated the public finances of the nation.

Consequently, and unlike even the worst period of the Great Recession, lockdown starved US Treasury receipts of $3 trillion in FY 2020 will amount to only 40% of Bailout bloated outlays, which will exceed $7 trillion. That’s not even worthy of banana republic style finance.

Needless to say, the Covid-fighters on Capitol Hill held no hearings, took no expert testimony, had the benefit of no professional analysis or even a cursory reading of the bills.

So they apparently didn’t bother to find out, for instance, that there were 71 million American workers last year whose paychecks averaged less than the new combined Federal/state benefit of $1,000 per week; and that there were 17 million workers in the hospitality and leisure sector as of February 2020, who averaged less than 25 hours per week on the clock and got paychecks of less than $350.

So now the state’s Virus Patrols are confronted with a new variety of ailment that may be afflicting millions of workers. To wit, the discovery that it pays big time to get furloughed.

As one widely circulated commentary on the social media put it: Thank Heavens for the Covid!

Before COVID I was miserable.

I had a job working $14.75/hr and hated waking up most days. I’ve since been laid off (obviously) but am one of those who is making much more by NOT working.

I used to make $550-600 per week depending on my hours but since COVID began, I’m clearing just over $1000/week. My gf is in the same situation and she’s also clearing just over $1000.

Today we plan to do some hiking since it’s going to be so nice out and I’ll be using my new grill to cook up some steak tonight. The gf is kind of a wine snob so she likes to splurge on really nice reds (which I’ll definitely be having later as well).

I really don’t understand people who say they’re more stressed or are fighting with their gf/wife more than before. It makes absolutely no sense to me. These have been the best 2 months I’ve had in a while. I can’t imagine going back to my old life and way of doing things. NOT HAPPENING!

The only thing that isn’t ideal right now is not being able to travel normally but I only vacationed once or twice a year before due to work/money issues. Now I’m able to save $800-1000/month with COVID stimulus and bonus so we’ll definitely be taking a nice vacation at some point this summer.

So the question recurs: Why the Lockdowns?

House arrest and the 6-foot cylinder of social control that have been stood up to thwart the spread of the virus are inherently unmatched to the task, which is illicit in the first place. But they will inherently clobber the economy and the livelihoods of millions— notwithstanding a lot of brave talk about the “new normal”.

As the Wall Street Journal detailed in a story about the travails of the restaurant industry, the so-called re-opening will only be a short bridge to oblivion for large segments of the industry:

Across the U.S., dining rooms are reopening and some customers are returning, industry data shows. But restaurants say they expect months of sales losses ahead due to capacity constraints imposed to contain the new coronavirus. They are also buying plexiglass walls to separate tables, hiring cleaning staff and turning fewer tables to give booths deeper scrub downs between customers, expenses that draw on a shallower pool of revenue.

Of the 30 states that have allowed restaurants statewide to resume serving customers indoors, 15 have limited capacity to 25% or 50%, according to market-research firm Gordon Haskett. The rest are mandating social distancing that have the effect of reducing capacity, or have yet to release guidance. Restaurant executives expect the limits to last at least through the summer.

Independent restaurants face even greater challenges than sit-down chains because they tend to have less room to cordon off customers and fewer seats to remove. A survey of 250 Colorado restaurant operators earlier this month found that nearly half expected to permanently close in less than three months at the 50% capacity cap that the state set on Wednesday. A study of 483 New York City venues found that 61% couldn’t make it with occupancy limits below 70%.

For a typical 75-seat sit-down restaurant in New York, an occupancy cap of 50% would allow for just 20 diners after accounting for employees, said James Mallios, a New York City restaurateur and attorney.

He said the number drops to around five diners at a 25% capacity limit. New York City hasn’t yet eased stay-at-home orders or set final capacity guidelines for restaurants.

Then again, there are 275 million Americans 64 years and under who face virtually no risk of death or serious illness. As of May 16, the CDC’s own data show that the WITH Covid mortality rate for this massive share of the population was just 4.9 per 100,000— about in line with the annual toll of traffic and other accidents.

By contrasts, the serious illnesses and deaths are occurring mainly where the Lockdowns aren’t. Persons 65 and older account for 16% of the population but 81% of the WITH-Covid deaths; and 32% of deaths have been among those 85 and older, which account for just 2.0% of the population—most of whom are in long-term care homes, and do not frequent restaurants.

The reason for high mortality and low public socializing, of course, is that the 22,543 persons 85 and older who died WITH Covid were pretty sick already. To wit, among them were—

· 8,267 cases of influenza and pneumonia;

· 11,250 cases of chronic lower respiratory and other pulmonary illnesses;

· 4,075 cases of high blood pressure;

· 4,000 cases of cardiac arrest and arterial arrhythmia;

· 5,800 cases of other circulatory diseases;

· 1,870 cases of diabetes and obesity;

· 3,650 cases of dementia;

· 1,700 cases of sepis and cancer;

· 1,025 cases of Alzheimer;

· 1,175 cases of renal failure; and

·8,000 cases of other serious ailments including accidents and poisonings. 

In all, the deceased over the age of 84 years had 50,800 of cases of classifiable diseases, most of them life-threatening. That’s an average of 2.25 each.

Needless to day, sickness is a condition of life—especially of advanced age; and it needs to be fought with medical care and personal health practices, not society-wide social engineering.

But when it becomes the Health of the State, as during the current Covid Hysteria, it is now apparent that the State becomes a greater mortal threat to liberty and prosperity than even during times of military war.

And we are quite sure that Randolph Bourne would heartily agree.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman's Contra Corner.

from Sickness Is The Health Of The State!

Protesters, Rioters, Looters, and Revolutionaries, Be Aware There Are Government Agents Among You

With protests, riots, looting, and revolutionary acts rising over the last few days across the country, here is a bit of information for participants in these activities to keep in mind: There are likely government agents among you. These government agents are undercover and taking part in the activities with you. Their role may be to take down names and inform on activities; their role may to act as provocateurs, seeking to lead you and others to do or say particular things; their role may be to make arrests.

This fact of life in America came to mind when I looked at a Friday Twitter post by journalist Luke Rudkowski. Rudkowski’s tweet includes a video clip in which a uniformed cop is among a group of people, many of whom seem to not be too happy with the cop. The cop is doling out some physical abuse, particularly on an individual he is trying to restrain, and receiving some physical abuse as well from several people in the crowd. It appears that the cop may be on the verge of being overpowered and seriously hurt. Indeed, it looks like a situation where he may pull out a gun to protect himself.

In the latter part of the video, one more person rushes into the area of conflict and seems to engage in a scuffle with the cop, drawing the cop out of the area and even chasing the cop off. At least that is how it seemed the first time I watched the video.

Something seemed off about how the two men interacted in the latter part of the video, so I watched a few more times.

