The Year When Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged

The Year in which Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged: "It is still possible that the catastrophic and pointless losses imposed by Covid crackdowns will finally awaken enough people to their growing subjugation. But the most dangerous myth is that Americans will finally become safe after they cease making any efforts to leash their rulers." ~ James...

Five Times this Year the New York Times Accidentally Told the Truth

Five Times this Year the New York Times Accidentally Told the Truth: "The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This article highlights the...

Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong

Twelve Times the Lockdowners Were Wrong: "This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens. We trusted these people with our lives and liberties and here is what they did with that trust." ~ Phillip W. Magness

Your Trauma and Mine: A Retrospective on 2020

Your Trauma and Mine: A Retrospective on 2020: "The many layers of trauma we’ve all experienced this year are awesome to contemplate. But if you are reading this, you are like me, a survivor. We are wounded but in other ways stronger than before, more dedicated to truth, more committed to the ideals of freedom, less naive and ready to go...

WHO Deletes Naturally Acquired Immunity from Its Website

WHO Deletes Naturally Acquired Immunity from Its Website: "When the existing textbooks that students use in college contradict the latest official pronouncements from the authorities during a crisis in which the ruling class is clearly attempting to seize permanent power, we’ve got a problem." ~ Jeffrey Tucker

Twelve Principles of Public Health

Twelve Principles of Public Health: "It is important for public health scientists and officials to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences. This pandemic has proved that many non-epidemiologists understand public health better than some epidemiologists." ~ Dr. Martin Kulldorff

Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence

Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence: "The use of universal lockdowns in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen has no precedent. It has been a science experiment in real time, with most of the human population used as lab rats. The costs are legion. The question is whether lockdowns worked to control the virus in a way that...

Cage Keeper Kleptocracy

Covid and The Rise of Cage Keeper Democracy: "The Covid pandemic is fueling many politicians’ passion for destroying Americans’ freedom based on the flimsiest pretexts. Thus far, politicians have paid no price for their constitutional demolitions. The only certainty is that much of the media and legions of activists will cheer the next...

When Do We Start Coming out of the Covid-19 Mass Hysteria?

When Do We Start Coming out of the Covid-19 Mass Hysteria?: "At some point hopefully we will feel the shame of the Salem witch hunters and all those who aided and abetted them, those in the courts who squirmed and screamed every time a suspect witch was questioned. Maybe we’ll shun the current panic-mongers, as those people were later shunned. But for...

Governments Ignored Truth As Red China Lied

Why Did the U.S. Copy China on Virus Control?: "Our governments are ignoring public health ethics. They have hijacked science, imposed life-altering edicts based on bad theories, manipulated everyone with media and technology, and now tell us we can never return to normal. What is the endgame? It can’t be good." ~ Stacey Rudin

Why Hayek was Right About Nazis Being Socialists

Why Hayek was Right About Nazis Being Socialists: "I would further ask him to concede that whether he agrees with the ends and goals of other socialists, their use of command and control and their introduction of some form of institutional central planning to pursue their declared 'social good' makes their system just as much a 'socialist' one...

The Censorship of Dr. Briand

The Censorship of Dr. Briand: "The main problem with all of this goes far beyond Dr. Briand’s research. This is all representative of an unproductive orthodoxy that exists around Covid-19. An orthodoxy that has a set view on how to think and how to respond to the virus." ~ Ethan Yang

Covid Misclassification: What Do the Data Suggest?

Covid Misclassification: What Do the Data Suggest?: "Even during the April peak, excess deaths from dementia were greater than excess deaths from all respiratory disease. This is very difficult to explain by any hypothesis other than death by lockdown." ~ Gilbert Berdine

Viruses, Lockdowns, and Biomic Learning

Viruses, Lockdowns, and Biomic Learning: "The best testimony to the success of these mutual learning processes is not only the amazing story of Taiwan. It is our very presence on the planet today, some 8 billion learning systems strong, distributed as widely as human minds and interacting everywhere to ensure the survival of learning...

Blinded By Disinformation Of Data

Blinded by a Blizzard of Data: "What’s important is that we address each risk with commensurate care. That the media has consistently reported on Covid without appropriate context suggests that historians will look back on 2020 less for its outbreak of Covid than for its outbreak of hysteria." ~ Antony Davies & James R. Harrigan

John Hopkins Highlights Serious Accounting Error Regarding Covid Deaths

New Study Highlights Serious Accounting Error Regarding Covid Deaths: "The accounting error has likely led to a number of policy decisions that have drastically crippled our ability to support the general welfare of society, economically, socially, and spiritually. Going forward these findings should give us pause and reconsideration over the threat Covid-19...

