Why we chose this article: Individualists are anti-war. The concept of nation states unleashing their mighty and destructive powers to kill individuals is abhorrent. We don’t post about it much, and it’s easy to forget that it is happening. A recent report brought the issue of the costs of war back into mind and Daniel Larison relates those costs to individual suffering.
Nearly twenty years of warfare in eight countries have resulted in the forced displacement of at least 37 million people. Those are the findings of a recent report by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. It is the first time that there has been an attempt to calculate a comprehensive tally of the number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) driven from their homes by armed conflict in the post-9/11 era.
The 37 million figure comes from tracking the number of refugees, IDPs, and asylum seekers driven out by wars in which the U.S. has been involved either directly or in a supporting role. The total number of people displaced by war during this period is much higher, and 37 million represents a conservative estimate of the upheaval caused by these conflicts. When we consider the tens of millions of people whose lives have been uprooted and devastated by the wars that our government has started or joined, we are obliged to ask why we have allowed our government to contribute to so much unnecessary suffering in so many different parts of the world.
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria are the countries that have had the largest number of people displaced by war. These are the countries that have experienced the longest and the most intense warfare, so it is understandable that these wars generated the most refugees and IDPs. According to the report, wars involving the U.S. led to the displacement of 9.2 million Iraqis, 7.1 million Syrians, and 5.3 million Afghans. That is more than 21 million just from those three countries. Yemen (4.4 million), Somalia (4.2 million), Pakistan (3.7 million), the Philippines (1.7 million), and Libya (1.2 million) account for the rest. Most of those displaced have since been able to return, but that still leaves roughly 12 million people that cannot. As the report’s authors note, these raw numbers cannot assess the toll that the experience of displacement has taken on the people that have gone through it.
Displacement is a rather bloodless term for a horrifying ordeal in which people are forced to abandon everything they have known because they no longer feel secure in their own communities. There are few things more traumatic. David Vine, one of the report’s co-authors, observes, “Losing one’s home and community, among other losses, has impoverished people not just economically but also psychologically, socially, culturally and politically.” Being forced to live in camps or in the wilderness exposes these people to a host of other dangers, including abuse, disease, and starvation. Documenting the massive scale of the displacement across all of these countries is an important beginning of reckoning with the terrible price that these nations have paid, but it cannot fully capture the terrible conditions that displaced people have had to endure.
The report’s authors make clear that they do not fault the U.S. alone for this:
In documenting displacement caused by the U.S. post-9/11 wars, we are not suggesting the U.S. government or the United States as a country is solely responsible for the displacement. Causation is never so simple. Causation always involves a multiplicity of combatants and other powerful actors, centuries of history, and large-scale political, economic, and social forces. Even in the simplest of cases, conditions of pre-existing poverty, environmental change, prior wars, and other forms of violence shape who is displaced and who is not.
What they do insist on, however, is recognizing the role that the U.S. has had in escalating and intensifying existing conflicts and beginning new ones. Most of the costs of war are borne by the people that live in the countries where our government has chosen to intervene to one degree or another, and those costs must be acknowledged in any honest assessment of the policies that have inflicted this damage on tens of millions of innocent people. When we count the costs of our interventions, we need to include not only those civilians killed and injured in the ensuing conflicts, but also those that had to flee in fear of their lives. The wounds left by our many wars on two continents will take decades to heal, and fresh wounds continue to be made every day that the U.S. is still engaged in hostilities in several of these countries.
The U.S. role in creating the chaotic conditions for displacement in Iraq and Afghanistan may be obvious enough, but the other cases are very instructive. U.S. involvement in a conflict does not have to be direct or even all that large to contribute significantly to forced displacement of millions. The supporting role that the U.S. has had in the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen, for example, has been limited in the sense that no U.S. troops are directly engaged in the fighting and no U.S. pilots are dropping the bombs that kill civilians and wreck the country’s infrastructure. But it has been quite extensive in providing logistical support, intelligence, weapons, and, until not that long ago, refueling for coalition jets. There is a reason why U.S. officials have been worried for years about being held liable for the war crimes committed by the Saudi coalition: the U.S. has been deeply complicit in the bombing and starving of Yemen for five and a half years. That support has also contributed to the displacement of more than four million people, most of whom have had to flee their homes because of the bombing or fighting between the coalition’s proxies and the Houthis since 2015.
Syria is a more fraught and complicated case, and it bears closer examination. The report limited its count of refugees and IDPs linked to a war involving the U.S. to just those territories in Syria where U.S. forces have been operating: “As a result, we focused our calculations on people displaced from five Syrian provinces where U.S. forces have fought and operated since 2014. A less conservative and arguably more accurate approach would include the displaced from all of Syria’s provinces since 2014 or as early as 2013 when the U.S. government began backing Syrian rebel groups.” It would not be hard to argue that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the consequences of arming anti-regime forces in Syria, so it is significant that the authors chose not to include displacement in areas where U.S.-armed proxies have operated. While some Syria hawks have disingenuously attacked the report because they find its evidence threatening to their constant agitation for deeper intervention, the authors are actually understating the effects of U.S. intervention in Syria.
Even if we were to exclude Syria from the list of U.S. wars, that would still leave the U.S. bearing at least partial responsibility for wars that have displaced 30 million people since 2001. That is a staggering number, and it is one that we cannot forget when we talk about ending endless wars. The main victims of endless war have been and will continue to be civilians caught in the middle. An earlier Costs of War study estimated that at least 335,000 civilians have been killed in these wars. Tens of millions more have been forced to flee their homes, and even after they have returned their lives will always bear the scars of displacement. Looking at the sheer scale of the carnage and misery caused by these wars, we have to conclude that nearly twenty years of endless war have not only been a costly debacle for U.S. interests but they have also been a catastrophe for the countries where they are being waged.
The United States is extraordinarily secure from physical threats, so we cannot seriously justify these costs as being somehow necessary to protecting this country or even its allies. They were not necessary, and they can’t be justified in terms of self-defense. It is imperative that we reject a policy of endless war that has done little more than create instability, stoke conflict, and wreck countless lives. More than 19 years after the terrorist attacks that triggered decades of senseless war, we have to put a stop to our part in this disaster before we cause even more damage than we already have.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where this article first appeared.
One of the important precepts of Austrian economics concerns uncertainty and the unpredictability of the future. It’s useful for all of us to contemplate this truth. One implication is that we should consider worst cases as well as best cases and some in-between.
I notice lots of folks on social media pining for 2021. Don’t kill the messenger, but 2021 could be much worse than 2020.
Coronavirus restrictions could get worse.
But how? Covid-19 came close to causing a legitimate crisis only in the New York City area and there only with “help” from Governor Cuomo’s kill people in nursing homes policy. Not that they needed much help as the virus has killed mostly the frail and elderly and according to one study people who normally would have died of the flu a year or two ago had not the last two flu seasons been relatively light. Moreover, death counts have been confusing, with documented instances of people dying in motorcycle accidents and from terminal cancer being counted as Covid-19 fatalities.
Death rates in the United States are running at 109% of expectations but parsing everything out is difficult because the lockdowns caused additional deaths from suicide and abuse while decreasing deaths from motor-vehicle and other accidents. Definitive stats on the number killed by lockdowns, as opposed to the virus, as opposed to old age and other comorbidities, may never be available.
Even discerning the number of Covid-19 “cases” is problematic because many people who had the virus, especially early on, were not officially tested for it. On the other hand, tests, report the formerly venerable New York Times, now may be returning mostly false positives because they are super sensitive and return only a binary “yes” or “no” response even though being infected with a virus is a far cry different than being pregnant. Magnitudes matter when it comes to spreading the little sucker.
In short, although the virus is less deadly than at first, and treatments have improved (for example by not putting people on those ventilators we so desperately thought we needed back in March with such alacrity), and the disease appears to have run its course in much of the country, politicians and the media continue to stir up uncertainty, which they use to stoke fear in the public, and continued compliance with government dictates, school closings, and such. You, gentle reader, may be convinced it is largely hokum at this point, but that isn’t going to help you if most of your neighbors still insist on masks and social distancing, talismans and role-playing though they are.
If more coronavirus restrictions seem unlikely, look at what has been going on in Australia, which is creating a techno-police state in a reputed effort to save people from something that won’t, indeed can’t, hurt most of them.
The recent Federal District court decision smacking down Pennsylvania’s lockdown is heartening, but what took so long? I called for attacking the constitutionality of lockdowns on due process (5th and 14th Amendment) grounds back in mid-April but only the Wisconsin Supreme Court responded appropriately and quickly, in May. The power hungry alpha Wolf of Pennsylvania wants the court’s ruling not to hold until he can appeal it! The audacity of that move should trouble anyone who thinks things cannot get worse.
And it is not clear that masks and other social distancing mandates will meet the same fate as shelter-in-place orders and other core lockdown measures, at least before 2021 rolls in. As John Tamny recently noted on these pages, “corona-reverence is far more political than the believers have previously felt comfortable admitting.”
Mostly peaceful protests could get less mostly peaceful.
America has a long history of riots that make even looted retail stores, torched buildings, and occupied police precincts appear like a walk in the park by comparison. With so much at stake in the Presidential election due to our inability and unwillingness to curb the federal government’s power, both sides have incentives to rile up their bases when one or the other side loses this November. Where it ends, nobody knows, but the historical precedents are frightening.
Many early American riots were deadly affairs, replete with real bombs and cannon showering lead grapeshot hither and thither. And the targets of wrath were often critical infrastructure, not symbolic statues. In 1837, for example, Radical Democrats called Loco Focos stirred up the crowd for partisan gain but after New York City’s mayor was assailed by sticks, brickbats, and pieces of ice (you thought Antifa invented that?), violence escalated and turned increasingly irrational.
Enraged rioters breached the defenses of flour wholesaler Eli Hart and destroyed much of his stock because they believed bread prices were too high. They equally irrationally pledged to accept only hard money (gold and silver coins) instead of bank money (notes and deposits) when the former was needed to acquire more flour from places not ravaged by the Hessian Fly, cholera, and a giant fire, one caused not by global warming but by allowing too much dry wood to accumulate in one place (Manhattan). What is that old saying about repeating history again?
Now imagine 2020’s murder hornets, Covid-19 lockdowns, urban riotish uprisings, and such but with enemy aircraft overhead and missiles inbound because we are also at war with Iran. Or China. Or Russia. Or North Korea. Or all of them.
Normally, countries do not want to throw down against the United States, which has proven its willingness and ability to invade, occupy, and generally ruin countries no matter how many trillions of dollars it takes. But it isn’t clear that Uncle Sam has trillions to spare anymore, especially if it is going Fight Club on itself. And it is clearly vulnerable in an age when the World War II Japanese tactic of trying to light its western forests on fire has become appallingly easy.
Moreover, America’s rulers might be interested in fomenting a war about now to distract from domestic difficulties. They are likely under the silly misapprehension that war is “good for the economy.” That sounds crazy, and it is, but we are talking about the same brainiacs who gave up the growth-inducing free trade consensus for tariffs, industrial policy, and anti-price gouging laws!
The war scenario struck me recently while rereading Robert Nisbet’s Twilight of Authority (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975 but also available at the Liberty Fund). An historical sociologist who taught at several major universities and was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, Nisbet (1913-1996) argued that Western Civilization could soon collapse into a new dark age. His work was easy to dismiss when America’s socioeconomic fortunes improved in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to deregulation, more rational trade policies, and productivity increases tied to the telecom revolution. But looked at from the perspective of September 2020, his book appears prophetic. Consider its chilling opening passage:
“Periodically in Western history twilight ages make their appearance. Processes of decline and erosion of institutions are more evident than those of genesis and development. Something like a vacuum obtains in the moral order for large numbers of people. Human loyalties, uprooted from accustomed soil, can be seen tumbling across the landscape with no scheme or larger purpose to fix them. Individualism reveals itself less as achievement and enterprise than as egoism and mere performance. Retreat from the major to the minor, from the noble to the trivial, the communal to the personal, and from the objective to the subjective is commonplace. There is a widely expressed sense of degradation of values and of corruption of culture. The sense of estrangement from community is strong.”
