I’m now fully vaccinated. How should I change my behavior? How should anyone?
One popular answer is: Not at all. Why not? The top reason I’ve heard is: Because even those of us who have been vaccinated can’t be absolutely sure we won’t be infected – or spread infection to others. Some use the same reasoning to argue that people who have recovered from COVID shouldn’t change their behavior either. As immunologist Alexander Sette puts it:
Not taking any precautions—including wearing a face mask, practicing social distancing, or getting vaccinated—after an initial coronavirus infection is comparable to “driving a car where you’re 90% sure the car has brakes.”
However, both common sense and economic reasoning say virtually the opposite. If a risk falls by 90% – and there are large gains to accepting the risk – you should not only accept more of the risk; you should probably accept much more risk.
This is obviously what self-interest recommends. And when your risk-taking benefits others, this is what humanitarianism recommends as well. Remember: Your social distancing doesn’t just harm your quality of life. Your social distancing also harms the quality of life of everyone who loses the pleasure of your company and the profit of your patronage. (Caveat: Since vaccines take two weeks or so to kick in, neither self-interest nor humanitarianism recommend drastically changing your behavior the instant you get vaccinated).
What about the “90% sure the car has brakes” analogy? It posits an lopsided scenario where you have a 10% chance of killing or seriously injuring others for a trivial total benefit. You shouldn’t die with 100% probability to see a movie; neither should you die with a 10% probability to see a movie. Anyone who has ever driven to a movie, however, has accepted a .00001% chance of dying en route. And accepting such a risk to see a movie is both prudent and considerate.
Or to tweak the hypothetical, it would be perfectly reasonable to drive regularly even though there is 10% chance that your brakes will go out sometime in the next twenty years of driving. Modest risk, massive gain.
The better argument against changing your behavior – or at least not changing it much – is that we still don’t know if vaccinated people are contagious. The absurd yet popular version of this argument is that we can’t be 100% sure that vaccinated people are 100% non-contagious. Caricature? Hardly. Here’s the Mayo clinic on March 5, 2021:
Keep in mind that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is 95% effective in preventing the COVID-19 virus with symptoms. The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is 94% effective in preventing the COVID-19 virus with symptoms. The Janssen/Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is 66% effective at preventing the COVID-19 virus with symptoms. While your risk of getting the COVID-19 virus after being vaccinated is low, it is possible.
It’s also not clear if the COVID-19 vaccines reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As a result, it’s not known if a person who is vaccinated could be a carrier of the COVID-19 virus and spread it to others, even if he or she doesn’t become sick. More research is needed to determine if you are still contagious after being vaccinated.
Because of these factors, even once you’re vaccinated you could still pose a health risk to unvaccinated family and friends by visiting with them in person.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to repair this argument. Namely: Hold reasonable beliefs about how contagious you are – and act on those beliefs. How does one acquire these “reasonable beliefs”? Textbook Bayesian inference.
Step 1: Get a reasonable base rate. How much does the typical vaccine reduce contagion?
Step 2: Adjust that base rate in response to evolving evidence.
Step 1 is pretty simple. Vaccines have an excellent historical track record for not only protecting the vaccinated, but virtually eradicating a long list of contagious diseases. As Paul Sax puts it:
So far, the single question that has drawn the most attention is this one:
Do the vaccines prevent transmission of the virus to others?
In my response, I try to highlight the fact that while we don’t have ironclad proof, it is highly likely that they will lower the risk. I urge you to read the full question where I outline the evidence so far.
In my response, however, I wrote this:
If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!
Some colleagues now have pointed out a few examples — diphtheria, meningitis B, and pertussis. My apologies for not mentioning these! We will update the site, and thanks for pointing this out.
Nonetheless, the general (if not ironclad) rule that vaccines typically reduce the risk of transmission to others remains true.
Bottom line: In the absence of any further evidence, we should have high confidence that COVID vaccines, like the large majority of vaccines, greatly reduce contagion.
Step 2 is harder. There is favorable preliminary evidence (scroll to “Do the vaccines prevent transmission of the virus to others”) but as a rule I’m not a fan of “preliminary evidence.”
