The virus that causes COVID-19 has now become endemic after it first emerged two and a half years ago. In the pandemic’s early days, many countries’ public health officials curtailed economic and social activity to various degrees, prescribed social distancing, enforced lockdowns, required masking, and pushed for other nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce illness and death. Those NPIs imposed an enormous economic and social cost by greatly reducing individual liberty in exchange for promised health benefits. Elsewhere, most famously in Sweden, public health officials were fiercely criticized for implementing less‐​harsh “light touch” NPI measures. Sweden’s approach presents a fascinating quasi‐​natural experiment to evaluate the merits and demerits of the more liberal approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate whether the loss in personal and economic freedom was partly compensated by a decrease in illness and death. Sweden’s outcomes on viral spread, excess mortality, and the socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19 compare well with other countries and suggest that strict NPI policies imposed more harm than good. Joining us to discuss how well Sweden’s approach worked are Jeanne Lenzer, an independent investigative journalist and regular contributor to The BMJ who has studied this issue; Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, an epidemiologist and public health policy analyst who is an associate professor at University of California San Francisco School of Medicine; Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration that urged a pandemic policy of “focused protection”; and Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who resides in Stockholm, Sweden, and has studied as well as experienced his country’s pandemic policy. The discussion will be moderated by Cato Institute senior fellow Jeffrey A. Singer. LEARN MORE: https://www.cato.org/events/pandemic-policy-postmortem-lessons-sweden Join the conversation across social media using #CatoHealth. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsyAdto_8zU

At a Cato Institute forum held December 15, 2011, Adam Liptak of the New York Times and Cato Institute adjunct scholar Richard Epstein discuss taxes. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAm5FqWGVI

http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/fiscal-policy-report-card-americas-governors-2014 In the new “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors,” Cato scholars Nicole Kaeding and Chris Edwards examine the tax and spending decisions made by U.S. governors since 2012. Governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades, while those who have increased taxes and spending the most receive the lowest grades. Only four governors were awarded an “A” in this latest report card — Pat McCrory of North Carolina, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Paul LePage of Maine, and Mike Pence of Indiana. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgyTvQaUA1k

This video was produced by Caleb Brown ( http://www.twitter.com/cobrown ) and Austin Bragg ( http://www.twitter.com/habragg ). ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8GN8g0Si7Q