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#MacroView: 2021 – A Disappointment Of Growth And Disinflation

As we head into 2021, there is a large consensus that the massive monetary interventions in 2020 will lead to an explosion of economic growth, inflation, and higher interest rates. We suspect that the outcome of more debt-driven spending will lead to…

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As we head into 2021, there is a large consensus that the massive monetary interventions in 2020 will lead to an explosion of economic growth, inflation, and higher interest rates. We suspect that the outcome of more debt-driven spending will lead to a disappointment in growth and disinflation instead.

Milton Friedman once said:

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” 

There is little argument currently that the Federal Reserve is “printing money” without any reservation. The chart below is the “supply of money” as represented by M2.

That massive spike in M2 is from the Government’s gigantic monetary rescue to combat the pandemic-related economic shutdown.

“In our analysis, the ‘end game’ for the Fed’s twin asset bubbles in stocks and bonds is inflation.” – Crescat Capital

Of course, if the massive monetary infusions create an economic boom, then a surge in inflation and interest rates should follow. As noted recently by GaveKal:

“In summary, my indicators tell me that US growth will be strong and we are on the right side of the four quadrants framework. As prices seem set to accelerate, we are moving into the upper half, which means that 2021 should see an inflationary boom in the US.”

There are several reasons why expectations may fall short of reality.

Why Printing Money Won’t Create Inflation

For the last 12-years, the annual refrain from economists has been “this year is the year of economic growth and inflation.” Each year has been a disappointment of those expectations.

The chart below compares the money supply to GDP growth and our composite economic indicator. The composite includes inflation, wages, and interest rates, which directly correlate to economic activity.

While in theory, “printing money” should lead to an increase in economic activity and inflation, such has not been the case.

A better way to look at this is through the “veil of money” theory. If money is a commodity, more of it should lead to less purchasing power, resulting in inflation. However, this theory began to fail as Governments attempted to adjust interest rates rather than maintain a gold standard.

As shown, beginning in 2000, the “money supply” as a percentage of GDP has exploded higher without a resulting rise in inflation or economic growth. As shown by the attendant trendlines, it has been quite the opposite.

However, this is where monetary velocity becomes essential.

Monetary Velocity

The Federal Reserve has failed to grasp that monetary policy is “deflationary” when “debt” is required to fund it.

How do we know this? Monetary velocity tells the story.

What is “monetary velocity?” 

“The velocity of money is important for measuring the rate at which money in circulation is used for purchasing goods and services. Velocity is useful in gauging the health and vitality of the economy. High money velocity is usually associated with a healthy, expanding economy. Low money velocity is usually associated with recessions and contractions.” – Investopedia

With each monetary policy intervention, the velocity of money has slowed along with the breadth and strength of economic activity.

However, it isn’t just the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, which undermines the strength of the economy. It is also the ongoing suppression of interest rates to try and stimulate economic activity.

In 2000, the Fed “crossed the Rubicon,” whereby lowering interest rates did not stimulate economic activity. Instead, the “debt burden” detracted from it. (More on this in a moment)

As monetary interventions increased, the “transmission system” became more fractured as the “wealth gap” expanded. Despite perennial hopes that economic growth and inflation would arise from lower rates, more government spending, and increased “accommodative policies,” each iteration led to weaker outcomes.

To illustrate the last point, we can compare monetary velocity to the deficit.

To no surprise, monetary velocity increases when the deficit reverses to a surplus. Financial surpluses allow revenues to move into productive investments rather than debt service.

The problem for the Fed is the misunderstanding of the derivation of organic economic inflation.

Productive Vs. Non-Productive Spending

Since 1980, there has been a shift in the economy’s fiscal makeup from productive to non-productive investment. To explain this concept, we can take a page from Dr. Woody Brock’s “American Gridlock” to explain the difference.

Country A spends $4 Trillion with receipts of $3 Trillion. This leaves Country A with a $1 Trillion deficit. In order to make up the difference between the spending and the income, the Treasury must issue $1 Trillion in new debt. That new debt is used to cover the excess expenditures, but generates no income leaving a future hole that must be filled.