Corona-Absurdity Collides with California, New York, and Thanksgiving

Corona-Absurdity Collides with California, New York, and Thanksgiving: "If coronavirus takes a lunch break then it will soon enough take many more breaks throughout the day. Absurd eventually swallows itself. Even in California and New York." ~ John Tamny

Asymptomatic Spread Is Nonexistent

Asymptomatic Spread Revisited: "We keep hearing about how we should follow the science. The claim is tired by now. We know what’s really happening. The lockdown lobby ignores whatever contradicts their narrative, preferring unverified anecdotes over an actual scientific study of 10 million residents in what was the world’s...

An Education in Viruses and Public Health, from Michael Yeadon, Former VP of Pfizer

An Education in Viruses and Public Health, from Michael Yeadon, Former VP of Pfizer: This video provides one of the most erudite and informative looks at Covid-19 and the consequences of lockdowns. It was remarkable this week to watch as it appeared on YouTube and was forcibly taken down only 2 hours after posting. The copy below is hosted on LBRY, a blockchain video...

The Blizzard of Bogus Journalism on Covid

The Blizzard of Bogus Journalism on Covid: "The world is being seriously misled by major media organs. The politicians are continuing to panic and impose draconian controls, fully nine months into this, and despite mountains of evidence of the real harm the lockdowns are causing everyone. If you haven’t lost faith in politicians and...

The Sordid History of Scam Science

The Sordid History of Scam Science: "We have to return to teaching people how to research and think for themselves and not just mindlessly jump on #bandwagons while falling for gross rhetorical tricks." ~ Robert E. Wright

Covid Treated As House Arrest

Getting Covid Is Not a Crime: "As states begin to lock down/lock up again, our choice remains clear: one simple, tried and true rule that respects individual rights and liberties, or myriads of oppressive rules that work at cross purposes and are certain to be mocked now and in the future." ~ Robert E. Wright

Cost of US Lockdowns: A Preliminary Report

Cost of US Lockdowns: A Preliminary Report: "In the debate over coronavirus policy, there has been far too little focus on the costs of lockdowns. It’s very common for the proponents of these interventions to write articles and large studies without even mentioning the downsides." ~ AIER Staff

Does Science Really Demand that Bars and Restaurants Close?

Does Science Really Demand that Bars and Restaurants Close?: "Until we start questioning 'the science' or demand that our policymakers stop hiding behind the boastful yet ambiguous label of 'science' and adequately identify precisely what evidence they are following, we will be sucked into an endless spiral of cyclical shutdowns. Unless they tell us what...

Even a Military-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals

Even a Military-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals: "The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus...

Overtesting Produces Phony Panic

Joe Biden, the New York Times, ‘Dark’ Winters, and ‘Terrifying Surges’: "The more a country tests, the more infections that country will unearth. Doctors and other experts can decide for themselves whether relentless testing is good, bad, or not terribly relevant, but it presumably explains a lot when it comes to virus spread in the U.S. More than politicians and...

Being Wrong About Great Barrington Declaration on Lockdown Policies

Tyler Cowen Is Wrong About Great Barrington Declaration on Lockdown Policies: "Lockdowns are being re-imposed across Europe, and we’re in increasing danger of seeing them re-imposed in parts of the United States. Ironically, if policy makers heed the advice in the Great Barrington Declaration, which Tyler disagrees with, then the lockdowns would be behind us." ~ Benjamin...

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Tyler Cowen on Covid-19

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Tyler Cowen on Covid-19: "By failing to take account of Covid’s differential impact on people according to their age, governments have compromised their credibility. By falsely treating everyone from kindergartners through college students and even middle-aged folks in normal health as if they all are as imperiled by...

We Tried To Intimidate A Virus - And Failed

Death by Lockdown: "We attempted to intimidate a virus with PhDs and political power, hoping that it would shrivel and die, and in so doing dramatically disabled human freedom and social functioning. What do we have to show for it? Massive carnage, and a virus that is still with us." ~ Jeffrey A. Tucker

Why Do We Waste Time Listening To Paul Krugman?

Paul Krugman, the Lock-’Em-Down Economist: "Those genuinely interested in finding the best solutions to complex problems do not automatically react with vitriol, smears, and petty insults, but carefully contemplate the ideas in question. One might speculate that the flippancy with which Krugman, Khullar, and the other elite pundits...

No One Is Required to Join the ‘Herd’ In Search of Immunity

No One Is Required to Join the ‘Herd’ In Search of Immunity: "Freedom is always the answer, including freedom to not join the herd. Unknown is why this bothers so many on the left, not to mention why what’s timeless bothers them. It seems they enjoy forcing their values on others, and more than that, they positively revel in being told what to do." ~ John...

