Liberty or Lockdown? Jeffrey Tucker & Keith Knight

Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone today. We have Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for economic research where he is, the editorial. Director will be discussing his new book Liberty or lockdown. Mr. Tucker. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find the book Amazon head over there. Now, you can get it in physical form or Kindle terrific. So the American government was justified in shutting down the

economy to a halt to stop the spreading of a deadly contagious disease, that has killed millions of people worldwide in order to save the lives of Americans. How do you respond nothing? Like this has ever been tried and it's an experiment that failed. We never should have tried it. Actually, we're a country of laws and Bill of Rights Constitution, that sort of thing. We've been at the issue of managing pandemics. Now, for will Humanity has for a

million years. I mean, we know about viruses, viruses, are everywhere. We know about how to manage them in the 20th century. We manage them, just fine. 4851 57 58, 60 68, 69 2006-2009. So on new viruses, come along, our, there's nothing novel about a novel virus and the idea that you would shut down people's rights and Liberties to mitigate disease. That was an unprecedented. Social experiment. I go into my book of the details

where this nonsense comes from. It's been building for over the last 15 years. Builders in their wild dreams for forced human separation and Universal asphyxiation. In the form of masking and travel restrictions and Border closures, and school closures and destruction of free enterprise. All these things have been fantasized by series of scientists for a long time, the extraordinary, your that's come out almost daily ever since. He's evil, evil lockdowns have begun.

Has failed to be able to document any kind of empirically significant relationship between lockdowns and life saves like no relationship whatsoever. And we have this documented on study after study after study the most recent one which just came out this morning, so, Looks G minutes. It has failed completely. We put we put a bunch of cranks and crazies and wackos in charge of the world briefly and look what they did to us. Now, if I'm the average Joe, I'm

thinking a virus goes from one person to another because they're close to each other. So, if we spread people out one, so we don't overwhelm the hospitals and to give us some time, so we can get a vaccine, doesn't that just logically get us to a place where there's less interaction less spreading of the virus. There's a lot of things and what you just said that are under question, one is the idea that there's any kind of pressure on hospitals.

We empirical we know that most Suppose in this country. We're not just not just not overwhelm. They emptied out because government wouldn't let you go get a surgery because your medical procedures non-essential. So we bankrupted hundreds of hospitals in this country with this with this gibberish. The the second thing is that a coronavirus there's never been in the history of vaccines. Anything like a vaccine for a coronavirus. The common cold is one example of it. This is Is not polio.

This is not a smallpox. This is not even mumps or measles or chicken pox. And you can take issue with some of those axons. I'm not sure. We even need a chicken, we do. But anyway, that's another issue should be left up to the individual but there's never been anything like a vaccine for a coronavirus. So we're going to come up with this novel solution. It's in that sense. It's very interesting. Like what's happening therapeutically is that this is try not to be very much like AIDS.

We don't have an AIDS vaccine. But a is, is very much under control of one thing. The symptoms are diminishing. As often happens with many forms of viruses that over time, as herd immunity grows the virus weekends, because why does the virus we can? Because it has to get smarter, to guess to get smart to live. We can get into that.

But by the way, I don't think we can talk about any of these things, without understanding, something about immunology, and virology, and epidemiology, and public health.

And one of the things you learn from Understanding of that is that the goal isn't always to avoid the virus that might be in the case of something like Ebola but for for a widespread and for the overwhelming 99.9% of the population point five percent the population for this, we basically a mild and sickness the goal is not to avoid it, you know. Yeah sure if you want to wash your hands with water, but you want you want to shove off your herd immunity on somebody else.

But basically you have to recode In system to every new virus. By the way. As I'm talking, I'm almost astonished that I have to say this because this is basically ninth grade biology and every generation learned. This my mother, her mother, her mother's mother. They all learned this in basic biology class. I learned that you have an immune system that fights viruses around you and they have to be updated and upgraded, just

like you update your iPhone. And the only way you do that is by pressing pressing upgrades, right? And you get the new codes, you get the fixes and for the changes. Another world changes in the virus World changes and so you have to adapt to the new informations after your immune system, adapts in information out there. So it's a huge and actually intellectually and medically outrageous idea that you should

avoid viruses. That's just Preposterous you want to avoid viruses, avoid the world.

Is there any correlation because I'm thinking of a way to falsify? The lockdown theory? Is there any correlation between states that had stricter, lockdowns and better results and countries that had stricter lockdowns and better results results? Meaning not necessarily numbers, but number of deaths, what's interesting about the question asked is that it's an empirical. It's an empirical question. Right?

So there's there's two issues that you have to address in any kind of empirical study widened its correlation and then There's a second step which is causation. Right? Much more difficult relations, the first step and then you have to run all sorts of house fist created statistical of new techniques to discern causation by basically introducing multivariate analysis.

And this sort of thing. What's fascinating about this question about whether there's a relationship between live saved and lockdowns is that they can't even get to the first step in others. You can't prove any Causation, because there's simply not any correlation at all. There's nothing. It's just a bunch of scattered dots on a page. And that, the, and we've seen this again and again, and again, you know, the in the case of the u.s. I'll just use. Well, we could look internationally.

I mean, one of the most open states in the world was Taiwan and they have very few deaths in very few infections. I'm just like, it's not even a thing and they stay completely open. Now, the Taiwanese case is fascinating because I had a pretty systematic testing restriction at the border. So there are controlling for the but there's even there's no relationship between the good outcomes in Taiwan and and the restrictions of the Border.

There's a lot of speculation about the Taiwanese case, which one of the weirdest in the world. I must say, but very few deaths at all. What happens to 10 years ago. They had a very strong outbreak of SARS. Now the virus itself to the stic. Is called covid-19. It's a species of the coronavirus generally but the virus itself is called Stars Cove to and the stars stars was allowed to run wild and and Taiwan 10 years ago.

And there's a lot of speculation in this young population that they built up immunities and that's what did it, you know, that's that expensive Taiwanese situation because there's a lot of cross communities with other stars in the czar's family. So that's a no. Just in case they but they stayed completely open place. Like Peru, you have mass death and whose lockdowns. So, you know, I'm there seems to

be no relationship whatsoever. I would ask only one Proviso and I've yet to see this has been fully demonstrated but it does make intuitive sense. In somebody that the more you lock down the longer you delay, herd immunity. And that's, I think a big concern for the signers of the great Branson declaration. They were very concerned about this. I deserve. Medical professionals in the Declaration that was signed by

by now six thousand. Scientists been probably nine thousand medical practitioners that the lockdowns are actually delaying herd immunity and therefore prolonging the pain, and the suffering and and cause it all sorts of ancillary Grim effects. One of your articles was

fact-checked by USA Today and it was regarding the Hong Kong fluid 1968. I read the article and the verdict is your research was correct, very well done. I had not heard of this. None of my parents, our grandparents, at heard of it. What was the Hong Kong flu of and what can we learn from the implications of what happened? There was an H1N1 virus. Same as 19, 1918.

So a very, very Serious flu and it killed 100,000 Americans back at a time when the population was Far lower and far younger and actually a massive healthier.

So, if you make the adjustments to the current demographics for the number of Americans that that that died in 1968, 69, it would be on the order of 240,000 from from, from what was an H1N1 virus, which you'd think an H1N1 virus would have thrown the whole country into a panic because it was Identical, not identical because I love your food slightly different, but very similar to the 1918 Spanish flu, but public health authority in those days. They knew after long experience.

It's a right thing to do in the case of a serious flu epidemic because to maintain social functioning as best as possible. Not panic, not do weird things that violate people's rights are abolished the Constitution and encourage young people than on vulnerable people to intermingle get together. Shirley closin, I guess we could say. And that's why Woodstock went ahead.

Now, when I wrote the article is very interesting because because I wrote all about how we had this Dreadful pandemic in 1968, 69 and along with civil rights as looking through the the kinds of things that that happened that year, one of which was the Woodstock festival, right? Music festival. And so I pointed out that it happened in the middle of the pandemic. People said, oh the pandemic, peaked in January and then it has a second wave. Later in the year. So with stock happened, you

know. In between those that here's the problem that kind of analysis is that you don't know the waves except exposed, right? You don't know what they consist of within while you're in the middle of it. And one of the things is fascinating. Is that BuzzFeed, I guess because I got fact-checked by all the news organizations. Reuters initially said is true, then they said it was partially true.

