Good Reads for those with time

Here are some pieces from Brownstone Institute from this week.

Novak Djokovic: Athlete, Rebel, Hero BY JORDAN SCHACHTEL.  Props to Novak Djokovic for fighting the good fight and carrying the torch. For using his platform to fight for the rights of every individual against the forces of government tyranny, he’s the new People’s Champ.

Are We Really Expected to Believe this China Covid Data? BY JOHN MAC GHLIONN.  China’s COVID success is a farce. The CCP’s “zero COVID” approach carries zero credibility.

Covid, As Seen With My Own Eyes BY LISBETH SELBY. There is little interest and therefore little data on natural immunity. I responded to an announcement for a COVID seroprevalence study in spring 2020 in which interested subjects were asked to contact the NIH via email. I sent 2 separate emails about 6 weeks apart with no response.

Get the Courts Out of Science BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. My highest hope is that the majority opinion here, if it goes the right way, will not be narrow and evasive, picking apart the mandate based on technicalities, but sweeping and fundamental. It should say in no uncertain terms that this mandate should never have been issued and that the court should never have to intervene in such matters in the future.

The Undoing of Science on Its 400th Anniversary BY IAN MCNULTY. Any science that can’t be disputed isn’t science. It’s religion. Like the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros, a serpent swallowing its own tail, Science has gone full circle and cancelled itself.

The Defenestration of Dr. Robert Malone BY JOHN MAC GHLIONN. Malone isn’t a crazed conspiracy theorist: He’s a man who’s intimately familiar with the benefits and the risks of vaccines. He’s a proponent of informed consent. Perhaps before letting someone inject a vaccine into your body, you should be fully informed of the risks involved, he says. He isn’t an unreasonable man.

Unvaccinated Pilots Fighting for Medical Freedom BY DANIEL NUCCIO. Whether groups like the US Freedom Flyers and Airline Employees for Health Freedom succeed likely will not come down to science, but, instead, a combination of legal technicalities and whether enough people will stand their ground and suffer the consequences while demonstrating their worth to their employers, and perhaps the rest of society, through their absence.

The Compliance Conundrum BY GABRIELLE BAUER.  As we demarcate our own comfort zones, we could all use an extra dose of compassion for those who make different calibrations. Whichever strategy claims our allegiance—persisting with strict compliance or loosening the reins—it pays to remember that people on the other side want the pandemic to end as much as we do: they simply disagree on how it will happen.

My Life After Leaving College BY SERENA JOHNSON. Being forced to leave university was very painful. My university adopted Alberta’s Restriction Exemption Program. None of the options given to allow me to continue my education were suitable. That left Academic Leave as my only choice.

Deep Inside Our Heads and Our Communal Lives BY THOMAS HARRINGTON.  We are, under the pressure of what is arguably the most ambitious and well-coordinated perception management campaign in history, having some of our more basic perceptual and behavioral instincts rapidly bred out of our lives. And worse yet, most people have yet to fathom or even contemplate the actual reasons why this is being done and, what it all portends for the future of human dignity and freedom.

Why the Vaccine Nationalism? BY JORDAN SCHACHTEL.  Most countries are pursuing their vaccine strategy in line with their current alliance structure. This reality does not seem to conform to the narrative of a global, devastating plague, but rather, a geopolitical struggle in the name of a virus. China’s allies are committing to China’s vaccines. Russia’s allies are committing to Russia’s vaccines. The Western world is committing to the U.S.-based shots, plus the Oxford-Astrazeneca shot.

They Said They Would Slow the Spread BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER.  What a stunning repudiation of state policy – the worst failing of public health and public policy perhaps in the history of the US if not the entire world. We are right now living in its last days. Remember these days, my friends. They are legion and mark what is likely the end of the great fiasco.

A Memo to GMU President Gregory Washington BY DONALD BOUDREAUX.  Because you’re a man of science, and because science stands firm against popular fads and hysterias, I urge you to follow the science and eliminate the booster mandate.

Life in Zero-Covid Antarctica BY WILLY FORSYTH. If an enterprise mostly created and funded by the NSF cannot utilize scientific reasoning and accept normalcy where there is no Covid, how can we trust our scientific institutions to seek to in the rest of the world, where Covid is here to stay?

The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health BY JAYANTA BHATTACHARYA, MARTIN KULLDORFF. When we wrote the Declaration, we knew that we were putting our professional careers at risk, as well as our ability to provide for our families.  That was a conscious decision on our part, and we fully sympathize with people who instead decided to focus on maintaining their important research laboratories and activities.

In the Name of Stopping Covid… BY TODD PORTER.  Health is much much more than Covid, and is better measured at the individual rather than population level and by a primary care provider (PCP) instead of by an academic with zero understanding of how health is managed within the context of an intimate doctor-patient relationship.

Students with Disabilities Need the Least Restrictive Environment BY CHAD DORAN, PATRICIA RICE DORAN.  More than other members of society, children are at a critical phase in development, with their well-being largely dependent on the good judgement of the adults around them. As we wrap up the holiday season, full of reminders of the innocence and joy of childhood, it’s time to embrace our responsibility, as adults, to protect that innocence through reasonable pandemic policy.

The Psychological Cruelty of Denying Natural immunity BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER.  Take away the knowledge of natural immunity, and thus the realization that there can be a better life on the other side of sickness, and you leave people with existential emptiness and a lasting sense of despair. No one can live that way. No one should have to.