Brownstone Institute
Enough With These Dangerous Calculations
From the Brownstone Institute
Now that there is more open talk about vaccine injury, we are continually assured that overall these vaccines were worth it even so. The thought always occurs: it has not been worth it for the injured. Nor is their injury lessened by the knowledge that others were helped, if they were.
What precise metric are we going to use to determine costs and benefits population-wide? Many millions were forced to take experimental injections that they did not want nor need. Many were injured and with no chance of compensation. This is gravely unjust. You don’t need to take recourse to fancy philosophical conjectures (The Trolley Problem, The Lifeboat Dilemma, The Fat Man on the Bridge, etc.) to do the utilitarian calculation.
And yet, such calculations are precisely what the defenders of society-wide pandemic interventions are citing as evidence that we can and should do it again. The costs are high, they now admit, but worth the benefit.
Well, maybe not. It’s hard to say but they will keep working on it. They will decide in due course.
This is the argument of Professor John M. Barry. His book on the 1918 flu pandemic kicked off the entire pandemic-planning industry once George W. Bush read the book flap in 2005. Barry’s new article in the New York Times raises alarms about the Avian Bird Flu, the same as the whole pandemic industry is doing right now, and makes the argument that the interventions last time were just great overall.
“Australia, Germany and Switzerland are among the countries that demonstrated those interventions can succeed,” he claims even though all three countries have been torn apart by the pandemic response that is still rocking politics and showing itself in economic decline “Even the experience of the United States provides overwhelming, if indirect, evidence of the success of those public health measures.”
What is that indirect evidence? This you won’t believe: that flu deaths dramatically fell. “The public health steps taken to slow Covid contributed significantly to this decline, and those same measures no doubt affected Covid as well.”
That’s a heck of a thing. If you burn down the house to kill the rats and fail, but happen to kill the pets, surely you have some bragging rights there.
There is indeed a big debate on why seasonal flu seems to have nearly disappeared during the pandemic. One theory is simple misclassification, that flu was just as present as always but labeled Covid because PCR tests pick up even slight elements of the pathogen and financial incentives drove one to displace the other. There is surely an element of this.
Another theory relates to crowding out: the more serious virus pushes aside the less serious one, which is an empirically testable hypothesis.
A third explanation might in fact be related to interventions. With vast numbers staying home and the banning of gatherings, there was indeed less opportunity for pathogenic spread. Even if granting that is true, the effect is far from perfect, as we know from the failure of every attempt to achieve zero Covid. Antarctica is a good example of that.
That said, and even postulating this might be correct, there is nothing to prevent the spread among the population after opening except with even worse results because immune systems are degraded for lack of exposure.
Barry concedes the point but says “such interventions can achieve two important goals.” The first is “preventing hospitals from being overrun. Achieving this outcome could require a cycle of imposing, lifting and reimposing public health measures to slow the spread of the virus. But the public should accept that because the goal is understandable, narrow and well defined.”
Fine, but there is a major glaring error. Most hospitals in the US were not overrun. There is even a genuine question about whether and to what extent New York City hospitals were overrun but, even if they were, this had nothing to do with hospitals in most of the country. And yet the grand central plan closed them all for diagnostics and elective surgeries. In major parts of the country, parking lots were completely empty and nurses were furloughed in more than 300 hospitals.
Overall, that scheme (and who imposed this?) didn’t work too well.
The second supposed benefit you can predict: shutting down buys time “for identifying, manufacturing and distributing therapeutics and vaccines and for clinicians to learn how to manage care with the resources at hand.” This is another strange statement because authorities actually removed therapeutics from the shelves all over the country even though physicians were prescribing them.
As for the supposed vaccine, it did not stop infection or transmission.
So that scheme didn’t work either. There is also something truly cruel about using compulsory methods to preserve the population’s immunological naïveté in anticipation of a vaccine that may or may not work and may or may not cause more harm than good. And yet that is precisely the plan.
The most alarming part of Barry’s article, even aside from his incorrect claim that masks work, is this statement: “So the question isn’t whether those measures work. They do. It’s whether their benefits outweigh their social and economic costs. This will be a continuing calculation.”
Again we are back to benefit vs costs. It’s one thing for a person confronting a true moral or personal difficulty to make that calculation and live with the consequences. Every philosophical problem listed above – Trolly Cars and Lifeboats – involves personal choices and single decision-makers. In the case of pandemic planning and response, we are talking about groups of intellectuals and bureaucrats making decisions for the whole of society. In the last go-round, they made these decisions for the entire world with catastrophic results.
Many hundreds of years ago and following, the Western mind decided that giving such power to elites was not a good idea. The “continuing calculation” about what costs and benefits are experienced by billions of people from compulsory impositions is not something we should risk, not even with AI (which Barry says will solve the problems next time). Instead, we generally decided that a presumption of freedom is a better idea than empowering a small elite of scientists with the power to make “continuing calculations” for our supposed benefit.
