THE DANGERS OF GOVERNING BY EXECUTIVE.

Volokh Conspiracy participant David Bernstein was thinking only about pen-and-a-phone executive orders when he wrote, "We had experience in 1861 with what happens when a significant part of the country believes that the national government has become arrayed against it, and it's not an experience we should want to repeat on any scale."  The extension to the states is straightforward.

Days later, did the county governments of California discuss with their citizens whether to impose “sheltering in place?” California’s governor? New York’s governor? Most of the other governors? No. Nor was there debate or much consultation on the White House’s sudden and shocking bans on international travel that have trapped possibly more than 100,000 American students abroad, forcibly separated from their families?

No, these leaders just did it.

That's David R. Henderson, who also notes, "This disease should have been regarded as a medical problem with a medical fix, not as an excuse to test out the range of awesome powers of the state to trample freedom."  His colleague Benjamin Powell notes that the state action created a different medical problem, probably the most glaring error of the initial closure orders.  "Politicians talking about any data beyond hospital capacity for reopening the economy are moving the goal posts."  That's right, dear reader, in the middle of a global pandemic, there are nurses, physicians, and surgeons furloughed, wings of hospitals closed, and biopsies and who knows how many outpatient procedures cancelled not because of any contradictions of capitalism, but by executive intent.

It's all too much for Christopher Phelan, head of the economics department at the University of Minnesota.

We are sacrificing the futures of our young to protect the old, and mostly the very old.

Some of the catastrophic economic costs our young are paying are due to the epidemic itself, but many are due to the shutdown policies. I believe we need to substantially relax restrictions, now or soon. We cannot wait months or years for a vaccine or treatment that may never come.

Other countries have shown we can protect against overwhelming our hospitals without shutting down the economy. We can allow individuals and businesses to make their own decisions on balancing risks. While not perfect, such private voluntary actions will slow infection rates. Policies of aggressive testing, tracing and isolating slow infection rates as well.

At-risk individuals (including the elderly) who are able to make it through the day without help eating, getting dressed and showered can make their own decisions regarding how much to expose themselves, and where necessary we should make it financially feasible for them to limit their exposure. For those who do need daily help, we need to do the best we can to protect them.

But this cannot come at the cost of ruining the futures of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

End the shutdowns. For the children.