Yes, 2021 Could Be Worse
Coronavirus restrictions could get worse.
But how? Covid-19 came close to causing a legitimate crisis only in the New York City area and there only with “help” from Governor Cuomo’s kill people in nursing homes policy. Not that they needed much help as the virus has killed mostly the frail and elderly and according to one study people who normally would have died of the flu a year or two ago had not the last two flu seasons been relatively light. Moreover, death counts have been confusing, with documented instances of people dying in motorcycle accidents and from terminal cancer being counted as Covid-19 fatalities.
Death rates in the United States are running at 109% of expectations but parsing everything out is difficult because the lockdowns caused additional deaths from suicide and abuse while decreasing deaths from motor-vehicle and other accidents. Definitive stats on the number killed by lockdowns, as opposed to the virus, as opposed to old age and other comorbidities, may never be available.
Even discerning the number of Covid-19 “cases” is problematic because many people who had the virus, especially early on, were not officially tested for it. On the other hand, tests, report the formerly venerable New York Times, now may be returning mostly false positives because they are super sensitive and return only a binary “yes” or “no” response even though being infected with a virus is a far cry different than being pregnant. Magnitudes matter when it comes to spreading the little sucker.
Another problem, as I pointed out previously, is that viral spread is usually not salient, so “the” scientists we are supposed to be following have never really tried to track an evolving polyglot mass this closely before, and they are clearly still pretty clueless about it all. But that is not a reason to panic about the virus; it is a reason to panic about the sanity or intentions of our leaders, who need to pay for destroying our civil liberties on a wing and a prayer.
In short, although the virus is less deadly than at first, and treatments have improved (for example by not putting people on those ventilators we so desperately thought we needed back in March with such alacrity), and the disease appears to have run its course in much of the country, politicians and the media continue to stir up uncertainty, which they use to stoke fear in the public, and continued compliance with government dictates, school closings, and such. You, gentle reader, may be convinced it is largely hokum at this point, but that isn’t going to help you if most of your neighbors still insist on masks and social distancing, talismans and role-playing though they are.
If more coronavirus restrictions seem unlikely, look at what has been going on in Australia, which is creating a techno-police state in a reputed effort to save people from something that won’t, indeed can’t, hurt most of them.
The recent Federal District court decision smacking down Pennsylvania’s lockdown is heartening, but what took so long? I called for attacking the constitutionality of lockdowns on due process (5th and 14th Amendment) grounds back in mid-April but only the Wisconsin Supreme Court responded appropriately and quickly, in May. The power hungry alpha Wolf of Pennsylvania wants the court’s ruling not to hold until he can appeal it! The audacity of that move should trouble anyone who thinks things cannot get worse.
And it is not clear that masks and other social distancing mandates will meet the same fate as shelter-in-place orders and other core lockdown measures, at least before 2021 rolls in. As John Tamny recently noted on these pages, “corona-reverence is far more political than the believers have previously felt comfortable admitting.”
Now imagine 2020’s murder hornets, Covid-19 lockdowns, urban riotish uprisings, and such but with enemy aircraft overhead and missiles inbound because we are also at war with Iran. Or China. Or Russia. Or North Korea. Or all of them.
The war scenario struck me recently while rereading Robert Nisbet’s Twilight of Authority (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975 but also available at the Liberty Fund). An historical sociologist who taught at several major universities and was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, Nisbet (1913-1996) argued that Western Civilization could soon collapse into a new dark age. His work was easy to dismiss when America’s socioeconomic fortunes improved in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to deregulation, more rational trade policies, and productivity increases tied to the telecom revolution. But looked at from the perspective of September 2020, his book appears prophetic. Consider its chilling opening passage:
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