Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been saying during his presidential campaign that he favors locking down the entire county if scientific advisors tell him that is the right course for dealing with coronavirus. This week, Biden announced his COVID-19 Advisory Board. Presumably, its members are among the scientific advisors who Biden will look to for the go-ahead for locking down all of America.
Indeed, Biden stated in announcing the advisory board that it “will help shape my approach to managing the surge in reported infections; ensuring vaccines are safe, effective, and distributed efficiently, equitably, and free; and protecting at-risk populations.”
A new interview at Yahoo Finance with one of the advisory board’s members suggests Americans should start preparing for a Biden lockdown.
Michael Osterholm is a member of Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board who is not shy about pushing for a countrywide lockdown. In a new interview, he says America should be locked down for four to six weeks.
Of course, many Americans know from experience that coronavirus crackdowns that were initially marketed as lasting a few weeks can remain in place for months on end.
Don’t worry about the costs of the lockdown, continues Osterholm. The United States government, he says “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, for city, states, county governments.” Thus, the economy would suffer from both a lockdown and from out-of-control government spending undoubtably paid for with new dollars conjured out of the air.
The costs of a countrywide lockdown will not just be economic. The costs in liberty denied will be very high. And the overall health costs from people forgoing noncoronavirus medical care and being driven to despair can be expected to be very high as well — much higher than any health gains from imposing lockdown quackery in response to coronavirus that for most people poses very little risk of death or even serious sickness.