The right reaction to this situation, though, is not to be agnostic, but to rely heavily on Step 1. The burden of proof is on those who doubt the contagion benefits of vaccines – and as far as I can tell, there is no good reason for doubt. Yes, we should further update our beliefs as new evidence comes in. But for the time being, we should act on the belief that vaccines sharply reduce risk to others as well as to ourselves. This is what I am doing myself – and what I advise you to do as well.
Note: Relying on base rates when specific evidence is scarce is distinct from the libertarian presumption against coercion. The libertarian presumption says governments shouldn’t force you to take extra care unless doing so yields large social gains with high certainty. What I’m saying, in contrast, is that we should already be highly certain that forcing vaccinated people to take extra care will yield large social losses.
I suspect that many people are so dehumanized by the COVID experience that they don’t consider a few more months of hyper-caution to be a large social loss. Yet if you do the math, you’ll see that the combined harm of private and government COVID prevention destroys millions of life-years per month in the United States alone. The mass loneliness, isolation, and fear we’ve endured stagger the imagination. Every vaccinated individual who returns to normalcy is doing themselves and the people around them a big favor.
Remember: The sociable vaccinated also help the unvaccinated escape loneliness, isolation, and fear. Tonight is a great time for the vaccinated to invite their unvaccinated friends over for dinner and boardgames.
The main roadblock is that other people can’t easily tell if you’ve been vaccinated. Your close friends will know, but what about everyone else? Hence, when you return to normalcy, you might just frighten others instead of putting them at ease. In a sensible world, we’d have brightly-colored vaccination bracelets to spread goodwill.
Since that isn’t going to happen, however, I’ve decided to fill the void. A couple weeks ago, I launched an illustration contest for COVID vaccination wear. I told entrants to combine the words, “Fear me not! I got my COVID vaccine” with artwork expressing friendship and joy. There were almost a thousand entries, and I selected three winners.
Long story short: Starting today, you can order t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, and more from my new Zazzle store, FearMeNot, to let the world know you’ve been vaccinated and are ready to return to normalcy. I told the artists to go for pure joy, and they delivered. Check out the winners:
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So let the rehumanization of humanity begin, one vaccination shirt at a time. If you order now, you get 15% off with the coupon code MONDAYTREATZ. And check out FearMeNot store for other way to share your return to normalcy with the world.
P.S. No, I am not worried that more than a tiny fraction of unvaccinated people will falsely wear my shirt. That is paranoia talking.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Hutcheson
Mar 8 2021 at 6:09am
I think this is correct except for mask wearing. The costs are trivial and why would anyone want to run the risk of being mistaken for a jerk who just does not care about infecting others
zeke5123
Mar 29 2021 at 11:24am
Because the costs are not trivial. A few:
Limits non-verbal communication
Harder to hear other people (especially problematic for those like me that don’t have the best hearing)
Generally engenders a fear response
Forcing kids to wear masks could have really long-term consequences
They are just generally uncomfortable
Maybe people who try to coerce others into engaging in security theatre while ignoring costs are the real jerks.
Frank
Mar 30 2021 at 8:01pm
“-Limits non-verbal communication
-Harder to hear other people”
But these are benefits of mask wearing.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 10:45pm
There is a sort of anti-social appeal… I think there was even some study out of somewhere in Asia talking about how many people use the masks (fashionable over there and used for pollution) as a crutch for anxiety. But on a more serious note, I think that’s a bad thing.
For people who are hard of hearing, masks are absolutely horrible. I’m not hard of hearing, but I find myself constantly asking people to repeat things, or leaning around the stupid plexiglass barriers just to communicate. I don’t think those are even the worst of the downsides, but the are some of the more obvious ones.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 29 2021 at 12:52pm
Because the costs are not at all trivial. Quite the opposite.
