Force as Farce: Unmasking the COVID Hypocrites
2020-12-13 · Guest: — · 52:11
libertarian perspectives on current events
Bob Zadek and Jon Miltimore discuss the unprecedented nature of COVID-19 lockdowns, arguing that quarantining the healthy was a historical first with catastrophic “unseen” consequences. They trace the shift in government strategy from a temporary 15-day “flatten the curve” measure to a prolonged period of state-mandated “house arrest.”
Topics: COVID-19 lockdowns, individual liberty, Frédéric Bastiat, public health policy, Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Speakers: Bob Zadek (host), Jon Miltimore (guest)
The Unprecedented Experiment of Lockdowns [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. All of radio—I mean it. We are the longest-running. Thank you so much for listening this fall, soon-to-be winter Sunday morning.
Well, here we are on the first day of the end of the pandemic. I heard in the early morning news that the trucks are rolling out with minus-70-degree temperature, storing the vaccine as it goes out to be distributed to the public in some order of distribution decided by—no headline here—politicians. So this is the first day of the end of the pandemic. Happy end-of-pandemic day, everyone.
Now it is already a chance to look back on what we have done in the pandemic. How have decisions been made? What has been the quality of the decision-making in handling the pandemic? Specifically, most specifically, the decision with the most massive consequences—mostly bad, maybe none good at all—which is the decision to impose a first in the 231-year history of our country: a lockdown.
This is the first time in our country’s history that the entire country, or a high percentage of the country, was put under house arrest. We didn’t have enough money for ankle bracelets for everybody, so we were on our honor more or less, although there were arrests. We were put under house arrest, even though, number one, we did nothing wrong, and number two, we weren’t even sick. So we were put under house arrest simply because all layers of government had decided that we are grossly incompetent to make even the most basic decisions about our lives—whether we should ourselves or have our family go to the supermarket, visit with friends, go to church, go to a synagogue to pray, go to work, or whether we were competent to go to the park.
The answer was universally: we are a bunch of idiots. We are not competent. Therefore, government had to make that decision for us. That is the essence of progressive government for sure: that we are incompetent, we must yield all basic life decisions to somebody else, and we just do what we are told.
Were the lockdowns the right strategy? I think you know the answer even before I discuss it with Jon, my guest this morning. Were the lockdowns the right decision? Most importantly, what were the not-so-obvious but soon-to-be very obvious consequences—adverse consequences, I should add—to the virus, what Frédéric Bastiat called the unseen, the unseen but important consequences?
With that introduction, I’m happy to welcome to the show Jon Miltimore. Jon is the managing editor of the Foundation for Economic Education, known to its friends and supporters such as me as FEE. Jon has written extensively on economic matters, such as and specifically including the lockdown. He has given this more thought than I dare say any elected official, although Jon has regretfully considerably less power than the elected officials have. We will discuss that in detail this morning. So, Jon, welcome to the show this morning.
Jon Miltimore: Thanks a lot for having me on, Bob.
Bob Zadek: Jon, the subject, of course, will start with the lockdowns themselves. Now, I believe I am correct in saying—I hope I am—that never before in American history have we had a circumstance when the population at large was quarantined, was restricted to their home, forbidden under pain of criminal penalty to go out, go to work, go to church, search—so socialize with friends, socialize with family members, even though they did nothing wrong and themselves were not sick.
We have had quarantines, but we’ve quarantined the sick so they do not infect somebody else. Long since decided that is an appropriate role of government. There’s no question about that. But we have quarantined the healthy and the honest for the first time. Now, there have been profound effects, and it was done—the reason was to refresh everybody’s memory. The original lockdown, Jon, was accomplished or was imposed—and it’s not “the” lockdown, there were many; they were separate actions by separate mayors and governors, but we’ll call it “lockdown” as if it was one event.
The lockdown was back in March and in April, probably April, and was done for a very narrow and specific purpose, which gets forgotten about, like passing the income tax in 2000 in—in 1913—a temporary measure to finance the growing debt for World War I which was about to take place. So taxes and other onerous statutes are always done temporarily, and I dare say the lockdown was sold as a temporary measure. What was the reason for the lockdown? Was the original reasoning sound, and how have we lost track of that reasoning?
Jon Miltimore: Well, it’s a great question. And I would say first, you are right; it’s never been done in American history before. But I go a step further: in human history, to our knowledge, this has never been tried before—of people trying to stop a virus from spreading, you know, on a large scale, people trying to stop a virus from spreading by quarantining healthy people.
