There’s no ethical justification for continuing this failed experiment
https://www.city-journal.org/lockdowns-must-end
A Failed Experiment
The lockdowns must end.
John Tierney
October 7, 2020
Covid-19
Economy, finance, and budgets
The Social Order
No one wants to hasten the demise of the elderly, but they and other vulnerable people can be shielded without shutting down the rest of the society, as Sweden and other countries have demonstrated.
Sweden was denounced early in the pandemic by lockdown proponents because of its relatively high death rate—and it did initially flounder in protecting nursing homes—but its overall mortality rate is now lower than that of the United States and some other European countries.
The rate is higher than that of its Nordic neighbors, but mainly because of demographic differences and other factors not related to its failure to shut down.
None of these facts, though, gets as much as attention as the daily case counts for Covid.
Nor do all the unseen casualties: the people dying from heart disease, cancer, suicide, and other causes related to lockdowns and economic distress.
Early in the pandemic, Scott Atlas at the Hoover Institution and researchers at Swansea University independently calculated that the lockdowns would ultimately cost more years of life than Covid-19 in the United States and Britain, and the toll seems certain to be worse in poor countries.
The World Bank estimates that the coronavirus recession could push 60 million people into extreme poverty, which inevitably means more disease and death.
The lockdowns may have been justified in the spring, when so little was known about the virus and the ways to contain it.
But now that we know more, there’s no ethical justification for continuing this failed experiment.
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