I went back to look at my posts on the virus crisis, to evaluate them in light of subsequent events. What did I get right before others did, and what did I get wrong?

Some of these posts I consider classics. I put them in bold.

As far as I can tell, my first post that mentioned the virus was on March 6, when I talked about how it reinforced Peter Zeihan’s predictions for de-globalization. Right.

On March 8, I also talked about de-globalization, and I added that the macroeconomics of the crisis would best be understood as a PSST story, not a conventional aggregate demand problem. Right.

Next, on March 11, I wrote “In theory, what you want is precisely targeted support, aimed at keeping alive the firms that deserve to survive short-term effects. But what you are likely to get instead are policies that mostly favor firms that do not need help or other firms that deserve to fail..” Right.

On March 12, I explained my self-quarantine decision. “How long will we self-quarantine? Either we’ll get something like an “all-clear” signal in a few weeks, or, if my worst fears are correct, there will be government-imposed measures that are as strong or stronger than what we are taking.” Right.

In that same post, I made the first of what would be many pleas for random-sample testing to determine the actual prevalence of the virus in the population. Not completely right, because such an exercise would be confounded by false positives when only a small proportion of the population is infected.

On March 13, I wrote The two-weeks-behind hypothesis, in which I asserted that responses to the virus tended to be two weeks behind. Right. In fact, two months later a study claimed that acting two weeks earlier would have saved 36,000 lives. Probably not a reliable study, but still. . .

3/14. I argued that banks should be allowed to fall below minimum capital standards for a while because of the crisis. Not quite right, but reasonable.

I criticized Heather MacDonald for trying to downplay the crisis. Next day, I criticized Roger Kimball for doing the same, saying that I wished I could bet that total cases by the end of that week would be more than double his prediction of 6000. Right.

3/17. I wrote

I suspect that the first-best strategy is a total, nationwide lockdown for two weeks, enforced militarily. The intent would be to deprive the virus of hosts. Even then, in order to contain subsequent outbreaks, we would have to continue to encourage social distancing, require people to keep track of contacts, and do a lot of random testing of asymptomatic people.

Possibly right. Consider that we shut down some businesses for much longer and still did not suppress the virus.

I first made my proposal for lending to households and businesses as a macroeconomic policy response to the virus crisis. Right.

3/18. I commented on David Henderson’s bet that we would have at least 100,000 virus deaths by the end of the year. That bet proved correct. I did some arithmetic related to the doubling time of the virus. Too non-committal to be right or wrong.

I wrote about how social distancing could buy time for dealing with the virus, listing 5 advantages from delaying the spread of the virus. Mostly wrong–those advantages did not materialize.

3/19. I wrote about the proposal for the government to send checks to every household. I said that this is like writing a check to yourself, in that your gain is an illusion. I stand by this, the first of many critiques that I would make of fiscal “stimulus” in the crisis.

Also on March 19, I wrote Fire the peacetime bureaucrats. Right. Of all of my posts on the crisis, I think this one was the best. President Trump’s biggest shortcoming was that he did not carry this out.

3/20. I tried using the PSST framework to explain why it was private-sector actions driving economic declines and that a return to normal was not an option. Right, although people find this hard to accept.

3/21. I wrote an Economic FAQ, which I thought I was going to maintain, but instead I just kept writing new blog posts. In the FAQ, I claimed that the quality of care affects the outcome from the disease. This now strikes me as wrong.

Also, I justified social distancing and government lockdowns by writing

the cumulative social cost of many people deciding to risk infection is high. First, they may infect others who have high risk. Second, as the number of people requiring treatment rises, the capacity of the health care system becomes strained, the quality of treatment falls, and the death rate rises.

By April, I would no longer be persuaded by this “public-good” argument.

Indeed, that same day (March 21) I linked to a controversial essay that argued against lockdowns. I can stand by what I wrote that day. Note that some of the questions raised in that post about the role of asymptomatic spreading have still not been fully resolved.

3/23. I complained about the use of computer models. Right.

I complained about Luigi Zingales assuming that there would be 7.2 million excess deaths without lockdowns. Right.

On March 24, Bring on the Masks and gloves came in response to a post by Scott Alexander. I immediately saw masks as a better solution than lockdowns for the public-good problem of getting people not to spread the virus. Later that day, I pointed out that while masks were in short supply, scarves would do the trick. I stand by those posts.

3/25. I predicted that the status of many of the slowest and least imaginative officials in the crisis would rise rather than fall. Time will tell.

In fact, all my posts that day were bitter and cynical. I suggested that the “stimulus” would go to the powerful, that Robert Higgs’ model of crisis and leviathan fit, and that public health officials were still flying blind.

3/27. My idea for credit lines for households and businesses made the Wall Street Journal.

3/28. I warned that deficits would unleash the inflation virus. I stand by that, although other economists and financial markets clearly disagree with me.

3/29. in response to a Tyler Cowen post on heterogeneity, I said

I would speculate on a combination of two factors. First, different variants of the virus, which spread and kill at different rates. Second, a highly skewed spreading phenomenon. That is, instead of every infected person proceeding to infect exactly 2.2 other people, you have a few infected persons infecting dozens of others, and most infected people infecting no one else. Put those two factors together, and you will get heterogeneity. But I emphasize that this is purely speculative.

