I’ll be on Fox News Channel tonight, discussing my op/ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Show: Laura Ingraham
Time: 7:40 p.m. PDT; 10:40 p.m. EDT.
I’ll be on Fox News Channel tonight, discussing my op/ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Show: Laura Ingraham
Time: 7:40 p.m. PDT; 10:40 p.m. EDT.
Jun 17 2020
Here's the video from last night. It's 4 minutes long. Watch it while it's hot because these things don't stay long.
Jun 17 2020
If you haven't heard of Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's Escaping Paternalism, you should. The book is an unbelievably learned, thoughtful, fair, wise, and inspired critique of applied behavioral economics in general and libertarian paternalism (a.k.a. "nudge") in particular. The book is not light reading. While ...
Jun 16 2020
I'll be on Fox News Channel tonight, discussing my op/ed in the Wall Street Journal. Show: Laura Ingraham Time: 7:40 p.m. PDT; 10:40 p.m. EDT.
READER COMMENTS
Alex Montero
Jun 17 2020 at 12:32am
Mr. Henderson,
I’ve read you WSJ piece and watched your appearance tonight on Laura Ingrahm’s show. I don’t agree with all of your modeling assumptions, but your work appears well formulated and worthy of consideration.
But I write in reference to your exchange with Ingrahm regarding Anthony Fauci’s recent conversion on mask wearing by the general public. Dr. Fauci initially recommended against masks for the general public back in February. He now admits this was in the context of trying to protect limited N95 mask supplies for use by frontline health care workers. Now that masks are in better supply, Fauci has changed his recommendation. You laughed as you agreed Fauci was a liar at Ingrahm’s prompting.
Sir, your ignorance on this was glaring and offensive to me – a frontline physician who has been treating hospitalized COVID patients for months. Fauci’s double talk on this has probably helped keep me alive and my family safe.. Had Fauci recommended mask wearing by the general public in February, it is not clear to me that I would have had the N95 masks available to me when treating COVID patients. And without people like me, I am not sure how secure you would have felt over the ladt few months knowing your local university hospital was running out of docs. Next time, don’t take the bait when you don’t really understand what you are endorsing.
As an aside, your analyses are largely correct, it is the mask wearing (not the lock downs) that have had the greatest mitigation impact as our best epidemiology studies are only now elucidating (see Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – June 11th issue).
Knut P. Heen
Jun 18 2020 at 11:13am
You take both the number of masks and the price of masks for given. That is a false premise.
The price of masks would skyrocket if masks were recommended for public use. Your employer would be the highest bidder anyway. You would therefore get your mask without the Fauci lie. However, the high price is a profit opportunity which increases the production of masks considerably. Hence, more masks would have been available for both the public and health care personnel. Fauci’s lie has reduced the number of available masks. The lock-down has further reduced the number of available masks because entrepreneurs cannot change their companies to produce masks in a lock-down.
Finally, why would anyone believe anything Fauci says going forward? And why would anyone believe any of his successors? They have shown that they are not trustworthy.
David Henderson
Jun 18 2020 at 12:51pm
Dear Mr. Montero,
Note the answer from Knut P. Been.
Also, thanks for all the work you’ve done on the front lines. I do appreciate it.
Besides Mr. Been’s answer, I want to point out that at the start of all this, sometime in March, I observed a tremendous amount of good will among Americans. Had Fauci told the truth, the odds are reasonable that even without price controls, many Americans would have settled for the makeshift masks we did use anyway, leaving the better masks to medical professionals such as yourself.
Oh, and by the way, I’m not ignorant of anything you said above. For that reason, my ignorance can’t be offensive. Also, even if I had been ignorant, your feeling offense is your problem, not mine.
I’m not sure Fauci’s lie did save lives on net. Had he not lied, many Americans would have been wearing masks sooner and more Americans would be trusting him now.
Finally, thank you for your affirmation that masks, not lockdowns, are key in saving lives.
Comments are closed.