Disease Control Makes An Elementary Logical Mistake

Do the Disease Eradicators Make an Elementary Logical Mistake?: "Trying to bludgeon effects into existence in order to blot out causes is a conventional mistake within the social sciences, and, apparently among certain naive disease suppressors too." ~ Jeffrey Tucker

Why This Disastrous Experiment Also Hurt States that Did Not Lock Down

Why This Disastrous Experiment Also Hurt States that Did Not Lock Down: "How much more shrunken would the state’s economy be if the state had locked down in the way that California or New York had? That’s the more important measure." ~ John Tamny

The Strange Advent of Lockdown Denialism

The Strange Advent of Lockdown Denialism: "As the latest repackaging of this epidemiological bill of goods gains traction in our public discourse, the world has but one viable pathway out of the present social, economic, and medical hellscape. And that is to meet the lockdowners with a resounding no." ~ Phillip W. Magness

The Scam Of Lockdowns

“Superstition in the Pigeon”: Can Lockdowns Really Stop Death?: "We are faced with a virus with a 997 out of 1000 survival rate. We have done harder things before. We can only be free of this plague by remembering something we have always known: neither we, nor our favorite politicians, have control over death." ~ Stacey Rudin

End Mitigation Now.

Reaching Immunity: A Private Summit of Epidemiologists Against Lockdowns (Video): "During the greatest public policy crisis of our lifetimes, this film chronicles what appears to be a turning point, the moment when the moral courage of a few people broke through the pro-lockdown opinion consensus. With patience and careful explanation, the panel reveals the lockdown agenda as...

No. Covid Is Not Different

"Many people today seem almost eager to be misled about the danger posed by Covid. Much of humanity today appears to perversely enjoy being duped into the irrational fear that any one of us, regardless of age or health, is at the mercy of a brutal beast categorically more lethal than (it in fact is)”

Run Away from Covid or Get Immune?

Run Away from Covid or Get Immune?: "Something tells me that rumors that Covid-19 can be caught twice will suddenly be 'proven' by 'the' scientists in a not-yet-peer-reviewed study that will be retracted just days after 3 November. Evidence of the inconvenient truth that survival brings immunity is overwhelming but if we have...

Two Types of Terror in Michigan

Two Types of Terror in Michigan: "Will the Michigan plot be touted by the media to valorize every government official who placed any American under house arrest in response to the pandemic? It is possible to heartily condemn both nitwit conspirators and oppressive politicians. Unfortunately, the media will likely pay far more...

The Great Barrington Declaration - Rebutting COVID Dishonesties

Real scientists and citizens recognize the failure of COVID lockdowns

Lockdown: The New Totalitarianism

Lockdown: The New Totalitarianism: "The lockdowns are looking less like a gigantic error and more like the unfolding of a fanatical political ideology and policy experiment that attacks core postulates of civilization at their very root. It’s time we take it seriously and combat it with the same fervor with which a free people...

The Compulsory Masking of New York City

The Compulsory Masking of New York City: "If these officials had our best interests in mind, instead of treating us like children or animals upon whom arbitrary punishment is inflicted in order to obtain obedience, they would contemplate the real problem and narrowly tailor solutions, taking into consideration the impact of any new...

Disease Panic vs. Medical Reality

Disease Panic vs. Medical Reality: "I urge the reader to approach Corona with an open mind, and when in doubt, to check the citations. Because, at the risk of sounding dramatic, our civilization depends on it. If we, as a species, can be so easily manipulated into ceding our liberty, dignity, and very lives to irrational fear, I...

The Clearest and Best Video Explanation of the Virus, the Lockdowns, and the Impact

The Clearest and Best Video Explanation of the Virus, the Lockdowns, and the Impact: "Those of us who have been reading and writing on lockdowns and the Covid-19 virus have been frustrated in competition with media frenzy and disinformation. Many times since February or so, I imagined that the latest study would put an end to the fake-science silliness and highly damaging...

Celebrate Entrepreneurs, Don’t Guillotine Them

Celebrate Entrepreneurs, Don’t Guillotine Them: "The key to getting wealthy in a capitalistic society is to produce something so valuable that millions of people want to trade for it." ~ Raymond C. Niles

A Closer Look at the States that Stayed Open

A Closer Look at the States that Stayed Open: "There is no definitive evidence to suggest that stay at home orders are effective at addressing COVID-19. Furthermore, the United States experiment with the policy has yielded results that are not favorable to Dr. Fauci’s suggestion regarding the nationwide implementation of stay at home...

Governments Go Groupthink

Governments thriw away analysus and just foolishly copy each other "A mystery for months is how it is that so many governments in so many different places on earth could have adopted the same or very similar preposterous policies, no matter the threat level of the virus, and without firm evidence that interventions had any hope of being effective."

Anthony Fauci Is Still A Liar

Fact-Checking Fauci: "The pro-lockdown position favored by Fauci and several US media outlets has become a matter of ideological commitment. Whether they are doing so to rationalize the costs we have already incurred from this disastrous approach or to further politicize the pandemic response for a variety of...

When Public Reacts Rationally And Doesn’t

My Covid Cri de Cœur: "I cannot explain why the public reacts rationally – that is, without much concern – to news of famous young people testing positive for COVID but, to other news about COVID, reacts irrationally. This discrepancy itself only causes me to worry further about our ability, or willingness, to put...

