Economist says of NYC's COVID-19 mandates: Political class is a 'machine that's just devouring the city'

NEW YORK CITY – Lifestyles forced onto New Yorkers through restrictive coronavirus mandates are "not the way we're supposed to conduct public life in this country," a libertarian economist warned after seeing the Big Apple's lockdowns firsthand.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, New York City took dramatic action to curb the spread of COVID-19. In March 2020, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses to close statewide and had shut down schools. More recently, Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed the first-ever vaccine mandate on all private-sector workers in the city. 

"Freedom is what made New York great, and now people just make fun of that," Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey Tucker, referring to public figures who have dismissed or mocked those who opposed vaccine mandates for reasons of personal freedom, told Fox News.

Tucker, who's been to New York countless times, was in the city on March 12, 2020, when initial panic of the novel coronavirus struck.

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