Scott Sumner is happy to admit that we’ve overreacted to Covid, but presents the overreaction as relatively mild:
Pundits often criticize the US government for overreacting to Covid, especially the excessive mandates for masks, vaccines, etc. I share their concern. But I also wonder where some of these people have been. On a list of regulatory overreaction, these mandates don’t even make my “top 100”. For decades, overreaction to tiny safety risks has been getting worse, with no end in sight.
Elaborating:
Unlike airline crashes, Covid has killed roughly 800,000 Americans, despite all sorts of social distancing, of which nearly 200,000 are less than 65-years old. Yes, we are overreacting, but it’s not like with airline crashes where the risk is entirely imaginary. Covid really is somewhat dangerous; not in absolute terms, but at least relative to the almost absurd safety of modern America.
In a sense, Scott is completely right.
If you measure overreaction using the ratio of the reaction to the actual harm, then the Covid response probably doesn’t even make the U.S. “top 100.” After all, many government crusades target “problems” that cause zero harm. Or, like immigration, negative harm.
In another sense, however, Scott is completely wrong.
If you measure overreaction using the total amount of effort that fails a cost-benefit test, then Covid has arguably been the greatest overreaction in U.S. history.
By my math, the total cost of the reaction for the U.S. was roughly fifteen times the total cost of the pandemic itself. (Similar calculations for Canada here). But that’s fifteen times a genuinely enormous cost of 800,000 lives, implying many trillions of dollars of overreaction.
In contrast: If the total cost of the reaction to shoe bombs was fifteen times the total cost of shoe bombs, the total harm would still be trivial, because shoe bombs themselves are trivial. You could have a 1000:1 ratio, and the sum of the harm of the overreaction would remain moderate. You might argue that a 1000:1 ratio is somehow more intellectually jarring. But if you could push a button to get rid of just one overreaction, you should clearly push the button that undoes more total harm, not the one with the most ludicrous cost/benefit ratio.
Sumner also remarks:
I don’t disagree with those who point to excessive fear of Covid, but why is anyone surprised? I’m surprised the regulations aren’t far worse. Given our history of overreaction, I would have expected us to emulate Australia.
Indeed. Which is why despite everything, I’m now convinced that the U.S. had the least-bad Covid response of any major English-speaking country. The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand all beat us in terms of fatalities/population. But almost no part of the U.S. ever put innocent people under house arrest. For most of Covid, I lived in one of the strictest regions of the U.S., yet there was never a day I couldn’t walk outside with my family, mask-free. I never even had to pretend to shop or exercise.
More importantly, due to America’s strange experiment in federalist dictatorship, large swaths of the U.S. returned to near-normalcy in a matter of months. This didn’t merely allow these states’ original populations to breathe freely again. It also provided an escape valve for locationally-flexible, risk-tolerant people around the country. And despite some minor exceptions, no U.S. state seriously tried to close its borders to other states. Thank you Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, where I’ve now lived for about five months of Covid.
Do I damn the U.S. with faint praise? Sure. But when I talk to my friends elsewhere in the Anglosphere, I still pity them for the tyranny they’ve endured – and often continue to endure.
P.S. Expect light posting for a while. Happy Holidays to all!
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Dec 16 2021 at 9:52am
In Maryland, we were. Counties were arresting folks for going outside. Until the governor stopped it.
David Henderson
Dec 16 2021 at 10:08am
Wow! I had not known that. For how many days or weeks was that regulation in force before the governor stopped it?
Jon Murphy
Dec 16 2021 at 10:10am
About a week, if I recall correctly. According to a friend who worked in the State House in Annapolis, apparently Gov Hogan went mental on the head of the State Police when he found out
Steve Bacharach
Dec 17 2021 at 11:58am
In the spring of 2020, a surfer was issued a $1000 fine in Manhattan Beach, CA once he came ashore after catching a few waves. That was a big sign for me early on that we had jumped the shark (pun intended).
