![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.aier.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/swedenoutdoordining-800x508.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAnd so it was time again. Tightened restrictions, mandatory\u00a0limits<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0public life<\/a>, curfews, orders to stay-at-home,\u00a0travel bans<\/a>\u00a0with invasive hoops, and all the other anti-corona policies that ostensibly aren\u2019t\u00a0lookdowns<\/a>: they look like lockdowns, they quack like lockdowns, but in these euphemism-prone times we call them by any other names than lockdowns.<\/p>\n Maddeningly, the goalpost keeps shifting, updating life and language faster and better than George Orwell himself could have done. First, we had to take precautions to flatten the curve. Hospitals and fears, remember? Then we had to stop traveling, or visit the mall \u2012 because who needs that, anyway?<\/p>\n Then we had to wear cloth over our faces and stay away from each other. For the elderly\u2019s sake, naturally. Then we had to give up public life for everyone\u2019s sake. The next step, bravely taken by authoritarian politicians and epidemiologists across the Western world, is to intentionally overdo the restrictions \u2012 \u201cfor now\u201d \u2012 so that we have any hope of getting freedoms back for the holidays.<\/p>\n No matter how hard these enlightened autocrats have squeezed, this badly-behaved virus refuses to listen. How odd, they must think; we passed a law, made an announcement \u2012 why isn\u2019t it working?<\/p>\n Back to your rooms, the Austrians said. After an\u00a0explosive<\/a>\u00a0number<\/a>\u00a0of positive tests in the last week, enough with the provisional liberties and niceties, you\u2019re grounded for the rest of November. Gatherings and cultural events are closed;\u00a0Christmas markets<\/a>\u00a0are out. The Icelanders, already in the spring proclaimed corona free and all summer celebrated in puff pieces by Elizabeth Kolbert in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and Adam Roy Gordon in\u00a0the Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, still dreamily speak of celebrating Christmas.<\/p>\n When the latest rounds of tighter and\u00a0tighter restrictions<\/a>\u00a0came into effect this week, the government talking heads, and the prime minister in particular, told their subjects to give up on Halloween and the next few weeks. Let\u2019s sacrifice these few weeks, they said, so that we can loosen restrictions for Christmas. Fat chance.<\/p>\n The Brits and the French have been even more adamant on setting timelines, or \u201ccircuit-breakers,\u201d on their invasive policies. We strip you of liberties, dignities, and the things in which most people find joy \u2012 but for a good cause, and just for a little while, okay?<\/p>\n The naivety here was always impressive. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Most people could have plausibly believed what their politicians told them about timelines in the spring; this was a new situation, we didn\u2019t know what the novel threat was, and old handbooks could be thrown out before anyone had time to object. The withdrawn freedoms would be rolled back in time, but as political economist\u00a0Robert Higgs taught us long ago<\/a>, never quite fully.<\/p>\n A little over half a year later, we\u2019re going through the same ordeal again. With much better knowledge about the (overblown) risks, with much better tools in preventing spread and safeguarding the elderly. Still, it doesn\u2019t seem to matter. The political overlords, not exactly known for their excellence in\u00a0interpreting statistics<\/a>, look at their\u00a0exponential graphs<\/a>\u00a0\u2012 and do the exact same thing they did in the spring.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as if the virus doesn\u2019t care about your crackdowns, your faster and harder tightening of the societal and commercial noose. If you squeeze people just a little bit more, maybe \u2012 just maybe \u2012 the virus will listen\u2026? French ministers, like American policy-makers in the spring, started mandating what kinds of products may be on the supermarket shelves:\u00a0soap is acceptable; makeup isn\u2019t<\/a>. The\u00a0Germans<\/a>, widely celebrated for their track-and-trace program and generous financial schemes, opted for a \u201cmild\u201d lockdown \u2012 \u201cjust\u201d for four weeks.<\/p>\n Perhaps, suggested\u00a0Holman Jenkins<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0recently, \u201cthe bigger numbers might suggest we are grappling with a natural phenomenon over which we exercise little control.\u201d<\/p>\n Take the bamboozled and highly infected discussion over mask-wearing.