Country B spends $4 Trillion and receives $3 Trillion income. However, the $1 Trillion of excess, which was financed by debt, was invested into projects, infrastructure, that produced a positive rate of return. There is no deficit as the rate of return on the investment funds the “deficit” over time.

Doing It Wrong

As discussed in “The Failing Theory Of MMT:”

“The problem is government spending has shifted away from productive investments. Instead of things like the Hoover Dam, which creates jobs (infrastructure and development), spending shifted to social welfare, defense, and debt service, which have a negative rate of return.

According to the Center On Budget & Policy Priorities, nearly 75% of every tax dollar goes to non-productive spending.” 

MMT, The Theory Of MMT Falls Flat When Faced With Reality (Part I)

In other words, the U.S. is “Country A.” 

However, since that article was published, the debt swelled by $6.2 trillion in 2020. In an economy saddled by $82 Trillion in debt, the debt is no longer productive as more debt is issued to cover ongoing spending needs. This is why “monetary velocity” began to decline as total debt passed the point of being “productive” to becoming “destructive.”

The Federal Reserve problem is that due to the massive levels of debt, interest rates MUST remain low. Any uptick in rates quickly slows economic activity, forcing the Fed to lower rates and support it.

With the economy set to push a $4.2 Trillion deficit in 2020, the deficit’s deflationary pressure will continue to erode economic activity. As noted, even if the Fed does manage to get a spark of inflation, which would push interest rates higher, the debt burden will lead to an economic recession and deflationary pressures.

Why Sending Money To Households Won’t Create Inflation

This time is different because we are sending money directly to households. 

Such is the underlying sentiment behind a universal basic income and its impact on economic growth. Unfortunately, it merely isn’t true.

We can run a hypothetical example using GDP from 2007 to the present. (I am using estimates of -1.1% for 2020 GDP growth) In 2008, in response to the “Financial Crisis,” Congress passes a bill providing $1000/month ($12,000 annually) to 190 million families in the U.S. 

The chart below shows the economy’s annual GDP growth trend assuming the entire UBI program shows up in economic growth. For those supporting programs like UBI, it certainly appears as if GDP rises to a higher level. 

However, such is an illusion. When you look at the annual rate of change in economic growth, which is how we measure GDP for economic purposes, a different picture emerges. In 2008, when the $12,000 arrives at households, GDP spikes, printing a 17% growth rate versus the actual 1.81% rate. Such was also be coincident with a short-term spike in inflationary pressures.

However, in the next year, the growth, along with inflation, disappears.

The reason is that after UBI flows into the system, the economy normalizes to a new level after the first year. Also, notice that GDP grows at a slightly slower rate as the dollar changes to GDP at higher levels print a lower growth rate.

Using the money supply as a proxy, we can see that increased money supply does not increase measured inflation.

Fed Monetize Debt Issuance, #MacroView: The Fed Will Monetize All Of The Debt Issuance

What we find is since 1980, increases in the money supply tend to precede periods of below-average inflation. As noted, this is due to the “debt burden” and non-productive investment of increased money supply.

Deflation Remains The Risk

The debt problem remains a massive risk of monetary to fiscal policy. If rates rise, the negative impact on an indebted economy quickly depresses activity. More importantly, the decline in monetary velocity clearly shows that deflation is a persistent threat.

Treasury&Risk clearly explained the reasoning:

“It is hard to overstate the degree to which psychology drives an economy’s shift to deflation. When the prevailing economic mood in a nation changes from optimism to pessimism, participants change. Creditors, debtors, investors, producers, and consumers all change their primary orientation from expansion to conservation.

  • Creditors become more conservative, and slow their lending.
  • Potential debtors become more conservative, and borrow less or not at all.
  • Investors become more conservative, they commit less money to debt investments.
  • Producers become more conservative and reduce expansion plans.
  • Consumers become more conservative, and save more and spend less.

