Is There a General Tendency for People to Misdiagnose What Happensa Based on a Preexisting Narrative?

In this episode, Saifedean talks to London School of Economics Professor Paul Frijters about his book The Great Covid Panic. They talk about the role played by epidemiologists like Neil Fergusson in encouraging governments to pursue extreme lockdowns, and why mainstream economists failed to properly evaluate the opportunity costs of this policy. They discuss the damage lockdowns have caused and how societies were driven by crowd mentality to engage in largely ineffectual “Covid theatre” such as mask wearing and hand sanitising. At the end of the episode, Paul takes questions from seminar attendees about Sweden’s Covid response, vaccine mandates and what lessons can be learned from the Covid panic.

 Resources

• Paul’s book The Great Covid Panic on Amazon.
• List of Neil Fergusson’s failed predictions.
• Saifedean’s Twitter thread on Belarus.
• BBC article on the environmental impact of disposable masks.
• Article on the psychological impact of social isolation caused by lockdowns.
• Julian Simon’s book The Ultimate Resource 2.
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay.
• Paul’s article on historical analogies for Covid-mania
• Paul’s article on why empirical sciences failed in times of Covid.

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