We tend to think of a vaccine in binary terms: it is either totally effective or totally ineffective. But who knows, especially with this weird virus? Maybe a given protocol with a vaccine will only work on 80 percent of people. What would that mean?

The good news is that it would still be great for society. Suppose we have 1 million cases, and every ten days they are doubling. But tomorrow everyone gets a vaccine that is 80 percent effective, so now every tend days the number of cases only increases by 0.4. So in 10 days we have 400k cases, then 160k, then 64k, then 25.6k, then 10.2k, then 4k, then 1.6k. . .in less than six months you have it essentially eradicated.

The bad news is that people would be slow to take up the vaccine, and meanwhile some of those vaccinated will get the disease, which will not be good PR for the vaccine campaign.

Other bad news is that when you are doing testing it can be very hard to distinguish 80 percent efficacy from placebo efficacy (i.e., zero efficacy). That is, I can imagine a testing protocol in which you give somebody a placebo and the vast majority of those people don’t get the virus.

1. The 7-day average daily death rate was about 430 a couple of weeks ago, but it is up to about 830 now.

2. Holman Jenkins in the WSJ writes,

The Denver Post interviewed a couple in their 70s who were risking the virus to resume weekend junkets to Las Vegas. Their only concession to Covid-19 was a plan to quarantine for 10 days before seeing their grandkids again.

Wow. Not what I would do at all. Imagine if we lived in a country where either I could impose my lifestyle on them. Or they could impose their lifestyle on me. Unfortunately, we live in a country where so-called “public health experts” are being granted such power.

3. I think that as an individual I could calibrate virus risk more reasonably if I had two pieces of information. The goal would be to enable me to have a better sense of my risk of getting a severe case, which we might define as causing me problems for more than 30 days; alternatively, we could define a severe case as requiring more than 48 hours of hospitalization.

One of the numbers that I want is what I call a “personal safety factor.” The scale would go from zero to one hundred. It would be based on a statistical model that combines age with polygenic analysis. My thinking is that the polygenic statistical analysis would pick up the likelihood of known risk factors (such as a tendency toward obesity) as well as other factors that are not currently known. In order to know my personal safety factor, I would have to have a DNA test. A personal safety factor of 90 means that I am in the top 10 percent, so that I am relatively unlikely to get a severe case. A personal safety factor of 10 means that I am in the bottom 10 percent, which means I really want to try to avoid getting the virus. If it turns out that I have a low personal safety factor, then I want to be in the front of the line to get a vaccine. Otherwise, I probably would be happy to wait.

The other number that I want is a “community safety factor.” This would estimate the probability that if I am in the same room with 50 people at least one of them will have the virus. If that probability is more than 10 percent and my personal safety factor is less than 90, then I am not ready to try a live dance session. Somebody else might be more risk tolerant.

4. Victor Chernozhukov and others write,

Our counterfactual experiments suggest that nationally mandating face masks for employees on April 1st could have reduced the growth rate of cases and deaths by more than 10 percentage points in late April, and could have led to as much as 17 to 55 percent less deaths nationally by the end of May, which roughly translates into 17 to 55 thousand saved lives. Our estimates imply that removing non-essential business closures (while maintaining school closures, restrictions on movie theaters and restaurants) could have led to -20 to 60 percent more cases and deaths by the end of May. We also find that, without stay-at-home orders, cases would have been larger by 25 to 170 percent

I would note that the economic cost of people wearing masks is considerably less than the cost of staying at home.

Joao Granja and others write,

we do not find evidence that funds flowed to areas more adversely affected by the economic effects of the pandemic, as measured by declines in hours worked or business shutdowns. If anything, funds flowed to areas less hard hit. . . We do not find evidence that the PPP had a substantial effect on local economic outcomes—including declines in hours worked, business shutdowns, initial unemployment insurance claims, and small business revenues—during the first round of the program. Firms appear to use first round funds to build up savings and meet loan and other commitments, which points to possible medium-run impacts.

Bruce Wydick writes,

the distinction between purchases of what I’ll call “Snap-Back” goods and services and those that are “Gone Forever.” In the Snap-Back category are things that we couldn’t buy during the heaviest COVID lock-down period, but these purchases were simply delayed. There is good reason to think that as the economy begins to open up, purchases of these items might even be higher than normal due to pent-up demand. . .

“Gone Forever” goods and services, in contrast, are just like the term suggests: gone forever. Like me, you may have foregone several haircuts during shelter-in-place because you didn’t want to get (or give) coronavirus to your barber. But when it becomes safe to go back to the barber chair, you’ll still only get one haircut.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen, who seems unsure whether to agree with Wydick that higher education is a Snap-Back good.

I think that higher education is in a third category, which might be termed Covinnovation Goods. That is because the virus forces suppliers to innovate to deliver the goods, and some of the innovations will stick. When fear of the virus subsides, consumers will choose the best blend of pre-virus and virus-adapted practices.

I will say how higher education fits in the Covinnovation categorey. But first, let me use the example of Israeli dancing. Continue reading →

A commenter asks where I think we will be one month from now. I think we will be in the dark, or at least I will be.

Recall that I prefer to track death rates. What I finally settled on as an indicator was the 7-day average death rate, using this data. This average held at around 1500 through the dark days of April and the first third of May, and then it finally began to trend lower after that, down to less than 600 in the third week in June. Then on one day, June 25, there were 2500 deaths, sending the seven-day average to over 800.

It is not that 2500 people died of the virus on the 25th. But that was the day that New Jersey included over 2000 previously unreported deaths from April and May. I am afraid that we have not seen the last of this “death harvesting.” I came across an article the other day, which I forgot to bookmark, that said that analysts are suspicious about the high rate of deaths reportedly caused by Alzheimer’s this year. So perhaps 10,000 more deaths will be re-stated as Covid deaths.

The data I wish I had is data on serious cases. I would define a serious case as a case that deprives the victim of normal activities for more than 30 days. Death obviously counts. Quibble with my definition all you want, but my point is that in order to calibrate my fear of the virus, I would like to know the prevalence of serious cases.

Do you work with symbols, things, or people? The answer determines how you were affected by the virus crisis.

If your value comes from working with symbols (words, computer code), then you are more likely now to work from home. Otherwise, your work was not heavily disrupted.

If your value comes from working with things, then if those things were “essential” you kept working. In fact, work to deliver things actually increased. If you made things that were not so essential, you may have experienced a short-term layoff.

If your value comes from working with people, then you have had to shut down or operate in a greatly altered environment. Think of a restaurant server, a hair stylist, a teacher, or the proprietor of a small shop.

The virus crisis is going to exacerbate some of the class differences that Joel Kotkin talks about. The class least adversely affected includes those who were already separating themselves as an upper crust. The class most adversely affected includes those who already were suffering declines in status and relative economic strength.