These behaviors reduce the velocity of money, which puts downward pressure on prices. Money velocity has already been slowing for years, a classic warning sign that deflation is impending. Now, thanks to the virus-related lockdowns, money velocity has begun to collapse. As widespread pessimism takes hold, expect it to fall even further.”

No Real Options

There are no real options for the Federal Reserve unless they are willing to allow the system to reset painfully.

Unfortunately, given we now have a decade of experience of watching monetary experiments only succeed in creating a massive “wealth gap,” maybe we should consider the alternative.

Ultimately, the Federal Reserve, and the Administration, will have to face hard choices to extricate the economy from the current “liquidity trap.”  However, history shows that political leadership never makes hard choices until those choices get forced upon them.

Most telling is the current economists’ inability, who maintain our monetary and fiscal policies, to realize the problem of trying to “cure a debt problem with more debt.”

The Keynesian view that “more money in people’s pockets” will drive up consumer spending, with a boost to GDP being the result, has been wrong. It hasn’t happened in 40 years.

We fear the ongoing policies will continue to lead to further social instability and populism. Such has been the result in every other country which has run such programs of unbridled debts and deficits.

As Dr. Woody Brock aptly argues:

“It is truly ‘American Gridlock’ as the real crisis lies between the choices of ‘austerity’ and continued government ‘largesse.’ One choice leads to long-term economic prosperity for all; the other doesn’t.”

Take your pick.

But 2021 will likely be a disappointment to those expecting more robust economic growth and inflation.

The post #MacroView: 2021 – A Disappointment Of Growth And Disinflation appeared first on RIA.

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Chronic stress and inflammation linked to societal and environmental impacts in new study

From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors…

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March 12, 2024

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From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors can cause chronic inflammation in our bodies. Chronic inflammation is linked to serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer – and may also affect our thinking and behavior.   

Credit: Image: Vodovotz et al/Frontiers

From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors can cause chronic inflammation in our bodies. Chronic inflammation is linked to serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer – and may also affect our thinking and behavior.   

A new hypothesis published in Frontiers in Science suggests the negative impacts may extend far further.   

“We propose that stress, inflammation, and consequently impaired cognition in individuals can scale up to communities and populations,” explained lead author Prof Yoram Vodovotz of the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

“This could affect the decision-making and behavior of entire societies, impair our cognitive ability to address complex issues like climate change, social unrest, and infectious disease – and ultimately lead to a self-sustaining cycle of societal dysfunction and environmental degradation,” he added.

Bodily inflammation ‘mapped’ in the brain  

One central premise to the hypothesis is an association between chronic inflammation and cognitive dysfunction.  

“The cause of this well-known phenomenon is not currently known,” said Vodovotz. “We propose a mechanism, which we call the ‘central inflammation map’.”    

The authors’ novel idea is that the brain creates its own copy of bodily inflammation. Normally, this inflammation map allows the brain to manage the inflammatory response and promote healing.   

When inflammation is high or chronic, however, the response goes awry and can damage healthy tissues and organs. The authors suggest the inflammation map could similarly harm the brain and impair cognition, emotion, and behavior.   

Accelerated spread of stress and inflammation online   

A second premise is the spread of chronic inflammation from individuals to populations.  

“While inflammation is not contagious per se, it could still spread via the transmission of stress among people,” explained Vodovotz.   

The authors further suggest that stress is being transmitted faster than ever before, through social media and other digital communications.  

“People are constantly bombarded with high levels of distressing information, be it the news, negative online comments, or a feeling of inadequacy when viewing social media feeds,” said Vodovotz. “We hypothesize that this new dimension of human experience, from which it is difficult to escape, is driving stress, chronic inflammation, and cognitive impairment across global societies.”   

Inflammation as a driver of social and planetary disruption  

These ideas shift our view of inflammation as a biological process restricted to an individual. Instead, the authors see it as a multiscale process linking molecular, cellular, and physiological interactions in each of us to altered decision-making and behavior in populations – and ultimately to large-scale societal and environmental impacts.  