The major “stigmata,” as Nisbet terms the signs of twilight, leads to a dark age of militarism because war appeals to increasing numbers of people as a way out of “economic crises, political division, and intolerable social disintegration.” The horrors of war go unheeded in the twilight era because “a spreading wave of unreason” engulfs both “popular and philosophical writing.”
And one final gem.
While a year is defined by the amount of time it takes the earth to revolve once around the sun, when a new year begins is arbitrary and varies over culture (e.g., the Chinese or Jewish new years) and over time. The new year in the Christian Western world, in fact, used to begin in March, which is why the names of our months do not correspondent with their current number: sept = 7, but it is the ninth month of the year currently; oct = 8, but it is the tenth month, nov = 9; and dec of course = 10.
So buck up, buckaroos, because 2021 is just a cultural construct anyway. The world will improve not on an arbitrary day but when you all decide to make it a better place.
A hundred years ago in response to the horror of WWI, the great Randolph Bourne famously pronounced the truth that “War is the Health of the State.” Said Bourne,
War is the health of the State.
It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate co-operation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, the minorities are either intimidated into silence or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them to really converting them……
Other values such artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.
In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out.
A century later it appears that Randolph Bourne needs an update: Apparently, Sickness is the Health of the State, as well.
During the past 10 weeks, state control of economic and social life in America has erupted like never before. The stay-at-home and lockdown orders decreed by mayors and governors intrude into every nook and cranny of daily life, essentially subjecting tens of millions of Americans to house arrest and/or entombment in six-foot cylinders of social control.
The historic quasi-regimentation and suppression of dissent that occurred domestically during both world wars, for instance, pales by comparison.
The pretext, of course, has been that the coronavirus presents a dire threat to the very life and limb of the American public, and that exigent and invasive controls on individual action and daily commerce are necessary to stop its spread.
But that’s a gargantuan lie. The risk of death to an average healthy person under 60 years of age is no greater than that entailed in commuting 50 miles per day by car to work and back.
And besides, once a highly contagious virus gets loose among the general population— which the coronavirus had done long before Lockdown Nation was launched on March 13—its spread cannot be stopped, anyway.
In fact, it shouldn’t be stopped. When the virus is already out the barn-door and is relatively benign among 95% of the population which contracts it, the right course of action is to let freedom reign. That is, enable its natural spread among the healthy population and thereby foster the herd immunities that the human organism and social community have been deploying to combat such diseases for millennia.
Stated differently, the very high threshold of across-the-board threat to the health and life of the citizenry that would be required to suspend their liberties and pursuit of economic livelihood has not been remotely reached by the Covid. So what has and is still happening in Lockdown Nation is a case of grotesque and malign disproportion.
That’s evident enough in any random sample of the social controls and “nonessential business lockdowns” that have been hastily stood up coast to coast. But these excerpts from the lawsuit of an Illinois businessman capture the intrusive absurdity being foisted on the public as well as any:
I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.
Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family- owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.
We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.
If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.
Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense. But this kind of arbitrary state invasion of economic and personal life is what happens when officialdom and politicians are green-lighted by an overpowering Big Lie.
In the case of Illinois, the state has its own bully-boy, Donald Trump wanna-be master of the universe in the state house. Governor J. B. Pritzker is the entitled scion of a brass knuckled family of Chicago business speculators who is used to getting his way, and has decided that it is his job job to quash the coronavirus—the rights of the state’s citizens and needs of the economy be damned.
But it is worth noting that the WITH Covid mortality rate in Illinois as of May 27 was just 40 per 100,000, which is only slightly above the US average and far below the level in hard hit states, where the apparent mortality rates are far higher.
It’s also about the same as Sweden, which hasn’t closed its schools, businesses and places of social congregation; and it is well above a variety of other US states and countries including Japan and South Korea, which have not employed anything remotely resembling the sweeping Lockdowns imposed by the state of Illinois:
WITH Covid Mortality Rates Per 100,000 (as of May 28)
New York: 153;
New Jersey: 128;
Connecticut: 107;
Massachusetts: 95;
Rhode Island: 64;
Sweden: 42;
Illinois: 40;
Georgia: 18;
Florida: 11;
Germany: 10;
Texas: 6;
Switzerland: 4;
Russia: 3;
Belarus: 2;
Japan: 0.7;
South Korea: 0.5
Indeed, the sweeping range of mortality rates among these jurisdictions tell you that intrusive lockdowns designed to stop the virus’ spread don’t have much to do at all with actual outcomes. Public health measures in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Japan, Belarus and South Korea, for example, were not a fraction as intrusive and comprehensive as those in the state of Illinois.
