Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Stay Home - or Protest! - and Read This! A Coronavirus Reading Sampler (April 28, 2020)


We are offering our top 10 selections, probably daily, of the best (most interesting, weirdest) articles and podcasts on COVID-19 and American policy responses.

Overall our reading leads us to think there ARE and  SHOULD BE "libertarians in a pandemic," and that indeed non-libertarian  policies are what make responses to the pandemic inadequate.


If we were religious we'd wonder if coronavirus were a biblical plague sent to punish the kind of people who are wishing death and disease on peaceful protesters asking for freedom of assembly and the right to earn a living. The hard hit areas do seem to be full of such people, perhaps in part because they were fans of government mass transit, which seems to be a vector for infection.

1) Governor Cuomo's Department of Health deliberately mandated a policy that infected nursing homes and killed the elderly. (New York Post)

2) Commercial real estate industry leaders praise the federal government's handling of coronavirus (...but do they also get bailed out?) (Commercial Observer)



3) Many, if not most, public school students are truant from tele-teaching. (Education Week)

4) The shutdown is wiping out annual dinners and other fundraising methods for LGBT non-profts. (Vice)

5) More Democrats than Republicans are coronavirus positive. (Forbes)

6) YouTube announces intention to censor any video that is not "substantiated" (by whom?) or that contradicts the World Health Organization. (BBC)

7) The 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic did not require a shutdown. (National Review)

8) Another local data set suggests COVID-19 infection rates are far higher and mortality rates far lower than official models suggested. (reason)

9) States begin re-opening. (Ballotpedia)

10) Government PR has made the population paranoid beyond the facts. (The Spectator)


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