Then they said is partially misleading so he could just basically Bobby and effort, you know, on the part of lock downers, but I think it's Basics. No, it's Scopes. Snows said that they had contacted the organizer with socket said, were you worried about the flu and he wrote back and said no. No, we knew we knew there was no food. We knew the fluid was already over in January. So with wasn't even an issue for us.

Well, Phil Magnus here at the American Institute for economic research, found a clipping from A newspaper and New York. Small, New York newspaper that exact same guy. And the month before the was talk happened.

Expressing public concern about the flu and he made sure that he had doctors on hand to take care of people in case they contracted it. So he openly and aggressively lied to Snopes and we proved it by posting that clipping and I think I have a screenshot of that clipping on the They are now because I had to fight for my life during that period because the article got about 10 million, 20 million reads, something like that and and it was a great piece in a sense of

the Consultants accidentally great. Like I just wrote it because I was like, whatever. My attitude is always like it's a disease that's between you and your doctor. Why were you shut it outside? It was been by perspective since since February, on this really January. Really, I've heard that before 15 years, but so, but the thing about the articles, That it shocked people because the people I think intuitively know, there's something wrong. We're doing it wrong.

Like we've never had this happen in the history of the world, the entire Globe shutting down for a virus. Like, what, why are we doing this? It doesn't make any sense. And, so, to point out that if we had locked down in 1968, 69 that we would have lost the single, most significant musical artistic cultural and even political event at the second half of the 20th century.

That's pretty shocking which makes you Wonder how much culture art we missing out on, because they were all many people still locked in the house. I miss, we do. I mean, the lockdowns continue. I'm you can't go to a Broadway. You can't go to a theater in New York. You can't go to a bar and you can't settle up to a bar anywhere in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont New Hampshire. And this whole thing is the totalitarian and outrageous and there's going to be hell to pay for it.

One of the Great Tricks, the estate display is to make it sound as though there are solutions as opposed to costs and benefits. Henry hazlitt says the art of Economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate, but at the longer effects of an act or policy, it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy, not merely for one group, but for all groups, what are the secondary effects of the lockdowns that are going on appreciated by the media and

politicians. It's tragic because Back in March. We already wrote an article saying there's going to be suicides are going to be drug overdose is going to be alcoholism. We're just going to be death by loneliness and mass depression and despair. We said all this because the empirical literature already verified, that we know this room is not I mean, it's a huge literature on this. You look at all up and it's all there. You can make perfect, almost perfect predictions about what's

going to happen. Well, now suddenly we do have the empirical information coming out. Suicides Rob drug overdoses, Miss cancer, screening. Has breast cancer and every other form of cancer missed immunizations, which is rich. In other words. We created a Public Health crisis by enacting this lockdowns. And I don't have to tell you or your listeners about this. I mean, the last seven months have been have been absolute hell on people.

We still can't fly to Paris. Paris still can't fly to us. You know, we can't, we don't have the freedom to travel but I can't even go see my mother in Texas without going under a 2 week. 12. I mean, this is fake science, bad public policy that despotic actions. That is that it's got this immense human costs and I don't know what the hell is wrong with public officials in this country that they can only think in this one.

Just single variant analysis is like stop the virus or yeah, you want to stop the virus to stop the world. What happens when you stop the world. There's going to be a lot of Carnage and we're going to be facing this Carnage for 10 years, if not longer now, put

yourself back in the mindset of February or March and the average Joe might say, we did not know what this was for all. We knew it could have killed one. Third of all Americans. So the lockdowns were morally Justified because we simply had no information. It's easy for the Libertarians to now, look back and say what should have been at the time. We didn't know we played it safe and likely saved lives out of yours.

Bond. If you don't, if you don't know about a virus, then you shouldn't act as if you do and that everything that we did about lockdowns is acting as if there's some relationship in lockdown, a controlling virus, there's no there's no evidence that that we didn't know. And and, and, and therefore, we shouldn't shouldn't have locked down because that's that's what laws are about. That's what rule of laws. Uh, so Traditions about.

