Pandemic Panic Returns
And the Branch Covidians are on the march again
Most Americans recall the COVID-19 pandemic with mingled horror and anger: Not only did the virus upend their lives, but the institutions that they depended upon to manage such a crisis proved ineffectual and, all too frequently, duplicitous.
But there was a cohort of Americans—small but annoyingly voluble—who positively enjoyed that time of trial. Some were just hypochondriacs for whom pandemic restrictions and mandates signaled that their hour had come around at last. But the majority were officious busybodies and bullies who seized the opportunity to impose their statist, authoritarian notions on the rest of us. Lockdowns and closures, social distancing, mandatory masking and vaccination: To the Branch Covidians (as some wit has christened them) these things embodied the long-cherished vision of a neat, tidy, orderly, elites-managed Radiant Future. In the early days of the pandemic power lay in the streets, and they battened on it like flies swarming over roadkill.
Perhaps you imagined that the end of the pandemic emergency put these people back in their place, but no such luck. The emergence of new variants of the coronavirus has quickened the pulses of those who’d hoped that pandemic restrictions would evolve into a new normal. Here and there voices are again being raised in favor of mask mandates, emergency government interventions, etc. And unluckily for American children, schools are being targeted once more. That’s just what we need: a repeat of the disastrous policies that crippled American public education.
Writing in the New York Times, “science and global health reporter” Apoorva Mandavilli wrings her hands over the fact that some 40% of American school building lack “proper ventilation.” (Note: the article squats behind the NYT paywall.) That this deficiency exists at all should raise eyebrows, given that the Biden Administration shoveled over half a billion dollars into public education to fund just such improvements. Where did the money go? Well, some of it remains unspent and some was redirected to other priorities, for instance DEI initiatives. So now, Mandavilli suggests, it might be necessary to slap masks back on the faces of students and maybe even revert to remote learning.
Almost, almost, I’d like to see the Branch Covidians try that. Parents, indeed most Americans, would go ballistic—as politicians at the local, state and federal levels surely realize. But after what happened in 2020-22, we should not be complacent. Given half a chance, the Anthony Faucis, Rochelle Walenskys, and Randi Weingartens of the world would take us back to their miserable pandemic dystopia. They have certainly not repented of their past incompetence and duplicity; probably they still think that they were right. No doubt they bitterly resent the criticism that came their way and would relish an opportunity to get even with those ingrate ignoramuses, the American people.
It's understandable that in the early days of the pandemic, the authorities imposed extreme restrictions: In a low-information situation, it seemed the prudent thing to do. I well remember the eerie sense of desertion that hovered over my corner of northwest Indiana in those days. But when more information became available, when the characteristics of the virus became better understood, when the risk factors came into focus—nothing changed. The lockdowns and other restrictions remained in place, and they were maintained in place by an organized campaign of misinformation and plain lying, in which most of the media was shamefully complicit.
Of course, it was inevitable that the pandemic would cause some damage to the country’s economy and social fabric. But thanks to the bad behavior of those entrusted with the management of the crisis, the damage was far worse than it needed to be. And we’re still coping with the fallout.
To all these criticisms, the Branch Covidians mount a last-ditch defense: Whatever the costs of the pandemic restrictions they forced on America—lives were saved. As it happens, that defense can be tested empirically. There was one Western country that bucked the trend of authoritarianism during the crisis: Sweden. The Swedish government ordered no lockdowns, closed no schools, imposed no mask mandates, merely advising people to practice common-sense precautions. Life went on more or less as usual, to the horror of journalists, politicians and public-health experts in other countries. The New York Times reviled Sweden as a “pariah state.” President Trump—Dr. Anthony Fauci’s best friend at the time—opined that the refusal to order a lockdown was costing Sweden dearly.
So what does the record show?
A study just released by the Cato Institute, “Sweden During the Pandemic,” lays out the facts. Author Johan Norberg notes that while the global economy was 2.9% smaller and the US economy was 1.2% smaller after 2021 than pre-pandemic forecasts had estimated, the Swedish economy grew by 0.4%. And while in the US pandemic-related learning loss suffered by children thanks to school closures has emerged as a national scandal, Swedish children suffered no such learning loss.
Yeah, sure, the Branch Covidians will say. But what about loss of life? Surely Sweden paid for those positive stats with a higher body count!
Well, no. As things turned out, Sweden’s “excess death score”—total deaths for 2020–22 compared with the previous three years—was +4.5% percent. The average excess death score for Europe was +11% percent. America’s excess death score was +15%. It seems fair to conclude, therefore, that all those journalists, politicians, and experts who heaped criticism on Sweden’s pandemic response didn’t know what they were talking about. For the conclusion is inescapable: while the draconian measures demanded by public health experts and enforced by governments at the local, state and federal levels did little to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, they had devastating political, social, and economic effects on America.
In short, it was all for nothing. Remember that when those same experts and governments start hinting that a return to the halcyon days of pandemic authoritarianism may soon be necessary.
Indeed, those who pontificated on Sweden now just ignore the facts. One can see that just comparing states within the US. Florida was supposed to be a disaster. In fact, the largest disaster was and remains New York and a handful of other northeast states: by far the highest raw death rates and excess mortalities in the country, making disproportionate contributions to the national total. So now the pontficators just ignore New York. Andrew Cuomo was forced to leave office, but not for the reason he should have been.
As for the mortuaries in parking lots, those stories were always exaggerated. A friend whose sister was a hospital nurse in NYC in the spring 2020 said (more than once) that the large numbers of dying COVID patients in certain hospitals was simply a result of the city and the hospitals deciding that serious COVID cases had to go to a limited number of facilities. They were overcrowded for a month or two, then things normalized as cases were left more geographically distributed. At no time were they in danger of running out of respirators (although they had a shortage of kidney dialysis machines, which were far more needed). The CDC did drag its feet on rapid testing for much of 2020, so the tests took longer to become available here than they did in, say, Europe. Rapid testing early on would have made it easy to slow the spread, by those infected just isolating until better. Instead, healthy people had to "quarantine" on a large scale. Temporary isolation of the sick was and remains more effective at slowing spread than the vaccines.
She also said that her job consisted of caring for "the very large and the very old," the main victims of serious COVID. Notice how it took two years for the CDC to acknowledge the strong relationship of serious COVID to old age and certain pre-existing conditions, a relationship many noticed in the first months. Meanwhile, the CDC continued as late as late 2021 to put out official misinformation about child mortality from COVID (miniscule, in reality, far less than from the annual flu) and pushed social and legacy media to censor those pointing out straightforward factual errors if they came from "official" sources.
And let's not get started on the disaster of school closings, especially in big cities, where kids were essentially on their own for two school years. Europe re-opened most of its schools for younger kids in spring 2020, and high schools and colleges in late 2020 and 2021, without any disaster.
Everything important about this disease was exaggerated or (if inconvenient, like discussion of its origins) censored.
I remember that headline in the Times about the school lacking proper ventilation. I remember scrolling past that and thinking God damn it, what a joke, this is why I don’t read 80% of the New York Times. And it probably ranks as my fourth source of daily news. You’ll see articles on the front page about the health risks posed by gas stoves. Great article Thomas. We have to resist any new calls for masking. It’s amazing. They never learn. Johan Norberg is a great voice of reason. I appreciate you quoting him. I just ordered his new book on how “capitalism will save the world” after reading his “In Defense of Global Capitalism.”