HOW TO MAKE A DISASTER EVEN WORSE: Lockdowns: the Self-Inflicted Disaster.  My new piece at City Journal looks at the latest lockdown research as well as previous research into the consequences of politicians using a natural disaster as a pretext for authoritarianism:

Long before Covid struck, economists detected a deadly pattern in the impact of natural disasters: if the executive branch of government used the emergency to claim sweeping new powers over the citizenry, more people died than would have if government powers had remained constrained. It’s now clear that the Covid pandemic is the deadliest confirmation yet of that pattern.

One reason Sweden escaped lockdowns is that its constitution guaranteed freedom of movement to citizens. We need to enact those sort of protections in the U.S, particularly since the CDC and WHO are making plans to seize even more power — and do more damage — in the next pandemic.