Brian Doherty has published a good post at Reason, the thesis of which is that posing the debate between “Openers” and “Closers” as one between “idiot death-worshippers” and “unnecessarily frightened tyrants” is counter-productive:
Beyond its devastating effect on the health of hundreds of thousands and the livelihood of millions, the COVID-19 crisis is a harshly vivid example of Americans’ inability to understand, fruitfully communicate with, or show a hint of respect for those seen to be on other side of an ideological line.
Americans are divided about the best way to proceed from here, three months since the first case was diagnosed in the U.S. The division is more vivid and harsh on social networks than in the polls, where a vast majority of Americans still think strong lockdowns are the best idea moving forward. Such Americans think the economy needs to stay shut down by law until a vaccine or some effective treatment is developed that ensures no more, or a very tiny number of, people will be seriously harmed or killed by COVID-19.
On the other hand, some Americans think, on balance, the country’s overall quality of life demands we start letting people and businesses make their own decisions about whether it is safe to go out in public or conduct business openly, especially given access to simple prophylactic measures such as gloves and masks.
Read the whole thing. It isn’t terribly long.
I’d like to offer some scattershot reactions. My first reaction is that dehumanizing your opponents isn’t supposed to be productive. It’s some combination of kneejerk reaction and battlespace preparation. It makes it easier simply to dismiss them rather than treating their concerns as legitimate.
A second reaction comes from one of my oldest blogging correspondents, Wretchard of The Belmont Club: “The cost of politicizing the disease is it locks people into positions. In fact dealing with an epidemic is an exercise in adaptation.” We don’t know “the facts” and may never know them completely but a famous response of the economist John Maynard Keynes’s seems appropriate: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” When altering your conclusions in response to new revelations is seen as some sort of moral failing, we have a basic problem.
Finally, I think the political incentives are presently completely disregulated. IMO the “stay at home” directives will remain in place until they become impossible to maintain or serious recall and/or impeachment proceedings begin. Then they will be lifted in an excessive rush.
I daresay the quoted polls probably suffer from the ” a recession is when you neighbor loses his job, a depression when you lose yours” syndrome.
I would also note that the prescription has not changed since London Imperial’s Furguson put out his bizarre estimates and today, when numbers are converging on typical rates. In fact, the ante is being upped on the prescription.
Hmmm. Whatup with that?
Link goes to Ferguson’s original paper. At this point those who claim he predicted 2.2 million without noting that was his prediction without mitigation are lying. What he did was predict a wide range of deaths depending upon whether or not we intervened. I, and others, have pointed this out many times. It saddens me to see people who I thought might have some integrity say things which are so obviously untrue. I can understand mistakes, but not repeating the same untrue things. You should also note that he said he thought it unlikely that we would do nothing.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Steve
You are talking in circles, steve. Of course he predicted 2 million US deaths. That’s what scared the bejesus out of everyone. So then he made the case for nuking the world economy, for which he have fancy names like mitigation and suppression.
“…in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed…”
Oh, so it could be worse.
Then he went on to describe two levels of policy action, mitigation, which he concluded would halve the deaths, and suppression, on which he never really made a prediction, but which he ultimately advocated. That’s how this mess got started, as many people have noted. And the suppression scenario has been devastating;, and its not at all clear any better than far milder policy responses. Worse, he really had no basis for his predictions, and he had no idea how disruptive or effective they would be if for no other reason than because he had no idea how compliant people would be. And then he drops the bomb:
“We do not consider the ethical or economic implications of either strategy (mitigation or suppression) here, except to note that there is no easy policy decision to be made.”
Well, no shit. He specifically states that full suppression is a 5+ month undertaking. How likely is that? This is of course where he falls flat on his face. There are always cost and benefit to be considered. Other wise all he did was write a piece of academic masturbation. We have barely been able to tolerate 1 month. How useful is his paper given that?
All this guy told us was, “this is bad bug, so I’m going to make up some dire predictions, recommend draconian and impossible to sustain policy prescriptions and dress it up in some statistical lingerie. And if I’m flat out wrong? Oopsy.” So how many have died relative to other severe flus? How many have or will die due to the policy actions?
You may not like it, steve, but this is a careless, irresponsible and dangerous man.