The Political Class And Its Hatred Of People

The Bloodless Political Class and Its Lack of Empathy: "Power is dangerous even when not used, but deploying it brutally and pointlessly rots the soul. This is a good description of almost the entire ruling class around the world today, save a few civilized countries that never locked down." ~ Jeffrey Tucker

Month Four of the Panic: Where Is the Evidence?

Month Four of the Panic: Where Is the Evidence?: "If there is no extraordinary evidence, why are there such extraordinary claims and responses? Why has the world medical, social, and economic order been torn apart for a pandemic that looks much like a normal influenza pandemic? These are the questions for which we will be seeking answers for...

The Sickness Of Lockdown Denial

Why Does the New York Times Deny the Obvious?: "It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they’ve done. Are we really supposed to...

Who Were the Entebbe Hijackers? The Full Story

Who Were the Entebbe Hijackers? The Full Story: The Entebbe Raid of July 4, 1976, is remembered as a high point of counter-terror warfare in general, and of the Israeli contribution to that field in particular. The raid involved astonishing audacity, precise and pinpoint intelligence, great courage

Fauci Is Wrong: New York Did Not Do it “Correctly”

Fauci Is Wrong: New York Did Not Do it “Correctly”: "The deep human costs of this virus and its corresponding policies have been exacerbated by blind hubris and unfounded pride––which, to no small extent, saw their expression in the conceit of rule by models. Though it might be too little too late, diligent reflection and readjustment in future...

The Models Were Wildly Wrong about Reopening Too

The Models Were Wildly Wrong about Reopening Too: "These flawed models begin with an unproven assumption, namely that lockdowns are effective at combating the coronavirus. The models are therefore automatically calibrated to produce a sharp spike in deaths after the removal of lockdowns or any move toward reopening." ~ Phil Magness

Month Four of the Panic: Where Is the Evidence?

Month Four of the Panic: Where Is the Evidence?: "If there is no extraordinary evidence, why are there such extraordinary claims and responses? Why has the world medical, social, and economic order been torn apart for a pandemic that looks much like a normal influenza pandemic? These are the questions for which we will be seeking answers for...

Epidemiologists Have Proven Fools

What Economists Can Teach Epidemiologists: "Hysterical, wildly off-the-mark forecasts about COVID-19 will ultimately cause more harm than good, and find their origins in the same set of snags which regularly trip up econometric forecasts. In the epidemiological version, instead of predicting a new Great Depression, they brought an...

Again, What Were the Benefits of Locking Down?

Again, What Were the Benefits of Locking Down?: "With the evidence coming in that the lockdowns were neither economically nor medically effective, it is going to be increasingly difficult for lockdown partisans to marshal the evidence to convince the public that isolating people, destroying businesses, and destroying social institutions was...

The Modelers Thought of Everything Except Reality

The Modelers Thought of Everything Except Reality: "For the sake of health, prosperity, human rights, and liberty, leave disease mitigation to the professionals and get it out of the hands of modelers and the politicians they intimidate into implementing their plans." ~ AIER

The Sears Catalog And How Market Economics Thwart Discrimination

The Economic Color Blindness of the Sears Catalog: Sears played an important role in circumventing the institutionalized racial discrimination of the Jim Crow South.

The Phony Brief About Michael Flynn

From the First Page, Judge Gleeson’s Brief Against Flynn is a Travesty: You know a lawyer’s bluffing if he inundates the court with case authority for an ostensibly simple principle. The amicus brief that Judge Gleeson filed with Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case has those string cites. Gleeson’s bluffing. Wor...

The Coronavirus Model Scam

The Fatal Conceit of COVID-19 Epidemic Models: "The epidemiological world has published countless articles and studies warning against the tendency and ease with which one can overestimate Ro. We have fallen prey to this tendency once again." Gregory van Kipnis

Scientists Replaced Knowledge With Assumptions

It Is Time To Call Shenanigans!: “If scientists truly knew nothing about SARS-COV-2 then they should have advocated doing nothing until it was well enough understood to proffer effective policies lest they inadvertently contribute to its spread.” ~ Robert Wright

An Honest Conversation on Race?

An Honest Conversation on Race?: One of the trite pearls of wisdom repeated ad nauseam for the past several days is that America needs to have an honest conversation on race.� It’s a constant theme repeated in the self-flagellating virtue signaling spewing forth from prom...

NY Times Fails Again

Why Does the New York Times Deny the Obvious?: "It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they’ve done. Are we really supposed to...

The 2007 Origins of Forced School Closings and Mandatory Human Separation

The 2007 Origins of Forced School Closings and Mandatory Human Separation: "If you have any doubt that the main push for the lockdown was less about therapy than models, inspired by the fantasies of a computer scientist rather than a genuine expert in viruses, a social experiment conducted with disregard for freedom and the rule of law, a wild and foolhardy central...