Also, anytime I hear “out of an abundance of caution”, I know people are doing nothing more than covering their asses – but isn’t that what’s behind almost all of our regulatory regime?
Floccina
Dec 16 2021 at 9:55am
Do the estimates that we have adequately reflect the lives saved by our policies. IE if Governments did nothing how many would have died?
I think Sweden had the best policies.
Ryan M
Dec 16 2021 at 1:06pm
This is very important. It wasn’t merely an overreaction, it was an inappropriate reaction, in that our reaction very likely caused far more harm than it did any good.Also, if we’re talking about covid deaths, I think that 800,000 number is misleading. A better metric would be excess deaths, but again, I have very little doubt that a fairly large number of excess deaths were caused by the overreaction rather than the virus.
We really should be looking at countries like Sweden – I don’t have other examples off the top of my head, but we certainly do have examples in other US states. It seems not only possible, but likely, that the actions we took even made the virus itself worse, rather than better. Perhaps the best example is the closing of schools. Had we simply allowed the virus to “run its course,” or done focused protection with respect to the vulnerable elderly, and also allowed people to make their own personal decisions, what course would the virus have taken? By keeping kids in school, we may have created a major boost for natural immunity, encouraging milder mutations and causing the virus to more quickly fizzle out. We don’t know the answer to that question, but it is an important question to consider before we just blindly accept the oft-repeated notion that “covid” has killed 800K.
Interestingly, what we’re seeing with Omicron is exactly what many epidemiologists were predicting early on. Virtually all viruses in human history have mutated this way, and 3 or 4 existing cold viruses are coronaviruses. We knew this would happen (even if our actions slowed this natural process) – but how do we react when it finally does? Well, I would expect doctors/scientists to be loudly celebrating the arrival of a covid cold virus, but again we are seeing a focus on “case numbers” and hearing about big waves (“of cases”) coming, seeing renewed calls for lockdowns and restrictions and ever more hyperventilation about vaccines. This is the opposite of the appropriate reaction.
But it is indicative of something that has been present this whole time. That not only have we overreacted, we have inappropriately reacted, and it is very likely that we have implemented a “cure worse than the disease” unlike any that has been attempted in human history.
Michael Rulle
Dec 16 2021 at 10:38am
I do not know that the marginal cost of Covid has been——-other than an extra million total deaths —-i.e., 500K in each of last 2 years—-(relative to the year 2019—-assuming of course government numbers are accurate.) This is most definitely true although it seems impossible. These are CDC numbers so for simplicities sake, I just accept them as accurate.
David is asserting that our reaction to Covid is worse by a factor of 15 than Covid itself. But, are we counting all our “reactions to Covid” ——such as creating the Vaccine—-which is by far the biggest reactions.
I probably have the same view as David as to the appropriate reaction to Covid—-but to get such a ratio——the effect size (as statisticians who critique p-values might say) might be de minimis.
Measuring life years and quality of life years has some usefulness but it is so value drenched and hard to measure as to be a side bar.
If, on the other hand, if David is assuming that unnecessary incremental Government spending is part of the cost—-that is more persuasive—-except Dem’s were going that way in any event.
One unknown, under the assumption many make, that the official number of cases are 1/3rd of the actual number, is how many died not from Covid (although had a case) but from the change in behavior of hospitals and individuals. That certainly adds to the relative cost.
But this is alternative history——we cannot know. And I am unaware of any attempt to measure this alternative history.
Another very material oddity which counters David’s point——is how high (so we are told) is the total deaths with Covid that come from the unvaccinated. For all practical purposes, an extraordinary small number of people are dying who have had the vaccine. All stats are suspect——but we now say 95-99+ percent of Covid deaths are among the unvaccinated.
One can say not getting a vaccine is a “non-reaction”. While I find the idea that almost all deaths are now from the unvaccinated almost impossible to believe (after all, wouldn’t we have had more deaths in 2020?) maybe everything else is noise if that is true.
I often wonder if we basically did nothing except create the vaccine, count Covid deaths like we used to count flu deaths——if we ever would have had a panic. While the 15x concept is very suspect, that does not mean it was nothing. We would have been emotionally better off and likely would have had less deaths.
