Pondering

A bit of good news to go with the ongoing indications of economic destruction.

• Federal judge ruled the CDC can’t force landlords to provide no-cash-payment housing.
• Black homeowners having more difficulty getting back on track with mortgage payments than other ethnic groups. Economic impact of shutdowns are falling disproportionately hard on minorities.
• Rent prices in New York City continue in freefall.

5/6/21 – Foundation for Economic Education – A Federal Judge Just Struck Down One of the CDC’s Most Blatant Power Grabs – The Centers for Disease Control assumed for itself the power to prohibit evictions of renters because they were not paying rent.

No, although it may be your first reaction, that is not socialism. The government telling you what to do with your property, how much to produce, and controlling the price you can charge, thus converting the property into de facto government property, actually falls into the definition of the economic system of fascism.

Article reminds us that in 9/20, CDC issued an order that non-paying tenants cannot be evicted in most situations. Serious penalties involved.

The extreme rationalization to grab this power was shut down by a federal judge on 5/5/20.

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A few of the recent articles pointing to health consequences from shutting down the economy:

• Flu bug has essentially disappeared.
• Rapid increase in alcohol deaths in England and Wales during the lockdown.
• One study finds being at home is more dangerous than being at work.
• Three articles point to the harsh medical consequences of the drop in cancer screenings; people are dying because of lack of access to health care during the lockdown.

I hope someday there will be accountability for the politicians and public health officials who put us in this place.

4/29/21 – Scientific American – Flu Has Disappeared Worldwide during the Covid Pandemic – Since the Covid pandemic began the incidents of influenza have shrank to level of inconsequential. One expert is quoted as saying there is “no flu circulating.”

Tally of deaths in the United States from influenza:

• 34,000 – 2018-2019 flu season
• 22,000 – 2019-2020 flu season
• 600 – 2020-2021 flu season, yes 600

Article has graph of influenza cases per week in North America. Graph of the previous eight flu seasons shows huge spike a couple months ago. The graph for the 2021 flu season is a flat line indistinguishable from zero. Looking at the graph you assume that flu has completely disappeared from North America.

“Experts” mentioned in the article unanimously attribute the disappearance to the same protocols used in an attempt to limit Covid infection – wearing masks, washing hands, frequent use of hand sanitizers, and social distancing.

Amusingly, missing from the article is even the mere possibility of considering that there might perhaps be the option of miscoding or erroneous diagnosis. There is no hint that could even possibly happen.

5/6/21 – Lockdown Skeptics – Alcohol Deaths Rise to Highest Level Since Records Began in England and Wales – Deaths from alcohol abuse have been rising for many years in England and Wales. However, there is a 20% increase in 2020 over 2019 with most of the acceleration happening after the lockdown began.

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Infection rates continue to drop. Depending on the particular statistic and which county you wish to look at, infections, hospitalization, and death rate are down in California somewhere in the range of 90% to 95% or even more since early January.

Yet California is still in lockdown. Not as abusively harsh as several months ago, but still in severe lockdown. So the ongoing destruction will continue.

Merely a few of the recent articles which will be highlighted today:

• The “hygiene theater” of deep clean is no longer necessary according to CDC
• CDC reports drug overdose are soaring
• Young adults are suffering severe psychological damage
• Small businesses can’t find employees because of the overgenerous federal unemployment benefits
• Some class-action lawsuit against higher education are moving forward
• Infective pandemic is accelerating the close of colleges

Adverse Health Impacts

4/8/21 – New York Times – Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an End? – CDC finally conceded it is exquisitely rare to transmit coronavirus by touching a contaminated surface. They assess the risk that less than one in 10,000.

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There haven’t been high visiblity examples in the last couple of months where political or medical leaders exercise their divine right to ignore the rules they impose on everyone else. Or perhaps I just haven’t been paying enough attention.

Well, the governor of Michigan and two of her aides have broken the dry spell of flagrant hypocrites getting caught in their hypocrisy.

Make a completely wild guess what the governor did while urging her subjects citizens to avoid travel to Florida for spring break and warn that snowbirds could easily bring infection back with them when returning from Florida?

Yup. She took a trip to Florida.

To visit her father.

Since the purpose wasn’t to frolic on the beach the trip is okey-dokey.

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In fall 2020 Van Morrison and Eric Clapton released songs protesting lockdowns, describing the damage the economic shutdowns were causing and focused attack on our freedoms. A host of articles referenced on my blog describe the damage they were referring to.

On 9/18/20 Van Morrison announced three songs:

• Born To Be Free
• As I Walked Out
• No More Lockdowns

Eric Clapton also released a song:

• Stand and Deliver

For reasons you can easily figure out for yourself, which I will not state explicitly, the songs were trashed in public. I will not link to or summarize the articles complimenting the songs because they get more political than I choose.

Before going into further discussion of the songs, with links to Amazon and some highlights of the lyrics, here are four out of dozens of articles trashing them:

• 9/25/20 – Rolling Stone – Van Morrison Has Been Complaining For Decades. This Time It Could Be Harmful.
• 10/23/20 – Rock Cellar Magazine – Van Morrison Shares “No More Lockdown,” the Third and Final in His Series of Aggressively “Anti-Lockdown Protest Songs”.
• 12/21/20 – Los Angeles times – Eric Clapton’s anti-lockdown protest song by Van Morrison is totally worth protesting.
• 1/6/21 – Belfast Telegraph – Van Morrison’s Covid protest songs “worst of 2020”.

