Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Robby Soave rightly says that “Local officials should end most pandemic restrictions immediately”:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks or engage in social distancing while outdoors or indoors. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky explained that except in a few special circumstances, vaccinated people can resume normal life completely.

“We have all longed for this moment,” said Walensky during a media briefing.

The available data made it clear, Walensky said, that the vaccines are very effective at eliminating both illness and transmission of COVID-19, and that they have thus far tackled the variants with incredible success.

“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing,” she said. “If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things you stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

This news is long overdue, as it has been clear for weeks that the vaccines should be considered a ticket back to normality. The CDC has proceeded with extreme caution.

But that makes this declaration all the more important: If even the notoriously risk-averse CDC says the vaccinated can put away their masks, then there’s no reason to keep local restrictions in place. If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated; if you arevaccinated, do whatever you want. All government mandates should reflect this reality.

(DBx: I wonder if Keith Olbermann will apologize to Robby.)

Deirdre McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi explain that the successful development in the west of Covid-19 vaccines is not due to industrial policy.

el gato malo offers a plausible explanation for Covid Derangement Syndrome. A a slice:

this is why this deprogramming is going to be so difficult and why so many are going to resist it. it’s why the resistance to it is so political: because those who experience the freedom and agency of others as oppressive select for ideologies that allow them to wield social control and the intersection of progressivism and critical theories dovetail perfectly into authoritarian health initiatives “for your own good.”

but it’s not for your good. it never was. it was for theirs. it was to mollify their emotional needs by taking your freedom for no good reason and asking you to thank them for it. this was those who seek control to alleviate their own fear surging to the fore and seizing control of the levers of power. they are not looking to let them go.

y’all know i love data and digging into it, but we’re getting the point where we’re past that. if you could read data and be convinced by it, you would have been by now.

Lockdowns were indeed chosen. Here’s Tom Moran’s conclusion:

Cancer does not cause hair loss. Viruses do not make people homeless. We have just participated, without consent, in the largest medical experiment in human history. Are we not entitled, at the very least, to a fair and logical evaluation of the outcomes?

Writing about Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College Covid model, “one of the most influential ever deployed in government,” Fraser Nelson believes that it “now looks as if it could be bunkum.” (HT Roger Koppl) A slice:

We can already look at America, where the states took wildly different approaches, and see the lack of correlation between lockdown stringency and virus control. Importantly, the few countries who did not lock down suffered far less death than Imperial’s models predicted. Sweden ended up with less than half the modelled death toll. Poor old Taiwan was down for 93,000 Covid deaths unless it locked down: it held its nerve and saw only a dozen fatalities.

Which brings us to the main problem: why the Sage group of advisers ever ended up with so much power. Such models will always have monstrous error margins: how could they not? But ministers wanted to say they were being guided by “the science” and saw, in Sage, a convenient political shield. It was a political decision to stand behind a group of advisers – who had been asked to focus on only one part of a mixed crisis. It was a major failing, with huge consequences.

Michael Tracey documents the wave of petty tyranny committed in just one American jurisdiction under the thumb of the Covidocracy. (HT Carl Linn). A slice:

Here are some examples of “unauthorized or otherwise unlawful acts” which allegedly contributed to “jeopardiz[ing] the health, welfare, and safety of the people” that police accused people of committing:

• Sitting in park
• Sitting and talking to others
• Sitting on milk crate
• Visiting with no legitimate purpose
• Hanging out
• Being in the street in the company of another
• In street in the company of others
• Sitting on bench smoking
• Encouraging others to not social distance
• Standing outside enjoying the weather
• Socializing with another
• Not Social Distancing
• Standing without mask

These violations are punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of $1,000.

TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

Julia Hartley-Brewer talks with Sunetra Gupta.

Ivor Cummins talks with Sebastian Rushworth.

Ethan Yang reports on Covid censorship in Canada.

“A Day In the Life of Ivan Dennison.”