The economic argument
John Tamny, identified as editor of RealClearMarkets, vice president at FreedomWorks and an author, argued with Bob Zadek that the “money vs. life” dichotomy is false because economic growth is essential for health and longevity. Tamny contended that decentralized market wisdom and individual freedom are superior to the centralized planning of experts, which he said disproportionately harms the working class while favoring the “managerial class.” John Tamny on Experts vs. the Wisdom of Markets (2020)
Carol Roth, in a later episode, described the government mantra “We are all in this together” as “the big gaslighting lie.” She said that about a third of the economy was locked down, mostly by mandate, and that the burden almost entirely fell on small businesses. She contrasted that with Walmart, Target and Amazon, which she said received a “golden ticket” and a “free pass,” and with Federal Reserve intervention that she said reversed the stock market’s dive and juiced large firms’ valuations. Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021)
Bob Zadek, in the same episode, called the phrase cynical and asked how the concept of lockdown could be reconciled with “all of us.” Roth said that people who believe the policies were appropriate say lockdowns were important to save Grandma and that everyone had to pitch in, but that the reality was otherwise. She also said that if the Fed had not propped up the stock market, the lockdowns would not have lasted even two weeks. Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021)
The economist’s accounting
Ryan Bourne told Zadek that a lockdown should be understood as a bundle of different regulations: closure of so-called non-essential businesses, school closures, and in many states stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders, along with other restrictions. He cited the Governor of Michigan banning people from buying non-essential items within stores that sold essential goods. Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021)
Bourne said his instinct, looking at the data and numerous studies, was that on the margin the first lockdowns probably did lead to less disease transmission and fewer deaths than would have occurred without them, but that this was not a slam dunk in favor of supporting them. He said benefits run up quickly when averted deaths are multiplied by a value of a statistical life derived from labor market studies. Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021)
On the cost side, Bourne said it is simplistic to compare the cumulative downturn in GDP against the value of lives saved, because many losses are not priced in markets. He gave the example of someone forced by lockdown regulation to miss a grandparent’s funeral, which does not appear in GDP but has a massive impact. He also cited longer-term costs including over a year and a half of lost schooling in some cases, effects on potential lifetime earnings, and consequences for entrepreneurship, since people who would have set up businesses would never have conceived of a state government shutting them down for long periods. Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021)
Bourne said he had no doubt the pandemic exacerbated problems such as non-diagnosed cancers and heart disease, but that comparing a lockdown world with a no-lockdown world is difficult, because fewer COVID patients in hospital might make hospitals more willing to admit patients for other conditions. His broad view was that lockdowns on the margin probably brought some public health benefits, nowhere near as big as many suggested, and that the balance of benefits and costs would prove much more finely balanced, if not balanced against full lockdowns. Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021)
The 1918 comparison
Ron Jones, described by Charlie Deist as an educator who had studied and implemented physical education systems with hundreds of students, said the average length of a shutdown or severe restrictions in 1918 was about two and a half weeks to six weeks. The shorter figure was more on the military camp side, he said, because of the close quarters of soldiers, which heavily factored into the infection problem in the United States through camps around big cities, civilian contractors and soldiers on furlough. Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020)
Jones gave city-level dates: in Los Angeles the peak period ran from September 22nd to February 6th, with school closures from October 11th to December 2nd, a second closure on December 10th, reopening beginning January 6th and the final school opening February 6th. San Francisco shut down on September 23rd and was basically open by February 1st, with schools closed from October 18th to November 25th. Seattle’s peak period ran from October 5th to December 31st, with schools shut from October 6th to November 14th. His summary was that it was weeks, if not days, but not four, five, six months, 12 months. Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020)
Deist said the age differential was a major difference from the present, with the 1918 pandemic disproportionately affecting old people and leaving the young relatively unscathed, and cited a statistic in the vicinity of one in a million for children. He framed the question as one of proportionate response, noting a death count by most estimates 10 times lower than in 1918. Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020)
Jones said there was a history of outdoor education in previous generations, some of it coming out of the 1918 influenza pandemic, but that he had not seen school districts with any definite concrete plan. He said PE is one of the first things to go and that he was not hearing about a school opening just to provide PE, though one could argue that would be one of the most important things to do. Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020)
Jones warned that locking people down in a machine all day inside would not go well, calling it a temporary solution that needs to be implemented but saying that holding up technology as the answer is a dangerous place in history. He cited reports of students unable to get up for three and a half hours straight because classes were stacked so close they could not go to the bathroom, and predicted higher levels of obesity, more joint problems, more back pain, and that children would not know how to take care of themselves without quality physical education. Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020)
The constitutional frame
Robert C. Wright told Zadek that Hamilton called the Constitution a frail and worthless fabric, and that Hamilton feared its words could be manipulated, which Wright said had happened starting especially in the New Deal and running to the present. Wright said the Founders’ mistake was not enumerating economic rights in the Constitution, because they feared that leaving something out could be used as a wedge to take that right away, and that they could never have conceived of losing essentially all unenumerated economic rights, with the right to work foremost among them. The Decline of American Independence (2020)
Zadek supplied “freedom of contract” as another such right, which Wright confirmed. Wright said the sea change is still happening and has been accelerated by the lockdowns, which he said looked very much like the dekulakization of America. Zadek explained the reference as Stalin confiscating independent farmers’ land and taking away their economic freedom; Wright said Stalin took away their economic freedom, took away their land, outright killed many of them, and sent others to re-education camps in Siberia. The Decline of American Independence (2020)
Wright said that when the U.S. was founded it was a nation of proprietors, shopkeepers, artisans and farmers, that almost everyone owned their own business, and that employees were looked upon almost like slaves because they were so dependent on their employers. By the New Deal and the Great Depression, he said, most people were employees who did not own their own business and were not politically independent, a shift that happened slowly over the 19th century and was one reason for the move from open balloting by voice or open ballot to the Australian or secret ballot system. He said what was lost was the solid center of politics, and that starting around 1900 with the Progressive movement came the radicalization of both right and left. The Decline of American Independence (2020)
Zadek, in the same episode, said the lockdowns and what came from them disproportionately affected small business, that lots of big businesses were deemed essential or got themselves deemed essential and could more or less operate, and that it was almost as if the lockdowns were targeting small business. He said the media focuses on the coasts and that it is easy to forget there is an entire country living differently, naming Sioux Falls, Boise and Oklahoma City as heartland news markets. The Decline of American Independence (2020)
Across episodes: the same question, restated
The question of who bore the lockdown’s costs recurs across the 2020 and 2021 episodes, but the excerpts show no development in the argument so much as a change of vocabulary: Tamny frames it as market wisdom against expert planning, Roth as a myth of shared sacrifice, Bourne as marginal benefits against unseen costs, and Wright as a constitutional rupture. The 1918 episode supplies the only historical comparison, and it is Jones, not the later guests, who provides the dates.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no judicial decision, no statute or bill name, and no amendment identified as the basis of any holding; the constitutional discussion remains a claim about unenumerated economic rights rather than a case. No excerpt states the state in which any city discussed is located, nor the title or field of several speakers beyond what the labels supply. The excerpts break off mid-sentence in several places, including Zadek’s closing lines in the Roth and Bourne episodes, and nothing after those breaks is reported here.