I have a close friend who’s a great person. He’s calm, generous, knowledgeable, hard-working, clever, sincere, fun, honest and humble. But sometimes he binge drinks. When he does, he gets so drunk he falls down and stays down. I’m seen him in this condition multiple times. He often ends up in the hospital for several days to dry out.
Given yet another man-down incident I witnessed on Thursday afternoon, I suspect that my friend is hospitalized again tonight. When he blacks out physically, telephone communication with him also blacks out.
Alcohol will kill him long before his time. I wish I could stop him from drinking. I wish he had no access to alcohol. Tonight, I wish there was no alcohol. Anywhere.
But I’m expressing emotion, not reason. People have been getting drunk all over the world for millennia. Despite alcohol’s risks, one can walk into a liquor store or bar nearly anywhere in America, plunk down a few bucks and get wasted. Or, as I and many others do, one can occasionally drink some wine with dinner or down a couple of beers at a bar with friends. Alcohol is a multi-trillion-dollar industry. Globally, people drink 446 billion liters of alcohol/year. It’s not going away.
Much could be said about alcoholism by people who know more about it than I do. But I know this: many people have died much younger from alcohol abuse than have most purported Covid victims. Alcohol overconsumption shortens the lives of overconsumers by an average of 26 years.
I used to play baseball. In baseball they say, “You can’t bullshit the curveball.”
The liver performs over 500 functions. In life, you can’t bullshit the liver.
In contrast to the clear etiology/symptomatology of alcohol-driven death, Covid has often been lucratively—via federal subsidies—blamed for many deaths that were caused by other conditions. In most other instances, Covid seems to shorten lives of very old, sick people by a few weeks or months. Non-lethal alcohol abuse worsens the lives of many-fold more people than “LoNg COvId” ever will. Considering both lethal and non-lethal effects, drinking damages public health far more than Covid does.
Alcohol abuse isn’t simply a personal matter. Drunkenness brings emotional —and/or, via violence, physical—pain to those with whom the intoxicated come into contact, including their families, mates, friends, neighbors, employers. sidewalk passersby, or other drivers or pedestrians.
Given alcohol’s public health toll, why don’t America and other nations ban it?
When the US did so from 1919-33, government officials learned that people still found ways to procure alcohol. Prohibition was, like Covid theater, a charade that many surreptitiously defied or profitably exploited.
Despite alcohol’s massive physical and social toll, Prohibition Era lawmakers learned—and their contemporary counterparts still know—that alcohol consumption was unstoppable and/or, on balance, believed its use was worth the attendant trouble. Thus, in 1933, the powers-that-were legalized alcohol in order to facilitate night life and to allow people to fulfill an enduring, widespread desire to alter their consciousnesses. Lawmakers who so concluded also were under the influence of a desire to shift alcohol revenue from mobsters to the government, via taxes.
By ending Prohibition, the Congress implicitly deemed Americans able to individually assess and manage the risk presented by their alcohol use. People were permitted to feel hungover after drinking and/or to gain weight from alcohol consumption. Governments and individuals fund treatment programs for people who drink too much. If treatment fails, we accept that some alcoholics will become ill and die; even if—like me right now—such outcomes, or the prospects of them, sadden us. The prevailing ethos regarding alcohol use is “You do you.”
Why didn’t American policymakers analogously see, in March 2020, that it was as impossible to crush a virus as it was to prohibit alcohol consumption, and that the social costs of zero Covid tolerance would far exceed the benefits of restructuring society? Why didn’t American governments allow individuals to manage their own Covid risks, just as it allows people to manage their own alcohol consumption? If many consider Prohibitionists the Flat-Earthers of their time, why shouldn’t the Lockdowners/Maskers/Testers/Vaxxers be seen as latter-day successors in this historical line of epic simple-mindedness?
Coronamania has been far more damaging than was Prohibition. Coronamania has worsened nearly every aspect of public life, for people of all ages. In contrast, Prohibition only curtailed alcohol consumption. The daytime world: businesses, schools and houses of worship remained open. No harmful injections were mandated.
Just as Prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking, the vaunted virus-crushing scheme predictably failed. Despite locking down, masking, mass-testing and “vaxxing,” countless millions of Americans were Corona-infected. Nearly all survived. Some died. (Though, because a 40 cycle PCR test reveals even dead viral shards and delivers 90+% false positives, all data analyses based on 40 cycle PCR test data are fundamentally shaky). Those who opposed Coronamania mandates turned out to be far better risk assessors than were the “experts” who strategized the scam.
From a public health standpoint, banning alcohol makes far more sense than have the Corona lockdowns/school closures, masks, tests and injections. Governments and citizens disregarded a 99.8% survival rate for those under 65 and nearly as high a rate for those over that age. There was—absurdly—zero tolerance for any Corona illness or malaise. Moreover, government officials conveniently refused to consider the damage that lockdowns, school closures, masking, testing and injecting would cause. Additionally, and tellingly, while pushing these ineffectual, oppressive and ridiculous strategies, governments and the media aggressively censored information about affordable, effective Covid-preventive measures and treatments.
In addition to tolerating post-Prohibition alcohol use, governments also tolerate other plainly damaging behaviors, such as smoking tobacco or increasingly potent marijuana, or eating junk food. The aggregate impact of such conduct on health and life span has far exceeded—and will continue to exceed—even the grossly exaggerated official Corona death toll. Tobacco use alone takes ten years from the average smoker’s life, as well as many years from those who live with smokers. Yet, aside from funding anti-tobacco ads and taxing tobacco, American governments don’t try to stop tobacco, sugar or marijuana use. Instead, as with alcohol, governments recognize that people will use these substances no matter what and allow unlimited use of each. The feds even subsidize these substances’ production.
During the lockdowns, governments who were purportedly “laser-focused” on public health decreed that liquor stores remain open and allowed the sale of tobacco and all kinds of unhealthy snacks and beverages. Governments wanted to pacify people, who should have protested en masse. Coronamania disruption predictably worsened alcohol and drug abuse and facilitated much health-damaging weight gain.
Juxtaposed with American consumer-sovereign alcohol/tobacco/herb/nutrition policy, the zero tolerance/spare no expense—social, psychological or fiscal—or effort to prevent every ostensible Covid case or death never made sense. As alcohol, tobacco, carbs and weed use cost many more life-years than does Covid, it’s been obvious from Day 1 that none of the arbitrary Corona mandates was about protecting public health.
People should have been allowed to assess and manage their own—typically microscopic—Covid risk. But drunk on power, bureaucrats, governors and mayors stole—via edicts, not legislation—personal freedom to manage tiny Covid risks. By so doing, the Coronamanic government and media disingenuously and lastingly damaged hundreds of millions of people’s lives for political, economic or personal gain.
Most Americans were willing to be scammed. Even now, few will admit that they were.
I’ll never raise a glass to, or with, the fearful, gullible, partisan and simple-minded.
"In addition to tolerating post-Prohibition alcohol use, governments also tolerate other plainly damaging behaviors, such as smoking tobacco or increasingly potent marijuana, or eating junk food. "
The biggest killer is prescription drugs. Governments not only tolerate prescription drugs but subsidize, advertise, patent, devise, and force the use of prescription drugs on the population. Hence the common cold poison shot mandates. Not to mention all the useless poison shots jabbed into infants and children just to attend worthless schools.
Prescription drugs rule the world, more so than illegal drugs or alcohol.
Mark, having just stumbled upon your work just yesterday, I'm just amazed I haven't found you sooner. You need a much bigger platform as your work is brilliant. You give me hope that there are others in our wonderful state of New Jersey who are ready and willing to take back our once great home from the current rulers. I just moved as far south in the state as possible to Cape May and I can't believe the difference from Central Jersey. This also gives me hope. Keep up the fantastic work.