You know, we’ve looked at this—a lot of people have—and we can’t find an instance of where it happened before China imposed their lockdown in February. And I think if you look back at news articles, at public health experts, and if you look back at what they were saying in February, they were saying China’s strategy isn’t going to work. They were saying, “This is a virus that—this isn’t something that you can contain by trying to, you know, tell people to stay in their houses and in closing shops and things like this.” There was a great deal of skepticism about that in February.
And that changed. That changed once we started to kind of focus on the virus in March. I was going to say when the virus arrived in March, but we know that’s not true, too. We know the virus had been here for months. The CDC published research just recently saying it could have been here, you know, maybe before Christmas in 2019, and it was working here and people weren’t even aware that it was here.
But what happened in March, I think, is it became the issue. And soon it was almost like the reporting I remember after 9/11; it was nonstop coverage about this thing that people didn’t really understand. In some ways, it was worse than 9/11 because at least with 9/11, it was an event, right? It was an event we all saw, we understood, as horrifying as it was; it was something we kind of knew. The virus was something different. We saw very scary numbers being projected.
And so I think what you saw is all the science that we kind of—you know, the sound science we’re talking about in February—that kind of went out the window. We started to think worst-case scenario: what’s going to happen? We could have hospitals overrun; we could have all these things. And so instead of looking at China’s strategy like we had a month before and saying that that’s not going to work, it doesn’t make sense, we’re not thinking about this, we’re not really thinking through—we did exactly what China did.
And you know, Italy had done shortly after China and said, “Okay, we got to do this.” But as you point out, it was never going to be some sort of permanent strategy. It was going to be something—okay, we don’t want everyone getting sick at once. Let’s do this for 15 days. You know, we’ll flatten the curve and then we can, you know, go—go back to normal.
But obviously that didn’t happen, and here we are nine, ten months later, and we look at how long these lockdowns have been imposed, and you look at the cost of them. And I’m convinced, you know, when after the politics of this issue go away, we look back in five, ten, fifteen years, and we’re going to realize what a mistake it was. And we will—we’ll look back at this and think, “What were we thinking? How could we—how could we try to fight a virus in this manner and think there was not going to be just horrible catastrophic consequences?”
Bob Zadek: You know, when you were speaking, Jon, just a second ago, I had this strange emotional intellectual experience. You said “flatten the curve.” That was like something in my past. That seems like “Remember the Maine,” “no taxation without representation”—all of these slogans. And “flatten the curve” was the goal.
The curve was the curve up in infections and of course in hospitalizations and ICU usage and in death. That was the curve. And we were as a nation, at least the leaders were frightened that as a purely practical matter, we were going to simply run out of hospital beds. And we’d never had had that happen before.
Bob Zadek: So the—in the—instinct, the panicked instinct was, as the curve creeps up, let’s flatten the curve—i.e., let’s not eliminate the virus, but contain the spread, tough it out, but at least not run out of hospital beds. And that reason for doing so quickly disappeared. And the lockdown became the tool to cure the virus, to eliminate the virus. Utterly absurd, because that will never happen. And what I thought of, Jon, is I thought of the War on Terror. And I said to myself, how will we ever declare victory? Do we have to wait until we can say today the last terrorist on earth just died? Close it up, we’ve won. How will we declare that the war on the virus has ended so that the emergency measures we have adopted will then be rescinded? And will they ever be rescinded? Of course the lockdown will be rescinded. But what about all of the other activities?
So, Jon, on the COVID and on the “flatten the curve,” the decision to flatten the curve was temporary, and it was—and I’d like to focus on that if we can, Jon—it was done through the emergency powers which most levels of government bestow upon the executive. And I’ve paid a lot of attention and done a lot of reading on emergency powers. Emergency powers—federal, state, or local—are aberrations. They are extraordinary measures and powers bestowed upon the executive until the legislature can take control, because the source of all laws is the legislature, not the executive. But so it’s supposed to be temporary only until the legislature can meet. But here, legislators never met, never deliberated, no decisions were ever made from March until today by the legislature. So let’s—so your opinions are—I sort of guess what they are—but on this executive power, which is like a dictatorship becoming an excuse for broad, unlimited in time or extent executive power, wasn’t it a gross misuse of the core system of the division of powers in our country?
Jon Miltimore: Oh, I—I think absolutely. And if you look, you know, s—some governors have been slapped down, right? They said, “No, you—you can do this for 21 days or 30 days or 45 days or whatever.” But after that, you need to get—you know, you—you do need to work with the legislature to get approval. That’s not everywhere. But at least we’ve seen in some places where courts have blasted governors who kind of think they can—they can run things, you know, like a little martinet, like they’re like a little dictator.