“Stress-impaired judgment could explain the chaotic and counter-intuitive responses of large parts of the global population to stressful events such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic,” explained Vodovotz.  

“An inability to address these and other stressors may propagate a self-fulfilling sense of pervasive danger, causing further stress, inflammation, and impaired cognition in a runaway, positive feedback loop,” he added.  

The fact that current levels of global stress have not led to widespread societal disorder could indicate an equally strong stabilizing effect from “controllers” such as trust in laws, science, and multinational organizations like the United Nations.   

“However, societal norms and institutions are increasingly being questioned, at times rightly so as relics of a foregone era,” said Prof Paul Verschure of Radboud University, the Netherlands, and a co-author of the article. “The challenge today is how we can ward off a new adversarial era of instability due to global stress caused by a multi-scale combination of geopolitical fragmentation, conflicts, and ecological collapse amplified by existential angst, cognitive overload, and runaway disinformation.”    

Reducing social media exposure as part of the solution  

The authors developed a mathematical model to test their ideas and explore ways to reduce stress and build resilience.  

“Preliminary results highlight the need for interventions at multiple levels and scales,” commented co-author Prof Julia Arciero of Indiana University, USA.  

“While anti-inflammatory drugs are sometimes used to treat medical conditions associated with inflammation, we do not believe these are the whole answer for individuals,” said Dr David Katz, co-author and a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine based in the US. “Lifestyle changes such as healthy nutrition, exercise, and reducing exposure to stressful online content could also be important.”  

“The dawning new era of precision and personalized therapeutics could also offer enormous potential,” he added.  

At the societal level, the authors suggest creating calm public spaces and providing education on the norms and institutions that keep our societies stable and functioning.  

“While our ‘inflammation map’ hypothesis and corresponding mathematical model are a start, a coordinated and interdisciplinary research effort is needed to define interventions that would improve the lives of individuals and the resilience of communities to stress. We hope our article stimulates scientists around the world to take up this challenge,” Vodovotz concluded.  

The article is part of the Frontiers in Science multimedia article hub ‘A multiscale map of inflammatory stress’. The hub features a video, an explainer, a version of the article written for kids, and an editorial, viewpoints, and policy outlook from other eminent experts: Prof David Almeida (Penn State University, USA), Prof Pietro Ghezzi (University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy), and Dr Ioannis P Androulakis (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA). 

Journal

Frontiers in Science

DOI

10.3389/1239462

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A multiscale inflammatory map: linking individual stress to societal dysfunction

Article Publication Date

12-Mar-2024

COI Statement

YV is a cofounder of, and stakeholder in, Immunetrics, Inc. and a consultant to Anuna AI. PFMJV is the founder of, and stakeholder in, Eodyne Systems s.l. and Sapiens5 Holding BV. DLK was employed by Tangelo – Intend, Inc. Neither these companies nor the funders mentioned above were involved in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication. The companies mentioned above also did not provide funding for the study. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The authors YV and PV declared that they are editorial board members of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

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International

Acadia’s Nuplazid fails PhIII study due to higher-than-expected placebo effect

After years of trying to expand the market territory for Nuplazid, Acadia Pharmaceuticals might have hit a dead end, with a Phase III fail in schizophrenia…

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March 12, 2024

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After years of trying to expand the market territory for Nuplazid, Acadia Pharmaceuticals might have hit a dead end, with a Phase III fail in schizophrenia due to the placebo arm performing better than expected.

Steve Davis

“We will continue to analyze these data with our scientific advisors, but we do not intend to conduct any further clinical trials with pimavanserin,” CEO Steve Davis said in a Monday press release. Acadia’s stock $ACAD dropped by 17.41% before the market opened Tuesday.

Pimavanserin, a serotonin inverse agonist and also a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist, is already in the market with the brand name Nuplazid for Parkinson’s disease psychosis. Efforts to expand into other indications such as Alzheimer’s-related psychosis and major depression have been unsuccessful, and previous trials in schizophrenia have yielded mixed data at best. Its February presentation does not list other pimavanserin studies in progress.

