I recently did a post arguing that the case for government coercion was weaker than it looked (although not necessarily incorrect.) Today I’d like to illustrate the ideas in that post with a couple of examples.
A few weeks ago, the NBA began considering the option of playing its games in empty arenas to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Then when a player became infected the entire league shut down. Why is that?
While it is not correct to say the coronavirus is no worse than the flu for young healthy people such as NBA players, it is relatively low risk. The NFL exposes players to some pretty significant brain injury risks, and we don’t shut down the NFL.
There are presumably a number of reasons for the NBA shutdown. Perhaps they were worried that more players and staff would catch the virus, and spread it to their family members. Or they worried about bad public relations if play continued. But I also suspect that part of the concern was the health of the NBA players themselves. Coronavirus seems like a mysterious hard to understand illness, whereas concussions in football are easier to understand.
It’s well known that many people fear vague, hard to understand risks like flying, nuclear waste sites, chemicals in food, vaccines, child kidnapping, etc., more than they should, and more than they fear much bigger risks like dying because they use the cell phone while driving, or because they eat too much fat and sugar. I suspect that NBA players are no different.
And this is really good news! If people didn’t overreact to the coronavirus from a self-interest perspective, they’d be underreacting from a social welfare perspective. That’s because social contact during an epidemic creates negative externalities.
In the early days of the crisis, the outbreaks in the US were mostly confined to Seattle and the San Francisco Bay areas. It wasn’t surprising that California had a lot of cases, as it has by far the largest community of Asian-Americans, with lots of travel back and forth with China. (My wife and I were in Wuhan last August.) What is surprising is that today California has only 5.1% of US cases [update: 4.5%], despite having nearly 12% of the US population. Some of that underrepresentation is caused by the huge spike in New York cases, but not all of it.
Back when California had just a handful of cases, I gently mocked people who were afraid to go to “Chinese” restaurants like PF Changs. (The actual joke revolved around the fact that in California their workers are mostly Mexican-American.) Well the joke’s on me, as it now looks like the “over-reacters” were doing the right thing. My wife is well connected with the Asian community out here, and told me of numerous events being cancelled back when the total case numbers were still tiny. I thought the actions were excessive, but now those cancellations now look much more sensible. Despite my joke (which seems tasteless today), I was not one of those who didn’t understand that coronavirus was potentially a big problem—we stocked up on canned goods and masks in January—I just didn’t see any need for people being so frightened when the caseloads were still so low.
It seems to me that the Asian community in California was especially aware of the severity of coronavirus, and that may explain why it spread much less rapidly here, after presumably entering California via travelers from China. After all, the previous SARS epidemic made a much greater impression on the psyche of Asian people than on Westerners. East Asian countries also seemed better prepared than Western countries.
This graph shows the growth in the caseload for New York (grey) and California (orange), with day zero being the point the total caseload hit 10. Note the log scale, as New York’s caseload is now more than 9 times larger than California’s.
PS. I wonder if New York is now being hurt by its greater proximity to Europe. For Californians, vacations in Italy require a long and tiring flight, and a lot of jet lag.
PPS. Younger readers might not know that Sri Lanka was once called Ceylon. Older readers might not know that Ceylon was once called Serendip—the fortunate island.
READER COMMENTS
Pietro
Mar 23 2020 at 11:02am
Many of my students at ucla in early February were wearing masks.
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 3:00pm
Are you in the math or physics department? (My daughter studies at UCLA.)
Pietro
Mar 24 2020 at 12:23pm
Yes math, visiting for Winter quarter. It’s a great school.
Scott Sumner
Mar 24 2020 at 12:36pm
Perhaps it was a good time for a visit? (Your name sounds Italian)
Ray
Mar 23 2020 at 11:09am
California’s warmer climate may also have something to do with the lower infection rate, despite the higher concentration of Asian communities.
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 12:04pm
Yes, that’s plausible. But so far there isn’t much evidence for that. I’d add that California has a Mediterranean climate, and Italy and Spain are currently the two hardest hit countries (apart from China).
Phil H
Mar 23 2020 at 12:02pm
This all seems right. It’s just worth remembering that not all government action is coercive. In this particular situation, it feels like the government could get an awful lot done with (a) better internal coordination and (b) consistent, strong (non-coercive) messaging to the public. It doesn’t feel like The Problem right now is one of whether or not to use force. It’s how to get it together.
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 12:08pm
I agree.
Warren Platts
Mar 23 2020 at 12:05pm
It turns out they were holding “Hug a Chinese Day” events in New York City, in addition to Milan in the early days of February. NYC and Milan became the epicenter of the disease outbreaks in USA and Italy respectively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQcqaw4zMXU
So your observation, Scott, that the Asian community was fully aware of the dangers of the coronavirus is interesting. That would seem to entail the Chinese persons involved in these “Hug a Chinese” events were also fully aware of the dangers of the coronavirus. Thus hugging random strangers, whether Chinese or not, is probably not the brightest idea anyone ever had. To put it mildly.
Moreover, slick videos of these events were created, and then carried by CGTN, Xinhua, and now South China Morning Post(!), indicating this was a coordinated worldwide effort on the part of the Chinese government. (Events were held later in February in at least Sydney, Barcelona, London, and Los Angeles, but by that time the events had morphed into “Take a Selfie with a Chinese” events.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZoKM7zOUnU
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 12:13pm
Good counterexample. But I was referring more to late February. In early February there was almost no (reported) risk in the US, no community transmission. By late February, community transmission was reported, but at extremely low levels. That’s why California residents began to take precautions. Even so, in retrospect it would have been wise not to do that in early February.
Mark Z
Mar 24 2020 at 4:58am
That sounds more like weird virtue signaling than coordinated operation ordered by Beijing. New York, in any case, did not have any cases in early February, it only hit here in early March after it was already in Washington (and California I think too).
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 23 2020 at 3:04pm
I would be careful discussing clinical data. From what I’ve seen the US is seeing a disproportionate number of hospitalizations for those 20-50 compared to some other countries. I’m not comfortable saying that young people are relatively unaffected. Obviously, as more hospital data comes in we may be able to make this statement but not right now.
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 8:02pm
OK, but I expect that when all the data comes in the risk to the young will still be relatively low when compared to the old, or compared to playing football.
Thaomas
Mar 23 2020 at 6:59pm
The name Serendip (of Arabic origin) gave rise to our word serendipity because of a story about a fortunate accident, but does not itself mean “fortunate island.”
Scott Sumner
Mar 23 2020 at 8:01pm
Thanks for that info.
Mark Z
Mar 24 2020 at 5:05am
New York also has a large Asian population, but did not seem very prepared for this. I suspect the main reason NYC overtook California and everywhere else though is because of the sheer population density.
Scott Sumner
Mar 24 2020 at 12:37pm
That’s plausible. I also suspect that California has more of the highly educated Asian in tech industries, which might play a role.
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