No, Lockdowns Don’t Save Lives

Did the Lockdown Save Lives?: No matter how much we try to spin this in our heads, no matter how much we want to believe that something good has come out of this catastrophe, we are all going to have someday to deal with the terrible but likely reality that it was all for naught.

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea: So far as anyone can tell, the intellectual machinery that made this mess was invented 14 years ago, and not by epidemiologists but by computer-simulation modelers. It was adopted not by experienced doctors – they warned ferociously against it – but by politicians.

Most Places are Not New York: A Look Through the COVID-19 Data

Most Places are Not New York: A Look Through the COVID-19 Data: Economic activity in one country is dependent upon economic activity of its trading partners. Trade makes us rich because it allows each of us to provide value and offer it to others in the market. If half of the world is in lockdown, we are all poorer for it.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Illegal Lockdowns

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Decision Is Brilliant: Wisconsin’s Supreme Court decided by a 4-3 vote on Wednesday May 13, 2020 to strike down the state’s “Safer at Home” order, its COVID-19 economic lockdown in other words. It did so completely, immediately, and unequivocally.

The Indefensible Cult of Cuomo

The Indefensible Cult of Cuomo

Doctor Fauci Fails At Central Planning

The Crisis Experts are Themselves the Crisis: So are Fauci and Gates wrong, or are Musk and Burry incorrect? Should local, state and national politicians seek economic re-opening, or is this virus so lethal that we must remain locked down for weeks? No one really knows. Since no one does, better for governments and experts to do nothing so...

Politics Kills Actual Science

A Wizard of Oz Virus: The COVID-19 Hoax: �When I speak of a hoax and The Virus, I don’t mean there isn’t in our population a pathogen identified loosely as COVID-19 or, as the “unwoke” might say, the Wuhan Flu. As with past respiratory diseases, it’s also ...

We Can’t Trust Governments to Manage a Pandemic

We Can’t Trust Governments to Manage a Pandemic: It is unconscionable—indeed, criminally irresponsible—to predicate policies as extreme and draconian as these lockdowns on such poor models and incomplete data—particularly when the very first serious seroprevalence survey we have in the country explodes the foundation of these policies.

How Wrong Were the Models and Why?

How Wrong Were the Models and Why?: Epidemiological expertise may convey specialized knowledge about the nature of disease transmission that is specifically suited to forecasting a pandemic’s spread. But it does not exempt the modelers from social scientific best practices for testing the robustness of their claims. Nor does it...

Lockdowns Don’t Work

Lockdowns Don’t Work: Many policies provide public-health benefits in pandemics, such as making facemasks mandatory, cancelling school, and banning large assemblies and long-distance travel. But ordering people to cower in their homes, harassing people for having playdates in the park, and ordering small businesses to cl

We Don’t Need a Cure to Reopen

We Don’t Need a Cure to Reopen: I hope someday soon we will once again be having very rational yet vigorous discussions about the fundamental issues related to the liberal principles of justice and political economy, and we can point to the resiliency and ingenuity of a free people even in the face of adversity as one of the...

The Political Class and the Media Are Spinning COVID19 Tales

Now It’s Obvious: The Political Class and the Media Are Spinning Tales: Rather than accepting the epistemic limitations of the current crisis as a reason to abstain from aggressive policies, they double down on the same. And when their chosen courses go awry or fail to deliver on their promised salvation, history is rewritten to obscure the fact that such promises...

The Monumental Failure of the CDC

The Monumental Failure of the CDC: This time, these government failures have resulted in millions of Americans being all stuck in their homes, schools being closed, the economy in a recession, and 18,000 people having died so far.

Maybe there's a reason why dire projections about COVID-19 have been wrong

Maybe there's a reason why dire projections about COVID-19 have been wrong: COVID-19 has proven to be a brutal flu for those unlucky enough to get it.��Any new disease that's successfully left animals behind for human-to-human transmission is highly risky.��Nevertheless, the current insanity gripping ...

The CDC Confesses to Lying About COVID-19 Death Numbers

The CDC Confesses to Lying About COVID-19 Death Numbers: Can any government statistics on COVID-19 deaths be trusted?

It is an open question now that we are learning that the highly respected, world-class Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lying to us.

This revelation comes a f...

People Adapt, Thwarting Government Plans

People Adapt, Thwarting Government Plans: If you derive no other takeaway from the political response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, let it be this: human behavior adapts in real-time to ever-changing expectations of the future.

Political Furor over Drugs that Might Help Fight against COVID-19

Political Furor over Drugs that Might Help Fight against COVID-19: Here's what we're dealing with:

California and New York sowed the seeds of their destruction

California and New York sowed the seeds of their destruction: Trump has not been perfect in managing the coronavirus situation, in large part because perfection in these situations is illusory.��From the start, the available information about the coronavirus has been fluid, whether because of China ...

