I had a bit of a notion when I got up today to write a post about the inevitable tradeoff between whacking the coronavirus once and for all and how the price is too steep for society to undertake what would be required. Alas, G. Patrick Lynch at Law & Liberty has handled the matter impeccably:
Back in March, before the world got weird, the argument for lockdowns and restrictions was simple and powerful. In the wake of the Italian healthcare system’s catastrophic failure to handle its first major Covid outbreak, public health officials and political leaders across the globe almost unanimously decided to pursue a lockdown for what they claimed would be a few weeks in order to “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming hospital systems. Trust me on this, you didn’t dream it.
Now more than eight months into those “few weeks,” the Great Barrington Declaration is forcing us in the developed West to answer a question that we have needed to discuss honestly and publicly for a while: what’s the goal now? What are we trying to accomplish with the myriad of frequently changing collections of Covid policies that are still in place in some locales and may be reimposed on others?
We don’t hear about curve bending, let alone flattening anymore. Instead, we hear about “public safety,” “protecting Grandma and Grandpa,” mask wearing, and social distancing. There have been recent threats of more “targeted” lockdowns because of increasing cases. None of these are goals—they are practices without a clear end in sight. No one in the White House, Congress, state legislatures, or governors’ mansions is articulating a clear goal or timeline. What’s more, the trade-offs associated with this messy collection of policies have been significant and deadly.
Public health experts talk about “excess deaths,” which are essentially additional deaths in a place over a time period above what you would have predicted under normal conditions. Since the beginning of the year, the US has experienced about 300,000 excess deaths, which is a lot. The number directly attributable to Covid is “only” about 200,000. So Covid has killed 200,000, but another 100,000 Americans have died while these policies have been in place. Health officials widely point to higher rates of serious health problems that aren’t being treated because of fear associated with Covid. For example, the heart attack death rate has doubled since the pandemic began. Many of those other excess deaths might be attributable to our Covid policies, not the virus. That’s a failure on both counts. We haven’t prevented 200,000 deaths from Covid, and our lockdowns and draconian approaches lasting for months have at the very least contributed to another 100,000. Individuals who cannot afford to do so are forgoing basic health services. Heart attacks, strokes, and many other significant health problems are occurring and not being treated because of fears related to the pandemic. And perhaps most dangerously, these extra deaths not directly attributable to Covid are occurring among younger Americans between 30 and 60 who are not at high risk of dying from the virus, but are foregoing treatment because of misplaced fear.
This is to say nothing of the suffering the virus and the containment policies have caused in the developing world where millions of people live from day to day. They aren’t rich enough to stay at home, watch Netflix, and chill. There are no virtual classes in poor public schools in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We in the US are rich enough to temporarily get away with this odd, bifurcated world where many of the wealthy work from home and their children receive private tutoring online, while other “essential” workers continue to work in their jobs and accept more risks.
Constructing public policy takes not only expertise, but a proper balance between risk and reward. Aaron Wildavsky’s work on this topic points out two reasons why public officials, in conjunction with citizens, must accept tradeoffs in the creation of safety policy. As Wildavsky argues, and the discussion of excess deaths clearly illustrates, seeking safety will inevitably increase danger in other areas. For instance, Wildavsky discusses attempts by the city of Los Angeles to promote the demolition of many older buildings throughout its metropolitan area because they were deemed unsafe in the event of an earthquake. City officials were trying to be proactive against possible deaths from older buildings collapsing. But as he notes, displacing 17,000 residents from those buildings and disrupting the commercial activity in many of them had consequences for health and safety. The same is true when new drugs are placed on the market. Many citizens benefit from the drugs, but a few can have severe side-effects.
Conversely, Wildavsky argues, somewhat paradoxically, that accepting risks can promote safety. Take any standard table or floor lamp. At the time that electric lamps were invented, people were somewhat concerned about running electric current right to their fingertips, but compared to burning gas and candles, it turned out to be much safer. The tradeoff was worth it and only through risk-taking experimentation did we discover that it was safe.
The problem with our current regulatory environment, as Wildavsky sees it, is twofold: resilience is not valued, and regulators and policymakers seek what he calls “perfect safety.” Our policymakers today are rejecting resiliency, making us poorer, less socially stable, less well-educated, and more divided. The second problem is that our health experts also seek some sort of ideal or perfect safety when it comes to Covid mitigation. When policymakers compete in a race to the bottom for draconian measures that fight Covid outbreaks only with brute force, they are lauded as being proactive without careful consideration of the harm these policies inflict.