Watching the video over and over, it looks more and more like the man who had seemed to come in to scuffle with the cop is actually pulling the cop out of the fray as a friend or coworker may do, while maybe putting on some ruse of conflict to ensure the extraction works. Indeed, at the end of the video clip, after a few viewings, it sure looks like neither man is chasing after the other. Instead, once clear of the danger that had confronted the cop, both men appear to jog off together.

It seems impossible to be certain just from looking at the video clip, but what appears to be happening here is an undercover cop, posing as a member of the protest, riot, or whatever came in to save the uniformed cop’s bacon or to prevent a further escalation of the physical conflict.

Undercover government agents are out there, and they are not out there just to protect the uniformed police. They are also there for purposes including surveilling and foiling the protesters, rioters, looters, or revolutionaries, as well as both provoking people to commit crimes and making arrests.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/may/30/protesters-rioters-looters-and-revolutionaries-be-aware-there-are-government-agents-among-you/

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests

A video has been circulating of a white man casually smashing the windows of a Minneapolis shop with a hammer during protests against the police murder of George Floyd. The man is clearly trying to hide his identity by wearing a gas mask, carrying a large umbrella, and wearing full-length black clothing.

Protesters can be seen intervening to stop his destructive behavior in the video.



“Are you a fu*king cop?” one asks.

An officer with the Saint Paul Police Department has been publicly named by someone identified as the officer’s ex-wife, who said his voice, walk and gas mask made her “90% sure” it was him. The Saint Paul Police Department has denied this.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it is a very safe bet that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind. Disruptive police infiltration of protest movements is a historical constant in America, after all. It is the norm, not the exception.

Protests have spread throughout the United States since the emergence of that footage. Journalist Max Blumenthal has uploaded a very interesting video of an encounter he had with an undercover cop posing as a protester in Washington, DC.

Look what I found outside #dcprotest. An obvious cop dressed like a protester getting out of an unmarked car and telling me he’s a CNN reporter. Beware of the lying provocateurs out here! pic.twitter.com/f90wYSjbGS

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 30, 2020

Blumenthal began following a man he reports he’d spotted coming out of an unmarked vehicle in an area that had been completely sealed off by marked police cars, meaning the police were restricting who came and went from that area. Blumenthal began questioning the man, asking him if he’d been to the protests and if he was a cop. The man said he’d been to the protests but denied he was a cop, saying that he worked with CNN.

Blumenthal then went to the unmarked vehicle the man had come from, where two more men were seated. He asked them if they were cops, which they denied, then asked if they were with CNN, which they also denied, saying they were “just hanging out”. Blumenthal informed them that he’d just caught the fake protester in a lie, at which point they rolled up the car window.

Local outlet KHOU 11 News was told by the Houston police department that protests over George Floyd’s murder would be attended by both “uniformed officers and plain-clothed officers”. This admission cannot be found in KHOU’s reporting any longer, but it has been screenshotted and still shows up on Google searches as of this writing.

In New York, protesters have conclusively worked out that cops posing as demonstrators are currently wearing white armbands to identify each other. Ways of identifying plain-clothes cops are being circulated by protesters on social media.

None of these people are paranoid or irrational. For generations it has been a well-established fact that police will reliably infiltrate protests and political movements, and it remains so to this day.

be careful they puttin undercover cops in the Houston protests pic.twitter.com/W1diuFUcr4

— ACAB (@rockonaoki) May 29, 2020

From J Edgar Hoover’s illicit COINTELPRO infiltration campaign to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize” dissident political movements, all the way up to infiltration and espionage targeting Black Lives Matter and Occupy protesters, police infiltration of American protests has been as certain as death and taxes.

A 2012 Truthdig article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers titled “Infiltration of Political Movements Is the Norm in America” goes into this time-honored tradition at some length. Here’s an excerpt [bold font mine]:

How many agents or infiltrators can we expect to see inside a movement? One of the most notorious “police riots” was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Independent journalist Yasha Levine writes: “During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. That’s right, 1/6th of the total protesting population was made up of spooks drawn from various federal agencies. That’s roughly 1,600 people! The stat came from an Army document obtained by CBS News in 1978, a full decade after the protest took place. According to CBS, the infiltrators were not passive observers, monitoring and relaying information to central command, but were involved in violent confrontations with the police.”

Peter Camejo, who ran as a Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1976, as a Green Party candidate for governor of California in 2003 and as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate in 2004, often told of infiltration in his mid-’70s presidential campaign. After campaign offices were burglarized, Camejo was able to get the FBI into court by suing it over COINTELPRO activities. The judge asked the FBI special agent in charge how many FBI agents had worked in Camejo’s presidential campaign; the answer was 66. Camejo estimated he had a campaign staff of 400 across the country. Once again that would be an infiltration rate of about one in six. Camejo discovered that among the agents was his campaign co-chair. He also discovered eavesdropping equipment in a campaign office and documents showing the FBI had followed him since he was an 18-year-old student activist.

One in six. That’s a whole lot.

Big FYI: For years, NYPD have had undercover cops deployed based on a color of the day model. Today it’s white, tomorrow could be green.

Not always an armband. https://t.co/QIPbn3Qbg1

— mervyn (@britrican) May 30, 2020

This is important for all of us to be aware of, not just the people attending these protests. Any time we are told a protester threw this or rioters set fire that, we must take this information with a very large grain of salt, because we usually won’t be able to know it wasn’t an undercover cop acting as an agent provocateur to shape a narrative and justify more use of force to disperse the crowd. The idiot with the umbrella did it in a very ham-fisted and obvious way, and we can expect other police infiltrators to be more clever about it as well.

This is not to say none of the anger we’ve seen exhibited at these protests is real and grassroots; people have a lot to be angry about, and surely much of the destruction we’re seeing is the organic result of way too many people being pushed way too far by a cruel and abusive system. It’s just to say that we should all be as skeptical as we would be when dealing with any other narratives we know powerful factions have a vested interest in manipulating, and not treat any claim about protester behavior as a certain fact.

The powerful few are afraid of the many. Always have been, always will be. And there’s nothing they and their goon squad won’t do to try and rein in any group which poses a threat to their power if they can get away with it.

Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com.
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from Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests

Politicians' COVID Mania Ravages Maryland

Maryland politicians have destroyed more than four hundred thousand jobs in dictatorial responses purporting to thwart the coronavirus pandemic. “Nearly one in five Maryland workers have filed for unemployment” compensation, theBaltimore Sun reported. The situation is so bad that even the Washington Post recognized that Maryland’s COVID “restrictions have crippled the economy and paralyzed daily life since mid-March.”

Shaky extrapolations of predicted infection rates sufficed to nullify limits on state and local government power. On March 20, Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, ordered the shutdown of all “nonessential” businesses. Ten days later, Hogan issued a mandatory “stay-at-home” order for all Marylanders. At that time, roughly a thousand Marylanders had tested positive for COVID and eighteen had died from the virus.

