Russell Roberts's Blog, page 239
August 24, 2021
Another First-hand Report from Dystopian Down Under
Commenting at my Facebook page in response to this Cafe Hayek post yesterday about Australia, Australian Mikayla Novak writes:
The great sense of lament expressed in the letter is, sadly, not inaccurate at all. One can easily catalogue the list of bizarre and illiberal exhortations to obey “rules” (the term set in quotation marks, given the lack of parliamentary assent for them) that stifle civil liberties, economic freedoms, social activities, and forms of political expression. Examples not only include the political castigation of viewing sunsets outdoors, but advising crowds to scurry away from footballs kicked during a match, advising business owners to shoo customers out of their stores if caught “browsing,” encouraging people to use official websites and hotlines to report noncompliant members of the public, etc. There are now regular spectacles of police barricading major roads into capital cities to prevent rumoured protests (we may refer to this tactic as the Police Anti-Anti-Lockdown Protest). All laughable, if not so seriously damaging to life, property, liberty, and happiness. In my jurisdiction (Australian Capital Territory) the local government has simultaneously imposed outdoor mask mandates, QR check-in codes at all retail premises, physical distancing provisions, home “lockdown” (essentially, a bio-political disciplinary measure that would make Foucault gasp), one hour of outdoor exercise daily, discouragement of travel more than five kilometres from one’s home, inability to travel interjurisdictionally, and so on. My university recently made an urgent call-out for staff-volunteers to help feed students locked up in their college residences.
As individual liberties and potentials for human association diminish substantially under the weight of measures in response to a handful of Covid “cases,” Australia’s political executives are squabbling over the meaning of over-simplistic epidemiological models. In this respect, would a hypothetical 70-80 per cent population-wide vaccination rate (for persons aged 16 years and over) really mean the end of lockdowns, constant surveillance, etc. etc.? Politicians in some jurisdictions say “yes,” others “no,” most “maybe, who knows?” This debate is being prosecuted against the background of a 24-25 per cent population-wide vaccination rate as of today (the potential implications of this debate for continuation of restrictive measures into the forseeable future are clear). All up, the situation is dire and entirely politically-induced. (One bright spot: Australia’s libertarian political party – the Liberal Democrats – is enjoying a surge in membership and public interest on account of their no-lockdown policies.)
Some Covid Links
It’s impossible to choose satisfactorily which selections to highlight from John Tierney’s latest essay – titled “Keeping Fear Alive” – on Covid hysteria; the entire piece is outstandingly good. Here are two slices:
Throughout the pandemic, American political and public-health leaders have been following Rahm Emanuel’s classic dictum for power-seeking officials: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now they’ve adopted a corollary: you never want a crisis to end.
So they are prolonging the national misery instead of easing it, which could be done with a few simple strategies. Explain to the public that the virus will never disappear but is no longer a mortal threat to the vast majority of Americans. Encourage the minority still at risk to get vaccinated by honestly discussing who is in jeopardy and what scientists have learned about infections. Promote treatments proven to prevent infection and speed recovery while avoiding unproven treatments and mandates that cause collateral damage and generate mistrust. Above all, make it clear to Americans that we finally have reason to celebrate: what once seemed an unprecedented danger is now just one of many pathogens that we know how to live with.
But the nation’s crisismongers aren’t about to relinquish their hold over the public, so they’ve set new goals that are as unachievable as they are unnecessary and harmful. Making vaccines available to every American adult is no longer sufficient; now the crisis cannot end until the entire population has been vaccinated. Instead of focusing efforts on vaccinating the vulnerable, officials obsess on compelling universal obedience, even if that means squandering vaccines on people who already have acquired natural immunity or are at minimal risk of serious illness.
…..
The CDC continues to undermine its credibility by claiming strong evidence for the efficacy of lockdowns and mask mandates. Dozens of studies have found that lockdowns are ineffective, and one recent analysis of trends in the United States and other countries found that lockdown policies are associated with an increase in excess deaths. The evidence offered by the CDC for mask mandates is weak, as Jeffrey H. Anderson has documented, and the most rigorous research—from more than a dozen randomized clinical trials—suggests that masks are ineffective (and possibly counterproductive) at stopping viral spread. One recent study, which tracked Covid case growth across the United States, concluded that “mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges.”
