Tag Archives: Covid-19 reopenings

All Hail the Reopening! by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on January 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Jeffrey A. Tucker has been consistently skeptical, and consistently right, about pandemic propoganda. From Tucker at aier.org:

What a glorious thing the reopening is! After nearly a year of darkening times, the light has begun to dawn, at least in the US.

Given how incredibly political this pandemic has been from the beginning, many people smell a rat. Is it really the case that the reopening of the American economy, particularly in blue states, is so perfectly timed? Do the science and politics really line up so well?

These are questions for another day. And for the record, my own opinion is that the loosening of restrictions is timed well with the relaxing of public disease fear, from whatever source, political or through exhaustion or through a shift in the media narrative. In any case, it doesn’t matter for now. What matters right now is that the astonishing destructiveness of lockdowns might be coming to an end.

For those of us inveighing against lockdowns for a full year, it’s truly been a remarkable week. Restrictions are being loosened or are going away. We are finally getting some truth about the carnage. And we are even starting to see some elected officials being honest with us.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, Horseshit, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda, Science

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Re-Opening the Economy Won’t Fix What’s Broken, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on May 27, 2020 | 1 comment

Reopening the economy will get some businesses open and some people working, but the economy’s problems run much deeper than that. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt “normal” won’t fix what’s broken.

The stock market is in a frenzy of euphoria at the re-opening of the economy. Too bad the re-opening won’t fix what’s broken. As I’ve been noting recently, the real problem is the systemic fragility of the U.S. economy, which has lurched from one new extreme to the next to maintain a thin, brittle veneer of normalcy.

Fragile economies cannot survive any impact with reality that disrupts the distortions that are keeping the illusion of “growth” from shattering. For the past two decades, every collision with reality cracked the illusion, and the “fix” was to duct-tape the pieces together with new extremes of money-creation, debt, risk and speculative excess.

While the stock market has soared, the real world falls apart. If your region needs a new bridge built, count on about 20 years to get all the “stakeholders” to agree and get the thing actually built. Count on the cost quintupling from $500 million to $2.5 billion. Count on corners being cut as costs skyrocket, so those cheap steel bolts from China that are already rusting before the bridge is even finished? Oops. Replacing them will add millions to the already bloated budget.

Want to add a passenger stop on an existing railroad line? Count on 20 years to get it done. The complexity thicket of every regulatory agency with the power to say “no” basically guarantees the project will never get approved, because every one of these bureaucracies justifies its existence by saying “no.” Sorry, you need another study, another environmental review, and so on.

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Posted in Business, Debt, Economy, Governments

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Georgia’s Reopening A ‘Great Success’: “In Theory, No One Is Going Too Fast,” Experts Claim, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

States that have reopened have not seen the predicted big surge in new coronavirus cases, although it’s still too early to say anything conclusive. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Well, would you look at that.

Three weeks have passed since Georgia started reopening its economy, and the feared apocalyptic resurgence in the coronavirus that was supposed to overwhelm the state’s health-care system and cost thousands of lives hasn’t come to pass. And many of the same experts who warned against reopening the state “prematurely” – a group that includes Dr. Tony Fauci – are now conspicuously silent.

Meanwhile, other experts have pointed out that Georgia’s reopening, along with the reopenings of others states like Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas, has so far worked out.

And if Georgia’s reopening has been a success so far, then in theory, “no state is going too fast.”

Some Wall Street economists say a continued decline in serious illnesses suggests Georgia’s reopening may encourage other states to ease restrictions and lead to an eventual resumption in economic activity in the US.

“Georgia is a bellwether mainly because the reopening has been so aggressive,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities LLC, who cited in a research note Wednesday an almost 20% drop in Georgia’s Covid-19 patients in the past week or so.

“The other aggressive states, like Florida and Texas, are still opening up more slowly,” Stanley said in an interview. “So if Georgia is successful then, in theory, no one is going too fast – there should be a strong presumption that reopenings everywhere else should be successful.”

Kemp lifted a state order on April 24, allowing nail salons, hairdressers, bowling alleys and gyms to reopen so long as they followed state protocols. Restaurants and theaters were given the go-ahead three days later.

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Posted in Business, Economy, Governments, Medicine

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