On March 12, I jotted down a first thought about the coronavirus. "The elderly and others with underlying conditions can be protected," I wrote. "The rest of us can get sick and move on." Little I've written since then has moved far from that core observation.
So I couldn't help but notice the central message of the Barrington Declaration, formulated by scientists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. After summarizing the medical, psychological and social carnage of anti-virus lockdowns, the declaration says that the "most compassionate" way forward "is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus..., while better protecting those who are at highest risk." Among the initial signers is the epidemiologist and economist Jay Bhattacharya, who I heard speak last week in Omaha. In his soft-spoken manner, he reviewed the ways elite institutions have suppressed views like his, which run contrary to what's continuously repeated, North Korea style, by the media.
I wish it were just an academic question. But as I walked through XNA and other airline ghost factories going to and from Omaha, I felt certain that, apart from the decisions that led to the Civil War in 1861, this virus episode will be remembered as the greatest domestic policy calamity in our country's history. The economic, medical, educational and social costs are yet to be known in depth, but the ugly tide is rising. "Suicides among U.S. soldiers climbed since March when pandemic lockdowns began," says a recent news article. "The pandemic has thrown between 88 million and 114 million people into extreme poverty," says the World Bank.
But it isn't the virus. It's misdirected overreactions to the virus. Overreactions that have led to the demise of hundreds of thousands of small businesses and the loss of millions of jobs, while channeling billions of dollars into the pockets of the already super-wealthy.
How did this happen? How did a supposedly free people fall into such self-destructiveness, least of all in the name of "safety"? From the beginning, there were serious people telling us that the lockdowns and most of what sprang from them were folly. They were bullied and shouted down.
I told my students in mid-March that the country was clearly falling into a mass psychological disturbance. I encouraged them not to let themselves slip -- to guard their own wits. To observe and learn. To question the voices of panic and control.
It's not in the interest of officials, the media or the tech giants for us to ask how we got here. They will want all but a few favored assertions to go into the memory hole. We can't let that happen. And journals, originally written for private purposes, are useful historical sources.
Here, edited in spots, are the first pages of one.
• March 12. "The University of Arkansas and the community college have ended classes because of the coronavirus pandemic. The NBA and NHL have shut down. A spirit of panic. It's too much. Few die from the virus. The elderly and others with underlying conditions can be protected. The rest of us can get sick and move on. But the panic is throwing the economy over a cliff. For some reason there's a rush on toilet paper. The toilet paper at the stores has been sold out. Why toilet paper? No one knows. I tell students it's a chance to study mass psychology."
• March 17. "Since the last entry, much of society has shut down in the face of the Corona pandemic. Students are gone. All classes have moved online. Air travel has effectively ended, restaurants are closing. The effect on the economy -- millions of livelihoods -- will be great. Only the elderly and already sick are really endangered. Better to protect them than throw the entire economy into the abyss. Too late now. Leaders feel compelled to take strong action and the immediate term rules."
• March 18. "Psychologically, a sense of brutalization."
• March 20. "The virus shutdown of the country continues. The economy -- people's lives and businesses -- devastated. The cure is obviously worse than the disease."
• March 25. "It appears that Congress is going to pass legislation sending $2 trillion to business people and families. $2 trillion added to the national debt of $23 trillion and dumped onto the shoulders of the young. All meeting places shuttered. Schools closed. It's going to be a very different country in a month."
• March 31. "The media continues to stoke hysteria, the economy continues to fall. The flu of 1918 was far more deadly than this, but the 1920s still roared. There will be no roaring 2021 or 2022. The ravaging of the economic landscape is too pronounced. Government by panic and sentimentality. No sense of proportion. Protect the vulnerable, but the entire society is under siege. Churches shuttered. Something malign has settled in."
-- Preston Jones lives in Siloam Springs and works on numerous educational projects, including "War & Life: Discussions with Veterans." The opinions expressed are those of the author.