Alberto Mingardi supplements Art Carden’s reading list for a pandemic. A slice:
Experts’ reasoning and models were often flawed, not only because experts were hubristic, but because they were deterministic. They reduced the pandemic situation to a certain number of parameters, some of them scrupulously monitored, and provided speculation based upon them. Certainly experts responded to incentives: for example, they were incentivized to produce very dramatic projections, as it is way better to be proven wrong on the date of the end of the world (the people will be relieved it didn’t happen and won’t mind) than to miss it. But I think an important takeaway is that lethality and the growth rate of the contagion can’t be taken as a given, as they depend on the environment it is taking place in and can adapt and adjust in different circumstances.
Robert Freudenthal unearths forgotten principles of risk assessment.
“Hidden immunity: Why booster jabs may not be needed after all“. Two slices:
But several studies have come out in the last few months that suggest we might not need to be too worried after all. Antibodies are not the only indicator of immunity.
In May, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, who studied 77 recovering Covid patients found that while antibodies declined over time, bone marrow plasma cells, capable of producing antibodies against the virus, remained stable.
…..
Similarly, researchers from The Rockefeller University, New York, recently found that recovered Covid patients still have immunity a year after infection, including antibodies that were “exceptionally resistant” to variants.
“The data suggest that immunity in convalescent individuals will be very long lasting and that convalescent individuals who receive available mRNA vaccines will produce antibodies and memory B-cells that should be protective against circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants,” the researchers concluded.
The problem with only looking at antibodies is it gives a false picture of the level of protection. The body is efficient, and will not continue to produce high-levels of antibodies when they are no longer needed.
Dystopian tyranny continues unabated in Australia. Two slices:
At the end of last year, Australia was lauded for its success in containing Covid-19. The country’s borders had been quickly closed; interstate travel restricted and resources diverted to tracking down cases. In the deluge of praise that followed, outlets like the Washington Post ran gushing features on the country’s ‘pandemic success story’ ‘putting faith in science’; America’s top doctor Anthony Fauci hailed it as the ‘epitome of success.’
But eight months on and a different picture emerges.
…..
Even worse was Dr Kerry Chant, the New South Wales Chief Health Officer, who implied that Australians should not to talk to one another outside. She said at a press conference: ‘We need to limit our movements. We need to consider whenever we leave our house that anyone with us, anyone we come into contact with, could convey the virus. So, while it is in human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately, this is not the time to do that.’
Telegraph‘s editors rightly decry the deranged and dangerous pursuit of zero-Covid. A slice:
Australia and New Zealand have often been described as two of the great success stories of the pandemic. Both have pursued a strategy of elimination, closing their borders and cracking down on cases through a ruthless policy of lockdowns. Both have kept their Covid death figures low by international comparison.
But as much of the rest of the developed world has used vaccination to find a new equilibrium with the virus as a manageable illness, Australia and New Zealand have remained stuck in a damaging cycle of lockdowns as they have sought to crush outbreaks of any size.
Mikko Packalen writes wisely, in the Toronto Sun, about Covid and the public’s (mis)perception of the risks that it poses. (HT Martin Kulldorff) A slice:
For precautions, such as requiring children to wear masks, lead the public to mistakenly conclude that schools are an important driver of Covid spread.
Research about Covid risk perceptions has shown that people have a very hard time understanding the risks posed by the virus.
People vastly overestimate the hospitalization and mortality risks and vastly underestimate the impact of age on these risks (the mortality risk posed by an infection with the virus is more than a thousand times higher for older people than it is for young people.)
The excess Covid fears are understandable. Since March 2020 it has been difficult to find information about the actual risks posed by the virus.
The media’s reluctance to grapple with this issue is evident in the fact that the leading newspapers first wrote about excess Covid fears only this spring, many months after the studies covered in those articles were published in July and December of 2020.
People have thus had to rely on other ways of forming perceptions about Covid risks. A paper recently published in Royal Society Open Science shows that people assess Covid risks partly based on the policies that they see implemented around them.
But Mandavilli completely overlooks other factors that help explain why so many Americans are disinclined to accept the government’s guidance as gospel. Public health advice is not simply a function of science. It incorporates cost-benefit analyses and value judgments on which well-informed people of good faith can honestly differ. Whether “universal masking” in schools makes sense, for instance, depends not only on the uncertain evidence that it prevents outbreaks but on the weight one assigns to the burdens that policy imposes. It also depends on what level of risk is deemed tolerable.
In this case and others, it often seems that public health agencies are working backward, settling on a policy and then searching for evidence to back it up. Anyone who delves into the studies that the CDC cites to justify its recommendation that everyone 2 or older wear face masks in schools and other public settings, regardless of their vaccination status, can see that science is just one element of the agency’s deliberative process.
