COVID FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: On May 1^st 2020, Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research reminded his readers: Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic. “In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong* to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide:”

“In 1968/69,” says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, “the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.”

And this happened in the lifetimes of every American over 52 years of age.

I was 5 years old and have no memory of this at all. My mother vaguely remembers being careful and washing surfaces, and encouraging her mom and dad to be careful. Otherwise, it’s mostly forgotten today. Why is that?

Nothing was closed by force. Schools mostly stayed open. Businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.

* * * * * * * *

As Bojan Pancevski in the Wall Street Journal points out, “In 1968-70, news outlets devoted cursory attention to the virus while training their lenses on other events such as the moon landing and the Vietnam War, and the cultural upheaval of the civil-rights movements, student protests and the sexual revolution.”

The only actions governments took was to collect data, watch and wait, encourage testing and vaccines, and so on. The medical community took the primary responsibility for disease mitigation, as one might expect. It was widely assumed that diseases require medical not political responses.

It’s not as if we had governments unwilling to intervene in other matters. We had the Vietnam War, social welfare, public housing, urban renewal, and the rise of Medicare and Medicaid. We had a president swearing to cure all poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Government was as intrusive as it had ever been in history. But for some reason, there was no thought given to shutdowns.

Which raises the question: why was this different? We will be trying to figure this one out for decades.

As I said above, Tucker’s column ran on May 1^st, 2020. One month later, cue the dancing TikTok nurses and let loose the George Floyd riots!**

As even far left New York magazine admitted in late 2023: COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure. A key lesson of the pandemic. In March of 2020, this sort of talk could get one de-platformed on social media and/or caught in the feedback loop of the MSM-DNC sending out the Batsignal to their readers on social media: [Four] years ago American Thinker was the first to call out the fraud of Dr. Anthony Fauci and was viciously attacked by the WaPo, NYT other MSM outlets.

* In a scene included in 2021’s Get Back, Peter Jackson’s 2021 eight-hour miniseries reworking of the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions, Paul McCartney even joked about the Hong Kong Flu, while he and John Lennon were hashing out song ideas:

January 23rd, 1969 (Apple Studios, London): While Robert Fraser drops in on the sessions, a good-humoured John and Paul stand up for a run-through of ‘Get Back’ that devolves into silly off-key takes on ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, ‘Help!’, and ‘Please Please Me’. (Note: The medium shot of Robert Fraser is the same as the one included here, so who knows where it really falls within the continuity.)

PAUL: Imagine I’m in love with you… I think I’m getting Hong Kong flu.

JOHN: What?

PAUL: I think I’m getting Hong Kong flu.

JOHN: Oh, are you? Take drugs.

[Let It Be Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg]: Are you really?

PAUL: No, not really. Not really.

And from Tucker’s article, the since-deleted tweets by fellow American Institute for Economic Research’s Phil Magness on Woodstock and other gigantic rock festivals that took place during that year’s pandemic:

** Jon Gabriel warned last year in the Arizona Republic: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same. “These mass demonstrations used to be more localized, such as Occupy Wall Street or the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. Today, they are global, and the new cause is released with the regularity of a new car model’s marketing campaign. This year, ‘global intifada’ is all the rage. I suppose activists are brainstorming a new cause to release in May 2025.”

DECOUPLING: China exports drop amid tariff fight with U.S.

The country’s official purchasing managers’ index for the manufacturing sector, which gauges Chinese factory activity, was at 49 points this month, down from 50.5 last month. A reading of 50 points or higher means factory activity is expanding, while a reading below 50 means it is contracting. This month’s reading was the weakest since December 2023.

New export orders dropped sharply to 44.7 points this month, which is the lowest reading since December 2022, indicating that trade is slowing between China and the U.S. as American importers cancel or delay orders amid tariffs.

President Trump has placed 145% tariffs on Chinese imports. China then placed more than 100% tariffs on U.S. imports and has targeted U.S. companies that operate in China while also restricting exports of minerals used in batteries and other high-tech applications.

In a social media post on Tuesday, the Chinese government said it will “never kneel down” before the U.S.

Tuesday was a long time ago: China caves on 125% tariff for major US export after White House predicts Beijing can’t keep up.

LIGHTNING DEAL: FLEXTAILGEAR Tiny Pump Portable Air Pump. #CommissionEarned

JUST A BONUS: Trump Didn’t Have to Humiliate ’60 Minutes’ Like This, but He Did It Anyway.

NEW YORK TIMES CLAIM: Trump Invented the Surveillance State. “Donald Trump is fast becoming an Orwellian repository for America’s past sins, helping erase long histories of abuses.”

UGH: Your Nest Thermostat May Be About to Become a Decoration. “Google announced that it was becoming a pain in the posterior to update the outdated hardware on some Nest Learning Thermostats, specifically the 2011 first generation, the 2012 second generation, and the European version of the 2014 second generation. Updates on those devices will grind to a screeching halt on October 25.”

The thermostats will still work but without any smart or cloud functionality.

IT’S NOT YOUR GOOD CHARACTERISTICS THAT MAKE YOU GREAT:  The Special Ones.

It’s the sum of everything you are, good and bad that makes you perfect for something. There’s something you were made for. See it, do it.

FREDDIE DE BOER: If “The Personal is Political,” Why Are You All So Fucking Sensitive?

