Russell Roberts's Blog, page 275

A Weak Hypothetical In Support of Tyranny

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:

Editor:

Leana Wen proposes that people’s freedom to go about the ordinary affairs of life continue to be restricted until and unless there’s a “requirement for proof of vaccination” (“The CDC shouldn’t have removed restrictions without requiring proof of vaccination,” May 14).

Why? Given the now-widespread availability of effective vaccines, why compel proof of vaccination given that anyone who chooses to forego vaccination voluntarily incurs the risk of contracting Covid?

Among the hypotheticals posed by Wen as an alleged reason nevertheless to require proof of vaccination is this: “What if you don’t have child care, so you had to bring your kids along? They didn’t choose to remain unvaccinated – the shots aren’t available for them. Surely, it’s not fair to put them at risk.”

What risk? We’ve long known that, as acknowledged by the CDC, “Young children are at higher risk of severe illness from flu” than from Covid. Covid poses no real risk to children. As of May 9, 2021, the percentage of Covid deaths of people 24 and younger is 0.19.

It’s telling that, to press her tyrannical proposal, Wen must concoct a hypothetical about potential harm to a group whose members are at virtually no risk from Covid.

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

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Note: Recent relaxation of mask mandates in the U.S. hopefully signals at least a beginning to the end of Covid Derangement Syndrome. Further sense, for me, that we might finally be escaping this madness came when I dined on Thursday evening at a restaurant on the California side of Lake Tahoe and was delighted to discover the place packed with patrons none of whom were “social distancing,” and many of whom were walking around maskless. So I will no longer feature a “Some Covid Links” post; such posts will become occasional. But below are today’s links.
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Jacob Sullum details reasons for rejecting the naive assumption that the CDC is driven exclusively by science.

Eric Boehm rightly ridicules the absurdity of New York’s still-operative Covid restrictions. Here’s his opening:

For a few hours every Sunday morning, New York City’s Jerry Orbach Theater transforms into a church. When it does, the 199-seat off-Broadway theater can be filled to 50 percent capacity under the state’s current COVID-19 rules.

A few hours later, when the Jerry Orbach welcomes guests to yet another performance of Perfect Crime, the long-running murder mystery show, the 199-seat theater’s capacity must be capped at just 33 percent.

Yes, under New York’s pandemic rules, the exact same physical space that can’t host more than 66 people for a performance is somehow considered safe when up to 99 people gather there to pray and sing together. That’s despite the fact that, based on what we know about how the COVID-19 spreads, church services seem to be, if anything, more dangerous for unvaccinated attendees.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board explains how teachers’ unions benefitted mightily from Covid hysteria – and at the expense of taxpayers and children. A slice:

Ms. Weingarten and her union friends who run big city districts have held children and parents hostage to obtain more money from Washington for higher salaries and pensions. The $1.9 trillion spending bill that Democrats passed in March includes $129 billion for K-12 schools, which was on top of the $13.2 billion allocated in last spring’s Cares Act and the $54.3 billion in the December Covid bill.

Schools haven’t had to reopen to receive any of the extra cash. The Congressional Budget Office projected that only $6 billion of the $129 billion would be spent in fiscal year 2021. Most of the booty won’t be spent until 2023 or later, and some not until 2028. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.

Camilla Tominey calls on her fellow Brits to regain their senses. A slice:

Despite the success of the vaccine rollout, and the lack of evidence that new variants override the protection of the jabs, as scientists like Professor Carl Heneghan have pointed out, we are still having to put up with alarmism from “variantists” who want to keep the borders closed, “zeroists” who want the virus to be completely eradicated and “miasmatists” who are keen on keeping masks and social distancing in place forever. We also have “vaccinationists” talking of inoculating children despite the infinitesimal risk to those under 18. It is almost inevitable that we will see an increase in transmission in the non-adult population if they remain unvaccinated (and unmasked in schools from Monday) – but that should not then result in the other three groups jumping up and down demanding a fourth lockdown at the merest hint of an uptick on the graphs. (Even with twice weekly testing, less than 0.4 per cent of pupils have been shown to be positive).

