During what government deems crisis, it’s those most willing and eager to flout convention and expert opinion who produce crucial information for the rest of us. If living freely results in sickness and death, then we all know what not to do. But if as was the case with the coronavirus that living freely wasn’t much of a risk at all except for the already very old and already very sick, then those who didn’t flout convention and expert opinion have the information necessary to alter their lifestyles with the information created by the rebellious.
Bad news for government, but great news for the US. If there's an upside to the lockdowns that never, ever made sense, it's that government has forfeited a great deal of the little credibility it had. Why did the lockdowns never make sense? They didn't simply because reality travels exponentially faster than government bureaucrats, along with health agencies staffed by government bureaucrats.
It's all a reminder that the more threatening anything is, including a virus, the more superfluous is government action of any kind.
The government force apologists will say, absent lockdowns some people would have continued to live and work without masks, some businesses would have remained open sans restriction, and then lots of horny high school and college kids would have acted like horny high school and college kids.
During what government deems crisis, it's those most willing and eager to flout convention and expert opinion who produce crucial information for the rest of us.
In it, at one point I wrote that government's role in times of a virus should be limited to "Be careful." How wrong I was! Government that is stupid in good times doesn't become wise in bad times.
Government must do nothing in bad times so that the marketplace that is the people can find out what to do, and for myriad different reasons.
As Ponnuru alludes, in doing something government forfeited whatever credibility it once had. Bad for government, but good for the rest of us.
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