Category Archives: Healthcare

Private Property Is Boss: It Decides Who Comes And Goes

Constitution, COVID-19, Healthcare, libertarianism, Private Property

“You are in violation of my f—— constitutional rights and my civil rights,” a man screamed when he was stopped from shopping at a Miami Beach Publix for not wearing a mask.

People really have no clue. Whatever laws we have that govern how private property must behave—these are not grounded in natural law. These originate in case law, or civil rights law—anything but natural law.

All these cases of Antifa-like anger and deadly violence over polite requests from private property to mask are a disgrace:

Last week, a woman, her adult son and husband were charged in the fatal shooting of a security guard who refused to let her daughter enter a Flint, Michigan, Family Dollar because she wasn’t wearing a face mask.

AND:

Two McDonald’s employees were shot inside an Oklahoma City restaurant after the suspect became upset when she was told the dining room was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, police said.

Oklahoma City Police Department said the 32-year-old female customer, whose name has not been released, got into a physical altercation with employees Wednesday evening, left the store and returned with a handgun.

MORE:

“Tensions Over Masks, Social Distancing Lead To Violent Altercations, Shooting Death, Pipe Bomb Threats.“

Barely-A-Blog’s Coronavirus News (4/29): Clarity In The Age Of Chaos

Conservatism, COVID-19, Healthcare, Republicans, Science

Very few of my Followers on social media, most of whom are on the Right (for some reason), seem to care about this number: 61,349 Americans dead from Coronavirus. On March 31, it was 3,900 deaths! This is Cancel Culture!

But I care. American deaths account for a fourth of the world’s deaths, including the undeveloped world. Without making you more weary than you already are, I’ll get to the data I find useful amid the white noise—provide some periodic clarity in this age of chaos.

From Barely A Blog:
http://barelyablog.com/:

1. Here Is What Canada’s Outbreak Scientists Knew About WuFlu By December 31 (And The US Was Too Callous and Incurious To Find Out)
http://barelyablog.com/what-canadas-outbreak-scientists-knew-about-wuflu-by-december-31/

2. If you get COVID, and it’s not the mild kind, you want a good outcome. Listen, then, not to the Just-The-Flu cohort, but to the brilliant, heroic, Dr. Richard Levitan:

Dr. Richard Levitan, an airway[s] [pulmonary] specialist who has practiced emergency medicine for over 30 years, is well aware of the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus began to overwhelm New York City at the end of March, he rushed from his home in New Hampshire to volunteer at Bellevue Hospital.

The Levitan interview is one of the clearest presentations I’ve watched. I’m honored to share this humble man’s wisdom and intelligence: “Patients Should Be Going to Hospitals Sooner.” You want to avoid the ventilator. And it’s a good time to acquire an oximeter. Listen:

https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/amanpour-co/why-covid-19-patients-should-be-going-hospitals-sooner-2a6jq/

As someone who has a daughter who suffered severe asthma as a child, I recognize the overcompensation Dr. Levitan describes so poignantly. Like the asthmatic, COVID patients compensate to the point of irreversible, dangerous, breathing difficulties. They can be blue around the mouth, yet still walking and talking.
I will never forget my daughter’s South-African pediatrician scolding me, then a young mom: “You waited too long to bring her in! Do you know how heroic these kids are! They learn to function with low oxygen levels.” What passion. The same passion for his patients I detect in Dr. Levitan.

3. Pulmonary specialist and ICU physician Vin Gupta, out of my state of WA, mentioned that COVID-19 is present for 21 days at least in the nasal tract. He noted that, while saliva tests are promising; antibody tests are inconclusive. Why not impart such practical data at the White House briefings?

Stay safe,

More later,

ilana

UPDATED (4/27/020): INDIA And COVID-19

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Etiquette, Healthcare

The Covid-19 case count in India is, so far, low. Or, rather, Indians are not getting infected in the numbers one would expect! The country’s population count is just shy of 1.4 billion.

The number of Indians presumed to be infected with COVID-19 is a mere 26,283. Total deaths stand at 825.

Perhaps the disease has “yet to hit India in a widespread way.” Perhaps it arrived in India late and has yet to climb its deadly curve.

If Indian coronavirus fortunes persist, we might look into their eating habits.

A large number of them don’t eat cows, they worship them. And they absolutely love their anti-inflammatory Curcumin, Tumeric, Curry and Cumin spices.

India has more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together.[62] In 2007, UN FAO statistics indicated that Indians had the lowest rate of meat consumption in the world.[63] India, the world’s second most populous country, has over 500 million vegetarians.

UPDATE (4/27/020): “India coronavirus: The ‘mystery’ of low Covid-19 death rates.”

UPDATED II (4/30): NEW COLUMN: The Ethics of Social Distancing: A Libertarian Perspective

Ethics, Healthcare, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Logic, Paleolibertarianism, Republicans, WMD

NEW COLUMN IS “The Ethics of Social Distancing: A Libertarian Perspective.” It is currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

This column is an honest examination of some highly complex questions and issues, without resorting to the smug self-satisfied SIN OF ABSTRACTION: “I’m so ideologically pure, look at me.”

As I say, “If I appear to be struggling with the ethics of this emergency—it is because I am. I must. This is vexing stuff.”

But readers do not want an honest struggle and a multi-faceted, nuanced examination of the issues. They want dogma; their own. Actually, the objections one critical reader mouthed are simplistic Republican dogma, sounded by almost all creedal Republicans; BUT NOT necessarily by all libertarians.

When libertarians begin to sound like Republicans all the time, it’s time to “check your premises.”

