The mortality unknown and the case for trade-offs
The earliest episode in the excerpts, from March 2020, features Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason magazine, who tells Bob Zadek that the most important unknown is how deadly the virus is — what percentage of infected people can be expected to die. Sullum says the seasonal flu has a case fatality rate of about 0.1%, while public health officials in the United States put COVID-19 somewhere between 0.1% and 1%, a range he calls huge and a sign of poor data collection. Some epidemiologists, he says, think the true figure could be as low as 0.05%, which would make COVID-19 less deadly than the seasonal flu. How to Stay Sane as a Libertarian on Lockdown (2020)
From that uncertainty Sullum derives the projections: the CDC foresaw 1.7 million deaths in the U.S., and a group at Imperial College headed by Neil Ferguson projected 2.2 million. He calls both scenarios implausible, because the CDC assumed a 0.8% case fatality rate and the Imperial College group 0.9%, and because the CDC assumed 65% of the population would ultimately be infected on the assumption that nothing effective is done. Voluntary changes in behavior — reduced social contact, fewer errands, frequent hand-washing — are bound to affect transmission, he argues. His own range runs from a few thousand deaths in the United States to maybe 20,000, up to the CDC’s worst case. How to Stay Sane as a Libertarian on Lockdown (2020)
Sullum’s conclusion is that rational policy is impossible under such uncertainty: you cannot know whether what you are doing is worth the cost. He points to the costs of shutdowns — people out of work, businesses no longer operating, bankruptcy, a severe recession possibly worse than 2008–2009, which he says cost an estimated $22 trillion. He rejects the position he attributes to Andrew Cuomo, that we will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes, no matter the cost, saying that cannot possibly be right. How to Stay Sane as a Libertarian on Lockdown (2020)
Economic fallacies and artificial scarcity
A second 2020 episode pairs Zadek with Don Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University and a writer for Cafe Hayek. The excerpt’s summary states that they discuss the trade-offs inherent in the government’s response to the pandemic, and that policies including lockdowns, anti-price gouging laws, tariffs, and Certificate of Need regulations create artificial scarcity and undermine the complex systems of cooperation that sustain human life and prosperity. The excerpt names Robert Higgs and Crisis and Leviathan among its topics. The Single Most Common Economic Fallacy in COVID-19 Reporting (2020)
A week later, economist Alex Tabarrok — identified as the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University — discusses with Zadek the systemic failures of the CDC and FDA during the early stages of the pandemic. The excerpt lists the economic trade-offs between public health and economic activity, the necessity of assigning a value to human life for policy-making, and the regulatory hurdles that prevented rapid testing and drug approval, alongside Right to Try, telemedicine, and public choice theory. FDA (2020)
Lending, local control and the future of cities
In May 2020 Zadek devotes an episode to the lending industry after the pandemic, contrasting traditional secured lending with the Fintech and MCA models. The excerpt names the regulatory landscape of created scarcity, the impending devaluation of commercial office space, and the need for a modernized, digital system for UCC lien clearance; the speakers are listed as Cole and Bob Zadek. The Future of Lending after COVID-19 (2020)
Later that month Zadek interviews Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt about local governance during the pandemic. The excerpt describes Hewitt’s history of fiscal reform in Calimesa, his underdog campaign for the Board of Supervisors, and the struggle for local control against state-level mandates and the CalPERS pension crisis; a caller from Sacramento, Lee, also appears. Commonsense COVID Response (2020)
In June 2020 Zadek opens an episode on cities by observing that the virus profoundly affected large cities — New York, Chicago, Seattle and the like — which took the brunt of the adverse economic, social and health effects. That led to workers working from home and to inquiry into what a city is. He asks whether the virus has forced a profound change in the relationship between where we live and where we work, and whether the long-term effects on city life will be positive, negative, or simply disappear. His guest is Brent Orrell, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who has worked in the Bush administration, has studied work in America, and hosts the podcast Hardly Working. The Future of Cities (2020)
Emergency powers and the HEROES Act
A January 2021 episode with Daniel Dew, Director of Legal Policy at the Pacific Legal Foundation, addresses the expansion of executive emergency powers during the pandemic. The excerpt lists historical skepticism of executive authority in state constitutions, the legal standards used to challenge lockdowns — strict scrutiny and rational basis — and legislative efforts to restore the balance of power between governors and legislatures, along with Kelo v. City of New London and the phrase “essential liberty.” Emperor Newsom’s New Clothes (2021)
The pandemic’s statutory afterlife appears in a September 2022 episode on student loan debt forgiveness. Zadek asks Elizabeth Nolan Brown how President Biden found congressional power for the action, and why Nancy Pelosi had concluded a year earlier that he had no such basis. Brown says Biden invoked a 2003 bill signed by George W. Bush, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, which permits the Secretary of Education to waive or modify federal student financial assistance program requirements to help students and families or academic institutions affected by war, other military operations, or national emergency. Biden, she says, is counting the COVID-19 pandemic as a national emergency. Student Loan Debt Forgiveness (2022)
Zadek then makes a point of statutory interpretation: where a statute lists A, B, or C, C must have something to do with A or B, and the two preceding terms relate to military action of one form or another, so COVID is not like a war or military action. He notes that when Biden acted on evictions he acknowledged the step would not succeed but would last a few months until it reached the court. Brown adds that opinions are mixed on whether the forgiveness will hold up, and that her colleague Damon Root wrote about it. Zadek also argues that when the statute was written in 2003 Congress intended that the war or other military action would have caused the problem the president was relieving, whereas COVID did not cause students to incur debt. Student Loan Debt Forgiveness (2022)
Across episodes
The trade-off argument recurs: Sullum in March 2020 says policy cannot be rational when the magnitude of the problem is unknown, and in July 2022 Steven E. Rhoads, discussing his updated book, says an economist’s view would have produced different decisions because economics is about giving something up when you go all-in on health. Rhoads points to the cost to children kept home from school, saying upper-income kids did reasonably well while poor kids did terribly, and that they have lost about a year of study. He invokes marginalism — economists do not ask whether health or economics is more important but treat both as important — and illustrates with Little League, asking why a dangerous sport would be subsidized if safety were the only priority. He adds that his son, a statistician, says the disease is not much worse than the flu and we do not do all this for the flu. The Economist’s View of the World (2022)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any lockdown challenge, nor how any court ruled on the student debt forgiveness. They do not give the name of any state or federal statute beyond the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, and they do not identify the amendment on which any challenge turned. Several excerpts are summaries or fragments — the Boudreaux, Tabarrok, lending, Hewitt and Dew episodes supply topics and speakers but no quoted argument — and the Sullum and Orrell transcripts break off mid-sentence.