I am trying not to let my emotions influence my analysis of the virus crisis. I am trying to stick close to what I know, which is economics and basic probability theory. As I look back on my posts, on this topic, I see quite a bit to be proud of and very little that I would want to walk back. With that as background, below are a few thoughts about anger.
1. Anger is one of the stages of grief. It is hard to accept that the virus crisis is going to change our lives, so that we can’t just go back to the way things were in January.
2. I think that some anger about the Chinese government’s lack of transparency is justified. I see the regime’s conduct as a reminder of the weaknesses of authoritarianism. Yes, they took strong measures against the virus, but you can also do that in a society with free speech and a free press. And with those freedoms you can identify problems sooner and be less likely to export them to other countries.
3. I think that some anger toward the upper echelons of the FDA is justified. Their timeline for approving diagnostic tests and therapies is ludicrously inappropriate in this crisis, and even in a bureaucracy you would think that people would be less dense.
4. I don’t think that anger toward President Trump is well justified. It is true that he reacted more slowly than many people who are more technically oriented and better able to read exponential processes. But almost every other leader around the world reacted just as slowly. And he was badly served by the FDA–see point (3). Some of those FDA folks are still taking their case to the press, attacking President Trump for breaking out of their regulatory straitjacket.
No doubt that there were some officials somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy who saw this coming and tried to send warnings up the chain of command. Perhaps some of those warnings made it all the way to the Oval Office. But suppose that Mr. Trump had understood and been ahead of the curve. Had he told people back in February that they needed to change their behavior, I am skeptical that he could have brought the country with him. The left, rather than respecting such a judgment, would more likely have denounced early measures to stop the virus as a fascist takeover. As it is, they can call him an idiot for being too late. Fine.
I don’t recall leading Democrats putting much pressure on him to act sooner.
Where I am inclined to fault Mr. Trump is in what I see as a lack of ability to attract and retain outstanding personnel. I think that his circle of trust is too narrow. If my intuition about this is correct, then this shortcoming is quite consequential.
If he were better at identifying and working with star performers, then he could more readily make the sorts of organizational moves I talked about in Fire the Peacetime Bureaucrats. As it is, I don’t think that the Federal government’s performance on hospital supply logistics is anything to cheer about. And as a data-oriented person, I see a shortfall in statistical and analytical efforts.
5. I don’t think that anger at our incompletely socialized health care system is justified. It’s not as if the more socialized systems in Europe are covering themselves with glory. As far as I can tell, the metrics say otherwise.
6. I don’t think that anger at governors for closing down businesses and ordinary activities is well justified. The health care workers on the front lines are adamant that they cannot cope with an ever-increasing case load. On the one hand, I have not seen evidence that definitively proves that these shutdowns will outperform less draconian measures in slowing the spread of the virus. But by the same token, I have not seen evidence that definitively makes the opposite case. Given the uncertainty, and the failure to perform the experiment on which side would you prefer to err?
Thanks for this, Arnold. Very much appreciate your grappling with this crisis.
The side of logic and reason. Germany death rate 0.1%. Princess cruise ship 1.0% which shows death rate ceiling for trapped elderly cruisers. Latest death rate in China of 1.6%. Spring time warmth retarding spread. S Italy SE Asia S Hemi S States without public transport are fine. More bell curve than x^2. Child immunity. If this was a bad flu season affecting children the adult Panic would be minimal. If I’m 85 smoker with high BP I don’t die of Corona. I die from living. The 1 given that human species conveniently forgets in (mental) pandemics.
An anecdote from a British hospital is circulating, to the effect that “five died this week, but they’d all have died in a fortnight anyway”.
What’s an anecdote from the www worth? Unfortunately it’s also true that I ask “what’s a heap of data worth that’s incomplete, underspecified, biased, artifactual and occasionally even a lie?
Given those limitations what’s the best bet for factual info? Data from the cruise ship and S Korea?
I would say there are at least two classes of reasons for justified anger against Trump.
