A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE

ImpOVERr 5,400,000imi READERS MONTHLYs May/June 2020 • Volume 49, Number 5/6

Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance Heather Mac Donald Manhattan Institute

HEATHER MAC DONALD is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from , an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including , , The New Criterion, and Public Interest, and is the author of four books, including The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on June 18, 2020, for a Hillsdale College online symposium, “The Coronavirus and Public Policy.”

Over the last four months, Americans have lived through what is arguably the most consequential period of government malfeasance in U.S. history. Public officials’ overreaction to the novel coronavirus put American cities into a coma; those same officials’ passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup de grâce. Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the Ameri- can polity and cripple urban life for decades. Before store windows started shattering in the name of racial justice, urban existence was already on life support, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns. Small HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844

businesses—the restaurants and shops from the virus against the harm from that are the lifeblood of cities—were the shutdowns, they showed no sign of shuttered, many for good, leaving it. Instead, governors and mayors started desolate rows of “For Rent” signs on rolling out one emergency decree after street after street in New York City and another to terminate economic activity, elsewhere. Americans huddled in their seemingly heedless of the consequences. homes for months on end, believing that The lockdown mandates employed if they went outside, death awaited them. mind-numbingly arbitrary distinctions. This panic was occasioned by epi- Wine stores and pot dispensaries were demiological models predicting wildly deemed “essential” and thus allowed to unlikely fatalities from the coronavirus. stay open; medical offices were required On March 30, the infamous Imperial to close. Large grocery stores got the College London model predicted 2.2 mil- green light; small retail establishments lion deaths in the U.S. by September 1, with only a few customers each day were absent government action. That predic- out of luck. Michigan Governor Gretchen tion was absurd on its face, given the dis- Whitmer notoriously used her red pen persal of the U.S. population and the fact within megastores to bar the sale of that China’s coronavirus death toll had seeds, gardening supplies, and paint. already levelled off at a few thousand. It was already clear when these The authors of that study soon revised it crushing mandates started pouring radically downwards. forth that shutting down every corner Too late. It had already become the of the country was a reckless overreac- basis for the exercise of unprecedented tion. By mid-March, two weeks before government power. was the the Imperial College model was pub- first state to lock down its economy and lished, Italian health data showed that confine its citizens to their homes; even- the coronavirus was terribly lethal to a tually almost every other state would fol- very small subset of the population—the low suit, under enormous media pressure elderly infirm—and a minor health to do so. problem to nearly everyone else who was Never before not already severely had public officials ill. The median age Imprimis (im-pri-mis),−´ required millions [Latin]: in the first place of coronavirus dece- of lawful businesses dents in Italy was 80, EDITOR  to shut their doors, Douglas A. Jeffrey and they died with a throwing tens of mil- DEPUTY EDITORS median of nearly three Matthew D. Bell lions of people out of Timothy W. Caspar comorbidities, such as work. They did so at Samantha Strayer heart disease and dia- ART DIRECTOR the command of one Shanna Cote betes. The lead author particular group of PRODUCTION MANAGER of the Imperial College Lucinda Grimm experts—those in the model has admitted STAFF ASSISTANT medical and public Kim Ellsworth that up to two-thirds health fields—who of all coronavirus Copyright © 2020 Hillsdale College viewed their mandate The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not fatalities would have as eliminating one necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. died from their comor- Permission to reprint in whole or in part is particular health risk hereby granted, provided the following credit bidities by the end of line is used: “Reprinted by permission from with every means put Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” 2020 anyway. at their disposal. SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. Three months If the politicians ISSN 0277-8432 later, this profile of Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. who followed their Patent and Trademark Office #1563325. coronavirus casualties advice weighed a still holds true. Public greater set of consid- health interventions erations, balancing could have been tar- the potential harm geted at that highly 2 MAY/JUNE 2020 • VOLUME 49, NUMBER 5/6 < hillsdale.edu vulnerable population without forcing the coronavirus is at most an inconve- the American economy into a death nience. The public health experts did spiral. not disclose that outdoors was the safest place to be and that people should get DISINFORMATION out of their homes and into the fresh air. Not coincidentally, the experts’ new- By now it is impossible to attribute found power over nearly every aspect the media’s failure to publicize the facts of American life was dependent on the about the coronavirus to mere oversight. maintenance of fear. Every story that does not mention, While the U.S. death toll from the preferably at the top, the vast overrep- coronavirus has been demographically resentation of nursing home deaths in circumscribed and lower than the previ- the coronavirus death count—above ous flu pandemics of 1968, 1956, and 50 percent in many countries and 80 1918 when adjusted for population, the percent in several of our states—is a economic toll has cut across every sec- story that is deliberately concealing the tor of the country and every population truth. Casual readers and viewers have group. Whole industries have seen their been left with the false impression that capital wiped out overnight. everyone is equally at risk, and thus that Despite a better than expected draconian measures are justified. employment report in early June, the long-term effects The politicians’ ignorance about the com- of the shutdowns plexity of economic life was stunning, as was and the continuing their hypocrisy. Every elected official, public mandates to socially health expert, and media pundit who lectured distance will pre- Americans about the need for an indefinite vent a full economic lockdown had a secure (“essential”) job. Not recovery for years to come. Forty-four one of them feared his employer would go million Americans bankrupt. are still out of work. Supply chains have The media have been equally unin- been thrown into chaos. Fresh fruits terested in the scientific evidence and vegetables are being plowed under regarding outdoor transmission. and livestock burned uneaten for lack of Coronavirus infections require what access to processing plants and markets. Japan calls the three Cs: confined Small businessmen who have put their spaces, crowded places, and close life savings into creating a service that contact. The fleeting encounters on customers want have seen their hard sidewalks and public parks that char- work go up in smoke. Without rent acterize much of city life simply do from their retail tenants, commercial not result in transmission. And yet if landlords can’t pay their taxes. City you briskly approach someone on one budgets have been decimated. The addi- of Manhattan’s broad and now empty tional $8 trillion in public debt taken sidewalks, the oncoming pedestrian on to try to substitute for the private may lunge into the street or press up economy will depress opportunity for against the closest wall in abject fear if generations. you are not wearing a mask. You may And what has been the response to be cursed at. this economic carnage on the part of The public health establishment our ruling class? Branding strategies! has been equally complicitous in creat- Politicians have put cute names on what ing this widespread ignorance. It has has been a taking of private property failed to stress at every opportunity on an unprecedented scale. New York that for the vast majority of the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo calls the 3 HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844