If you look, you know, one of the things you’re talking about, Bob, is the ratchet effect, right? It’s this idea that, like, the government comes in and they assume all these powers during an emergency, and afterwards they—they don’t give all those back. Like, you know, as you were talking earlier in your show, today’s vaccine day. I think, you know, you were saying that the day the coronavirus—and I—I think we both know that’s not going to happen. A vaccine isn’t suddenly going to make all these things go away. And you’re right, maybe we’re reaching a point where hopefully lockdowns are going to be a thing of the past, although I’m not convinced of that either.
But—but we look at the situation, and I think, you know, people reasonably—reasonably look at it and say, “No, our world has changed,” and they’re not going to give a lot of these—a lot of this power back. They—it is going to be something that they use to sort of keep their influence in—in a lot of the spaces in public health and these things that I think people like you and me will—will—will find troubling.
On the bright side, I think that this has been a wake-up call for Americans. I think a lot of Americans are—are realizing for the first time that—that government is actually an evil—not a necessary evil, but it—but the—this idea, we’ve had this idea for a long time that government is—is this kind of good body that can fix our problems and take care of us and make the world a better place. I think it’s a very pernicious way to view government. I mean, I think it’s—it’s—it’s wrong. It’s—it’s about power. The late Walter Williams has so many great things on this point he wrote. And we need to remember that—that government is a necessary evil that is far more capable of—of ruining our—our world and our lives than of making it a better place. And I think that this virus has reminded Americans of that.
The Failure of Lockdown Efficacy [14:15]
Bob Zadek: The lockdown, um, as I’ll ask you to explain, I don’t think it accomplished what it was designed—supposed to, if there was a goal—supposed to accomplish. And it did accomplish lots of adverse consequences that nobody anticipated. And the fact that nobody anticipated it, the fault lies clearly in government. Because when you—when government exercises draconian powers, if they are wrong, that wrong decision harms many more people than a wrong decision made by any other organization. So summarize for us what the lockdown didn’t do that it was supposed to do and what it did do that it wasn’t supposed to do.
Jon Miltimore: Yeah. So, you know, when you—when you look at this, there’s kind of an assumption that, “Okay, if we tell people to stay in their homes and we shut down businesses, um, there might be costs to that, but at the least we’re—you know, we’re—we’re gonna be saving lives, um, we’re gonna be slowing this virus down. Um, these measures might be painful, but they’re—they’re for a greater good. They’re achieving something.”
The problem with that is—is the more you look at the data, the lockdowns are not doing that. And we have a lot of good data, and there—there was three studies I wrote about just recently. Um, one was in The Lancet published in July. The Lancet is—is one of the oldest medical journals in the world. It goes back to 1823. Um, the researchers looked and they said there was no correlation between lockdowns and lockdown stringency and—and lower mortality rates for COVID. Um, a European medical journal found the same thing. They—they—they measured and looked for a correlation between all these things, and they saw correlation in—in some things: um, life expectancy, whether or not someone smoked, um, population smoked, um, death—you know—demographics, geography. They—they found correlations there. They found no correlation between whether or not countries had a lockdown in place or how strict it was and lower mortality rates.
And a different study, University of Tel Aviv, came out with one just a month—a month before that. I think that was in October, and it found the same thing. And they—they—they—they measured cell phone data and they—they—they crunched a lot of data and looked and said that we—we can’t find any. They were surprised by this. They said, “Well, you’d think we’d look at lockdown countries and see lower mortality rates, but that’s not the case.”
And um, I think there’s an assumption that, “Okay, if we lock down the economy, we’re doing something,” and that’s gonna make people—um, people are assuming that’s gonna mean less foot traffic and things like this, that people are gonna be social distancing more. Um, I think that’s a false assumption. Like, that’s—you should not make that assumption. People are still gonna go out; they’re just gonna change their behavior. If you can’t go to, say, the local mall, you—you’re still gonna be going to the grocery stores. Um, and you—you can close down the gym, but you’re still—oh, Starbucks is still open.
Um, and what we’re seeing is we never—nobody—we don’t close down an economy completely. Certain businesses get closed down. Basically the businesses that have the least political power. I mentioned the mall earlier. I live up in the—the Twin Cities. The Mall of America is still open up here. Now, if you look, lots of other things are closed. You know, the local restaurants, they’re gone; the gyms, um, the schools are closed; the hardware store up by my house is closed. The Mall of America is still open. And I shared pictures recently on Twitter. It’s not just open; it’s packed. There are people shoulder to shoulder at the Mall of America. Um, are you telling me that—that this isn’t a place where the virus is going to be transmitted? Well, of course not.