One is the tendency which you identify but I think understate, which is to drive away experts from the federal government, ignore their guidance, and replace them with know-nothing sycophants, because he only trusts sycophants. Notably, he ignored the findings from multiple exercises (including one that the Obama administration did for his transition team) that gamed out pandemic scenarios and identified institutional weaknesses, and he let Ziemer and Bossert depart key preparedness leadership positions and replaced them belatedly with the far less experienced and less competent Azar and Pence. This is in keeping with the general phenomenon of Trump placing loyalty above quality whenever the two conflict.
The second is that he has made a bunch of untrue statements which have caused real harm and which he should have known were not true. These include statements in February to the effect that the pandemic was likely to go away quickly and without incident for the US; any competent person whose advice he might have consulted would have told him not to make such statements, and making such statements proactively is different, and worse, than just failing to warn people about the severity of what was coming. A more recent example was his drastically overoptimistic statement about the likely effectiveness of chloroquine. Other misstatements have failed to take due care to give the consistent true information on which others depend, e.g. it is inexcusable that he initially phrased the announcement of the European travel suspension in a way which led people to believe it would include goods as well as people.
It’s hard to doubt that Trump has routinely said idiotic things and his childlike fixation on the stock market is disturbing, but the counter-argument is that no one listens to what he says anyway, that even his supporters view him as an instrument to keep Democrats out of the White House, not a trustworthy leader, and that though he deserves scorn for his nonsense, that it is fairly inconsequential. I think there’s some truth to that, but he does foment a lot of uncertainty when he talks and markets don’t like uncertainty.
I question how much difference another advisory team would make; I think action-wise Trump’s biggest fault has been his slowness to mobilize national resources: he should’ve been sending the army Corps of engineers to build temp hospitals, sending medically trained military personnel, issuing executive orders temporarily replacing any law that impedes expanding healthcare capacity much earlier; weeks earlier. On some level maybe he believed his own optimism. Likewise governors should have been making use of the national guard earlier on to help with containment.
When the Ivy League suspended its basketball tournament and Harvard sent all of its students home, we should have recognized what was coming.
What is amazing is even as late of Mar 7 2020, no one was talking about how spring break would be a huge spreader to Covid-19.
The last problem is that virtually all politicians have taken half steps every step of the way instead of responding quickly and decisively. What is amazing is how every day a politicians or business owner decides to destroy their career by saying or posting a stupid, selfish comment.
You probably don’t live in the south. Here, the major do listen to and trust the President, and consequently think that the effects of the coronavirus will be minor and brief.
Nonsense. I live in the south and almost nobody that I know thinks that it will be minor and brief….and most of these people are Trump supporters.
“even his supporters view him as an instrument to keep Democrats out of the White House, not a trustworthy leader”
If he is not a trustworthy leader, how will he keep Democrats outside the White House after this year (as far as I know, there was a solution to keep Democrats outside the White House for the remainder of the year if Trump had been impeached — it was called Mike Pence, a conservative)? How will he persuade voters? By deceiving them? Your statement probably sounds a lot more cyncical than you planned it to be.
Incumbents of every party in major western countries will be voted out for their mishandling of the crisis. Whether that will be right or left will basically depend on the timing of who was in power. Looking back, we will find that neither incumbents or opposition, left or right, private or public, on the whole took much a different stance on any of the issues before or during the crisis.
but the counter-argument is that no one listens to what he says anyway,
His supporters listen to him.
If he had told crowds at his rallies “hey, we probably won’t be able to meet like this soon” or “guys, as a personal favor, can you make sure you have some things prepared at home in case you are stuck there for a few days” would they have all tuned him out?
Great post, it is nice to see some level-headed commentary in a time like this. Like you said, it is pretty natural to try and find someone to blame and it only makes us angrier and more confused when we can’t do that.
Thank you Mr Kling, I have found your treatment of this pandemic and related economic crisis to be thorough, thoughtful, and well calibrated. I can’t argue with any of your anger-related comments.
