Apr 24, 2020 | Politics
Human Flourishing advocate Alex Epstein interviews philosopher Onkar Ghate, Senior Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, on why lockdowns are not a proper response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics they cover include:
- We need objective, clearly defined laws specifying and limiting the power of government in regard to infectious diseases.
- Why Sweden has more American infectious disease laws than America does.
- How clearly defined laws lead to better preparedness by government, industry, and individuals.
- Why more profit-making in the health care system is key to scaling capacity.
- How governments have failed to do their proper job of identifying and isolating infectious individuals.
- How far greater transparency from government would empower a free people to make rational decisions.
- The right way to handle potential hospital capacity shortages.
- How the idea of “free” health care promotes irresponsible behavior.
- Why state-wide lockdowns were not the right policy with the evidence we had.
- Why lockdowns were a panic-based, not reason-based policy that should be removed as quickly as possible.
- How governments should make policy and communicate to citizens going forward.
- Why now is the time to write to government officials—and what you should write.
Apr 22, 2020 | Business, Politics, Sci-Tech
Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
After providing evidence for the above facts he goes on to conclude:
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation.
A pandemic does not alter the role of a government. For example, it can limit the freedom of those individuals who carry the virus for limited periods to protect others, whose right to life would be violated. This could involve testing, tracing contacts, and tracking. When governments are involved in operating health care systems, as they are in most mixed economies, they would isolate nursing home residents and other vulnerable people, increase hospital capacity, and set guidelines for physical distancing—as opposed to violating everybody’s right to liberty by locking down economies.
We need to learn to appreciate progress—both what we’ve already done, and why we can’t stop now. We need to tell the amazing story of progress: how comfort, safety, health, and luxury have become commonplace, and what a dramatic achievement that has been.
More recently, in the wake of the Covid-19 virus outbreak, we’ve seen unwarranted, unprecedented violations of all three realms of freedom in America – mandates to close businesses, edicts that people stay in their homes (“shelter in place,” akin to a nationwide house arrest of innocents presumed guilty), decrees against assembling (compelling “social distancing”), orders restricting access to gun shops, even the classification of some street protests (against the illiberal controls) as prohibited because a “non-essential” activity. We’ve yet to see challenges from the ACLU or court orders staying the rights violations. Why?
The lockdowns, whatever one thinks of them, were never sold to us as a way to eradicate the disease. They were sold as a way to “flatten the curve” so that the medical system didn’t become overwhelmed, leading to *unnecessary* deaths. […] We must open the economy as fast as we can. And we must do so while managing the disease as best we can. That includes selective isolation for the most vulnerable. (I have family members in this category…and, if it matters, they support re-opening the economy. They recognize that it would be immoral to demand that we sacrifice the whole country to reduce their odds of getting the disease.)
- Alex Epstein’s video “A pro-freedom approach to fighting COVID-19″: (Power Hour, April 15, 2020):
If you’re seeking to avoid COVID-19, the hand sanitizer gel you carry in a pocket or purse did not exist until the 1960s. If you start to show symptoms, the pulse oximeter that tests your blood oxygenation was not developed until the 1970s. If your case worsens, the mechanical ventilator that keeps you alive was invented in the 1950s—in fact, no form of artificial respiration was widely available until the “iron lung” used to treat polio patients in the 1930s. Even the modern emergency medical system did not exist until recently: if during the 1918 flu pandemic you became seriously ill, there was no 911 hotline to call, and any ambulance that showed up would likely have been a modified van or hearse, with no equipment or trained staff.
If you are a scientist at an academic institution currently working on a COVID-19 related project and in need of funding, we invite you to apply for a Fast Grant. Fast Grants are $10k to $500k and decisions are made in under 48 hours. If you wish to apply to grants for scientific or biomedical COVID-19 projects, please apply through FastGrants.org.
Apr 16, 2020 | Politics
According to the creators, the Decentralised Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) project is “an open protocol for COVID-19 proximity tracing using Bluetooth Low Energy functionality on mobile devices that ensures personal data and computation stays entirely on an individual’s phone.”
Artist Nicky Case (with help from Prof Carmelo Troncoso & Prof Marcel Salathé) created a comic to explain how the protocol works:
You can see the long version here.
Updates:
Apr 10, 2020 | Politics
“….Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates offers insights into the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing why testing and self-isolation are essential, which medical advancements show promise and what it will take for the world to endure this crisis.”
Takeaways:
- Targeted Testing, as done in South Korea and Taiwan.
- Gate’s did agree with Taiwan being shut-out of WHO, especially . (For the record, this is due to the China Communist dictatorship’s control over the UN. Taiwan was warning the WHO about what the NY Times was calling the ‘Wuhan Virus’ from December and was ignored.)
- South Korea did not have to implement a nation-wide shut down because they did such an excellent job at early testing to isolate those with COVID-19.
- Testing should be prioritized for health care workers in constant contact with patients and for those non-health-care workers who are symptomatic given the lack of supply of convenient COVID-19 kits to test everyone.
- The COVID-19 testing problem will be resolved when reliable, in-home, self-test kits that deliver same-day results, are available.
- Isolation & Shut-Down
- If you cannot do a proper job on testing early, then you need to shut down movement to “flatten the curve“
- Once the majority of COVID-19 carriers are isolated, the economy can reopen once you have done proper testing.
- Mass vaccination in the long-run is the solution according to Gates. He has spent a hundred million dollars in advancing vaccination, particularly in third-world countries.
Delay in COVID Testing: “Too many chefs in the kitchen” or “All eggs in one basket”?
The interviewer, head of TED Chris Anderson, attempts to blame free-markets when he asks is the delay in the U.S. getting COVID-19 tests out in time due to “too many chefs in the kitchen.” (In a market there are many biotech companies competing to produce the best test)
The actual cause of the delay in COVID-19 testing was that there was only one “universal” government chef in the kitchen — the CDC — which only approved one “universal” test created by the state and forbade all the “recipes” (tests) from other chefs (private companies) — and the CDC’s test did not work. CDC-FDA “universal” socialist medicine was the cause of the delay in this case.
A better metaphor would be “putting all your testing eggs in one government-controlled basket.”
Thankfully, private U.S. medical companies came to the rescue.
$$$
Related: The next outbreak? We’re not ready | Bill Gates (2015 Talk)
Apr 10, 2020 | Sci-Tech
Writes Matt Ridley on the Bats Behind The Pandemic (WSJ, April 9, 2020):
RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather of a sample of its feces collected in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan, China. The sample was collected by hazmat-clad scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan that year. Stored away and forgotten until January this year, the sample from the horseshoe bat contains the virus that causes Covid-19.
[…]
In a paper published in February last year, Patrick Woo and colleagues at Hong Kong University surveyed the coronaviruses found in bats and came to a prescient conclusion: “Bat–animal and bat–human interactions, such as the presence of live bats in wildlife wet markets and restaurants in Southern China, are important for interspecies transmission of [coronaviruses] and may lead to devastating global outbreaks.”