That's what I mean, you know, I documented so many cases in American history. We had egregious Public Health crisis, and we never got rid of the Constitution. I mean George, Washington's. Troops faced, a terrible outbreak of smallpox. It was grim and horrible, then they end up inoculate themselves, you know, they would

get the smallpox dad. Scrape officer, scabs injected them to their skin that you have five percent death rate, but from that kind of unsanitary attempts at not inoculation, but they did it anyway because they understood something about science. I don't know what went wrong on 21st century where we all pretend as we don't know anything about viruses or Immunology. So I mean, Had a hard time actually believe in that this

has happened. I remember March 8th was the first really big evil action of the United States. That was a shutting down of South by Southwest, the Austin Tech event, that's attended by 10 to 20 thousand people, something like that, the mayor just cancel the whole thing, you know, Valley Bank contracts, all over the place, you're ripping up plan takes and posing vast costs on the city and, you know, the hospitality industry and so on.

And I do cried it. I wrote an article saying this is, this is an egregious China, the China like actions, and didn't know free. People can live this way. Of course, got worse. March March 12th. We got the, the travel bans, from Europe, and then later, Australia, and the UK, and people of families separated into people trapped, and it was just gas, a. That was the Trump Administration to develop stuff. So they were the first real, despite Trump.

Transaction. That could be some sort of, you know, champion of openness and God bless him with this extent. At least he's learned over time. But initially, he was, he was absolute terrible on on this virus. And he was, I would say the beginning, locked on some March 13th. The CDC issued through Pence's White House, task force, a blueprint. For what I read. Is it totalitarian. Take over the US? I think AI are was the first people that first institution, that released that that PDF that

thing. Welcome to go read it. That was a trump Administration that did it. Now. It's true that the states and went much further than Trump, and they said that they're the ones who there was no stay home orders in the March 13th edict, right? It was just travel restriction school closures and that kind of stuff but the state's just thought. Oh this looks like fun. Good. Bunch of Governors, huh? It's kind of cool. Yeah. I got em, got a power module, use it so suddenly everybody's

under house arrest. We were told to stay inside because the virus is outside and then later. We are told to stay outside because the virus is inside. So, you know, I mean this is fake science. It's fake science and its public policy malpractice of the worst sort. So if we take, what was being

communicated to us, in March, they claim was cases, are going to go up and up, and up along with deaths until there is some sort of vaccine more or less. So, now that we're in September of 2020 have cases constantly gone up at a consistent rate.

Have deaths. Consistently gone up as at a consistent rate, as we were told, what would inevitably happen until there was a vaccine or the, you know, the lot of people saying, we needed a single National Lucien on this has done because the virus travels regionally because this is viruses are interesting, right? They're not actually living thinking things, but they have to hop from person to person smart, viruses, do it.

Rather. Well, by not killing their hosts, stupid virus has killed too quickly like the Gladiator and the early film in the early scenes of that movie, he to kill to quickly write. And that's Ebola, right? So smart, viruses, you know, hang around your body, mostly asymptomatic, and so on. So it traveled and traveled, south and traveled West and in each case.

We saw the same way. If you trust the you can't trust all the testing data, you kind of trust all the Death data, unfortunately, but but for the most part you can you can still even though even though the dad is a little suspect, you see this consistent sort of pattern, the virus comes and 70 days. Later is gone. And the people kills on, on average are 80 to 82 years old with a 2.6 comorbidities, which means is that, which is to say Bradley.

Life expectancy people. So which is to say, which is very interesting about this particular virus because if you are going to choose this virus is versus say a hundred other viruses, you know, among which you know, AIDS and Ebola and all these other terrible things or 68, you know, which targeted pregnant. Women have polio? Which targets young girls between the ages of like 7 and 12 and maims them for life. I'm Jesus and flu season, a

fluke. Can be Wicked. I had a friend who just up and died at the age of 24 perfectly healthy person from the flu 2 years ago. You would choose this virus. And the reason is this virus is over. It's incredibly mild for the overwhelming amount of the population. We know precisely who the non vulnerable. Populations are mainly healthy people under the age of 70 80, and actually you can be 110 and have a healthy immune system and

and have no trouble with this. This coronavirus, so we know specifically Who had who had harms. You would choose this virus. I forget now, your question, but yeah. Oh, yeah. So anyway, so what happens, what happens in place that place the virus arrives and and its victims are those who cannot withstand the virus and then everybody else gets it. Her demeanor has achieved a move on.