Even then, fully 50% of the WITH Covid deaths in Illinois have been in nursing and other long-term care facilities—places outside the reach of the general public lockdowns, anyway.
So if you set aside the long-term care deaths, the general population mortality rate in Illinois is actually about 20 Covid deaths per 100,000. That’s only slightly higher than the year-in and year-out suicide rate of 15 per 100,000 and not even 3% of Illinois’ annual mortality rate from all causes of about 875 per 100,000.
So you have the worst of both worlds: The Illinois lockdowns do not account for its moderate mortality rates because if plenary lockdowns were efficacious, the mortality figures for New York and New Jersey would be drastically lower.
At the same time, destroying an economy and personal liberties and livelihoods on account of a 3% share of the state’s normal mortality rate gives the idea of overkill and disproportion an altogether new meaning.
To take another example, the WITH Covid mortality rate of 15.7 per 100,000 in Virginia is only a tad above its annual suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000.
But that hasn’t stopped its power-grabbing governor, Ralph Northam, from imposing a sweeping lockdown on the state’s residents, including an edict that after Friday all Virginians over 10 years of age will wear the Mask pretty much everywhere. As one acerbic critic rightly noted,
Or else! Gesundheitsfuhrers – health police – will do the enforcing, handing out misdemeanor fines and presumably Hut! Hut! Huts! to the non-compliant.
Needless to say, even as the state balloons with its puffed up health police, the private sector has literally imploded. With today’s weekly report on initial unemployment claims, we have now reached a milestone which was not attained even during the darkest moments of the Great Depression.
To wit, during the past ten weeks 40.7 million workers have filed for state unemployment benefits, a figure which is nine times greater than the worst 10 months of the Great Recession; and when you add in the 4.5 million workers newly eligible under PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance), the total is close to 45 million.
The total employed work force on the eve of Lockdown Nation in February 2020, however, was just 158.7 million.
So, actually, 28.3% of employed workers in what was alleged to be the Greatest Economy Ever have now received pink slips, and in a ten-week flash of the eye.
Still, this needless calamity gets us to another avenue by which sickness have become the Health of the State.
After the Donald’s camarilla of malpracticing doctors green-lighted the Governors and Mayors to lockdown their economies in Mid-March and conducted daily coronavirus task force briefings which became the fodder for the MSM to generate hysteria among the general public, the Washington politicians experienced their own version of fear contagion. That is, they passed sight unseen a $3 trillion Everything Bailout which has literally eviscerated the public finances of the nation.
Consequently, and unlike even the worst period of the Great Recession, lockdown starved US Treasury receipts of $3 trillion in FY 2020 will amount to only 40% of Bailout bloated outlays, which will exceed $7 trillion. That’s not even worthy of banana republic style finance.
Needless to say, the Covid-fighters on Capitol Hill held no hearings, took no expert testimony, had the benefit of no professional analysis or even a cursory reading of the bills.
So they apparently didn’t bother to find out, for instance, that there were 71 million American workers last year whose paychecks averaged less than the new combined Federal/state benefit of $1,000 per week; and that there were 17 million workers in the hospitality and leisure sector as of February 2020, who averaged less than 25 hours per week on the clock and got paychecks of less than $350.
So now the state’s Virus Patrols are confronted with a new variety of ailment that may be afflicting millions of workers. To wit, the discovery that it pays big time to get furloughed.
As one widely circulated commentary on the social media put it: Thank Heavens for the Covid! Before COVID I was miserable.
I had a job working $14.75/hr and hated waking up most days. I’ve since been laid off (obviously) but am one of those who is making much more by NOT working.
I used to make $550-600 per week depending on my hours but since COVID began, I’m clearing just over $1000/week. My gf is in the same situation and she’s also clearing just over $1000.