A Government That Does Everything Can’t Do Anything Well

A Government That Does Everything Can’t Do Anything Well: The often-prescient Tyler Cowen commented not long ago that libertarianism, if it is to grow as a political movement, should embrace arguments for expanding state capacity in some areas. He named this approach “State Capacity Libertarianism” (SCL). I’m not sure you have to go that far, accepting...

China Virus And Unreality

The virus from China has been handled foolishly by everyone and showcased the denial of reality prevalent in life.

We Were Wrong: So Sorry that We Ruined Your Life

We Were Wrong: So Sorry that We Ruined Your Life: Andrew Cuomo has admitted some of the error. In a much-welcome change, he has even deregulated medical services. There’s just a hint of humility and humanity embedded in these statements and actions. We need more of that, vastly more.

800 Medical Specialists Caution Against Draconian Measures

800 Medical Specialists Caution Against Draconian Measures: If you worry that the coercive measures government is proposing go way too far, you are not alone: many in the mainstream of the medical profession agree with you.

Incarceration, Monetization, and Nationalization Can’t Preserve Our Health or Wealth

Incarceration, Monetization, and Nationalization Can’t Preserve Our Health or Wealth: Perhaps the main difference between the mild reaction to the more lethal H1NI virus in 2010 and the hyped, heated reaction to the Wuhan China virus in 2020 is the difference between President Obama, who was adored by most of the media, and President Trump, who, we know, is reviled by most of it.

An Epistemic Crisis

An Epistemic Crisis: The ray of hope is that reliable tests are going to be distributed widely in the coming days, and that will solve the great epistemic crisis. There is hope and light at the end of this very dark tunnel of ignorance.

South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates are Falling

South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates are Falling: What’s the better for dealing with pandemic disease: martial-law quarantines imposed by the state or keeping society open while trusting individuals, families, and communities to make intelligent decisions?

Vegas Surge As NASCAR Enters Fontana

Strat 200 for the Gander Truck Series turned into a rip-roaring sidedraft fight on two separate occasions between Kyle Busch, the prohibitive favorite, and Sheldon Creed.

Winston Cup Las Vegas Pennzoil 400



After a week of controversy centered on Ryan Newman's crash NASCAR got some positive momentum at Las Vegas with a spirited pair of races in Winston Cup and the Gander Truck Series and an unplanned two-day affair for the Xfinity Series.   The big picture takeaways -



1 - Goodyear brought a softer left side tire for the Winston Cup cars and it seemed to be a substantially better for the high downforce-draft duct package.  We'd be surprised if this softer left side tire doesn't become a standard right now for Fontana next week and other tracks like it.


2 - Chevrolet's new car showed eye-opening improvement from the last two seasons.   Not only did Chevrolets lead 101 laps (mostly by Chase Elliott who spun on Lap 222 thus producing a typical underachievement finish for him of 20th) but six Chevrolets from six different teams finished in the top ten - Ricky Stenhouse in JTG-Daugherty's 47, Austin Dillon in the RCR 3, Jimmie Johnson with Hendrick, Bubba Wallace with Petty thanks to a gutsy non-pitstop call by his former JGR crew chief Jerry Baxter, Kyle Larson with Ganassi, and Ty Dillon with Germain Racing.   This is the kind of depth Chevrolet needs to strengthen and should have been pursuing from the beginning; it will be a key angle to watch at Fontana.


3 - Toyota's strength without numbers strategy backfired as no Toyota finished higher than Kyle Busch's 15th, this after three Camrys were busted in prerace tech and started in the back, including Busch.   With just five cars Toyota is grossly outnumbered with in essence just one team.


4 - The story everyone watched was Ross Chastain subbing for Ryan Newman.   Chastain, borriwed from Ganassi Racing, acquitted himself well enough - despite a late spin - that speculation soon began circulating on social media whether when Newman returns a third Roush car will have to be fielded to accommodate Newman while retaining Chastain.   We expect Chastain to run respectably at Fontana.

Steve O'Donnell's opening presser on Ryan Newman's crash



5 - There has been a growing controversy in angry exchanges in NASCAR media involving the Barstool Sports website.  While at least some of the controversy may be legitimate, having followed NASCAR media coverage all these decades what has always been striking is the groupthink mentality that has long existed there and the longstanding need for fresh and differing perspectives to be brought to the press room and to coverage in general, such as media that will challenge the opinions of drivers should the issue in question warrant it.   





So it proceeds as the series enters Fontana.

