by Jenin Younes
The American Institute for Economic Research
From the moment it became clear that the coronavirus was headed for our shores and that much of the United States was gearing up to follow China and Italy into lockdown, my instincts told me that this was the wrong response. We cannot simply cease indefinitely the functioning of large swaths of society without a terrible, adverse impact on ourselves and the world, I thought.
Yet on the liberal-left, since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an almost complete absence of discussion and debate on the subject. Anyone who dares to suggest that we have overreacted to the threat of coronavirus, and in doing so, have caused more harm than the disease itself, is accused of being a grandma-killer, a fascist, and worse.