Among many problems with the scientistic scheme for elite rule in the realm of infectious disease is that the population as a whole has no way to evaluate schemes and claims made to them by the government itself. They told us terrible population-wide death would come from Covid but it turned out to be exactly what others said back in February 2020; a disease impactful mainly on the aged and infirm.
Similarly, with the bird flu, we’ve been through a quarter century of claims that half of humanity could die from it. So far, every jump from animals to humans has resulted in reparable maladies like conjunctivitis.
But let’s say the bird flu really does get bad. Should the scientists who ruled us last time be trusted to do it again? That’s Barry’s plea: he demands “trust in government.” At the same time, he wants government to have the power to censor dissent. He falsely claims that last time, “there was no organized effort to counter social media disinformation” despite vast evidence of exactly this.
More information is actually what we need, especially from dissidents. For example, Barry celebrates that dexamethasone worked against Covid. But he fails to point out that the “experts” said in February 2020 that dexamethasone should not be used. Indeed, if you followed the Lancet, you would not have used them at all. In other words, Barry’s article refutes itself simply by showing the experts were desperately wrong in this case.
And, honestly, he knows this. Every bit of it. I have no doubt that if we met for cocktails, he would agree with most of this article. But he would also quickly point out that, after all, the New York Times commissioned the article so he can only say so much. He is merely being strategic, don’t you know?
This is the problem we face today with nearly all ruling-class intellectuals. We don’t actually disagree that much on the facts. We disagree on how much of the facts we are in a position to admit. And this puts Brownstone in a very awkward position of being a venue to say publicly what most people in the know say only privately. We do it because we believe in doing so.
All of which underscores the more general point: government and its connected scientists simply cannot be trusted with this kind of power. The last experience illustrates why. We forged our societies to have laws and guaranteed liberties that can never be taken away, not even during a pandemic. It is never worth using the power of the state to ruin lives to fulfill anyone’s abstract vision of what constitutes the greater good.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
By 
Anthony Fauci must be furious.
He spent years proudly being the public face of the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He did, however, flip-flop on almost every major issue, seamlessly managing to shift his guidance based on current political whims and an enormous desire to coerce behavior.
Nowhere was this more obvious than his dictates on masks. If you recall, in February 2020, Fauci infamously stated on 60 Minutes that masks didn’t work. That they didn’t provide the protection people thought they did, there were gaps in the fit, and wearing masks could actually make things worse by encouraging wearers to touch their face.
Just a few months later, he did a 180, then backtracked by making up a post-hoc justification for his initial remarks. Laughably, Fauci said that he recommended against masks to protect supply for healthcare workers, as if hospitals would ever buy cloth masks on Amazon like the general public.
Later in interviews, he guaranteed that cities or states that listened to his advice would fare better than those that didn’t. Masks would limit Covid transmission so effectively, he believed, that it would be immediately obvious which states had mandates and which didn’t. It was obvious, but not in the way he expected.
And now, finally, after years of being proven wrong, the White House has officially and thoroughly rebuked Fauci in every conceivable way.
White House Covid Page Points Out Fauci’s Duplicitous Guidance
A new White House official page points out, in detail, exactly where Fauci and the public health expert class went wrong on Covid.
It starts by laying out the case for the lab-leak origin of the coronavirus, with explanations of how Fauci and his partners misled the public by obscuring information and evidence. How they used the “FOIA lady” to hide emails, used private communications to avoid scrutiny, and downplayed the conduct of EcoHealth Alliance because they helped fund it.
They roast the World Health Organization for caving to China and attempting to broaden its powers in the aftermath of “abject failure.”
“The WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties. Further, the WHO’s newest effort to solve the problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — via a “Pandemic Treaty” — may harm the United States,” the site reads.
Social distancing is criticized, correctly pointing out that Fauci testified that there was no scientific data or evidence to support their specific recommendations.
“The ‘6 feet apart’ social distancing recommendation — which shut down schools and small business across the country — was arbitrary and not based on science. During closed door testimony, Dr. Fauci testified that the guidance ‘sort of just appeared.’”
There’s another section demolishing the extended lockdowns that came into effect in blue states like California, Illinois, and New York. Even the initial lockdown, the “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” was a poorly reasoned policy that had no chance of working; extended closures were immensely harmful with no demonstrable benefit.
“Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy, but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens. Rather than prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable populations, federal and state government policies forced millions of Americans to forgo crucial elements of a healthy and financially sound life,” it says.
Then there’s the good stuff: mask mandates. While there’s plenty more detail that could be added, it’s immensely rewarding to see, finally, the truth on an official White House website. Masks don’t work. There’s no evidence supporting mandates, and public health, especially Fauci, flip-flopped without supporting data.
“There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19. Public health officials flipped-flopped on the efficacy of masks without providing Americans scientific data — causing a massive uptick in public distrust.”
This is inarguably true. There were no new studies or data justifying the flip-flop, just wishful thinking and guessing based on results in Asia. It was an inexcusable, world-changing policy that had no basis in evidence, but was treated as equivalent to gospel truth by a willing media and left-wing politicians.
