Tea at Trianon: Meanwhile, Back in Philadelphia...

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Meanwhile, Back in Philadelphia...

From The Brownstone Institute:

Here we go again. Just a short month ago Philly became a laughing stock as the only city in the country to try to reinstate mask mandates, only to rescind the mandate four days later. No bad outcomes of rescinding the mandate have been reported. If it had been allowed to continue, it would have been pointless.

Yet here we are: Mask mandates are reimposed in Philadelphia’s schools starting Monday, May 23. According to the Inquirer, Superintendent Hite said in an email to staff, “the coronavirus continues to evolve and so too will our response to it.” He called for working “together to minimize spread.” Let’s examine those two statements and how they correspond with our current situation.

It is true that the SARS-Cov-2 virus continues to evolve, as should our response to it. In fact, it has evolved so much that it has managed to infect at least 60% of us, and we will all inevitably get it multiple times from now on. That is why, as Dr. Fauci announced on April 26th to surprisingly little fanfare, “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.” Which means that the measures we used during the pandemic to try to slow transmission, flatten the curve, etc. are no longer necessary. The goal is no longer to “minimize spread.” Covid has or will spread to all of us. This applies to all mask mandates, not just in schools.

But let’s look specifically at mask mandates in schools. There are some vital Covid facts that bear on this issue, many of which have not been well publicized or explained:

FACT #1: Deaths in children from Covid are extremely rare.

In the entire United States of America, over the last 26 months, 1,045 children under age 18 (out of approximately 73 million) have died of Covid. That’s between 0% and 0.28% of all reported Covid deaths. It means children under 18 have less than 2 in 100,000 chances of dying of Covid, which is lower than their risk of dying of child abuse or car accidents. (Read more.)