I agree wholeheartedly with your proposal for a valid experiment to better estimate the various coefficients we need to support rational policies. I am struck by the difference between the various sophisticated double blind tests we require for a new medicine and the ad hoc measures we are using to track the pandemic. We know the government has competent statisticians but where are they?
The sophisticated double-blind tests “we” (meaning the FDA) require for new medicines take months and millions to billions of dollars. That is clearly not agile enough for a rapidly unfolding pandemic. And spending more money won’t make them go any faster.
Also, Mr Kling leaves out the CDC, which IMHO, deserves at least as much blame as the FDA. They tried to create a more sophisticated test to provide better data, which would be fine under other circumstances (e.g., AIDS or the 2009 SARS pandemic, much slower moving esp in US), and flubbed the main goal–get a handle on true case rate a spread fast.
Anger disrupts focused mental effort and delays effective addressing of the immediate challenges Covid-19 presents. In Tom Hanks’ portrayal of the mission commander in “Apollo 13” Jim Lovell asks — as his crew lists things wrong with the spacecraft — “What have we got?” He asked that question — achieved that focus — when his life was as much at risk as that of the others.
All of us have ample information on practical steps to take to avoid contracting the virus. We have ample information on which to make reasonable, risk-based decisions on the extent to which we can engage individually and directly in assisting others around us.
At this juncture, President Trump’s actions — past, present, or future — and those of governors and legislators are not going to determine whether or not most of us avoid Covid-19 — or recover from it — and continue on our path in life. As I see it, anger toward them is a waste of psychic energy and time better put to other use.
Well, if you’re going to criticize people for focus, get your movie facts right. It wasn’t Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell who asked that question, but Ed Harris as Gene Kranz. Specifically, “Let’s look at this thing from a… um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?”
He also said, “Let’s work the problem, people. Don’t make things worse by guessing.”
+1
We need to think about quick and dirty Fermi Estimates. Really rough 7 day incubation, a 7 day mild symptomatic but contagious period, and a 7 day doubling time is “good enough”. Today’s symptom onset is the first signal from 7 days ago. The first signal from any intervention implemented today will not be seen for seven days and will be accompanied by one doubling.
Every potential intervention has to last at least two weeks for the first noisy efficacy signal at which time we will have to cope with two doublings.
We really have to think about things that scale like crazy to cope. If you train a call centre the training program itself also has to double every week. Beware of Brooks Law, throwing resources at a late project just makes it later.
The good news is that the doublings truly are 7 days at a time. At some point an intervention will catch and cause an inflection that starts to look like a bell curve.
“Where are they?”
Set aside some anger for Libertarians who became statist-martinets overnight… without clarifying who exactly is dying from COVID-19:
The elderly with multiple comorbidities and elderly smokers. At the risk of sounding callous, people with one leg in the grave already.
It is too late to point out this reality anymore. The statist-martinets cannot take off their jodhpurs and epaulettes and say, “We’re sorry.”
It is like the mid-stages of an expensive unnecessary war. The costs are too horrific to admit error.
Preach man.
“which side would you prefer to err”
The side that follows the Constitution and protects liberty. PA just suspended the second amendment. The Honolulu mayor just authorized a couple hours ago the police to arrest anyone who attempts to remove him from office indefinitely until a future time he is OK with it.
But yeah let’s error on suspension of the rule of law, great idea Arnold. I don’t want to hear any complaints when the November elections are suspended for safety reasons.
One family had four deaths. https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/new-jersey-family-shattered-by-coronavirus-desperate-for-answers/
I guess that had it coming and deserved it so that other people can go to bruch.
Liberty is about personal responsibility for one’s own choices. That family was free to remain home on their own accord. They chose not to, that’s on them. Quit denying their agency and dignity.
Gentlemen, the historical precedent is The Battle of the Atlantic where the Nazi U-Boat fleet doubles in size every 7 days and every new tactic introduced to protect your supply chain takes 28 days to gauge its effectiveness.
The obnoxious signals of politicians is of no significance at the moment unless the signal is aligned with today’s new 28 day battle.
Good points.
