There is a case for government coercion in certain situations, including an epidemic. And it is possible that coercion might be beneficial right now. But here I’d like to point out that the case for coercion is weaker than it looks, and that the amount of coercion we actually adopt is likely to be more than the socially optimal amount.
The case for coercion right now is obvious. And epidemic spreads by people infecting other nearby people. That infection imposes an external cost on others. Social distancing can reduce the spread of an epidemic. Standard economic “externality” models suggest a role for the government in discouraging encouraging social distancing.
The optimal policies are actually likely to be taxes, not bans, but let’s suppose that for some reason taxes are infeasible. Are bans the way to go? Maybe, but that’s not at all clear.
There is also a powerful force suggesting that the free market might engage in too much social distancing. Americans tend to be excessively fearful of hard to understand risks, such as flying in airplanes, living near nuclear power plants, eating non-organic foods, having free range children, legalizing drugs, having Covid-19 quarantine facilities in their town, having nuclear waste dumps under mountains far from their city, and many other risks. In contrast, we probably are not fearful enough of things we think we understand, such as driving cars.
The coronavirus is much more like those mysterious, hard to understand risks than it is like driving a car. So pure theory doesn’t tell us whether government coercion would move us closer to or further from the optimal amount of social distancing, there are good arguments both ways.
Just to be clear, I strongly believe that the optimal outcome right now would be lots of social distancing. I am not advocating a “do nothing” approach. Just the opposite. Rather I am considering what role should be played by government coercion.
For instance, in this crisis the private sector sprung into action even before the government. Private schools often closed before government schools. The NBA shut down while the federal government was still asleep at the wheel. So it’s not like a lack of government coercion is identical to no social distancing. Americans are rapidly becoming afraid, and many are demanding that their employers allow them to work at home. I’m already seeing a lot of excessively fearful behavior, without any government coercion.
Nor am I arguing that government has no role to play in the epidemic. Perhaps more generous unemployment insurance is called for, or more funding of medical research, or subsidies to ventilator manufacturing. (Note the government can also help by removing regulations that inhibit a quick response, so it cuts both ways.) I’m addressing the specific question of coercion and social distancing.
China has achieved success in controlling the epidemic with a lot of coercion. But it’s also worth noting that other East Asian countries have had some success with much less coercion. And it’s also worth noting that the Chinese case first got out of hand due to government coercion that prevented doctors from warning Wuhan residents about the problem.
At the top I claimed that we are likely to end up with too much coercion. That’s partly based on my reading of history. In similar situations like WWI, WWII, and 9/11, we pretty clearly ended up with a level of repression that now seems excessive. There were pointless limits on free speech during WWI, we put Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during WWII, and we passed the Patriot Act after 9/11.
I encourage readers to question “realists” who tell you that everyone must get on board with the program during this crisis. We should certainly all behave responsibly, but we do not all have to support any given government policy, especially a coercive policy. Russ Feingold (from my home state) was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. Only two senators voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which led to our involvement in the Vietnam War. It’s hard to stand up to a frightened and angry mob of fellow citizens.
It’s important for people to push back against the natural human instinct for repression during periods of crisis. Even if a very modest amount of repression is optimal in a few cases, we are likely going to end up going too far.
READER COMMENTS
blink
Mar 20 2020 at 1:37pm
Your point about private action is important; that private schools and sports leagues were ahead of the curve is notable. In practice, the practical effect of government mandates may simply be to codify what we are already doing. Similarly, reduced restrictions — hopefully to become permanent — or at least alternative/supplementary approval procedures could prove more valuable than any other potential measures.
In the slightly longer-term, more nuanced restrictions make sense. Why, for instance, ought recovered persons (assuming they are no longer at risk of spreading or contracting the virus) be restricted?
Errata: Paragraph 2 (“Standard economic ‘externality’ models suggest a role for the government in discouraging social distancing.”), should read “…encouraging social distancing.”
Scott Sumner
Mar 20 2020 at 3:08pm
Thanks, I corrected the typo.
Peter
Mar 20 2020 at 2:19pm
Not to often you and I agree much Scott anymore but bravo and I applaud you for this post.
Mark Bahner
Mar 20 2020 at 4:33pm
I’m an engineer, and I come at this from an engineering standpoint. Further, I have a fair amount of expertise in particulate matter measurement and of dispersion of pollutants, including indoor air pollutants. But I don’t have any medical expertise.
We talk about “social distancing”…but any good engineer knows that there are essentially an infinite number of measures that can be taken that produce “social distancing” across an entire continuum of “social distance.”