Despite the shutdown, Maryland has had over forty-eight thousand COVID cases and more than twenty-two hundred fatalities. If the shutdown had been effective, the transmission rate should have plunged after the fourteen-day incubation period for coronavirus. Didn’t happen. The shutdown utterly failed to stop the pandemic but inflicted collateral damage that will hobble the state for many years and probably permanently blight thousands of lives.

From the beginning, Maryland’s response epitomized iron fist progressivism—one overreaching decree after another. Piety repeatedly trumped safety.

For instance, on April 9, Montgomery County’s chief health officer Travis Gayles decreed that any grocery store customer who failed to wear a mask would be fined $500. Gayles discouraged local residents from acquiring and wearing the most reliable protection, such as surgical masks or N95 masks, which the county said “should be reserved for health care workers.” Hogan later followed up with a similar statewide mandate.

But some risks were too sacrosanct to reduce. Hundreds of grocery workers nationwide have been infected by the coronavirus and at least thirty have died. One of the biggest sources of contagion in grocery stores is ratty old recycling bags that customers drag along to tote their purchases home, which some states and cities have banned for the duration of the pandemic. Montgomery County imposes a five-cent tax on each plastic grocery bag, despite one food workers' union calling for an “end to the disease-transmitting bag tax.” A majority of county council members sponsored a bill to suspend the grocery bag tax to “minimize risk,” because “the health and safety of all Montgomery County residents must come first.” The Sierra Club protested that suspending the bag tax will leave “the public with a false sense of security in encouraging single-use plastic shopping bags,” which “are difficult to clean.” But that’s why they are called “single-use” bags. The council quickly caved to the environmentalist demand but pretended to give a damn about grocery workers by encouraging residents to wash reusable bags after each visit to the grocery store—which is as likely as hell freezing over.

When Hogan announced that anyone who violated his “shelter-at-home” order could face a $5,000 fine and a year in prison, he ludicrously declared, “Every Marylander can be a hero, just by staying home.” As of early May, Maryland police had arrested more than a hundred people for violating the order and responded to more than three thousand reports of violations. It is unclear whether the percentage of Marylanders who turned into informants was higher than the rate in former East Germany.

Private parades are strictly prohibited during the lockdown. But Montgomery County police conducted at least three police car parades in front of local hospitals to show their support for healthcare workers. At the same time, the county police exploited the pandemic to justify refusing to provide any information on a brutal predawn, no-knock raid on March 12 in which Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old libertarian-leaning gun rights activist was killed as he slept in his parents’ home in Potomac, Maryland. When Lemp family members signaled their intention to attend a planned protest over their son’s killing at the police headquarters, a county prosecutor speedily threatened any family members who attended the protest with a $5,000 fine and jail for violating Hogan’s shelter-in-place order.

Politicians talked as if any large gathering of people would be tantamount to mass murder. But there was a tacit exception for anything that trumpeted the majesty of the government.

A military jet flyover tribute to local hospitals in the Washington suburbs was Security Theater at its best. The Montgomery County Police Department announced on Twitter: “Please adhere to @GovLarryHogan social distancing order and do not congregate at any hospitals in the County to view the flyover as we must keep the hospital areas clear for healthcare workers.” Twitter user @LibertyLockPod replied, “The roar of the jets will give me strength while I cower indoors. Thank you government!” Another Twitter user groused, “Some hospitals in Montgomery County are out of hand sanitizer, supplying that would be a great way to honor them.”

When the US Navy Blue Angels did a heavily publicized flyover of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda on May 2, hundreds of people squeezed into the hospital parking lot and elsewhere to see the show, social distancing be damned. At least one county council member joined the crowd in blatant violation of the governor’s “shelter-in-place” order, while a second council member stood near the throng. But the media, except for the online Rockville Reports, ignored the high-profile hypocrisy.

Government officials justified the lockdown by endlessly claiming that their decisions were based on “science” and “data.” But the data is available only to those authorized to enter the Inner Temple of Maryland Politics, apparently. The online activist group Reopen Maryland complained that:

Hogan has provided no transparency about the process through which models were consulted and used in Maryland's decision-making to justify state and county closures. Reopen Maryland again calls upon the Governor to make his task force and recovery team minutes and records public. Taxpayers deserve to know how and why these destructive decisions were made.

The state government denied a request for such information under Maryland’s Public Information Act.

Maryland is busy hiring a thousand “contact tracers” to track down anyone who might have interacted with anyone who tested positive for COVID. Privacy will be no excuse for failing to disclose personal contacts. However, at the same time, the Maryland Department of Health ordered local county health departments to cease disclosing which nursing homes have been ravaged by COVID outbreaks, claiming that such information “‘serves no public health purpose’ and violates privacy laws,” as WJLA TV reported. Most COVID fatalities statewide have occurred in nursing homes. One would think that sons and daughters would have a legitimate interest in knowing where their parents faced the greatest risk of dying, but no such luck in the Free State.

Why the secrecy? Reopen Maryland requested and was denied “information on whether…the state forced nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive patients discharged from hospitals, as suggested by the Governor's April 5 executive order and corresponding directives from the Maryland Department of Health.” Similar policies in New York and Pennsylvania contributed to thousands of nursing home deaths.

As elsewhere in the United States, Democrats are far more enthusiastic about perpetuating the lockdown than are Republicans. On May 15, Governor Hogan rescinded the statewide stay-at-home order. That dictate never made any sense for much of the state. Garrett County, for instance, has had only ten COVID cases and no fatalities, but its schools and businesses were shuttered at the command of Annapolis.

Media-favored experts shuddered at Hogan’s premature release of 6 million people from de facto house arrest. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, lamented, “People wonder if it’s necessary, if it’s not necessary. When people receive mixed messages, they’re not going to do what they need to protect themselves.” Without Hogan’s dictate, every Marylander would presumably rush out into the street and hug everyone they saw. Actually, Marylanders responded to the pandemic by voluntarily “social distancing” even before Hogan’s stay-at-home order. Unacast, a company that created software to track social distancing via cell phone data, rated Maryland an “A” and one of the best in the nation.

Hogan’s announcement ending the state shutdown sparked a political pity party by Democratic officials in the Washington suburbs and Baltimore area. “All of us were taken aback by his announcement. We were hung out to dry,” whined Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich, who faced the burden of justifying perpetuating the lockdown for the million residents in his county. Elrich lamented that that “makes it sound like it’s an arbitrary decision.…[Hogan] kind of ignited this rebellion against what we were doing.”

