Penna Dexter

You have probably noticed the conservative–liberal divide on COVID-19 mitigation measures, especially lockdowns. It’s not that conservatives aren’t worried about the current uptick in cases. We just don’t think another set of lockdowns will be particularly effective in the long run. We see the millions of jobs lost, businesses shuttered, whole industries devastated — perhaps never to fully recover, and the academic setbacks. We simply don’t advocate a repeat. As the virus sickens and sometimes kills, we notice that lockdowns in the health care industry are also damaging people’s health and killing some. Conservatives oppose lockdowns because we think they do more damage than good. Vance Ginn, chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation encourages Americans to “acknowledge we can’t get to zero cases and deaths without eliminating liberty and livelihoods.” According to economist Steve Moore, the 10 states with the strictest lockdowns are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington. Not one of these has a conservative governor. Liberal governors prohibit restaurant dining. Yet contact tracing shows only 2 percent of transmission comes from restaurants. The National Restaurant Association expects that 40 to 50 percent of restaurants will go bankrupt if those forced to close do not reopen soon. As Mr. Moore points out in a column at Townhall.com, liberals complain about so-called income inequality, the gap between rich and poor. But lockdowns are making this much worse. People in public facing service-industry jobs are at risk for getting the virus. But they’re also vulnerable when they lose their jobs. And they are losing jobs. Politico reported that the poor, and especially the minority poor, are disproportionately losing jobs, “because Black and Latino workers are over-represented in the service industries wiped out by shutdowns.” Liberals are supposed to be the ones who care about these people. But, as Steve Moore says, their lockdown policies “are crushing the little guy.” They are, in fact, “the great unequalizer.”