For instance, there’s school. You can call off school completely. Or you could do these or a million other possibilities:
A) Call off the younger grades, figuring that they can’t really be trained quickly enough in proper precautions, but still have the older grades attending.
B) Simply strongly suggest that all students wear filter masks and washable fabric gloves. Or if sufficient masks and gloves aren’t available, every other student wearing masks and gloves, and seat them accordingly. Or half of the students wearing masks, and half wearing gloves. Base it on even and odd last name first letter.
C) Or instead of store-bought filter masks, simply have students wear a scarf over their mouth and nose, and make sure they use alcohol for hand sanitizer periodically. Tell them to make sure they clean the scarves each night.
D) Don’t change classrooms for students who have different subjects with different teachers. Instead, have the teachers switch classrooms to come to the students.
E) Stagger class endings so that all students aren’t out in the hall at the same time.
F) Make sure students aren’t touching each others’ lockers, or sharing phones (“OMG, look at this cat video!”) (I have no idea how kids talk these days. And possibly they don’t even pass each other their phones, but I’d guess they do!)
G) Even think about classes outdoors. Or at least lunches outdoors. Think about opening windows.
H) Make sure that children who have even the slightest symptoms are isolated.
I) Don’t close doors, especially if they have door knobs.
J) Wash hands with something at least a couple times a day.
Etc. Etc. Etc. There are literally an infinite number of things. All of these could be simple federal or state government suggestions, with local governments and schools deciding for themselves what is best.
The same sorts of things could be done for bars and restaurants…and additionally simply limiting seating to less than full capacity or taking temperatures at the door. These are all measures that increase social isolation without the burden of closing the business completely.
P.S. David Henderson, if you haven’t seen my latest bet offer, I’m now offering a second bet of $40 that less than 4,000 people in the U.S. will die of COVID-19 in 2020, as recorded on the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracking website. 🙂
David Henderson
Mar 20 2020 at 5:13pm
Mark,
I didn’t see that. I accept. I’ve become way more optimistic but I think you’re too optimistic. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Mark Bahner
Apr 1 2020 at 12:49pm
Hi David,
Well, you weren’t proven wrong. I was.
I really just didn’t think we in the U.S. were such idiots. But we are. Everyone out in public in the U.S. should be wearing some sort of mask or something to cover their mouths, and washable gloves of some sort to cover their hands. That would cost less than $30 per person.
If we did that from the point infections in the U.S. crossed the 100 or 1000 or 10,000 mark, we probably could come close to the number of cases and deaths per 10 million population that Japan is at. Japan has a population of 127 million people, and as of today has 2,178 cases and 57 deaths from COVID-19. With our population of 330 million people, we have 190,740 cases and 4,127 deaths.
What a monumentally senseless cause of suffering.
I think I’ve got you’re email address. I’ll shoot you an email today or tomorrow.
Best wishes,
Mark
P.S. I still think I’ll win easily on the number of COVID-19 deaths being less than 40,000 in 2020. We’re idiots, but I do think there are limits!
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 20 2020 at 6:21pm
While these are all good ideas, the scenes from Florida showing lots of college kids frolicking early this week don’t inspire much confidence. My elder daughter is an elementary school special education teacher. For those kids, it’s difficult enough just to keep a semblance of order in the classroom much less having rational cleanliness standards.
Mark Bahner
Mar 21 2020 at 12:39am
OK, let’s look at Spring Break. I assume that virtually all of the people on Spring Break are adults. (So you can’t go through their parents.)
Here are some things local governments–or even private land owners, if the Spring Breakers are on private land–could do that would be far less coercive than to close the beaches. The whole list might not be necessary…even one or two items might be sufficient.
A) Require every beach attender to pay maybe $2 to receive a 20 minute lecture before being allowed on the beach. The lectures would cover the basics of COVID-19 with emphasis on how it spreads and how dangerous it can be…not necessarily to them, but to their parents and especially grandparents. (I imagine very few college kids want to be a cause of the death of their grandparents.) Point out to them that, were this 1940-1945, males among them could would probably be fighting in WWII, so the annoyances here are fairly minor.
B) Require every beach goer to wear a filter mask and washable gloves when not in the water. Both items would be purchased by the beachgoers, or they could bring their own. Further inform them that there is a modest fine (say $50) for failure to wear the masks and gloves except when in the water.
C) Urge them to maintain several feet of distance both on land and in the water.
D) Require them to sign in and present their photo IDs or their license plate numbers to get onto the beach. Cordon off beaches into couple-hundred-yard increments, and require them to stay in those increments, so that contact tracing can be performed if a COVID-19 outbreak occurred.
E) Make them sign a consent that random people may be required to give a mouth swab sample to allow for coronavirus testing.
