The Price of Panic Lib/E: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe

For the first time in history, the world shut itself down--by choice--all for fear of a virus, COVID-19, that wasn't well understood. The government, with the support of most Americans, ordered the closure of tens of thousands of small businesses--many never to return. Almost every school and college in the country sent its students home to finish the school year in front of a computer. Churches canceled worship services. "Social distancing" went from a non-word to a moral obligation overnight. Moral preening on social media achieved ever new heights. The world will reopen and life will go on, but what kind of world will it be when it does? It can't be what it was, because of what's just happened. Professors Jay Richards, William Briggs, and Douglas Axe take a deep dive into the crucial questions on the minds of millions of Americans during one of the most jarring and unprecedented global events in a generation. What will be the total cost in dollars, lives, and livelihoods of this response from governments, on advice from Science? What role have national and global health organizations such as WHO played in this? To whom are they accountable? What evidence do they rely on in sounding the alarm? How did science bureaucrats, relying on murky data and speculative computer models, gain the power to shut down the global economy? How did politicians, who know nothing of the science, decide whom to trust?We need to know what and how it happened, to keep it from ever happening again.

About the Author :
Douglas Axe is the Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University, the founding director of the Biologic Institute, and the founding editor of BIO-Complexity. His work and ideas have been featured in the Journal of Molecular Biology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature. Find him on Twitter at @DougAxe. William M. Briggs holds a PhD in statistics from Cornell University. He is the author of Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability & Statistics and the author or coauthor of over one hundred scientific papers. He tweets at @FamedCelebrity. Jay W. Richards is a research assistant professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, coauthor of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery, and author of Money, Greed, and God. Follow him on Twitter at @DrJayRichards. John McLain, a professional voice actor, has won an AudioFile Earphones Award and been nominated for the prestigous Audie Award. On stage, he has appeared in The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Amahl & the Night Visitors, and The Music Man.

Review :
"How did 'experts' like Fauci become gods, and why were those of us who questioned the panic labeled as 'psychopaths?' How did progressive fascism become the 'new normal' and, more importantly, how do we get--and keep--the normal normal back? Arm yourself with the answers to these questions by reading The Price of Panic, then buy a copy for a liberty-minded friend." -- "Steven W. Mosher, author of Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream Is the New Threat to World Order" "A highly informed, page-turning look at how the entire world succumbed to what can only be described as a virus of experts." -- "Austin Ruse, author of Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data" "Entertaining prose, surprising insight, and an engrossing account of how a handful of so-called experts with bad track records, dubious modeling, and no data convinced world leaders to shut down the economy." -- "Betsy McCaughey, PhD, New York Post columnist" "Shows how most decision-makers relied way too heavily on gimmicks, such as computer models, to arrive at disastrous decisions." -- "Robert J. Cihak, MD, former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons" "The definitive account of the most egregious policy blunder in the history of American government." -- "George Gilder, author of Life after Google"