A great deal of the coverage of the COVID-19 crisis has been apocalyptic. That is partly because “if it bleeds, it leads.” But it is also because some of the medical experts with media megaphones have put forward potentially catastrophic scenarios and drastic plans to deal with them, reinforced by assertions that the rest of us should “listen to the experts,” because only they know enough to determine policy. Unfortunately, those experts don’t know enough to determine appropriate policies.

Whether the coronavirus is the Spanish flu come again I cannot say, and will not try. We shall have some grounds for knowing by Easter and may have confirmation next year, when the annual mortality figures are published. Something I can say, however, is that the response to the virus will have large and continuing effects. Many things will return to normal after the lockdown. Much else will not. As ever with those things that change, there will be a new set of winners and losers.

The year 2006 seems like a lifetime ago. The housing boom seemed to be going full throttle, but danger lurked. I wrote on LewRockwell.com in March of that year, concerning a Las Vegas real estate seminar, that “nary a discouraging word was spoken.”

About 2.9 million people die in the United States each year from all causes. Monthly this total ranges from around 220,000 in the summertime to more than 280,000 in winter. 

In recent decades, flu season has often peaked sometime from January to March, and this is a major driver in total deaths. The average daily number of deaths from December through March is over eight thousand.

“South Dakota is not New York City.” 

A seemingly innocuous statement, made last Wednesday by Governor Kristi Noem in response to calls for her to issue a coronavirus shutdown across a state with the motto “Under God the People Rule.”

In the race to develop a cure and treat COVID-19, many consider the state and its subsidiaries as the only institutions capable of adapting our current system to suit the epidemic. On the other hand, phrases such as “the private sector has no interest in humanitarian goals! It only seeks profit!” are uttered as justification for more state action.

My posts on social media lately have focused on national and international issues related to COVID-19. I occasionally cruise through posts from my neighborhood’s Facebook page and Nextdoor.com and just throw up my hands. The local “Karens” are condemning people for traveling, looking for offending groups of more than three people to narc on to the local hotline, and calling for increased police patrols of the neighborhood, etc. The most fundamental of civil rights mean nothing to these people.