You say “The left, rather than respecting such a judgment, would more likely have denounced early measures to stop the virus as a fascist takeover.” The US travel restrictions against China were put in place on February and many were critical of those as useless.
We all have to start to think like epidemiologists. The case against targeted flight restrictions is that it forces desperate passengers through alternate multi-hop paths and you lose the origin information of incoming passengers who are forced to lie about their travel.
When your Test, Track, and Trace system is still working under capacity then it is easier to bring your population home as carefully as possible. Lesson 1 from COVID-19 is to pay attention to the scale and scope of your citizens out of country. Prime Minister Trudeau this morning said there are up to 3 million Canadians out of country at any one time. That means 30 million for the U.S. which is hard to fathom.
Shortly the question of interstate travel will be on the table. That epidemiologist’s hat should start to feel very uncomfortable.
“I don’t think that anger at governors for closing down businesses and ordinary activities is well justified. “‘
I disagree, obviously.
“The health care workers on the front lines are adamant that they cannot cope with an ever-increasing case load.”
Then fix *that* problem, or at least *try* to fix it. At least discuss the tradeoff. They did none of that. They just shut down everything and destroyed livelihoods on the off chance that this shut down would reduce an overload. Without proof. It’s appalling.
The trade off seems to be a situation like Italy where the medical supply gets completely overwhelmed and lots of people die unnecessarily.
And while that problem is being worked, it’s evident that it can’t be fixed as quickly as it can be avoided by not overwhelming the system.
I’m not a doctor, but I know several, and they seem clear that there is a danger of a complete and dangerous escalation if we get to that point. Additionally, I heard from a friend who works in a hospital in Belgium today (in billing) that plans were being made to push her and others into backup care-giving roles. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, but the fact that this is being contemplated is pretty damn frightening.
So let me get this straight. When I say “We’re killing the economy” you say “Yeah, but we don’t want to be like Belgium where billing clerks have to work checking in patients.”
Seriously?
OK, then bluntly: that’s moronic. I’d much rather put more amateurs to work in patient care and keep the economy going. And I’m still appalled at the people who think that arguments like yours are reasons why we should destroy businesses, families, and educations.
No. If you want to reply in good faith, feel free to try again.
If you want more people to die, you put more amateurs to work.
If you overload the system, the physicians and nurses will eventually walk away instead of dealing with the stupid of people who caught Covid-19 by other means.
If you overload the system in Covid-19 patients and the worried well, then very other type of emergency care such as heart attacks, car wrecks before less effective.
“the physicians and nurses will eventually walk away”
Don’t worry, they will get conscripted and enslaved. Already hearing in local chatter talks to revoke the license for any licensed medical professional in the state who refused to play ball. If enough do, enslavement not far behind with people such as you or Arnold cheerleading it.
If you do not provide a cite, you claim is invalid.
Slavery will be the people who are forced to come to work by idiot bosses such as occurred Microstrategy, Gamestop, and Charter Communications.
Don’t worry, they will get conscripted and enslaved. Already hearing in local chatter talks to revoke the license for any licensed medical professional in the state who refused to play ball.
Conscripted Enslaved.
My understanding is that in many places, a medical professional’s license includes some level of conscription in that they can be explicitly required to render public service in times of emergency.
This is a contingency you sign up for when you become a doctor, no different that being recalled to active duty is a contingency you sign up for when you join the military.
MikeDC
Do you have a cite for that are you just guessing? The hospitals are privating run and the state cannot force them to be open or their employees to show up. Image what happens if some governor or mayor decides to be stupid and the entire ER walks out in protest.
A simple check is to note that the AMA ethical guidelines require it
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/physicians-responsibilities-disaster-response-preparedness
and most states consider ethical breaches of governing bodies like this to be cause for revoking a license. Also several doctors and nurses have told me this.
MikeDC,
Thanks for the cite. However, it reads that the physician has to protect themselves during a disaster. If hospitals are overwhelmed and lacking in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), then under their ethnics, they could refuse to work. If the government takes actions that puts healthcare workers in danger, they would be considred ethical to refuse to work.
