Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
San Diego schools chief demonstrates once again that Democratic-controlled urban districts will be the first to add COVID restrictions—and subtract students. According to CDC metrics as of Tuesday morning, 35 percent of U.S. counties had “high” community levels, 40 percent had “medium,” and 25 percent “low.” That does not mean 35 percent of school districts … Read more
The CDC has announced the results of an alarming new study: everyone who has ever been infected with COVID-19 will die at some point in their life. “Yes, everyone who gets COVID will die,” said a spokesperson for the CDC. “Maybe not immediately, but at some point, in the future. Almost all of those people … Read more
Experts tell the Register that the tragedy of the death and suffering the health crisis has inflicted on U.S. seniors spotlights the need to implement new models that can better protect their health and dignity. . . . In “Old Age: Our Future,” a recent document on lessons to be learned from the pandemic and … Read more
The over-politicization of society erodes our trust in institutions and impoverishes many parts of our lives . . . America is rapidly becoming a low-trust society, with profoundly disturbing implications. Successful non-collectivist societies are predicated on a high level of trust, both among citizens and in public and private institutions. Low-trust societies have higher levels … Read more
What will Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s legacy — and that of the other political coronavirus lockdown artists — look like? Like this. The end of great independent restaurants and bars that you love, places that give Chicago its character, replaced by the hegemony of crappy corporate food. Consider the future: A Chili’s on one corner, with … Read more
On February 28, the idea of locking down and smashing economies and human rights the world over was unthinkable to most of us but lustily imagined by intellectuals hoping to conduct a new social/political experiment. On that day, New York Times reporter Donald McNeil released a shocking article: “To Take On the Coronavirus, Go Medieval … Read more
It’s more than fair to say that we are experiencing a pandemic, but not the one you hear about ad nauseum. No, the pandemic is not a virus, it is a pandemic outbreak of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy which focuses its obsessions on the virus. Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy is a mental illness in which … Read more
Six months into the pandemic with no end in sight, many of us have been feeling a sense of unease that goes beyond anxiety or distress. It’s a nameless feeling that somehow makes it hard to go on with even the nice things we regularly do. What’s blocking our everyday routines is not the anxiety … Read more
Wherever you come down with respect to the debates over re-opening, mask-wearing, and whatever else, all reasonable citizens ought to feel a bit distressed by our collective failure to effectively navigate COVID-19 by saving as many lives and livelihoods as possible. The reasons we have failed to do so are many, but one certainly stands … Read more
Jeffrey Friedman introduced me to the term naive realism, which is an important concept with a misleading name. I would explain naive realism as follows. A first-order naive realist believes that he knows enough to solve a problem if he were in charge. A second-order naive realist admits that he does not know the solution, … Read more
Note that one term, meant as a criticism, that George Will uses to describe this CDC action is “muscular.” So in this light consider that a Washington Post report today describes – apparently approvingly – the plan that President Biden will implement to fight covid as “far more muscular” than actions taken under the Trump … Read more
Were the lockdowns a mistake? To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes. Certainly, they were a novelty. As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, “We’ve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries.” As I noted in May, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 75,000 and 116,000 people in the … Read more
The Batflu has been discouragement enough, to those who may never reach maturity, but the spectacular success of the Nanny State effort to keep them socially atomized and in muzzles, portends innumerable (fake) “pandemics” to come. For what faceless time-server, “dressed in a little authority,” can resist an opportunity to treat the general population as … Read more
I have learned that loneliness has no boundaries. It stretches out its tentacles and wraps them around those who may have lost a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling, or even a dear friend. I have been widowed twice and know full well how loneliness can create a desolate place in the widowed equation. … Read more
In 1969, long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger made a prediction about the post–Vatican II Catholic Church. Instead of a growing and dynamic Church reaching all cultures, he envisioned a smaller and less influential Church: “She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. … Read more
Msgr. Charles Pope – My Journey Through COVID It was July 27, a fairly normal Monday at the parish. I was up early for the radio show followed by a private Mass. Strangely, my nerves were shot, and I had no appetite. By early afternoon I had a fever of 102.5 and felt … Read more
An intriguing new study by researchers in Europe suggests that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality rates are likely to be lower in countries where diets are rich in fermented vegetables. Earlier this year, Jean Bousquet (Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin) and colleagues investigated whether diet may contribute to the significant variation in COVID-19 death rates that have … Read more
No matter how smart or well-intentioned central planners are, they can’t possibly understand all the implications of the choices they’re making. When policymakers across the country decided to “lock down” in response to the March outbreak of the novel coronavirus, they took a leap into the unknown. Not only did we know little about COVID-19 … Read more
But who do you say I am?” It’s the central question of the Gospel for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. It’s the central question of the Gospel, period. If you look at the Gospel of Mark, it’s right there in Chapter 8, smack dab in the literal center of that Gospel. It’s the central … Read more
In the days leading up to her son Jacob’s bar mitzvah on March 14, Jennifer Friedman watched plans quickly unravel. As Michigan became a COVID-19 hot spot and social distancing restrictions tightened, out-of-town relatives began canceling, and the party was postponed. Finally, the day before the bar mitzvah, the family’s Conservative synagogue, Congregation Shaarey Zedek … Read more
Here’s a letter to a Café Hayek commenter: Ms. Fernandes: Regarding your comment on this blog-post of mine: You write as though covid kills all, or nearly everyone, who it infects. But it does not come remotely close to being so lethal. I don’t deny that covid is unusually harmful. What I do deny is … Read more
In the continual absence of metaphysics, life – shaped for many years by the pursuit of comfort – is now defined by the avoidance of death. Doctors and scientists insist we can ‘win the war against Covid’. Perhaps they are right. And yet, though measured precautions against any transmittable disease are desirable, it seems unwise … Read more
After twenty years of lockdown (or has it been more?) we feel less connected to the world and its institutions. The institutions are less connected with each other. Many have “atomized from within.” They continue to exist, but only nominally; reduced to some links on the Internet, perhaps. One thinks of the Catholic Church, for … Read more
We are living through perhaps the unhappiest period in half a century, one that offers good reasons to be gloomy. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and America’s political and social disharmony are obvious factors, but for many, unhappiness also stems from not having a “third place” to socialize. The term, coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, author … Read more
When is a law a law? The question seems simple enough, but things get complicated pretty quickly. We have our Constitution, of course. But we also have federal, state, county, and local laws, and then there are numerous federal, state, and local regulations that various bodies enact to carry out laws. There are so many … Read more