Tag: news

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A pro-refugee activist in France was found dead at his home after being murdered by the same 20-year-old Afghan migrant he had been sleeping with.

63-year-old Jean Dussine was head of a group called Itinérance that helps vulnerable migrants. The activist also personally allowed some of the migrants to stay at his home.

According to Ouest France, Dussine was found dead at his home having been viciously beaten with an iron rod as he slept.

Dussine “was sleeping when [the alleged assailant], an Afghan migrant barely 20 years old, attacked him with an iron rod. He could not be revived,” reports Valeurs Actuelles.

The migrant, who cannot speak French, was taken into custody by police. Authorities are still trying to determine a motive for the killing.

“Sadly, a similar story took place last year where a promising medical student and pro-migrant activist, also from Normandy, was stabbed to death by a migrant she was reportedly housing,” reports National File.

Back in 2016, it was revealed that open borders activists were sleeping with refugees, some of them children, at the Calais migrant camp.

After he was anally raped by a Somalian migrant in 2016, Norwegian refugee activist Karsten Nordal Hauken said he felt ‘guilt and responsibility’ that the migrant was deported for his crime.

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More than two centuries ago, on May 14, 1796, the English doctor Edward Jenner carried out what was later proven to have been the first modern-day vaccination, when he injected a young boy with pus from cow pox (or vaccinia virus) blisters on a milkmaid’s hands. This immunized him against smallpox and the virus’ name coined the term “vaccine.”

Jenner was the first doctor to introduce and scientifically study the smallpox vaccine. But the concept of giving yourself a mild form of the disease to immunize against a harsher form existed as early as 16th century China or early 18th century India.

With the progress of science in the 20th century, the development of vaccines was accelerating, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the latter part of the century also gave rise to skepticism and conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines.

While the disease targeted by the first modern-day vaccine, smallpox, has successfully been eradicated, that feat has not been accomplished for polio and tuberculosis yet…

You will find more infographics at Statista

WHO data on global vaccine coverage only goes back to 1980 despite humans having experimented with vaccines and inoculations (giving yourself a mild form of a disease to gain immunity) since the 16th century. But strides in global vaccine coverage – defined by the WHO as the share of one-year-olds having received a vaccine – have been made in the last 40 years as well.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 1980 only around 20 percent of children in the world received the vaccines for tuberculosis, DTP (diphtheria/tetanus/whooping cough) and polio. While the former two were developed in the 1920s, the polio vaccine became commercially available in 1961.

Coverage rates for the three diseases rose to approximately 80 percent in the ten years up until 1990.

The immunization against hepatitis B, the world’s first genetically modified vaccine, was made available in the early 1980s and also reached a global coverage of 80 percent in 2012.

Measles vaccinations, on the other hand, have been available since the 1960s but have only reached around 69 percent of children globally (two doses), comparable to the HIB vaccine against a virus causing meningitis, which is now reaching 72 percent of all children worldwide.

Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

The latest capitulation by the European Union in the face of Chinese intimidation demonstrates that, when it comes to protecting the interests of member states, the Brussels bureaucracy is no match for Beijing’s new breed of warrior diplomats.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the more notable features of China’s response has been the willingness of senior Chinese diplomats to intervene forcibly in defence of China’s interests.

The interventions of these “Wolf Warrior” diplomats, so-called after a series of iconic Chinese action movies in which Chinese special forces vanquish their American foes, take several forms.

On one level, Chinese ambassadors, particularly those based in Western capitals, simply resort to blackmail, threatening to deny governments vital medical supplies to cope with the pandemic if they do not comply with Beijing’s wishes.

On another level, they indulge in disseminating fake news, using social media platforms to propagate information that is patently false.

To deal with the growing menace posed by China’s diplomatic community, it is vital, therefore, that the West take robust action to protect its interests, and to hold China to account for its role in causing the pandemic in the first place, and then trying to cover its culpability by launching a global campaign to conceal the origins of the outbreak.

