He was pilloried for daring to suggest that government action with respect to the coronavirus pandemic has both benefits and costs.  Now he appears to be "all-in" on the national lockdown and more in sync with "expert" opinion and the big blue-state governors.

Given that we don't possess the luxury of hindsight, we don't know if this is the correct move or not.  But what's indisputable is that this approach to a pandemic is unprecedented in America.

Recently, Manhattan's City Journal published the reflections of Clark Whelton, a former speechwriter for New York City mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani, who remembered living through the pandemic of 1957, known at the time by the politically incorrect label "the Asian Flu."  The virus was responsible for the deaths of over a million people worldwide and 116,000 in the United States (which at the time had about half the current population).