As antibody tests across the country, including New York, indicate that the virus is far less deadly and far wider spread than previously reported, the conclusion is becoming even more inescapable that the lockdowns were a massive mistake. What some argued all along is now being vindicated by the data: we wrecked the economy for no good reason. But don’t expect those politicians and bureaucrats behind this historic blunder to take any responsibility. Instead, they are resorting to ever more deranged justifications for the policies that have left over 26 million jobless and relegated millions of Americans to the food bank line.
Of all the deranged justifications, perhaps none can top New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s diatribe at a press briefing yesterday. When asked whether the economic devastation from the lockdowns may prove more disastrous than the illness itself, Cuomo rejected the premise of the question, stating that nothing can be worse than the illness because “the illness is death.” He explained that this is especially a problem because the illness may be “my death as opposed to your death.” He then claimed, incredibly, that while economic hardship and domestic violence are “very bad” results of the shutdowns, they are “not death.” Cuomo also argued that the people who want to go to work are too focused on themselves – “it’s not just about you,” he declared – and that ending the shutdowns may result in the deaths of other people besides those who want the shutdowns to end.
This is all quite astounding. First of all, the illness is not death. For a very small minority of people, it will cause death. For most it will not. So, when Cuomo says “the illness is death,” what he must mean is that “the illness is a thing that for a minority of people leads to death.” But then how can he claim that economic hardship and domestic violence aren’t, in this same sense, death? Poverty kills millions across the world each year. Domestic violence kills thousands. I’m sure that Cuomo doesn’t actually think that domestic violence and poverty aren’t potentially deadly, but that’s what he claimed for the sake of rationalizing his lockdown policies.
As for this “it’s not just about you” stuff, that holds true in the other direction as well. If it is selfish for a man to go to work to feed his family because he might get someone else sick, is it not just as selfish to demand or impose a lockdown that will impoverish other people just so that you can be safe? I would argue that “it’s not just about you” applies much more to the people supporting lockdowns than those opposing them, given that the policies are instated and enforced by government officials who sill have jobs and defended by media personalities who still have jobs. They get all of the benefit of the shutdown – namely, whatever nominal and temporary safety the policies might afford – but suffer almost none of the consequences. How could the people suffering the consequences be the selfish ones in this equation?
Finally, Cuomo’s arguments are wrong in a more fundamental sense because they’re built on the premise that “nothing can be worse” than death. From a societal standpoint, that is absurd. If we were actually governed that way on a consistent basis, it would mean the end of human civilization. You simply cannot have a functioning civilization that views the avoidance of death as the ultimate and overriding goal, and death itself as a thing that must be avoided at literally any cost. By that logic, every action that carries risk should be banned. All driving banned. All vehicles impounded. Every pool and baseball diamond and beach and amusement park closed. To permit any of these things is to admit that we are willing to risk death. And often we are willing to face a much greater risk of death than coronavirus presents for things much less essential than our jobs and livelihoods. Indeed, it’s probably much more likely that a young and healthy person drowns at the beach because of a riptide than it is that he dies from contracting the virus at the beach. And yet we closed the beaches only for fear of the latter scenario. This is irrational in the extreme. And Cuomo’s defense of these policies is just as irrational.