Unfortunately, so far as the EU is concerned, the Brussels establishment has proved itself to be little more than a paper tiger when it comes to dealing with China’s more aggressive diplomatic approach, as can be seen from the EU’s most recent act of appeasement towards Beijing. The latest controversy concerns an article written by Nicolas Chapuis, the EU’s ambassador to China, which was conceived to mark the 45th anniversary of EU-China diplomatic relations, and was also signed by all 27 EU country national ambassadors in Beijing.

The article was written for publication in the state-owned China Daily newspaper, but ran into trouble when China’s foreign ministry objected to a reference in the article which suggested the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. The offending passage referred to the “outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world.”

The article eventually appeared in print, but not before EU officials had agreed to remove this passage, prompting Mr Chapuis to remark, “It is of course regrettable to see that the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited.”

The EU’s willingness to concede to Beijing’s bully-boy tactics is not the first time in recent weeks that Brussels has been forced to capitulate to Chinese intimidation. Last month, the EU amended a report into China’s disinformation campaign in Europe following pressure from Chinese officials. This prompted one outraged EU official to complain that the EU was “self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party.”

In this latest example of Brussels kowtowing to Beijing, the EU only has itself to blame: by seeking to publish the article, it was deliberately seeking to pivot towards China in what appeared to be a European attempt to seize upon a perceived lack of U.S. leadership during the pandemic.

Apart from making itself look weak and incompetent, the failure to publish the article in full has angered a number of European governments, who have themselves been targeted by Beijing’s aggressive diplomatic tactics. This resulted in the Beijing embassies of countries such as Germany, France and Italy publishing the letter in full, complete with the reference originating in China and spreading from there to the rest of the world.

All these countries have good reason to want to stand their ground against Beijing. Italy has been the target of a skilful fake news campaign by Beijing with cleverly edited videos that show Italians showing their gratitude for China’s help in the pandemic when no such demonstrations took place.

The French government was outraged after the Chinese embassy in Paris accused French care-workers of abandoning their posts, thereby causing elderly residents to die; while Germany has complained that Chinese diplomats tried to pressure officials to make positive statements on how Beijing was handling the coronavirus pandemic.

As the EU, by constantly capitulating to Beijing’s demands, has shown it is totally incapable of protecting the interests of member states, the governments of Europe are finally waking up to the reality that, in order to defend themselves against China’s bully-boy tactics, they will have to look after themselves.

Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to dominate the news and life of the American Republic. With currently no end in sight it is not paranoid to wonder if and how the pandemic will affect the presidential elections coming up in November. Two World Wars, The Civil War, The Great Depression and the Spanish Flu were not enough to stop voting for some congressmen and the top executive of the United States as planned. Now for the first time there are rumors moving about that there could be a major delay for voting nationwide.

On a state level delays have happened a few times in history but there is no precedent for this happening on a national scale. This lack of precedent in dealing with this sort of situation could create room for certain “opportunities” that will be mostly detrimental to the future of America.

Manchurian vs. Muscovite Candidates in 2020

Even without the Covid-19 issue, Trump was, and could be again, bogged down by accusations of ties to Russia or working in Russian interests in the run up to election night. This naive “the Russians are coming” narrative was very effectively sold onto the Democrats so much so that they all started to actually believe their own absurdity. In fact the Department of Homeland Security and Trump’s eternal antagonists in the FBI have put together a document titled “Possible Russian Tactics Ahead of 2020 US Election”. And when big government agencies write “possible” they mean “confirmed” especially when that is the desired reality that they want. The stage is being set for Russiagate 2.0. It sort of worked to a degree the first time so why not try it again?

Now that Trump has experienced a delegitimization campaign via accusations from the Democrats the simplest defense would be to in turn accuse his opponent Biden and every other Democrat he has ever spoken to of being servants of China. Reason cannot triumph over madness, only more madness will do the trick.

