Gigi Foster

Blue Army: Persons of Interest

An Epidemic of Socialism

COVID didn't crush the economy.
Government crushed the economy.

— Kristi Noem (1971), Govenor of South Dakota, CPAC, 2021.


[You] need to control the virus to get people back to work.

— Alan Kohler (1952)

(ABC News, 2 September 2020)


(ABC News, 7 December 2020)

Liberty Or Death

(Pandemic 2020)

Gigi Foster

Associate Professor of Economics, UNSW Business School.
PhD (Economics), University of Maryland.
BA (Ethics, Politics, and Economics), Yale University.

Are Lockdowns a Crime Against Humanity?

The Nuremberg code [is] a code of ethical standards …
It's something that, essentially, the war criminals of period during the WWII atrocities were facing, in the 1950s kind of period, to try to draw them to account for the massive damage they had done, the genocides.
And this code is something that requires governments defend the actions on the basis of public health.
So the sixth Nuremberg code demands that the decision maker must have a reasonable view that the benefits of an intervention will be higher than the costs, and failure to abide by that is a crime against humanity …

Museum Note:
On August 19, 1947, the judges of the American military tribunal in the case of the USA vs Karl Brandt et al … confronted the difficult question of medical experimentation on human beings. …
Although the [Nuremberg] code addressed the defense arguments in general remarkably none of the specific findings against Brandt and his codefendants mentioned the code.
Thus the legal force of the document was not well established.
The uncertain use of the code continued in the half century following the trial when it informed numerous international ethics statements but failed to find a place in either the American or German national law codes.
Nevertheless, it remains a landmark document on medical ethics …

Permissible Medical Experiments:
The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
(Nuremberg Code, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Have you seen a cost-benefit analysis produced by the government to defend its decisions during this period?
To strip people of their liberties.
To close schools.
To shut borders.
To cease trade.
I went for months waiting for that and finally produced one on the back of a cocktail napkin basically myself [in approximately … 15 hours in August 2020.]

[You can't assume] that it was those tough early restrictions that, as a package, created the outcomes we've seen.
My reading of the data is that pretty much how well or not you did in this period health-wise and economics-wise was kind of unrelated whether you locked down really hard or not so hard or whatever.
In fact the best thing to do probably would have been to target of our protection and our attention to the people who were actually vulnerable to this virus, and to invest in things like prophylactic treatments evaluation and evaluation of what can we do, medicines we can use, not just vaccines, but all sorts of cheaper things, when somebody gets the virus to prevent them getting serious symptoms. …

[We're] an island nation …
But there are many [other] reasons why the virus didn't run like it did, in the US for example, here that have nothing to do with our policy responses and you can compare Victoria to NSW if you want to get a sense of what's possible without locking down. …


[We] knew that this thing was killing mainly older people … which is why … in March of last year I called for the radical protection of older people, people in danger from this virus, and everybody else be allowed to go about their business as they deemed fit …
And the thing is, it's very uncomfortable right now to admit that we messed up.
For the politicians to admit it …

(Lockdowns and the path forward , ABC The Economists, 24 June 2021)


If you look at the people who have died from [COVID-19, they] have 5-6 years on average still to live …
How much does a developed society typically spend in normal times per [Quality Adjusted Life Year?]
Usually somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 per QALY. …

Office of Best Practice Regulation:
Willingness to pay is the appropriate way to estimate the value of reductions in the risk of physical harm – known as the value of statistical life.
Based on international and Australian research a credible estimate of … the value of statistical life year is $195,000 in 2018 dollars.
(Best Practice Regulation Guidance Note: Value of statistical life, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government, October 2018)

William Viscusi (1947):
Unlimited personal freedoms will lower our well‐being, particularly when confronting crises for which collective, responsible behavior is desirable.

