1. So I have some thoughts on Austrian medicine, Austrian economics, therapeutic nihilism, medical metaphors in economics, the two Ludwigs (Wittgenstein, von Mises), and a new push on the right for a social darwinist "solution" to coronavirus (ie let the disease spread quickly)
2. There flourished in Vienna circa 1850-1870, a school of medicine that was deeply critical of the efficacy of drugs (not without justice: quack remedies were commonplace). Historians call it therapeutic nihilism: idea its better to let diseases run their course than to cure
3. As William Johnson notes in The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938 (1972), therapeutic nihilism had a long afterlife even past 1870s in the pessimism of many Austrian thinkers, ranging from Freud to Wittgenstein 
4. Wittgenstein's famous aphorism "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." is, if think about it, an appealing distillation of therapeutic nihilism. A less appealing form is in Austrian economics, where attempts to fight economic depressions are worse than disease
5. Economics leans heavily on metaphors from medicine & psychology (the "cure" for a "depression"). The aversion of a von Mises or Hayek to Keynesianism parallels the hostility of therapeutic nihilists to medical intervention.
6. I think the history of therapeutic nihilism is now salient because a rising chorus of voices on the right are now calling for a similar response to coronavirus: just let it spread, trying to stop it will cause more damage, and it'll run its course.
7. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial also seemed to echo this line of thought. As the pandemic continues and the economy crashes, expect to hear arguments for therapeutic nihilism (in every sense).