Ryan M
Dec 16 2021 at 1:12pm
Very early on – like May of 2020 – I kept posing a similar hypothetical to friends and coworkers. Though my hypothetical is nearly the opposite. The reality was, we didn’t know all that much about covid, but we began widely testing for it and treating every case as if it was a deadly one. So my hypothetical was this: Imagine if we were to test widely for the common cold, and to respond to it exactly as we have covid. So, every case where the patient dies with a cold is a “cold death;” every case where an elderly person dies w/ a cold is a “cold death; we shut down schools for cold outbreaks, we require masks on everyone, we test the healthy and quarantine anyone who tests positive, we shut down elective surgeries, etc… etc… etc…
If we took this same reaction and applied it to the common cold, how differently would that look? How many cold deaths would we register? How much panic would we see?
I honestly don’t think it would look much different, and that is an important thought, because without ever denying that covid exists and that it can certainly result in bad outcomes, we can at least compare the outcome of our response to the outcome if that same response was applied for no reason at all, and measure the difference. I think it would be pretty shocking, and that we would discover that our cold pandemic doesn’t look much different from what we’ve created w/ covid.
Todd Kreider
Dec 16 2021 at 1:59pm
Nobel laureate Michael Levitt pointed out in June 2020 that if we counted flu deaths the way that we count Covid deaths with PCR testing and “with Covid” even if not a cause of the death, then “the number would be far, far higher.” An actuary gave an estimate of doing this with the harsh flu season of 2017/2018 where the CDC states 60,000 to 70,000 Americans died from the flu – just one season. His estimate was 150,000 to 250,000 flu deaths using Covid counting and hardly anyone knew noticed how severe that flu season was.
Michael Rulle
Dec 18 2021 at 10:46am
Was not aware of that—-when the change was made it was stated as the opposite—-but I accept Levitt’s point.
Does Levitt have a view as to why flu deaths are now annualizing at less than a 1000 a year? Or why Pneumonia deaths are now annualizing at 350K a year? Or why, deaths from Covid, Or Pneumonia, or Flu, or any combo, almost are identical to the increase in total deaths for 2020 and 2021 versus 2019? And why the CDC presents that information in a single table updated daily to make it seem (yes seem—although it is in the section “explaining” excess deaths) as if it were cause and effect? Or why we have the same number of Covid deaths in 2021 as 202o even as we now have a vaccine? Or why the rate of death for unvaccinated are 6x the vaccinated—-yet the death attributions are the same for 2020 when there was no vaccine? since counting matters to him—-I will look at what he is written, because I think how we count matters too.
I do believe we have 500k more deaths—-each year versus 2019—and it obviously is due to Covid——but as David writes——how much because of the disease——versus our reaction to the disease? He
MikeW
Dec 19 2021 at 9:50am
My understanding is that the numbers you have seen in the past for influenza deaths have always been estimates. I believe that most pneumonia deaths were treated as influenza deaths. That assumption has gone out the window the past two years, so it seems to me that it’s pretty hard to compare influenza deaths this year and last with the numbers from past years.
JFA
Dec 16 2021 at 4:40pm
I think if you look at excess deaths, you’ll find that testing more has not been the reason for finding Covid deaths. Movements in excess deaths follow the movement in cases. Excess deaths have been large in both lockdown and non-lockdown states (so it’s not the lockdowns causing the deaths).
Todd Kreider
Dec 16 2021 at 6:06pm
Do you really believe that there have been no lockdown deaths?
JFA
Dec 16 2021 at 9:49pm
I think some of the deaths were caused by lockdowns, especially some of the increase in drug overdose deaths (some of which were surely lockdown related). I just think it’s a small minority of the deaths.
David Henderson
Dec 16 2021 at 11:18pm
I would bet that there have been tens of thousands of deaths due to people missing cancer treatments and not taking care of their heart health.
