If Machines Ruled Us, Lockdowns Would Be Tougher
Data show that limiting contacts is the best way to save lives. What’s more, restricting economies doesn’t necessarily increase deaths.
Your new overlord knows best.
Photographer: Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
Last Sunday, our family went to church.
Ordinarily, there’s nothing for me, a non-practicing Jew, or my wife, a lapsed Russian Orthodox Christian, to do at a Lutheran religious service like the one we attended at the Berliner Dom. But Berlin’s central cathedral has an exceptional organ, and Andreas Sieling plays it with dignity and subtlety. We’d rather have gone to the Philharmonie, but the government shut it down as part of its anti-Covid 19 policy. Closing down churches, however, turned out to be a step too far for the governing Christian Democrats. Chancellor Angela Merkel called on fellow legislators to listen to science in a widely praised December speech; she’s a physicist — but she’s also a clergyman’s daughter.