Episode 129: “Weighing the Cost of Panic” with Jay Richards and John Tamny

In this episode, Bill talks with Jay Richards and John Tamny about the Covid-19 pandemic and the trade-offs between freedom and government mandated “safety.”

Should governments have simply provided people with information about risks and precautionary measures, or were the microscopic instructions, lockdowns and mask mandates necessary?

At this point the answer seems pretty clear.

“We’re a full year into this and we’ve got a lot of empirical data,” Jay explains. “We have Florida and New York to compare, as well as other states, so it’s not as if we’re in a position where we don’t really understand whether lockdowns worked. The most modest and moderate way of saying it is that the lockdowns seem to make no difference one way or the other.”

Moreover, we’re now seeing the lockdown’s enormous human and social costs with most vulnerable groups in the US devastated by unscientific and ineffective policies.

But even with the evidence before us, we’re now seeing the goal lines to end mandates continually moved outward to some distant time when we will all be “safe.”

When do we get to the point when we can declare that – like all other viruses – we just have to learn to deal with its risks?

Dr. Jay Richards is a professor at Catholic University, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, the executive editor of The Stream and the author The Price of Panic.

John Tamny is the economic guru for FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets and the author of When Politicians Panicked.

Both John and Jay have penetrating observations about the ordeal we’ve all been through and what we can learn from it about balancing the risks in life.