WHERE A LOCKDOWN MAKES SENSE: The Real Center of the Pandemic. How to protect people in nursing homes from Covid-19 (and how it wasn’t done in New York and other states).

NO, BLUE STATES DON’T DESERVE EXTRA AID: Givers and Takers. Democratic governors’ arguments that their states are “donors” doesn’t hold water.

FAKE HISTORY: Ms. Judging Mrs. America. A compelling new series on Phyllis Schlafly’s battles against leading feminists makes some legitimate criticisms—while also distorting facts and indulging in plenty of blue-state condescension.

GET WOKE, GET SICK: The Glory–and Risk–of Cities.  From the beginning, urban density has yielded opportunity while also posing the danger of contagion. “Sewer socialists” and other leftists used to focus on public hygiene, but today’s urban progressives tolerate homeless encampments that are breeding grounds for diseases more dangerous than coronavirus.

NO, ONE LIFE IS NOT “PRICELESS”: Andrew Cuomo’s Morally Grotesque Rationale for Maintaining Covid-19 Lockdowns. Even the president is a better moral philosopher than New York’s governor.

KC JOHNSON: When Rules Don’t Apply. Joe Biden wants to deny accused college students the procedural protections that he demands for himself.

NO THANKS TO THE NET-NEUTRALITY NITWITS:  The Pandemic That Didn’t Break the Internet. Market-friendly policies let Americans stream to their hearts’ content, while regulation-heavy Europe has been forced to impose speed limits on streaming services due to high demand during the pandemic.

YES, THERE REALLY ARE SOME: Reasons to be Cheerful. On Freakonomics Radio, Stephen Dubner discusses how to  deal with the negativity bias in our news and in our brains. He interviews David Byrne of Talking Heads fame about Byrne’s good-news magazine and talks to a researcher who has developed software for filtering out depressing stories. And he chats with Roy Baumeister and me about our book, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Bonus feature: I confess how I learned to create fake bad news early in my journalistic career.

DOUBLING DOWN ON HIS DOUBLE STANDARD: Biden Vows to Destroy Campus Due Process Again If Elected. He shamelessly continues promoting injustice for men accused of sexual assault — except himself, of course. That’s different.

HELEN FISHER: How Coronavirus Is Changing the Dating Game for the Better. With video chats, you don’t have to fret about who picks up the check. And maybe the biggest plus: You’re forced to take things slow.

MESSING WITH THE MARKET: At What Price? The federal government’s monetary remedies for the pandemic could produce a combination of inflation and deflation.

IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE: What Do We Clap for When We Clap for Government? I like joining my Bronx neighbors in the nightly tribute to health-care workers, but I worry about our fondness for “encompassment,” as the economist Daniel Klein terms our yearning for emotional communion with everyone around us. As Hayek warned, it’s this emotional inheritance from our hunter-gatherer ancestors that leads to blather about “social justice” and enthusiam for political collectivism. This primal impulse for solidarity explains why socialism’s appeal endures despite its colossal failures — and why Americans have cheered the unprecedented expansion of government power during the pandemic.

A PANDEMIC IS NO TIME TO FOCUS ON SCIENCE: Should Identity Politics Dictate Vaccine Research? Even amid a pandemic, federal science agencies continue to fund anti-scientific diversity initiatives. Besides subsidizing the usual suspects, NIH now wants more scientists who have been homeless.

SAVING OUR BACON: America’s Indispensable Industry. How to keep meatpacking plants open and the food supply chain moving.

PRIVATE V. PUBLIC HEALTH CARE: A Tale of Two Countries. Northern Italy could learn from Switzerland’s Covid-19 experience.

THE RATCHET RACKET: Past Crises Have Ratcheted Up Leviathan. The Covid-19 Pandemic Will Too. A too-timely warning from the economists Robert Higgs (author of the classic Crisis and Leviathan) and Donald Boudreaux (proprietor of Cafe Hayek).

GOOD NEWS: Recovered patients who tested positive for Covid-19 likely not reinfected. Encouraging findings from South Korea, among other good news at Lockdown Skeptics.

MUSTN’T LET PEOPLE THINK FOR THEMSELVES: The Trust Deficit. Faced with disaster, authorities too often suffer “elite panic,” worrying about more an unruly public than about the crisis at hand.

THE CITY THAT SOMETIMES SLEEPS: New York’s Darkened Future.  The subway system has never shut down at night — until now. Another bad move by Cuomo and di Blasio.

REDISCOVERING THE LABORATORY: The Pandemic Has Produced a Radical Experiment in Federalism. Varying state responses will provide the thing we most right now: information.

FASTER, PLEASE: A Challenge to Accept. The FDA should allow testing Covid-19 vaccines through deliberate human infection.

IF YOU CAN’T FIND A CRIME, CREATE ONE: Much of the FBI’s Treatment of Mike Flynn Was Business as Usual, and That’s the Scandal. This sleazy tactic needs to be outlawed.

THE 1918 PANDEMIC DIDN’T SHUT DOWN BROADWAY OR SILENCE CARUSO: The Show Must Go On! Most of New York’s theaters and the Metropolitan Opera didn’t close during the Spanish flu pandemic. Here’s how they can reopen this year.

THE SKY ISN’T FALLING IN SWEDEN OR GERMANY: Lockdown Skeptics. Toby Young’s daily roundup features more evidence that it’s time to ease the lockdowns — and that they didn’t do much good in the first place.

NO GAIN, MORE PAIN: Golden State Lockdown. Even with infections dropping, the Bay Area extends its shelter-in-place order.