The Phase III ADVANCE-2 trial investigated 34 mg pimavanserin versus placebo in 454 patients who have negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The study used the negative symptom assessment-16 (NSA-16) total score as a primary endpoint and followed participants up to week 26. Study participants have control of positive symptoms due to antipsychotic therapies.

The company said that the change from baseline in this measure for the treatment arm was similar between the Phase II ADVANCE-1 study and ADVANCE-2 at -11.6 and -11.8, respectively. However, the placebo was higher in ADVANCE-2 at -11.1, when this was -8.5 in ADVANCE-1. The p-value in ADVANCE-2 was 0.4825.

In July last year, another Phase III schizophrenia trial — by Sumitomo and Otsuka — also reported negative results due to what the company noted as Covid-19 induced placebo effect.

According to Mizuho Securities analysts, ADVANCE-2 data were disappointing considering the company applied what it learned from ADVANCE-1, such as recruiting patients outside the US to alleviate a high placebo effect. The Phase III recruited participants in Argentina and Europe.

Analysts at Cowen added that the placebo effect has been a “notorious headwind” in US-based trials, which appears to “now extend” to ex-US studies. But they also noted ADVANCE-1 reported a “modest effect” from the drug anyway.

Nonetheless, pimavanserin’s safety profile in the late-stage study “was consistent with previous clinical trials,” with the drug having an adverse event rate of 30.4% versus 40.3% with placebo, the company said. Back in 2018, even with the FDA approval for Parkinson’s psychosis, there was an intense spotlight on Nuplazid’s safety profile.

Acadia previously aimed to get Nuplazid approved for Alzheimer’s-related psychosis but had many hurdles. The drug faced an adcomm in June 2022 that voted 9-3 noting that the drug is unlikely to be effective in this setting, culminating in a CRL a few months later.

As for the company’s next R&D milestones, Mizuho analysts said it won’t be anytime soon: There is the Phase III study for ACP-101 in Prader-Willi syndrome with data expected late next year and a Phase II trial for ACP-204 in Alzheimer’s disease psychosis with results anticipated in 2026.

Acadia collected $549.2 million in full-year 2023 revenues for Nuplazid, with $143.9 million in the fourth quarter.

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Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare…

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March 12, 2024

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Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare quotes the soothsayer’s warning Julius Caesar about what turned out to be an impending assassination on March 15. The death of American liberty happened around the same time four years ago, when the orders went out from all levels of government to close all indoor and outdoor venues where people gather. 

It was not quite a law and it was never voted on by anyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, people who the public had largely ignored, the public health bureaucrats, all united to tell the executives in charge – mayors, governors, and the president – that the only way to deal with a respiratory virus was to scrap freedom and the Bill of Rights. 

And they did, not only in the US but all over the world. 

The forced closures in the US began on March 6 when the mayor of Austin, Texas, announced the shutdown of the technology and arts festival South by Southwest. Hundreds of thousands of contracts, of attendees and vendors, were instantly scrapped. The mayor said he was acting on the advice of his health experts and they in turn pointed to the CDC, which in turn pointed to the World Health Organization, which in turn pointed to member states and so on. 

There was no record of Covid in Austin, Texas, that day but they were sure they were doing their part to stop the spread. It was the first deployment of the “Zero Covid” strategy that became, for a time, official US policy, just as in China. 

It was never clear precisely who to blame or who would take responsibility, legal or otherwise. 

This Friday evening press conference in Austin was just the beginning. By the next Thursday evening, the lockdown mania reached a full crescendo. Donald Trump went on nationwide television to announce that everything was under control but that he was stopping all travel in and out of US borders, from Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. American citizens would need to return by Monday or be stuck. 

Americans abroad panicked while spending on tickets home and crowded into international airports with waits up to 8 hours standing shoulder to shoulder. It was the first clear sign: there would be no consistency in the deployment of these edicts. 