Merely from the titles of the articles, you can tell how much venom was poured out on the songs.

A hint of what the self-appointed critics did not like:

As I walked out all the streets were empty
The government said everyone should stay home
And they spread fear and loathing and no hope for the future
Not many did question this very strange move

After reading several articles, including some that were favorable, I wasn’t going to look at the songs any further. However, I decided to at least take a quick look. After I listened to Born To Be Free, I looked up the lyrics and listened again. Then I was intrigued and listened to all four songs, following along with the lyrics.

If you read my blog and especially if you got this far in this particular post, you will enjoy the songs.

Born To Be Free

By the way, all four of the songs are available for a mere $0.89. This one is available at Amazon at the link:

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Um, yeah. Rolling Stones, well Mick Jagger by himself (since the band can’t get together), weighed in with a song protesting the lockdowns.

A protest song.

Song ridicules the ongoing lockdown, describing the effect of being isolated as lobotomizing.

It compares the forced quarantine to prison confinement.

There is one recurring line, which you have to think about a while:

It’ll be a memory you’re trying to remember to forget.

Aha…we will have to work to forget this horrible time.

The lockdowns of the past year are a nightmare for those who lost businesses, will never catch up on their rent, whose education has been harshly disrupted if not destroyed, all those who now have severe depression, and those with well-advanced cancer because they couldn’t get in to see a doctor for so many months to check out that odd thing and now it is stage 4.

Yes, we will all have memories that will we be trying to forget.

A hint of the lyrics:

We took it on the chin
The numbers were so grim
Bossed around by p*****.

The video of Easy Sleazy, then more lyrics:

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On 4/9/21, the Supreme Court told the state of California for the fifth time that the Free Exercise of Religion clause of the First Amendment actually, really, truly does allow free exercise of religion. Oh yeah, the injunction mentioned this was the fifth injunction against the unconstitutional state rules.

On 4/12/21, attorneys from the Thomas More Society called state officials, according to a press release from Thomas More Society, wanting to confirm a telephone call at 1 PM that day to discuss the next round of the South Bay United Pentecostal Church lawsuit against the state. An evidentiary hearing had been scheduled sometime in May.

According to the press release, attorneys for the church asked if the state was going to allow worship at 100% capacity. If not, the church would proceed to the hearing which would “inevitably result in the 6th rebuke from SCOTUS.”

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On Friday, 4/9/21, the Supreme Court issued an injunction prohibiting California from enforcing an arbitrary rule that no more than three families may gather for in-home worship or prayer meetings.

The unsigned opinion stated:

“This is the fifth time the Court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s COVID restrictions on religious exercise.”

This is the fifth injunction against California restrictions on religious worship. For this moment in time at least, the Free Expression clause of the First Amendment is still in place and operational.

Why do I say “for the moment?” Previous decisions have been 6-3. Justice Roberts disagreed with this ruling but did not sign on to the dissent. The justices in favor of keeping the First Amendment in place may have slipped to 5-4.

The injunction is titled Ritesh Tandon, et al. v. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, et al.

Other comments in the ruling are equally amusing.

The first paragraph says:

“The Ninth Circuit’s failure to grant an injunction pending appeal was erroneous. This Court’s decisions have made the following points clear.”

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The devastating side-effects from government-imposed lockdowns keeps growing. The lack of benefits and damage from lockdowns is becoming more obvious with every week that passes.

Merely a few of the recent articles in the news:

• Suicide attempts amongst youth increasing.
• Long-term care residents in Canada remain in solitary confinement in spite of 90% of them having been vaccinated.
• Unemployment rate higher in states with harsh lockdowns, lower in states with freedom.

3/16/21 – Foundation for Economic Education – Child Suicide is Becoming an “International Epidemic” Amid Restricted Pandemic Life, Doctors Warn – Associated Press interviewed a British doctor who works in an ER.  Number of suicide attempts he is treating has gone from a couple a week before the pandemic started to several a day now.

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To the extent there was ever justification for closing schools, emerging research demonstrates it has been an extremely long time since any such justification evaporated. Research from Wharton shows the severe, lifelong cost of losing out on two or three semesters of education.

This is the fifth in a series of posts reminding us we have completed one year of “fifteen days to smooth the curve.” In California, we have started our second year of curve smoothing.

10/12/20 – Penn Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, Budget Model website – Covid: Trade-offs in School Reopening – Detailed economic analysis is thoroughly devastating to any argument there is any value in keeping schools closed and in fact there are substantive questions whether there was any value to closing any schools.

Summary

There will be permanent damage to the education level of most students with a serious adverse impact on lifetime earnings with a disproportionate impact on kids who are poor kids, disadvantaged kids, and persons of color.

Read the full article. Please.

Recap of the highlights:

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Articles describing the destruction in the education world have been noticable to me over the last several weeks. Most of the articles have discussed the devastation in primary and secondary education.

Here are a few articles describing disruption in higher education:

• Alternatives to traditional non-campus higher education are growing.
• What might a post-covid higher education world look like? One scenario.
• Lots of class-action suits against colleges for refunds are getting dismissed.

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