Our bossy lifestyle regulators are making the most of this crisis
COVID-19 has suddenly made much of the western public health establishment effectively redundant. Unused to dealing with infectious disease, we have a legion of epidemiologists who have never studied an epidemic and a horde of public health professionals who are more comfortable discussing soda taxes than virology.
If you’ve spent your career believing that drinking, smoking and obesity are the real epidemics, a potentially fatal virus forcing billions of people into hiding could make you question your priorities. But if the nanny state lobby was disoriented at first, it has quickly learnt to adapt. The public are temporarily willing to sacrifice a bit of liberty for safety and the lifestyle regulators sense fresh opportunities. Â
Last year’s vaping ‘epidemic’ now looks like a rinky-dink panic from a different age, but those who orchestrated it are not letting go. There is zero evidence that vapers are at greater risk of catching coronavirus and no reason to think they are more likely to die from it. Nevertheless, when asked about relatively high rates of COVID-19 among young Americans, Surgeon General Jerome Adams told a television audience that ‘it could be because we know we have a higher proportion of people in the United States and also in Italy who vape.’ Turning this baseless speculation into implicit fact, he added that ‘we don’t know if that’s the only cause.’
Christopher Snowdon –Â Spectarot USA – April 6, 2020.
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