There is no historical record of any American president ever issuing global travel restrictions like this without a declaration of war. Until then, and since the age of travel began, every American had taken it for granted that he could buy a ticket and board a plane. That was no longer possible. Very quickly it became even difficult to travel state to state, as most states eventually implemented a two-week quarantine rule. 

The next day, Friday March 13, Broadway closed and New York City began to empty out as any residents who could went to summer homes or out of state. 

On that day, the Trump administration declared the national emergency by invoking the Stafford Act which triggers new powers and resources to the Federal Emergency Management Administration. 

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document, only to be released to the public months later. The document initiated the lockdowns. It still does not exist on any government website.

The White House Coronavirus Response Task Force, led by the Vice President, will coordinate a whole-of-government approach, including governors, state and local officials, and members of Congress, to develop the best options for the safety, well-being, and health of the American people. HHS is the LFA [Lead Federal Agency] for coordinating the federal response to COVID-19.

Closures were guaranteed:

Recommend significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Issue widespread ‘stay at home’ directives for public and private organizations, with nearly 100% telework for some, although critical public services and infrastructure may need to retain skeleton crews. Law enforcement could shift to focus more on crime prevention, as routine monitoring of storefronts could be important.

In this vision of turnkey totalitarian control of society, the vaccine was pre-approved: “Partner with pharmaceutical industry to produce anti-virals and vaccine.”

The National Security Council was put in charge of policy making. The CDC was just the marketing operation. That’s why it felt like martial law. Without using those words, that’s what was being declared. It even urged information management, with censorship strongly implied.

The timing here is fascinating. This document came out on a Friday. But according to every autobiographical account – from Mike Pence and Scott Gottlieb to Deborah Birx and Jared Kushner – the gathered team did not meet with Trump himself until the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Saturday and Sunday. 

According to their account, this was his first real encounter with the urge that he lock down the whole country. He reluctantly agreed to 15 days to flatten the curve. He announced this on Monday the 16th with the famous line: “All public and private venues where people gather should be closed.”

This makes no sense. The decision had already been made and all enabling documents were already in circulation. 

There are only two possibilities. 

One: the Department of Homeland Security issued this March 13 HHS document without Trump’s knowledge or authority. That seems unlikely. 

Two: Kushner, Birx, Pence, and Gottlieb are lying. They decided on a story and they are sticking to it. 

Trump himself has never explained the timeline or precisely when he decided to greenlight the lockdowns. To this day, he avoids the issue beyond his constant claim that he doesn’t get enough credit for his handling of the pandemic.

With Nixon, the famous question was always what did he know and when did he know it? When it comes to Trump and insofar as concerns Covid lockdowns – unlike the fake allegations of collusion with Russia – we have no investigations. To this day, no one in the corporate media seems even slightly interested in why, how, or when human rights got abolished by bureaucratic edict. 

As part of the lockdowns, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, as set up in 2018, broke the entire American labor force into essential and nonessential.

They also set up and enforced censorship protocols, which is why it seemed like so few objected. In addition, CISA was tasked with overseeing mail-in ballots. 

Only 8 days into the 15, Trump announced that he wanted to open the country by Easter, which was on April 12. His announcement on March 24 was treated as outrageous and irresponsible by the national press but keep in mind: Easter would already take us beyond the initial two-week lockdown. What seemed to be an opening was an extension of closing. 

This announcement by Trump encouraged Birx and Fauci to ask for an additional 30 days of lockdown, which Trump granted. Even on April 23, Trump told Georgia and Florida, which had made noises about reopening, that “It’s too soon.” He publicly fought with the governor of Georgia, who was first to open his state. 

Before the 15 days was over, Congress passed and the president signed the 880-page CARES Act, which authorized the distribution of $2 trillion to states, businesses, and individuals, thus guaranteeing that lockdowns would continue for the duration. 

There was never a stated exit plan beyond Birx’s public statements that she wanted zero cases of Covid in the country. That was never going to happen. It is very likely that the virus had already been circulating in the US and Canada from October 2019. A famous seroprevalence study by Jay Bhattacharya came out in May 2020 discerning that infections and immunity were already widespread in the California county they examined. 

