A Nashville Restriction Eats Away at Public Trust Like Acid
17th September 2020
This spring, public officials at all levels were thrown into a public-health crisis that made the first SARS, H1N1, Ebola, MERS, and Zika look like small potatoes. It is understandable that mistakes would be made, but officials assured us that their decisions were data-driven and that they were following science (or “SCIENCE!” as Gavin Newsom insists).
When cities and states enacted lockdowns, mostly in March and April, the U.S. had about a million diagnosed cases, concentrated in cities, particularly in the Northeast. Lots of counties in the rest of the country had few or no cases. Enacting a full lockdown in those places — shutting down all nonessential businesses, telling people to stay home, placing restrictions on interstate travel — was an excessive step that burned through a limited supply of public patience. Eight weeks of lockdowns limited the stress on hospitals and bought time, but at extreme economic cost, and that time was largely not put to good use. We would have been better off if restrictions were enacted on a local basis, depending on the prevalence of cases — although our assessment of how many cases were in an area was impeded by the limited number of tests and the difficulty of getting fast results. Some corners of the public will be highly resistant to any attempt to reinstate those restrictions, because they no longer have faith that they’re necessary.
We don’t mind ‘following the science’ so long as it is not JUNK SCIENCE, which a lot of the underlayment of these job-destroying restrictions is turning out to be.