What we know is the Mall of America has better lobbyists. They’re able to work with the state legislature and the lawmakers there, and the governor—they have his ear. And so they’re able to remain open. So when we look at lockdowns, we—we just should not assume that they’re achieving this goal of slowing the spread. The data says they do not. Nobody denies those. And in fact, you know, Melinda Gates, Bill’s wife—you know, last time I spoke with you, I think we talked about this—uh, she came and said, “Boy, we—we kind of should have thought through the economic ramifications of these a little bit more.” Which is obviously the first thing you should be doing in a situation like this is say, “Okay, this is what we’re trying to do, but what else could happen?”
The Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns [20:07]
Jon Miltimore: And most people did not bother to ask that question. And as far as the unintended consequences go, it’s a long, long list. And it’s a very sad one. The World Bank has research out that says 150 million people are going to slip into extreme poverty by the end of the year. 150 million people. Um, we don’t feel the pain as much. I mean, I—I think if you ask Americans in 2020, they’re hurting. I think that they’re suffering from a lot of depression. A lot—that social isolation is very bad for human beings. There is a ton of research on that. Um, suicide rates look very troubling. We don’t have national data yet, but we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that says there’s some—some very dark things happening. Um, in—when—when you drug use, fire use, all these things, and—and, uh, we have all these damaging effects. Uh, you know, we—we have children um, are—are—are suffering in a way. There was a new study that just came out, the University of Cambridge showed in the UK children are—are suffering from depression in—in ways that we’ve never seen before. Um, so there’s—there’s a lot of effects, and a lot of these we won’t see for a decade. What—uh, we look at the—the—the people that had to forego surgeries or cancer screenings during this. Um, you know, we—we were gonna see rates of alcoholism and drug use um, that are already surging. Um, so there’s—there’s all these unintended consequences that are very harmful that we look at. Um, many of you look at that and you—and you see, okay, what did—what did that actually get? You know, we have tens of millions of people out of work, we have bankruptcies, all these, you know, people that have poured their life and hearts and souls into businesses that are, uh, suddenly gone. Um, there—i—it—it’s almost—it’s imperial to look at that—at those consequences and to say, boy, well, you know, was all that in vain? Is it—is this virus—do we not even manage to slow it down? But it—that appears to be the case.
The Failure of Executive Power and “Following the Science” [22:45]
Bob Zadek: When I—when I hear you speak, Jon, I—I feel—I truly feel intense pain and discouragement at the failure of government. But what I do with that, what I do with those feelings, is I ask myself: what are the lessons? What are the struct—governmental structural lessons we can learn from this? And what—what seems to me what’s happening is, first of all, a lot of powers—power was transferred, executive admitted—or emergency power transferred to mayors and governors. Cuomo, Whitmer, uh, Wolf, uh, of course, uh, uh, in Gavin Newsom in California, and others like them, progressive governors, but, uh, let’s focus on that for a moment. We have chief executives, mayors and governors. Now, how did they get to be mayors and governors? Statistically, there is no question that politicians are number one in the most reviled, despised occupations in the country. That’s objective data. That’s not Bob voicing—spewing an opinion. That’s objective. I researched it long before this show. So, who is a mayor or a governor? That is the best politician in the state, i.e., the best at the most reviled occupation. So we start there. That’s what a mayor or the governor is. The best at the most reviled occupation. Now, that’s not enough, at least not for me. So now, what do we expect of a governor or a mayor? We don’t expect them to be all-knowing. We don’t expect them to be an epidemiologist, we don’t expect them to be an economist. We do expect them to use their power wisely after collecting objective information. In other words, we expect them to follow the science. That’s what we expect. That’s the only task. It’s kind of an easy job. You have a challenge, you don’t understand the info, you don’t understand the subject matter, so you—you consult with experts. Think of Washington, D.C., the president. The president has a cabinet of people who are—have access to a lot of very technical information. They all supply their specific technical information, and the president or the governor or the mayor collects the information and makes a decision. What really happened, and this is in my opinion, the lesson, is that governors and mayors start with the decision they wanted, and then they dragged out some epidemiologist, put him in front of a camera in order that the governor or the mayor could hide behind them and justify their decision as saying, “I’m just doing what the science tells me. I’m just doing what the scientist tells me.” The question has to be: what science and what scientist? Did even one mayor or governor drag in front of a camera an economist and saying, “Here’s the plan”? No, they all brought out epidemiologists. When you’re an epidemiologist, everything is attributable to a virus. And therefore the cure is deal with the virus. And I guess I know the answer, but I’m willing to be corrected. And if not, what could have been the different public policy had economists been consulted?