Mainstream News Media loves to draw charts and connections between politicians and Russia based on the fact that some people, at some time have spoken to each other and gone to the same cocktail parties – guilt by association. Furthermore for the racist MSM, all Russians count as being agents of Putin/The Kremlin. No Russian businessman every works in his own interests, somehow they are all hive minded agents. This means that Trump is very free to throw the same guilt by association tactics at the Democrats for their contact with any person even remotely connected to China. If you draw enough red lines on pretty graphics connecting people, that is good enough to get a conviction nowadays. Trump is very likely to use any connections between the Democrats and China benign or validly suspicious to his advantage. Fighting fire with fire actually works when running for office.

In fact, this election cycle could very well cement a new wedge issue for American politics – whom our traitors serve, Russia or China? Or maybe more simply who is the big enemy, Russia or China? It will be very refreshing to finally get a new wedge issue, guns and abortion have gotten very repetitive.

There is a certain danger in going into an election with both sides accusing the other of being traitors – it utterly delegitimizes the elections and could delegitimize the American establishment, killing the Golden Goose of Stability that continues to lay eggs. Will lobbing accusations of treason in Washington definitely cause a collapse of the system – probably not, but it does knock on the door of that possibility which is unacceptably dangerous. If we convince the American people and establishment that the elections are completely controlled by foreign powers that is bound to have an impact.

Trump Must Go!?

The presidential inauguration happening in January, 72-78 days after election night, seems like a very good amount of padding, even for “Democracy” in a pre-internet world, but the Coronavirus is holding put. In theory Trump would have to step down if his time runs out during an electoral delay and the Presidency would go down the line of succession until it hits a viable candidate. But what if Trump feels that something is afoot and maybe leaving without an election is not in his or America’s best interests?

Of the U.S. presidents there is some debate as to whom among them is the most hated during their time in office by the other side. Lincoln made just a few enemies down south, Hoover got blamed for the economy collapsing, but the hatred for Trump is also top tier. If a delay happened during Reagan’s rule there would be no ramifications. The old actor staying in power two more months or so would be quickly forgotten, but Trump’s enemies despise him and will use any excuse to make sure he goes away forever.

The elections being put off for months opens the door to the very worst of dynamics, one half of the population chanting “he must go” while the other half chants “he must stay”. These situations are what lead to Color Revolutions succeeding in poor weak nations. The elections must happen on time to completely eliminate any possibility of this situation arising.

E-Democracy is the Worst Answer to the Problem

The American electoral system with its Gerrymandering, Hanging Chads, Buttigieg’s “Shadow” over the Iowa Caucus, and Sanders’ mysteriously candidacy denial in 2016 has problems to say the least. The voting system we Americans “enjoy” is far from perfect, but the scary possible answer to America being locked down on election night is a form of “Electronic Democracy”, which due to its intangible and vulnerable nature would be manipulable on a scale not even Boss Hogg could dream of.

The answer to 1776 is not 1984 and if anything needs to be protested it would be any efforts by the government to make elections “go digital”. Ironically such a move would actually be the way that the Chinese and Russians could actually get the guy they want in the Oval Office.

The American electoral system could benefit from standardization, or at least fixing many of the problems on a state level, but any electronic “solution” will be a massive step in the wrong direction.

Vote Now Do Not Delay

Although it technically risks lives, it is critical for real American security to get the election done on time. Any delay will open up lots of opportunities for something to ruin America’s long-term stability which is worth the cost of a potential handful of Covid casualties. The rhetoric between the Democrats and Republicans is dangerous with its growing narrative that America is being taken over foreign influence. Trump needs to either be re-elected or leave on time as to not spark some sort of need to overthrow him, or just revolt against him “holding onto power by delaying”. Furthermore, Electronic Democracy is a nightmarish farce that should not come to pass as it would actually make the quality of American elections go from problem ridden to worthless.

The potential human losses that could be inflicted by voting on time are worth it.

OpenTable restaurant data continues to show most foot traffic at eateries across America at near zero. There are some signs of life in Naples, Tampa, Houston, and Dallas. But for most of the country, pickup or curbside delivery has been the norm for the last several months. 