The idea that “the political is personal” has proven to be one of the worst intellectual developments in the history of the left. I would argue that, more than any other ideological influence, this idea has underpinned the social justice turn in American liberalism, which has transformed the language and norms of contemporary left-of-center people and briefly the politics of the Democratic party. That famous little nostrum has ruled over a period of time in which any sense of politics as an exercise beyond and outside of the self has collapsed, leaving us with generations of progressive people who think that doing politics is all about feeling and not doing, who mistake posting black squares on Instagram and liking Frank Ocean for doing politics. “The personal is political” is why people think that crying until the other person stops talking is an appropriate way to debate, why the representation of Black woman in the next season of Love is Blind is treated as a bigger deal than lead in the drinking water in Black communities, why autism and ADHD have become lifestyle trends with vague activist connotations, why an entire generation of culture writers churn out pieces about how Inspector Gadget is propaganda for white supremacy, why left-of-center American politics is so horribly immaterial, why feelings have utterly eaten actual material oppression as the concern of the left. I’m not a fan.

The other thing, though, is that when you erase the line between the political and the personal, you end up with these weird social prohibitions against openly and frankly debating elements of politics that must be debated. If you say that your politics are who you are and that who you are is your politics, then criticism of certain elements of your politics will inevitably be represented as impolite and aggressive personal insult.

Well, yes.

NOT REALLY, BUT SCHIFF IS SURE HE CAN FUNDRAISE AND ENHANCE MEDIA VISIBILITY WITH IT:  This Lawmaker Thinks He Can Pass a New Assault Weapons Ban.

MISSED, DUCKED, QUIBBLE QUIBBLE QUIBBLE:  The Liberal Media’s ‘We Missed the Story’ Excuse on Biden Just Got Put on Blast.

IT’S NOT WHAT HE SAYS, IT’S HOW HE EMOTES:  Hakeem Jeffries Uses Many Words to Say a Whole Lot of Nothing While Trashing Trump’s First 100 Days.

LEGACY MEDIA SAYS, SILLY PRESIDENT, PATIENCE IS FOR DEMOCRATS:  Trump Urges Patience As Congress Works on His Agenda.

SNIFF, SNIFF? IS THAT PURE BULL EXCRETA?  Claim: Trump Tariffs to Blame for the UK Economic Slump (Not Climate Policy).

IF IT’S FROM THE MEDIA, DEMS, AND INFLUENCERS YOU JUST KNOW IT’S GOTTA BE FALSE:  DHS Smacks Down This ‘False Narrative’ From the Media, Dems, and Influencers.

HE’S FACING A DIFFICULT PRIMARY AND NEEDS TO RALLY THE BASE:  The Dem Who’s Leading the Impeachment Charge Against Trump Is a Trainwreck.

BEATING THEM WITH MONEY IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER THAN BEATING THEM WITH THE BLOOD OF AMERICAN BOYS:  Remembering Reagan’s Zero Option: How Trump’s “Tariff War” Resembles the Last Battle of the Cold War.

CRYING TO THE HEAVENS:  Hundreds Arrested at UCLA Anti-Israel Encampment, But Only Two Pro-Israel Students Being Prosecuted.

I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE WAS NAVAJO!   Walz: Harris Picked Me as VP Since ‘I Could Code Talk to White Guys’.

SO IT WAS FORETOLD. SO IT’S BEEN:  U.S., Ukraine Sign Rare Minerals Deal.

DID YOU KNOW THAT BIDEN’S “STUDENT LOAN FORGIVING” ACTUALLY WAS A SCAM: Most of what he forgave, he had to. They’d lost all documentation to. And most of those people had already paid many times the principal in interest.

Did you know most doctors these days make 1/4 what they did sixty years ago? No, not adjusted for inflation. H1B visas.  Did you know most engineering jobs are going to H1B visas and that the starting salaries are about what they were in the eighties?

The people you hear about demanding their student loans be cancelled? The ones who studied puppetry and such? They’re the ones who can talk without losing their phony baloney jobs. One of the things Biden did was rewrite how things could be paid back, so most responsible people making their payments will never be done. EVER.

Listen, I know you’ve heard a lot of things about “kids these days” but it’s not the kids fault. They didn’t do this. And you don’t get to pile live coals on their heads by demanding they marry and have kids when they’re barely surviving.

You don’t GET to tell the eunuchs to be fruitful and multiply. Not eunuchs made on your watch.

READ WHAT I WROTE. REALLY READ WHAT I WROTE, NOT WHAT’S WRITTEN INSIDE YOUR EYELIDS. THEN COME UP WITH BETTER ARGUMENTS, BECAUSE YOURS STINK OF ENVY AND IGNORANCE:  Why, Yes, Revisiting Student Loans again.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE:  The Buffalo Media Is As Evil As the School System.

HANK JOHNSON SHOULD SEND THE ILLEGALS TO GUAM AND SEE IF IT CAPSIZES:  Hank Johnson Does It Again – Listen to His Bizarre Comments About Illegal Aliens.

I AGREE, INCLUDING HIGHER EDUCATION:  To Really Fix Education, Burn It to the Ground.

… I hear the song of the chainsaw, saying come and join the fray….

YES, INDEED. BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE:  Wait…what? They lied to us? I’m SHOCKED.

WELL, IT’S THAT DAY OF THE YEAR:  Victims of Communism Day.