state lockdowns “New York on Pause,” set of guidelines to determine which as if commerce can be indefinitely sus- businesses would be allowed to start up pended and then magically resuscitated again and when. “Science,” we were told, with the flick of a switch. dictated the timetable for reopening, The politicians’ ignorance about based on rates of hospital bed vacancies the complexity of economic life was and new infections. stunning, as was their hypocrisy. To In fact, the numerical benchmarks, a person, every elected official, every enforced with draconian punctilious- public health expert, and every media ness, seem to have been drawn out of pundit who lectured Americans about a hat—they certainly had no evidence the need to stay in indefinite lockdown behind them. But even with official had a secure (“essential”) job. Not one reopenings, many customers will be of them feared his employer would go long reluctant to resume their normal bankrupt. Anyone who warned that the habits of consumption and travel thanks effects of the lockdowns would be more to the uninterrupted fearmongering on devastating than anything the corona- the part of the media, the experts, and virus could inflict was accused of being elected leaders. a heartless capitalist who only cared Being fantastically risk averse is now about profits. a badge of honor, at least among the professional elites. Blue state officials invoked “science” to jus- A young tech col- tify yet another arbitrary set of guidelines as umnist for The New to which businesses could start up again and York Times wrote an when. But even with official reopenings, many op-ed in May about customers will be long reluctant to resume cancelling a restau- their normal habits thanks to uninterrupted rant reservation in Missoula, Montana. fearmongering on the part of the media, the Missoula County experts, and elected leaders. had been virus- free for weeks, and But to care about the economy is Montana’s case load had been negligible. to care about human life, since the Nevertheless, the columnist experienced economy is how life is sustained. It is a panic attack after booking a table, a source of meaning, as well as suste- contemplating the allegedly lethal risk nance, binding humans to each other that awaited him in the reopened res- in a web of voluntary exchange. To its taurant. Rather than being ashamed of workers, every business is essential, and his cowardice, the columnist was proud, to many of its customers as well. Even he wrote, to have bailed out of his res- judged by the narrowest possible defini- ervation in order to continue sheltering tion of public health—lives lost—the in place. toll from the lockdowns will exceed that The absurd social distancing proto- of the virus, due to the cancellation of cols make operating many businesses elective medical procedures, patients’ and much of city life virtually impos- unnecessary fear of seeking medical sible. The six-foot rule is as arbitrary as treatment, and the psychological effects the “metrics” for reopening. (The World of unemployment. Health Organization recommends three In May, politicians started inviting feet of social distance, and many coun- a few scattered sectors of their state tries have adopted that recommenda- economies to reopen, with blue state tion.) Keeping customers and employees governors and mayors being particu- six feet apart will render a city’s basic larly parsimonious with their noblesse institutions unworkable, from restau- oblige. These blue state officials invoked rants to concert halls. The Metropolitan “science” to justify yet another arbitrary Opera has cancelled the first half of its 4 MAY/JUNE 2020 • VOLUME 49, NUMBER 5/6 < hillsdale.edu