I think anger at western countries including our government is justified. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, HK all managed to contain Covid-19. Despite China’s despicable cover-up, by the second week of January (11 weeks ago) the whole world knew about the virus which should have provided ample time to prepare the country and take necessary measures to ensure that it doesn’t spiral out of control and result in a total economic shutdown.
Saying that other world leaders made a mess of this doesn’t exonerate Trump. Him and his administration were asleep at the switch. People will die, and millions will lose their jobs. This is inexcusable.
For the commentators who are belittling the effect of the virus, I’d invite you to look at the CDC data. ~17% of 20-40 year olds in the US who contract the virus require hospitalization, and ~3% end up in ICU with the potential for permanent lung damage. Even if they are not dying the virus does impact “healthy” people. The only way to contain it now is to impose social distancing which will destroy the economy. Had a large number of tests been done from the start and exhaustive contract tracing administered we could have avoided being in this terrible situation.
“the CDC data. ~17% of 20-40 year olds in the US who contract the virus require hospitalization”: what an absurd claim. The CDC has not the first idea how many 20-40 years olds have contracted the virus. (Neither has anyone else, due partly to the CDC’s extraordinary incompetence.)
China doesn’t care about human life, and cares a lot about economic growth. Yet they did the lockdown.
A have a friend who is a doctor in Milan and what she posts sounds like the apocalypse. I get the impression NYC either has or easily could have become like that.
Another friend who is a priest has noted an incredible number of priest in Milan that have died.
So the impression I get from this is that lockdowns are inevitable and probably a good thing. Anyplace where this got out of control people backpedal and lockdown.
South Korea, Japan, etc still shutdown schools and had other restrictions. It’s not like they did nothing. They have huge advantages in terms of a culture of cleanliness, lack of touch, and that everyone has masks all the time already. They also did some smart things.
I don’t think Kling exonerated Trump. He merely stated that the conduct of his opponents and other western leaders wasn’t any different or better. He speculates that the zeitgeist wouldn’t have allowed it to be any other way in February, when I distinctly remember article after article by the prestige press belittling the problem and call the China travel ban racist.
“China doesn’t care about human life, and cares a lot about economic growth. Yet they did the lockdown.” I’ve always found that the best evidence for this being a lethal disease. Strictly though, it’s only evidence that the CCP thought it might be lethal enough to foment revolution if they didn’t do something draconian.
I’m a bit surprised that libertarians aren’t chiming in with an approach based on informing everyone of the dangers and letting them make their own decisions. Yes, it may be true that many more will get sick and suffer consequences. But isn’t that, at least partly, what libertarianism is about? Let individuals make their own decisions and suffer the consequences? Those who are concerned about getting infected can self-quarantine and realize the benefits?
I’m also surprised that more libertarians aren’t thinking about potential long-term effects on policy. In the past, crises have generally led to more government power and control. What are the potential expansions of government that this could set precedent for? For example, could the country be subject to a general curfew every year as flu season rolls around? Will N95 face masks become compulsory, creating the western equivalent of the burka? Could government funds be diverted to failing businesses on a routine basis in response to various “crises”? Will Modern Monetary Theorists and Universal Basic Income crowds use the stimulus package to neener-neener the free marketeers and provide precedent their policies?
At a minimum, can some bright economist do a cost-benefit analysis on the current approach? Do the current policies make sense from a purely economic standpoint?
Jeff Miron and Erin Partin from Cato on what has been and should be done: https://www.cato.org/blog/government-policy-covid-19-pandemic
Stirling, see this post: http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/virus-crisis-economic-faq/
Because the election of Trump winnowed out a big chunk of self described libertarians and this fakedemic is winnowing out the rest.
What these events are showing us is what most of us have known for years and why libertarians are derided generally, because most of they are just embarrassed Republicans/Democrats.
Plenty of actually libertarians are thinking about exactly what you said. Sadly what we have learned is the GMU crowd aren’t that to the point of “state capacity ‘libertarians'”. They were simply free marketeers. Mr. Kling was the last of the group I still held out hope for, he’s quickly making me lose that faith. He still has great ideas and I respect him but not on liberty.
