BUT HEY, IT’S ENRICHING TRIAL LAWYERS: American’s War on Pain Pills Is Killing Addicts and Leaving Patients in Agony. The government’s efforts to get between people and the drugs they want have no prevented drug use, but they have made it more dangerous.

THE CITY THAT NEVER WAKES: The Big Empty. Sohrab Ahmari takes a stroll on the abandoned sidewalks of New York:

By the end of my walk, I was tempted to scream, Charlton-Heston-in-Planet-of-the-Apes-style: “We finally did it! You maniacs . . . God damn you!” They—we—turned the greatest city in the world into Podgorica at nighttime, except weird and dystopian to boot.

When I got home, I told my wife that I wished to launch a civil-disobedience movement against the lockdowns. She blessedly talked me down, and I slept off the strong drink and inspired resolution. Still, I’m angry, as an American and a New Yorker, and have been angry since this all began. I can’t avoid holding in contempt the virtue-signaling double-masking types on the Upper East Side (“I’m one of the good ones, Dr. Fauci!”); the moms at my son’s Catholic school who pull Junior away from touching a metal railing (“Watch out! The virus!”); the young professionals who seem to take a perverse pleasure in the possibility that we are unlikely to socialize in person ever again and must learn to love the Clubhouse voice app.

The pandemic and the lockdowns are highly complex events and, as the social theorists might say, overdetermined. But one clear factor is the behavior of a laptop class that lives in fear of risk, with no transcendent horizon and “the consolations neither of Christ nor of Seneca,” as my friend Rusty Reno likes to say. That class seems prepared to desolate a place like New York City in service of safety-ism, to reorganize our way of life around its own neo-gnostic preferences, its horror of embodied relationships and inherited obligations—including obligations to place.

Yes, it’s now the Big Empty.

NO, IT’S NOT A HOMELESS PROBLEM: San Francisco’s Substance-Abuse Crisis. Governor Gavin Newsom touts Project Roomkey, his hotels-for-the-homeless program, as a model for the rest of the nation, and the program is expanding with funding from the Biden administration. But take a stroll through the city’s Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods:

Block after block, you’ll see thousands of people who are barely alive. Some are alone; others are piled on top of one another, running into traffic, or standing slumped over, unconscious. They’ll be injecting or smoking heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in front of you, unaware or unfazed by your presence. Scabs cover their faces and bodies, limbs are swollen red and blue, often bloody and oozing pus. You’ll notice the garbage, rotting food, discarded drug detritus, and feces surrounding them. A shocking number are mere teenagers, but many are old or have aged well before their time.

Project Roomkey’s hotels offer no addiction-recovery treatment, and there’s no sobriety requirement. But the hotel residents do get fresh needles.

HIS PARTING GIFT: Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate. The astrophysicist S. Fred Singer spent much of his career challenging climate alarmists and other environmentalist doomsayers. He died last year, but not before revising and updating his opus on the subject with the help of two other climate scientists, David R. Legates and Anthony R. Lupo.

NOT-SO-SOFT BIGOTRY: The Tribalist Left. When will the “antiracists” start rooting out the bigots in their own ranks?

STAY UNWOKE, DON’T GO BROKE: Capitalist Havens of Free Speech. Market-driven innovation is providing new outlets for free expression in an increasingly intolerant media environment. Steven Malanga chronicles the rise of Substack, Adam Carolla and other rebels against mainstream orthodoxy. He also discusses the history of free speech and what has made it possible: capitalism.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: A Troubled Rule of Law. The pervasive sense that cities would burn if Derek Chauvin were not convicted raises questions about whether the jury’s verdict was reached dispassionately. And the false narrative about a racist criminal-justice system will continue victimizing thousands of law-abiding blacks in vulnerable urban neighborhoods who yearn for more police protection.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Is a Supernova Volcano and How Can We Prevent an Eruption? When it comes to existential threats to humanity, a supervolcano eruption is twice as likely as a giant asteroid strike. But there’s a fix, as explained in one of the engaging science and public-policy videos at the new Kite and Key Media website. Other videos debunk the “overpopulation” crisis and the myth that electric cars can make a difference in combating climate change.

ANOTHER REASON TO ABOLISH THE FDA: The FDA’s War on Nicotine Will Encourage Americans to Smoke More Cigarettes. Having done its best to discourage smokers from from switching to vaping, the FDA’s new policy will directly promote more cigarette sales.

A PLAGUE OF CHILD ABUSE: Masking Children Is Unnecessary—and Harmful. The pandemic has turned American adults into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year, and still can’t restrain themselves. Social distancing and masks hinder learning while harming children emotionally, socially, and physically, all for no purpose other than providing false comfort to adults who ought to know better. In my City Journal article, I present the evidence that these restrictions are both pointless and damaging.

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOOTING: Storm Warning in Philadelphia. While hapless city officials try appeasing activists, residents and business owners brace for the Chauvin verdict.