Jay Bhattacharya is now on Twitter.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 1 of my late teacher Leland Yeager’s important 2001 book, Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation:
Social science helps check ethical intuitions against facts. It examines clashes among values and helps sort out the most fundamental ones. It recognizes that fact and logic alone cannot recommend private actions and public policies; ethical judgments must also enter in. Knowing that “good intentions are not enough”, social science insists on comparing how alternative sets of institutions and rules are likely to work.
August 23, 2021
Dystopia Down Under
Andy Ashwood is a resident of Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. He’s also a patron of Cafe Hayek (and of EconTalk). Yesterday he sent to me the following e-mail, which I share here in full with his kind permission. (All three sets of ellipses are original to Andy’s e-mail.)
Dear Don
I wanted to say hi from Melbourne, Victoria where we are over 200 days into hard lockdown. I’ve been a big fan of Café Hayek and Econtalk for many years.
Life here in Melbourne has been awful since early last year … the government has been making illegal the very things that make life meaningful – connecting with family and friends, leisure … they don’t quite understand that they are burning down he village in order to save it…..
I wanted to say thank you for continuing the highlight the insanity that we are facing. While I am still locked down, with curfew, and a premier who has stated on camera that it is against the law to leave your home to watch the sunset it is comforting to know that the covid-insanity has not spread to everyone.
Keep it up and thanks again.
Andy Ashwood
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 153 of Roger Koppl’s important – and now especially relevant – 2018 book, Expert Failure (link added):
An economic theory of experts should rely on the underlying logic of public choice theory…. People are the same in economic and political exchange. The economics of experts pushes the same basic idea by assuming experts are driven by the same motives as nonexperts. In particular, we must abandon the idea that experts seek only the truth without regard to motives such as fame and fortune.
Religious Exemption at GMU
My colleague Dan Klein supplied me with these remarks and instructions, which should be of interest to stakeholders at George Mason University and beyond.
Religious Exemption at GMU
By Dan Klein
I believe that God or “Nature’s God,” to echo the Declaration of Independence, or a benevolent universal beholder of humankind including future generations:
approves of your choosing to not get a Covid vaccine, especially if you’re under 60 and don’t have comorbidities, and really especially if you’ve already had Covid;disapproves of Covid vaccine mandates and mask mandates.To put in for a religious exemption at George Mason University:
Download the short, simple form found here.
Print it out.
Fill it out.
Bring it to a notary and get it notarized.
Make a copy.
Mail the original notarized copy to (see here): George Mason University, Immunization Office, 4400 University Drive, MS 2D3, Fairfax VA 22030
Scan the copy to make a pdf of it. Go to medicatconnect.com to go into your George Mason Health Services Patient Portal. Click Upload. In “Choose document you are uploading” select “Immunization Support Documents: Lab Results, Shot Records, Exemptions.” Upload the pdf.
Wait to hear by email.
Some Non-Covid Links
This letter in the Wall Street Journal is excellent:
Regarding Joseph Epstein’s op-ed “Black Lives Matter Poisons a Young Athlete’s Mind” (Aug. 17): In criticizing the negative messages of the BLM movement and naming many heroic civil-rights leaders of earlier generations, Mr. Epstein asks, “Why hasn’t a stronger black leadership arisen since this earlier generation of brave and highly intelligent men?”
It has arisen, though it is mostly overlooked by the mainstream media. Among today’s great black public leaders, such as Robert Woodson Sr., Carol Swain, Glenn Loury, Jason Riley, John McWhorter, Thomas Sowell, the late Walter Williams, Ian Rowe and Shelby Steele among others, can be found an optimistic and grateful strain of thought on black agency, progress and life in America.
I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Woodson and Ms. Swain speak to a racially mixed audience. They noted how much improvement they’ve experienced in their lifetimes and their optimism for the future. Mr. Woodson characterizes his outlook as “radical grace,” encouraging his people to look ahead, not back, and to exercise agency for their personal and family success. “Things that are all black should not be seen as bad,” nor should black success depend on “what white people do or think of us,” he said. Ms. Swain noted that she was not raised to hate white people but to accept individuals as they come, and judge them likewise. She, too, has no time for self-pity or worrying about what some may think of her.
Arnold L. Goldman
Canton, Conn.
George Will explains why Californians might replace strongman Gavin Newsom with Larry Elder. A slice:
Elder’s constituency consists of the dissatisfied. Newsom’s base, those government employees unions, are government lobbying itself to do what it wants to do: expand. Progressives want to discredit Elder, but because he is Black, their explanation of everything — “systemic racism” — is unhelpful.
