Three Key Takeaways:
- In their new book, Princeton professors Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee expose how COVID policies were driven by groupthink and partisan bias, with no meaningful difference in death rates between strict and lenient states, undermining the justification for severe lockdowns.
- The professors criticize the economic and social costs of lockdown measures, including the devastation of small businesses, learning loss for poor and minority students, and inflation caused by trillions in government spending, with much of the relief money misallocated or stolen.
- Their book also tackles the controversy of the Wuhan lab leak theory and the failure of the scientific community and health officials to provide transparent information, leading to long-term consequences for public trust and American society.
A bombshell new book from two liberal professors just confirmed what conservatives have been saying all along.
The lockdowns were a costly mistake that damaged our economy while failing to save more lives than states with lighter restrictions.
Now liberal elites are squirming as these Princeton professors exposed how groupthink hurt small businesses and children’s education.
Left-leaning professors admit COVID policies were massive failures
Princeton professors Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee dropped a truth bomb in their peer-reviewed book In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
These aren’t right-wing pundits. The Guardian reports that both professors “consider themselves left-leaning.”
But they couldn’t ignore the evidence that many COVID policies were driven by groupthink rather than solid science.
“COVID is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias,” Macedo explained in an interview with The Guardian.
The professors point to CDC data cited in their book showing that in the pre-vaccine period, Democrat states that imposed stricter lockdowns had “no meaningful difference” in COVID death rates compared to Republican states with more lenient policies.
Let that sink in. All those small businesses that went bankrupt? The children who fell behind in school? The trillions in government spending that sparked massive inflation? It was all for nothing.
Liberal elites pushed measures without weighing costs and benefits
The professors didn’t hold back in criticizing the laptop class of liberal elites who could comfortably work from home while destroying the livelihoods of working-class Americans.
“It became so moralized, like: ‘We’re not interested in looking at how other people are [responding to the pandemic], because only bad people would do it a different way from the way we’re doing’,” Professor Lee said.
This ideological blindness had devastating consequences.
According to the book, of the staggering $5 trillion that Congress authorized for COVID in 2020 and 2021, only about 10% went to actual medical expenses like hospitals or vaccine distribution. The rest went to economic relief for lockdown damage.
Even worse, according to the AP as cited in The Guardian, another 10% of that relief money was stolen through fraud.
Schools closed despite evidence it hurt poor and minority students
Perhaps most damning is how teachers unions kept schools closed despite evidence that poor and minority students were being harmed the most.
The book notes that these unions, which The Guardian describes as “often bastions of Democratic support,” painted school reopenings as “rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny” and “a recipe for . . . structural racism” – despite the fact that minority and poor students were most disadvantaged by remote learning.
Meanwhile, many wealthy liberals sent their children to private schools that reopened much quicker.
Red state policies show different approach
The book examines how figures like President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took different approaches that were harshly criticized at the time.
DeSantis faced intense criticism from leftists for reopening Florida schools quickly, which the book discusses in its examination of policy differences.
The authors also favorably compare Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had a lower mortality rate than many other European countries that imposed strict measures.
“We take a look at the state of the evidence as it was in early 2020,” Lee said. “It was clear at the time that the evidence was quite unsettled around all of this, and if policymakers had been more honest with the public about these uncertainties, I think they would have maintained public trust better.”
The lab leak theory keeps looking more likely
The professors also took on the Wuhan lab leak theory that got so many conservatives censored on social media.
Remember when anyone suggesting COVID leaked from a Chinese lab was called a “conspiracy theorist”?
Turns out even the CIA has come around to admitting the lab leak might be real.
The evidence was always there. The Wuhan lab was studying the exact kind of coronavirus that caused the pandemic. It had previous safety problems. It sat right at ground zero of the outbreak.
And here’s the kicker – American taxpayers were helping fund the “gain-of-function” research happening there.
Meanwhile, Fauci and his health official buddies weren’t straight with the American people about any of this, according to the professors.
Americans still paying the price
The costs of these policies continue to impact everyday Americans.
As the book points out, learning loss and school absenteeism have soared.
Your grocery bill is through the roof thanks in part to what the book describes as “lockdown spending and stimulus payments.”
Main Street businesses defaulted while many affluent Americans actually grew wealthier.
Mental health problems and crime rates increased, with particularly severe economic strain on poor and minority Americans.
And the professors wrote that in inflation-adjusted terms, “the United States spent more on pandemic aid in 2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal combined.”
That’s right. The COVID response cost about what America spent on war production in 1943 during World War II.
All this money and suffering, and Blue states had no better outcomes than Red states that prioritized freedom.
The professors worried their book might fuel attacks on science, but concluded: “Our response is that the best way to refute criticisms that science and universities have been politicized is to be open to criticism and willing to engage in self-criticism.”