\u00a0They\u2019re effective, they\u2019re not effective<\/a>; they\u2019re effective if you use them right; and even if they\u2019re not, every little bit counts. In its beautiful\u00a0infographic<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0describes how they work: \u201cA good mask will have a large surface area, a tight fit around the edges, and a shape that leaves space around your nostrils and mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if accurate, we don\u2019t need to go much further than our closest supermarket to notice that that\u2019s not the kind of masks worn by most people. Most people wear loosely fitted, thin pieces of cloth that probably capture some particles \u2012 what do I know? \u2012 but is unlikely to approach the efficacy that its proponents describe. We reuse them without washing them \u2012 can anyone really be bothered? \u2012 we don\u2019t put them on properly, they leak left-right-and-center.<\/p>\n The fallback line? Well, not\u00a0individually<\/em>\u00a0but they\u2019re part of a bigger package. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0quotes Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech saying that \u201csomething is better than nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps every little helps in a what-otherwise-would-have-been sense, but that\u2019s not how most decision-makers justify the above withdrawal of our liberties. Rather, they say that the infection rates are \u201ctoo high,\u201d the curve too steep, the hospital capacity for treatment too close for comfort. Presuming their honesty \u2012 the\u00a0faking of which<\/a>\u00a0I don\u2019t put past them \u2012 there\u2019s scant evidence that aggregate mask use correlates in any way with infection rates.<\/p>\n Sweden, where virtually nobody outside hospital settings\u00a0uses masks<\/a>, has had lower\u00a07-days rolling deaths per capita<\/a>\u00a0than the U.S. for four months straight; lower than the mask-wielding and lockdown-prone U.K. for almost two months. Even the much-praised German experience now has more people dying from (and with) Covid-19 than Sweden does. Infection rates and\u00a0spread too<\/a>: the\u00a0trends<\/a>\u00a0since the height of summer or beginning of fall look the same, regardless if you\u2019re a massively mask-wielding country or not.<\/p>\n Yes, it is possible that without widespread mask use among Americans and Brits, infection rates would have\u00a0even<\/em>\u00a0higher and death rates too. I keep wondering, what would the numbers have to look like for you to even\u00a0consider<\/em>\u00a0that what we\u2019re doing isn\u2019t working? That perhaps locking down societies, practically, doesn\u2019t do much to combat the disease, but\u00a0quite a lot<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0ruin people\u2019s lives<\/a>\u00a0and livelihoods?<\/p>\n We can choose cherry-picked countries for our various cases all we like: the \u201csuccess stories<\/a>\u201d of Vietnam, New Zealand, or Australia haven\u2019t done things much differently than Denmark, Austria, France, U.K. or the U.S.: squeeze your populace, and say the magic incantations. Perhaps the virus deity will grant your wishes.<\/p>\n I\u2019m reminded of two-decades old words by Jason Diakit\u00e9 (stage name \u2018Timbuktu\u2019), one of my favorite musicians and one of the most successful hip-hoppers in Sweden. In the early 2000s, he released a pretty obscure song called\u00a0Ett Brev<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cA Letter\u201d) structured like a letter to the then-prime minister of Sweden. A political rapper \u2012 naturally hard left like all good artists \u2012 Diakit\u00e9 was objecting to the many frightening trends he saw in Europe: dismantled social safety nets, overburdened health care services, opposition and hatred towards immigrants. He explicitly included a list of countries where Nazis were allegedly \u201cgaining the upper hand\u201d in typical Antifa-like hyperbole: France, Italy, \u201cBeNeLux<\/a>,\u201d and Sweden\u2019s immediate neighbor Denmark. The list of places going radically south, as he saw it, was long.<\/p>\n In all of these places, \u201cForces for good have presumably surrendered.\u201d Little did Diakit\u00e9 know that almost two decades after he penned those provocative lines, his words would ring true across most of the Western world.<\/p>\n The authoritarian threat of 2020 is very different, and instead of neo-Nazi movements of the early 2000s the culprits are established, well-meaning politicians and technocrats. Much like then, Sweden is depicted as a beacon of light,\u00a0standing against<\/a>\u00a0a world gone mad, the last outpost of sanity and the values underpinning Western Liberal Democracy.<\/p>\n Most everywhere else, different rules apply: no matter the facts, we must squeeze harder. The badly-behaved virus must stop progressing, must cease and desist. Anything else, apparently, \u201cjust doesn\u2019t seem worth it<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n