We've had herd immunity more or less kind of, sort of, at least according the Immunology. As I talked with, I should say epidemiologist. I talked to in the Northeast since about the middle. April, if you can believe it, and yet, New York still locked down. New Jersey, still locked down, still got lockdowns in Massachusetts. So it's outrageous.

We had some good governors in this country that figured out what they did wrong and just went ahead and opened up so camp in Georgia to Santa's in Florida. Arizona has been you know, more or less OK and we have States that never locked down at all South Dakota. North Dakota South Dakota in particular Naomi or Christie known as. It's just been this great Champion. The should never locked down.

And they have one of the lowest death per million in the United States. I mean, I think they're like the fifth lowest to right? So and actually, if you look at all the no lockdown stays, they had the lowest death per million of all the other states. So you can't make any sense of this stuff, right? And and it's not about population density. Either.

We ran a study here comparing population densities between South Carolina, South Dakota, and other other states with low population, density and a handful of big. Cities, like Maine, and, and others and South Dakota. Still comes out better. And I think the reason is that has something to do with, with herd immunity and also pre-existing M, and T cells to. So, there's a lot of factors

that go into this. Let me say something to Libertarians at this point, because I think, I think your audience might be libertarian minded. You can't, you can't use philosophical priors to understand viruses. That's a huge mistake, you know, to understand. Like the relationship of viruses to to Public Health and to human Liberty.

It requires that you learn something about science requires that you hit the books and figure out something about immunology and and viruses and not just make things up. So in the early days of this, I've been very as you have we all have been deeply disappointed in the libertarian response because very confused. I mean the early days somebody said oh viruses that's an aggression. So so we all have to mask up and locked.

Down. And so the government is is totally justified in doing this because that's consist of the non-aggression principle, which is just about ridiculous. It's the same thing as if I announce that lemons are extremely dangerous to you and started shooting people to store who were buying them. And I said, well, I'm preventing people from aggressing against me with limits, you know, I don't know. You can make up your Tails, but Libertarians need to get sophisticated about science.

They need to start taking other disciplines besides their own seriously and economists and and political philosopher. And especially libertarian activist needs to start actually like taking a few days off and and reading cell biology for dummies to figure out what we're talking about here. Turns out of virus getting a virus is not aggression, it very well. Could be benefaction. Might be you might be getting a favor because you have to get in

your your immune system. Isn't that what the flu shot is?

I mean, I know so little about the blue. That's okay. You know, I mean, I don't I don't personally get the flu shot, but I know a lot of people do feel about 30% affected. The reason is that there's basically four flus And and there's a forecasting model that has to go out every year and so immunologist get together and try to figure out which brand of flu shot. They're going to they're going to mark it as the one that's

going to happen this year. Based on the probabilities of the flu coming, they can get it. They get it. Right? Some years. They get wrong, some other some of years on average, the flu shot protects about 30% of the people, get it, but only 40% of the population, takes flu shot. So the important thing to remember about about vaccines is not Vaccine is not like some sort of disease Shield. All right, it's not how it

works. What it does, is it gives you a tiny element of the cygnus itself and invites your body's immune system to build up immunities to that. So that when the real thing comes along, you've already got your immunities, if you don't have a functioning immune system, the vaccine will not work, which is why this coronavirus seen, even if we had had it and January. We don't know how many lives that would have saved, maybe none, maybe half. We don't know.

But the reason people are Dying from the crowded bars. They had, they had extremely weak. Non functioning immune systems, in which case the vaccine will not work. Now. I'm telling you this, which, you know, is an extraordinary actually realization. I'm telling you this because this was told to me by a person who serves on the task force to evaluate vaccines for the CDC, right? You told me this vaccine, even if it happens, if it happens, but will not have long-lasting effects.

It may only Twenty thirty percent of the population because, you know, viruses change, right? They evolved, just like, Society evolves. Very interesting things, these viruses and, but the problem is that, the people who need the vaccine, don't can't respond to because they have broken immune systems, and the people who have good immune systems, don't need the vaccine. So this is a serious problem. I don't know. You think of it as Venn diagram, not going to help, don't need.