At Bleu Sushi in Philadelphia, those who are picking up delivery are now greeted with a robot arm that will hand them their order. This allows owner Hendra Yong and his staff to practice strict “safety protocols during the coronavirus pandemic while also having a little fun,” said Eater Philly. 

“We wanted to keep serving customers, in a safe way. So we came up with this idea. I can see people’s surprise when they come because no one else is doing this,” Yong said. 

“When the robot bows, the customer bows,” he said. “It’s kind of funny to watch.”

Yong ordered the robot from Japan with the purpose of contactless pickup. He said there are still many functions that he’s trying to figure out but says the robot is here to stay. 

I was out delivering food last night and bleu sushi has this neat ass social distancing robot pic.twitter.com/yL5QBQGy3d

— big naturals (@luifarted) May 3, 2020

This #restaurant #bleusushi takes #SocialDistanacing to another level! #pma #coronavirus #rad #robots #messlife #food #delivery #bikemessenger #takeout #essential pic.twitter.com/FnWQqAhp1g

— Joe Cox Activist for an Equitable Philadelphia (@Joecoxactivist) April 28, 2020

Ready for some high tech take-out? This robot at Bleu Sushi in Center City has you covered. Customer: It makes me happy inside to know this is where we’re at. That I can just pull up to a place and this random robot is going to hand me my food. @NBCPhiladelphia Tonight at 11 pic.twitter.com/9kVq056IMW

— Denise Nakano (@DeniseNakanoTV) May 6, 2020

In the last month, we noted how a supermarket in the city took sanitizing to an entirely new level by dunking shopping carts into large vats of disinfectants to give customers the peace of mind that they won’t contract the deadly virus. Last week, another supermarket installed “tent-like plastic enclosures” around cashier booths to keep essential workers safe while interacting with customers at checkout lines. 

It’s clear that a post-corona world is quickly changing the economy and how people interact with each other. It remains to be seen if social distancing will slow economic growth. 

Authored by Alan Macleod via MintPressNews.com,

A team from the University of Harrisburg, PA, has developed automated computer facial recognition software that they claim can predict with 80 percent accuracy and “no racial bias” whether a person is likely going to be a criminal, purely by looking at a picture of them.

“By automating the identification of potential threats without bias, our aim is to produce tools for crime prevention, law enforcement, and military applications,” they said, declaring that they were looking for “strategic partners” to work with to implement their product.

In a worrying use of words, the team in their own press release, move from referring to those the software recognizes as being “likely criminals” to “criminals” in the space of just one sentence, suggesting they are confident in the discredited racist pseudoscience of phrenology they appear to have updated for the 21st century.

Public reaction to the project was less than enthusiastic, judging by comments left on Facebook, which included “Societies have been trying to push the idea of ‘born criminals’ for centuries,” “and this isn’t profiling because……?” and “20 percent getting tailed by police constantly because they have the ‘crime face.’” Indeed, the response was so negative that the university pulled the press release from the internet. However, it is still visible using the Internet Wayback Machine.

While the research team claims to be removing bias and racism from decision making, leaving it up to a faceless algorithm, those who write the code, and those who get to decide who constitutes a criminal in the first place, certainly do have their own biases. Why are the homeless or people of color who “loiter” on sidewalks criminalized, but senators and congresspersons who vote for wars and regime change operations not? And who is more likely to be arrested? Wall Street executives doing cocaine in their offices or working-class people smoking marijuana or crack? The higher the level of a person in society, the more serious and harmful their crimes become, but the likelihood of an arrest and a custodial sentence decreases. Black people are more likely to be arrested for the same crime as white people and are sentenced to longer stays in prison, too. Furthermore, facial recognition software is notorious for being unable to tell people of color apart, raising further concerns.

