| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #168 11/25/2020 |
| 1) Thank God the Pilgrims Were Risk Takers Not Snow Flakes From our friend and ally Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute. We couldn’t have said it better: Had King James’s Privy Council contained an-Anthony Fauci in 1620, there might not have been a Thanksgiving holiday for the current-day Fauci and his peers to cancel four centuries later. The transatlantic voyage that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock would have been unthinkable under the “stay safe” philosophy that now governs American life. Nearly half the 102 occupants of the Mayflower died in their first year of settlement at Plymouth, sometimes at a rate of three a day. Such a mortality rate was predictable. The earlier outpost at Jamestown, founded in 1607, lost 66 of its original 104 settlers in its first nine months. Other early settlement casualties included the outpost of Roanoke, which simply disappeared. Overall, for every six would-be colonists who ventured across the Atlantic, only one survived, according to one estimate. Trying to establish a new life in the New World was most definitely not ‘safe’. And yet the voyagers kept coming, driven by something beyond safetyism — religious zeal, ambition, passion for discovery, the desire for greater freedom. Those Americans who later spread across the continent, whether as solo explorers or in wagon trains, likewise eschewed a ‘stay safe’ philosophy. Today, we are strangling American society in order to avoid a risk of death so infinitesimal — roughly 0.001 percent — for the majority of Americans that it would not have registered in any possible cost-benefit analysis governing both notable American endeavors and quotidian activities over the last four centuries. Our current Thanksgiving Day mantras — ‘Stay within your pod. Stay within your bubble. Stay within your household’ (in the words of a University of California, San Francisco, epidemiologist); don’t travel, don’t share food, don’t touch your family members or friends, speak only in hushed tones — make a mockery of the spirit that creates a country and sustains human life.  |
| 2) Pausing To Note The Good News on COVID-19 This Holiday Karol Sikora, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Buckingham Medical School, writes in Britain’s Daily Mail that we really have turned the corner in fighting COVID-19. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8979717/Professor-KAROL-SIKORA-says-coronavirus-vaccines-really-game-changers.html “The whole Covid landscape has been transformed,” he writes. “In a remarkably short period of time, researchers are building a formidable pharmaceutical arsenal against the virus.” He notes that just a few days ago a partnership between Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca announced a new vaccine that has clear advantages over the previously announced ones from Pfizer and Moderna. First, it is far cheaper to produce, with each dose costing about $4, compared with $20 for Pfizer’s and $35 for Moderna’s. Second, it will be far easier to store and distribute, because it can be kept at the temperature of a normal fridge, whereas the Pfizer vaccine must be kept at -94F. Sikora says that will be of great help to the developing world, where refrigeration and transport facilities are limited. Sikora concludes that “there is no doubt that after the long, painful months of contagion and lockdown, our prospects are suddenly looking much more optimistic. The Covid cycle can be broken and the disease almost eradicated. These powerful vaccines will not only protect people but will also halt the transmission of the virus worldwide.” Now if only we could develop a vaccine we could inject into government officials and “experts” to protect us from future panic in another pandemic. |
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