Why the Florida COVID spike vanished from the media

Two items for you this morning.

First, a few social media remarks from a physician and academic (Dr. Victoria Fox):

I’m sorry -- it’s time for public health officials to implement evidence-based pandemic mitigation solutions that are logistically feasible, sustainable and target the problem while allowing society to function. Give people viable solutions they can implement day to day to protect their loved ones during outbreaks. You can’t tell the world to stay home and 'socially distance' -- whatever that even means -- and then act shocked, pissed and punish society because your vague, untested voodoo didn’t work. Because the truth is there is no good solution to this -- only tradeoffs. Public health doesn’t want to be responsible for the adverse outcomes of the tradeoffs so they have developed a strategy that [claims] the pandemic [is] preventable and places blame on society for not complying.

So perfectly said.

Instead of being mature adults who understand that widespread shutdowns leave massive wreckage in their wake -- and I've chronicled these numerous times in this space; they're so devastating that I cannot believe any compassionate human being could support lockdowns -- we are instead to ignore the wreckage, make the whole thing into a simple morality play, and then lecture people for not complying when the virus doesn't simply go away.

Again, I can show you charts of states and countries that locked down, with the names removed. You will not be able to tell me which ones locked down, how hard they locked down, how intense their so-called mitigation strategies were, or when or how widely they reopened. That is just a fact. Nitpick me all you want, but this is something I guarantee you cannot do.

Yet, just like Keynesian stimulus, when the approach doesn't work our overlords respond with an even heavier dose of the original poison. So when the Obama stimulus yielded terrible results, the response from its evidence-impervious architects was not that the whole approach might be juvenile and destructive to begin with, but (of course) that they hadn't done enough of it.

Same with the lockdowns -- and in general it's the same people advocating them. As another observer recently pointed out, had Florida locked down to cope with the Sun Belt spike and gotten the results below, this chart would have been "presented as scientific proof lockdowns prevented overwhelmed hospitals. Instead they didn’t, so we just stop talking about Florida."

Second item:

You will no doubt recall -- because it was everywhere on social media for days -- a paper published by an "Institute for Labor Economics" claiming that the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota was responsible for over 266,000 new COVID "cases."

The authors' contempt for the people they treat in that paper is evident throughout, starting from the very beginning: the paper opens with a quotation from the singer of Smash Mouth, a band that performed there, saying that enough is enough and it's good to see people living like human beings again.

There have been plenty of responses to that paper that have cut it off at the knees, but now even Slate -- which isn't exactly eager to exonerate mostly pro-Trump motorcycle dudes -- ran an article you can find in the search engines called "The Sturgis Biker Rally Did Not Cause 266,796 Cases of COVID-19." It concludes:

"Exaggerated headlines and cherry-picking of results for 'I told you so' media moments can dangerously undermine the long-term integrity of the science -- something we can little afford right now."

And finally, two happy things to leave you with on a Sunday:

(1) We didn't vote for Dr. Fauci, but here's a way to vote against him in your personal life. Tomorrow (Monday) night I'm doing one more live workshop with Tom Woods Show guest (and creator of multiple companies) Mark Ling. We're getting much more specific in this one. Want to make yourself immune to shutdowns, so the lunatics can't destroy how you make your living? Here's how -- and while we're at it, we'll be taking a sledgehammer to the mental glass ceiling inside your head. Don't even think about missing it: http://www.tomwoods.com/sledgehammer

(2) If you're going stir crazy and miss in-person events, remember that the Mises Institute's Supporters Summit is not taking place over Zoom, like everything else these days, but in person: Jekyll Island, Georgia, October 8-10. I'll be speaking alongside some great liberty luminaries. Details: https://mises.org/events/supporters-summit-2020

Tom Woods