Also because the benefit is nonexistent, as has been shown by actual studies (not the models pretending to be studies that pro-maskers use to justify their position) for decades, and as has been shown through empirical data. Masks do nothing to protect you or to protect anyone else, and they come at a great cost, both in mental health and in the sheer loss of individual liberty.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 29 2021 at 12:58pm
Here is something to consider, even if only as a hypothetical. We can actually see in the numbers that infection has risen in places with mask mandates and more regular mask usage. This does not immediately mean that correlation equals causation, of course, but some have suggested that masks actually increase the risk of infection, as they quickly become saturated, making them ineffective, or worse, by aerosolizing the virus, causing it to spread even more quickly than it otherwise would.
So – what if we use your exact same logic the other way around? The “inconvenience” of not wearing a mask is trivial (obviously)… and there is a percentage likelihood that by not wearing a mask, you might reduce the risk of spreading not just this, but any virus. We have just as much data to support the notion that wearing masks causes harm as we have to support the notion that it is somehow protective. So why not act on the former premise, using as our baseline the underlying principle that we should engage in as little disruption (and as little infringement on liberty) as possible?
How many doctors do you know of who would look at a medicine and say “well, the downside is minimal, so heck, let’s go ahead and take this and see what happens?” Very few. Now, from there to “well, the risk is minimal, so even though we have little to say that it will do good and just as much to say it will do harm, let’s go ahead and require, by threat of violence, that every human being on the planet undergo this treatment.” Would you trust that doctor?
John K
Mar 29 2021 at 5:04pm
Do you have citations for the masks not being effective? If so, please share.
This one from Germany leveraged some natural experiements in which different regions implemented mask mandates at different times. Per the abstract, “we conclude that 20 d after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45%.“
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:10pm
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240287
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19-face-masks-community-first-update.pdf
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/
https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/a-1174-6591
This is a very good thread, displaying actual real-world data on masked communities vs. unmasked communities: https://twitter.com/yinonw/status/1321177359601393664
[Add to that what’s been happening in the US, lately. Current increase in cases (and all of these increases correspond to seasonality, as with every virus) happening in states with mandated mask requirements, with much less growth in those states that have fully opened up and eliminated their mask mandates]
The reality of universal masking is that it absolutely relies on both proper usage of effective masks (which is all but impossible even in the hospital setting), and it is 100% pointless if asymptomatic spread is not a major factor in virus transmission (and we now know that it is not). At this point, masks serve only to aid in social control and increase fear. This in addition to the countless other harmful effects.
Jon Murphy
Mar 30 2021 at 4:23pm
Here’s the WHO at the beginning of the pandemic (see page 4 and 14):
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 5:20pm
Dang it. I just tried 2 separate comments with several dozen links showing exactly what you’re asking for. Both were deleted.
Try going over to AIER dot ORG and searching “masks.”
Also, go to duck duck go and search “swiss doctor are masks effective?”
Interestingly, if you go to google dot com, the website will not come up. Rather, you’ll get a bunch of “approved articles” supporting masks. If you go to duck duck go, it comes up immediately, and it provides several links to actual studies.
This should be terrifying, as it is actual suppression of important information in favor of a government narrative (i.e. propaganda). But there you have it. If you do the research, you will see that the evidence is clear.
Jon Murphy
Mar 30 2021 at 5:22pm
They weren’t deleted. Multiple links get caught in the spam filter. They need to be released.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 7:26pm
Hopefully they can be released. 🙂 Are these threads moderated, or will it just sit there unless I email the webmaster and ask to have the comments released?
[Note from webmaster: I recommend that you email the EconLog Moderator. I can see that you still have some comments in our EconLog pending/spam areas. Your waylaid comments all contain long lists of links. When you submit comments that entirely consist of dozens of links, much less repeated comments with the same or similar links, your comments get treated like spam by our spam filter software.–Econlib Ed.]
Alabamian
Mar 29 2021 at 1:04pm
Agreed. Even if you are vaccinated, there isn’t a very good reason not to wear a mask while walking around a grocery store, etc. The costs are infinitesimal. Otherwise I very much agree that vaccinated folks can and should go about living their lives.
Aaron
Mar 29 2021 at 1:41pm
Agreed!
