Russell Roberts's Blog, page 344

Resisting Tyranny

(Don Boudreaux)

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The Sheriff of Riverside County, California, takes a principled stand of resistance against using his office to enforce the arbitrary, tyrannical commands of California dictator Gavin Newsom. (HT Todd Zywicki)

Hospital Utilization in the United States

(Don Boudreaux)

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My friend Lyle Albaugh shared with me these data. While not telling any complete story, they tell a significant part of a relevant one.

Here, showing Estimated National Hospital Utilization in the U.S. on December 4, 2020.

And here.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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In two very short videos – here and here, and each with a focus on Florida – Ivor Cummins further debunks the notion that lockdowns are an effective means of combatting Covid-19.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal rightly hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court will continue to rein in the dictatorial powers now exercised by many state and local government “leaders.” Here’s the conclusion:

Americans have put up with a lot this year to limit the spread of Covid. But too often Governors have imposed arbitrary restrictions without respect for the Constitution or common sense. The Supreme Court’s heightened scrutiny is welcome.

In conversation, my friend Lyle Albaugh frequently points out that by feverishly opposing in-person opening of K-12 schools, U.S. teachers’ unions reveal that so-called “teachers” have no real interest in teaching. This essay by Robby Soave is strong evidence for Lyle’s insight. A slice:

Given this reality, it would be more accurate to say that the push to keep schools closed is racist and sexist—though the root cause of the continuing closures is not racism or sexism, but rather the tremendous political power of teachers unions, who have lobbied district officials to stick with virtual education even as other essential employees return to work. Public school teachers, after all, continue to receive a paycheck regardless, which means their union has very little incentive to take any risk whatsoever, no matter how substandard the quality of remote education might be.

Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler rightly bemoans the Keynesian belief in the miracle of multipliers. A slice:

But no matter, expect multiplier talk to, er, multiply. The Biden team already has gnomes busy at work sharpening their pencils finding new and innovative ways to raise taxes to spend on green and other favored projects, without having to pass new laws in a potentially divided Congress.

Roger Ream remembers Walter Williams.

David Henderson recalls the first time he met Walter Williams.

Joakim Book offers a valuable lesson in labor economics.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 151 of the 2009 edition of the incomparable H.L. Mencken’s 1926 book, Notes on Democracy:

The distinction that goes with mere office runs far ahead of the distinction that goes with actual achievement.

DBx: Proof of the truth of this observation is abundant for all who will observe with clear eyes.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from my late, great colleague Walter Williams’s September 9th, 2020, syndicated column “Today and Yesterday“:

The poverty we have today is spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty is an absence of what traditionally has been known as various human virtues. Much of that spiritual poverty is a result of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility. Chief among the policies that reward inferiority and irresponsibility is the welfare state.

Sebastian Rushworth

(Don Boudreaux)

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My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein recently recommended the posts on Covid-19 by Sebastian Rushworth. I’ve so far read a few of them and find them to be useful. Here’s a slice from Rushworth’s November 29th, 2020, post titled “How many years of life are lost to covid?“:

Since then, professor [John] Ioannidis has updated his figures. The newer numbers have been published in The European Journal of Clinical Investigation. The modifications have been made to compensate for the fact that the earlier estimates were extrapolated from the countries that were hardest hit by covid. When this is accounted for, the new estimate is that covid kills around 0,15-0,20% of those infected, so around one in 600 infected people die of the disease overall. Among people under 70 years of age, the revised estimate is that 0,03-0,04% die, which is around one in 3,000.

However, professor Ioannidis also mentions that the fatality rate varies a lot between countries, related to varying levels of risk factors. As I mentioned in a previous article, the main risk factor for dying of covid is obesity. So countries with high levels of obesity will be hit harder than countries with low levels, which likely explains why the US has been hit so much harder by covid than Japan. Other health related factors that increase the risk of dying of covid are high age, organ transplantation, uncontrolled diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver failure, kidney failure, and cancer. Basically, the things that predispose you to dying in the near future more generally, also predispose you to dying of covid.

