The world turned upside down

Panicked mob attacks

New York has joined California in shutting down the entire state and most of the states will probably follow.

That’s retailers, service providers, musicians; almost all of the private sector economy. Permanent damage is about to be unleashed across the land, even beyond the trillions of inflationary dollars being printed by the federal government as you read this.

How many small businesses can survive no income for a month, let alone 18 months, or however long the states deem necessary?

Our “leaders”, and many of the people they govern, have lost all perspective; in fact they’ve been driven out of their minds by fear. Says Cuomo on destroying private business and lives, “I want to be able to say to the people of New York — I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”

Someday I’d like to meet that individual, the “one life” that so many awful, stupid laws have been enacted to save regardless of cost. Whoever he is, even he may not survive this final insanity.

John Hinderaker pleads, futilely, I’m sure an end to this madness:

STOP THE INSANE OVERREACTION

The economic devastation that is now playing out before our eyes is not caused by the Wuhan flu virus. In the last 21 days, approximately 162,000 Americans have died. Of that number, 150 were killed by the Wuhan virus. If governments at all levels had done nothing, other than eliminating regulatory barriers to the deployment of already-existing medicines, would the virus have killed more Americans? Yes, that is what flu bugs do. Would it kill more than the 13,000 or so who have died from this year’s seasonal flu virus? Who knows? More than the estimated 80,000 who were killed by the flu in the U.S. just two years ago? I doubt it: world-wide, it has killed only a little more than one-tenth that number.

The answers to those questions are speculative, but this is not: by dictating a virtual cessation of economic activity, governments at all levels, but especially state and local, are causing an economic collapse the likes of which, if it continues, we have not seen since the Great Depression, if ever. When has such a government-caused disaster comparably devastated a non-socialist country? Not often. The inflation of the Weimar Republic comes to mind.

I agree with the Wall Street Journal editorial that Scott quoted from this morning, but I think it is too mild. Here is a prediction: the deaths of Americans caused by the Wuhan flu bug will be dwarfed by the suicides committed by people whose life’s savings have been wiped out, whose businesses have been bankrupted, whose jobs have been lost, and whose prospects have been blighted by the insane overreaction we now see from our governments. That overreaction must stop. Right now. Before it is too late, if it is not too late already.