JFA
Dec 17 2021 at 6:08am
David, I think it would be hard to determine whether missed medical care was the cause because 1) those people were already sick and 2) for heart diseases, Covid is known to increase the risk of heart attacks (the flu also increases risk of stroke and heart attack in the first 3-6 months after recovery). For cancers, there hasn’t been any noticeable change in mortality, so I don’t think you’ll find many “lockdown deaths” in that group. People made the argument that we would see those deaths (due to lack of screening and treatment) later. If that were the case, we would have seen at least an uptick in the number of people dying of cancer at some point in 2021. That hasn’t been the case.
If you take a look at excess deaths in Florida and Texas (2 notable non-lockdown states), excess deaths follow the movement of cases, and there is also in increase in excess deaths from non-Covid causes (even in the latest summer wave).
Data can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
David Henderson
Dec 17 2021 at 10:28am
Thanks for those data, JFA.
Michael Rulle
Dec 18 2021 at 10:26am
Interesting——so presumably all excess deaths would have appeared to be from the cold. If there were no Covid, there would have been few to no excess deaths—-just many linked to colds. A small bit of irony—-a cold is a coronavirus. And it would have caused a huge reaction. But the new thing was Covid——so it made sense to track that—-however wrong or right the tracking was conducted.
Spencer Bradley Hall
Dec 16 2021 at 10:40am
Lending by the Reserve and commercial banks is inflationary (increases the volume and turnover of new money). Whereas lending by the nonbanks is noninflationary (results in the turnover of existing money). And if existing money doesn’t turn over, completing the circuit income velocity of funds, a dampening economic impact is exerted (viz., secular stagnation). Thus, the objective should be to incentivize the utilization of savings.
But the Keynesian economists have achieved their objective, that there is no difference between money and liquid assets. The Keynesian macro-economic persuasion maintains a commercial bank is a financial intermediary, joining savers with borrowers.
That ignores the fact that it’s virtually impossible for the DFIs to engage in any type of activity involving its own non-bank customers without an alteration in the money stock.
And lending/investing by the DFIs is largely for existing assets. There is not any assurance that an increase in the money stock will be matched by an offsetting addition to the supply of new goods and services in our market economy.
How do you activate monetary savings? And all monetary savings originate within, not outside of, the payment’s system. You gradually drive the banks out of the savings business. You force the banks to store their liquidity, instead of buying their liquidity. You cap CDs. You reduce FDIC deposit insurance. You then insure the nonbanks. And none of those initiatives reduce the size of the payment’s system. If fact, it makes the payment’s system more profitable (but not necessarily for any given bank).
So, the response to Covid-19 was diametrically wrong. And given these differences, we can only expect more of the same, only worse. The remuneration of interbank demand deposits guarantees it. I.e., cash for duration.
Philo
Dec 16 2021 at 11:40am
“If you measure overreaction using the total amount of effort that fails a cost-benefit test, then Covid has arguably been the greatest overreaction in U.S. history.” At least superficially, this is implausible, given the existence of wars: wars are always very costly–much more so than the COVID-19 restrictions–and their benefits are usually meagre, at best.
David Henderson
Dec 16 2021 at 4:06pm
Excellent point.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 20 2021 at 5:47pm
I have not see a good model of the optimized Covid response. Of course we know pieces — don’t restrict outdoor activities, restrict venues according to risk not class, screening tests for asymptomatic people, less delay in approving vaccines — but exactly how should they have been fitted together? So what was the net cost of the actual response compared to the optimal response?
Tom Jackson
Dec 16 2021 at 6:40pm
I would note that England does not require kids to wear masks at school and we in the U.S. do, so in that sense, the U.S. “overreacted” more than the English did.
Phil H
Dec 16 2021 at 7:15pm
“I’m now convinced that the U.S. had the least-bad Covid response of any major English-speaking country. The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand all beat us in terms of fatalities/population. But almost no part of the U.S. ever put innocent people under house arrest.”
So lockdowns did work, then? That’s good to know, for next time.
