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Face the Truth
In late September, William Foege, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent a letter to Robert Redfield, the current director of the CDC. In the letter, Foege calls on Redfield to “face the truth.” In a period of six months, the CDC has gone from the gold standard in…
The Role of Government in a Pandemic
The proper purpose of government is the protection of individual rights, including property rights. The proper purpose of government is to protect the freedom of individuals to act on their own judgment, so long as they respect the freedom of others to do the same. Government’s purpose does not change in a pandemic. The role…
A Plan that Could have Saved America
Vanity Fair reports that Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and advisor, developed a plan to dramatically and rapidly ramp up testing for the cornavirus. A combination of bureaucratic incompetence, political expediency, and intellectual dishonesty caused that plan to be abandoned. Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity,…
COVID and Self-interest
Writing for Forbes, Dr. Paul Hsieh notes that both the National Basketball Association and Disney World have been able to re-open and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The key was rigorous testing, contact tracing, and isolation of the infected. The economic self-interest of both organizations motivated them to take precautions for employees, vendors, guests,…
An Alternative to Lockdowns
According to the Wall Street Journal, a growing number of economists and epidemiologists are questioning the wisdom of lockdowns to combact COVID-19. [T]he evidence suggests lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool. They are politically difficult to keep in place for long enough to stamp out the virus. The evidence also points to…
The Freedom to Produce and Trade Vaccines
Nearly a week after Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine began being used in Great Britain, the vaccine will start being used in America today. The delay was caused because Pfizer had to obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it could release the vaccine. In the meantime, an unknown number of Americans died from…