Many of us have experienced the empty grocery shelves, the mad run on toilet paper (Calling Mr. Bidet?), and the ubiquitous face of Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes for Health on television broadcasts. Federal and local authorities are stretching their constitutional limits well beyond anything our ancestors would have recognized in their attempts to keep people away from each other and prevent social contact. (I am currently in Sacramento, California, which just has enacted a de facto version of local martial law.)

Life in America has been reshaped dramatically in the last two weeks. The fear of the Chinese coronavirus has completely eclipsed all other news stories in the US and abroad. Among these stories is the Democratic primary race, which is apparently still going on—and where Joe Biden has managed to stumble into near presumptive-nominee status by outlasting an elderly democratic socialist from Vermont. Primaries are being postponed and forgotten for the time being, though.

However high the death rate of the COVID-19 coronavirus becomes, the governmental response to the threat will be even more dangerous. If the current blockade of economic life continues, more people will die from the countermeasures than from the virus itself. In a short time, the basic supply of everyday goods will be at risk. By interrupting the global transport and supply chains, important medicines will be missing and food supplies will be insufficient. This is how a containment strategy works: operation successful, patient dead.

The last days and weeks of the coronavirus epidemic give an interesting insight into the human psyche. Elementary liberties are restricted all over the world, such as the freedom of movement or private property. Yet most people accept these restrictions without blinking, as the state declares their indispensability.

Horrific videos out of China, uploaded at great personal risk, expose the communist lies and mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak. The mishandling of public health by the centralized Chinese regime is just the latest example of how the regime believes control, secrecy, and centralization are the solutions to most any problem.

Examples extend well beyond the current coronavirus crisis.

The growing concerns about the consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus have led to a global demand and supply shock: the demand for goods and services has collapsed, and because international production and value chains are now also disrupted, output slows down, and its former level can no longer be maintained.

Remember the Golden Age of Laissez-Faire, the grand epoch brought to a tragic end by the COVID-19 crisis, which laid bare its failures for all to see? Me neither.

John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the twentieth century. Those interested in modern economics must ask: how did he become so influential? It is well known that his 1919 polemic The Economic Consequences of the Peace launched his career. But how did he come to be in a position to write the book?