Over time, the CDC and Fauci relied on ridiculous “studies” that were quickly debunked, anecdotes, and ever-shifting goal posts. Wear one cloth mask turned to wear a surgical mask. That turned into “wear two masks,” then wear an N95, then wear two N95s.
All the while ignoring that jurisdictions that tried “high-quality” mask mandates also failed in spectacular fashion.
And that the only high-quality evidence review on masking confirmed no masks worked, even N95s, to prevent Covid transmission, as well as hearing that the CDC knew masks didn’t work anyway.
The website ends with a complete and thorough rebuke of the public health establishment and the Biden administration’s disastrous efforts to censor those who disagreed.
“Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab-leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions.
When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to ‘outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent.’”
About time these truths are acknowledged in a public, authoritative manner. Masks don’t work. Lockdowns don’t work. Fauci lied and helped cover up damning evidence.
If only this website had been available years ago.
Though, of course, knowing the media’s political beliefs, they’d have ignored it then, too.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Author
Brownstone Institute
RCMP seem more interested in House of Commons Pages than MP’s suspected of colluding with China
From the Brownstone Institute
Canadians shouldn’t have information about their wayward MPs, but the RCMP can’t have too much biometric information about regular people. It’s always a good time for a little fishing. Let’s run those prints, shall we?
Forget the members of Parliament who may have colluded with foreign governments. The real menace, the RCMP seem to think, are House of Commons pages. MPs suspected of foreign election interference should not be identified, the Mounties have insisted, but House of Commons staff must be fingerprinted. Serious threats to the country are hidden away, while innocent people are subjected to state surveillance. If you want to see how the managerial state (dys)functions, Canada is the place to be.
In June, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) tabled its redacted report that suggested at least 11 sitting MPs may have benefitted from foreign election interference. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme cautioned against releasing their identities. Canadians remained in the dark until Oct. 28 when Kevin Vuong, a former Liberal MP now sitting as an Independent, hosted a news conference to suggest who some of the parliamentarians may be. Like the RCMP, most of the country’s media didn’t seem interested.
But the RCMP are very interested in certain other things. For years, they have pushed for the federal civil service to be fingerprinted. Not just high security clearance for top-secret stuff, but across government departments. The Treasury Board adopted the standard in 2014 and the House of Commons currently requires fingerprinting for staff hired since 2017. The Senate implemented fingerprinting this year. The RCMP have claimed that the old policy of doing criminal background checks by name is obsolete and too expensive.
But stated rationales are rarely the real ones. Name-based background checks are not obsolete or expensive. Numerous police departments continue to use them. They do so, in part, because name checks do not compromise biometric privacy. Fingerprints are a form of biometric data, as unique as your DNA. Under the federal Identification of Criminals Act, you must be in custody and charged with a serious offence before law enforcement can take your prints. Canadians shouldn’t have information about their wayward MPs, but the RCMP can’t have too much biometric information about regular people. It’s always a good time for a little fishing. Let’s run those prints, shall we?
It’s designed to seem like a small deal. If House of Commons staff must give their fingerprints, that’s just a requirement of the job. Managerial bureaucracies prefer not to coerce directly but to create requirements that are “choices.” Fingerprints aren’t mandatory. You can choose to provide them or choose not to work on the Hill.
Sound familiar? That’s the way Covid vaccine mandates worked too. Vaccines were never mandatory. There were no fines or prison terms. But the alternative was to lose your job, social life, or ability to visit a dying parent. When the state controls everything, it doesn’t always need to dictate. Instead, it provides unpalatable choices and raises the stakes so that people choose correctly.
Government intrudes incrementally. Digital ID, for instance, will be offered as a convenient choice. You can, if you wish, carry your papers in the form of a QR code on your phone. Voluntary, of course. But later there will be extra hoops to jump through to apply for a driver’s licence or health card in the old form.
Eventually, analogue ID will cost more, because, after all, digital ID is more automated and cheaper to run. Some outlets will not recognize plastic identification. Eventually, the government will offer only digital ID. The old way will be discarded as antiquated and too expensive to maintain. The new regime will provide the capacity to keep tabs on people like never before. Privacy will be compromised without debate. The bureaucracy will change the landscape in the guise of practicality, convenience, and cost.
Each new round of procedures and requirements is only slightly more invasive than the last. But turn around and find you have travelled a long way from where you began. Eventually, people will need digital ID, fingerprints, DNA, vaccine records, and social credit scores to be employed. It’s not coercive, just required for the job.
Occasionally the curtain is pulled back. The federal government unleashed the Emergencies Act on the truckers and their supporters in February 2022. Jackboots in riot gear took down peaceful protesters for objecting to government policy. Authorities revealed their contempt for law-abiding but argumentative citizens. For an honest moment, the government was not incremental and insidious, but enraged and direct. When they come after you in the streets with batons, at least you can see what’s happening.
We still don’t know who colluded with China. But we can be confident that House of Commons staffers aren’t wanted for murder. The RCMP has fingerprints to prove it. Controlling the people and shielding the powerful are mandates of the modern managerial state.
Republished from the Epoch Times
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