Statists always conjure up some concern about a possible failure of the free market. Free markets in their view need to be perfect, while governments, which fail every day, just need to provide promises and good intentions.
Governments are made up of humans just the same as the private sector is made up of humans, they are susceptible to the same mistakes as free enterprise. The only difference is that their decisions are centralized and mandatory to obey whether you agree with them or not.
What does this mean for us? It means that when a bureaucrat in government makes a mistake it impacts not just a particular business, but possibly an entire nation. When a business makes a mistake, it suffers and takes the loss, but when a bureaucrat makes a mistake, he passes the loss and suffering on to us.
As the corona-virus spreads around the world, it is highlighting the failure of statist, centralized decision making. We start of with China.
China lied about the virus: China lied about corona’s ability to spread from human to human for months. China failed to warn WHO, and continues to this day to severely under-report its cases. It is estimated that if China acted just 3 weeks earlier, the cases around the world could have been decreased by 95%. US intelligence is now reporting that China has under-reported corona cases in its country by 40x.
WHO ignored the warnings: For whatever reason, whether close ties with China, or sheer incompetence WHO ignored warnings from China’s neighboring countries about the virus. WHO has a website platform that allows the CDC of other countries to report information. Taiwanese health officials alerted WHO about the Wuhan coronavirus’ transmission between humans back in December but the organization failed to alert countries around the world or post the information on the platform. The WHO continued to push communist China’s talking points, including the blatantly false claim that the virus is not spread through human-to-human transmission. That to me seems like a pretty serious blunder. People around the world are suffering due to this massive mistake. Will officials at WHO be held accountable, will there be any consequences for WHO at all?
Western countries’ stance on wearing masks: The centers of disease control in western countries have always advised that wearing masks does not help curb the spread of viruses. On the other hand, the CDCs of Asian countries take the exact opposite position and recommend wearing masks. The inconsistent and visibly constant change in the stance on mask-wearing has confused the population and even politicized the issue.
FDA and other regulations in the way of real solutions: Countries like South Korea that have more direct experience with the spread of infectious diseases have a special protocol that deregulates the healthcare industry and allows it to respond to the threat. On the other hand, the FDA in the US continues to this day to delay and hold off potential solutions to the pandemic. For instance, there is a cheap testing technology that could permit millions now sheltering at home to return to work and school without undue fear of unwittingly spreading the virus.
“The tests are called rapid antigen tests. While the FDA has approved more expensive versions of these tests for doctors to prescribe and administer, the agency still has not authorized the most inexpensive over-the-counter versions for consumer use. Why? These tests detect when the patient has a relatively high viral load and is most likely contagious. They take only 15 minutes and can be done easily at home. And because they are cheap, they can be taken regularly (even many at once) to let people know almost immediately if they should stay away from social gatherings. Frequent and widespread use of these tests could help fully reopen our economy.”