Jon Murphy
Dec 17 2021 at 8:29am
You and I have very different definitions of “worked” if that’s your conclusion.
Vivian Darkbloom
Dec 17 2021 at 9:29am
Next time, perhaps we should not simply assume that there is not a 100 percent correlation between the severity of limits on freedom of movement, association, etc (“lockdowns”) and an alleged favorable selective outcome? Would there not be other factors at play?
And, perhaps I completely misunderstood Caplan’s point, but I had thought he was talking about *both* costs and benefits:
“If you measure overreaction using the total amount of effort that fails a cost-benefit test, then Covid has arguably been the greatest overreaction in U.S. history.”
By your logic, the policy of a country that prohibits cars on the road “worked” simply because the number of road deaths had been reduced. I’m being of course generous here because the causal link between outlawing cars on the road and road deaths is much more certain and direct than that between lockdowns and covid deaths.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 16 2021 at 8:08pm
I’d like to see the calculation of the over reaction as measured against the optimal reaction. If it is something like the Tabarrok-Romer idea then the “overreaction” may be even greater, as their plan would probably have saved more lives at lower cost. But still I’d like to see the model that showed the optimum response at a benchmark.
Monte
Dec 17 2021 at 11:03am
We can attribute the excess mortality resulting from global lock-downs to Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College team of nonpharmaceutical interventionists. These were, as it turns out, tâtonnement policies that may well constitute one of the greatest scientific failures in modern human history.
Daniel Kuehn
Dec 17 2021 at 11:11am
It seems absurd to trust your Twitter polls as data for cost-benefit analysis, right? I thought you did those for fun or to understand the psychology of your followers. You don’t really think those answers say much, do you?
MikeW
Dec 17 2021 at 3:23pm
It’s going to take years to sort everything out, but something I think worth mentioning is that the 1918/19 Spanish Flu was over with in approximately one year. Covid-19 is going to be with us for at least two years. I conclude from this that the things we have done in response to Covid have stretched out the pandemic in time, but we don’t really know yet if the response also reduced the total mortality and morbidity. (I think probably so, but not by as much as most people think.)
robc
Dec 20 2021 at 7:49am
Flattening the curve was the goal, right?
But seriously, spanish flu is still with us, just in weaker versions like omicron. With this strain, we should just call covid over.
Lawrence
Dec 17 2021 at 7:14pm
The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand all beat us in terms of fatalities/population. But almost no part of the U.S. ever put innocent people under house arrest. For most of Covid, I lived in one of the strictest regions of the U.S., yet there was never a day I couldn’t walk outside with my family, mask-free. I never even had to pretend to shop or exercise.
I’m in Canada. I think there was some silliness about making overseas travelers stay in a hotel for a week or two upon arrival, but that’s the closest I’m aware of that we came to ‘house arrest’ for anyone here. I have experienced zero restrictions on going outside mask-free with family or friends, without having to have any pretext for doing so, for the duration. For all but about a cumulative total of about 5 weeks in the past 2 years, I’ve been able to go to restaurants, bars, gyms, or basically anywhere (wearing a mask indoors). Our CFR is approximate one third that of the USA.
Student of Liberty
Dec 18 2021 at 8:11am
True. Being French and living abroad using English as a speaking language, I had come to think that English-speaking countries type of individualism and understanding of the issues with constructivism was at the root of freedom and made life in these countries less at risk of authoritarian rule.
Now I am naked, trying to understand how it could go so bad so quickly. My guess is that it has something to do with the sanctity of legislation attached to the rule of law but I am no philosopher, may be completely wrong and still need to learn about what is going on in the world…
E. Harding
Dec 18 2021 at 2:00pm
“Which is why despite everything, I’m now convinced that the U.S. had the least-bad Covid response of any major English-speaking country.”
Take a look at the unemployment rate spikes. America did not do the best, not by a long shot. Australia and New Zealand saw the fastest returns to pre-pandemic unemployment, not the U.S., while the United Kingdom and New Zealand saw the smallest unemployment rate spikes.
Comments are closed.