Gans: Reproduction Numbers Tend to 1 & ��e Reason Could Be Behavioural���Noted

I confess that back in March I grossly misjudged the situation. I thought back then that one of two things would happen: (1) We would fail to knock the virus���s R[current] below 1, and the virus would rip through the population in a spring or spring and summer of horror, but it would be largely over by the fall. (2) We would knock the virus���s R[current] below one, and the virus would become a minor annoyance. I completely did not expect what we have now: a seriously depressed economy, with substantial but inadequate social-distancing, mask-wearing, and other measures, keeping the virus���s R[current] around one, but with every prospect of this plague raging for years until policy somehow changes. Here the very sharp Joshua Gans says: We are economists. We are trained to look for equilibrium positions. So we should have expected this. Yes, I take his point. But I would never have imagined that the equilibrium caseload would be this high, and cause this big an ongoing depression:

Joshua Gans: Reproduction Numbers Tend to 1 & ��e Reason Could Be Behavioural https://voxeu.org/article/reproduction-numbers-tend-1-and-reason-could-be-behavioural: ���Standard epidemiological models that show how infection rates in the population rise and then fall assume that people do not understand what���s going on. When people react to infection rates by changing behaviour, the model���s predictions are no longer valid. This column explains why that can mean that pandemics don���t rage out of control but becoming something more endemic. In particular, epidemiological models that incorporate rational economic agents tend to predict that pandemics may move towards a steady state for a significant period of time...

.#noted #2020-09-18