THEY DIDN'T LISTEN, THEY DID NOT KNOW HOW.

As early as April, 2020, Cold Spring Shops called attention to the folly of continuing to confine healthy people to quarters.

The governors who are having the most trouble are the ones having trouble taking "yes" for an answer. That is, the people began taking quarantine measures before the governors acted, the observed cases and deaths occurred, but in magnitudes far less than those that would overwhelm the hospitals and clinics, and instead of thinking about ways to offer some time off for good behavior, the governors extended their orders.

In the case of Illinois, dictator-for-life Democrat governor J. B. Pritzker is still extending his tyranny, for all the good it is doing. What the early tyranny was doing was mostly making people angry, although, in the United States, not in sufficient numbers to turf out the pettiest tyrants, although what Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds alerted us to appears, finally, to be breaking through to the population more generally. "People don’t appreciate being condescended to and bossed around, especially when the leaders ask them for sacrifices without empathy and humility."

Perhaps they'll listen now.

Restrictive public health measures were sold as temporary trade-offs of liberty for safety from infection. The pitch was that, if we give up freedom of movement, trade, and normal social interaction for a short time, we could beat COVID-19 and then get back to living. But from day one (as Reason has emphasized) the costs to liberty and prosperity have been high for uncertain return. And now researchers present new evidence that the world got very little benefit for the freedom that was taken away.

In addition, it's possible that public health authorities got caught up in a management fad, only masks took the place of twee invocations of quality.

One of the study’s more depressing findings is that lockdowns appear to have been heavily driven by intergovernmental peer pressure. “In short,” the authors note, “it is not the severity of the pandemic that drives the adoption of lockdowns, but rather the propensity to copy policies initiated by neighboring countries.”

There's a win for the economic way of thinking, if only people will recognize it.

“[Lockdown policies] have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the damning report insisted.

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the authors said of the “ill-founded” measures.

We can count, dear reader, on politicians being politicians.

A real scientist will revise his priors. A politician, not so much, although the consequences for the politician might be more final.  [Reason's Eric] Boehm concludes,  "In fact, we're long past that point [where the politicians admit their error and lift their ukases]. But it's good to see some politicians catching up."

But even now, they'd rather spin.  The latest howler from the coot and Raggedy Ann is something about "we've never advocated lockdowns."  No, never with those words, but haven't I seen Giftzwerg fretting about superspreader events at football games ever since the season kicked off?

It's more about ruling classes being reluctant to relinquish their powers, isn't it?

Now we have further evidence that enormous incursions into civil liberties and economic prosperity have done little to reduce deaths from COVID-19. We've had an awful lot taken from us in return for very little, if any, gain.

"Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic," the Johns Hopkins paper's authors add. "Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, 'Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission.'"

There's a lesson here, though it's not just about the ineffectiveness of the most intrusive efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a caution that any benefits the political class promises in return for disrupting our lives may be illusory. We'll have to fight to regain our liberty and prosperity, and we may never fully regain what we had.

Particularly with political leaders saying stupid things like "I have the freedom to kill you with my corona."  Or pretending that they have to Do Something.  "Driven to use the tools they have, the Biden administration has been forcing boosters on younger and younger children, even though we know that (a) they are at little risk of severe disease and virtually no risk if already vaccinated, (b) there is little evidence the boosters help young people at all, and (c) FDA officials are resigning in protest."

Turf them out.