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We are surrounded by the fallout from two years of disastrous policy:
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Real disposable income is down 20% year over year.
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Government has created a new Ministry of Truth.
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The more we know about the vaccines, the less mandates make sense.
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The CDC is still not being honest about natural immunity.
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The administrative state is demanding the power and authority to do anything it wants.
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A mental health crisis has swept young populations.
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The educational losses are without precedent.
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Confidence in public health has completely fractured.
And that’s just the start of it. It will take years to sort it all out and more still fully to assign responsibility. The good news is that the backlash is also here, as more people wake up to how brutally we’ve been treated.
Some of this is covered in the latest content from Brownstone Institute, which is always deeply grateful for your support. The coming months will be crucial as we delve more deeply into unravelling the great mystery of how and why this all happened.
Real Personal Income Down 20% from One Year Ago BY DAVID STOCKMAN. Neither the American economy nor economists’ models are built to handle fluctuations of such gigantic magnitudes. Accordingly, the American economy is now flying blind into a direction which includes soaring inflation and an abrupt reversal of the massive monetary and fiscal stimulus that drastically distorted economic activity during the past two years.
Back to the Sedition Act of 1798 BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. No authority can substitute for the activity, creativity, and adaptability of the human mind. We need systems that celebrate that, and not attempt surreptitious methods for imposing Orwellian-style thought control. Ideas are more powerful than armies, and the urge to censor is an implicit recognition of that. Still, it didn’t work in 1798 and it surely cannot work in 2020.
Fauci Sets New Records for Obfuscation BY DEBBIE LERMAN. It’s exhausting and demoralizing to see glimmers of hope, like Fauci’s initial announcement, get muddied, misinterpreted and turned upside down, through more obfuscation and spin, like so much of the news and public health messaging since the pandemic began.
The Battle for Control of Your Mind BY AARON KHERIATY. These new digital surveillance and control mechanisms will be no less oppressive for being virtual rather than physical. Contact tracing apps, for example, have proliferated with at least 120 different apps in used in 71 different states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. There is currently no evidence that contact tracing apps or other methods of digital surveillance have helped to slow the spread of covid; but as with so many of our pandemic policies, this does not seem to have deterred their use.
Two Weeks to Flatten the GDP BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Governments in the US crushed market functioning in the name of virus control, and all the rest fell into place after: the spending, the debt, the monetary floods, the panicked purging of the labor force of the noncompliant, the wrecking of trade networks, driving people out of work, ruining businesses, low growth, and all the rest.
Fear and Loathing of the Unvaccinated Gets Another Boost BY BHASKARAN RAMAN. The much publicized CMAJ simulation study is based on assumptions which are known to be flawed. The conclusions may be true in an alternate world where immunity from natural exposure is poor, and Covid-19 vaccines have high efficacy which does not wane; but they certainly do not hold in the real world.
The Fragmented Trust in Public Health BY VINAY PRASAD. Trust in public health is gone not despite the actions of public health, but because of them. When a star dies, it may shower pieces across the galaxy, and if public health implodes, Americans will seek out snake-oil salesman and charlatans, and we will have only ourselves to blame.
The UK Covid Response: A Stool with Three Legs BY CARL HENEGHAN, TOM JEFFERSON. Misuse of PCR underpinned the whole narrative. Its very high sensitivity and robotic acceptance as a gold standard created the illusion of many more cases (i.e. active infections) than were really present and prompted long quarantines, disrupting society and lives.
Recovery Is Possible: The Case of Post-War Germany BY JOHN TAMNY. The main thing is Germany once again recovered. This rates thought and repeated thought as a reminder of the stupidity of bailouts and intervention in countries like the U.S. As readers will learn from Aftermath, nothing is forever.
John Stuart Mill on Contagious Diseases and the Law BY PHILIPP BAGUS. Based on Mill’s arguments, the classical liberal tradition toward contagious diseases refuses the right of authorities to oblige individuals to be tested on suspicion. It also opposes the confinement of individuals exercising their individual rights.
The Next Ten Battles BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Finally we come to the biggest problem of all. What kind of society do we want to live in and build? Is it based on the presumption that freedom belongs to all and is the best path for progress and good lives? Or do we want the rights of the people always to defer to the mandarins in the walled-off bureaucracies who give orders and expect only compliance and no challenge to their rule?
Elon Musk Conquers Twitter BY MICHAEL TRACEY. All the media/activists who are so infuriated by this can’t seem to specify how exactly they foresee their Twitter user experience being changed under Musk’s ownership. Presumably, they’ll still be able to follow or not follow whomever they choose, block and mute at will, etc. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem should be obvious, and almost doesn’t even need articulating: they will no longer be able to coerce Twitter’s management to accede to their demands.
Silent No More: Voices Against Restrictions and Mandates BY SARABETH MATILSKY. There were MANY of my colleagues who took this vaccine and they did not want to take this vaccine. They took it to keep their employment, to put food on the table, and I would never judge anyone for doing that, but it was horrible, the way they were being pushed into it.
The Attorney Who Won the Mask Mandate Case in Florida: An Interview BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE. Brant Hadaway, the attorney who represented the Health Freedom Defense Fund in the federal district court case against the transportation mask mandate, is here interviewed by Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone Institute. He discusses the sketchy legal basis of the federal mandate and his arguments to the judge who ruled against the administrative state.