MUCH TO THE DISMAY OF THE PUBLIC-HEALTH ESTABLISHMENT: There Will Be No Third Wave of Covid Deaths. There may be a lot more infections in the UK, but few severe cases, according to a professor at Bristol University with a strong track record for predicting trends in Covid and other viruses.

BUT THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GRAFT IS A SURE THING: Industrial Policy Is a Bad Bet. Biden’s spending bills will lead to lower growth and more risk.

LOCKDOWNERS’ FAVORITE ARGUMENT: The Great Barrington Declaration and Ad Hominem Argumentation. The personal attacks on critics of lockdowns shows how weak the lockdowners’ case is.

CORRUPTING INFLUENCES: Who Killed Adam Toledo? How did a 13-year-old boy end up in an alley with a gun at 2:30 on a Monday morning? Chicago police say that he was apparently out on the street with a 21-year-old member of the Latin Kings gang.  Video footage appears to show that one or both of them fired eight or nine shots at a passing vehicle. The gunshots brought police to the scene — and the fatal chase in the alley.

ANNALS OF JUNK SCIENCE: Why Americans Are Suckers for Quick Fixes From Psychologists. Nick Gillespie of Reason talks to Jesse Singal about the self-esteem movement, the implicit-bias test, and other follies chronicled in Singal’s new book, The Quick Fix. 

BUT THEN HOW COULD BLM AND THE SPLC KEEP RAISING MONEY? The Case for Black Patriotism. Glenn Loury on why blacks should embrace the country that is the greatest force for human liberty on the planet.

ANOTHER SHOOTING, ANOTHER FAKE NARRATIVE: A Recipe for More Tragedy. The media’s rush to judgment on the Adam Toledo shooting in Chicago will come with a high cost. Rafael Mangual’s frame-by-frame analysis of the video footage shows what’s wrong with the story being spun by the media and politicians.

NOT IF WE’RE FOLLOWING THE REAL SCIENCE: Do We Need Mask Mandates? Connor Harris takes a deep dive into the research on masks and epidemics, from the 1910 Manchurian Plague and 1918 Spanish flu through Covid-19. After surveying the reported benefits and harms – including the possibility that some face masks make fatal infections more likely — he concludes that Dr. Fauci’s version of “the science” bears little resemblance to the scientific literature.

It would be an overstatement to say that cloth and surgical masks are unambiguously ineffective or harmful. But neither is there a firm case that they provide any meaningful benefit. Limited mask mandates may be justified in circumstances with unavoidable face-to-face contact within the range of droplet spread, such as public transport, and private businesses should be free to require masks if they like. Citizens at high risk should be free to wear effective N95 masks for their own protection, and federal regulators should clear away barriers to domestic production.

But mandates of cloth and surgical masks impose major inconveniences and potentially serious health risks on citizens, for no clear benefit either to themselves or to others. Leaders who pride themselves on following the science should consider ending them and letting citizens protect their health as they see fit.

But then what would that leave for our leaders to do?

LEARNING FROM HISTORY: How to Defend Free Speech. The 1980s and 1990s battles against campus political correctness offer lessons for pushing back against cancel culture today. While cancel culture is indeed broader and more worrisome than campus PC was, Tevi Troy writes, the earlier effort was successful in four major ways: by unifying conservatives in the effort against PC; by enlisting some prominent non-conservatives to join the cause; by gaining broad attention outside the think tank and university world; and by using humor to highlight PC’s excesses.  All of these tactics could be useful in the anti-cancel culture fight of today.

THE WORST SCANDAL OF THE PANDEMIC: Death and Lockdowns. There’s still no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them, as I found by looking at the toll of “excess deaths” during the pandemic. Last year in the United States  there were 130,000 more deaths than normal that were not attributed to the coronavirus.

These excess deaths occurred disproportionately among the young and middle-aged, minorities and low-income workers — groups hit especially hard by the lockdowns. The toll has been especially high in locked-down California but not in unlocked Florida. The mortality rate among younger people soared in America but not in Sweden, where it has been below normal.  All of which confirms that the lockdowns are “trickle-down epidemiology” — protecting the laptop class at the expense of the working class — and constitute one of the greatest public-health mistakes in history.

DEMOCRATS BRAVELY DEFEND THE LEISURE CLASS: Schumer Insists on Keeping Beachfront Bailouts for Wealthy Americans’ Vacation Homes.

BARI WEISS: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret.

One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”

Home schooling looks better and better.

BUT THEY WERE FOLLOWING “THE SCIENCE”: Lockdown States Suffer More Covid Deaths on Average.

FROM BAD TO WORSE: Biden’s Retreat on Crime.  Violent crime is soaring, police departments are shrinking, local activists are further hamstringing law enforcement, and now the Biden Justice Department seems likely to press for more of the “reforms” that drove up crime in the cities targeted by the Obama administration. In a podcast (which includes a transcript), Rafael Mangual and Brian Anderson of City Journal discuss the grim prospects for New York and the rest of the country.