Mortality costs of COVID‐19 in Australia as of January 1, 2021 (Table A1 extract)
Number of deaths	909
VSL ($ millions)	8.6636
VSL × deaths ($ millions)	7875
VSL = Value of a Statistical Life

(Economic lessons for COVID‐19 pandemic policies, South Economic Journal, 4 March 2021)

[So] every death we [prevent] from COVID-19 is [worth] around $500,000 and $600,000. …
Then you have a currency. …
Then you can say … when we do this lockdown:

• [Firstly,] are we actually preventing that many more deaths?
• [Secondly,] whatever number we are saving [we] multiply that by whatever the amount is we're willing to spend in normal times to save that amount of lives, that quality of life.

[Then] we get a dollar figure.
And then we can say: …
Is the economic cost of implementing these measures less than that?

• [If] so — good idea.
• If not — let's think about it more.

(Who'll pay the COVID-19 bill?, ABC The Signal, 5 May 2020)

What Have The Capitalists Ever Done For Us?

[Shutdowns are] very much a cure that's worse than the disease …
We had Trump saying that, by Easter, he wants things to be back on game …
He's right … to try to give a stopping point, to try to increase a bit of certainty about what to expect.
Because businesses … are in free freefall — people are stressed and they're going to be dying from that at some stage. …

This is the way that economies in communist systems organise …
[Whereas, Capitalism] has kept us all doing so well and having such luxurious lives, by historical and international comparisons, for so long. …

We know GDP is a huge predictor of [longevity.]
[Life] spans have increased over the last 100 years … on the back of rises in GDP per capita that pay for research and development, and health … and education services, and better roads, and everything that makes our lives better …
We giving that up with every day we are in shutdown …

[The global response to COVID-19] is actually killing people …
I'm talking about statistical lives lost.
Human welfare which is tanking because the economy is tanking. …

[Keeping the economy running] saves many more lives than are saved by quarantining the entire economy …
[The tradeoff is] not lives against money, it's lives against more lives. …

We need to be aggressively targeting isolation of older people, because those are the people who are dying. …
But to say to young people you should stay home and worry, and not go to pubs, is … absolutely a disgrace.
[These people] won't die from it — under 40 it's a 0.2% death rate …
[When Boris Johnson] could not stay that ["herd immunity"] course in the face public opinion — that was an entirely political move. …


The young people who lived through this, the coronavirus cohort, they are going to see negative effects throughout their lives because of what has already happened.
The longer this goes on, the worse off those people are going to be, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years …

I just want to see us open for business as soon as possible.

(As the coronavirus marches on, can wartime measures save us from a depression?, ABC The Economists, 26 March 2020)

The Logic of War

Live Long and Prosper: Ministry of Peace

For such is the logic of war.
If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles.
And then mutual annihilation will commence. …

What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that,
though our great nation and the United States were in complete ruins,
the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact?

— Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971), October 1962 & 1963.


[Peace is] the necessary rational end of rational men. …
[The] expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them [is not] the most efficient, means of assuring peace. …

[In] the final analysis, our most basic common link is that …

• we all inhabit this small planet …
• we all breathe the same air …
• we all cherish our children's future, and
• we are all mortal.

—John Kennedy (1917 – 63), Commencement Address, American University, Washington, 10 June 1963)

(Susan Bellows, JFK, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2013)

(Adriana Bosch, Eisenhower, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 1993)

Harry Haldeman (1926 – 93) [White House Chief of Staff, Nixon Administration, 1969–73]:
When Eisenhower arrived in the White House, the Korean War was stalemated.
Eisenhower ended the impasse in a hurry.
He secretly got word to the Chinese that he would drop nuclear bombs on North Korea unless a truce was signed immediately.
In a few weeks, the Chinese called for a truce and the Korean War ended.
(The Ends of Power, Times Books, 1978)

Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Whether such threats actually affected the Chinese decision makers or whether they even received them remains uncertain and controversial.
What is neither uncertain nor inconsequential is that the Eisenhower administration, including [then vice president] Richard Nixon, regarded them as successful.
In line with this belief, Eisenhower and Dulles relied on such threats repeatedly, in a series of crises.
[And later Nixon, as president, made similar threats towards the North Vietnamese.]
(pp 311-2)

