Familiar readers are probably aware that I've probably published at least a half dozen posts arguing against certain opinions voiced by the "Good Morning Liberty" podcast guys, Nate Thurston and Chuck Thompson. If you are not familiar with them, the two are thirty-something friends since childhood with lower middle-class family roots in Illinois, who made their way to Nashville a few years back. They both had brief musician careers as young adults; Nate later did some work fixing up and flipping houses while Chuck owns a small healthcare IT software services company. In addition to the growing podcast, they have a stock trading education website they frequently promote during the podcast.
They've created an interesting niche in the libertarian podcast world, say, versus Tom Woods who is heavily vested in the Mises Institute, has high-level contacts in the Austrian School of Economics world, including Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and Bob Murphy, among others. Woods typically runs interviews with more of a scholarly take on libertarianism and also has focused on certain themes, like the economic tsunami of 2008 and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, particularly public policy. Nate and Chuck have more of tutorial approach to libertarian concepts with a distinctive sense of humor through discussion of current event news items and disputes; their most popular signature show is the Friday "Dumb BLEEP of the Week" where they collect a handful or more outrageous recent typically progressive soundbites, often from AOC, Comrade Bernie, Biden and others.
I've whittled down my GML episode backlog to about 190. Now we libertarians are notoriously quarrelsome among ourselves. I'm talking beyond the notorious anarchist/minarchist (like myself) kerfuffle. Take the topic of immigration. (I may have discussed Nate's rather restrictionist position in a recent post, i.e., I'm in favor of open borders if and when we get rid of the social welfare net. This is usually a variation on late Rothbard and/or a misunderstanding of Milton Friedman who actually preferred illegal to legal immigration, the latter which he considered morally hazardous because of the welfare net. I've always been passionately pro-immigration; during the earlier days of the blog, I focused on the absurd quota system, which is about as anti-free market as it gets, and its effect on skilled professionals, like one of my best friends, RN, an Indian IT professional I met in Santa Clara who had been exploited by his H1B sponsor. (He eventually got his green card, i.e., permanent residency, and then became a naturalized citizen.) But free market economist Don Boudreaux made it clear that the answer wasn't a zero-sum game between classes of workers. The labor and/or other markets, not government officials, and human freedom of movement should decide things like inflows and outflows. Other economists, including Tyler Cowen who recent wrote a pro-immigration book, have also reinforced my point of view. To me, it's personal; my French-Canadian ancestors (both sides of the family) emigrated in the late nineteenth century, not because of nonexistent public safety nets, but for opportunity (Quebec province, with limited land and resources, could not sustain a growing population). It wasn't for an easy life in the States; it often meant hard, long days working on farms, textile mills (my maternal grandmother had been a skilled worker in one of these), etc.
So, when Nate goes on one of these welfare net rants, knowing full well none of these hypocritical conservatives or libertarians have the stomach for engaging in a politically suicidal attack on the welfare state, the vast majority of which services native-born residents, and scapegoating the immigrant population, despite policies delaying any qualifications for several years, it disturbs me.
I probably agree with the GML guys the vast majority of the time, and quite frankly if I wrote an essay every time I disagree with others, I wouldn't have time for anything else with my time. So why not just unsubscribe? I may do that in time, but in part it's a test of my tolerance. In my daily posts, I often include content I don't always agree with, including Tom Woods, Ron Paul and Brion McClanahan. I don't always annotate the clips with criticisms. I do a similar thing when I troll partisan progressive trends on Twitter. It's entirely subjective as to which ones I'll pick up for commenting. Sometimes there is a stupid meme attached or misleading statistics.
A lot of the things I've picked on the GML guys about is their tilt to Trump. Keep in mind neither of them voted for Trump in either election. There're the questions of the impeachments, which they saw as totally partisan and factually challenged. I've probably written 3 or 4 essays refuting their stands on those, not to mention the 2017 "fine people on both sides" Charlottesville kerfuffle. I'm sure there's a ton of similar crap in the remaining episodes I haven't reviewed. And there are some times I'm just letting some stuff go; for example, Chuck Thompson doesn't understand the difference between statutory and constitutional/impeachable crimes. Another thing is he thought the evidence of some preplanned activities by alt-righters exonerated what Trump did on January 6, totally ignoring over 90% of the arrests were of an independent, one-off nature and Trump wanted his cultists to confront Congress over the confirmation vote: there's a reason he held his rally early the day of the vote. We know he threw Pence under the bus and trying to get him to call on his mob to cease and desist was like pulling teeth. I could go on and on.
