I still want to participate in a movement to change the direction of the policy response to the virus crisis. The health policy leadership strikes me as inflexible and unscientific in its approach. And the macroeconomics profession is even worse. Our peacetime bureaucrats are losing the war on all fronts.
I decided after experimenting the other day that I don’t have a comparative advantage in audio-visual media. Others in the movement may prove better at that. I am thinking in terms of a different blog-like format, but more polished than this one. I do want to involve well-known thinkers I respect. I want to hear from the audience and involve them, not just talk (write) at them. Stay tuned.
Here are some comments on analysis that has recently come to my attention.
We are still nowhere on mass public face covering, but at least one country’s leader thinks it’s worth a try. And if it works there, maybe all the flak the idea gets from the health policy experts won’t stop us from trying it here.
Listening to Peter Attia and Michael Osterholm, it seems likely that our hospital system is going to run into shortages of many supplies, including medicines, masks, and chemicals necessary to carry out tests. Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the pointer.
Listening to Jay Bhattacharya and Peter Robinson, it sounds like Jay understands the principles of science. I wish somewhat like him had more power to oversee the allocation of resources for testing.
Robin Hanson found a serious error in every so-called model to predict spreading. That is, treating the spread rate, or R0, as if it were a single, physical parameter is misleading. In fact, we know that most people with the disease have R0’s well below 1, and a remarkably large fraction of cases are caused by a tiny number of super-spreaders. Robin shows that this makes it much harder to contain the virus. I trust his model more than the fancier ones out there.
I think this argues for a policy of limiting the number of people any one person can be in contact with per 10-day period. But “in contact with” may have to include doorknob effects. Of course, we still have not done the experiment to see how strong doorknob effects are.
William Galston is among at least a few people promoting the idea of a commission to investigate the government’s response to the virus crisis. I think that is a terrible idea. A commission is a symbolic gesture–an alternative to really cleaning house.
What I want to see instead is a really effective effort to lower the status of the public health experts and economic experts who created the response. Meanwhile, raise the status of outside thinkers who have been more insightful. The real commission will be what is embedded in the movement that I pray will form and in which I plan to participate.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the elites raised the status of Ben Bernanke and the Obama team without critically examining whether what they did was helpful or harmful. Not surprisingly the current Fed and the Trump economic team are pulling out the same playbook, expecting to reap the same glory.
But what have they accomplished? They have taken us much farther down the road to serfdom. We need to turn this vehicle around.
[I don’t need your negativity now. Maybe some other time–Ed.]
These gov docs modeling 100-200k deaths (and earlier 2-20M) should go down as Tuskegee experiment.
Great post.
I definitely agree that we do not need another Trump investigation! One was enough
Thank you for persisting in your efforts, Arnold. I have found yours to be the most reasoned and alert voice throughout the course of this pandemic. Tyler Cowen may be your favorite blogger, but you are, without a doubt, mine.
Well said Todd, my thoughts exactly!
President Trump did advise the public to wear face coverings, and specifically scarves if they don’t have masks. Kling is apparently uninterested in recognizing that.
I quoted that in a short comment posted to this blog on March 31. I don’t expect Kling to read my comments. If Kling is going to repeatedly criticize the Trump Administration on not recommending face coverings, when the Trump Administration is recommending face coverings, Kling has some responsibility to recognize that.
Serfdom?
Is part of the answer a much smaller military-intelligence complex?
I keep wondering why the Task Force and those writing on the economics are dealing with the harsh reality. That is, we aren’t ending social distancing anytime soon. We may reopen, but the virus will still be out there. It will remain a significant illness threat for several years, even if we get effective treatment of the serious cases. A vaccine can change this a bit. Then the SARS-CoV-2 will just take its place among all the other cold and flu viruses.
So when we reopen, because not reopening is not an option, crowded restaurants, bars, stadiums, concerts, etc. may not reopen. Restaurants should be using this time to figure out how they are going to operate without a crowded dining room.
An extra delay will be that many manufacturers, construction, etc., will not be able to start fully as they will need the continuing short-supply PPE for their operations. And there will be an army of state, local and federal OSHA inspectors, labor inspectors, etc. behind other revenue quotas to find the smallest transgression. That doesn’t even consider the ambulance-chasing lawyers looking for some paydays. Already, the mayor of Nashville is talking tax increases. Others won’t be far behind.
Serological antibody tests are being tried out already. That will tell whether a person has already been infected, but is now immune and no longer contagious. That is, they can do any normal thing, without being a danger to themselves or others.
There is no reason to impose any restrictions on these people, except for not knowing who they are, and not having reliable gatekeepers with that knowledge at the entrances to most risky places.
But it is absolutely technically feasible and potentially cheap and fast to establish an immunity certificate system.
To operate, bars in some areas must already use government-issued identity cards to verify one has a right to enter, and the TSA uses them to verify one can fly.
Probably we’ll do it all with smartphone apps, flashing QR codes at each other, like anti-scarlet letters, or “social proximity licenses”.
That’s a way we could get the most people back to normal, fast and safe.
Independentvoters.org is taking a national survey to identify common ground on ways to rise to meet this challenge. It may be of interest: https://tinyurl.com/ut7oqtd
I think the hospitals were correct to call a sudden stop when they found the spread rate. Under business as usual, ER rooms were a major spreader.
The virus hunters know this stuff and are ignoring government edicts as needed. This is a two generation pandemic, we have not seen one since the late 50s. Covid trials are the current constraint, more of them. We need a very quick biotech boom in DNA Valley.
I think there is something to this. I feel the part of the problems in the Italy, Spain and the U.S. is the hysteria caused a lot of people with symptoms (and the virus) to go to the ER or urgent care to get tested and that helped spread it to workers and patients already there.
If true, then an overlooked potential benefit of S. Korea’s drive thru testing stations was keeping a lot of people with the virus out of the hospitals and avoiding the super spread.
Hanson’s “super spreader” and variable R0 rate observations are important. But are they *behavioral* characteristics? Maybe most of us have naturally low R0 but some social butterflies and globetrotters have high R0. If the restrictions and distancing clip their wings, we get R0 down very quickly. Maybe it is like a meal with 5-10 friends is not really so bad… but meals with 5-10 different sets of 5-10 friends is catastrophic. Since we can’t very well monitor to distinguish the two cases, we have to go to full prohibition.
Regarding R-nought and superspreaders, I think Taleb was there first: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b68a4e4a2772c2a206180a1/t/5e2efaa2ff2cf27efbe8fc91/1580137123173/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_via_Novel_Path.pdf
TL;DR – if the disease is so why spread, why are tests given to a group in effect selected TO have the virus, showing only 10% infection rate? (In WA state…)
Having just watched Peter Attia’s video, I have a disconcerting observation.
In WA, they are still very much testing people who (a) show appearing to have the disease, etc, or (b) are worried and find a way through the mess.
In other words, it appears to me that the testing is selecting for people who are in fact ill.
One would expect that in such a pool, the positive rate would be very high (say, 50%)
From what data I get to see (reporting problems in WA state) it’s more like 10%.
Which suggests that Peter’s observation if only 1% of asymptomatic people shows signs of the disease, that’s very disconcerting – might be the more likely direction.