Like you, I also am a person that derives infinitesimal value from things like… being able to exchange facial expressions with other human beings in public… or being able to breathe normally in public without constantly feeling my own hot breath on my stupid face… or being able to see out of my unfogged glasses… or being able to clearly hear and be heard by other human beings without muffled voices. infinitesimal.
Oh, by the way, do you happen to know how to say infinitesimal cost in Arabic? If so, do me a favor and let her know? I think she’ll probably get a kick out of what you think of all her complaints. After all, there isn’t a very good reason not to wear it!
That is what motivates us to do all of the things that we do in life, right? Because there isn’t a very good reason not to?
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:17pm
The costs are absolutely not infinitesimal. But beyond that, the costs may be different for different people. This, as with everything else, is something that needs to be a matter of individual choice. It is amazing to me that people who recognize the absolute folly of one-size-fits-all centralized government planning somehow think that it will be ok in this instance, which involves probably the most individual and subjective matter of all, our physical and mental health.
If you believe that the pros outweigh the cons with respect to wearing masks, and you wish to wear one, you should absolutely be free to do so. Otherwise, you are not free to require me to do so.
Nicholas Decker
Mar 29 2021 at 1:23pm
And moreover, you wearing a mask out in public is necessary so that it becomes normal and accepted. If enough people stop wearing masks then it becomes seen as socially weird – to avoid this, keep wearing till just about everyone is vaccinated.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:20pm
I can only assume you are being sarcastic. Because… yes, this is pretty much the only reason for mandated masking. To make it socially normal. That is called social control, or propaganda. You don’t trust people to make their own decisions, so you force them to make the decisions you want them to make. What you’ve hit up on is probably the #1 reason why universal masking is so dangerous and tyrannical, and why it must not be tolerated.
Jon Murphy
Mar 29 2021 at 1:30pm
Thomas: remember that costs are subjective and ephemeral. To you, they may be trivial. But, as evidenced by the many people who do not wear masks unless they have to, the costs are not trivial.
Secondly, remember that it is not the costs that matter, but the costs relative to the benefits. If costs are absolutely small but large relative to the benefits, then people will not take the action.
Alabamian
Mar 29 2021 at 9:54pm
@Jon Murphy: Remember that costs are subjective and ephemeral. To you, they may be trivial.
There may be a sense in which this is true, but it isn’t one that should matter for public policy debates. Take a look at housing policy if you want to see what happens when we allow people to veto positive sum policies by reference to their “subjective and ephemeral” costs.
But, as evidenced by the many people who do not wear masks unless they have to, the costs are not trivial.
This is poppycock. First, the framework misstates the relevant consideration. Obviously systems exist where the cost/benefit faced by individual agents is misaligned with the best aggregate outcome. That’s the entire idea of coordination problems, public choice theory, public goods, etc. The fact that some individual subjectively claims that mask wearing has a marginally negative utility for himself personally is neither here nor there, especially when the objective personal cost is very very low.
But, second, the decisions not to mask aren’t based on individualized and independent analysis of costs and benefits anyway, as would be needed to accord them deference as you suggest. Mask-wearing became politicized and decisions not to wear a masks now very much involve signaling, at least for large segment of folks. The “wisdom of crowds” type argument goes out the window when the behavior at issue is coordinated political behavior undertaken for signaling purposes [see also Lucas critique, Goodhart’s law, etc.]. And I can’t think of a political issue for which your argument can’t be used (“oh yeah, if this is such a good idea, why am I here disagreeing with it?!?”), which suggests to me that it’s not very strong.
Jon Murphy
Mar 29 2021 at 10:24pm
It’s not clear to me what you are referring to. NIMBY?
Note what you did: you switched from costs and benefits to utility. A subtle switch, but a switch nonetheless.
Now, there is a larger issue here. Whether or not social costs and benefits align with private costs and benefits (a formulation I wholly reject for Buchanianian-Coasian-Alchianian-Hayekian reasons), it is wholly irrelevant. Thomas made a claim about individual costs: he said they are objectively trivial. I merely pointed out that is not the case through revealed preferences (including his own. I doubt Thomas wears a mask constantly, which he’d have to if his statement that the costs are trivial is correct).
