There Was Never an Honest Case for Lockdowns

The Irrational Double Standard Wiped From History

An increasing argument now is “even if in hindsight we know lockdowns unequivocally fail cost-benefit analysis, we didn’t know that at the time”. This might be true if you replace “we” with “me”, the person making the arguments. There was state-coordinated censorship and most of the public was not able to read scientific papers. But by Summer 2020, there was plenty of evidence that:

• Stratification of deaths and hospitalizations were extremely dependent on age and co-morbidities 

• Uniform transmission was being used to incorrectly overestimate rates of transmission and herd immunity thresholds

And

• Lockdowns would cause a recession or inflation via the spending to prevent the recession

• Lockdowns would cause supply chain disruptions and shortages

• Lockdowns would cause severe learning loss

• Lockdowns would reduce immunity to other viruses

The big lie was not even the epidemiological failures that exaggerated the danger of COVID. The big lie was the consistent, regime-enforced downplaying of the cost of lockdowns. Normal people didn’t know what the uniform transmission model even is. Their ignorance might be excusable, but they were ignorant nonetheless. The same cannot be said for the costs of lockdowns. It does not take a genius to tell you the possible costs of lockdowns. They would surely be less quantitative, but would not come to nearly as disastrous conclusions as the American ruling class (and most Western ruling classes). 

The reason is that the 85 iq person is applying equal (albeit low) standards of rigor to judging lockdowns and viruses. This is a normal thing to do. If this was the failure of the ruling class, I would forgive them. If this was what happened, I would accept the argument that “we just didn’t know at the time”. 

The Double Standard of Rigor

This was not what happened. The American ruling class became simultaneously radicalized in two contradictory directions. They rushed into lockdowns with reckless disregard while falling for the worst anecdotes of Covid hysteria, greatly estimating its danger. This is not what an intellectually honest person would do. If someone was paranoid about both the cost of Covid and the cost of lockdowns, I would intellectually respect them, even if I do not agree. This was almost never the case. Instead, there were polar opposite demands for rigor. This is why the American ruling class systematically ignored correct information about both the severity and stratification of Covid, as well as about the cost of lockdowns.

This is the reason why the ruling class is not only to blame for enforcing lockdowns during and after summer 2020, but also beforehand. While the exact degree of excess damage was not known at the time, anyone not malicious or at least extremely negligent could have predicted that lockdowns would do more damage than the virus itself. This intellectual dishonesty is the most appalling part of the Covid regime. I respect a lot of innumeracy and error in life. We are only human. But these mistakes were not a random group of errors. They were the result of an isolated, inconsistent paranoia that anyone could predict would horribly bias their worldview. 

Despite taking several months to fully uncover school, supply chain and co-morbidity data (until Summer 2020) and even later to fully measure inflation and impact of spending, the expected values of these numbers could be reasonably estimated at the time, so long as you had an equal consideration of the costs of lockdowns as the cost of Covid itself. This is why there was not even an ethical case for lockdowns in February. So long as you were considering the expected value of both sides of the equation equally, this was an absurd decision. 

No Classical Liberalism For Lockdown Enforcers

The paradox of tolerance suggests that classical liberals must be alert for future threats to classical liberalism, people who would deny them freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, and other fundamental rights. In the case of many lockdown enforcers, the exact same people who denied these freedoms to other people are still in charge and are still able to wield the exact same power they once wielded in a full on assault against classical liberalism. There is no excuse for this from within a classical liberal framework. Within the framework of classical liberalism, there is no higher bar to surpass than this: lockdown enforcers have violated your rights, are still in positions of power to violate your rights again, and have said they plan to do it again. The refusal to take political and social actions to remove lockdowns enforcers from all positions of oligarchic power, including government agencies, legacy media, scientific journals, and public office is a total indictment of any self-consistent classical liberal philosophy. 

While I am in general supportive of open debate free from social coercion, lockdown enforcers are a clear exception. As I said before, normal members of the public can be unaware or affected by media and censorship. However, those who continue to advocate lockdowns should also be shamed, humiliated, and ostracized. There are several reasons for this:

• The aforementioned paradox of tolerance.

• Lockdown enforcers are not representative of the general population. From prominent examples, they are likely far more neurotic and conformist, making this tactic much more important in dealing with them.

• Moral justification: lockdown enforcers are directly responsible for the worst experience in the lives of most people in my generation. Reminding lockdown supporters of the truth of what they did is a small fraction of justice.

Denouement

Most of my articles are related to political theory and strategy. Many come to mind as being applicable here. Stupidity Beats Intelligence. The Case for Sacred Experiments. Even The Rule of Midwits from almost two years ago. Many people have different answers for “why do you care about winning”. The unmitigated, anarcho-tyrannic disaster that was Covid policy is mine.