Georgia Is Doing Just Fine After Reopening, Thank You

The northeastern United States was badly ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. The five states with the highest Covid-19 deaths per capita to date are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island; if the District of Columbia were a state, it would place sixth. It is generally believed that public policies on social distancing, face coverings, contact tracing, and quarantine are critical in preventing Covid-19 deaths. One imagines that state governments with access to the best public-health, medical, and political-science expertise would craft the best such policies. One might also imagine that wealthier state governments would exercise such policies most robustly.

How surprising, then, to learn that the DC, Massachusetts, and the New York City metro area boast the highest-income citizenries in the nation. Why did these areas, these national centers of government power (Washington), financial might (New York City), and academic prestige (Boston) do so poorly? It is a truism that it’s easier to spot the speck in someone else’s eye than the log in your own; we have seen elite publications from each of these cultural capitals charge that poor, southern, and red states were committing their citizens to slaughter by not following the policy dictates of the northeastern mandarins, even as those policies seemingly failed. Read Full Article »