Thoughts on the Current Crisis

by Larry P. Arnn,

As I write, I am not confident that I know whether all of the current economic shutdowns in the United States are necessary to stop the virus. Every hour I read some authoritative person saying yes, and the next hour I read some authoritative person saying no.

I am told that there has been an unsuccessful push to produce a stockpile of ventilators going back to the end of the second Bush administration and extending through President Obama’s two terms, and that the FDA has delayed production recently by taking five years to approve a new ventilator design. There is no doubt that there are many people at fault, but above all the blame lies with the bureaucratic form of government that has developed in our country since the 1960s.

by the 2000s, the CDC, like most executive agencies, had become largely independent of political control and lost its focus. It had widened its work to include chronic diseases and addictions, nutrition, school health, injuries, and—a telltale sign of ideological corruption and mission creep…

n the years since 2007, there have been reports documenting multi-million dollar CDC studies on topics like the prevention of gun violence, how parents should discipline children, and chronic health conditions among lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations.

In 2017 alone, the CDC spent over $1.1 billion on chronic disease prevention and health promotion, $215 million on environmental health, and $285 million on injury prevention—all purposes that are addressed by other federal agencies.

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