F) Take ear measurements of temperatures prior to entering the beach.
G) Advise them that, for the sake of their families, the people in their universities, and fellow Spring Breakers, they should report any symptoms of COVID-19 to proper health authorities both at Break and for at least three weeks afterward.
You might think, “Wow, that’s pretty coercive!” But it pales compared to the coercion of closing the beach.
P.S. Regarding the special ed kids, like I wrote before, maybe school could be called off for the younger kids (or special ed kids), but not for older kids.
Mark Bahner
Mar 21 2020 at 11:51am
Hi Alan,
I may simply be a naive optimist about human nature, but thinking about this some more, I think all that probably would have been needed was to force the Spring Breakers to pay $2 each (to cover the cost of the lecturers) to hear a 5-10 minute lecture about COVID-19 before being allowed on the beach.
Basically, the lecture would be a “canned” lecture that retirees would be paid to come give. It would go something like:
Don Geddis
Mar 20 2020 at 9:27pm
Here’s a very, very different take: without extreme government coercion now, US deaths are likely to be in the high hundreds of thousands, and easily plausible in the millions (if ICUs and ventilators get overwhelmed) — especially if you include collateral damage.
You’re essentially proposing a voluntary, “leaky” quarantine (mostly social / cultural pressure). Simulations with leaky quarantines suggest that they perform hardly better than no quarantine at all.
I suspect that your prediction that the political bias here will be “too much coercion” will not be correct. The medical facts of this situation suggest instead the the US will more likely not have the political will to take as drastic measures as necessary, before it is “too late”. There are “only” a few hundred deaths today. It seems there will almost certainly be thousands of deaths within the next year no matter what is done. Without coercion, likely millions of deaths in the next year. Finding the “right level” of coercion, to end up with something between thousands and millions of deaths, is not at all an easy puzzle.
Scott Sumner
Mar 20 2020 at 10:35pm
Actually, I’m not “proposing” anything. Read the post again.
John Alcorn
Mar 21 2020 at 10:02am
Dr. Sumner,
Thanks for your latest insights.
A question about coercion at the margin, so to speak:
If random testing (at efficient scale) at regular intervals would yield highly useful information for analysis, behavior, and policy; and if feasible incentives (e.g., payments) wouldn’t achieve sufficient willingness to be randomly tested, then would you endorse coercion to achieve compliance with random testing?
Mark Bahner
Mar 21 2020 at 11:06am
I’m not Scott, but this seems so unlikely that it’s not really worth considering the hypothetical. The “testing” (the sampling part anyway) is just a mouth swab…it’s not anything intrusive or embarrassing. And it seems to me most people would be happy to make sure they don’t have the virus. If they do have the virus, they could spread it to their family, friends and co-workers, etc. So I don’t see any possible strong incentive not to get tested.
John Alcorn
Mar 21 2020 at 11:18am
Anecdotal evidence: According to news reports, a majority of passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship at San Francisco refused to be tested, presumably because they wanted to avoid extended quarantine.
Mark Bahner
Mar 21 2020 at 9:09pm
I think the Grand Princess is a pretty special case. From the article you cited:
So here are unfortunate people who have been quarantined for 19 days already…5 on the ship and 14 at Travis AFB. And the offer to them seems to have been: “You could take the test. We don’t know when the results will be back. You need to stay until the results come, no matter how long that is. If they’re positive, you’ll have to continue to stay here at Travis AFB (presumably for 14 more days).
This sort of situation is inexplicable to me. (Actually, it isn’t. It’s governmental stupidity, which is easily explained. The government officials feel like they have to go by the book, even if that means people walk out without being tested. So the book results in a stupid outcome.)
In my mind, government officials should be pitching the testing along the lines of a car salesperson, “What can we do to get you to do the testing?”
In particular, why not tell this 86 year old women and her 84 year old husband, “Look if you take the test, and it takes more than 48 hours to get the results, we’ll send you home. You just need to stay at home with limited contacts (e.g., people in respirator and hooded coveralls with face shield) until the test results come in. Then, if the results are positive, you just need to stay in your home 14 more days, with continued limited contacts.”
Thaomas
Mar 21 2020 at 1:21pm
Anything that is done about an externality is “coercion.” The point is to try as best as one can given the uncertainties to figure out the optimal response.
J Mann
Mar 23 2020 at 12:39pm
I’d be interested in analysis of supply side coercion, if anyone can point me to some.
With New York MUCH harder hit than anyone else, and with general shortages of masks and ventilators, lots of people are calling on the feds to impose a wartime economy, directing ventilators to NY, re-purposing factories to make masks, etc. Are any countries doing this, and how is it working out?
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