True. And that’s a cost-benefit analysis as well. It is incorrect to say that “The “wisdom of crowds” type argument goes out the window when the behavior at issue is coordinated political behavior undertaken for signaling purposes.” Indeed, there is a vast empirical literature that studies political economy: public choice. We’ve even won a few Nobel Prizes.
I agree with you. It’s not a good argument. Which is why I don’t make it. All I said was costs are subjective and dependent on relevant alternatives. Thus, one cannot make a broad claim such as “costs are trivial.” My point is purely positive.
Mitch Berkson
Mar 29 2021 at 2:26pm
Maybe now is a good time for people to start wearing masks to protect themselves instead of others. N95 masks are available.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:27pm
People have virtually always had the option of protecting themselves. Staying home, having groceries delivered, never visiting with anyone.
You could load up on all sorts of PPE and treat the entire world as a leper colony if you so desire. And we’ve always had that option.
But that isn’t what universal masking is all about. We should not forget what Neal Ferguson said with respect to lockdowns. He pointed out that China did it, but we knew we could never do it in the west… “but then Italy did it, and we realized we could do it, too.”
The masks are absolutely necessary because they are the outward manifestation of this “emergency” that most people now realize is completely disproportionate to the response. People are beginning to tune out the news completely, and to start believing their own lying eyes. This has everything to do with the fact that western governments have suddenly realized that their populations will actually tolerate these governments acting as dictatorships, and we have already seen how much they are willing to stretch that out into as many areas of life as humanly possible.
Once you take the masks off, citizens will start behaving like free people again, and the dominoes will begin to fall very, very quickly. Additionally, people will begin to feel very much lied to – some might even desire to hold these politicians accountable.
Mike
Mar 29 2021 at 2:55pm
I would have agreed with you at the outset that the costs of mask-wearing are trivial. But after having lived through a year-plus of mask-wearing, I have to say I disagree.
It struck me first while visiting Disney World: walking around and seeing other people, complete strangers, with their families, happy and smiling, is a surprisingly large part of the joy of being at the parks. With everyone wearing masks, it simply wasn’t as much fun to be there.
I have started to believe that there’s a small but meaningful cost in terms of psychological well-being to widespread mask-wearing.
It’s still likely better to wear one for the un-vaccinated, and I’ll continue to do so. But the sooner we can all get vaccinated and take off these masks, the better.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:33pm
Are you familiar with this phenomenon of CGI seeming kind of scary to a lot of people? It is because, unlike cartoons, which are obviously fake, CGI attempts to get very close to reality – but when people watch it, they know that something is off…
I have a similar experience to yours, except I’ve never worn the mask. Walking through a grocery store, I am surrounded by people, but not interacting with, or relating to, any of them. It is an intensely lonely experience. This is how people’s mental health begins to deteriorate. Isolation has always been a powerful tool with respect to breaking people’s will (say, in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or even in an interrogation room at a police station), and whether intended or not, it will continue to have that effect.
That cost is not at all trivial. Suicides are up dramatically. Counselors’ and therapists’ practices are thriving … and not in a good way. Child abuse is up, spousal abuse is up (while reporting is down). This is not all because of masks, but it is all because of our interventions WRT covid. And I would be willing to bet that it has much, much more to do with masks than most people are able to recognize. If you were able to measure these metrics in places where mask mandates have been lifted, I think the results would be very interesting.
robc
Mar 8 2021 at 6:55am
Edit left in as last paragraph?
Dylan
Mar 8 2021 at 7:04am
Bryan,
The last paragraph here feels like it might have been left over from an earlier draft?
Overall, good post. I’ve been frustrated by the messaging that we shouldn’t change our behavior at all even after being fully vaccinated. I was gratified to hear Dr. Scott Gottlieb, on Face the Nation this weekend say the same thing, that public policy can’t lag too far behind where people want to be and the level of risk they are comfortable with, suggesting that we need to be opening up far more as vaccination rates go up.
One potential wrinkle* though, is the emergence of new variants, some of which appear to be far more likely to reinfect like the B1.526 variant in New York. I just learned yesterday of a friend, who had a bad case of Covid in the spring, then a few days after receiving her 1st vaccination shot, she was sick again and tested and it was confirmed she had this variant.
