Retrospectives on the U.S.’s COVID-19 failures are soon to be written. Misguided decisions and the individuals who made them will take center stage. A good analysis, though, might step back and ask: What fundamental errors of thinking lay behind the most egregious mistakes?
Looking back, it’s clear a lot of the worst public health decisions were themselves underpinned by faulty economic analysis, implicit or explicit.
Ryan Bourne occupies the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute.