More fundamentally, what have all of these Covid mitigation policies done for human flourishing? If we could reach the perfectly safe Covid life, would it be worth it? Aristotle reminds us of the problems that arise when individuals do not live socially. As he notes in the Politics, our natural state is in a social order like the city, the center of the ancient Greek world. He famously noted that the man not suited to social life in the city was either “a beast or a god.” But what often gets left out is the next sentence, where he writes, “There is then in all persons a natural impetus to associate with each other in this manner, and he who first founded civil society was the cause of the greatest good.” Our end goal should be the promotion of human flourishing, which requires the maintenance of civil society—the social world where we practice politics, associate freely, and achieve justice through the rules that evolve from our regular interactions. This process is halted in the Covid world.
But it’s not merely our rules and sense of justice that come from social life. Our friendships, described by Aristotle in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, are profoundly important not only because of the good they do for us and our friends, but also because friendship is a substitute for state-enforced justice. When friendship is rich and deep in a political system, leaders do not need to resort to coercion and force. By instilling fear among all of us, politicians are fracturing friendship and subjecting us to lives that are not natural. We can easily see the roots of our recent civil unrest, rioting, and lawlessness during this pandemic in the isolation and breakdown of social and economic life.
None of these forced and consciously chosen disruptions were done in bad faith. However, isolation and separation from our friends, loved ones, and social life is not natural and not without cost. It can fracture our social fabric irreparably. Waiting for months without a clear set of goals decreases cohesion and trust among the governed. At the regime level, this opens up the possibility for a growing chasm between the governed and governors. Such a situation invites potential abuses of power.
Seth Chalmer at Quillette offers a thought-provoking perspective on our society's ever-ratcheting polarization:
When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, many Jews in the Russian Empire hoped for a French victory. Napoleon had eliminated barriers to Jewish integration and advancement in France; the Russian regime and its policies, by contrast, were thoroughly infused with anti-Jewish discrimination and hostility. But one prominent Hasidic leader disagreed with those cheering Bonaparte. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founding Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect, fervently supported Russia’s Tsar Alexander I. Publicly, Schneur Zalman argued that the Tsar served God while Napoleon served only himself. Privately, however, the rabbi had another reason. Writing to a friend, he explained that if Napoleon were victorious, conditions would greatly improve for the Jews and this would weaken their commitment to God, whereas if the Tsar prevailed, Jews would suffer but remain religiously committed as a result. Closing his letter, he quoted Psalm 119: “‘Princes have persecuted me without cause; But my heart stands in awe of Your words.’ And for God’s sake: Burn this letter.”
I thought of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s secret reasoning while reading Ezra Klein’s 2019 book, Why We’re Polarized. There’s a parallel between the Hasidic master’s conviction that repression of Jews strengthens Jewish commitment and some of the social science Klein discusses. Schneur Zalman’s focus was piety, not identity, yet in a way he seems to have known a truth that research later confirmed, and that all sides of today’s culture wars would be wise to remember: when you attack an identity, you make it stronger. Klein synthesizes decades of social science research about how people relate to group identities. Summarizing these findings, he writes: “The human mind is exquisitely tuned to group affiliation and group difference. It takes almost nothing for us to form a group identity, and once that happens, we naturally assume ourselves in competition with other groups.” Furthermore, “The simplest way to activate someone’s identity is to threaten it.” Threat is such a strong force that it can awaken seemingly dormant identities; for example, Klein paraphrases Professor Ashley Jardina, who studies racial identity: “White political identity is conditional. It emerges in periods of threat and challenges.”
Note the asymmetry of ease between nurturing an identity and weakening one: it takes “almost nothing” for us to form an identity, whereas when someone threatens an identity we hold, that only activates us to claim and defend it, even if it hadn’t felt relevant to us before. Klein is interested in this subject for what it tells us about the two political “mega-identities” that consume America today, how the alignment of political identities with social identities inflames our divisions, and why so many arguments that seem to be about ideology and policy are really about politics as identity. But Klein’s observations lead me to ask a question he doesn’t address: What is the most effective way to uproot an identity?
