And the people who should have held them to account — the academics and journalists charged with speaking truth to power — too often fell down on the job.
The costs of the shutdowns were enormous: trillions of dollars in deficit spending to stave off economic ruin; massive learning loss, concentrated among the least advantaged children; the special pain of leaving loved ones to die alone in dreary nursing homes and emergency rooms; a further cleaving of our already divided society.
And despite all the sacrifice, the United States still had a much higher death rate than other wealthy nations.
At a critical moment, American science abandoned its most fundamental tenets. It forsook inquiry, it muzzled debate.
And American democracy did no better. Reasonable skepticism was cast as tinfoil-hat conspiracy mongering. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube were purged of heresy.
For Macedo and Lee, the story is clear: The pandemic was a monumental test of the American system — and the system failed.
That pronouncement feels a little overwrought in parts of the book. Though the authors promise in their introduction to be careful about criticizing what happened in the past based on what is known in the present, they don’t always live up to their pledge.
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Covid era Dane County Madison Public Health Mandate and Lockdown policies.
Waiting for an analysis of the long term costs of taxpayer supported Dane County Madison Public Health “mandates”