Amy Jones decries the obsession with Covid variants.

Jeffrey Tucker warns of the WHO’s endorsement of what David Hart calls “hygiene socialism.”

Jay Bhattacharya is interviewed by Dennis Prager.

Phil Magness:

Covid has exposed a number of formerly distinguished scholars as little more than partisan hacks.

“The masks worn by millions were useless as designed and could not prevent influenza. Only preventing exposure to the virus could.” – John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (2004)

“Abandoning masks and social distancing now would be the worst possible move for Americans and their political leaders. The 1918 pandemic teaches us why.” – John M. Barry, Washington Post, March 12, 2021

And Charley Hooper commenting on Phil Magness:

COVID has exposed a group of “intellectuals” that are simply lazy conformists. We need a good housecleaning. How did that former politician phrase it? Drain the swamp?

Update on Texas: The “Neanderthal thinking” in the Lone Star state that, on March 2nd, conditionally rid Texans of statewide Covid restrictions has not remotely resulted in the calamity that many predicted. As of yesterday, the 7-day-average case count in Texas was only 31% of what the that count was on March 2nd. Hospitalization and deaths are also significantly lower.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages 53-54 of the 2009 edition of the incomparable H.L. Mencken’s 1926 book, Notes on Democracy:

The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind. He can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty – for example, the right to choose between political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest – but the reality is incomprehensible to him. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it….

DBx: Today the term “inferior man” is anachronistic. By it, Mencken means what we today call – or, what some of us today call – a person who lacks good character. Such persons – and they do exist – are identified not by race, sex, religion, place of birth, occupation, age, wealth, or any other such superficial marker. Instead, such persons are identified merely because they lack good character – a feature of one’s personality that is a result of the likes of culture, upbringing, and education, but emphatically not of genetics.

Regardless of the source of cowardice, a society of cowards is destined to be a society of slaves. The slavery might not be formal, and the slaves might be unaware of their chains. But slaves cowards will be. Cowards put far too high a value on safety, real and imagined, to be free.

“Maybe What People Are Calling ‘the New Normal’ Was In Fact Normal All Along”

(Don Boudreaux)

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I fear that Dan Hannan is correct.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Robby Soave rightly says that “Local officials should end most pandemic restrictions immediately”:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks or engage in social distancing while outdoors or indoors. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky explained that except in a few special circumstances, vaccinated people can resume normal life completely.

“We have all longed for this moment,” said Walensky during a media briefing.

The available data made it clear, Walensky said, that the vaccines are very effective at eliminating both illness and transmission of COVID-19, and that they have thus far tackled the variants with incredible success.

“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing,” she said. “If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things you stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

This news is long overdue, as it has been clear for weeks that the vaccines should be considered a ticket back to normality. The CDC has proceeded with extreme caution.

But that makes this declaration all the more important: If even the notoriously risk-averse CDC says the vaccinated can put away their masks, then there’s no reason to keep local restrictions in place. If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated; if you arevaccinated, do whatever you want. All government mandates should reflect this reality.

(DBx: I wonder if Keith Olbermann will apologize to Robby.)

Deirdre McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi explain that the successful development in the west of Covid-19 vaccines is not due to industrial policy.

el gato malo offers a plausible explanation for Covid Derangement Syndrome. A a slice:

this is why this deprogramming is going to be so difficult and why so many are going to resist it. it’s why the resistance to it is so political: because those who experience the freedom and agency of others as oppressive select for ideologies that allow them to wield social control and the intersection of progressivism and critical theories dovetail perfectly into authoritarian health initiatives “for your own good.”

but it’s not for your good. it never was. it was for theirs. it was to mollify their emotional needs by taking your freedom for no good reason and asking you to thank them for it. this was those who seek control to alleviate their own fear surging to the fore and seizing control of the levers of power. they are not looking to let them go.

y’all know i love data and digging into it, but we’re getting the point where we’re past that. if you could read data and be convinced by it, you would have been by now.

Lockdowns were indeed chosen. Here’s Tom Moran’s conclusion:

Cancer does not cause hair loss. Viruses do not make people homeless. We have just participated, without consent, in the largest medical experiment in human history. Are we not entitled, at the very least, to a fair and logical evaluation of the outcomes?

Writing about Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College Covid model, “one of the most influential ever deployed in government,” Fraser Nelson believes that it “now looks as if it could be bunkum.” (HT Roger Koppl) A slice:

We can already look at America, where the states took wildly different approaches, and see the lack of correlation between lockdown stringency and virus control. Importantly, the few countries who did not lock down suffered far less death than Imperial’s models predicted. Sweden ended up with less than half the modelled death toll. Poor old Taiwan was down for 93,000 Covid deaths unless it locked down: it held its nerve and saw only a dozen fatalities.

Which brings us to the main problem: why the Sage group of advisers ever ended up with so much power. Such models will always have monstrous error margins: how could they not? But ministers wanted to say they were being guided by “the science” and saw, in Sage, a convenient political shield. It was a political decision to stand behind a group of advisers – who had been asked to focus on only one part of a mixed crisis. It was a major failing, with huge consequences.

Michael Tracey documents the wave of petty tyranny committed in just one American jurisdiction under the thumb of the Covidocracy. (HT Carl Linn). A slice:

Here are some examples of “unauthorized or otherwise unlawful acts” which allegedly contributed to “jeopardiz[ing] the health, welfare, and safety of the people” that police accused people of committing:

Sitting in parkSitting and talking to othersSitting on milk crateVisiting with no legitimate purposeHanging outBeing in the street in the company of anotherIn street in the company of othersSitting on bench smokingEncouraging others to not social distanceStanding outside enjoying the weatherSocializing with anotherNot Social DistancingStanding without mask

These violations are punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of $1,000.

TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

Julia Hartley-Brewer talks with Sunetra Gupta.

Ivor Cummins talks with Sebastian Rushworth.

Ethan Yang reports on Covid censorship in Canada.

“A Day In the Life of Ivan Dennison.”

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Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 185 of University of Notre Dame philosopher James Otteson’s superb 2021 book, Seven Deadly Economic Sins:

[image error]Cooperative behavior in market economies may be driven by self-interest, but it is not selfish in the sense of disregarding others’ interests. Indeed, the only way that exchanges can be successfully executed in a market economy is with the cooperation of willing others. Thus, market economies are as much cooperative as they are self-interested.

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Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… … is from page 150 of Jason Riley’s new and splendid intellectual biography of the great Thomas Sowell, Maverick:

As Sowell put it, “People often say that I’m denying that there’s racism. On the contrary, racism exists everywhere around the world, down through history. That’s one of the reasons it’s hard to use it as an empirical explanation for anything.”

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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GMU Econ alum Abigail Devereaux, writing at The Hill, warns of the dangers of vaccine passports. Here’s her conclusion:

We are at a critical social juncture after a year of devastation. We should use the availability of effective vaccines as a reason to put the brakes on new interventions, not plow forward into more uncharted social territory by creating and requiring novel health credentials to participate in normal life.

Richard Rahn rightly decries the Covid-19 misinformation and hysteria – and the galling arrogance of the likes of Fauci – that have cursed America over the past 16 months. Two slices:

Those 24 and under believed they had a 7.7 to 8.7 chance from dying form COVID-19 while the real risk is 0.1 percent.” Much of the ignorance about critical health matters, and notably COVID-19, can be traced back to mainstream media, which far too often misinforms and makes everything political. Scaring people sells newspapers and focuses eyeballs on the news channels.

Unfortunately, government officials, like the notorious Dr. Fauci, also have an interest in keeping a high level of panic. This previously unknown government bureaucrat was given considerable power over his fellow citizens and the American economy. He clearly has enjoyed the power, as demonstrated by his almost non-stop TV appearances, his ability to glide past never-ending policy contradictions, and his willingness to comment on topics for which he has no expertise and little apparent knowledge.
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History will not treat most of our government leaders, health care professionals, and media folks well over the COVID-19 pandemic because too many of them let their own egos and ideologies get in the way of sound policies based on the best numbers. Even more disturbing was the willingness of the political class to defer to public health folks, while almost totally ignoring the overriding of constitutional protections and the erosion of basic liberties.

Donald Siegel and Robert Sauer decry the politicization of government ‘science.‘ A slice:

What motivates political appointees at the CDC to collude with teachers unions to prolong lockdowns and continue the confinement and deformity of our children? First, the Biden administration is beholden to teachers unions, who provide substantial financial support to Democrats and also constitute a major, reliable voting bloc. Second, CDC stands for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and thus, is responsible for the single greatest government failure of all time. Their ineptitude, inconsistency, and overall incompetence, both before and after the outbreak of the virus, has been staggering. Therefore, it is important that the CDC keeps its trade union friends for political cover. Third, public health police state officials, such as the CDC director, are basking in the limelight and flush with funds, power, and influence. For infectious disease experts, who have become our unelected rulers, these are the best of times. Pandering to teachers unions allows them to continue regulating all aspects of our family life. Note also that while the CDC is lionized by the media, they are also shielded by craven, cowardly politicians from any accountability for the damage they have inflicted on our economy, society, and physical and mental health, as a result of their misguided quarantines, lockdowns, and “reopenings.”

Phil Magness is a national treasure.

Great Britain looks as though it might be haunted unendingly by a straw man.

TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

The Covidocracy is cruel, heartless, inhuman.

Gawain Towler reports on that MIT study the authors of which were surprised to find that serious lockdown opponents are committed the scientific method.

Here are the final two paragraphs of Kylee Zempel’s latest:

The science is surfacing, and with it the reality that our ruling classes blew it big time. They failed on lockdowns. They slashed our economy. They killed the elderly, screwed students, and ruined livelihoods. They lied about transmission, flip-flopped on guidelines that they didn’t abide by anyway, and turned our cultural climate into a fearful and isolated space. When intelligent people raised alarm bells and offered alternatives, they were scoffed at and ignored.

Now the ruling class is trying to blame those who were right from the start. Don’t let them.

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Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 31 of Thomas Sowell’s 2008 book, Economic Facts and Fallacies:

[image error]Ironically, having created [with land-use restrictions] artificially high housing prices, government then often supplies token amounts of “affordable housing” to selected individuals or groups. Such selective generosity may be subsidized by taxpayers or by making it mandatory that private builders sell a certain percentage of their housing at prices “below market,” as a precondition for approving building permits. These “below market” prices may nevertheless be higher than housing prices would be in the absence of building restrictions.

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Everyone’s A Social Engineer

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to Bloomberg:

Editor:

Interviewed by Ramesh Ponnuru, Lyman Stone said this: “We know from surveys that Americans actively intend and plan to have 2 to 2.3 children on average, yet at current rates will have just 1.64. We know that Americans say they want to have, or think it’s ideal to have, or say they’d be happiest having somewhere between 2.2 and 2.8 children. So it’s very clear that low fertility is ‘bad’ in the sense that it is not what Americans say they want.” (“Want More American Babies? Make the U.S. More Livable,” May 11).

Nonsense.

People’s true preferences are much more accurately revealed by their actions than by their words. Because Americans are free to have more children, the fact that they have fewer children than they say they want is evidence only that surveys are a poor means of discovering what people really want when fully confronted with reality. Unlike surveys, reality confronts each person with the actual need to make many trade-offs and to personally bear the resulting costs while enjoying the resulting benefits.

And as for Mr. Stone’s conclusion that Americans would have more children if Americans’ costs of having more children were lower – well, yes. No one needs a survey to reach the conclusion that as the cost of some benefit falls, more of that benefit will be pursued.

While government should not artificially raise the cost incurred by individuals of having children, it also should neither artificially lower that cost nor artificially raise the benefit.

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

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