How is everyone so sure of what will happen with the virus? "We are Italy," people say. "It's just getting started," people say.

Maybe. I've repeatedly urged libertarians to knock off the silliness and take the virus seriously. There is legitimate reason for concern.

But there appears to be zero curiosity about strange anomalies surrounding the virus. Like: why has the German number of deaths amounted to practically zero? Why has there been no real outbreak in Japan? Some things were closed but no society-wide lockdowns, and rush-hour trains are still full. Why has Vietnam seen zero deaths?

These questions genuinely stump the experts, though nobody you talk to on Twitter seems stumped. These people have answers for everything.

Over the weekend I posted an outrageous headline from the New York Post on Twitter about a 20-year-old who died, and I noted that they waited until paragraph ten to tell us he had leukemia. Surely we can all agree this is irresponsible, right?

Nope. Someone from my high school class commented to remind us about the seriousness of the virus -- which is irrelevant to the point about the misleading headline. She then said that lots of young people were dying.

Lots of young people are not dying. The headlines about this are the most irresponsible of the whole crisis. Without fail, stories about this handful of young people -- a rounding error in the grand scheme of things -- end with, "Oh, by the way, this one had this disease and that one had that." Hardly cases of robust young people struck down in the prime of life.

A doctor in Michigan made everyone go berserk when he said his hospital was full of twentysomethings on ventilators "fighting for their lives" against the virus.

He later admitted that this was not true:

"Beaumont’s ICUs are not full of young people on ventilators. In reality, much of what I wrote in that text message is exaggerated and untrue. During this time of crisis, truth and accuracy are more important than ever. I sincerely apologize for sharing false information."
 

Then this high school acquaintance went to somebody else's thread to report on me. Why, have you seen what our friend Tom Woods is saying?

Imagine that: Tom Woods holds an opinion other than the one we've all been told to hold. Go gawk at him!

Yes, I think it has the potential to be serious, and yes, I think people should take reasonable precautions. But thank goodness we have dissident voices, because sometimes the herd gets it wrong.

For instance, David Katz, the founding director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center just wrote in the New York Times, "The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy. A more surgical approach is what we need."

Indeed. You think sending a bunch of college kids home to hang around with their older parents and grandparents might actually not be too bright after all?

Katz says the shutdown of virtually everything will have other consequences that will likely worsen the situation on all levels. "Let's shut everything down and see what happens" is supposed to be the sophisticated response of the so-called adults in the room, but it's actually extremely naive.

This is what other scientists have not been good at: cost-benefit analysis. They are not trained for it. This is why we need the analytical abilities of other people, particularly economists, coupled with the medical knowledge of specialists, if we are going to devise a sensible approach to what we are facing.

More on this tomorrow.

Meanwhile:

We are having some fairly robust discussion of all this in your refuge, the Tom Woods Show Elite.

If you're not in there yet, take shelter now:
 

http://www.SupportingListeners.com

Tom Woods