Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is John Tierney. He's a contributing editor of City Journal and the author of The Panic

Pandemic, the lead story in this summer's print edition of our quarterly magazine. John, thanks,

as always, for joining us. Thanks for inviting me, Brian.

This is a terrific story, and I'd like to dive into it right away.

You assert at the beginning of the essay that the American response to COVID-19,

which you acknowledge has killed a lot of Americans, about one in 500, has in fact been more

harmful than the virus itself. That's a striking claim. It's, you know, generated a lot of

attention online this piece. But let's look at the evidence for your argument. What was the nature, in your view, of the pandemic response in the U.S., and what costs, more

specifically, in your view, has it imposed on the country?

Well, it's, I think there's a good chance that in the long run it is going to prove deadlier than the coronavirus.

I did an earlier piece for City Journal death and lockdowns where I looked into the excess deaths last year.

And a good percentage of them, in fact, by some estimates, some more recent estimates, 40% of the deaths among people under 65

of the excess deaths, the deaths more than normal, were not due to COVID, but rather the

effects of the lockdown, the missed cancer screenings, the missed, the heart attacks that weren't

treated, the fatal drug overdoses, there were more fatal car accidents.

So there were lots of immediately deadly effects of the lockdowns, and those effects are going to

continue for years and years. I've written about this, Scott Atlas has published some work,

and some other economists have, too, that when you cause such an enormous economic loss to people,

that that manifests itself later in lower life expectancy.

When students lose that much education, their life expectancy goes down.

So there have been calculations that in the long run, the lockdowns will cause more years of

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