Dr. Gottlieb seems to think that this variant will be crowded out by one of the other variants, which doesn’t have the same reinfection rate and for which current vaccines seem to be effective, but it is a worrying development.
*Note, I’m not suggesting this wrinkle justifies continued lockdowns, just that the risks in your example might need to be updated a bit if one of these strains becomes dominant.
zeke5123
Mar 29 2021 at 11:26am
It seems that following the CDC behavior makes it more likely to have viruses that favor re-infection. If everyone bunkers down, then there is selection pressure for viruses that re-infect.
The real question isn’t about re-infection but mortality on re-infection.
TMC
Mar 29 2021 at 10:18am
Add to the calculation that once you get the vaccine you are ~100% sure it will be basically like having the flu. Dieing and the worst of the hospitalizations are no longer a threat.
KevinDC
Mar 29 2021 at 10:19am
One important cost of the “don’t change your behavior even after vaccination” message that I’ve seen is that it’s also having the effect of reducing people’s confidence in and willingness to receive the vaccine, at least on the margins. I don’t know how widespread the phenomenon is, but I’ve encountered it quite a lot in discussions about COVID. People are hearing the message “these vaccines are highly effective” immediately followed up by “but even when you’re fully vaccinated you need to be exactly as restricted as the unvaccinated” and drawing the inference “it seems like the vaccine probably doesn’t make much of a difference after all, if even fully vaccinated people need to stay strictly locked down.” I know several people, both personally and through my work in the health care field, who have had the opportunity to get the vaccine but haven’t bothered for exactly this reason.
Jon Murphy
Mar 29 2021 at 10:41am
I’ve witnessed this behavior too (with the added negative consequence of feeding right into anti-vaxxer claims).
The public health officials are repeating the same mistake they made with masks early on in the pandemic when they said both to not wear masks because they’re ineffective and that masks were important to stop the spread of the disease: sending mixed messages and undermining their own goals.
KevinDC
Mar 29 2021 at 11:08am
I’ve unfortunately seen the same thing on the anti-vaxxer front too. One doctor bemoaned to me that the “your life must remain unchanged even when fully vaccinated” messaging has been the most effective recruiting tool into the anti-vaxxer movement that she’s ever seen. And given that vaccines are just about the greatest health innovation ever (no more smallpox!!!), the potential consequences of this can be devastating.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:40pm
I am not an anti-vaxxer in general (I’ve had all of mine, and my children have had all of theirs). But keep in mind that this is an entirely new type of vaccine that has not been tested. It is not at all the equivalent of the smallpox vaccines or other vaccines that we have used safely for years. It is not at all unreasonable for people to be opposed to this – especially if you consider their relative risk/reward. If you want the vaccine, you should be free to take it. But people who don’t want it should be free to allow their immune systems to work as well. Especially considering the fact that this disease is not at all dangerous to the vast majority of people, and that it is almost entirely harmless with respect to children. Labeling everyone who declines this particular vaccine as “anti-vaxxer” would simply be false; it also ignores their very legitimate concerns.
Jon Murphy
Mar 30 2021 at 4:25pm
Sure, but neither KevenDC nor I are saying that. What we are saying is that the behavior of the public health officials, by contradicting themselves and making public statements about the ineffectiveness of the vaccine, are playing into the hands of anti-vaxxers.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 5:07pm
@jon murphy: I acknowledge and appreciate that.
But I still worry about the tendency to label anyone who disagrees as “anti-vaxxer.” It is a way of suppressing information and silencing opposition. At the end of the day, the reality should be that once the vaccine is available, society opens up fully, and people should be permitted to make their own decisions about both the vaccine and their own personal risk (i.e. masks, groups, etc…)
I believe that society should never have been locked down to begin with – both that it was illegal, and that it caused more harm than good. But even under a protectionist mindset, there is no excuse for continued restrictions and mandates once people have these options available to them.
