Libertarian: Lockdowns Don’t Work
“Would a national lockdown have saved the US from COVID-19?” asks Reason’s Jacob Sullum. The New York Times thinks so, blaming America’s high per-capita death rate on the lack of “a unified national strategy” and crediting states implementing restrictive lockdowns “with saving many lives.” But if that’s true, “states that imposed lockdowns early, lifted them gradually and quickly re-imposed restrictions in response to surges in cases and deaths should have fared better than less cautious states.” They didn’t. “California, despite taking a much more restrictive approach than Texas, has seen much bigger increases in cases and deaths this fall and winter.” And Britain, Belgium and Italy all “rank higher in per-capita deaths” than America, though they “implemented national lockdowns.” It seems “government policy does not play as important a role in the behavior that drives virus transmission as the Times seems to think.”
From the left: Beyond Biden’s Unity Appeal
“The effective half-life” of Joe Biden’s expected inaugural “appeal for unity,” laments Politico’s John Harris, “will be measured in days or hours” — because it will fall on “desensitized minds, even among people who say they want unity.” Decades of experience show “inspirational words” don’t work, yet “substantive deeds” might: Conservatives and liberals, after all, have things in common. Both “want to be jabbed with a needle.” Neither wants recession or “kids going to school on computer screens.” Both long for government to “become more functional.” Biden can “revive a brand of politics that once again revolves around concrete things, rather than symbolism” — moving “away from the politics of identity to the politics of material gains.” And “the best way to unite the country may be not to talk about it much.”
Legal eagle: Fighting Social-Media Monopolies
In The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan asks libertarian legal scholar Richard Epstein about the question of censorship by social-media giants. Though a harsh critic of President Trump, Epstein has big issues with the Twitter-Facebook ban against him, with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s defense of the move “a rare combination of hubris and ignorance, proof of how dangerous it is to have a committed partisan as an ostensible umpire.” Epstein flags a huge hole in Dorsey’s argument that “if folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another Internet service.” In fact, these companies may qualify as monopolies, “common carriers” that have clear legal obligations: “No private monopoly has the right to turn away customers” but must take them all on “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” terms.
Culture critic: The Addictive Thrill of COVID-19
“Hitchcock would have loved COVID,” Mark Mason muses in Spectator USA. “It’s proving his point about fear: Deep down, people actually enjoy it.” We love to feel threatened by risk or menace as long as we know we’re most likely safe. So it is with the coronavirus: “People know, in their heart of hearts that the disease is unlikely to cause them serious harm, much less kill them.” It is this psychological dynamic that drives people to bring their own shopping carts, even though grocery stores meticulously disinfect carts, and don “a mask as they drive their car with no one else in it.” Of course, like all good horror movies, this one has to eventually end, and it’s no wonder that with vaccines rolled out, lockdown “compliance levels” are plummeting.
Inauguration watch: Biden Parties as US Burns
With celebrities “showing up in droves,” President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration looks like a movie: “A seasoned, gray-haired pro comes out of retirement to put the gang back together for one last job,” snarks The Week’s Jeva Lange. The Hollywood-style festivities feel “jarringly out-of-step and out-of-touch with the current moment — one of the darkest in our nation’s 243-year history.” While the end of “President Trump’s record of cruelty, petulance and catastrophic indifference” is cause for celebration, “a party on the deck of a sinking Titanic” shows the incoming administration’s failure “to separate entertainment from politics” and starts Biden’s presidency “tainted with the impression of elitism.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board