Bangladesh, May 25 -- Why was the entire country not locked down during major pandemics of 1968/69, 1957, 1949-1952 or even the Spanish Flu of 1918?

That's a question many are asking some two months into the unprecedented mass quarantine of the healthy in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Whatever the answer, wrote Jeffrey A. Tucker, editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research, it must be "a bizarre tale."

"How," he asked, "did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of international travel, a 40% job loss among people earning less than $40K per year, devastation of ev...