Pandemic journal: Politicizing Pharmaceuticals
At Spectator World, Roger Kimball recalls his doctor showing him “a few boxes of ivermectin” in winter 2020. He “told me it was probably an effective therapeutic, but it had some serious disadvantages,” chiefly that “it was very cheap and therefore was unsupported by Big Pharma.” Lawmakers, “who like the contributions they get from drug companies, basically outlawed its use for COVID.” Yet “many people are now touting” its “potent therapeutic properties,” including “bad-boy podcaster extraordinaire Joe Rogan.” Is it responsible for his COVID recovery? “Who knows?” But it’s “utterly irresponsible for the establishment media machine to trash ivermectin categorically,” with NBC calling it a “widely discredited drug.” “Discredited by whom?” The National Institutes of Health points to studies suggesting its efficacy. The ivermectin hostility is like the earlier hydroxychloroquine hostility: “It was cheap, Donald Trump took it, it must be bad.”
From the right: Dem Devices Could Bite Biden
The “eventual casualty” of the “woke madness spreading through popular culture and Congress” will be President Biden, Victor Davis Hanson predicts at American Greatness. He has “wrought a series of disasters that will invoke outrage that dwarfs the concocted anger directed at Donald Trump,” and “it may be vented through the very protocols” the left “invented for its own short-term advantage.” Serial impeachment without a special counsel or a case built on evidence can follow a president’s party losing the House. “Pentagon brass” can declare a prez “morally unfit to hold office.” And with “threatening to invoke the 25th Amendment” now “a casual affair,” a president “rarely able to craft complete sentences” should worry.
Media desk: How Oz Tamed Big Tech
“Journalism is vital to our democracy,” declare Jamie Irving and Paul Deegan at National Post, and Australia shows how to protect it from tech firms profiting off content from traditional outlets while driving polarization. Australia “proposed a mandatory code and arbitration regime to level the playing field between the country’s news publishers and Google and Facebook” — in essence, subjecting the tech giants to binding arbitration over content-payment disputes. After mounting ferocious opposition, Silicon Valley caved. “To avoid binding arbitration, both platforms have negotiated contracts with the news media that provide meaningful remuneration,” paying “in the range of 30 percent of the cost of each full-time journalist,” including at smaller, local outlets. “The Australian model is a simple, fair and proven solution.”
From the left: BlackRock’s China Blunder
“Pouring billions of dollars into China now is a tragic mistake,” warns George Soros at The Wall Street Journal of asset-manager BlackRock’s new initiative. The investment giant “appears to misunderstand President Xi Jinping’s China” — since “the regime regards all Chinese companies as instruments of the one-party state.” More, Xi’s new “Common Prosperity” program “seeks to reduce inequality by distributing the wealth of the rich to the general population. That does not augur well for foreign investors.” Worse, Xi’s coming bid to become president-for-life will require him “to bring to heel any entity rich enough to exercise independent power.” Worst, BlackRock’s investments “will help prop up” Xi’s regime, “which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.” Congress should empower the SEC “to limit the flow of funds to China. The effort ought to enjoy bipartisan support.”
Libertarian: Don’t Cheer Texas Abortion Ban
Texas’ “abortion law is a legal menace” that should outrage conservatives as much as liberals, since the “same legal ruse can be used against gun rights and other civil liberties,” fumes Reason’s Damon Root. Typically, state officials “must answer in federal court when regulated parties raise a constitutional objection.” But Texas hands enforcement “to private parties” launching civil suits in a “conniving attempt to avoid responsibility for its own law” barring abortion after six weeks. It could provide a way for states to curb other rights. “What’s to stop an anti-gun state legislature from banning handguns in the home,” then “placing state officials beyond the reach of federal judicial review by outsourcing” enforcement to “private-sector gun-control activists?”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
