Category Archives: COVID-19

Finally, PPE Domestic Production Capacity Predicted To Take Off

Business, Capitalism, COVID-19, Free Markets, Government

Thankfully, the domestic production of personal protective equipment (PPE) is predicted to vastly expand in the next five years.

Back on March 5, a full month before government’s “experts,” national and international, stopped fumbling, lying and dissembling about the effectiveness of masks, I foresaw what IBISWorld, an industry research company, now confirms. I wrote:

A rise in consumer demand for this product, reflected in empty shelves and relatively higher prices, will galvanize business to hire more workers and produce more of the coveted commodity.
Prices are crucial. They are the street signs of the economy. The thing the socialists will soon insist on controlling (“price-controls”) and suppressing are the vital signs of the economy. In particular, scarcity and high prices are vital signals. Mask these natural market indices, and you kill off the knowledge needed by manufacturers and entrepreneurs to decide whether to rush into the production of surgical face masks and N-95 respirators.
Masks and all others pandemic prophylactics are currently exorbitantly priced to reflect high demand and subsequent scarcity. These prices have already been taken by producers as a signal to accelerate productions.

IBISWorld now forecasts an “increased emphasis on domestic production capacity in the interest of national security.” It expects “the industry’s trade balance to shift from a deficit to a surplus over the five years to 2025.”

SEE: “Unmasking Statist, Socialist Propaganda About ‘Face Masks”’(March 5)

IBISWorld further reports that “the PPE manufacturing industry has seen an unprecedented surge in demand for N95 masks, respirators, face shields and gloves. The industry’s largest operators are operating at maximum capacity and are currently or intending to expand their domestic production capacity within the year.”

For this, we owe the profit motive, not American leaders. As a rule, the latter have no compunction about leaving their pliant people in the lurch during disasters.  The U.S. government knows its loyalists will do anything, including to deny COVID is real, to help their leaders save face.

 

NEW COLUMN: Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1

Constitution, COVID-19, Etiquette, Law, Pop-Culture

THE NEW COLUMN IS “Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1.” It appeared on WND.COM, and The Unz Review and is currently featured on American Greatness .

An excerpt:

Ideas about liberty have evolved, thankfully.

Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, received a Nobel Prize for performing lobotomies on his vulnerable, unconsenting psychiatric patients—or victims. Today, he is the just recipient of the contempt of decent mental-health practitioners. (Those who do not hold him in contempt are not decent.)

The same fate may await Alan Dershowitz’s status as a constitutional scholar for his coronavirus jurisprudence. Dershowitz has stated that the State has the power of precedent to drag you to a doctor’s office and plunge a vaccine-filled syringe into your veins.

Inconvenienced Vs. Violated

Contra Dershowitz’s forced-vaccination violence, and contrary to the opinions of many of my friends on the Right, social distancing and masking are mere inconveniences. They are not rights-infringing. Being inconvenienced is not the same as being unfree.

That you are asked to sanitize, suite-up and give people space means only that you are inconvenienced. That you are being requested not to encroach upon others—not to rub-up against them, or expel sputum on them: This is but an inconvenience.

In the context of a pandemic, these are quotidian requests, to be associated with civility and comity. They crimp your style, not your rights. The thing that infringes on your natural rights to sustain life and liberty is the lockdown.

Sequestering you so that you cannot feed yourself and your dependents is a violation of both natural and constitutional rights.

But prevention? Please!

Prevention is about delayed gratification. When you go out on the town or to work, you have to make an effort to protect others.

After all, isn’t asking members of society to cover-up and keep a distance as non-invasive as a request can get? Give it some thought.

Real men use prophylactics: Remember that ad campaign? …

... READ THE REST… THE NEW COLUMN IS “Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1.” It is currently featured on American Greatness.

 

 

How Far Are We From Herd Immunity To COVID? Very Far.

Argument, COVID-19, Healthcare, Logic

There seems to be a simple—as in elegant—way of getting some perspective on COVID-19 and herd immunity, which is defined as,

A situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. Even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community. Also known as herd immunity.

According to WorldOMeter, the United States has 1,546,420 Coronavirus Cases.

As has been pointed out here, America’s case count is scandalously inaccurate. By the Economist’s telling,

Throughout April the number of daily tests has averaged around 150,000, with the share of positive tests staying around 20%. That suggests America is testing only people who are probably infected (in Taiwan, for instance, one in every 132 tests is positive), which in turn suggests that many mild or asymptomatic cases are going undetected. America may have 15 to 20 times more actual infected people than confirmed cases.

1.5 million times 20 makes 30 million infected.

At best, approximately 30 million individuals in the US have some immunity to COVID-19.

The 30 million number is predicated on these two assumptions:

1. That the infected number includes the dead and the recovered. This seems reasonable.

2. That the Economist’s multiplier above is correct. That likelihood is good, too.

Thirty million people with immunity is less than 10 percent of the U.S. population. For there to be population-level immunity to COVID, “at least 70 percent of the population needs to be immune.”

We are still very far from achieving herd immunity.

 

Big Corp America Is No Country For Small Biz Or Individualism

Business, Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, English, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, War

Face it, we live in a country in which, increasingly, big corporations with political clout prevail in the economy. In politics, it’s the factions with the biggest corporate donors and the slimiest lobbyists: their politics and policies rule the day.

What is particularly sick-making is not only that a (subsidized) sham like “Tesla is allowed to reopen in defiance of the shelter in place order,” applied diligently to small companies—but that Tesla doesn’t care to protect its employees.

Hardly a good corporate citizen.

“Resentment Builds When COVID-19 Reopening Rules Apply To Some Businesses, But Not Others“:

“At the beginning we immediately closed our store, shut off our lights, put up messages to the community saying ‘we’re all in this together and we’ll be back,” said Marcy Simon, co-owner of Ashby Flowers.
But even now, the tiny shop is not allowed to bring flowers outside for curbside pickup by customers. It’s legal in the rest of Alameda County but Berkeley has its own health rules that say florists can only deliver. Meanwhile large Whole Foods Market right next to it–which also sells flowers—has a long line of people waiting to get inside.
Simon is like a lot of others who thought they were doing the right thing, but are now starting to get mad.
“I think that many people are now definitely looking for ways to get around the rules, there’s no question about it,” she said.
Clinical psychologist Judye Hess says that shouldn’t be a surprise. She says people naturally lose respect for laws when it feels like they’re being unfairly applied.

This mentality applies across the board. How many times, over 20 years, have I heard the shameless refrain from conservative outlets that, “We won’t syndicate a column that doesn’t come from the major syndicator”? To be syndicated by a major syndicator you have to parrot received opinion pretty much on everything. Neither can you be a stylistically risque, interesting writer. With few exceptions, monotony of style and mind are a must if you are to be syndicated.

Other than “too idiosyncratic,” there were the other refrains around the time my column was first syndicated unsuccessfully (2001 or 2002), chief among them were these: “You are neither Republican nor Democrat. And you don’t support Bush’s war.” (The Iraq onslaught was supported by most members of the duopoly.)

The idea that the gritty little gal or guy carries the day, or that individualism is cherished in the USA: These are fallacies in my experience.

*Image via Mises