Today we plan to do some hiking since it’s going to be so nice out and I’ll be using my new grill to cook up some steak tonight. The gf is kind of a wine snob so she likes to splurge on really nice reds (which I’ll definitely be having later as well).
I really don’t understand people who say they’re more stressed or are fighting with their gf/wife more than before. It makes absolutely no sense to me. These have been the best 2 months I’ve had in a while. I can’t imagine going back to my old life and way of doing things. NOT HAPPENING!
The only thing that isn’t ideal right now is not being able to travel normally but I only vacationed once or twice a year before due to work/money issues. Now I’m able to save $800-1000/month with COVID stimulus and bonus so we’ll definitely be taking a nice vacation at some point this summer.
So the question recurs: Why the Lockdowns?
House arrest and the 6-foot cylinder of social control that have been stood up to thwart the spread of the virus are inherently unmatched to the task, which is illicit in the first place. But they will inherently clobber the economy and the livelihoods of millions— notwithstanding a lot of brave talk about the “new normal”.
As the Wall Street Journal detailed in a story about the travails of the restaurant industry, the so-called re-opening will only be a short bridge to oblivion for large segments of the industry:
Across the U.S., dining rooms are reopening and some customers are returning, industry data shows. But restaurants say they expect months of sales losses ahead due to capacity constraints imposed to contain the new coronavirus. They are also buying plexiglass walls to separate tables, hiring cleaning staff and turning fewer tables to give booths deeper scrub downs between customers, expenses that draw on a shallower pool of revenue.
Of the 30 states that have allowed restaurants statewide to resume serving customers indoors, 15 have limited capacity to 25% or 50%, according to market-research firm Gordon Haskett. The rest are mandating social distancing that have the effect of reducing capacity, or have yet to release guidance. Restaurant executives expect the limits to last at least through the summer.
Independent restaurants face even greater challenges than sit-down chains because they tend to have less room to cordon off customers and fewer seats to remove. A survey of 250 Colorado restaurant operators earlier this month found that nearly half expected to permanently close in less than three months at the 50% capacity cap that the state set on Wednesday. A study of 483 New York City venues found that 61% couldn’t make it with occupancy limits below 70%.
For a typical 75-seat sit-down restaurant in New York, an occupancy cap of 50% would allow for just 20 diners after accounting for employees, said James Mallios, a New York City restaurateur and attorney.
He said the number drops to around five diners at a 25% capacity limit. New York City hasn’t yet eased stay-at-home orders or set final capacity guidelines for restaurants.
Then again, there are 275 million Americans 64 years and under who face virtually no risk of death or serious illness. As of May 16, the CDC’s own data show that the WITH- Covid mortality rate for this massive share of the population was just 4.9 per 100,000— about in line with the annual toll of traffic and other accidents.
By contrasts, the serious illnesses and deaths are occurring mainly where the Lockdowns aren’t. Persons 65 and older account for 16% of the population but 81% of the WITH-Covid deaths; and 32% of deaths have been among those 85 and older, which account for just 2.0% of the population—most of whom are in long-term care homes, and do not frequent restaurants.
The reason for high mortality and low public socializing, of course, is that the 22,543 persons 85 and older who died WITH Covid were pretty sick already. To wit, among them were—
8,267 cases of influenza and pneumonia;
11,250 cases of chronic lower respiratory and other pulmonary illnesses;
4,075 cases of high blood pressure;
4,000 cases of cardiac arrest and arterial arrhythmia;
5,800 cases of other circulatory diseases;
1,870 cases of diabetes and obesity;
3,650 cases of dementia;
1,700 cases of sepis and cancer;
1,025 cases of Alzheimer;
1,175 cases of renal failure; and
8,000 cases of other serious ailments including accidents and poisonings.
In all, the deceased over the age of 84 years had 50,800 of cases of classifiable diseases, most of them life-threatening. That’s an average of 2.25 each.
Needless to day, sickness is a condition of life—especially of advanced age; and it needs to be fought with medical care and personal health practices, not society-wide social engineering.
But when it becomes the Health of the State, as during the current Covid Hysteria, it is now apparent that the State becomes a greater mortal threat to liberty and prosperity than even during times of military war.
And we are quite sure that Randolph Bourne would heartily agree.
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