2020-2021 season while it figures out arrests that the police make each year. how to maintain social distancing among Indeed, there is no government agency audience members and on the stage. more dedicated to the proposition Every other performing arts organization that than the police. will face the same almost insuperable Nevertheless, within 24 hours, the vio- dilemma. lence had begun. My 34-story apartment building On the night of Thursday, May 28, in Manhattan, like many others, has Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey ordered imposed a one person per elevator ride the city’s Third Police Precinct evacu- rule, even though the elevator interiors ated as the forces of anarchy descended are more than six feet across. I invite upon it for a third day in a row. The anyone who may also be waiting for an building was promptly torched, sending elevator to share my ride up; no one has a powerful sign that society would not ever accepted the offer, even though defend its most fundamental institutions both I and my invitee are masked. Nor of law and order. has anyone ever extended such an offer Soon cities across the country to me. Now translate this hysteria to became scenes of feral savagery. The Manhattan’s massive office towers. If human lust for violence, the sheer joy of New York City ever fully reopens, a simi- plunder and destruction, were unleashed lar social distancing rule for office eleva- without check. Police officers were shot tors will lead to lines of workers around at, run over, slashed with knives, and every midtown block each morning. clubbed; two current and former law As long as this fear lasts, city life is not enforcement officers were killed in cold possible. blood. Police cruisers and station houses were firebombed; courthouses were FROM COLD WAR TO HOT trashed. Looters drove trucks through storefronts and emptied the stores’ Then the cities started burning. What contents into the back of these newly had been a cold war on the economy and repurposed vehicles of civil war. ATMs civic life became a hot war. were ripped out of walls; pharmacies Government officials, having shut plundered for drugs. down commerce due to unblemished Blue state governors and mayors ignorance of how markets work, now ordered law enforcement to stand down enabled the torching and looting of or use at most (in New York City Mayor thousands of businesses due to the Bill de Blasio’s words) a “light touch” shirking of their most profound respon- with the rioters. By the time these pro- sibility: protecting civil peace. gressive public leaders realized that On Monday, May 25, a video of the something more forceful needed to be horrific arrest and death of a black man done, it was too late. The fire of sadism suspected of passing a forged $20 bill in and hatred could not be contained, but Minneapolis went viral. A police officer would have to burn itself out. Belatedly kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for imposed curfews were universally nearly nine minutes as Floyd begged for ignored: why should anyone obey an help breathing. Floyd was already hand- edict from a government that refused to cuffed and thus posed a minimal risk. protect human life and livelihoods? The officer ignored Floyd’s distress even Perversely, the rioting exhibited fea- as Floyd stopped talking or moving. tures of the coronavirus shutdowns in The officer’s behavior was grotesquely even more literal form. If before, busi- callous and contrary to sound tactics, nesses were boarded up due to bank- and the officer will be prosecuted and ruptcy, now they were boarded up to punished under the law. His behavior prevent further theft. Small businesses, was not, however, representative of the lacking the resources to outlast the overwhelming majority of the ten million shutdowns, now saw the final depletion 5 HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844