Floccina
Mar 29 2021 at 12:04pm
Another reason to ease up is, that in my county anyone who over 65yo or with an underlying condition has had a chance to get the vaccination, thus greatly lowering the chance of transmitting the virus to someone likely to be hospitalized from covid.
Benji
Mar 29 2021 at 5:30pm
Great post!
I was expecting an argument along the lines of Steven Landsburg’s More Sex is Safer Sex. As I understand it, Landsburg’s argument is that a small fraction of people have lots of sexual partners and are therefore responsible for most of the spread of STDs whereas most people have extremely few sexual partners if any, so they’re extremely unlikely to have or spread STDs. If the safer people become more promiscuous at the margin, fewer people would pair with the high risk people and the spread of STDs would be reduced.As Landsburg put it in Slate:
I feel like you could make a similar argument about Covid vaccines: if more bar, restaurant, and cafe seats are occupied by the vaccinated, then the unvaccinated people who just decided to accept the risk will be less likely to infect each other.
John Chilton
Mar 29 2021 at 8:23pm
Reminds me of Steve Landsburg’s argument in More Sex Means Safer Sex (also in his book of the same title)
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/books/chapters/0708-1st-land.html
“I’m always glad to see guys like Martin in the bars. When he takes home an uninfected partner, he diverts that partner from a potentially more dangerous liaison. When he takes home an infected partner, he diverts that partner from giving the virus to someone who might spread it far and wide. Either way, I sure hope he gets lucky tonight.”
BonafideView
Mar 29 2021 at 11:36pm
That highly effective and innovative vaccines have arrived to combat the COVID-19 virus with such swiftness has been the most hope filled turn in enduring this pandemic. Many people have come forward to vaccinate and personally liberate themselves from higher risk of getting the disease which at the same time contributes to the greater good of herd immunity. There is also the natural immunity from the many who experienced the virus. The wild beast is getting less to be feared.
The point is very close where wearing a mask should be optional. The population most probable of getting severe cases of COVID-19 has had great opportunity to get vaccinated and continues to do so. Younger populations are now also getting the vaccines. Several states have already vaccinated to 60% herd immunity.
We should not have to announce to the public that we have vaccinated but I often do when someone is struggling to quickly put on their mask out of politeness when we cross by each other on a hiking trail. I still pull up my mask out of politeness at this point also. We are close to the positive moment when we are relatively safe from getting the virus and no longer need to feel guilty that we may pass it on to another. When enough of the population has vaccinated to the amazingly improved risk of 90-95% efficacy we should not continue to be forced to wear masks to signal that we care for others.
Not wearing a mask will not mean I don’t care for others. It means there comes a point where an individual can determine their own risk level. Those who are still in fear or at risk should be responsible for their own protection. They can continue to wear masks and should never feel ashamed of doing so. They can stay in personal lockdown if they need to. As for those who choose not to vaccinate that is fine. They have weighed the risks of what they need to do personally and need to be willing to take them. But it is not my responsibility to stop living my life fully to protect either the fearful, at risk, or unvaccinated once a reasonable herd immunity is reached.
Dylan
Mar 30 2021 at 1:38pm
I don’t disagree with the broad thrust of your post, but thought I should point out that as of today (March 30th, 2021) the most vaccinated state is New Mexico, where 37.5% of the population has received one dose, and 23% are fully vaccinated. Most other states are trailing that by a fairly wide margin.
Now, there’s been some issues with the space-time continuum with this post (note the comment of mine from March 8th, on a post that was only published yesterday). So perhaps you are writing from the future, in which congrats to those few states that have managed to vaccinate 60% of their population. Also, can you let me know what the current bitcoin price is in your time?
Max More
Mar 31 2021 at 3:10pm
Add to the percentage of people vaccinated those who have been infected (which is probably at least twice the number of reported cases) and you get close to 60% in many states.