Going Forward Following Daytona

The Daytona 150s were some of the best racing of Speedweeks and will be among the most competitive events of the season


The Winston Cup season of 2020 is now underway with the Daytona 500 and going forward the Cup tour has something to look back on with Speedweeks.   Some quick takes on the race where dreams can be made but where they also go to die -


Chevrolet's ballyhooed new car ultimately didn't deliver.    The 150s showed promise for the Chevrolet with its redesigned front, and Ryan Preece in Brad Daugherty's 47 led 24 total laps - but almost none of them happened after the race was postponed with twenty laps in to Monday afternoon.  Chase Elliott led 23 laps but he's a driver who can never advance beyond doing less with more, and he didn't deliver when it mattered either in his 150 or the 500; in fact Hendrick Motorsports as a group personifies the continued weakness of the Chevrolet camp as William Byron won his 150 but crashed in the 500, Alex Bowman qualified on the front row and led in his 150 but faded and was mostly MIA in the 500 (finishing 24th), and Jimmie Johnson led three laps and contended for a long time but ended the 500 in 35th. 

Only two Chevrolets finished in the top ten and neither got there because they were all that good or even decent at all - Brendan Gaughn, whose racing career never really recovered from collapsing at the end of the 2003 Truck season, and Kyle Larson, like Elliott a less-with-more underachiever whose commitment to Winston Cup now can be seriously questioned.   The rest of the Chevy fleet didn't even do that well - RCR saw Austin Dillon run decently all week but with only 12th to show for it, Bubba Wallace finished an eye-opening fifth in his 150 but his car never really sucked up in the draft or pushed anyone, RCR's new rookie Tyler Reddick didn't look like an improvement in the 8 over his predecessor, and Stenhouse's JTG-Daugherty teammate Ryan Preece looks like a drafting failure.



Analytics racing doesn't work.    The Busch Clash was an "analytics race," to quote Kurt Busch, and the first segment of the 500 looked like one as well, one that left everyone from drivers to media confused as to the purpose.   The Toyotas forfeited the first segment before finally going for the lead, as Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch combined to lead 93 laps.   In the end the analytics approach accomplished nothing.



Toyota's strength in lack of numbers isn't succeeding because it's a good strategy.   Toyota deliberately backs only one organization - Joe Gibbs, with its satellite deal with Bob Leavine's team and Christopher Bell.  There were thus five Toyotas in the 500 and only one finished higher than 18th.  The notion that Toyota is succeeding because it limits its backing to one organization is seriously debatable; it seems absurd that Toyota would struggle if it backed two or three organizations, notably when JGR and the Barney Visser team were nose to nose for championships in the 2016-18 period, combining to win 45 races.  If anything there truly is strength in numbers.



Joey Logano is Ernie Irvan.   The Busch Clash began Joey Logano's roller coaster week.   He swerved into Kyle Busch and wiped out a number of cars, and one of them was teammate Brad Keselowski, who was angry enough to lash out afterward.   Logano then won his 150 in a terrific sidedraft fight, then took out a bunch of cars in the final laps of the 500 before getting wrecked himself a few laps later.   It's always what he's been since the infamous January 2009 NASCAR Toyota All-Star Shootout at Irwindale Speedway. 

An interesting side note; since joining Penske Logano and Keselowski have each won 21 races.




So the Winston Cup tour heads to Las Vegas, most of the field hoping something better develops of it.

NASCAR Now Must Address Blocking Following Newman Disaster

So the 2020 Daytona 500 will not be remembered for terrific racing.  It will be remembered for Ryan Newman's bad crash.   That Newman as of this late-Monday authorship is stable albeit seriously hurt is a sign he'll pull through, though we seriously doubt he'll ever race again. 

Newman started this entire mess when he swerved to chop off Ryan Blaney and got nailed. 

Steve O'Donnell's statement on Newman's injuries following the 500

On social media there was widespread comparison to Dale Earnhardt's fatal 2001 crash - to which this mess has zero comparison.   The 1995 Jimmy Horton crash where he was T-boned in midair by Ed Dixon is what the Newman crash resembled. 


The epidemic of crashes at the end of the Daytona 500 came a week after melees in the Busch Clash, and both bring to the fore what a problem blocking has become in NASCAR.   The first big melee on the backstretch was a slam draft gone wrong; the irony is the drivers had pretty well policed it following the Clash.   Other wrecks such as the late Turn One mess were caused by blocks; again drivers seemed to have policed it reasonably following the Busch Clash.

It's been an issue for some years now with blocks going wrong, such as Aric Almirola's last lap crash in 2018 and Austin Dillon's disastrous swerve last July in the Firecracker 400 - ironically the first of now-three straight "plate" races that have been delayed or cut into two days by rain.

Correspondent Michael Dickinson makes an interesting analogy to the 2009 Keselowski-Edwards melee, ironically involving Newman, and which also illustrates the issue of blocking.

Contrast this with Grant Enfinger in winning the NextEra 250 on Friday night before the 500.  He held his line and simply raced a challenging Jordan Anderson to the stripe.  The two bounced off each other but none of it was gratuitous, and it made for a terrific finish to what had become a rip-roaring race.  

