To the editor:

“The more threatening anything is, the more important it is that politicians do nothing. Translated, the more lethal the virus is presumed to be, the less need for rules and laws in a vain attempt to force behavior.”

That is how John Tamny, describes the point of his 2021 book, “When Politicians Panicked.” Let people be free to react on their own to a threat to their health; let them be free to react on their own as business owners, or customers, in changed circumstances.

Tamny also stresses that since freedom produces wealth, which is needed to fight disease, the worst possible reaction to disease is to attack freedom, e.g., by lockdowns. Fighting disease by enforced poverty is folly. And he illustrates the wisdom of political inaction by pointing to the rapid recovery from recession made possible by President Harding’s “do nothing” response 100 years ago.

Can we face up to what happened, and learn? “The problem was that in 2020, the solution from panicked politicians was to wreck the global economy, induce potential starvation for hundreds of millions, and create mass desperation in order to fight a virus. The words are hard to type, so shockingly obtuse was the political response.”

My thanks to Tamny! And also to Jeff Tucker. In the acknowledgments, it states: “When Politicians Panicked begins with the great Jeffrey Tucker. There’s no way to adequately describe how essential he was and will always be to the coronavirus debate.”

R.E. Wehrwein

New Ulm