Public Choice Theory and Political Self-Interest [26:15]
Jon Miltimore: No, it’s a great question. It’s one I’ve really never thought of before. Um, but I think you’re right. To my knowledge, I can’t—I don’t remember anyone from Donald Trump to the governor to the mayor. Um, you know, I obviously didn’t see every s—city and state in the country, but I don’t recall, uh, one of these leaders, you know, standing with an economist, um, at the—at the pulpit and, you know, behind the microphone and discussing what might be the fallout from some of these things. Um, even if the economist is gonna do kind of well—that you said, like they’re gonna bring on the economist that is going to kind of say what they want them to say. At least—at least it’s happening. At least there’s an economist in the room, at least that there’s somebody here who’s part of these conversations. Um, but we—we see like—I—I think it’s—it’s sort of because economists represent evil markets or, um, money or things like this. Um, even the visual of having one there was probably undesirable. Um, but you know, you touched on something, you know, the—the—the politicians making this—these decisions. Um, and you—you—you pointed out they’re not all-knowing. And, um, a lot of people assume they are, right? But we know they’re not. But it’s not just that they’re not all-knowing. You know, I—I tell people if you really want to understand what is happening with this pandemic and what happened in 2020, just read—go to Wikipedia and read a little bit on public choice theory. And you know, for—for—I don’t want to go wonky, but it—it’s a very simple idea. Um, James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize in economics for it in 1986. And basically it’s the idea that just says politicians are like everyone else. They—they act and make decisions on self-interest. And this—does that sound simple, but it’s—it—it’s for years we looked and said, “Well, you know, people and, you know, bureaucrats and politicians, they make decisions based on the public good. They’re—they’re going to do what’s good for everyone.” But if you look at that—no, they’re—they’re just like everyone else and they’re going to be making decisions kind of, you know, to—to cover themselves. And if you—if you look, you know, it would have been madness for—for a—a mayor or a governor in one of these states to say, “You know what? I’m just gonna kind of to tell people keep—wash your hands, you know, make sure that you try to stay apart. You know, if you want to wear a mask, wear a mask, um, but we’re not going to close this stuff down because we don’t think that’s actually the right thing to do.” Politicians—the first thing that’s going to happen is you have Ms. Carter, the—the teacher who taught at the school for 40 years, or, um, when she dies—if it’s someone like that dies, they’re gonna be—your picture is going to be on the—the local news on every channel and they’re gonna blame you for it. And it—you know, they’re not—look, because that’s the—the nature of this pandemic right now where we’re focusing just on the very first thing. We’re focusing just on what’s happening with the virus. We’re not—we’re not paying a lot of attention to the businesses being shuttered. We’re not paying attention to the World Bank studies that shows how—how drastically this is impacting, uh, the global economy and in poverty around other parts of the world. Um, we’re not too worried about those workers—that the restaurant worker who’s suddenly out of work, who’s—can’t pay his rent or his utility bill. Um, all of that’s unseen. What we’re seeing are—we have the ticker up of the—of the fatal case numbers and—and fatalities of COVID and, you know, what we’re gonna happen if—if somebody does die, um, you know, we want to blame someone. And—and politicians aren’t stupid. They know that they’re gonna get blamed. So the safest thing they can do is take a lot of these restrictive measures, even if they’re not effective. They give the appearance that the governor’s in control, he’s taking a tough stance. It’s—it’s—you know, we’ve heard all this language about “we’re—we’re at war with the virus,” right? Um, you know, I think it’s pretty stupid—you don’t go to war with a virus. You do your best to mitigate it.
Jon Miltimore: Um, but we’re—we see people like they want a tough stance against it. Um, and you know, for for a politician, again, it might not be effective. It’s probably the smart thing to do, at least in the short term, because everyone else is doing it. And who wants to be that politician that kind of takes the st—the—the stand on principle? We’ve seen a couple of them. We’ve seen, um, you know, Kristi Noem, the—the governor of South Dakota. She’s kind of taken a—uh—an approach that said, “I’m not gonna try to—uh—to go there.” And even when the—when South Dakota’s numbers were great, her press was terrible. She was getting just hammered in the press. And—uh—you know, so I think for—for a politician there’s a great amount of risk there to take a—uh—the right stance, even if it is the right one.
The Private vs. Public Decision-Making Process [31:45]
Bob Zadek: And all I’m asking for, or I have been asking for, is for a politician to exercise their enormous power the way everybody listening to this show exercises their power in their private life. Those of you who are—are decision-making for a family or for a small business. Well, when you make decisions in a family, you’re going to be making medical decisions, economic decisions, practical decisions, and you’re not going to know it all. You’re just like a mayor or governor—doesn’t know it all. And what will you do? You will seek out advice. If you need a surgery, you will consult with a doctor as to what the recommended course is. You will then contemplate: how long will you be out of work and how long will the recovery be? Can you make it through economically? And you will balance all of the competing considerations and you will make a decision. Everybody listening to this show follows that practice. Not just the economic, not just the medical, not just the emotional. You consider it all, and you do the best you gosh-darn can to make the right decision.
