 And that is that Europeans, European countries, country after country after country are locking down severe lock downs, lock downs reminiscent of the lock downs in the spring. Different countries are more or less severe. Germany is locking down for a month. France is locking down for at least a month. Italy has locked down portions of its economy, significant portions. And now the UK is locking down their economy for at least four weeks. So no bars, no restaurants and very little business activity other than what are called essential services. Of course, defined by the central planners in chief, those who I guess spend their time in 10 Downing Street and who decide what's essential and what's not essential. And it really is striking right now. It's striking that you have got across Europe, you've got these lock downs and it, you know, in America, the idea of lock downs, not lock downs, it's, it's, it's almost 100% the debate, the discussion is political. Democrats want one thing, Republicans want another, and it's all about what tribe you belong to. But if you look across the pond, if you look across the Atlantic to Europe, you know, Johnson is not a leftist. He is a the leader of the Conservative Party. Macron is, yeah, I sent a left, but really a centrist, actually quite good and admirable in his position about Islam and about free speech in the last couple of, in the last couple of weeks. So, actually my opinion of Macron has gone up dramatically. And yet for lock downs, Germany, Angela Merkel, usually pretty, pretty, pretty honest and, and, and straight shooting and pretty good in many issues, particularly economic ones. And she has instituted a lockdown in Germany. It really shows that the political class in the West, I'd say a couple of things. One, completely and utterly, completely and utterly blew it with regard to this crisis. I mean, this second wave of cases was completely predictable. Everybody knew what was going to happen. And yet no planning, no preparation, no building the infrastructure for testing, tracing and isolating, which we know from Asia works beautifully well when executed. But neither the United States, nor Europe, have been able to actually put it together in spite of having plenty of time, plenty of warning, plenty of knowledge. They can't do it. The incompetence of our political class is just unbelievable. It's just for this reason only, they should all be voted out of office. They utter and complete failure to deal with the COVID crisis, even if the solution to the COVID crisis is to get on television, sit down with the, with the people, American people, the British people and tell them that it's not that bad. And there are ways to deal with it that do not involve shutting down the world. There are ways to deal with it that do not involve eliminating liberty and freedom and giving power to government, unlimited power to government, unlimited power to government. To actually dictate where I can go, what I can do with my life, with every minute of my time. I mean, it is unbelievable and unprecedented that throughout the entire Western world, we have adopted the Chinese model of shutting down Wuhan rather than the Taiwanese model of the North Korean, the South Korean model, which relatively speaking left people free, but engaged in intense testing, tracing, isolating, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Vietnam has done a better rights-respecting job than most of the people, most of the countries in the West. So it's truly, truly shocking to see this and it doesn't seem political in the sense that at least in Europe, it's parties on the right and parties on the left. It's parties in the center and parties on the right of center, left of center. It's not some grand leftist conspiracy to shut down the economy, to destroy Trump's ability to win an election. That's not what happened in Europe, so it has to be broader than just politics. It's just incompetence, unthinking, panic, and a longing, I guess, to be China, to have the kind of power that the Chinese government has its own people. Of course, China, at least China, you know, did lockdowns but also did testing, and now China does testing instead of lockdowns. Yes, now China does testing instead of lockdowns, but it started out with lockdowns. Now it does testing, testing, testing, and it isolates those people who test positive, and if you do that, you're done. But now, of course, in most Western countries, the virus has grown so far, so big that you almost can't catch up. There's not enough testing and tracing and isolating that you can do to stop this. You know, we're going to have to probably live through it, but this was not necessary. A lot of people are going to die unnecessarily, and these lockdowns don't help. The statistics show it. Sweden, that didn't lockdown, is not locking down now, has the same death rates as the UK, France, less than Italy, less than Spain. And in the second lockdown, I suspect in this winter rise, it looks like Sweden is doing fine. It looks like Sweden is actually going to do fine, far better than all these other countries. So it's truly stunning and sad. Now let me just say that in the UK, there is going to be a vote on Wednesday in the House of Parliament to approve the lockdown measures that the government is proposing. I encourage all those listeners in the UK and their friends and their compatriots and anybody you can get to in the UK. I encourage you to write to your representative. Remember, these politicians are your servants, your representatives. I encourage you to write to them and demand, demand that they not pass this legislation, that they not pass this legislation. So you have an opportunity here to impact, to have an impact. Tell them that if they pass this legislation, you will vote them out of office next time. Even if that means voting in labor just to punish them, to punish the conservatives for what they are doing. So write to your representative. If you live in the UK, stop this massive violation of rights, this massive violation of our freedoms, this massive violation of our liberty. Sweden is a model not far away from you. And while Sweden didn't do this perfectly, far from perfect, particularly as compared to, again, the Asian countries, Sweden is a far better model than what Boris Johnson is proposing right now out of panic. And again, in spite of having no plan to properly deal with, properly deal with this crisis. Andrew writes, Boris Johnson is more of evidence that freedom won't be established by quirky individuals with hazy pro-liberty inclinations. Principles are needed. Absolutely. Absolutely. And no, I'm not for the New Zealand model either, the Melbourne model. These are horrible models. These are the models that Europe is now implementing, and now it implemented them in the spring, it didn't help. They followed the same trajectory as Sweden. They had the same death rates as Sweden. They declined in the same way as Sweden. Oh, by the way, Belgium is also shutting down. So basically, Western Europe is shutting down with the exception of Sweden. I think the Netherlands is shutting