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses how two law firms pursuing these Hail-Mary efforts of the Trump campaign to find funny business withdrawing their services has unsettling long-term implications. If law firms can be cowed by the forces of wokeness to stand down, an important resource of participants in our democratic process takes a hit:
the timing on Porter Wright’s move seems curious, if so. That exchange in court took place a week ago. Yesterday, however, the New York Times highlighted internal divisions and external pressures on Porter Wright and Jones Day, another storied Ohio legal firm retained by Team Trump, over their participation in election challenges.
Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.
Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.
At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio, lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm’s election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm. At least one lawyer quit in protest.
Jones Day has earned more than $20 million doing business with Trump, his campaigns, and the RNC over the last five years, $4 million in this year alone. That’s a lot of income, and it pays more than a few salaries. Yet this seems to be the bigger concern among some of its attorneys:
In recent days, two Jones Day lawyers said they had faced heckling from friends and others on social media about working at a firm that is supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts.
A lawyer in Jones Day’s Washington office felt that the firm risked hurting itself by taking on work that undermined the rule of law. “To me, it seems extremely shortsighted,” the lawyer said.
That in itself is nonsense. Pursuing election challenges is not “undermining the rule of law,” but an exercise in law, as attorneys should especially know. I quoted Fordham Law professor Jed Shugerman in my earlier post, but he’s worth quoting again here:
The lawsuits may prove to be the best way to legitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and draw to a close years of bogus complaints about voter fraud. The lack of merit in the legal complaints means they will be dead on arrival in the courts, and while the resounding rejection of Trump’s fantasies by judges will not persuade his fiercest loyalists, it will prevent conspiracy theories from spreading.
It is also a bad idea, as a general matter, to object to election law litigation: In two years, or four years — and possibly in two months in Georgia — the shoe may be on the other foot. It would look hypocritical to condemn the very idea of challenging an election result now, only to turn around and do so in different (albeit more legitimate) circumstances.
Does it undermine the rule of law to appeal a conviction of a murder defendant one knows to be guilty on technical grounds? Should attorneys only take on clients who are popular and whose causes they agree with? The true undermining of the rule of law is the hounding of lawyers based on the clients they accept. Trump can always find law firms that will take him on as a client, but if these social-media mobs and examples of law-firm wokery set these kinds of precedents, unpopular defendants, plaintiffs, and respondents will eventually find themselves locked out of the legal system.
That will undermine the rule of law, not representing a client in futile efforts in legal challenges to election results.
When people criticize attorneys for the clients they have represented, especially in a political campaign, the standard lawyer response is also the correct and true one: every client deserves representation in the legal process. If that ceases to be the standard and the value of the legal profession, then heaven help the lawyers to come, and heaven help us all when we need representation. That matters a lot more than Trump’s futile fights in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Update: I edited the headline for greater precision shortly after publishing.
Update: I missed this earlier, but it’s an important part of the context:
On Tuesday, The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, said it will spend $500,000 on ads targeting Jones Day and a smaller law firm working for Trump, following a Monday New York Times report citing dissent among Jones Day’s senior attorneys over its election work for Republicans.
In tweets online, the group, co-founded by conservative lawyer George Conway, who is the husband of former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, has encouraged lawyers and clients to abandon Jones Day.
Online critics of Jones Day also tweeted at its clients, including Verizon VZ.N and General Motors GM.N, urging them to drop the law firm.
A Twitter post by General Motors on Monday recognizing women leaders at the auto company has garnered more than 40 responses, including “sever ties with @JonesDay or be prepared for a #BoycottGM” and “Are you a Jones Day client? Do you really want your name associated with them?”
That said, the effort to find a sufficient amount of funny business to get the Very Stable Genius a victory is clearly an exercise in futility at this late date. More substantiation here. And here.
In a time when capitalism is under attack from the left and the right, this highly promising vaccine is a reminder of what profit-driven markets are capable of. Pfizer chose to go it alone and the company’s reasoning is worth consideration. In an interview, the CEO of Pfizer emphasized that he wanted to liberate his scientists from bureaucracy, that he didn’t want to deal with the strings that money would come with, and that he wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics. In his approach we glean two insights: the importance of forward-thinking corporate leadership and the critical difference between government as a customer and government as an investor.
John Loftus at National Review on the hurl-worthy degree of moral preening and self-congratulation exemplified by “IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER / WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS / NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL / SCIENCE IS REAL / LOVE IS LOVE / KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING” yard signs.
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