Skip to main content

A Blunt Cry for Covid Dread’s End


Allowing an admittedly adverse ailment to be inaccurately advertised as an apocalyptic abomination able to annihilate all is aggravating, annoying, and abhorrent. An accurate assessment advises any and all to avoid alarmism and act appropriately. Anxieties are anticipated, but authentic appraisal admits an alternative: any of advanced age or anemic autoimmunity are advised to avert ailment by avoiding acquaintances and afflicted areas. Adults, adolescents, and any of an early age are able to get back to business.

Bodies are besieged and beset by baseless bombast. Broadcasters blithely belch baloney. Boorish bullies berate and belittle. Bureaucrats ban beneficial business. Busybodies blinded by bad bulletins belittle benign behaviors. But bravery and boldness bolster benevolence. By bringing back businesses, cities can commence circulation of currency and cooperative commerce. 

Concededly, Covid causes casualties. However, careful consideration confirms: car crashes cruelly cause catastrophe, cigarettes cause cancer, and cardiac crisis claims more lives than any contrary cause. Curiously, coupes and carriages continue to cruise, cigar consumption carries on, and corpulent consumers chew copious counts of cholesterol. Consequently, caution is called for, but we can't condone crippling cowardice. Craven conduct is a cancer. Courage is the cure.

Doubtless destiny dictates death for all, but deaths from this disease are dwindling. Digging deep into darkened dens to delay dying declares defeat. Defeatism does durable damage. Driving out debilitating dread is our duty. Determination is desirable. Daring is distinguished.

Ducking destiny is doubtful. Death is defeated, but not yet destroyed. Do deeds. Dream dreams. Dance. Discover. Develop. Defy danger. Delight in the days you do have.

Emergency edicts were erroneous. Extending them was egregious. Encourage - without enforcing extra enactments - the elderly and enfeebled to eliminate their exposure. Everyone is entitled to evaluate exposure, estimate enrichment, and employ expedient efforts to effectuate an equilibrium of risk and reward. So enable the economy. Educate. Empower employers and employees to emerge from exile and engage in exchange. Embrace economic endeavors. Every employee is essential.

Even excellent elected executives floundered, and failed to fulfill fiduciary functions, fearing figurative floggings from feckless fear-mongers for not forcing fearless figures to find foxholes for the foreseeable future.

Fairness favors flexibility: folks who feasibly fear fatality can’t be faulted for fortifying. Fleeing fellowship is fruitful for families who feature fragile folks. But forcing fledglings and formidable fellows to fritter away fruitful functions for flimsy freebies is foul play.

Generally, getting gated in without guests gives way to gloom and gluttony. Gainful goings-on generate glee and gladness. Responsibility gives life meaning, so get going.

High-risk humans hardly have a choice: habitation at home is healthful. But healthy homo-sapiens should hurriedly hop headlong towards happening hotspots. Herd immunity will help hasten normal habits. Then high-risk humans can end hibernation and head out too. Houses habitually holding homebound hosts heighten horridly harmful hopelessness.

Is it innocuous? No illness is. Innovative inoculation is ideal, but impractical to the immediate issue: indefinite immobilization of industry is immoral if we are incapable of issuing indispensable items ex nihilo. (And we are.)

Jittery jerks judge judicious journeymen whose jobs they judge not-justified. But just about every Jack and Jill from janitors to jailers and even jet pilots just needs to juggle enough Jeffersons to buy jelly and jerky, and keep their junk out of jeopardy.

Keep calm. Knowledge kindles a knack for the kind of know-how we keenly need. Kick lengthy lockdowns, they’re ludicrous. Let locals live their lives.

Mask mandates make many people mighty mad. More mature and measured methods might mean more mellow manners. Merry multitudes might mutually agree to minimize maladies by more moderate means.

Negating the natural order with novel norms that necessitate nose coverings (never mind the no-work nonsense) is a nonstarter.

Oklahoma ought not overdo onerous ordinances. Ordinary operations ought to overrule orders from on high. Our overseers are not omniscient.