Crime figures are greatly swayed by whom the police choose to follow and what they decide to prioritize. For example, a recent study found 97.5 percent of Brooklyn residents arrested for breaking social distancing laws were people of color. Meanwhile, an analysis of 95 million traffic stops found that police officers were far more likely to stop black people during the daytime when their race could be determined from afar. As soon as dusk hit, the disparity greatly diminished, as a “veil of darkness” saved them from undue harassment, according to researchers. Thus, the population of people convicted of crimes does not necessarily correspond to the population that commits them.

The 2002 hit movie Minority Report is set in a future world where the government’s pre-crime division stops all murders well before they happen, with future criminals locked up preemptively. Even if accurate, is an 80 percent accuracy rate worth risking the creation of a dystopian Minority Report-style society where people are monitored and arrested for pre-crimes?

Phrenology, the long-abandoned study of the size and shape of the head, has a long and sordid history of dangerous racist and elitist pseudoscience. For instance, Cesare Lombroso’s 1876 book, Criminal Man, told students that large jaws and high cheekbones were a feature of “criminals, savages and apes,” and was a sure sign of the “love of orgies and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh, and drink its blood.” Meanwhile, rapists nearly always have jug ears, delicate features, swollen lips, and hunchbacks. Lombroso himself was a professor in psychiatry and criminal anthropology and his book were taught in universities for decades. To Lombroso, it was almost impossible for a good-looking person to commit a serious crime.

The latest technological development from the University of Harrisburg appears to be an updated, “algorithmic phrenology,” repackaging a dangerous idea for the 21st century, all the more noteworthy because they are trying to sell it to law enforcement as an unbiased tool helping society.

Some restaurateurs, those who are surviving the severe economic downturn, because as we’ve noted, restaurants are getting fried during lockdowns, have said they will reopen dining halls when a proven vaccine is mass-produced for the general population. Now the issue, there is no clear timetable on when a treatment or vaccine will be ready — an uncertainty that could prove disastrous industrywide. 

Danny Meyer, a restaurateur in New York City with 19 eateries, said his dining halls would remain closed until a COVID-19 vaccine is seen. 

Of the 19 restaurants, he owns Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café, two pricey restaurants in Manhattan. He told Bloomberg that all of his eateries were shuttered in early March due to the public health crisis. 

“We won’t be welcoming guests into our full-service restaurants for a very long time—probably not until there’s a vaccine,” Meyer said. “There is no interest or excitement on my part to having a half-full dining room while everyone is getting their temperature taken and wearing masks, for not much money.”

“It’s very frustrating, but it’s the only safe way to go,” he adds. This gloomy outlook is also shared by fellow restaurateur Daniel Humm, who may permanently close Eleven Madison Park.

With the restaurant industry on life-support, hopes for a vaccine were dashed on Wednesday when Dr. Anthony Fauci noted several caveats, one being that Gilead’s remdesivir has proven to be a “modest success” by the results so far – it’s not the ‘game-changer’ as Wall Street likes to believe. He said some of the vaccine trials could cause harm to test subjects while listing at least eight vaccines (including Moderna’s) in some stage of development.

Dr. Fauci said more details about the trails would be known by late fall or early winter. 

As for President Trump, he’s on Twitter Thursday morning trying to pump the stock market with tweets about “VERY promising” vaccines “before the end of the year.” 

A proven vaccine by the fourth quarter is possibly the best and most optimistic scenario, though JPMorgan’s core assumption is that one “could take 12-16 months” — which would mean a vaccine could be seen in the back half of 2021. 

Rick Bright, the top federal vaccine official who claims he was ousted for criticizing President Trump’s response to the virus pandemic, told a House hearing on Thursday that “2020 will be (the) darkest winter in modern history.” 

What’s worse, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently warned treatment or vaccine might be more than a year away – and in fact, may never arrive. 

“A mass vaccine or treatment may be more than a year away. Indeed, in a worst-case scenario, we may never find a vaccine,” said Johnson. “So our plan must countenance a situation where we are in this, together, for the long haul, even while doing all we can to avoid that outcome.”