He rose from South Central L.A. to Brown University and the University of Michigan Law School, practiced law and founded a search firm for attorneys, before finding his vocation: decanting into millions of listeners the thoughts derived from Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, William F. Buckley Jr., Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others.
The pandemic, having concentrated minds on the power of teachers unions to prevent teaching, has opened many minds, especially among California’s Hispanic plurality, to Elder’s plans for schools: Public education money would flow to parents, who could spend it on public or private schooling. And unions could no longer protect the incompetent 5 percent (a conservative estimate of 15,000) of the state’s 300,000 public school teachers. In the previous decade, about two teachers a year (0.0007 percent) were fired for poor performance.
My GMU Econ colleague tackles the question: Why not rectify past injustices?
Douglas Murray writes about the late Roger Scruton.
Clemson University economist Tom Hazlett explains why so-called ‘net neutrality’ is unnecessary.
Angela Rachidi warns of government subsidization of non-work.
Jeff Jacoby applauds love across the color line.
Some Covid Links
Well, who’d a-thunk that government officials would abuse the power to ‘nudge’? A slice:
The minutes of the SPI-B meeting of March 22nd, 2020, demonstrate that its endorsement of a covert psychological strategy was a calculated decision to scare the British people, recommending that: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent… using hard-hitting emotional messaging.” In her book, A State of Fear, Laura Dodsworth interviewed members of SPI-B who confirmed that there had been a concerted effort to elevate the fear levels of the general public. One committee member, Educational Psychologist Dr. Gavin Morgan, admitted: “They went overboard with the scary message to get compliance.” Another SPI-B member – who wished to remain anonymous – was even more forthright: “The way we have used fear is dystopian… The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”
Current data strongly suggests that accidents associated with home improvement projects spiked in 2020 as people sought to productively couple idle weeks or months with stimulus payments. And further, that tens (and perhaps hundreds) of thousands of individuals who were hurt undertaking those do-it-yourself plans avoided medical treatment out of fear of contracting Covid at hospitals and other medical facilities.
Sweden’s decision to eschew lockdown and leave pubs, restaurants, shopping centres and primary schools open throughout the pandemic generated furious discussion internationally.
Millions of people across the world have been confined to their homes, watched businesses go under, and struggled to stay on top of their studies amid wave after wave of restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
But for some 10 million Swedes, the eighteen months since the first local Covid-19 case was registered last February have been largely unremarkable.
Two-thirds of people are not worried about the consequences of the pandemic for them and their family, according to the most recent opinion survey for the Civil Contingencies Agency, carried out in mid-June.
Well, SARS-CoV-2 does use animals in addition to humans as reservoirs, so you can’t be too safe.
Colin Axon warns against the normalization of masks. A slice:
For a year or more, many commentators have been suggesting that the Government’s responses to the pandemic owe more to politics and polls than science. We must resist the creeping normalisation of masks and resist the way in which they have been adopted as a talisman by the campaign for the impossible state of zero Covid.
Right now America is intoxicated on masking 2 year olds outside and inside (‘cept when they nap – virus naps too)
Soon we will be sober and look at what have we done.
It won’t age well, I promise.
Here’s a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal from Michael Raab, MD:
Dr. Michael Segal advises the reader to “Follow Your Nose to Herd Immunity” (op-ed, Aug. 17). At present, mucosal immunity requires environmental exposure. We know the risk of serious infection among vaccinated people is small, which makes the vaccinated the ideal group to develop mucosal immunity. Mask use among the vaccinated can only decrease the number who safely develop mucosal antibodies, slowing the development of herd immunity. Masking the vaccinated is the wrong solution.
Michael F. Raab, M.D.
Sanibel, Fla.
Jay Bhattacharya writes that “the war on Covid should be over – we do not need lockdowns.” Two slices:
Instead of body bags, we now count the number of people who test positive for the virus that causes the disease. The problem is that the count of cases does not measure the actual danger that the virus poses to people.
There is a thousand-fold difference in the mortality risk from Covid infection between young and old. Based on World Health Organization data published before the vaccine, the survival rate after infection is 95 percent for those over 70, while for those under 70, it is 99.95 percent.
Tracking cases among the vulnerable old is thus a much better marker of progress in the epidemic than cases overall.
…..
Second, mass testing is an insidious form of lockdown by stealth.
Testing regimens aim to check whether perfectly healthy people harbour the virus though they display no symptoms whatsoever.
Careful reviews of the published data show that a significant fraction of the time, though a PCR test for viral fragments (the type typically used for testing) may be positive, a healthy person is not infectious and poses no risk of spreading the virus.