Purge the panic. Premature prognostications proved preposterous. Pull down the parabola? Performed. Proceed to previous patterns. Perpetual phobia pilfers precious periods of pleasant pastimes and productive pursuits. 

Quit quivering in quarantine. Reopen restaurants. Save stores. Treat every trade to toleration. A taste for toil ought to titillate every tradesman. Undo unnatural unemployment.

Viral response varies between the vivacious and the vulnerable. Versatility may be valuable in various responses. Vile vitriol is at variance from village values. Virile voters vying vigorously at various vocations are virtuous. Vivre et laisser vivre.

When will we be willing to work? Extended exclusion of exchange is an example of excessive executive orders and exhortations. You yelling yet? Zone out the zealots!

Advance Activities. Bring back business. Commence Commerce. Demand deregulation. Energize the economy. Finish fretting. Good grief!

Mike Davis is a Research Fellow at 1889 Institute. He can be reached at mdavis@1889institute.org.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.



Popular posts from this blog

1889 Institute's Statement Regarding School Closures

The 1889 Institute, an Oklahoma think tank, has released the following statement regarding Joy Hofmeister’s proposal to keep schools closed for the remainder of the school year. We at the 1889 Institute consider Joy Hofmeister’s proposal to close Oklahoma’s schools for the rest of the school year a gross overreaction to the coronavirus situation. Even in the best of times and circumstances, suddenly shifting every student in the state from traditional classrooms to online distance learning will have negative educational consequences. This in addition to the economic burden on two-earner families forced to completely reorder their lives with schools closed. We believe many of our leaders have overreacted to worst-case scenarios presented by well-intended health experts with no training or sense of proportion in weighing the collateral damage of shutting down our economy versus targeting resources to protect the truly vulnerable. We say reopen the schools and stop the madness. ...

Can Government Force You to Close Your Business?

1889 Institute takes no position on whether any or all of these measures are warranted or necessary, or whether their economic fallout would inflict more human suffering than they prevent. We are simply evaluating whether they are legal.   With the unprecedented (in the last 100 years at least) reaction surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19, questions that few living legal scholars have considered are suddenly relevant.   Can a quarantine be ordered?   Can a mass quarantine, lockdown, or “cordon sanitaire” be ordered? Can businesses be ordered to change their behavior?   Can businesses be ordered to close? Can state governments order these measures? Can local governments order these measures? My legal brief addresses these issues from a statutory point of view; it is clear that state law gives the governor and mayors broad authority in a state of emergency. They must, of course, do so in a neutral way that they reasonably believe will help preve...

The Bravery of Those Who Died to Defend Us Highlights Our Cowardice

Memorial Day commemorates those who died in military service to our country. These people died not for a chunk of land, for the natural resources available on that chunk of land, nor for any such simple material possession. They died for an idea, a way of life, as well as for each other. We used to be the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. Now we're the land of the lockdown and the home of the trepidatious.   The bravery of heroes past has been replaced by dirty looks for those who dare to go outside without a mask - even in their own cars – where mask wearing, at best, can only be justified as a sign of solidarity . But solidarity for what? Certainly not freedom. That solidarity happens when people stand shoulder to shoulder against the jackboots who would take someone to jail for what now appears to be the shocking desire to earn a living to feed a family. What follows are three stories of heroism, and four contrasting acts of cowardice. May the deeds of the...

Even If Pandemic Models Were Right, Were Covid Lockdowns Wrong?

1889 has been quite critical of pandemic modeling that government officials have relied on for their Covid-19 response. We have also criticized shutdown orders in light of flaws in the models. But let’s assume for a moment that the worst predictions really would have come true if nothing was done. Even in those worst case scenarios, it’s fair to ask if our governments did the right thing. Were involuntary shutdowns justified, or would people have found a way to both limit the contagion and maintain some level of productivity? Was putting healthy citizens under house arrest acceptable even if they were willing to risk infection?   While large groups of people are often compared to herd animals, we are not sheep. We don’t behave like animals. We can, have, and will step up when our communities are in danger. When government and journalists give incomplete or false information, people will act irrationally. Depending on the situation, some will blindly follow the first aut...