Were lockdowns a mistake?

Michael Barone writes in the New York Post,

Were lockdowns a mistake? To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes.

…The legitimate fears that hospitals would be overwhelmed apparently explain the (in retrospect, deadly) orders of the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan requiring elderly care facilities to admit COVID-infected patients. And the original purpose to “flatten the curve” segued into “stamp out the virus.”

…Examples include shaming beachgoers though outdoor virus spread is minimal; extending school shutdowns though few children get or transmit the infection; closing down gardening aisles in superstores; and barring church services while blessing inevitably noisy and crowded demonstrations for politically favored causes.

…The new thinking on lockdowns, as Greg Ip reported in the Wall Street Journal last week, is that “they’re overly blunt and costly.” That supports President Trump’s mid-April statement that “A prolonged lockdown combined with a forced economic depression would inflict an immense and wide-ranging toll on public health.”

…For many, that economic damage has been of Great Depression proportions. Restaurants and small businesses have been closed forever, even before the last three months of “mostly peaceful” urban rioting. Losses have been concentrated on those with low income and little wealth, while lockdowns have added tens of billions to the net worth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

The anti-lockdown blogger (and former New York Times reporter) Alex Berenson makes a powerful case that lockdowns delayed, rather than prevented, infections.

Read more here.