What is the context for this post? 73-year-old Ray Martin DeMonia owned and operated DeMonia’s Antiques and Auctions in Cullman, AL, about 50 miles north of Birmingham. In April of last year he suffered a stroke, but a Birmingham hospital was able to accommodate him. (I don't know if his care then required an ICU.) He was subsequently fully vaccinated against COVID-19. On this past August 23, he had some heart issues and was admitted to a local hospital. They lacked an available specialized cardiac ICU bed which he needed. Over the next 12 hours the local emergency staff failed to locate an available ICU bed over 43 hospitals in 3 states. They finally found one at Rush Foundation Hospital in Meridian, Miss, about 200 miles away, to which he was airlifted. He spent a week there before passing with his family present. The long commute posed a hardship on the family.
Due to health privacy, we don't know the specifics of DeMonia's condition and treatment: did the delay in getting specialized care play a factor in the fatal outcome? I don't think the family has made that allegation. Like many families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, directly or indirectly (by pandemic effects on hospital capacity), they appealed for others to get vaccinated. Alabama is among the 4 lowest-vaccinated states with just under 40% vaccinated versus about 54% nationally. COVID patients were occupying about half of 1551 ICU beds in the state. About 83% of COVID ICU patients are unvaccinated.
Nate and Chuck were incensed over NPR's account of DeMonia. (Nate is unvaccinated but recently had COVID-19. Chuck is vaccinated; I don't know the specifics, but he did recently get married in Italy and I think there are EU travel restrictions on unvaccinated Americans.) Now I recall some news reports on DeMonia's death were misleading; I could swear I saw one item suggesting DeMonia had died in transit to MS.
I think Nate's wife works for a healthcare organization in the Nashville area and of course Chuck's company deals with IT issues in billing and the like.
I'll briefly paraphrase: they point out the Cullman, AL experience is not unusual for rural hospitals, airlifts are standard operations; they make much of specialized ICU beds, that COVID ICU beds weren't available for heart-condition patients, etc. They also note that he got treated in Mississippi. Their position is that NPR engaged in pro-vaccine propaganda.
To say their take is insensitive is an understatement. I don't have much direct experience with ICU's. There is one related experience. In 2014 I was living in West Virginia. On a Monday I got an unexpected call from my Mom. My Dad had gotten released from a San Antonio military hospital following back surgery the prior day. My youngest sister had dashed off an email that Dad was doing well getting settled in where he would be undergoing therapy as she headed home to Missouri. I was watching the TV when I got a panicked call from my Mom, screaming that my Dad was dying and I needed to get there ASAP if I wanted to say goodbye. While she's on the phone, the medical team is chasing her out of the room so they can work on Dad. I thought, "Oh my God. I'm hearing Dad die over a phone call." The story is Dad had a successful first therapy session; Mom was there and went out to grab a bite to eat when all of a sudden his blood pressure crashed through the floor, most likely caused by an infection during his hospital stay. My nearest major airport was Pittsburgh, maybe a hour-plus due north. I couldn't book a flight to San Antonio on Tuesday. I remember flirting with the idea of driving, but it was a good 2-day drive away. One of my sisters called the next morning, stressing I needed to get a flight ASAP. I finally got an early flight Wednesday morning. My air flight landed shortly after noon CDT. My sister and brother-in-law picked me up. I was hungry; I hadn't eaten since 5 AM EDT, but they went straight to the hospital. I did get to see him and say my goodbye; he was aware--his eyes followed me around his bed. He couldn't speak. The breathing tube was down his throat. They had kept him alive long enough to see me; 5 of my other siblings (minus my Missouri sister) were there with Mom. Literally less than 2 hours after my plane touched ground, my Dad was gone.
So for me, this issue hits home. It took everything they could do to get my Dad to the hospital alive. He would not have survived interstate transit. Some 40-odd% of ICUs in Alabama were occupied by unvaccinated COVID patients: almost totally unnecessary given low risks of vaccine breakthrough infection. DeMonia could have been treated in Alabama, like he had last year.
There's a concept one learns in Econ 101: negative externalities. Unvaccinated people are having an outsized adverse effect on hospital capacity, and it's being imposed on people with other serious health conditions affected by the drain on resources.
One thing that particularly annoyed me about Nate and Chuck's discussion of specialized ICU beds was the very concept of a COVID ICU. Where did they think these beds come from? Pixie dust?
Nearly half of the state’s intensive care unit beds, or 772 beds, are occupied by a person with COVID-19. And the surge of patients meant some hospitals had to convert other space to ICUs. Patients who normally would be treated in ICU wards are instead being cared for in emergency rooms, normal beds or even gurneys left in hallways, state officials said. The state had 1,562 ICU patients Monday, but 1,551 dedicated ICU beds.