down. It's just unbelievable. These are rich countries. These are countries that could have invested in a strategy of testing, tracing, isolating. These are countries that could have invested in a strategy that cocooned their elderly, that cocooned the people at risk. I just saw today a statistic that basically, if you're under 50, if you're under 50, your chances of dying from this are almost zero, negligible, not worth thinking about. Between 50 to 70, your chances of dying of this about double the chances of dying from the flu, 0.2%. High and probably related to health. If you're healthy in those age groups, you're probably still negligible, flu-like, or less. If you're 70 plus, the probability jumps to 5.4%. That's high. It's very high. And my guess is that it's driven primarily by people in the 80s who seem to be the most susceptible to this virus. So again, isolate them, isolate them. Penny asks, what if those in Asia had some antibodies that gave them better defenses from SARS? I mean, it's possible, and that might be one of the explanations for why it's less in Asia, but it's hard to believe in this sense. That is, in a globalized economy, in a globalized world in which we're traveling from country to country to country constantly, Asians are coming to Europe constantly, Europeans are going to Asia constantly. It's hard to believe that one part of the world has developed antibodies to certain viruses that did not spread across the world. Now, it's possible that these were short-lived viruses, they didn't expand widely. Hard to tell. Scientists will be studying this in the future, and maybe they will discover that that is the cause. I've heard other ideas that Asian countries are more focused. Some of them have higher rates of vitamin D. Some of them have just take care of their immune system better. There might be all kinds of reasons, but it's clear that the CDC plan from before January, the CDC plan to deal with pandemics that goes back a decade, and that was reinforced and that every country in the world in a sense signed off of because it was a good plan, was, never had lockdowns in it, never had masks in it. What it had was, test, trace, isolate. This is kind of, you know, 101 pandemic, how to deal with the pandemic. Leverage up your resources in testing, tracing, and isolate. Isolate the people who have it. And this is true of deadly diseases. This is what you do. Communicable, deadly disease. Now, you could argue about how deadly is COVID and how, you know, the extent to which you want, but that's the kind of debate we should be having. Not whether to test, trace, isolate, but how deadly is it and what extent do we isolate, how much do we... I mean, given how deadly it is, but that's not the discussion that's being had. There is no discussion. It's basically panic, hysteria, tribalism, and politics. And in Europe, I'd say it's mostly panic and hysteria. Now, what's interesting is, in Europe right now, there are demonstrations against all of this. There are demonstrations to do this. And the violent demonstrations, places like in Italy, in Germany there were demonstrations, in Italy there were riots. We'll see what happens in the UK. We'll see what happens in France. You know, of course, France is also dealing with this wave of terrorism. So it's going to be really interesting to see how Europe overall copes with this. And to what extent, there is a trending on Twitter, there is a, I can't remember the exact statement, but it's something like, don't, you know, even if they do a lockdown, ignore it. And let's see, let's see the extent to which, let's see the extent to which Europeans are willing to stand up against these lockdowns. Europeans traditionally have not. Europeans traditionally have been very pro-government and pro-statism and do what the government tells you to do. Americans are the ones that usually stand up to government. You know, I don't think the US is going to try for lockdowns again. I think that is, I think Americans would resist it too strongly. But let's see if Europeans resist it. And the sad fact is, Americans did not resist it the first round. So I think the lesson learned for politicians is that Americans are softened. Americans are much more open and susceptible to statism and lockdowns than they were in the past. Anyway, a lot going on in the world. Yeah, Barcelona, a lot of demonstrations in Barcelona, riots in Barcelona, cops and rioters going after each other, fires and, you know, demonstrators starting fires and trash bins. And I haven't seen any looting, that's only, I guess, in Philadelphia. But no looting in Europe that I've seen. I've seen mainly demonstrations in riots and attacking the police. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Ratha says, USA lockdowns half-assed compared to Europe. It's not all of them. New York was a pretty harsh lockdown. So was other places, even in Texas. You remember that woman who was put on trial for opening up her salon? I mean, she was ultimately released from prison. But no, it's parts of the country. They took it very seriously and they were very harsh here in Puerto Rico. For a while we had very, very severe lockdowns. There's basically no lockdown right now in Puerto Rico. 55% limited capacity on restaurants, 30% in cinemas. But other than that, pretty much open, you know, at the beach, the beach is crowded. You have to wear a mask. There's a mask, you know, government is forcing us to wear masks, another massive violation of our rights. Government has no business in doing these things. Again, all it has a business is protecting rights, the way you protect rights during a pandemic. And test, trace, isolate. It's been like this forever. And you could argue, given the government's having involvement in the medical system and in hospitals and places like that, isolate the elderly so that they don't overwhelm the hospitals. But how you exactly isolate the elderly without violating rights and do it smart is tricky. But there are ways to do it, but there's been no effort. There's been no effort to do it. You know, that in New York State, elderly was sent back into nursing homes to infect the rest of the people, elderly who had COVID, to infect everybody else. Our political system, I mean, this is the thing about COVID. COVID has shown that our political leaders are incompetent. They're incompetent with the pandemic. They're completely ignorant, ignoramuses, incompetent, no plan, no execution from Trump to Johnson to Macron to whoever's running Italy these days to Germany to every one of these countries. They're absolutely 100% competent. And that didn't include all the governors in the United States. A possible exception of a Florida that has done a relatively good job, although in Florida you get lockdowns on local levels, on city levels. So we have a political class that has basically been shown to be completely and utterly incompetent. And therefore they need a fair price. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I think at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. 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