Further, the contact tracing system forces into quarantine countless people who come within the vicinity of the non-infectious healthy person who tested positive.
The result is that a vast number of healthy adults and children are forced to stay at home and miss out on life, with no infection control benefit whatsoever.
Third, mass testing causes lockdown. When cases go up, the media and politicians push for draconian and ineffective lockdown measures, including closed businesses and (in the US) schools. Australia and New Zealand are the apotheosis of this policy of institutionalised hypochondria, where governments impose lockdowns whenever even a single case is found.
This tactic works because obsessive case tracking and reporting are closely tied to the sense of panic and dread in the population.
In Canberra, suffering perhaps from relevance deprivation syndrome while macho state premiers imposed tough lockdowns to increased popularity, Andrew Barr declared a shutdown on 12 August based on one case. Yet a week later, with 67 active cases, there was not a single Covid hospitalisation in the ACT. Not to be outdone, across the ditch Jacinda Ardern shut down the whole country based on just one case.
Many of us have family (parents, siblings, children) in neighbouring and far-flung countries. Politicians and health bureaucrats cannot decide for us the balance of risks of dying from a virus and the joys of spending time with family in our remaining years. As a short-term holding operation while the world tried to figure out what was happening, the harsh restrictions were perhaps tolerable, if barely. Now, as data accumulates and the rest of the world opens up with significantly reduced deaths that contradict the embarrassment-proof Henny Pennies of the epidemiological community, the stubborn devotion to the cult of zero Covid is unforgivable. Remember news anchor Howard Beale in the 1975 film classic Network? ‘I’m a human being, Goddammit. My life has value … I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’.
The straw man extends his visit to New Zealand. A slice:
New Zealand’s government on Monday said it will extend a strict nationwide lockdown until at least Friday as it tries to extinguish a growing coronavirus outbreak.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 149 of F.A. Hayek’s profound 1952 book The Counter-Revolution of Science, as this book appears as part of volume 13 (Studies on the Abuse & Decline of Reason, Bruce Caldwell, ed. [2010]) of the Collected Works of F.A. Hayek (footnotes deleted; link added):
The belief that processes which are consciously directed are necessarily superior to any spontaneous process is an unfounded superstition. It would be truer to say, as A.N. Whitehead has argued in another connection, that on the contrary “civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking about them.” If it is true that the spontaneous interplay of social forces sometimes solves problems no individual mind could consciously solve, or perhaps even perceives, and if they thereby create an ordered structure which increases the power of the individuals without having been designed by any one of them, they are superior to conscious action. Indeed, and social processes which deserve to be called ‘social’ in distinction from the action of individuals are almost ex definitione not conscious. Insofar as such processes are capable of producing a useful order which could not have been produced by conscious direction, any attempt to make them subject to such direction would necessarily mean that we restrict what social activity can achieve to the inferior capacity of the individual mind.
August 22, 2021
Vernon Smith on Adam Smith
My emeritus Nobel-laureate colleague (now teaching at Chapman University), Vernon Smith, sent the following e-mail to me in response to my letter of earlier today to Russ Roberts. (I here share Vernon’s e-mail with his kind permission.)
…..
Don:
In the claim that classical liberalism “pays too little heed to human beings’ natural sociability” we find a reversal of Adam Smith’s concept of natural liberty.
It’s the other way around!
Smith more articulately than any, saw property and economy, based on gains from exchange, as consequential developments of human sociability. We were social because we had this capacity for imagining changing places with others and learning to see ourselves as others see us. As Smith put it, although we are all strictly self-interested we cannot look mankind in the face and avow that all our actions are taken in our strict self-interest. He thus carefully distinguishes being self-interested from acting self-interestedly, which is the logical flaw in modern utilitarianism.
In “Beneficence” we reach a consensus that intentional acts of a beneficent tendency obligate reward out of feelings of gratitude which leads endogenously to positive reciprocity (gains from social exchange in community and society); in “Justice” we reach a consensus that acts of a hurtful tendency out of feelings of resentment rightly invoke the desire to punish appropriately (the punishment is proportionate to the infraction, and is neither too much, or too little) thus providing “security from injury” and avoiding the escalation of negative reciprocity. (The notion of “distributive justice” is a misnomer, for distribution comes under the category of Beneficence, not Justice and the thinking gets muddled.)
Justice constitutes property in pre-civil society, leading to “the rule of law” in nation states, and allowing markets to be free beyond the regulations imposed by property.
Vernon
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