Friday Hodgepodge

Notable Commentary for April, Part I

Time and recent events have left me with a backlog. I'll post (quite) a few this week and the rest next week. -- ed

Image by Tobias Tullius, via Unsplash, license.

"As incubation periods now dwarf travel times anywhere on the planet, it has become increasingly likely that disease importations can occur with sickness occurring only after arrival -- indeed this is the pattern followed by the man who died of Ebola in Dallas." -- Amesh Adalja, in "3 Ways Every Clinician Can Contribute to Pandemic Preparedness" (2018) at Op-Med.

"Eliminating bad laws would go a long way to improving the freedom of workers and employers alike." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Why More Employers Are Not Hiring Smokers and What to Do About It" at Forbes.

"Patients showing up at the ER for possible COVID will add to usual load of patients already there for heart attacks, stroke, acute appendicitis, accidents, 'normal' influenza, etc." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Tips for Staying Out of the ER During the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic" at Forbes.

"Only a socialist sympathizer could conclude, unabashedly, that the lesson to be learned by American voters, observing socialist China leak and spread a virus, is that they too should be ruled by socialists." -- Richard Salsman, in "The Equity-Price Plunge: Sanders-Virus Versus Corona-Virus" (PDF) at Investor Alert.

"It's economically false (and morally obscene) to declare some people, some jobs, some firms, or some sectors 'essential' while claiming others are 'non-essential.'" -- Richard Salsman, in "Unwealthy is Unhealthy, So Why Mandate It?" at The American Institute for Economic Research.

"The extraordinary government clampdown on economic life that we are enduring -- in order to preserve hospital beds and the capacity of doctors and nurses -- is the result, not just of the coronavirus, but of the severe restrictions on economic activity that have made our economy brittle and poorly-suited to adapt and respond to this natural emergency." -- Raymond Niles, in "Controls Breeding More Controls" at The American Institute for Economic Research.

"The DPA neither cures a virus nor boosts investor confidence. It says that when times are tough we should rely on emotion, coercion, and socialism instead of reason, incentives, and capitalism." -- Richard Salsman, in "The Defense Production Act: More Market Destruction" at Intermarket Forecasting.

"In a time of crisis we need leaders to communicate openly, frankly, and truthfully." -- Elan Journo, in "In This Pandemic, We're All Paying the Price of Trump's War on Truth" at Medium.

"[I]f your government derives its powers from a Social Contract, then that contract is forced upon you under duress -- which actually voids and invalidates that contract as rightfully enforceable." -- Stuart Hayashi, in "Bound to the So-Called 'Social Contract' Under Duress" at Medium.

"Rand's admiration for Pittsburgh was, in at least one important instance, reciprocated -- Pittsburgh Press critic Bett Anderson's glowing review of Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead." -- Scott Holleran, in "Bridging Ayn Rand and Pittsburgh" at Pittsburgh Quarterly.

"Does being a woman mean being a stripper, grabbing your crotch, and spreading your legs to an audience?" -- Charlotte Cushman, in "Those 'Stuffy' Americans" at The American Thinker.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected author of "Controls Breed Controls" to Raymond Niles.