Policy

Not only economists but also medical professionals and especially politicians need to step up and admit where they were wrong and work to make sure nothing like this is repeated again. If it does happen again, it should not happen with the blessing of economists, even if they have high-end positions at Ivy League universities.

SHARE | PRINT | EMAILRecall that the lockdowns that came to the U.S. in 2020 had an unusual origin. It was from Wuhan, China. That city’s experience became the test and the model. We saw all the images of the wicked effects of the virus. People were dying on the streets

The idea of virus elimination via government is a fundamental threat to all Enlightenment values. It is not scientific at all: serious scholars in this field have observed that virus suppression through force is impossible and foolish. If temporarily successful, it merely results in a population with a naive immune system that is more susceptible to a more serious disease later.

The letter was sent March 14, 2020, a Saturday, and the day after the HHS privately released what amounted to a lockdown order from the federal government. The Trump administration had already been talked into shutting down as much as it could and urging states to do the same. In some sense, then, the latter came too late. Regardless, Fauci ignored it (“Thank you for your note”) .

“There’s nothing particularly wrong per se in the impulse for pathogen avoidance, unless it becomes baked into the social system and becomes an excuse for segregation and for undemocratic forms of political management. Here is where problems begin. Society becomes divided by touchable and untouchable, clean and unclean.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker