Russell Roberts's Blog, page 242
August 17, 2021
All Benefits Have Costs
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Editor:
Today’s edition contains three letters critical of my colleague Todd Zywicki’s defense, in your pages, of his lawsuit against George Mason University’s vaccination requirement. Each letter-writer, alas, misses a point that’s central to the broader case against vaccination mandates – and, indeed, against all Covid restrictions: Because vaccination is indeed quite effective at protecting each vaccinated person against suffering serious consequences from Covid, there’s no good reason to require anyone to be vaccinated. Each individual has easy ability to acquire such a high degree of protection that we can stop tyrannizing each other in the name of fighting Covid.
Furthermore, evidence from amply vaccinated countries, including Israel, Iceland, and the U.K., reveals that vaccination doesn’t stop disease spread. It provides a personal benefit – reduced disease severity upon infection – but little public benefit.
The predictable response is that vaccination isn’t 100 percent effective even for the vaccinated. True. But whatever additional benefits might be gained from vaccine mandates and other Covid restrictions must be weighed against the costs of these intrusions – costs that include solidifying an ominous precedent for until-now unprecedented authoritarian intrusions into Americans’ private affairs.
Contrary to each letter-writer’s supposition, establishing the case for vaccination mandates requires more than pointing out the trivial reality that an unvaccinated person might impose more risks on nonconsenting others than does a vaccinated person. Other questions must be asked and correctly answered – chief among these are ‘How much more risk?’ (answer: not much), and ‘At what cost?’ (answer: immense).
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
…..
Adults sitting at home pose less risk to strangers than do adults out driving automobiles. Yet we correctly do not leap from this reality to the conclusion that therefore further restrictions are justified on adults’ freedom to drive automobiles.
For helpful feedback on an earlier version of this letter I thank Jay Bhattacharya.
Some Covid Links
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a bonanza for government officials, allowing them to extend authority that they then exercise with relatively little oversight or restraint in ways that would have been inconceivable in the past. It has accelerated the transformation of previously free societies into permission-based states, where things once done as a matter of right are now considered privileges to be dispensed or withheld by those in power. Case in point: the Biden administration reportedly discussed making travel within the United States conditional on vaccination status but is holding back out of fear that the public has yet to be sufficiently softened-up for such an intrusive restriction.
Mark Perry – here and here – serves up two graphs to put into perspective the danger posed to children from Covid.
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
Again, TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
James Le Fanu rightly bemoans the careless use of statistics in the age of Covid. A slice:
The pandemic has generated more statistics than any other event in the history of the world, though too often their interpretation tends to the obfuscatory rather than illuminating.
Last week Sarah Knapton, our award winning Science Editor, rumbled the new NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard “massaging the figures”. Her alarmist claim of a fourfold increase of “really unwell” young adults being admitted to hospital turned out to be suspect on several counts.
The figures Pritchard cited could not apparently be independently confirmed, as “the age range chosen is not one recognised in official data sets”. Next, while the proportion of the young in hospital has certainly risen, this is only because, thanks to the vaccination programme, the numbers of the elderly has collapsed, down 90 per cent compared to the winter peak with most being discharged after just four days.
Fred Pawle decries the tyrannical hygiene socialism now crushing Australians. A slice:
The restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic are just the start of it. People have been confined to their houses, prevented from going to school or work, denied the freedom to cross state borders even to see a dying relative, and coerced to take a vaccine in order hopefully to regain the freedoms that were once their birthright.
Worse, these restrictions are being imposed by authoritarians who have seemingly come from nowhere and now dominate all of Australia’s positions of power, from the government to big business. These people are unlike any ruling elite Australia has ever known.
For more on just how dystopian Australia has become, see Charis Chang. (HT Phil Magness)
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 102 of Thomas Sowell’s 1993 collection, Is Reality Optional?:
What they [the media and politicians] want to hear are things that make for excitement, crusades, and a chance to be on the side of the angels. They want statistics or anything else that blames our whole way of life for creating catastrophic dangers that only the wise and noble few can save us from.
Whether it is “the greenhouse effect,” chemical residues from pesticides, the dangers of nuclear radiation, or a thousand other things, the bottom line is the same: The morally anointed are to stand on Olympus and order the rest of us around – for our own good.
Statistics that ruin this scenario are rarely mentioned.
August 16, 2021
A Low-Information Citizen
On a drive back today to Fairfax from DC I was behind a guy driving a convertible with the top down. He was alone and wearing a mask. Upon passing him it appeared to me that he was double-masked, but I can’t say for sure. But he sure was wearing at least one mask as he zipped westward along Arlington Blvd. in northern Virginia. Intelligent and well-informed fella. 
Who says that Covid Derangement Syndrome isn’t real?
An Open Letter to Dr. Francis Collins
Dr. Francis Collins, Director
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD
Dr. Collins:
In your interview yesterday with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday you rightly complained that “the evidence and the basis for making decisions on facts has gotten pushed aside by politics.” But you, sir, are as guilty as anyone of politicizing this disease by distorting the presentation of facts.