Thanks for the pointers, these are illuminating. A 24% reduction in the economy in the second quarter sounds quite serious. It’s roughly $2 trillion. Has anyone calculated the range of costs of various scenarios (based on the different infection rates and mortality rates reported so far)?
I still think without a serious cost-benefit analysis we can’t know whether the cure is worse than the disease. If one were to be done, we might give more consideration to alternatives that could cause less damage to the economy without significantly increasing the damage caused by the virus. We also are not allowing better solutions to spontaneously emerge.
I also miss the old days when libertarian intellectuals would give a full-throated opinion based on their basic principals. At a minimum, this could shake people up and we might come up with some smarter solutions.
“Let individuals make their own decisions and suffer the consequences” Yes, that is seemingly the perpetual blindspot of libertarianism that can’t/won’t admit how much individual actions affect others, including those choosing to self-quarantine. My “own decisions” affect people’s abilities to make their own decisions far more than libertarians usually own up to.
Taiwan and other reasonably free-market East Asian countries did much better than China. So the claim that we are better served by an authoritarian Govt is false (in nerd terms, omitted variable bias). See for instance,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2020-03-20/how-civic-technology-can-help-stop-pandemic
Sorry–my comment reads like a criticism of Dr Kling, but it’s not. It is a criticism of people who admire China’s dictatorship, which Dr Kling discusses in #2.
Let’s say you aren’t a first world East Asian society with existing cultural norms of cleanliness, social distancing, an ample supply of masks used regularly in normal times, and huge wells of knowledge both institutionally and at the individual level from past similar outbreaks, and a bunch of tests sitting around.
What would you recommend as a course of action?
Because it seems like our options are get draconian or end up like Milan (which just means getting even more draconian in the long run when the bodies pile up).
BTW, those countries also closed schools and had force quarantines and lots of non-libertarian things.
Four C’s: Coughs, Contacts, Communication, and Calm
I think this will work. It works in a household, it works in an extended family, it works in a neighborhood, it works in a workplace. It works best with a functioning health system but it will work without it.
my last post got lost/censored? sorry if this is a double post.
I wanted to briefly say that China is guilty more much more than simply lack of transparency. They have blame in causing this outbreak by reopening wildlife wet markets after SARS when it was clear that those posed global health risks. China has apparently corrupted the WHO. And China is deliberately restricting medical supply exports to hurt people around the world.
And Kling’s post “Hating On China”. Kling was right to criticize Rubio, Rubio was wrong, but in many ways free trade doctrine has given China leverage over the US in this situation that China is exploiting, and Kling was wrong to downplay the threat that China has posed. In hindsight, the Trump Administration was the wiser.
After reading your comment about Trump reacting slowly, I took a look at your posts tagged virus and the first was on March 8. I was expecting to find some in January when Trump first assembled his task first and when the first travel ban with China was put in effect. Trump also realized very quickly that the CDC and FDA were impediments to testing on a March 6th and quickly bypassed them.
In fact, Trump was way ahead of you and most of the political class.
Richard, I fully agree with you.
Indirect transfer of SARS-CoV-2 from surfaces is a reality that can’t be ignored. Face masks help with aerosol intake directly into our lungs but the surfaces of all items, including your hair and clothes along with your shoes, can result in contaminating your hands which then touch your nose and you are off to the races with an infection. Only a very small fraction of someone’s sneeze will be inhaled by someone else, most of the infective particles are on surfaces hanging around for hours to many days waiting for your nose.
Sterilization of your outer surfaces with the heat at > 140ºF or even better 170ºF for 30 minutes will inactivate this bug.
Great post, but if we are going to err on the side of shutting down most of the economy, don’t the people most affected by such a draconian measure deserve just compensation in return? See: https://priorprobability.com/2020/03/25/a-takings-model-of-the-economic-shutdown/
The lack of just compensation is what makes me angry!