Joe Biden’s Lockdown Lobby His Covid advisers seem to have learned nothing from the spring recession.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-lockdown-lobby-11605223647?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
Did you enjoy the days at home from mid-March to May? The 22 million lost jobs, the shuttered storefronts, the neighborhood shops out of business, the kids unable to attend school, and the near economic depression? Well, congratulations, a reprise may be coming your way if Joe Biden heeds his Covid-19 advisory team.
We’ve told you about Ezekiel Emanuel, the advisory committee member who wanted new lockdowns during the summer flare-up in the Sunbelt states. Lucky for the country that his only power then was appearing on MSNBC.
Then there’s Michael Osterholm, also a member of the Biden Covid committee, who now wants a new nationwide lockdown for as many as six weeks. Dr. Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. CNBC quoted him as suggesting that we are about to enter “Covid hell” and the government should lock everyone up as we await a vaccine.
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” Dr. Osterholm said, according to Yahoo Finance. “If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks.”
Lockdowns are the good doctor’s household remedy. In August he and Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari argued for harsher lockdowns. “The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota deemed 78 percent of its workers essential,” the duo wrote in the New York Times. “To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive and strict as possible.”
Did they learn anything from the spring and events since? Lockdowns don’t crush the virus. They merely delay its spread until the lockdowns end. Targeted restrictions on people and businesses may be needed in an emergency in some locations to prevent hospitals from being overrun—though even then the government can surge medical resources, as is now happening in El Paso.
The costs of severe lockdowns are horrendous. The U.S. is still recovering from the spring catastrophe when the jobless rate surged in two months to 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of businesses closed and many will never reopen.
The human cost is even worse. A quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds have reported suicidal thoughts and increased substance abuse. Half of them reported symptoms consistent with a depressive disorder, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey in June. Some 13% of Americans said they started or increased substance use to cope with the pandemic.
Dr. Osterholm seems to think all of this harm can be alleviated if the government writes another giant check. But the feds have already appropriated nearly $3 trillion, the Federal Reserve is adding hundreds of billions, and the federal debt is now 100% of GDP and rising. Will $3 trillion more do it, or will we need $10 trillion?
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This awful advice arrives as the economy continues to recover from the first shutdowns. Third-quarter growth was a record 33.1% and the fourth quarter has started strong. Continuing jobless claims fell again in Thursday’s weekly report by another 436,000, and new claims by 48,000. The U.S. has recovered more than half of the jobs it lost, and the jobless rate has fallen to 6.9%. Where would we be now if we’d have taken Dr. Osterholm’s advice in August, or Dr. Emanuel’s in June?
Covid cases are accelerating, to a worrying degree in some places. Hospitalizations are rising, and deaths will follow, though many fewer per infection than in the spring thanks to clinical advances in treating the disease. But we should have learned by now that the best response to these surges is to protect the vulnerable, maintain social-distance protocols and wear masks when in close quarters indoors while getting on as much as possible with normal life, education and commerce.
The Biden team would have more credibility on lockdowns if they and Mr. Biden were more consistent in their Covid admonitions. But they stayed silent about last weekend’s public celebrations over Mr. Biden’s declaration of victory, and we don’t recall their warnings during the summer racial-justice protests. No wonder so many Americans ignore Covid warnings when they see this double standard.
The problem with Mr. Biden’s advisory committee is that its members are part of the conformist Covid clerisy who think that lockdowns dictated from on high are good for the little people. He ought to diversify his advice by calling in the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration on the alternative policy of “focused protection.”
On current trend Mr. Biden will inherit a recovering economy and a pipeline of better Covid therapies and likely vaccines. His job will be to extend this progress, not to send the country back into the despond of April. If he does return to lockdowns, he’ll own the economic and public-health consequences.
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