Dylan
Mar 31 2021 at 3:45pm
Could be, but I’m not sure if that’s the case and if it is, how much it matters. On the first part, obviously there’s significant overlap in people that have had covid previously and those that have been vaccinated, we don’t know how much, but they are not distinct circles. Secondly, we’re a year into this thing, and it is quite possible that immunity from getting it last spring might have started weakening a bit (an acquaintance has been confirmed to have it twice now). Third, if we were approaching herd immunity based on people that have had it + people that have been vaccinated, we wouldn’t expect to see spikes in the places that were heavily hit, but New York City and New Jersey both seem to be going through spikes now after being the worst hit in March and April last year. Belgium was I think the worst hit European country in the spring and again in the fall.
Alexander
Mar 30 2021 at 3:11am
I think one of the problems is people’s inability to accept risk and the concept of cost when it comes to human lives. If you say humans dying is a cost you are considered cold and sociopathic by some.
Jon Murphy
Mar 30 2021 at 8:20am
It’s not clear to me what you mean. Humans accept risk and cost in terms of human lives all the time. When we get into a car, for example, we risk both our lives and other people’s lives.
Frank
Mar 30 2021 at 8:09pm
Humans find it hard to process risks, but we do learn. We get into car, and do not get involved in an accident. Therefore, we get into car the next day as well.
Let us forgive us about Covid, for we have no experience with it, vaccinated or not.
Billy Kaubashine
Mar 30 2021 at 11:29am
If you catch Covid from someone who has been vaccinated, the most likely reason is that the vaccinated person has touched something that carried the virus and moved the virus to a surface that you touched.
Masks are somewhat useful in preventing the broadcast of virus (pretty much unnecessary for a vaccinated individual), but almost useless in preventing the reception of the virus.
A vaccinated individual and an un-vaccinated individual both wearing masks (in isolation from other individuals) seems like the perfect marriage of unnecessary and useless.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 3:49pm
Keep in mind that masks are 100% useless if worn by people who are not infected with the virus. The argument used to be that people might not know, and that asymptomatic spread is common. That argument no longer holds any water, as we are well aware of the fact that asymptomatic spread is statistically irrelevant (if it exists at all).
At this point, the only real argument in favor of universal masking – assuming they work (which we know they do not) – is that people cannot be trusted to either stay home or cover their faces, or otherwise avoid infecting others when they are sick. So the logic goes that we require 100% of people to do something in order to force the .01% of people who would otherwise refuse to do something to actually do it…
This is a bit like the gun control argument. Maybe if we make these guns illegal, right? To which I often reply that maybe we should just make murder illegal, if laws are all it takes.
The point, though, is that this is not how a free society should operate. We are not children, and we are not subjects. We are free individuals who do not rely on government grants of freedom. “well, some people could be lying, and they might break the rules, so everyone has to do it even though we know this is unnecessary for 99.9% of you” is, quite simply, an argument that should always be rejected.
Billy Kaubashine
Mar 30 2021 at 5:03pm
Excellent point. If cancer treatment were like gun control, the chemotherapy would kill 100 benign cells for every cancer cell.
It would never be approved due to lack of efficacy and unpleasant side effects.
Ryan McPherson
Mar 30 2021 at 5:15pm
Funny thing about that. If half of what is now being mandated/encouraged was judged in the same way we judge everything else, we would be looking at an amazing amount of medical malpractice.
I went to the doctor with my wife, recently, who suffered a bout of bells palsy. She asked about a few things, physical therapy being one. The doctor said that physical therapy has not been proven beneficial and she can do it, but the doctor isn’t recommending it. A few minutes earlier, she yelled at me for not having a mask over my nose, saying that if the mask slipped for even a second, they would have to shut down the whole room for 2 hours, and what if I was asymptomatic and then some compromised person came in and I ended up killing that person? I didn’t say anything back, but let that sink in for a minute…
what if I’m asymptomatic? what if I manage to get virus somewhere in the room or in the air? what if someone who is immunocompromised walks into the room? what if that person encounters the virus? what if that person has a negative reaction to the virus and dies? Therefore, we are requiring you to actively employ this medical intervention… just in case.
That’s a pretty long list of “what ifs.” Now – what if we treated every risk in that manner? What if we treated every known illness in that manner?
Right after she refused to recommend physical therapy because it was not yet proven effective. We will not be going back to that doctor. Unfortunately, that describes a majority position, globally. That is scary.
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