But what governors and mayors have done—I always remember the famous, dare I say, infamous quote by Andrew Cuomo, uh, Governor of New York: “Even one life is invaluable.” That is, there’s no expense too great to save even one life. The utmost hypocrisy one can possibly s—uh—state. But we could never make that kind of—have that kind of decision-making in our private lives. We would perish. We would fail—uh—in our life. So it’s the decision-making that I quarrel with. I don’t quarrel with governors getting it wrong. I often say in my private exchange of—of ideas and opinions—uh—with guests and with my friends: I care very little about what your opinion is, about what your conclusion is. I find that to be kind of boring. I do care how you got there. And share with me the thought process. Because we can roll up our sleeves and we can have great fun for an hour comparing thought process and reach the best conclusion.
But the mayors and governors have never shown us the data. They have never told us how exactly they made the decision because it’s too embarrassing. And all, as citizens, I often get asked, “What can we do about it? How can we get rid of the lockdowns?” There’s four words you have to say to a mayor or a governor or a county official: “Show us the data.” Once you say “show us the data,” they will wilt because they don’t have the data. That is the perfect antidote to bad—uh—bad decisions by governors and mayors.
Analyzing the Sweden Case Study [35:10]
Bob Zadek: Now, uh, Jon, you have done a lot of study, and there’s been a lot of press about Sweden. Those people who are very pro-lockdown, uh, look at Sweden. Sweden is a perfect example because it, of course, is one of several Scandinavian countries, all of similar size, similar demographics, of course, similar weather, a lot of things the same. And Sweden, unlike Finland and Norway, Sweden made a decision not to impose mandatory lockdowns, not to even impose mandatory mask-wearing. But I’m not going to discuss masks on the show. It’s a whole other issue. And then the—when Sweden appeared to many to have failed in that decision, those people who are pro-lockdown were looking at Sweden as proof that lockdowns work. You have done a lot of study about what happened in Sweden. Share with us the results of your analysis and your—uh—reviewing the data on Sweden.
Jon Miltimore: Yeah, Swe—Sweden is very interesting. They were that—that country from the beginning. Um, partly due to its constitution, you know, um, they—they said, “No, we’re not gonna do—uh—lockdown. We’re gonna try to—to get people to voluntarily social distance.” And if you look at Sweden’s, you know, data, they—their social distancing was very similar to—to their other Nordic neighbors. It wasn’t like they’re—and—and that’s really what lockdowns are—are—are trying to achieve. We forget that. Lockdowns, all they’re trying to do is force people to social distance. But you know, that’s really the thing that we—you know, people—if we’re trying to—to say, “Okay, flatten this virus down, just social distance.” However that is done, it doesn’t really matter. We just want people to social distance.
Um, and so, you know, Sweden from the beginning didn’t force the issue. They—they—um—um—took a more, you know, laissez-faire approach. Um, and they kind of became the world target, like Kristi Noem was, I mentioned a moment ago. Um, they took a lot of heat for this. And if you look, you know, they became the cautionary tale of the pandemic. Um, Sweden’s numbers—it’s kind of funny because that—they weren’t—they weren’t great. Um, they—they weren’t horrible either. And people look at Sweden—if you want to, you know, it—it’s like a Rorschach blot. People see with Sweden what they want to see. Um, you know, if you look right now, they’re about 25th in the world in mortality rates. Um, they’re better than a lot of European countries that did lockdown. They’re better than Belgium, they’re better than France and the UK, they’re better than Spain and Italy. All those—those countries had these lockdowns that were very stringent, and they have higher mortality rates than Sweden.
Um, but people point out, and they’ve been doing this for months: Sweden, uh, if you compare Sweden to its Nordic neighbors, they’re much higher. And that’s true. Um, but what’s interesting, if you actually go and look at that—the stringency of—of lockdowns, and you can do this. If—if—if listeners want to go check it out, go to Our World in Data and just Google in—um—you know, lockdown stringency. And you can measure the stringency of all these lockdowns by country. And Finland and Norway, these countries that are compared to Sweden to—you know, to make Sweden look un—in an unfavorable way, they have actually had fewer government restrictions than Sweden.
Um, Sweden got all the attention because, you know, from the beginning, they kind of said, “No, we’re not gonna do any lockdown.” And in Finland and Norway did do—uh—a modest lockdown. It wasn’t—it—it—it wasn’t as—uh—stringent as—as that of Belgium and the UK and a lot of these other countries. But they did for about a month and a half impose what was, you know, kind of a—some—some mandatory rules that were gonna have consequences. Um, but—but they basically since June, these countries have had some of the—the least restrictive policies in the world, and—and their numbers are—you know, they have less than a thousand deaths combined total in—and on a per capita rate they’re—they’re—um—among the lowest, you know, mortality rates in—in—in Europe.
