Heroes In a Year of Horrors

by Don Boudreaux on December 22, 2020

David Henderson. Calling as early as mid-April for an end to the lockdowns, Henderson has consistently been a crystal-clear source of sanity amidst the Covid madness. Writing principally at his blog, EconLog, but also in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and for the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas, he is characteristically very generous to those with whom he disagrees while he never refrains from taking a principled and untrimmed – and economically informed – stand against lockdown tyranny.

Dan Klein. My colleague in George Mason University’s Department of Economics, Dan – who lives for much of the year in Sweden – co-wrote an important paper (with Joakim Book and Christian Bjørnskov) explaining why Sweden’s unusually high death rate in 2020 is not the result of the Swedish government’s generally much lighter approach to Covid. This paper is, I believe, the source of the term “dry tinder.” Unfortunately, the findings of Dan and his co-authors are simply ignored by those who are intent on keeping humanity infected with CDS-20. In addition, Dan courageously challenges even his close friends when any of them publicly pronounce on Covid in ways that he believes to be mistaken or misleading. And I must also express my appreciation for an important three-part distinction that Dan draws. It’s between persons who support lockdowns, persons who refuse to oppose lockdowns, and persons who actively oppose those of us who oppose lockdowns.

Phil Magness. Impressively active on Facebook – in addition to publishing elsewhere – Magness can be counted on to be at the forefront of correcting any of the many errors du jour that emerge from the Covid-hysteria crowd.

Matt Ridley. Although in the Spring his fear of Covid prompted him to support lockdowns, Ridley has since used his prominent voice to speak out lucidly against them.