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.
Posts
