Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives

The Re declines naturally as an epidemic proceeds because susceptible people become infected and either die or survive and acquire immunity (to a greater or lesser extent). Thus, behaviors and attributes of the pathogen’s host matter.

The disease also displays a great range of severity across patients. Perhaps half of those infected are entirely asymptomatic. For the remainder, the range of outcomes stretches from a mild illness (in most cases) to hospitalization (in perhaps 20 percent of cases) to death (in perhaps as many as 1 percent of cases).

And during recent emergencies (especially the pandemic) America’s central government has already road-tested many of the policies it may employ to begin reconstruction. It can now issue universal incomes to households and firms, block interest due on loans, freeze (“sanction”) individual bank accounts, stop cross-border trade, and compel firms to s

Though the Chemical Warfare Service ran tests on animals—goats were a favorite—it insisted that all gases and equipment be ultimately tested on humans. Those humans were soldiers, recruited with modest inducements such as extra leave time or appeals to patriotism. They participated in three types of tests. In the drop test, liquid was applied to th