"More than five years after COVID-19 began spreading in the United States, a new conventional wisdom has taken hold in some quarters: Public-health officials knew or should have known from the start that pandemic restrictions would do more harm than good, forced them on the public anyway, and then doubled down even as the evidence piled up against them."
"Two recent books by respectable left-of-center authors- In Covid's Wake, by the Princeton political scientists Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, and An Abundance of Caution, by the journalist David Zweig-take up versions of this skeptical narrative, each with their own twists. Both have received rave reviews in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and even the overtly progressive . The flagship New York Times podcast, The Daily, devoted an episode to an interview with Macedo and Lee."
A skeptical narrative has gained traction claiming public-health officials either knew or should have known that pandemic restrictions would cause more harm than good, imposed them anyway, and suppressed dissent to manufacture consensus. That narrative now appears across the political spectrum, with recent left-of-center works adopting variants of the critique. Some criticisms are valid: certain restrictions persisted too long after vaccines, experts made mistakes, and inconsistent messaging—such as endorsing mass protests while warning against gatherings—damaged credibility. However, broad assertions that restrictions never saved lives or were imposed in bad faith constitute a harmful overcorrection.
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