More people are leaving the pandemic zone, saying they are more aware of their personal risks. We now can calibrate…more of the risks that we want to take. “As that happens, we will see more people being able to avoid the pandemic as we move into the new year.” ReasonRonald Bailey, Science Correspondent has stated provocatively that the pandemic can be stopped if “we stop paying attention.” However, will the authorities at all levels (local, state, federal) allow us to return to our daily lives?
Over the last two years, COVID-19 has been the dominant topic in our daily lives. It is the deadly respiratory virus that claimed 820,000 lives and has caused lockdowns at school, work, travel restrictions and mandates for vaccines and masks.
The heroic responses to the pandemic have included the rapid development and deployment, and healthy distrust of state power, of highly effective and safe vaccines. Gallup revealed that 54% of Americans believed the government should do more to address our problems in 2020. This was only the second year in thirty years where a majority of Americans supported more state intervention. But after another year—and another unpopular president at the helm—the situation has reversed back to historical patterns, with 52 percent now agreeing that “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.”
So how and when will the pandemic—and all the policies, good and bad, that have followed—finally end? Bailey and I met up for a conversation. ReasonJacob Sullum, Senior Editor, will discuss the ineffectiveness of additional lockdowns or mandates after ubiquitous vaccines. He also discusses how politicization has driven down trust and confidence in doctors. The FDA’s failure to respond to these challenges and the disturbing turn many, even libertarians into anti-vaxxers following misinformation from both official and activist sources.
Sullum writes about public and community health. He is cautious about COVID-19’s legacy. He says that COVID-19 is the sort of emergency—an airborne respiratory virus—that, from a libertarian perspective, government has a legitimate role in combating. He is concerned that people will forget the fact that different levels of government have overstepped their bounds and surpassed legitimate state functions without any increase in good outcomes. He predicts that there will be more emergency situations in the future. We could live a life filled with rolling emergencies, which are not extraordinary power exercises but only. [become]It is a standard operating procedure. Adults won’t respond in that manner because they will remember how it was before and understand the changes. If that is all they know, younger children might be able to respond. Therefore, I am both hopeful and afraid.