Heroes in a Year of Horrors
Donald J. Boudreaux
– December 22, 2020 Reading Time: 5 minutes

AIER >> Daily Economy >> Freedom >> Crisis >> Authoritarianism


Art Carden rightly points out that 2020 doesn’t come close to being humanity’s worst year ever. This reality ought never be forgotten. Still, 2020 has nevertheless proven, by modern standards, to be a year especially vile. And by far the vilest aspects of this soon-to-be-done year are the media-fueled unhinged fear of Covid-19 and the resulting tolerance for arbitrary restrictions on human freedom.

Yet bad times bring to the fore heroic individuals. Let’s acknowledge and applaud some of 2020’s finest.

Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff. These co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration courageously put at stake their high professional reputations by publicly dissenting from a scientific consensus that suddenly emerged this past Spring seemingly out of nowhere. Refusing to run with the herd, these researchers were led by their integrity and understanding of the science to join forces with AIER in an effort not only to calm the disproportionate fear of Covid, but also to propose a much-better alternative to lockdowns – an alternative they call “Focused Protection.”

Edward Stringham, Jeffrey Tucker and AIER’s leadership, staff, and other columnists. I’m told that in the earliest days of the pandemic, Professor Stringham gathered his staff and calmly said: We will keep our commitment to freedom and science as we have since 1933, saying what we find to be true, with no partisan bias. That statement unleashed AIER to be a global leader. Jeffrey Tucker was among the earliest and most historically grounded voices warning against what I’ve come to call “Covid Derangement Syndrome,” or “CDS-20.” Although I’m a regular columnist for AIER, I’m not on site and have little personal knowledge of – and I play no role in – any of AIER’s many valiant efforts to do battle against CDS-20. But I know that Jeffrey is a key soldier in these efforts, from arranging for the Great Barrington Declaration to ensuring that AIER’s website daily features top-quality assessments of Covid developments.

Ivor Cummins. His clearly narrated and data-filled videos on Covid are must-watch.-- excerpt, rest at link above --