These last few days, I have watched pharmaceuticals on TV with unusual interest. I remember seeing an ad for smoking cessation, another for high blood pressure, and some others.
I have become amused with the disclaimers that list the possible side effects.
One commercial used an announcer who talked like an auctioneer. Another ad incorporated the possible side effects along with the benefits of the drug throughout the commercial.
I watched the commercial thinking, “Maybe that guy would be better off without it.”
Most ads went something like this: “If you have blank, you need to take x. When you do, you may not be able to stop or start pooping, sit down, stand up, see, or walk straight. You may swing between extreme happiness and sadness or become suicidal.
"But if you die it will not be from that other thing, and this prescription will have been 100% effective."
Those ads are a lot like this quarantine.
An overly-sensationalized virus, with overly-credentialed doctors, using computer models with faulty assumptions predicted the plague and body counts in the millions.
The only prescription was to shut down the economy. Turn it off.
Without offering alternatives, governors across the country issued the order that non-essential businesses should close.
American men and women across this country (who in many cases had risked all they had to start a business, some having spent years building a clientele) closed their non-essential salons, stores, and offices.
It was for their own good and the good of the community, they were told.
They took the anti-viral prescription, only to suffer the side effects of lost wages, benefits, financial anxiety, and risk of bankruptcy. But they will be safe from the virus.
In a free market, how does one determine what is essential and what is not? How do retailers know which products their customers need or do not need?
Fortunately, there are governors and mayors with the necessary arrogance to decide this.
In cities and towns across America, retailers were directed on what to sell and what not to sell, while Americans are arrested for fishing, playing in their front yard, and going to parks.
Sadly, in my beloved home state of Mississippi, a pastor and parishioners were threatened with citation or arrest for their drive-in service. I love Mississippi, and I love cops. But this is wrong. This is brown shirt stuff. This is the nanny state forcing its prescription on “free” Americans.
Congress saw the bitter side effects of the anti-viral prescription that had put Americans out of business and out of work and decided to help. Selected Americans would get a check.
Did they forget that until taxes are collected or money is borrowed or printed, the government has no money? Did they forget that when Americans are not working and businesses are not engaged in commerce, there is no tax revenue?
Did they forget the federal government has a total debt of $226 trillion in unfunded liabilities? Perhaps, but they remember it is an election year. All they did was add to the looming financial crisis.
But we are safe from the virus.
One week since the shutdown has become eight. Americans are out of work. The government’s payroll protection checks have been cashed and spent.
The virus models were wrong. The inflated death count is still far from predicted, and yet those responsible have not been held accountable and are still being paid.
When this quarantine is finally over, what will be the side effects? Although the economy can be stopped, time cannot be.
People need regular incomes. People must eat. People owe money. Companies owe creditors. Creditors owe other creditors.
How many companies will not survive? How many jobs will be lost? What will be the side effects of this shut down now that governments have exercised near dictatorial power in unplugging the U.S. economy?
How much freedom have Americans sacrificed as a side effect of this prescription?
Now that aspiring despot governors and mayors have successfully dictated what Americans can buy and what Americans can do, what will be the side effects?
When will the next life and death emergency be declared? What will it be?
At least we are safe from the virus.
