Cyril Morong, an Associate Professor of Economics at Northeast Lakeview College in Universal City, Texas, sent me a letter that he had sent to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal decided not to publish it and I got Cyril’s permission to run it here.
His letter was in response to an interview that Tunku Varadarajan did with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Professor (not Mr.) Martin Kulldorf in the Journal. It’s titled “Epidemiologists Stray from the Herd,” WSJ, October 23, 2020. (October 24-25 in the print edition.)
The paragraph he singled out was this:
Mr. Kulldorff says the Covid-19 restrictions violate two cardinal principles of public health. First, “you can’t just look at Covid, you have to look holistically at health and consider the collateral damage.” Among the damage: a worsening incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer and an alarming decline in immunization. “People aren’t going to the doctor,” he says. Dr. Bhattacharya also points to the suspension of tuberculosis programs in India and of malaria-eradication programs elsewhere.
Mr. Kulldorff’s second principle: “You can’t just look short-term.” Dr. Bhattacharya says we will “be counting the health harms from these lockdowns for a very long time.” He says anti-Covid efforts are sowing the seeds of other epidemics: “Pertussis—whooping cough—will come back. Polio will come back because of the cessation of vaccination campaigns. All these diseases that we’ve made substantial progress in will start to come back.”
Cyril wrote:
Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff seems to channel Henry Hazlitt, the author of the book Economics in One Lesson, in stating two cardinal principles of public health (“Epidemiologists Stray From the Covid Herd,” Opinion, Oct. 24.) Hazlitt said “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” One of Kulldorff’s principles is “you can’t just look at Covid, you have to look holistically at health and consider the collateral damage.” The other is “You can’t just look short-term.” Both Hazlitt and Kulldorff say you can’t focus on how policy affects just one group or disease and that the long run matters, not just the short run. Maybe more of our leaders, including both politicians and scientists, should read Hazlitt.
And, I would add, should read the author that, to some extent, Henry Hazlitt channelled, Frederic Bastiat, especially this.
READER COMMENTS
David Seltzer
Nov 3 2020 at 6:04pm
I’ve read Hazlitt and Bastait several times. Each time, I grasp another nuance of “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen.” I recommended Economics In One Lesson, as per DH’s suggestion, to my then 17 year old nephew. He is now in college and intends to major in Economics.
David Henderson
Nov 4 2020 at 9:44am
David, This is the best news I’ve received today. Tell him to feel free to contact me.
David Seltzer
Nov 4 2020 at 10:36am
Will do. BTW, I gave him a copy of the Encyclopedia. I have 2 copies.
Thomas Hutcheson
Nov 4 2020 at 7:41am
The principle is pretty obvious. The optimal policy has to take account of all the variables in the objective function with costs and benefits discounted to the present. [Why should this basic principle of welfare economics attributed to Hazlitt?]
Given this correct principle, what is Professor Kulldorf’s policy recommendation? Or yours?
If I were to make an only slightly less high-level criticism of policy on conceptual grounds, it would be that policies and even more the messaging of the policies did not take enough account of the external benefits (and possibly too much account of the internal benefits) of the actions being recommended or required.
To apply to myself the criticism I make of Professor Kulldorf (the failure to present an alternative to the policy he disagrees with) I will point to mask wearing and testing.
Only little by little, and never completely, did the message become that one ought to wear a mask mainly for the benefit of other people. One is being asked to (or required to) perform an other-regarding act, to incur the costs and inconvenience of wearing a mask mainly for the benefit of the people the wearer might otherwise infect and those the non-infected others do not infect and to set a good example for others to perform the same other-regarding act.
Testing never reached the level, never aimed at the level, of testing enough asymptomatic people (allowing those who test positive to self-isolate until they get a negative test) to keep case levels low enough that closing of schools and businesses would not even appear to be “necessary.”
Jon Murphy
Nov 5 2020 at 10:03am
The principle is obvious to many economists, but not outside the profession. Indeed, even within the profession it is not observed. Let us not forget that Coase’s big critique of both Pigou (Problem of Social Cost) and Samuelson (Marginal Cost Controversy) was that their methods of achieving “optimal policy” ignored total effects and focused too much on marginal. John Nye has an excellent piece in Regulation (The Problem of Pigou, 2008) where he shows the modern conversations of carbon taxes (and other externality taxes) explicitly refuse to consider total effects. James McClure and Tyler Watts have a great paper in The American Economist (The Greatest Externality Story (n)ever Told, 2016) where they discuss how current pedagogy ignore most of the total effects of externalities and their “optimal policies” in mainstream textbooks.
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