I don’t think that the hypothesis that there are very different strains of the virus in different regions has been ruled out. The “highly skewed spreading phenomenon” is getting a lot more play these days.

3/31. I said that we should repeal the CARES act (the “stimulus.”) I argued that it was centralizing the allocation of capital. I stand by that.

I was trying to explore ways to mobilize people against government power grabs, but I soon gave up on this.

4/1. I talked about the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and my disagreement with markets. I had favored selling stocks early in March, and that was a good call for the rest of that month. But since then, stocks have really come back. So I appear to have been wrong.

4/2. I wrote a post called a general update. I would do that daily for the next several weeks, with commentary on various items related to the virus crisis.

I made another plea for using experiments rather than models. I was right.

4/3. I attempted to explain that the government writing checks is not creating wealth, contrary to childish beliefs.

In the context of a general criticism of how experts were approaching the crisis, I wrote

For now, the only forecasting method I trust is to extrapolate the growth rate in the number of deaths for a few more weeks. Until today, deaths were doubling very steadily every three days. Today, the ratio of deaths to the total three days ago dropped to 1.86. That is the best number to track until we get something more rigorous to use.

Soon, I would dub that ratio the 3DDRR.

4/4. I started thinking about the potential impact of imperfectly accurate tests for the virus. But I did the arithmetic in terms of the probability that you have the disease given that you test positive, rather than the probability that you test positive given that you have the disease. So not the right approach.

I described and explained my justification for the 3DDRR. I was right to try to get away from using data on cases to track the spread of the virus, but ultimately the 3DDRR was problematic because of day-of-week biases.

4/6. I wrote The worst is behind us. Probably my most wrong post. I did not yet realize that the 3DDRR is always low on Mondays.

4/7. The Avalon Hill metaphor. Trying to get away from thinking of the spread rate and the fatality rate. Instead looking at attack strength vs. defense strength. I stand by this approach.

In my general update, I wrote,

The CARES Act will live in infamy as one of the worst pieces of legislation every enacted.

I don’t know if economists will ever come around to that view. They did come to agree that the fascist part of the New Deal (the National Recovery Administration) was bad. As James Tobin put it, Roosevelt got lucky when the Supreme Court struck it down.

I linked to Zvi Mowshowitz on viral load. This is an example of an idea that amateurs had before the professionals picked up on it.

4/8. I backtracked from “the worst is behind us.”

4/9. Now I was making the case against lockdowns. I emphasized that private responses to the virus were sufficient, and that we did not need additional government coercion.

I spelled out my increasingly libertarian thinking.

Much of the economic dislocation comes from the actions of private individuals and businesses. The idea that the government has the power to “reopen the economy” is as wrong-headed as believing that it is government’s responsibility to close businesses and shut people up indoors.

(emphasis in the original)

4/10. I remarked on the political reactions to the crisis. I saw libertarianism losing.

4/11. I annotated a Tyler Cowen podcast. Among many wise comments he made, this one stands out:

He says that just as we under-reacted to the crisis at first, we will probably over-react going forward. That is, whenever the actual risk abates, the fear will remain longer.

I agreed then and I agree now.

I disagreed with his view that progressives will suffer.

I see progressives not as retreating, but as pivoting. They will argue that this pandemic shows that we need world government. Technocrats have to be in charge. Climate change is the next pandemic, and we can no longer tolerate complacency.

I also quipped,

I predict that the libertarian movement will tend to give up on politics and instead look for ways to “go Galt.” More interest in Seasteading, less interest in Cato.

I wrote some more about imperfectly accurate testing, this time making more useful assumptions.

4/12. I talked about PSST and the economic recovery. I suggested a two-dimensional industry breakdown, based on the necessity of the output that an industry produces and the risk involved in consuming that output. Think of taking a cruise as low in necessity and high in risk.

I suggested two sociological variables: ghetto-ization of immigrants; and herding of elderly into nursing homes.

4/15. I tried to draw inferences from looking at the worst outbreaks. I speculated that

We will find that New York has some nursing homes that are run appallingly badly, and these will account for a significant share of the deaths there.

Bullseye.

Also, a very interesting general update, including: Robin Hanson’s indictment of the public health experts; taking note of a study of a homeless shelter; and my complaint that

Somewhere along the way, we went beyond the goal of reducing infection risk as a means to preserve scarce medical resources. The goal now seems to be reducing infection risk as an end in itself. Once we accept that as a vital government objective, the default becomes indefinite infringement on liberty.

4/16. I created a timeline showing all the times that public health officials and major media outlets said things about the virus crisis that now look foolish. My timeline was criticized, probably correctly, for not highlighting wrongheaded statements by President Trump and other Republicans.

4/17. I took another stab at explaining regional heterogeneities.

Did the virus strike more at-risk people in the Y regions than in the X regions? This is one of the explanations that I like to believe. I tell it as a story of cultural differences. For elderly people living independently or in nursing homes that have hygienic skill/luck going for them, death rates will be low; otherwise, they will be high. For people who work in jobs that force them to encounter many people in enclosed spaces (including a need to commute by subway), death rates will be high; otherwise they will be low.