What that implied was two crucial points: there was zero hope for the Zero Covid mission and this pandemic would end as they all did, through endemicity via exposure, not from a vaccine as such. That was certainly not the message that was being broadcast from Washington. The growing sense at the time was that we all had to sit tight and just wait for the inoculation on which pharmaceutical companies were working. 

By summer 2020, you recall what happened. A restless generation of kids fed up with this stay-at-home nonsense seized on the opportunity to protest racial injustice in the killing of George Floyd. Public health officials approved of these gatherings – unlike protests against lockdowns – on grounds that racism was a virus even more serious than Covid. Some of these protests got out of hand and became violent and destructive. 

Meanwhile, substance abuse rage – the liquor and weed stores never closed – and immune systems were being degraded by lack of normal exposure, exactly as the Bakersfield doctors had predicted. Millions of small businesses had closed. The learning losses from school closures were mounting, as it turned out that Zoom school was near worthless. 

It was about this time that Trump seemed to figure out – thanks to the wise council of Dr. Scott Atlas – that he had been played and started urging states to reopen. But it was strange: he seemed to be less in the position of being a president in charge and more of a public pundit, Tweeting out his wishes until his account was banned. He was unable to put the worms back in the can that he had approved opening. 

By that time, and by all accounts, Trump was convinced that the whole effort was a mistake, that he had been trolled into wrecking the country he promised to make great. It was too late. Mail-in ballots had been widely approved, the country was in shambles, the media and public health bureaucrats were ruling the airwaves, and his final months of the campaign failed even to come to grips with the reality on the ground. 

At the time, many people had predicted that once Biden took office and the vaccine was released, Covid would be declared to have been beaten. But that didn’t happen and mainly for one reason: resistance to the vaccine was more intense than anyone had predicted. The Biden administration attempted to impose mandates on the entire US workforce. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, that effort was thwarted but not before HR departments around the country had already implemented them. 

As the months rolled on – and four major cities closed all public accommodations to the unvaccinated, who were being demonized for prolonging the pandemic – it became clear that the vaccine could not and would not stop infection or transmission, which means that this shot could not be classified as a public health benefit. Even as a private benefit, the evidence was mixed. Any protection it provided was short-lived and reports of vaccine injury began to mount. Even now, we cannot gain full clarity on the scale of the problem because essential data and documentation remains classified. 

After four years, we find ourselves in a strange position. We still do not know precisely what unfolded in mid-March 2020: who made what decisions, when, and why. There has been no serious attempt at any high level to provide a clear accounting much less assign blame. 

Not even Tucker Carlson, who reportedly played a crucial role in getting Trump to panic over the virus, will tell us the source of his own information or what his source told him. There have been a series of valuable hearings in the House and Senate but they have received little to no press attention, and none have focus on the lockdown orders themselves. 

The prevailing attitude in public life is just to forget the whole thing. And yet we live now in a country very different from the one we inhabited five years ago. Our media is captured. Social media is widely censored in violation of the First Amendment, a problem being taken up by the Supreme Court this month with no certainty of the outcome. The administrative state that seized control has not given up power. Crime has been normalized. Art and music institutions are on the rocks. Public trust in all official institutions is at rock bottom. We don’t even know if we can trust the elections anymore. 

In the early days of lockdown, Henry Kissinger warned that if the mitigation plan does not go well, the world will find itself set “on fire.” He died in 2023. Meanwhile, the world is indeed on fire. The essential struggle in every country on earth today concerns the battle between the authority and power of permanent administration apparatus of the state – the very one that took total control in lockdowns – and the enlightenment ideal of a government that is responsible to the will of the people and the moral demand for freedom and rights. 

How this struggle turns out is the essential story of our times. 

CODA: I’m embedding a copy of PanCAP Adapted, as annotated by Debbie Lerman. You might need to download the whole thing to see the annotations. If you can help with research, please do.

*  *  *

Jeffrey Tucker is the author of the excellent new book 'Life After Lock-Down'

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 23:40

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