The Washington Post summarized Elrich’s response: “Montgomery County rushed to create its own data dashboard last week, so elected leaders could justify to constituents why they remain stuck in a coronavirus shutdown.” But county officials are apparently being slippery, relying on arbitrary selection and manipulation of data to justify perpetuating arbitrary power. Maryland daily COVID fatalities have fallen by more than 50 percent, and the hysteria is becoming harder to perpetuate every week. Anne Arundel County struck bureaucratic gold when it declared that its pandemic emergency would continue until “health equity” was achieved—whatever the hell that means.

Most Maryland residents live in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, and most of the media coverage in that area has been both pro-panic and pro-government. As a result, Maryland politicians may face few consequences for the destruction and pointless subjugation they imposed. But the Great Pandemic Follies of 2020 may prove a fertile breeding ground for anarchists, libertarians, and unregenerate cynics across the nation.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from Politicians' COVID Mania Ravages Maryland

CoronaCrisis and Leviathan: Big Brother Comes to Your Town (and iPhone)

Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois is proposing the Orwellian (and improperly capitalized) COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, offering states and locales $100 billion with which to become total police states.

The bill would provide funds for localities to contact trace, test, and quarantine infected individuals, and while its sponsor claims testing and quarantining would be on a “voluntary” basis, given how states and localities are already accessing and using technology in the name of the CoronaCrisis, more funding would provide them even more tools that would make Big Brother green with envy:

'Armies' of Contract Tracers

States across the country are building “armies” (their term) of contract tracers: Gov. Newsom says California will “start” with 20,000 and may build to 100,000; Washington, West Virginia, Iowa, North Dakota and Rhode Island are using the National Guard for their contract tracing “armies;” while former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg committed $10.5 million to create an “army” of Tracers for New York, in coordination with New Jersey and Connecticut.

And just what will all these soldiers do when they’ve traced the infection to your door? Assess the suitability of your home as a quarantine location, and if they deem it not suitable, you may well find yourself escorted to an “isolation center,” which in New Jersey could include a “field hospital,” or in New York, Mayor de Blasio suggests following the Chinese model of using sports facilities such as the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens.

Drones

Police agencies are already using drones to enforce stay at home orders and social distancing, as well as detect fevers—which they do very inaccurately. Even without Rep. Rush’s additional funding, 43 law enforcement agencies in 22 states have already purchased drone technology from just one Chinese company. Who knows how many others there may be?

Cameras

Face recognition cameras are being hawked to governments to track people violating mandatory quarantine orders. American technology apparently falls behind in this area: an ACLU study of Amazon’s “Rekognition” software showed it misidentifying 28 members of Congress against a mug shot database. Once again, China offers a better way for Big Government, including technology that provides recognition of even people wearing masks (think: Hong Kong protestors).

Technology company Clearview AI is in talks with the government to create a system that would use face recognition in public places ostensibly to identify unknown people who may have been infected by a known carrier. The proposal, however, would in reality result in a massive surveillance infrastructure, linked to billions of social media images, that could allow the government to readily identify all people in public spaces for any reason.

License-plate reading cameras are another handy way for Big Brother to keep tabs on where you are. In Kentucky, church attendees were so surveilled, then issued orders to self-quarantine for 2 weeks.

Phone Tech

China, again, seems to lead the way in quarantine tech a/k/a keeping you where the government wants you. There, residents are assigned color-coded QR codes on their phones—yours must be green to leave home. But American companies such as Apple and Google are eagerly stepping forward to offer home-grown tech: proximity tracking Apps and location data for enforcing social distancing and contract tracing; and all manner of House Arrest Tech, from GPS-enabled ankle bracelets to smartphone tracking apps, are being retooled and/or developed for quarantine enforcement. The maker of the detainee-tracking smartphone app E-Cell was asked by a state agency to swap out the word “client,” the company’s term for arrestees, to “patient.”

Apple and Google promise that their technology will protect individual privacy by “anonymizing” the location data, but our cell phones are already tracking and providing our locations to tech companies and the government all the time—which data is stored to allow for virtually anyone’s location to be pin-pointed, any time.

Most alarmingly, under the guise of a coronavirus pandemic, local law enforcement, bureaucrats, and lowest-rung clerks are gaining access to massive surveillance capabilities and police powers, with no provision for privacy protection or redress against their misuse.

We’ve already learned—in full, gory detail from NSA whistleblowers and others—the massive number of people who have access to and can misuse our personal data collected by the federal government. Now just imagine all your personal data in the hands of your local beat cop, public health employee, or city hall clerk, now endowed with the power to use it as they see fit.

Because remember, this is a “Crisis:” the ordinary Rule of Law and rights don’t apply. As Louisville’s chief of public services, in imposing GPS-enforced stay-at-home orders, put it, “We don’t want to take away people’s freedoms but at the same time we have a pandemic.”

But just try to get your freedoms back once the “pandemic” has passed. As Crisis and Leviathan and recent history has shown, once they have a power, they keep it. The only way to keep your rights is to keep them all the time. Just say “No” to TRACE and every other “emergency” decree.

Reprinted with permission from the Independent Institute.

from CoronaCrisis and Leviathan: Big Brother Comes to Your Town (and iPhone)

Are You Ready For Your...Immunity Passport?

Think of it as the REAL ID on steroids. The airlines and sectors of government are pushing for a biometric "immunity passport" to prove that one is not corona contagious before flying, attending large events, maybe even going to work. Plus today's program will look at another pandemic: depression and anxiety as a result of the shutdown. And Minnesota Governor Tim Walz emptied out hospitals and cancelled surgeries to make way for a coronavirus tidal wave that never hit. Finally, freedom action in Brazoria County as homeschoolers challenge park shutdowns. Watch today's Liberty Report:





from Are You Ready For Your...Immunity Passport?

The Greatest Danger to Our Liberty is Not the Virus

My family and I were about to sit down for lunch on Easter Sunday when I received an extremely disturbing call from a constituent. The caller said, “I wanted you to know that my wife is hanging on to her life and I’m afraid she’s going to die soon.” I could hear total desperation in the man’s voice. “She’s living off a bag of IV fluid a day at this point. The doctor won’t operate on my wife due to the governor’s orders.”

The great Milton Friedman once said that “the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.” Indeed, the government’s many “solutions” to Covid-19 have proven, without a doubt, far more catastrophic than the virus itself.

As some government officials and unelected bureaucrats plunge the world into a dark depression, it’s imperative for us to remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. The people, through their elected representatives, must take back the power to ensure that the rampant government overreach and economic ruin we have seen in recent months can never happen again.

It doesn’t matter what the government's intentions are. We all know where this road leads. Pandemic or not, there’s no excuse to suspend or ignore the Constitution or to put people on lockdown indefinitely. Unfortunately, however, many have become paralyzed by fear. Fear is control.

