I wrote about this in my Jacobin essay, but I keep seeing the strong parallels between 19th century anti-contagionism and the public health people who are opposed to suppressing covid via economic restrictions

Anti-contagionists often saw themselves as advocates of both the working class AND the free market. They opposed quarantines and cordons sanitaires bc they disrupted trade and travel, leading to impoverishment of working people and even riots

Of course some of these negative effects could have been buffered by a welfare state. But some of the key anti-contagionists were opposed to the welfare state like Edwin Chadwick, author of the draconian Poor Laws in England which required people to labor in workhouses to get aid

There was a sort 'solution aversion' (h/t @s_j_prins) to quarantine to the point that they convinced themselves diseases spread via miasma rather than from person to person

Anyway, this is what I think about when I see experts raising nonspecific concerns wrt what economic interventions mean for essential workers and for policing. I've worked on occupational health since 2010 and policing since 2013 and the arguments are not making sense to me.