Free Market, Latter-day Saint, and Other Reactions to COVID-19

Tyler Moulton kindly called my attention to the second of the two articles immediately below and then, from it, I found the first of the pair.  They’re longish, but they’re really interesting and thought-provoking and I would love to hear responses to them from readers who know more about medicine and public health issues than I do.  (Heck, given my notorious hostility toward science — see, for that, the final portion of “Coronavirus presents millennials with a generational moment” — why would I even want to know anything about those subjects?)

“Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now: Politicians, Community Leaders and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When?”

“Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance: What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time”

I also found this article of interest:

“A Doctor’s Assessment of the COVID-19 Outbreak: It is a serious disease, and we should treat it like one. But the shutdown approach may be imperfect.”

A few days ago, I posted a link to this article:

“There Is No Such Thing as Price Gouging: Denying that a thing is worth what another person is willing to pay for it is like denying gravity.”

Quite predictably — although I offered no commentary on the article at all, neither positive nor negative — it garnered outraged denunciations of my greed and cruelty from the usual anonymous suspects.  So I hereby compound my crime by sharing yet another link to an article making a similar point:

“California: Two Cheers for ‘Price Gouging’: The state has set up an anti-gouging hotline and has threatened to prosecute businesses, but this approach only ensures scarcity.”

I’ve explained many times that I’m a political conservative with strong libertarian leanings on economic issues.  So this article caught my attention:

“A Free-Market Economist’s Thoughts on Coronavirus: What answers can free-market thinking offer in the face of COVID-19?”

I’m not, though, simply an avaricious economic buccaneer seeking to exploit the poor and the helpless.  Do I contradict myself?  No, actually and with apologies to Walt Whitman, I don’t.  Still, though, I do contain multitudes!  (It’s my belief in freedom that allows me to do so.)   So here’s an article of a rather different kind:

“Meet the Americans who are canceling everything but kindness: Forget the toilet paper wars and price gouging. Let us count the ways COVID-19 is bringing out the best in Americans.”

And, to finish things up here, I offer an article with a focus on the Latter-day Saints from The Atlantic:

“The Stockpile of Food in My Garage: As I hunker down at home with my family amid a global pandemic, I have a new appreciation for a strange religious tradition.”