Numbers – quantitative facts – are meaningful only in proper context. Yet in this same interview with Wallace you ignored this reality when you announced that “more than 400 children [in America] have died of Covid-19,” and then concluded from this ‘fact’ that “the evidence” shows that Covid poses a great risk to children.
Well.
Ignore the fact (!) that the number of “deaths involving Covid-19” in America, as of August 11th, 2021, of persons under the age of 18 is reported by the CDC as 353; let’s take 400 as the correct number of children who’ve so far died of Covid. Aren’t you, as a public-health official, ashamed that you didn’t bother to observe that 400 children deaths from Covid is a paltry 0.76 percent of the total number of children deaths in America (52,672) over the same time period? Aren’t you embarrassed that you forgot to note that, over this same time period, the number of children in America whose deaths are classified as “involving pneumonia” is 859 – that is, more than double the number whose deaths are classified as “involving Covid-19”?
Are you not mortified that you neglected to say that the number of children who are killed each year in motor-vehicle accidents is multiple times higher than is the number who’ve died since January 2020 of Covid? Do you regret forgetting to reveal that in 2019 the number of children in the U.S. who died from cancerous tumors was, at 1,060, more than 150 percent higher than is the number who have so far died of Covid? (These data are available here.) And are you not overwhelmed with remorse that you said not a word about the number of children (and adults) who’ll die unnecessarily of cancer and other non-Covid illnesses because of treatment delays sparked by disproportionate fears of Covid – disproportionate fears that you consistently stoke?
You’re no longer promoting public health; Dr. Collins; you’re peddling panic porn – which has become a lethal collective addiction.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Teaching Principles
My goal in teaching Principles of Microeconomics is not to launch my students on a path to earn graduate degrees in the subject, or even for them to become undergraduate econ majors. While I’m always pleased when a student, after taking my class, switches his or her major to economics, I teach the course on the assumption that mine is the only economics course these students will ever take. (Empirically, this assumption is valid.) So unlike many other intro-econ courses, I do absolutely no mathematics; I even refrain from drawing any of the cost curves that I encountered as a student in my first economics course. I do define a handful of esoteric terms, such as the “law of diminishing marginal utility” and the “law of one price,” but I never mention many other terms – such as “perfect competition” or “marginal rates of substitution” – that are typical fare in most other principles-of-microeconomic courses. I wouldn’t even dream of doing, in this introductory course, the likes of indifference-curve analysis.
I open my course with some economic history. (“Have you any idea how magnificently, materially prosperous you are compared to the vast majority of your ancestors? Because you’re too young to remember a world even without smartphones, of course you don’t appreciate just how prosperous you are. So let me tell you!”) I next tell my students about Adam Smith and Julian Simon. Then I do my best to rock their world by introducing them to the principle of comparative advantage.
I’m not embarrassed to confess that when I demonstrate comparative advantage I am intentionally theatrical. It’s a powerful principle that I want my students never to forget.
After some additional introductory material – not the least of which includes a warning against the commission of various logical fallacies (such as the fallacy of composition) – it’s on to the course’s core: supply and demand. I later devote two whole sections to international trade, another to public choice, and one to public goods and taxation. (Each section is two-and-a-half-hours long. And I cover some other topics in addition; I mention these only to give a flavor of my course.)
My goal – by teaching basic, foundational, principles of microeconomics – is to inoculate students against the bulk of the common economic myths that they’ll encounter throughout their lives – myths such as that the great abundance of goods and services available to us denizens of modernity is the result of a process that can be easily mimicked or understood in detail by smart people or planners – that the market value of goods or services can be raised as desired by price floors (such as a legislated minimum wages) or lowered as desired by price ceilings (such as rent controls) – that benefits can be created without costs – that government is an institution capable of rising above the realities that ensure that private institutions never perform ‘perfectly’ – that intentions are results – that destruction of property is a source of prosperity – that exchange across political boundaries differs in economically meaningful ways from exchange that takes place within political boundaries – that the only consequences that occur or that matter are those that are easily anticipated and seen.
Some Covid Links
Difficult as it is to believe – and distressing as it is to behold – Australia daily embraces greater tyranny. This new announcement reads as if it’s lifted directly from a dystopian novel. How can anyone observe what’s being done in Australia and deny that Covid Derangement Syndrome is real and dangerous?
Humanity, irrationally fearful of Covid-19, has lost its mind – as Tim Wallace reports. A slice:
Tight lockdowns to stamp on the smallest outbreak were held up as an example to the rest of the world, with campaigns in countries including Britain calling for the same here.
But when it comes to reopening, China finds itself stuck in a seemingly endless game of whack-a-mole, cracking down rather than learning to live with Covid as an endemic but decreasingly deadly disease.
It is not the only country that tried to wipe the virus out. Australia sealed its borders and imposed tough restrictions. Its death count is also low – fewer than 1,000 have died of Covid, an enviable figure in comparison to more than 130,000 in the UK.