America’s founding fathers — as well as award-winning economists like Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard — warned us about the dangers of the kind of government we face today. From unconstitutional shutdowns, “stay-at-home” orders, contact tracing, and mandatory vaccines to never-ending stimulus programs, our freedoms have been under unrelenting attack.

The central planners have taken a bad virus and, through the threat and coercion of the government, have made it exponentially worse. As runaway governors and mayors go into complete dictator mode, over 36 million people have registered for unemployment (including 500,000 in my home state of South Carolina over the last eight weeks). Small businesses have suffered major blows, with some permanently closing.

Government just can’t turn the economy off and back on again. Many of the complex connections throughout the market have been severed. The government's attempts to mitigate the virus have put countless lives in turmoil as depression, suicide, and crime rates skyrocket.

Ultimately, turning off the economy meant turning off people’s ability to get essential goods and services, including (ironically enough) healthcare. It meant turning off people’s ability to be free. This is completely unacceptable and any elected official who has supported the shutdowns should be forced to resign for neglecting common sense and the Constitution.

Thomas Paine once said, “Society in every state is a blessing. Government in its best state is but a necessary evil. At its worst an intolerable one.” Our government's reaction to Covid-19 would, without question, qualify as “intolerable.”

Those eager to expand the power of government have often said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” US Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) even referred to the coronavirus crisis as an “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision...”

The greatest danger to our freedoms is not a virus, but a mindset — one that puts individual liberty on a backburner to the so-called “good intentions” of government (and we all know where the road of good intentions leads). Many elected officials are saying now that we need even more government — that they didn’t go far enough with bailouts, endless bureaucracy, and intrusions into our everyday lives.

To emerge from this mindset, we the people must make the case for free markets and individual responsibility as both the best and most moral solution. States must take the lead in permanently abolishing licensing laws and eliminating unnecessary regulations that prevent healthcare workers from delivering life-saving care. We must take our children back from the compulsory public education system that indoctrinates them into believing that government is the solution to all of their problems.

We must win people over to the ideas of freedom.

We have an opportunity now to restore liberty by reducing the size of government across the board. We must have the courage to heed the advice of America’s founders and the great economic thinkers who put mind over matter and freedom over government force.

Stewart Jones is a state representative from South Carolina House District 14.


from The Greatest Danger to Our Liberty is Not the Virus

Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda

In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration and its media accomplices waged a relentless propaganda campaign to win political support for what turned out to be one of the most disastrous foreign policy mistakes in American history.

Nearly two decades later, with perhaps a million dead Iraqis and thousands of dead American soldiers, we are still paying for that mistake. 

Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were key players behind the propaganda—which we can define as purposeful use of information and misinformation to manipulate public opinion in favor of state action. Iraq and its president Saddam Hussein were the ostensible focus, but their greater goal was to make the case for a broader and open-ended "War on Terror." ​

So they created a narrative using a mélange of half-truths, faintly plausible fabrications, and outright lies:

- Iraq and the nefarious Saddam Hussein were "behind," i.e., backing, the Saudi terrorists responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US; 

- Hussein and his government were stockpiling yellowcake uranium in an effort to develop nuclear capability; 

- Hussein was connected with al-Qaeda  

- Iran was lurking in the background as a state sponsor of terrorism, coordinating and facilitating attacks against the US in coordination with Hamas; 

- Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and other terror groups were working against the US across the Middle East in some kind of murky but coordinated effort; 

- We have to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"; 

- The Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators. 

And so forth.

But the propaganda "worked" in the most meaningful sense: Congress voted nearly 3–1 in favor of military action against Iraq, and Gallup showed 72 percent of Americans supporting the invasion as it commenced in 2003. Media outlets across the spectrum such as the Washington Post cheered the war. National Review dutifully did its part, labeling Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, and other outspoken opponents of the invasion as "unpatriotic conservatives."

Tragically, the American people never placed the burden of proof squarely with the war cheerleaders to justify their absolutely crazed effort to remake the Middle East. In hindsight, this is obvious, but at the time propaganda did its job. Disinformation is part and parcel of the fog of war.

What will hindsight make clear about our reaction to COVID-19 propaganda? Will we regret shutting down the economy as much as we ought to regret invading Iraq?

The cast of characters is different, of course: Trump, desperately seeking "wartime president" status; Dr. Anthony Fauci; epidemiologist Neil Ferguson; state governors such as Cuomo, Whitmer, and Newsom; and a host of media acolytes just itching to force a new normal down our throats. Like the Iraq War architects, they use COVID-19 as justification to advance a preexisting agenda, namely, greater state control over our lives and our economy. Yet because too many Americans remain stubbornly attached to the old normal, a propaganda campaign is required.

So we are faced with a blizzard of new "facts" almost every day, most of which turn out to be only mildly true, extremely dubious, or plainly false:

- The virus aerosolizes and floats around, so we all need to be six feet apart (But why not twenty feet? Why not one mile?);

- The virus lives on surfaces everywhere, for days;

- Asymptomatic people can spread it unknowingly;

- Antibodies may or may not develop naturally;

- People may become infected more than once;

- Young healthy people are at great risk not only themselves, but also pose a risk to their elderly family members;

- Thin, permeable paper masks somehow prevent microscopic viral spores from being inhaled or exhaled toward others;

- People are safer inside;

- The rate of new infected "cases" in the first few weeks of the virus reaching America would continue or even grow exponentially; 

- Social distancing and quarantines do indeed "save" lives;

- Testing is key (But what if an individual visits a crowded grocery an hour after testing negative?);

- A second wave of infections is nigh; and 

- Our personal and work lives cannot continue without a vaccine, which, by the way, may be two years away.

Again, much of this is not true and not even intended to be true—but rather to influence public behavior and opinions. And again, the overwhelming burden of proof should lie squarely with those advocating a lockdown of society, who would risk a modern Great Depression in response to a simple virus.

How much damage will the lockdown cause? Economics aside, the sheer toll of this self-inflicted wound will be a matter for historians to document. That toll includes all the things Americans would have done without the shutdown in their personal and professional lives, representing a diminution of life itself. Can that be measured, or distilled into numerical terms? Probably not, but this group of researchers and academics argues that we have already suffered more than one million "lost years of life" due to the ravages of unemployment, missed healthcare, and general malaise.

By the same token, how do we measure the blood and treasure lost in Iraq? How much PTSD will soldiers suffer? How many billions of dollars in future VA medical care will be required? How many children will grow up without fathers? And how many millions of lives are forever shattered in that cobbled-together political artifice in the Middle East?

