Authors:

  • Lisa Robinson

Excerpt

July, 2021, Opinion: "To me, I say the cost of a human life is priceless, period,” said Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state. As they tried to slow the spread of covid-19 in the spring of 2020, politicians took actions that were unprecedented in their scale and scope. The dire warnings of the deaths to come if nothing was done, and the sight of overflowing Italian hospitals, were unfamiliar and terrifying. Before the crisis the notion of halting people’s day-to-day activity seemed so economically and politically costly as to be implausible. But once China and Italy imposed lockdowns, they became unavoidable elsewhere."

HKS MRCBG Senior Fellow - Lisa Robinson