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of their inventories. The fortress men- wisdom regarding social distancing. tality in residential buildings from The politicians, pundits, and health coronavirus hysteria was replaced by experts who had condescendingly an actual fortress, as building manage- rebuked business owners for reopening ments hastily erected plywood bar- without official permission, who had riers over lobby windows and doors. banned funerals and church services The hyped-up fear of going outside of more than ten people, and who had into allegedly virus-infected public heaped scorn on protesters who had spaces became a justified fear of leav- gathered in state capitols to express ing one’s fortress and being sacrificed their economic distress, suddenly to the mob. Shelter-in-place became a became avid cheerleaders for screaming necessity, not a product of government crowds numbering in the thousands. overreach. The fall of night became a Most remarkably, public officials source of terror for ordinary citizens overtly admitted to choosing the forms and business owners. of assembly that would be allowed Previously, securely-employed pub- based on the content of the protesters’ lic officials breezily dismissed their speech. Mayor de Blasio explained that constituents’ anguish over unemploy- protests over “400 years of American ment and growing business failures. ” are not the same as a “store Now those same officials, safe behind owner or the devout religious person their security details and publicly- who wants to go back to services.” owned mansions, foreswore the acti- While the store owner or worshipper vation of the National Guard and may be “understandably aggrieved,” he military. None of those officials owned conceded, their grievances must still be businesses, so they faced no loss either suppressed in the name of coronavirus from economic quarantine or from safety. Not the grievances of the pro- physical rampage. testers and rioters, however. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy congratulated DOUBLE STANDARDS the Black Lives Matter activists and dis- tinguished them from mere “nail salon” One thing did change markedly entrepreneurs protesting their ongoing between the coronavirus lockdowns business stasis. The two are in “differ- and the riot lockdowns, however: elite ent orbits,” Murphy said. 6 MAY/JUNE 2020 • VOLUME 49, NUMBER 5/6 < hillsdale.edu

The politicians’ hypocrisy was a were deaf to the pleas of law-abiding mere warm-up for that of the public business owners who saw their life’s health establishment. These were the efforts snuffed out. They engineered people whose diktats had inspired the the destruction of trillions of dollars of lockdowns and whose allegedly supreme wealth, through thoroughly arbitrary knowledge of medical risk was allowed to decision making. And then they stood by cancel all other considerations in main- as billions more dollars of work burned taining a functioning society. Nearly down. Public order and safety, equal 1,200 of these same experts, including treatment under the law, stability of from the CDC, signed a public letter sup- expectations—all the prerequisites for porting the unsocially distanced protests robust investment have been decimated. on the grounds that “white supremacy is The failure to quell the riots means that a lethal public health issue that predates more are inevitable. Any future business and contributes to COVID-19.” faces possible destruction by another One could just as easily argue that a lockdown or by looting—which it will be global depression, induced by the gratu- is anyone’s guess. itous crushing of trade and the hollow- ing out of capital, is a lethal public health *** issue of at least equal magnitude. But it turns out that public health is as much The coronavirus lockdowns demon- about politics as it is about science. strated our leaders’ ignorance of eco- This shameless reversal should have nomic interdependence. After the riots, torpedoed the lockdowns once and for that ignorance has been shown to run far all. If it turns out that mass gatherings deeper. It is an ignorance about govern- were now not just allowable but to be ment’s most fundamental obligation: to encouraged, no rationale remained for safeguard life, liberty, and property. It is preventing restaurants and stores from an ignorance about human nature and reopening. But instead, once media human striving. attention became a little less monoma- Property and capital are not soul- niacally focused on the anti-police agita- less abstractions, easily replaced by an tion, the familiar chorus rose up again, insurance payout, as the rioters and their directed at everyone else: Stay socially apologists maintain. (The Massachusetts distanced! Wear your outdoor masks! Attorney General noted that burning is No gatherings of more than a few dozen! “how forests grow.”) Capital is accumu- No entering “non-essential” stores! The lated effort and innovation, the sum of same arbitrary “metrics” for business human achievement and imagination. reopenings were still in place and still Its creation is the aim of civilization. being enforced. But civilization is everywhere and at all By now, the collapse of government times vulnerable to the darkest human legitimacy is complete. For three months, impulses. Government exists to rein in public officials abdicated their respon- those impulses so that individual initia- sibility to balance the costs and benefits tive can flourish. America’s Founders, of any given policy. They put the future schooled in a profound philosophical and of hundreds of millions of Americans literary tradition dating back to classi- in the hands of a narrow set of experts cal antiquity, understood the fragility of who lack all awareness of the workings civil peace and the danger of the lustful, of economic and social systems, and vengeful mob. whose “science” was built on the ever- Our present leaders, the products of a shifting sand of speculative models and politicized and failing education system, on extreme risk aversion regarding only seem to know nothing of those truths. one kind of risk. Pulling the country back from the abyss The public officials who ceded will require a recalling of our civiliza- their authority to the so-called experts tional inheritance. ■ 7