Propaganda kills, but it also works. Politicians of all stripes will benefit from the coronavirus; the American people will suffer. Perversely, one of the worst COVID propagandists—the aforementioned Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York—yesterday rang the bell as the New York Stock Exchange reopened to floor trading. He now admits that the models were wrong and that his lockdown did nothing to prevent the Empire State from suffering the highest per capita deaths from COVID. Like the architects of the Iraq War, he belongs on a criminal docket. But thanks to propaganda, he is hailed as presidential.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda

Smackdown! Homeschool 'Park Patriots' Vs. Brazoria County Park Closures

As we've been saying on the Ron Paul Liberty Report for some time, in this period of coronavirus and the naked power-grabs by authoritarian politicians from all levels of government, if there is any hope to claw back some of our liberties it will come from the bottom up.

Politicians are drunk on power and they are not about to enter any kind of 12 step program. 

But throughout the country it is the people who are fighting back. And they are scoring tremendous victories. On a small scale, a hundred flowers are blooming daily as Americans who perhaps yesterday were not at all political, or who went along to get along, are realizing what is at stake and are standing up.

The elites laughed at the "flyover country" folks in places like the Lake of the Ozarks who ignored demands that they practice "social distancing" and wear masks in public over Memorial Day weekend and simply went out and had a good time. In fact the elites and the sycophants openly wished these people would contract Covid and die as punishment for ignoring the orders of their "betters."

That's how sick things have become.

Here in Texas the speaker of the house Dennis Bonnen - ostensibly a conservative Republican - has warned us lowly citizens that if we want big daddy government to allow us to conduct business again in this state, we need to bow down and scrape. 

He told USA Today that if we don't wear masks whenever we go outside, we can't have our freedom back:

I don’t know what message they are sending other than the message of stupidity that they’re not going to wear a face covering in public. Well, pick it. Either you want the economy open or you want to be selfish and not wear a face covering when you are out in the public.

The corrupt Dennis Bonnen may think he can push Texans around, but perhaps he's had his own mask on too tight and is suffering from hypoxia. 

Down here in Brazoria county a strong independent spirit runs through the vibrant and active homeschool movement. In fact Texas homeschoolers and particularly Brazoria County homeschoolers have been the backbone of Ron Paul country. 

Earlier this month, a group of homeschoolers mobilized and began challenging the ridiculous closures of playgrounds throughout Brazoria County through direct action.

It is the most outrageous abuse of power to deny children the ability to go outside in the sun, help virus-killing vitamin D to flow through their systems, and get the exercise that is most directly associated with a healthy immune system and resistance to coronavirus. 

Government restricting children from that which keeps them healthy is not "science" - it's criminal.

So this group, the "Park Patriots," took action. First they descended on a park in Lake Jackson, Ron Paul's hometown, and after the city workers called the police on them they gave the police a lesson in the law and law enforcement. They ended up at city hall and successfully got the vice mayor to admit that there was no force of law behind the forced shutdown of parks. Officials pretended they had the authority to deny citizens the facilities they were forced to pay for, but in the end a "guideline" is quite different than a law.

The mothers returned to the park and let their kids loose on the playground. Victory indeed.

Today the "Park Patriots" struck again, trudging up to Angleton's "Freedom Park" to again let their homeschooled kids loose on the taped up playground - and to reclaim their freedom.

As they arrived they began dismantling the tape and the other impediments to children using the facilities:



The orange fencing keeping children from enjoying the park that their parents paid for ended up exactly where it belonged:



One of the children - in this case your author's own daughter - relished the idea of smashing through the ridiculous "caution" tape on the swings:



Once again it was city workers who called the police on the people who pay their salaries - notice a pattern here? - and soon enough some squad cars showed up. 



What followed was the greatest example of how citizens can reclaim their own liberty by simply standing up to authoritarians. By simply working up the courage to say, "we're not going to take this anymore." Here is a short video of the essence of the exchange between the homeschool mothers and fathers of Brazoria County when the police tried to strong-arm them to leave the park:



Ironic how the officer with "We The People" tattooed across his arm showed up with such contempt for the actual people. One of the homeschool fathers hit the perfect note when he reminded the officer that it was in fact the park itself that belonged to the same "We The People" he was wearing on his arm.

Also of interest is that when the officer's falsely asserted authority to remove the children from the park was obliterated by the excellent rhetoric of the parents, how only response was the bizarre "y'all anti-vaxxers?" Bad move, officer!

Finally, the officer, totally defeated by the arguments of the parents, turned heel and walked away, leaving his colleague dumbfounded and alone. She also turned around and walked away. 

One group of parents broke off to go to the city hall to directly challenge authorities and the other group remained at the park. 

Eventually the officer returned to the homeschoolers remaining at the park. He tried to act friendly at this point. "The chief of police has decided that you can remain at the park."

Victory:



And thanks to these brave and dedicated homeschoolers, "Freedom Park" is free again:



We can all make a difference. We can all fight for our freedom, one small battle at a time. We can all help defeat the tyrants.

And finally: Don't mess with Texas...homeschoolers!

from Smackdown! Homeschool 'Park Patriots' Vs. Brazoria County Park Closures

Mandatory Masks, Contact Tracing, Social Distancing - Tyrants Desperately Clinging To Power

With a new CDC report confirming that the Covid-19 death rate is far, far lower than originally estimated, and Covid deaths plummeting across the country, desperate governors are ignoring facts and imposing even more authoritarian measures to oppress the population. With rebellion breaking out everywhere, at what point are we going to see a clash between a population no longer believing the coronavirus myths (that it is ten times more deadly than the flu, for example) and a political class drunk on power? Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Mandatory Masks, Contact Tracing, Social Distancing - Tyrants Desperately Clinging To Power

Virginia’s Statewide Mask Mandate

Starting Friday, people ten years old and older who are indoors just about anywhere in Virginia other than in private homes will be required by a new executive order of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to “cover their mouth and nose with a face covering, as described and recommended by” the United Sates government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further, the mandate even requires wearing such a mask when outside at a long list of places “if a distance of six feet from every other person cannot be maintained.”

Oh brother. Indeed, oh Big Brother.

Like many other draconian mandates imposed by the Virginia governor and other politicians across America, the new mask mandate is purportedly purposed to counter coronavirus. That, of course, is a stretch given that there is no clear evidence masks protect people from coronavirus and that the mandate is being imposed when even the CDC is admitting the coronavirus threat is much, much less than many coronavirus crackdown proponents have been claiming over the last few months.

Northam lists in his executive order a few exceptions. For example, people can remove their masks while eating and drinking and while exercising.

People opposed to being required to wear a mask should take particular notice of this exception listed in the executive order:

Nothing in this Order shall require the use of a face covering by any person for whom doing so would be contrary to his or her health or safety because of a medical condition.

In regard to this exception, the executive order further states:

Any person who declines to wear a face covering because of a medical condition shall not be required to produce or carry medical documentation verifying the stated condition nor shall the person be required to identify the precise underlying medical condition.

I don’t know about you, but following draconian government mandates makes me sick.