[Eisenhower’s judgment was] that no war between any significant forces of the United States and the Soviet Union could remain limited more than momentarily.
Therefore, if such a conflict were pending, the United States should immediately go to an all-out nuclear first strike rather than allow the Soviets to do so. …

[Any] alternative approach was unacceptable from a fiscal point of view.
[His economic advisors had convinced him] that preparation to fight even a limited number of Soviet divisions on the ground … would compel an increase in defense spending that would cause inflation, precipitating a depression and "national bankruptcy."
(pp 94-5)

In 1961, [within the US] arsenal there were some 500 bombs with an explosive power of 25 megatons.
Each of these warheads had more firepower than all the bombs and shells exploded in all the wars of human history. …
The preplanned targets for the whole force included … every city in the Soviet Union and China.
There was at least one warhead allocated for every city of 25,000 people or more in the Soviet Union.
(pp 98-9)

In 1986, the US had 23,317 nuclear warheads and Russia had 40,159, for a total of 63,836 weapons.
(p 144)

[The Strategic Integrated Operations Plan:]

• provided for no distinction between the USSR and China; …
• allowed for no avoidance or postponement of attacks on cities; …
• allowed for no option to minimize nonmilitary casualties; …
• offered no option for preserving enemy command and control capability, [and]
• allowed for no Stop order once an authenticated Execute order was received by [Strategic Air Command] forces.

Since this unleashed attacks on all major Sino-Soviet urban-industrial centers and governmental and military control centers, this policy maintained no plausible basis for inducing any Soviet commanders or units to terminate operations prior to expending all their weapons upon US and allied cities.
(pp 126-7)

David Shoup (1904 – 83) [General, US Marine Corp]:
[Any] plan that murders 300 million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan.
That is not the American way.
(p 103, emphasis added)

Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack — or responding to such an attack — has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations.
The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the [imperative] to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a US first strike against the USSR or Russia.
(p 12)

The … arrangements made in Russia and the United States have long made it highly likely, if not virtually certain, that a single Hiroshima-type fission weapon exploding on either Washington or Moscow — whether deliberate or the result of a mistaken attack (as in Fail Safe or Dr Strangelove) or as a result of an independent terrorist action — would lead to the end of human civilization (and most other species).
(The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury, 2017, p 305)

Robert McMahon:
By 1960, the United States [had achieved] the coveted ‘triad’ of bomber-, land-, and submarine-based nuclear weapons, each part of the triad capable of obliterating major Soviet targets.
The total US nuclear arsenal had grown from approximately 1,000 warheads in 1953, Eisenhower’s first year in office, to 18,000 in 1960, his last.
By then, the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) boasted a total of 1,735 strategic bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons on Soviet targets. …
Aided by secret reconnaissance photographs [Eisenhower knew] that the United States maintained a formidable lead over its rival in deliverable nuclear weapons.
Still, a political frenzy surrounded the supposed missile gap, and the non-existent gap actually emerged as a galvanizing issue in the 1960 presidential election.
(The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 74‒6)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900):
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, [and] ages, it is the rule.
(Aphorism 156, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

(Nuclear Nightmeres, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 5, Season 2, Vice, 2021)

Rationality Alone Will Not Save Us

Against stupidity
The Gods themselves
Contend in vain

— Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)


India and Pakistan have fought three vicious conventional land wars.
Yet despite their border disputes [they] have not fought a major conflict since since they generated nuclear capacity in the 1970s. …
Post-WWII history is littered with examples of deterrence preventing powers from using nuclear weapons in an offensive manner.
During the long peace of the Cold War there was actually a very limited chance of nuclear war.
Why?
Because Washington and Moscow were rational calculators of nuclear risks. …
Now it's true that Pakistan could one day implode into chaos and one or more of its nukes could fall into the hands of jihadists who are irrational enough to use them.
Still, the lesson [of history] is clear: nuclear deterrence works.

— Tom Switzer (1971), India and Pakistan nuclear tests 1998, ABC Between the Lines, 31 May 2018.