Um, so these countries that people use to—uh—compare against Sweden to make Sweden look bad, they’re missing the point that these countries too—um—had policies that were very laissez-faire, that they weren’t—um—taking lockdown, they weren’t shutting down businesses—um—for months and months. You know, for a very brief time did they have—uh—take a harder, you know, approach. And I think right now all those countries are—are—are—are starting to take a little bit more—um—Sweden is actually, I think, doing it more than Finland and Norway right now, and I think it’s—it’s largely from political pressure. They’ve been badgered for months and months on this. Numbers are actually, you know—if you compare to the—the cases are exploding in Europe just like they are here in the US. Sweden’s numbers aren’t exploding—um—at any higher—they’re—they’re doing better than Italy and Belgium, these other countries. But I think they finally said, “Boy, you know, like, we don’t want to go through six months more of—of being the country who’s gambling with people’s lives.” So they’ve—uh—you know, imposed some—some restrictions now.
But you know, I—I think the Sweden case, it matters because if you look at what people were predicting would happen in Sweden, people were predicting a hundred thousand people were going to die because they—they weren’t taking—they weren’t enforcing lockdowns. And it shows how bad from the beginning, all these people, you know—uh—some of these schools, uh, Imperial College London, uh, the—the—the—these predictions they’re making, they’re all garbage. But we—we made these decisions early on.
The Economic Blind Spot of Lockdowns [40:24]
Jon Miltimore: Um, very, very important that devastating decisions based on data that was completely wrong. Sweden didn’t lose a hundred thousand, you know, lives. They’ve lost, you know, um, probably I think 6,500, maybe 7,000, though. And every life does matter. We, we, we don’t want that to happen. Um, but the, the last point here is taking—you really can’t stop this. It’s, it’s a virus. It’s—you, you, you want to try to target certain, um, communities and make sure that they—you, you protect, um, your, your elderly care homes and, um, but for, for most people that this virus is, is gonna be a, a bad, you know, kind of a bad flu. And we—you’re like me, Bob, you probably know several people that have had it, and for several people they said it was, you know, a mild cold. Um, you know, I have a family member right now that’s fighting, and he’s, he’s having serious breathing issues in the hospital. So I don’t want to make light of this virus; it sucks. Um, I wish it had never arrived. But what people need to understand is the, the real draconian steps to contain it are doing more harm than good.
Bob Zadek: To me, this is, this is to—going to be looked back upon as being the maybe clearest test, clearest example of how a libertarian approach to governance would have produced infinitely and measurably better results. Here’s what I mean. The lockdown, as Jon and I have both mentioned, a first in world history. The lockdown was done under—for the one reason and one reason alone: We are incapable of making personal behavioral decisions that are best for us. Whether we should go to work or work from home, whether we should go to a restaurant, go to a hair salon, go to a gym, go to a church, or stay at home. We are—it was decided by government. We are not competent to make that decision. So therefore, one who is equally incompetent—the public choice theory—a governor or a mayor, who’s just an ordinary guy, except he’s or gal, except they’re better at politics than we are. That’s why they are the governor. They’re not smarter, they don’t know about our lives. They’re just better at the reviled craft of politics. That’s why they got elected. That they are somehow more well-suited to decide. We are not—the lockdown was not to protect the public from me. It was to protect me from myself. And it was done with utter disregard to the negative consequences, which Jon has pointed out, the economic consequences that we will only begin to suffer now. So this will show how incompetent government is at making our personal decisions for us rather than us making them. And I look forward to the time when we look back on this period and reach those types of conclusions.
Now, I’m gonna—uh, by the way, Jon referred to Melinda Gates. Um, Melinda Gates gave a long-form interview to the New York Times, and she had the—and she, of course, has lots of economic power. She’s no smarter, but she has lots of economic power, and she can surround herself with advisors who will fill in the blanks in her knowledge. And, and she had been—she and the Gates Foundation were very strong, very aggressive proponents of the lockdown on a worldwide basis. And she’s, she said—and I’m gonna read through the one-sentence quote, because, uh, Jon referred to it, it is so telling, and I had identified that quote as being important for the show. Melinda Gates said in the New York Times interview, quote, “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” Oh my God, hadn’t thought through the economic impacts of a total lockdown, the loss of small business in America? We haven’t thought it through. That’s because she didn’t want to know. The information was available. And just imagine that comment, that quote by Melinda Gates could have been said by any governor, any mayor, any county executive, because it was true for all of them.
