If Woodstock occurred today, it would be derided as a “superspreader” event. Superspreader events are events or gatherings (such as a sporting match, religious service, birthday or wedding) at which an infected individual(s) infects a disproportionate number of other individuals, thereby accelerating community spread of a disease. According to the Cleveland Clinic, a superspreader event is one in which the rate of reproduction of the virus is above the basic reproduction number, R0, which is...

By laying out unrealistic demands to Iran and engaging in fearmongering about its nuclear program, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has underscored America’s real intent about rejoining the controversial agreement. President Joe Biden has made rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal) one of the top priorities of his administration, reversing course from the direction taken by former President Donald Trump who, in May 2018, withdrew the...

A year on and Covid quackery remains a potent force in global public health discourse. We should not be surprised by this as quackery of all sorts suffuses the history of medicine in America and abroad. The recent mass exodus of public health officials from their jobs, however, is so unprecedented that it challenges Murray Rothbard’s Second Law: “No one ever resigns.” What the flight of the Covid quacks portends, however, remains unclear. Quackery is a derisive term often used by medical...

Which is the more reasonable approach a society might take in the outbreak of epidemic: To quarantine the sick, and take reasonable precautions to stop those who are identified as vulnerable from contracting the illness. To attempt to “control the virus” by preventing millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people. To any society prior to 2020, it would have been obvious that the first approach is not only logical and proportionate, but the one least likely to have...

Concerns over “civil disturbance” have led the powers-who-be in Washington, DC, to extend the stay of members of the National Guard in the nation’s capital city. A military occupation in America — who knew. Military troops are not law enforcement officers. Nor should they be treated as such. The first is designed for war; the second, for fighting crime. Mixing the two can have disastrous results for citizens’ rights. The mindsets are completely different. “Police killing more likely in...

The violent protest at the US Capitol on January 6 has long been over, but the upcoming Biden administration’s response to it is likely to do greater violence to the US Constitution and the rule of law than anything the worst of the protesters could have accomplished. Thanks to the response of the George W. Bush administration and Congress to the 9/11 attacks almost two decades ago, Joe Biden’s prosecutors will have plenty of legal ammunition to go after their political enemies. It won’t stop...

The Department of Homeland Security issued on Wednesday a nationwide terror alert lasting until April 30. The alert warns of potential terrorist attacks from Americans who are “ideologically motivated” and have “objections to the exercise of government authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”The language used in this alert suggests that millions of Americans are potential terrorists. Second Amendment supporting, antiwar,...

Whence Power Flows: Corporate-Funded Think Tanks Another election. Another political transition. Another opportunity for the US to change course regarding its otherwise destructive foreign policy? Not quite. Contrary to popular belief, US foreign policy is not the product of the nation’s elected representatives nor is it overseen by the occupants of the White House. US foreign policy is instead driven by unelected corporate-financier interests. These include some of the largest, most powerful...

In the accounts about the Trump supporters who attacked the US Capitol, the media have sometimes alluded to supposed “libertarian” connections. The Wall St. Journal calls Parler, the social-media network which, it says, “served as a hub for people who organized, participated in or celebrated the storming of the Capitol” a “libertarian-leaning social-media site.” In the same story it reported that one of the participants (Rosanne Boyland) “joined at least two libertarian-leaning Facebook...

After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that time, all civil and Constitutional rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of The USA PATRIOT Act. Almost 20 years later, the US has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a “virus” and it’s “super mutations” and a “riot” at the capitol. A lot of people called this and to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11, Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties...

A nasty spat has emerged between the US and Mexican governments about alleged official corruption and drug trafficking. The latest incident began on October 16, 2020, when US authorities arrested Mexico’s former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, at Los Angeles International Airport on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Cienfuegos Zepeda was a major player in Mexico’s military and political affairs, leading the country’s armed forces for six years under former...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been attacking Republicans members as traitors in a continuation of the reckless rhetoric from the last four years on both sides. Despite a desire for greater unity from voters, Pelosi has sought to capitalize on rather than close those divisions while other Democrats are calling for blacklists and retaliatory measures. The Speaker has now doubled down on these attacks by claiming that the need to increase security is due in no small degree to the “enemy within”...

The day after opposition figure Alexei Navalny was arrested in Moscow last week on his return from a provocative and prolonged decampment in Germany, Western media fell over themselves to condemn his detention. In its online edition, the US government-owned Radio Free Europe news outlet ran seven articles dedicated to Navalny out of a total of 21. One of the top RFE articles openly called for Russian people to take to the streets to demand the release of the activist. Last weekend, the US...

A day after Joe Biden's inauguration, the headline in Axios read: “Trust in media hits a new low.” Felix Salmon wrote that “for the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media.” The Edelman survey showed overall faith in the press dropping to 46%. The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that Republicans hate the press a lot, but Democrats just a little. The Axios story bore this out somewhat, as only 18% of Republicans reported trusting media,...