WHO’s Dr. Mike Ryan warned this week that the virus is bouncing around the population like HIV or a supercharged version of the common cold until a vaccine can be mass-produced.

Restaurants are making a good call to exclude the opening of dining halls, and many have opted to rework their business models to include carryout. 

For restaurants waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine to reopen, we note that seventeen years after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak and seven years since the first Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) case, there is still none. 

What’s becoming clear is that a mass-produced vaccine is not a 2020 story. Bright told a House hearing on Thursday that a 12-18 month vaccine timeline is still very “aggressive.” Restaurants are doomed, and judging by the shockingly easy spread of viruses as we detailed earlier, it will be a long time before anything like ‘normal’ is back.

 

Authored by Jon Miltimore via The Libertarian Institute/FEE,

At an April 23 press conference, Gov. Andrew Cuomo sounded indignant when a reporter asked if anyone had objected to New York’s policy of forcing nursing homes to admit recently discharged COVID-19 patients.

“They don’t have the right to object,” Cuomo answered before the reporter finished his question. “That is the rule, and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with it.”

New York isn’t the only state to adopt a policy ordering long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19-infected patients discharged from hospitals. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California —three states also hit particularly hard by the novel coronavirus —passed similar policies to free up hospital beds to make room for sicker patients.

The practice is coming under increased scrutiny by health experts and family members of deceased patients who say the orders needlessly put the most susceptible populations at risk.

“The whole thing has just been handled awfully… by everybody in regard to nursing homes,” said Kathleen Cole, a nurse who recently lost her 89-year-old mother who lived at Ferncliff Nursing Home in Rhinebeck, New York: 

“It’s like a slaughterhouse at these places.”

Cole, who shared her story with the Bucks County Courier Times, told the paper her mother, Dolores McGoldrick, became infected with COVID-19 on April 2 after Ferncliff re-admitted a resident who had been discharged in late March. Two weeks later her mother, a former school teacher, was dead.

Andrew Cuomo finally reverses his deadly Nursing Home order, which sent patients who tested positive for COVID-19 back to their nursing homes, which resulted in thousands of infections and deaths

— Stonewall Jackson (@1776Stonewall) May 11, 2020

McGoldrick is one of nearly five thousand COVID-19 victims who died in New York nursing homes, according to new figures from The New York Times. New York’s high nursing home death toll is not an outlier. California recently released data showing that some 40 percent of California’s COVID-19 fatalities have come from eldercare homes. In Pennsylvania, nursing homes account for 65 percent of COVID-19 deaths. Both states, like New York, had orders in place that required nursing homes to admit recently released COVID-19 patients.

These results are not surprising to some. Health experts and trade associations had warned early on that forcing nursing homes to take on newly discharged COVID-19 patients was a recipe for disaster, noting that such facilities didn’t have the ability to properly quarantine the infected.

“This approach will introduce the highly contagious virus into more nursing homes. There will be more hospitalizations for nursing home residents who need ventilator care and ultimately, a higher number of deaths. Issuing such an order is a mistake and there is a better solution,” American Health Care Association President and CEO Mark Parkinson announced in March after New York’s order went into effect.

David Grabowski, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, sounded incredulous when asked about the policy.

“Nursing homes are working so hard to keep the virus out, and now we’re going to be introducing new COVID-positive patients?” Grabowski told NBC.

Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York, echoed that sentiment.

“To have a mandate that nursing homes accept COVID-19 patients has put many people in grave danger,” Mollot told the Bucks County Courier Times.

The question, of course, is why states began ordering nursing homes to take in COVID-19 infected residents. The one thing we know of COVID-19, and have known from the beginning, is that the virus is particularly deadly for the elderly and people with compromised immune systems.

State leaders will have to answer that question themselves. But one answer might be that central planning is inherently irrational.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek observed that the problem with trying to centrally plan economies and other complex social orders is that central planners cannot possibly access, comprehend, and weigh the vast amount of information relevant to their sweeping decisions.