In any event, here is a short excerpt. Follow the hyperlinks to the website of your choice:

I was running up the mountain the other day. A couple was walking down it. I quickly crossed over, so as not to expirate all over them. To my surprise, they thanked me profusely.

I’m healthy; they looked fit. Distancing may not have been necessary in this case. Yet, in this simple act of conscious distancing, in the epochal age of a terrifying, communicable disease—my neighbors and I had come closer than ever before. Fear gave way to fellow feeling.

Having lived in both the developed and underdeveloped world, I have always associated social distancing with civility and civilization.

Cultures that honor personal boundaries have always seemed better than cultures which don’t—more genteel, refined and respectful.

Ditto people who keep a respectful distance: They have more merit than those who get in your face.

Which is why the wish expressed by so many freedom-loving protesters to violate the personal space of others is vexing.

Which is why comments such as the following are anathema:

“Your ‘health’ does not supersede my right.”

“Give me liberty or give me COVID-19.”

“I am not required to descend into poverty for you.”

In the absence of clinical therapies or a vaccine for coronavirus, the successful return to work rests, very plainly, on the willingness of the citizenry to cover up, keep clean and keep a distance. Why would anyone wish to infringe on another’s personal space, when the stakes are clearly so high?

Insisting on unfettered freedom to come and go as one pleases, sans protection, comes at a grave cost to others—it could constitute aggression against innocent others.

By the same token, the shuttering of private property by the State is an incontrovertible violation of private property rights. …

... READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “The Ethics of Social Distancing: A Libertarian Perspective,” is currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

UPDATE I (4/24): Some responses to readers. These should give you some idea of the intellectual climate out there:

ILANA Mercer says: • Website
April 24, 2020 at 8:18 pm GMT • 100 Words

@der einzige

What do we have here? Pointless, filthy, foaming at the mouth, directed at a writer; foul cuss words and hysterics utterly unmoored from the text “addressed.”

This is what my impartial examination of a “vexing” situation from different angles did to you.

The advice of Humphrey Bogart, playing Rick Blaine in “Casablanca,” should be considered: “I never saw a dame yet that didn’t understand a good slap in the mouth …”

You (male or female) qualify. Settle down. Give yourself that slap in the mouth. I write a column. You stepped into its space. Step out. Bow out. You have nothing reasonable or well-reasoned to add. Never will.

But no, you would rather anything that causes YOU cognitive dissonance be removed.

ILANA Mercer says: • Website
April 24, 2020 at 6:18 pm GMT • 100 Words

@Weston Waroda

Glad you admit, at least, that you are “railing,” and that, what you wrote, to quote, “wasn’t so much disagreement with [me] anyway as [your] own personal anguish.”

The unfortunate state of “thought” on this thread is that it demands a certain dogma to cheer on.

To thinking libertarians, the pandemic presents dilemmas. To tinny ideologues it doesn’t. I’m not a tinny ideologue. Too easy, too dishonest.

I could offer up rah-rah dogma to those who feel anguish and anger. I won’t.

In addition, I am not “advocating” any position, as you asserted; I am explaining positions. Distortions of my text are of a piece with the hysterical tone that develops on the threads to my articles.

ILANA Mercer says: • Website

April 24, 2020 at 4:52 am GMT • 200 Words

There has been no advocacy for tyranny here and there is no applause for the State; only an honest examination of some complex questions and issues, without resorting to the smug self-satisfied SIN OF ABSTRACTION: “I’m so ideologically pure, look at me.”

Actually, what the reader mouths is the simplistic Republican dogma, sounded by almost all creedal Republicans; BUT NOT necessarily by all libertarians.

See: https://apnews.com/cfcdd563167c5ba60aa0e9011f4446cd

When libertarians begin to sound like Republicans, it’s time to “check your premises.”

It’s odd that an honestly conflicted look at the COVID-19 issues from all sides elicits such outrage. Is this the “Closing of the American Mind,” or what?

I recommend hearing from this New Yorker, who is in the thick of it. Warning: nuanced, closely reasoned thinking:

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002826.html
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002814.html
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002811.html

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002800.html

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002806.html

all the best,
ilana

ILANA Mercer says: • Website
April 24, 2020 at 5:37 am GMT • 100 Words

@Exile

Thanks for the polite comment, in general, and this sharp observation, in particular:

The reason I as an ex-Objectivist still read Ilana Mercer is that she is one of the few libertarians who know [sic] the difference between anarchy and a functioning government that still prioritizes libertarian freedoms.

Your observation comports with my consistent attempts to avoid “that sin of abstraction.” Reality is the ultimate adjudicator of truth, in my thinking.

I presume, then, that you’ve read “Libertarian Anarchism’s Justice Problem” (2015):

http://www.ilanamercer.com/2015/04/libertarian-anarchisms-justice-problem/

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback.
ilana

• Replies: @Exile

 

Exile says:
April 24, 2020 at 6:40 am GMT • 100 Words

@ILANA Mercer

That’s another good piece on the “is-ought” dilemma of libertarianism.

I like your citations above re: Republicans as well. The GOP has co-opted many libertarian concepts in the “tactical” fashion I mentioned to WW above, to the discredit of serious thinkers and the concepts themselves.

It’s in the common interest of all anti-establishment thinkers from libertarians to sincere Leftists to nationalist-populists to discredit and ultimately marginalize both major U.S. parties. The GOP is the lowest-hanging fruit. GOP delenda est, then on to the Democrats.

UPDATED II (4/30): If you dare honor the dead …