That same October, Fauci boasted that he had advised the president to shut down the country and bemoaned the fact that we “did not shut down completely, the way China did.” He criticized decision-makers who considered the negative consequences of lockdowns in states such as Florida, Texas, and Georgia that had “tried to so-called ‘open up carefully.’” In fact, an empirical study I co-authored with colleagues from the Paragon Health Institute showed that states that stuck with severe lockdown measures had no better health outcomes but far worse economic and educational outcomes as compared with states that lifted lockdowns.
Joel M. Zinberg, M.D., J.D. is the Director of the Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative at Paragon Health Institute, and a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. A native New Yorker, he recently completed two years as General Counsel and Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President.
