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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the Wall Street Journal. I'm Jerry Baker, editor at large of the journal.

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This week, it's exactly four years since the country's schools,

workplaces, restaurants, gyms, and just about all our public places were locked down by

official mandate as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. We were told at the time by

public health leaders, government officials, scientific experts, and with especially self-confident

insistence by the media,

that lockdowns were essential to contain the spread of the virus and save many lives.

Well, four years on, what have we learned?

Some experts do continue to claim that the measures were effective in limiting the incidence

of serious illness and death.

The data are mixed on that question. What we do

know is that the cost of lockdowns was much higher than we were ever told at the time in terms

of economic losses, years of children's education missed, increased incidents of other illnesses

as patients weren't seen or treated, huge increases in mental health problems through loneliness,

...