Unfortunately, many businesses and their managers can be expected to enforce this new mandate vigorously, choosing to kick out people who refuse to wear a mask and even to disregard the executive order’s listed exceptions. Some of these businesses or their managers will do so because they fear government enforcement actions that may come if there are reports of unmasked individuals at the businesses. Others will enthusiastically join in a zealous effort, often also supported by a substantial number of their customers, to stomp out any departure from the new dress code of subservience.

from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/may/27/virginia-s-statewide-mask-mandate/

Covid: Killing Fields of the Old and Sick?

Note: This was first published as a letter to RPI Subscribers. Subscribe for free here.

The numbers are sickening and impossible to ignore. Throughout the United States the Coronavirus "pandemic" looks more and more like a war on the elderly and sick than a mysterious new virus that was so dangerous and unknown that the entire country (with notable exceptions - South Dakota for example) had to be completely locked down tighter than Guantanamo Bay.

Nationwide, 42 percent of the Covid-19 death toll was comprised of Americans who were confined to live-in care facilities. While at first it was easy to simply gasp at a disease so cruel that it seemed to target older people, now that the smoke has cleared it is becoming painfully - and criminally - obvious that the virus had some very powerful human enablers. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has shamelessly used the coronavirus crisis to puff up his national political profile, ordered the elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their nursing homes where they could spread the virus like so many Typhoid Marys. Amid calls for a Federal probe into Cuomo's callous and deadly decision to rip elderly patients from their hospital beds and send them back to cramped senior facilities, Cuomo demurs, blaming...you guessed it: Trump!

In Pennsylvania a particularly cruel (and unelected) creature, Rachel Levine, in charge of the state's Covid policy oversaw a virus outbreak that claimed the elderly in care facilities as 70 percent of the entire state's death toll. Astonishing! A real genocide of the old. Of course before she ordered those elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their care facilities to infect and kill others she moved her own mother out of the facilities and into a hotel.

Under the Mussolini of Michigan, the Covid-ravaged elderly were also returned to their care facilities where they could infect and kill their housemates. Governor Gretchen Whitmer seemed to actually gain pleasure from destroying untold lives with her strict lockdown orders, stooping so low as to strip a 77 year old barber of his license for daring to open his shop against her will as he faced starvation. She loved pushing around working people, who were nearly immune to the virus. But when it came to actually protecting the vulnerable layers of society, she was AWOL. 

These shameful policies were followed in many states and while at first when little was known about the outbreak, there might be some room for acceptable error. But as it became clear the demographics of who were most vulnerable, it has become indefensible to focus all resources on shutting down restaurants, bars, churches, mom and pop shops, schools while ignoring that the virus preyed almost exclusively on the old and sick. Yes, shut down elementary schools where virtually no one fell victim, but throw open the doors to the old folks home where the virus raged like a tsunami. Brilliant move.

Coincidence? We should not discount the possibility that sheer government incompetence is responsible for this massive failure and resulting senior killing fields. Maybe there is more to it. The sanctity of life in the United States has been degraded for years, including via a foreign policy that considers half a million dead Iraqi children "worth it" to undermine Saddam Hussein's rule. A foreign policy that doesn't blink when an estimated 40,000 Venezuelan civilians die from US sanctions. A foreign policy that has spent the past nine years arming literal Islamist terrorists to overthrow the secular rule of Syria's Assad with hundreds of thousands dead in the process and nary a notice in the US mainstream media.

When one embraces the idea that it's OK to kill millions overseas to maintain a US global empire that only enriches the Beltway military-industrial-Congressional-media-think tank complex, it is not a far leap to embrace the idea that seniors are expendable. When some lives are not considered worth saving - from pre-cradle to grave - it is a slippery slope to view others also not worth saving.

from Covid: Killing Fields of the Old and Sick?

Focus on the Covid-19 Death Rate

In the saga of the virus and the lockdown, the wisdom of the crowds, that is the wisdom of each of us, was thwarted by bad data, perhaps intentionally bad. On the other hand, the ersatz wisdom of the collective bureaucracy in federal, state and local health agencies was based on crafted data. In the end data didn’t matter, as the bureaucracies were more concerned with their natural territorial imperative, which is to rule and control.

The most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death. That fear, once magnified to proportions which become palpable to the individual, became the basis for dreadful economic and medical policies from governments and crushed the natural optimism of the public.

In early days, we were caught in a squeeze of conflicting information. Was COVID-19 a bioweapon gone rogue and destined to indiscriminately wipe out young and old? Or, was it another bad flu or perhaps an extremely bad flu? After all, initial information showed the victims were concentrated in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington. 

No cases were reported amongst the homeless on West Coast streets. No deaths among children were reported. And in the closed world of cruise liners and later a military ship, there were lots of early cases and some deaths. As time passed, there was little more bad news. We should have been suspicious of the data.

We were mainly focused on the case fatality rate (CFR: deaths as a percent of diagnosed cases) which were frighteningly high. We worried about the infection fatality rate (IFR), but there was too little data and testing available to have any idea how many people were or ultimately would be infected. 

But those concepts – CFR and IFR – are not the most important strategic measures of the severity of the disease. It is the death rate, properly defined and understood, that should matter for long-term policy makers, our erstwhile more level-headed thinkers, in determining policy.

In the past few weeks, we have obtained more useful data in the US. There were secrets lurking in the data, waiting to be uncovered, that could help ascertain what was really happening. The purpose of this report is to do just that – to ascertain what the data are telling us. It also gives us the basis for judging the appropriateness of past and present policies

So, let’s begin with a simple question: what is the relevant death rate due to COVID-19? There are many definitions in the epidemiological world such as the CFR and IFR mentioned above. My focus is on the overall death rate – actual and projected. Until we have more widespread testing for COVID-19, we cannot know with any accuracy how many people were infected by the virus. We cannot know what proportion of the population has some sort of natural or acquired immunity. 

We do not even have accurate data on how many people have died from COVID-19 alone versus COVID-19 plus some other complications that were already present such as diabetes, morbid obesity and prior respiratory complications, any one of which might equally have been the proximate cause of death. There is ample evidence, especially in the Northeast region that there has been “over classification” (a euphemism for data bias). We do not have the demographic details for those infected and those who died. But we do have death data, and it is more accurate than the number of cases and the number of infections.

To understand how our minds have been misdirected in understanding the real risks associated with COVID-19, let’s begin with a brain teaser. It will awaken our numerate minds in preparation for understanding the data deception and misunderstandings that prevail.

When is 1.7% greater than 98.3%? 

In the bizarro world of COVID-19 reporting that is the case – 1.7% is greater than 98.3%. Specifically, deaths among a narrow 1.7% group of the population are greater than deaths from the other 98.3%. Numerically a death may be a death, but from a policy point of view, to be blunt about it, not all deaths are the same.

Fact #1: 1.7% of the population in the US resides in long-term medical care facilities (LTMCFs) and total 5.7 million. 