Another, more historical, contrast is the famous 1974 Firecracker 400 finish where Richard Petty tried to stop David Pearson's pass but left room rather than wreck himself and Pearson.


These wrecks simply shouldn't be happening.   I certainly do not favor adding more officiating to the sport - a sport that like all sports needs to start reducing incidence of officiating.   But NASCAR does need to address the epidemic of blocking, and drivers need to police each other a lot more.   Trying to protect the lead - we get that.   Pushing another car to speed up him and thus yourself - we favor that.  NASCAR needs to discourage the gratuitous blocking that's become a clear problem and drivers need to police it themselves better.   


Terrific racing doesn't need wrecks.   Nose to nose combat first on back is what it needs. UPDATE: Newman was released from the hospital Wednesday afternoon.

NASCAR Doubleheaders Schedule?

With Pocono running a Winston Cup doubleheader in 2020 the concept has no doubt circulated discussion of more tracks perhaps trying the idea.   With that in mind a possible Winston Cup schedule with doubleheader; Xfinity and Truck support races would of course be a major part of the majority of "Classic" doubleheaders -


FEBRUARY

DAYTONA 500
LAS VEGAS


MARCH


PHOENIX
CALIFORNIA 500 CLASSIC, Fontana
MIAMI 500 CLASSIC, Homestead
ATLANTA 500 CLASSIC

APRIL

MUSIC CITY CLASSIC, Nashville
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
VIRGINIA 500 CLASSIC, Martinsville



MAY

TALLADEGA
KANSAS
WORLD 600 CLASSIC, Charlotte - two 300 lappers Saturday & Sunday


JUNE
DELAWARE 500 CLASSIC, Dover Downs.
MOSPORT
CHICAGOLAND
POCONO SUMMER CLASSIC
WATKINS GLEN


JULY

BRICKYARD CLASSIC (Truck race added; second Xfinity race added to Indianapolis as second, separate date for the road course, presumably during Indy GP week).
NEW ENGLAND CLASSIC, New Hampshire
GATEWAY
IOWA CLASSIC



AUGUST

SEARS POINT
MOTOR STATE 500 CLASSIC, Michigan
FIRECRACKER 400, Daytona
VOLUNTEER 500 CLASSIC, Bristol



SEPTEMBER

SOUTHERN 500 CLASSIC, Darlington
CAPITAL CITY 500 CLASSIC, Richmond
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TALLADEGA



OCTOBER 

CHARLOTTE ROAD RACE
KANSAS
PHOENIX
LAS VEGAS.

Speedweeks 2020: Busch Bash High/Low-lights First Weekend

Daytona pre-Clash 500 practice


NASCAR begins its 2020 season with Daytona Speedweeks and controversy is already in mid-season form.

The Busch Clash began as "an analytics race," to quote Kurt Busch, as there was some spirited combat but also quite a bit of single file running to pound out laps and potentially stretch fuel.   It turned ugly when Joey Logano threw two blocks on Kyle Busch and it ended in a big wreck.   Yet it wasn't all as a gagged restart led to another crash, then more blockheaded Ernie Irvan-esque swerves among Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson left only six cars to finish - yet they still put on a rip-roaring finish as the battered Toyota of Erik Jones drafted to the win with huge slam-draft help from teammate Denny Hamlin. 

The incidence of wrecks naturally left everyone outside of the race winner livid.   But drivers know who's at fault - themselves.   Drivers know holding their line better is a preferable option.  NASCAR shouldn't want to enforce a no-blocking rule but it may come to that. 

Others try to portray it as "what superspeedway racing has become." This though is an exercise in denial of responsibility.  Claiming "the current package just has the packs too tightly wound together with a (draft) that is just too prominent" is excusing the drivers.  The draft is supposed to be this strong, and the current wicker package has made the racing far better than it had been for a number of years.   If anything the wicker needs to be added to more tracks - all of them truthfully.   The intermediates and lower banked tracks like Pocono, Michigan, Indianapolis, etc. are supposed to be drafting tracks, certainly not to the same "extreme" as Daytona..........

.........but more like with the Modifieds at New Hampshire (here illustrated by the 2018 Eastern Propane 100),  Indeed the history of Atlanta, Charlotte, Pocono, Michigan, and the old Ontario Motor Speedway were long drafting histories.

As for the short tracks, there's no drafting effect to be had but the short tracks also have aero impediment issues and the wicker by all accounts has killed the "beachball" aero impediment effect that has plagued the racing.  I can't help but think having the wicker can help change aero impediment for the better at those places as well.

Matt Weaver's suggestion to run the Busch Clash at New Smyrna is his usual flippant annoyance, especially as short tracks are as prone to bad crashes as superspeedways and aren't that conducive to passing as shown in a pretty anticlimatic finish to the Skips 175, the first race of the revamped Eastern tour of NASCAR integrated into the ARCA division.


So Speedweeks 2020 is underway and we await more competitive excitement.