Mayors and governors have been ordering soul-crushing shutdowns yet again.
When I try to explain that these measures don't seem to accomplish anything, since places that don't do them get similar results, I get reader feedback saying: don't bother making this argument. The political class has a secret agenda it's pushing, and it's not about a virus.
Well, the political class always has an ulterior motive for what it does, but that doesn't mean there's no value in explaining to ordinary people that what they're doing hurts rather than helps.
And what shocks me is how many ordinary people continue to go along, and continue to shame dissidents, without having bothered to look into whether any of it has done any good.
So I like to draw comparisons.
As I noted in a recent talk, much more open Oklahoma has if anything done better in terms of deaths per million (524 v. 558) than relatively closed North Carolina, for example.
We could generate similar comparisons all day.
Whenever you draw comparisons, though, the lockdowners try to pretend that the places you're comparing are just too different from each other for the comparison to be valid.
So if Oklahoma and North Carolina had exactly the same death chart, well, that's just a coincidence caused by the precise balancing of drastic differences between those places and populations.
Uh huh.
(These are the very same people, by the way, who don't hesitate to compare isolated New Zealand to the United States.)
I found it interesting to look at three places that are right next to each other, in order to minimize differentiating factors like weather, demographics, etc.
And yet despite different policies implemented at different times, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia follow exactly the same pattern. Isn't that at least odd?
Or how about Arizona, Nevada, and California. Different policies, same result:
I realize this isn't as much fun as blaming people for the virus, and I realize that's what so many people want to do. This is your fault!
It's excruciatingly obvious at this point that the virus is going to do what it's going to do. The mitigation measures have catastrophic side effects and -- even if intuitively they may seem to make sense -- don't really accomplish anything with this virus.
Eli Klein, who runs an art gallery in New York City, just pointed out that New York has 25 percent more COVID hospitalizations per capita than Florida, and is worse in every other cumulative and current metric. Florida is completely open, while New York is irrationally closed.
"Nobody I talk to in NYC knows that data," he says. "Nobody."
If we had an honest media, everyone would know this -- especially New Yorkers.
Now you may say: Woods, the thing is seasonal, and weather differences explain the divergence.
Maybe. But in that case, why is the establishment blaming people for their supposedly bad behavior when the real culprit is climate?
Now:
Today's Tom Woods Show, episode #1796, features a coffee shop owner in Lexington, Kentucky, who in defiance of the governor's orders refused to close down. He has a great story, and a great message. It goes live in just under an hour.
Meanwhile, remember: you're not fated to be surrounded by COVID zombies. Join me in my private group and you'll be supported in your sanity by smart, well-informed people who don't think the virus is your fault. And you'll keep up with what's really happening, as opposed to panic propaganda.
-Tom Woods
[https://tomwoods.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=77713d21ff56f1c126607d2c5&id=993a9f2387&e=a833ea81e8](Supporting Listeners)