The global coronavirus lockdown is a ‘misguided social experiment’ which threatens to do far more long term damage than the disease itself. We need to get back to work.
So argue two professors — one of public affairs, the other of economics — in a trenchant editorial for Jerusalem Post.
They claim:
Citizens of many countries throughout the world have recently become human subjects in a grand social science experiment that is being conducted without our informed consent.
The unintended consequences of current lockdown policies may include a surge in domestic violence and suicide and a ‘self-inflicted economic and psychological depression, hoisted upon us by an unholy triumvirate of public health officials, the media and politicians.’
The authors of the piece are Donald S Siegel, foundation professor and director at the School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University; and Robert M Sauer, professor of economics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
They say that government policy is being designed by the very same ‘unelected public health officials’ who failed in their duty to protect us from the virus. In other words, governments are being advised on how to ‘solve’ the problem by the very people who helped create that problem.
This ‘multifaceted tragedy’ is being further enhanced by a ‘crazed media, which have sensationalized the spread of the virus and vastly overestimated the damage the virus could create.’