Fact #2: The residents of LTMCFs accounted for 38,800 or 53% of all COVID-19 deaths (based on recent data). The rest of the country, the 98.3%, have experienced approximately 34,600 deaths, or 47% of the nation’s total COVID-19 deaths. 

The Death Rate at LTMCFs Is Stunning

That means the death rate, deaths expressed as a percent of those living in medical care institutions, is 0.682%, more than 50 times the death rate of the rest of the population at 0.012%. The death rate for the overall populations is 0.022%. 

That should leave you speechless.

We have a COVID-19 problem, but we have an even greater and more serious LTMCF problem that is clouding our understanding of the contagion and therefore what our best public health policies should be. Shutting down the economy, the world wherein the 98.3% live and prosper was too draconian. The feared overloading of the hospital system with emergency patients, which was short-lived, was disproportionately coming from the residents of LTMCFs, not the general public.

The data have been there all along, but they were not properly collected, catalogued and analyzed.

Much of the data in this report came from a landmark study by Gregg Girvan and Avik Roy of the Foundation for Research of Equal Opportunity. Their work was based on data collected through May 10th, 2020 for most states. Since their publication, revisions have been incorporated as states have corrected or updated their data since the original report. The calculations given above are imputations from the updated data. 

At this point, we do not know what the ultimate count of deaths and the death rate will be, but what we have in hand are statistics that are very indicative and telling of the gross misunderstanding that the public and federal, state and local decision-makers have been working with on which to base their decisions.

Long-term medical care providers to the aged and medically infirm (per the Girvan-Roy study) consist of: Nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities; Assisted living facilities, i.e., residential care communities or personal care homes; Adult day service centers; Home health Agencies; and Hospices. 

The first two medical care providers for seniors are referred to as long-term medical care facilities (LTMCF) and are the source of the data. Data for the other three elder care facilities are not collected or were not available for the Girvan-Roy study. In fact, it has been acknowledged that there continues to be underreporting of deaths related to LTMCFs. Some providers are just not reporting. In other cases, the residents die in hospitals and they are not categorized as LTMCF deaths. Nonetheless, the data are sufficient to draw some useful if not stark observations. 

What about the Flu and Pneumonia Death Rates in Earlier Years?

To even better understand these death rate figures, it is useful to put them into the context of what we know about death rates from the flu before the arrival of COVID-19. Is the COVID-19 death rate worse, better or about the same as prior flu seasons? We should expect the rates to be worse because there is no vaccine whereas most people get a vaccine shot for the routine flus that are expected each year.

In 2017 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that annual deaths from all causes were 2.8 million or 0.866% of the population. The leading causes of death, in order of magnitude, were heart disease, cancer, accidents, respiratory disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, flu & pneumonia and suicide. 

Just looking at the Flu & Pneumonia (FP) cause, in 2017 it accounted for 55,672 deaths or 0.017% for the population as a whole. Death from FP, as you would expect, fell hardest on people over 75 totaling 38,078 deaths. That translates into a FP death rate of 0.180% for those over-75 group, which is a little more than 10 times the death rate for the overall population. For the rest of the population under 75 the death rate was only 0.006%, or or 1/30th of those over 75 (0.006% vs 0.180%). 



What this means at this point is that in the aggregate the overall COVID-19 death rate is slightly worse than the flu death rate in a prior year (0.022% vs 0.017%). However, for seniors in LTMCFs, the COVID-19 death rate is 100 times greater than the flu and pneumonia DR was for those under 75 in 2017 (0.682% vs 0.006%) and nearly 4 times greater than those over 75.

In summary the COVID-19 death rate is far more skewed to those older than 75 and those residents in medical care facilities for the aged.


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What Does the Future Hold?

Looking ahead we obtained the most recent forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. They are considered by many medical professionals as the most thorough modelers. On May 18, 2020 the IHME released the results of the third run of its new model. They predict that by August 4, 2020 a total of 143,357 Americans will die of COVID-19. That forecast nearly doubles the number of COVID-19 deaths. It is worth noting that each run of the model has produced lower forecasts for future deaths. There are detractors of their modeling procedures, but it is the best we have at the moment.

One interesting medical research report suggests that a significant portion of the population has natural immunity to COVID-19. In the May 14 edition of Cell, published by Elsevier, the researchers found:

T cell responses were detected in 40-60% of unexposed individuals. This may be reflective of some degree of cross-reactive, preexisting immunity to SARSCoV-2 in some, but not all, individuals… suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2. 

This might be why there are so many reports of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19. That also may mean the IHME forecast will be revised down even more.

However, COVID-19 has brutal consequences for people over 75. That detail cannot be minimized. But what policies would that suggest?

Did We Adopt the Right Policies?

What do these data suggest about the medical and economic policies that have been adopted by the federal, states and local governments?

The carnage of COVID-19 is concentrated in elder care facilities not in the population at large. The policies and procedures, including lockdowns and state-of-the-art personal protection practices for those facilities, should have been more thoroughly thought out based on useful data. 

Keep in mind, about 70% of the elder care facilities are for-profit. Yet they are not free-market enterprises; enterprises free to do what they think is best. These for-profit facilities are licensed and regulated by the several Departments of Health of the states. They do what the state tells them to do. 

The governors and mayors, and their medical and science advisers, made the decision to pack them in, force them to house and retain infected and returning infected patients. They chose to divert PPE supplies to hospitals, not the elder care facilities. This characterization is based on reports in the press. One certainly hopes there were some communities that did a better job. There is reason to believe that is the case because some assisted living facilities have reported no deaths.

As COVID-19 deaths mounted, not a word was officially spoken about where they were occurring. Fear was stoked that it was a population-wide epidemic. We should ALL lock down. 

What a costly mistake, a mistake that continues to this day. Governors and mayors with fresh data insights into the truth still want to be central planners and determine which businesses can re-open and to what degree, who should still shelter or socially distance. They send out teams to draw circles in the grass defining where groups can camp out and place police monitors in all the parks to warn people to stay within the circles. At this point they are just imaginary prisons, but they are prisons.

Madness, sheer madness. 

Though that is an easy and superficial observation to make, what is really unsaid, and not easy to admit, is that large numbers of politicians and bureaucrats have revealed their true nature. Speeches decorated with declarations of “better safe than sorry” and “planning is better than no planning” reveal they are authoritarians by nature; central planners of the worst kind. 

In conclusion, the relevant death rate for policy purposes has been obscured. The consequence has been inappropriate policies. They have resulted in a bizarro world of highly restricted commercial functioning and immense economic destruction, alongside no evidence that lives were saved and growing evidence of second-tier loss of life resulting from lockdown.  

Reprinted with permission from the American Institute for Economic Research.

from Focus on the Covid-19 Death Rate