Lockdown proponents across the media are smugly patting themselves on the back, proclaiming that stay-at-home policies didn’t harm the economy. Try telling that to the millions of small-business owners who were irreparably damaged by prolonged and irrational restrictions.

With many big corporations deemed “essential,” and a stock market propped up by the Federal Reserve, it’s easy to see economic strength and miss the glaring weaknesses.

While Walmart and Target continue to beat earnings expectations, small businesses struggle to survive. Nearly two-thirds of them are hitting only half or less of their pre-lockdown monthly revenue levels, according to Alignable’s June Road to Recovery report.

Then there are the businesses that never recovered at all. The Biden administration recently projected that more than 400,000 small businesses have closed permanently, but that’s likely a massive underestimate: Already by June 2020, the Hamilton Project had counted 400,000 closures. Opportunity Insights data, meanwhile, show that by the end of May 2021, there were 38.9 percent fewer small businesses open nationwide than at the outset of 2020.

Small business forms the US economy’s backbone, accounting for more than 99 percent of all business entities, and before 2020, around half of...................