Have you all noticed that the more the COVID-19 virus spreads, the fewer restrictions are in place? When less than 100 people in the entire state were infected, all the schools, bars, and restaurants were shut down. Only essential workers were allowed to commute, everyone else was only allowed out to buy food.
Now there are over 100,000 cases in Indiana and the restaurants that haven’t gone out of business are allowed to operate at full capacity.
The lockdowns were never going to work. There were loopholes that some businesses were able to exploit, and there were individuals who just didn’t take the threat seriously. If AIDS couldn’t scare young people into celibacy, COVID-19 wasn’t going to stop college students from partying either. Almost every elected official has been to college, so you’d expect them to know how a frat brother’s brain works (it often doesn’t work at all). Any policy that requires 100% public compliance to succeed is doomed to failure.
We all knew, or should have known, that the pandemic was going to be a marathon and not a sprint. If staying at home for 14 days was all it took to stop the virus, we would have moved on by now. In hindsight, a governor had two choices: A)wreck the economy and fail to stop the spread of the virus or B) not wreck the economy but keep the public warned about the threat that the virus poses. The virus is going to spread in either scenario. Many politicians are tempted to choose Option A because it makes it look like they are taking harsh measures to stop the threat. But if the threat can’t be stopped, the harsh measures only make things worse.
In times of crisis when nobody is sure what to do, governments should err on the side of freedom and individuals should err on the side of caution. You probably shouldn’t go out tonight, and you know this. But if you need to go out for supplies, or even if sitting around the house all week has taken a toll on your mental health, the government shouldn’t try to stop you from going out.
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