If you head over to “The Federalist” entry on Wikipedia, you will find, among other smears of our little operation, a “COVID-19 pandemic misinformation” section. It’s a sad reminder of how authoritarians misuse the idea of “misinformation” to quash debate and control the conversation.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wikipedia contends, “The Federalist published many pieces that contained false information, pseudoscience, and contradictions or misrepresentations of the recommendations of public health authorities.” According to Media Matters for America,” the entry goes on, “The Federalist published articles calling on the government to quickly end social distancing directions, and to open businesses again.”
To begin with, even if Federalist writers had turned out to be completely wrong about lockdowns and social distancing, calculating the tradeoffs of public policy and forming opinions that conflict with public-health officials isn’t any kind of “misinformation.” It’s the way we debate in an open society.
Public-health officials are preternaturally risk averse. They see the world through the prism of safety, often ignoring— among many other factors—personal freedoms, economic consequences, and social disruptions. Safetyism can lead to some of the worst infringements of individual rights. That is why we don’t live in a public-health dictatorship.
Or rather, why we didn’t until Covid.
The thing is, though, most of the time our writers weren’t wrong. It is now indisputable that shutdowns inflicted deep harm on children and destabilized the economy. It is also highly unlikely that, after it was clear Covid variants would continue to spread, keeping businesses closed for months
