“No, that’s a dead end. That would be a bad thing. Don’t do that.”

COVID-19: Four-fifths of cases are asymptomatic, China figures indicate:

“A total of 130 of 166 new infections (78%) identified in the 24 hours to the afternoon of Wednesday 1 April were asymptomatic, said China’s National Health Commission. And most of the 36 cases in which patients showed symptoms involved arrivals from overseas, down from 48 the previous day, the commission said.”

H/t People for Informed Consent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=CtNH3OBBmL4&feature=emb_title

The astoundingly principled Kristi Noem:

“The calls to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to this problem in South Dakota is herd mentality, not leadership”

“My responsibility is to respect the rights of the people who elected me, and to manage our state operations in a way that reflects the realities of what we have here on the ground here. On the foundation of my principles, commonsense conservative values, and the principles we hold dear in America, the facts, the science, and the data will guide our decision-making here in South Dakota.”

The Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams has penned an entertaining essay about his experience at the local grocery store in the midst of the pandemic. Specifically, it’s his observation of how every employee has transformed into a low-level authoritarian functionary eager to bark orders, deliver threats, and mete out punishment. Read it here.

I’ve also noticed this phenomenon at the store I frequent. Getting compulsively eyeballed by every mask-and-glove wearing, aerosol spraying employee in order to ensure I obey the 6-feet rule while I shop isn’t pleasant. I have a theory of why authoritarianism has been the rule, rather than the exception throughout history, and why it has sprung up with enthusiastic support by the entire population: people love the sense of purpose that authority gives them. They feel important, like they matter in some deep, cosmic sense. People also love to obey authoritarian diktats, and love to shame and snitch on others who don’t do as they do. If you think about it, it’s amazing that even a modicum of liberty has ever existed at all.

Hartford Courant

Candace Owens brought this issue to national attention. Her Twitter feed has been invaluable for updates.

We should be very afraid of our rulers’ desire to keep the coronavirus panic inflamed. They see that people are realizing that COVID-19 is only a danger to the elderly and immunocompromised, and that the vast majority could safely return to their normal lives, so they are desperate for evidence of fatalities in children and healthy young adults. They can’t find any, so they lie.

Here’s another instance of a state government lying about the death of a child being linked to COVID-19.

From Business Insider.

Those immune will get their passport and leave lock-down early, but where does this type of policy end? What other infectious diseases will be added to our “passport” in the future and required before we can leave home?

The hysteria must end before tragedies like this become more frequent.

How many nurses have children? Is their custody also threatened? If so, doesn’t this seem like an enormous incentive to not assist coronavirus victims? COVID-19 is virtually harmless in children, and would more than likely render them immune to future infections for the rest of their lives.

Fear is coursing through society’s veins like a poison, racing straight for the heart. By indulging this fear, a fear completely umoored to any sense of reality, we are going to lose so much.

Norman, OK, police are now beginning to issue citations to businesses who are deemed “non-essential” yet refuse to shutter their store. A grave injustice is being committed against the majority of small businesses by forcing them to close, throwing many out of work and into desperation. The livelihoods of these “non-essential” workers should have been valued more highly when making a decision on the appropriate response to COVID-19, but it appears that at every level of government, it wasn’t even taken much into account. “Flatten the curve at all costs!” is turning out to have a tragically high price, one that our governing class is forcing the lower and middle classes to pay. And all in service to a fantastically unrealistic fear of an illness with a mortality rate almost identical to the seasonal flu. Why not quarantine the elderly and immunocompromised and allow the younger, healthier, employed citizens return to work? We might’ve avoided a total collapse of economic life, and the coming wave of “deaths of despair” that will hit by the tens of thousands.

Of course, Walmart and other big box chain stores are open for business,where we are all still free to congregate en masse, even if we can’t go to church. This begs the question: won’t these stores become hot zones for COVID-19, and won’t we all just contract it from the stores that remain open?

No government should have the power to deem anyone “non-essential”. It has been made clear that this power’s only function is to destroy lives.

We must also look more closely at the unchecked power of local governments. Mayors throughout the country have transformed overnight into tinpot authoritarians, reveling in their new-found power to bully non-compliant residents.

One of the most-studied topics in economics is the effect of unemployment on mortality. A wonderful op-ed at Children’s Health Defense, penned by economist Toby Rogers explains this connection, and the research behind it.

“A more recent meta analysis of 42 studies conducted in 15 countries on the relationship between unemployment and all-cause mortality found that unemployment increased the risk of dying by 63%“

If a 20-30% unemployment rate is sustained over a period of several years, will the over 1 million “deaths of despair” have been worth slowing the spread of a mostly benign infection by a few months? Will the destruction of the economy have been worth it? Those deaths will be swept under the rug, never counted, never acknowledged.