Many politicians, including United States President Joe Biden, like to drone on about how everybody should take experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. Yet, even if we suppose the shots provide much help against coronavirus, many people are at so little risk from coronavirus that it seems very foolhardy for them to risk the side effects of the shots.
Two groups with apparently among the lowest risks of death or major sickness from coronavirus are children and professional athletes.
One of Robert Higgs’ great contributions to understanding government is his exploration of what he terms the ratchet effect. In a 2011 interview posted at the Mises Institute website, Higgs provided this succinct description of the ratchet effect:
In my work, the ratchet effect describes the characteristic way in which government under modern ideological conditions grows during a perceived national emergency. The government’s size, scope, and power grow abruptly as the government acts to “do something” to allay the threat. Then, as the threat is eliminated or diminished, the government shrinks, but not all the way to the level it would have reached if the crisis had not occurred. Hence, each crisis shifts the government’s growth trajectory to a higher level of size, scope, and power.
Much attention is focused on President Joe Biden in a Thursday speech announcing that the coronavirus testing alternative United States government employees had been able to use to avoid the mandate to take experimental coronavirus vaccines is being eliminated and that regulations are in the works to require all employees at companies with 100 or more employees to take the “vaccines” or be tested weekly. Less noticed is news that experimental coronavirus vaccines may soon be rolled out for young children. Pfizer-BioNTech is seeking in the next few weeks approval for giving its experimental coronavirus vaccine shots to children ages five through 11, while Moderna is close behind, proceeding with testing of its shots on children 11 and younger. Then come shots for toddlers and babies.
Shots mandates for workers first, shots mandates for children next: That seems to be the situation in America, though it should be noted that some children —especially older children — are workers too.
A few people over at Reason have been head over heels for the experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, being pushed incessantly by many people working in politics and media. But, you may have thought the libertarianish media organization with the slogan “free minds and free markets” would draw the line at posting at its website one of its senior editors endorsing government mandating people take the shots. If so, you thought wrong.
Last week President Joe Biden told the coronavirus vaccines propaganda whopper that about 350 million Americans had taken shots of the experimental coronavirus vaccines. That number, of course, is greater than the United States population. Not content to leave the extreme overcounting of supposed vaccination success to her boss, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in a Wednesday press briefing, claimed that we have “seen tens of millions of people’s lives saved who have gotten the vaccine; that data is clear across the country.”
While other professional sports organizations are imposing much pressure on competitors to take experimental coronavirus vaccine shots, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White is taking a refreshingly different and pro-freedom approach to the matter. He is declaring he will mind his own business, saying a decision whether to take or not take shots is a personal decision.
Francis S. Collins, the director of the United States government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), went full-on authoritarian in his Sunday interview with Jake Tapper at CNN’s State of the Nation. Collins, in the interview, supported in short succession the imposing of several extreme violations of the freedom of people who have chosen not to take experimental coronavirus vaccines — some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term.
Use vaccine passports to prevent these individuals from attending public events and entering businesses, fire them from their jobs, and bar them from traveling, Collins championed.
For how long can you trust a politician to stick to his commitment to defend freedom? In the case of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, it looks like three months max. After signing into law on April 29 legislation prohibiting mask mandates by state and local governments in Arkansas, Hutchinson on Thursday, July 29, declared he intends to call a special session of the state legislature, likely to occur next week, for the purpose of exempting kindergarten through 12th grade public schools from the statute’s mask mandate prohibition.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, over the last year and a half, has been one of the American governors imposing the most extensive crackdowns on freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. He also famously exhibited extreme hypocrisy in November by flagrantly violating his own California coronavirus-related mandates while taking part in a dinner party at the uber-expensive French Laundry restaurant. Newsom’s attitude seems to be that his rules are for regular people, not for himself and his friends.
On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden was hyping the supposed effectiveness of experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. He claimed in a CNN event that people who take the shots will not “get covid,” “be hospitalized,” “be in an ICU unit,” or “die.” It turns out Biden’s assurance is wrong.
The experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, are not miracle drugs. Indeed, recent information from Israel, where shots were given very widely and early, indicates that whatever effectiveness the shots may have in countering coronavirus appears to wear off mighty quickly.