Now, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna sandbag my guest. Um, I warned him a little bit in advance, but in the few minutes we have left, uh, there’s a subject, COVID-related, that is just hitting the news now. The trucks with the, with the vaccinations are rolling out now as we speak. They’re hitting this—hitting the streets and they’re going to their destinations in the states. Now comes the next battle. Who gets the vaccination first? Oh my God. Is there going to be a political battle? You watch. Now the system is, if you want to call it that, the federal government, which is paying for the vaccination, so it’s one of those benefits you get from living here. You get a free—and you get a free vaccination compliments of Washington, DC, and the federal government is distributing the vaccination to the states, and the states are free to decide who gets it and in what order. Now watch. The states seem to be deciding that healthcare workers get it first. I’m kind of surprised. I would have thought it would have been members of the assembly and the Senate and the executive branch who get it first, but maybe that’s going to happen. We’re not going to know about it, but it’s going to happen because they are essential, God forbid. But now we have the unions. You watch the battle. So my question for Jon, as a libertarian, Jon, if you were the vaccination czar, how would you decide who in your state, Minnesota, gets the virus first? Gets the vaccination first. What would be the system you would follow applying all that you believe in? How would you do it?
Jon Miltimore: Yeah, it is one of those issues. I haven’t thought a whole lot of the vaccine, you know, like I, like I admitted. But it’s, it’s fun to talk about, it’s fun to think about. And I, I first have to say, if I’m the czar, I’m gonna say, okay, you don’t have to take this thing if you don’t want to. And that, and that itself is sort of like what we’re trying to figure out. Do we make people take the virus? Or the—excuse me, the vaccine.
Bob Zadek: You can’t. It’s unconstitutional. You can’t do it.
Jon Miltimore: Yeah, as far as who gets it, you know, I, I’m kind of thinking about the people that are most at risk of dying. Um, the people that have preconditions, um, the people that might be in that age demographic where this is a very nasty and deadly virus. Um, you know, we know for young—young people are, are hardly at risk for this. Um, you know, especially if you’re healthy. So, um, I’d be going for the, the—those people that I could save the most lives with and say, look, we have, we have a vaccine now, it’s available. Um, you’re gonna be at the front of the line if you want to take this. And then I think maybe, you know, healthcare workers, if, if they are gonna be the people that we need in case, um, you know, we do get hot—the, the hospitals overrun or something like that, they’d probably be next. But I, I’m kind of more curious to hear what you think, Bob.
Bob Zadek: Well, it’s interesting. I’ve given it a bit of thought. This is just the kind of fun intellectual exercise that I found myself doing as I was starting to read about the systems states will adopt. And it’s quite interesting, Jon. I reach an almost totally opposite conclusion. I say you give it to the 20-somethings and 30-somethings and teenagers. Why? Because they are asymptomatic and they were the spreaders. They were the ones who were spreading the disease because they were asymptomatic, nobody knew they had it. They also were going to work and they were socializing the most. Now, the reason I would give it to them is because that would fire up the economy the fastest. They would be the spenders, they would be the workers, and therefore the economy would take off much faster. There would, therefore, there would be a powerful economic bang for the buck by giving them the vaccination first. Also, the older people caught the virus from the younger people. Therefore, as the younger people get vaccinated, they then can visit their and socialize with their older family members, with their older employers without fear of those people who are vulnerable getting the disease. So in my intellectual game that I was playing, I found myself favoring giving it to those people first for that reason.
Jon Miltimore: I like that. So it—you know, some of it I’d want to know the answer to that question better than I do before, um, weighing in. But the other thing is the problem to young people, they’re gonna take this vaccine and go, go back to their basement and play Xbox and TikTok and everything else.
Bob Zadek: Now, Jon. Now, Jon. They’re gonna—they’re gonna go to work and they’re gonna invent new products for us. We’re running out of time, Jon. I want to take this opportunity really to thank you and FEE for all of the great work that you do. Jon, how do our friends out there follow your thoughts and your writing?
Jon Miltimore: Well, you can check out our, our work at FEE.org, F-E-E.org. And, uh, you know, if you want to follow me, I’m, I’m on Twitter. If you’re on that thing, just go to Miltimore79—um, my handle, I believe. So, uh, and we’re always writing every day.
A Golden Age for Libertarianism [51:34]
Jon Miltimore: We’re coming out with ideas on economics, on liberty, um, and we’re kind of fighting what feels like a rear guard action right now. You know, we’re trying to have people that liberty is important. The aftermath of the virus will be a golden age for libertarianism because all the other systems are failing.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot, Jon. Thanks for your time this Sunday morning.
Jon Miltimore: Appreciate it, Bob. Have a good one.
Bob Zadek: And thanks to my friends out there. I’ll be back again next Sunday.