Maybe there's a small percentage of the population is in between for whom this would actually Be a benefit. I hope so. But but even then it may not provide lasting immunity. And here's another thing, you have to remember. And again, I'm not a doctor and I am not took ninth grade biology. Mostly. I learned all this stuff for my mother, but the world's most important epidemiologist told me that there is no question. That any competent scientists

will tell you this. That acquired natural immunities are far more safe and effective than any vaccine. Even the best ones to think about that. Wow. Again, the book is liberty or lockdown. Mr. Tucker. I have two more questions for you, please.

It looks like the state sort of cells us a new lie, every decade the state gets to grow because there's communism will actually there's terrorism and their Saddam and there's the 2008

crash. Ash and there's inequality and now there's racism and there's corruption in business and now there's covid every time they sell us on a new thing and the masses fall for it. Do you have any philosophical ideas or lot or ways of thinking that could get us to stop falling for this Charlie kicking the ball that Lucy keeps tricking him with every single time. There's no question that the state is a very smart virus. This case. It doesn't kill us.

It just keeps Keeps living going from person to person, you know, and and crawling under their brains, you know, so that's a. I wish we could get ourselves out of this. This idea that we can solve any social economic problems with with government because we can't. I mean, the world's always give it an imperfect place. We have to struggle through it and figure out how to had a

mitigator problems. But using compulsion and guns and coercion and big shots like idiots, like Dan Andrews, and us and Australia, or Andrew Cuomo, New York, and this is These people don't know medicine. They don't heal anybody. Then I'll discover viruses. They don't, they've got saved a single soul of Koufax, just quite the, quite the reverse.

I don't know what to do. I've feel like we like Libertarians really, really need to upgrade their knowledge of a variety of different fields because we keep being blindsided by new information and they get scared.

And that's the other thing. I've really been disappointed as just, this sort of the lack of moral courage that have seen over the last seven months, people going along with things that you People going along with things when they shouldn't have gone along with them, you know, and even Libertarians in the steps are to keep harping on this. But I mean, the left has been terrible.

Also, the right has been the National Review is has been terrible on lockdowns, but libertarian should have known better than they should have spoken up earlier. We need to upgrade our knowledge and we need to upgrade our moral courage and start speaking out. I think we can defeat this. The other thing is that I think there's a lot of public outrage right now towards the lockdowns. And I'm hoping that over the

next year or two three. People going to think about what happened and what we let government get away with in. They're going to start building some serious extreme protections against letting this ever ever happen again. Sure. The final question I have is

someone I was speaking with said there are no Libertarians or Freedom advocates in a pandemic. The one thing this pandemic has done is make me more of a stance socialist is the existence of this pandemic or this virus. An indictment of the free-market, self-ownership non-aggression principle, and voluntary, contracts of to my mind is exactly the opposite.

The only thing we've learned is that that that free market voluntary, contracts, individual sovereignty and choice, and social order generally is the only thing that really works and the event of a crisis. And and the worst thing you can do is throw a bunch of guns and cops at it, what it really amounts to a medical problem. I mean, it's astonishing to me,

whatever would have done this. There's not a single textbook on epidemiology, anywhere on the planet Earth, that recommends that you lock people in the homes, Universal quarantines for the sick and the nonstick, they ban travel and quite the opposite, Douglas Henderson bun to the Donald him. Some other great epidemiologist in the 20 20th century. The guy who radicand smallpox said that none of these things work, you know, Matt Matt math and travel ban school closures.

And he says, if you do these things you would discredit Health regeneration. And it'll turn into a manageable virus into a social catastrophe, and he was exactly right. That's exactly what we've done. I want to thank everyone for watching Keith and I don't try it on anyone. The book is liberty or lockdown right in the description. Give it a click check it out on Amazon. You can read the introduction. The forward for free. And that will really make you pull the trigger on this

purchase. He cites a primary sources. He cites studies from Israeli research, that shows days it the virus comes to a population and then goes through it just mind-blowing things. This is how we can combat. The irrationality of the media and politicians mr. Tucker. Thank you so much for your time, sir. Thanks for having me. Well done. Thank you. Thanks.