At Least in Ireland the Mainstream Media are Finally Reporting on Covid-19 with More Balance

(Don Boudreaux)

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“Level 5 [Lockdown] came at a huge cost, and made no real difference”

HT Ivor Cummins

Speaking Out Against the Media’s Stoking of Covid Derangement Syndrome

(Don Boudreaux)

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Jay Bhattacharya and Christos Makridis, writing at The Hill, are properly critical of the media’s hysterical stoking of Covid Derangement Syndrome. (“Covid Derangement Syndrome,” to be clear, is my term, not theirs.) Two slices:

The media relish negative news. “If it bleeds it leads” still holds, and perhaps it’s never been truer than in the COVID-19 era. Every day the news highlights the spread of the virus and tells the sad stories of some of its victims.

And yet, much of the media does not pay sufficient attention to the good news regarding improved treatments and survival of patients with the coronavirus. In contrast with the international media, the American press has been unrelentingly negative in its COVID coverage, even when there is good news to tell. That negativity is part of what fuels a culture of fear that affects local, state and federal politicians and the decisions they make.

But there is a lot of good news to tell. The case fatality rate from the virus has dropped sharply since March. The infection survival rate is 99.95 percent for people under 70 and 95 percent for people over 70. Hospitals are much better equipped to handle patients, with improved ventilator protocols, improved management of outpatients and new therapeutic strategies to provide relief and recoveries. Moreover, thanks to multiple ongoing clinical trials around the world, there may soon be a safe and effective vaccine.

…..

Though there has been some coverage of lockdown harms, the media have not paid the same attention to it as they have to COVID deaths. If there is a COVID-death tracker, there should be side-by-side with it a lockdown-death tracker.

The lack of balanced media attention towards the good news about the virus and the costs of lockdowns comes with its own cost. Without a balanced approach to COVID news, the public cannot make informed choices about COVID policy, such as school closures. Even a diligent citizen cannot make an informed judgment about the wisdom of continuing lockdowns if only their benefits are emphasized and their costs downplayed. The media have an obligation to show both.

More on the Test for Covid

(Don Boudreaux)

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Unhappy with my fourth link in this post, Eric Kramer sent to me the following e-mail, on whose validity I’m not competent to offer a final assessment. But it seems to be the right thing to do to share his comment in full.

For some reason I can’t log in to comment at your site, so I’ll just send this along (reference to this post):

The suggestion above that covid pcr tests have a false positive rate of 80% to 97% is obviously wrong.  The overall positivity rate – which includes both false and true positives – has been between 4% and 22% since testing began (and mostly between 4% and 10%).

I suspect your antipathy to covid policy led you to be less than appropriately critical of a story that clearly required some degree of skepticism.  Passing along nonsense like this cannot be justified simply by noting that you are not an expert – it’s an academic version of Trump passing along lies and saying “many people are saying”.  To be true to your liberal values I hope you will flag this issue for your readers, or remove this apparently bogus story from your blog entirely.

Eric

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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James Bovard decries the tyranny and irrationality unleashed in Montgomery County, Maryland, by Covid Derangement Syndrome (CDS-20). A slice:

Maryland has a hotline number to report any violators of statewide mask mandates, and MoCo is a rich soil for raising informants. Politicians and bureaucrats have fanned mass fears which have ripened into hatred of anyone who does not comply with the latest edict.

David Henderson writes wisely and humanely about vaccines.

Also writing about vaccines – specifically, about the globalization that produces them – is Eric Boehm.

Link 4 is removed, at least temporarily. I perhaps put it up after a too-quick and careless reading.

Art Carden remembers Walter Williams. A slice:

Williams was a towering intellect who made the economic way of thinking come alive to generations of undergraduates, graduate students, readers, and anyone who would listen. He suffered no fools, which incidentally appears as the title of the 2014 Free to Choose Network documentary on his life and work. To adapt an African proverb, the best time to start reading Walter Williams’ work is twenty years ago. The second best time is right now.

Phil Magness documents John Maynard Keynes’s lifelong attraction to eugenics. (Keynes, as they say, “followed the science” – the they who use these three words too often being people who understand neither the role of science nor the nature of policy-making.)