But still, lockdowns remain frequent and severe.
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
Throughout the pandemic, restaurant workers delivered food to stay-at-home zoom professionals. How did we thank them? With a $300 fine for not wearing their mask correctly!
US and UK plunged into lockdowns without realistic aims, without an exit plan and with a mission that crept and mutated by the day. As many of us warned at the time, it was hard to see how it would end well. We were, as usual dismissed and reviled.
Adam Wolstenholme offers six reasons to ditch the mask. A slice:
4. Masks could be damaging your health
According to the BMJ, studies show the oxygen deficiency caused by mask wearing can lead to increased heart rate, nausea, dizziness and headaches. You probably knew that already, but the BMJ also says face masking can increase stress hormones, leading to ‘a negative impact on immune resilience in the long term’. As with the devotion of the NHS to Covid at the expense of other diseases, it seems the masking policy prioritised short-term political gain over long-term health outcomes.
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik is consistently dreadful. He’s innumerate, ignorant of history, even more ignorant of economics, and an excellent example of someone who confuses intentions for results. In this EconLog post, David Henderson characteristically bends over backwards to be generous to Hiltzik. Note also Charley Hooper’s excellent comments.
The straw man is now stomping through Iran.
Here’s a bit of good news out of Texas. (HT Phil Magness)
But put all that to one side. Suppose the authors are correct that universal masking reduces transmission in schools. Is it therefore worth doing? I would argue no.
First, there are tangible costs to mask-wearing. They’re uncomfortable. They get dirty. And they don’t allow you to see other people’s faces, which hampers learning (particularly for the youngest children) as well as social interaction more generally.
Second, it’s not even clear that we want to prevent children from becoming infected. For starters, they face an extremely low risk of death from COVID-19. According to a recent English study, the survival rate for under-18s is 99.995%. And if COVID-19 becomes endemic, which seems very likely, they’ll have to get it at some point. So why not now?
In fact, we might want to encourage children to become infected, the better to build up population immunity and protect the most vulnerable. (I’m of course exempting children who have a serious underlying health condition.)
Vaccination is another option, but I believe we should focus vaccines on those who actually need them, such as elderly people in other countries. And in any case, many people don’t want their children to be vaccinated.
The authors of the New York Times piece make two claims: universal masking cuts transmission in schools; and therefore we should require it. I’m sceptical of the first claim, but even if it’s true, the second doesn’t follow. Wearing masks is costly, and it’s not even clear we want to prevent infections among healthy children.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 143 of the 2009 Revised Edition of Thomas Sowell’s Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One:
Our natural inclination may be to want to make every place as safe as possible but, in reality, no one does that when they must pay the costs themselves. We are willing to pay for brakes on our cars, but having a second set of brakes in case the first set fails would make us feel safer still, and a third set would result in even more reduction of risk, although probably not by a substantial amount. However, faced with rising costs and declining reductions of risk as more backup brake are added to automobiles, most people will at some point refuse to pay any more for additional but insignificant reductions in risk. However, if someone else is paying for reduction in risk, the point at which risk reduction stops may be very different.
DBx: Although Sowell penned these words long before Covid-19, the lesson is general. It applies today. His wise words remind us that reductions in risk are costly, and that at some point additional reductions in risk – while real, and perhaps worthwhile if less costly – are not worthwhile given the cost of achieving these reductions.
Sowell’s words remind us also that risk reduction, as with any other good or service, will be pursued in greater quantities the lower is the cost of that pursuit to the person with the authority to decide how much such pursuit to undertake. And if the person with this decision-making authority is not the same as the person who will pay for the additional risk reduction, then chances are high that too much risk reduction will be pursued.
Who paid a disproportionately high share of the cost of reducing Covid risks through lockdowns? Answer: Mostly people who are not members of the Zoomgeoise. Politicians ordered businesses and schools closed, and people to remain at home. Many in the Zoomgeoise cheered self-righteously about the great merit of the resulting reduction in Covid risks. (Forget here that other risks were largely ignored.) Able to work from home and have restaurant meals and groceries delivered (or packaged for “socially distanced” pick-up), the Zoomgeoise offloaded most of the cost of lockdowns mostly on working-class people.
“We are avoiding externalities!” shouted smug Zoomgeoise intellectuals – unaware of, or indifferent to, the costs that they and the tyrants whose authoritarian actions they cheered on were unleashing far greater external costs on millions of innocent people.
The Covid lockdowns were, and are, an unforgivable crime against humanity.
August 15, 2021
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 9 of the 2008 third edition of James W. Ely’s important book The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights:
[G]iven the framers’ concern with protecting property as well as the nearly 150 years of Supreme Court activity in this field, the relegation of property rights to a lesser constitutional status is not historically warranted. The framers did not separate property and personal rights. Significantly, the language of the Fifth Amendment unites safeguards for both liberty and property.
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