The Chinese have a saying ‘may you live in interesting times’. They certainly got their wish. No-one I have spoken to can recall anything quite like what we are experiencing now.
However, despite the induced hysteria, the past week has seen some evidence that the alarmism attached to COVID–19 and the global response has been way over the top.
The catastrophic danger peddled by much of the media is increasingly being exposed as statistical manipulation.
In some countries with high mortality rates, they only count those who are hospitalised as Corona cases. This conveniently ignores many who have the virus but much less severe (or even zero) symptoms.
This generates headline mortality rates that have little statistical validity but frighten the heck out of people.
I wrote last week that the vast majority of victims have one or more underlying health conditions and this week has also seen reports that many victims died due to these conditions rather than anything specifically induced by the Coronavirus.
It just so happens that they have COVID–19 as well as other problems.
There is no question that this virus is bad but there are many worse things at work in the world and we don’t bring everything to a shuddering halt to deal with them.
And yes, some government response to this latest peril is warranted but the long-term implications of what governments across the globe are doing cannot be ignored.
In times of crisis or uncertainty, it is more important than ever to adhere to principle to inform important decisions.
Unfortunately this has been ignored as political types try to fix the problems they created by trying to fix other problems which they created trying to fix…
You get the picture.
I never imagined Australian’s would be banned from going to the beach or the footy. Who could predict that property rights would be violated to such an extent that government simply tells people it’s okay not to pay rent and then prevents property owners from evicting them.
Until this week I thought rationing of basic foodstuffs was the preserve of communist dictatorships.
The Greens political party would be cheering the implementation of their policy increase the dole but even couldn't dream it would double..
Personally I find it hard to understand the need to double payments for those who weren’t working in the first place and now don’t have to pay any rent and have no jobs to even apply for.
I suppose they can spend more on those ’essentials’ at the few stores actually open through the great beneficence of the government.
It all comes at a heavy price which will be in the form of a one trillion dollar national debt that will be met by future generations as capitalism and ancient liberties are forever changed.
The tsunami of borrowed stimulus money washing across the country is simply a salve designed to ease the pain of a politically cauterised economy.
The political left have seen their big government dreams come true with more and more citizens dependent on the state than ever before.
Trust me when I tell you this will not end well for any of us.
Actually, that’s not quite true. There is one group of people who are largely unaffected by this crisis. That’s the government workers and the politicians.
Their jobs are secure and their pay has been unaffected. It must be a great comfort that they can be spared the worst of their policy experiments which will have massive long-term implications for the rest of us.
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