The NYT report on nursing homes receiving immunity from lawsuits over coronavirus deaths waits until the 23rd paragraph to briefly mention Cuomo’s admin required them to take COVID-19-positive patientshttps://t.co/LNlRLAqVLd

— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) May 14, 2020

The only way to cope with this “knowledge problem” is by bringing to bear the special knowledge that each individual has about the matters he or she is intimately familiar with. And that can only happen through decentralized processes, like the market price system.

This lesson has been lost on many, but particularly so on politicians and bureaucrats who imagine they possess the knowledge to design a more perfect social order. As Hayek famously explained in The Fatal Conceit:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.

This is why individuals are more competent decision-makers about their own affairs than governments. For this reason, a society that removes decision-making from individuals and places it in the hands of central planners invites disorder and endangerment, the economist Thomas Sowell has observed.

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong,” wrote Sowell.

Media were quick to describe the nursing home tragedy as a “market failure,” pointing out that 70 percent of nursing homes in the US are for-profit. This is hardly a market failure, however. Long-term care facilities saw the danger and warned public officials what would happen.

What were they told?

“That is the rule, and that is the regulation,” Cuomo told them, “and they have to comply with it.”

Gov. Cuomo and other officials responsible for these policies are guilty of Hayek’s fatal conceit. In their hubris, they presumed to know enough to centrally plan a complex society’s response to a complex pandemic, and to know more than individuals with local knowledge, industry expertise, and skin in the game, like the elder care experts and businesspeople who tried to warn policymakers about the disastrous effects the policy would have.

This presumption may stem from another kind of conceit: the dictatorial arrogance on display when Cuomo indignantly insisted that unquestioning compliance was the only appropriate response to his mandate.

Tragically, that conceit was quite literally fatal for many of the most vulnerable members of society.

Governments are preparing for a post-corona world. They are relaxing social distancing rules, and public health experts have been figuring out how people should proceed with socializing. One solution could be “social bubbles,” which means small groups of people will be allowed to socialize with each other outside their household regularly. 

Europe could be the first continent to implement the new scheme. The UK government is calling it “10 friends and family” strategy. This would enable people to socialize with ten friends and family for sporting activities, having a beer, and or even having dinner. 

According to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, the new strategy in reopening the economy while keeping the curve flatten was first examined by the Belgian government. The idea is to limit socialization in the immediate weeks and months after lockdowns are lifted to a small group. This will hopefully lower the probability of contracting the virus.

Psychologist Dr. Linda Papadopoulos is optimistic about social bubbles:

“At the start of COVID-19, people would have been like, ‘Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous!'” Papadopoulos told Market Watch. “But when we’ve not been allowed to see anybody bar immediate family for close to two months, I think people will see it as progress and a welcome development.”

Rory Sutherland, a behavioral scientist and vice chairman of the advertising agency Ogilvy, noted: “The proposal [social bubbles] makes perfect sense from an epidemiological perspective.”

“From a psychological perspective,” said Sutherland, “I am not sure that it works at all. … Any group assembling could simply claim that everyone present was part of the same cluster, and without spectacular levels of bureaucracy, it would be impossible to establish the veracity of this. It would re-establish the sight of large groups of people as a norm.”

He added, “I think it falls into that category of “excellent science, bad policy.”

Stefan Flasche, associate professor for the department of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, detailed in a recent blog post the importance of exclusivity within these bubbles. 

Flasche noted how lockdowns were extremely hard for his young daughter, explaining how at her age, with limited digital communication that “her social life is very much centered around close physical contact with her best friends.”

He said allowing her to see her friends would “tremendously help her mental health and social development,” and he noted private playgroups could be formed. 

This “social contact clustering for children would allow them to mingle with their friends while only adding a rather marginal risk for coronavirus infection from, or transmission to, those outside of the playgroup and their respective households,” Flasche said.

Furthermore, do not worry about the enforcement of these bubbles; the government could use smartphone app(s) to track and trace bubble violaters.