Stay Home! - or Protest - and Read This! A Coronavirus Reading Sampler (April 18-19, 2020 Weekend Edition)

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.


1)  Stanford University Medical Center study suggest COVID-19 lethality much like annual seasonal flu.  (reason)

2) The economic lockdown is going to kill hundreds of thousands of children globally.  (Reuters)

3) IMF:  Lockdown is greatest global recession since Great Depression. (Bloomberg)

4) Free and open Sweden continues to have low rates of coronavirus. (Daily Mail)

5) Italy, with the worst rates of coronavirus, early on produced government public service annoucements urging Italians to hug Chinese tourists to show that they were not racist.  (YouTube)

6) China sold Great Britain $20 million worth of fake coronavirus tests.  (The Hill)

7) Shutdown policies curiously and coincidentally target self-employed people and small businesses more likely to vote other than for Democrats.  (American Greatness)

9) Government failure:  contamination at CDC labs delayed rolling out coronavirus testing. (CNN)

9) The list of TV and movie productions that have been postponed.  (IndieWire)

10) Mass protest in many lockdown states began this weekend.  (KTVB)

Stay Home and Read This! - A Coronavirus Reading Sampler (April 6, 2020)

We are offering our top 10 selections, probably daily, of the best 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.

1) WHO and public health bureaucrats encourage local officials to code all death by anyone who is positive for coronavirus as caused by COVID-19.

2) The IMHE model governments are using is predicting the number of deaths (but given the over-coding mandating, see #1 ?) but over-estimating the number of hospital beds needed.

3) Italy begins mass treatment with hydroxychloraquine.

4) Socialized medical systems decide to let older patients die: Spain.

5) Socialized medical systems decide to let older patients die: France.

6) Eighty percent of COVID-19 test kits donated by China are faulty.

7) Tigers and lions now infected with coronavirus.

8) A clinical immunologist calls the response to COVID-19 and anti-American panic.

9) How Democrats planning for climate change missed preparing for a pandemic.

10) Calls continue to re-open economy.

Stay Home and Read This! - A COVID-19 Reading Sampler (March 30, 2020)

We are offering our top 10 selections, probably daily, of the best 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.


1) Long waiting times in socialize medical systems, and Italian social customs regarding touching, lead to a nosocomial spread of COVID-19 in Europe.

2) Australian provinces consider closing internal borders.

3) New York public health bureaucrats deliberately decided years ago not to buy enough ventilators, and drew up plans to ration them instead.

4) Bill Bennett asks if the cure is worse than the disease.

5) Amazon makes Audible books free.

6) COVID-19 economic restrictions may lead to food shortages in the U.S.

7) How government regulation prevented testing in the United States.

8) Gov. Cuomo admits to hoarding ventilators in case he needs them later.

9) Alaska outlaws most internal travel between communities.

10) Jake Tapper nails Mayor de Blasio on saying people should ignore coronavirus - as late as March 13.