The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “anti-vaxxer” as “a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination.” Where does that leave us? We both strongly favor vaccination against Covid-19; one of us (Mr. Hooper) has spent years working and consulting for vaccine manufacturers. But we strongly oppose government vaccine mandates. If you’re crazy about Hondas but don’t think the government should force everyone to buy a Honda, are you “anti-Honda”?
The people at Merriam-Webster are blurring the distinction between choice and coercion, and that’s not merely semantics. If we accept that the difference between choice and coercion is insignificant, we will be led easily to advocate policies that require a large amount of coercion. Coercive solutions deprive us of freedom and the responsibility that goes with it. Freedom is intrinsically valuable; it is also the central component of the best problem-solving system ever devised.
These are the opening two paragraphs of David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper, “Coercion Made the Pandemic Worse,” Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2021 (December 28, 2021 print edition.)
I’ll post the whole thing on January 27, 2022, when my agreement with the WSJ allows me to.
I’ve had a lot of fun this morning responding to commenters on the WSJ site.
One commenter said:
These authors compare choosing whether or not to get vaccinated with whether or not to buy a Honda. Completely inapplicable comparison.
Vaccination during a public health emergency is NOT merely a personal choice – never has been. That’s why George Washington successfully forced all his troops to receive the primitive smallpox inoculation in January 1777 and why the US Supreme Court in the historic Jacobson vs. Massachusetts case upheld compulsory vaccinations — for the good of the American public.
Choosing a Honda has almost no effect on the health of your neighbor. Choosing whether or not to get vaccinated will almost certainly have an effect.
He didn’t get it.
Commenter Justin Sauerwein replied beautifully:
Assuming your response is genuine, you did not understand the article at all.
The authors did not compare Honda to anything, they take issue with Webster’s definition that conflates two different things (“blurring the distinction between choice and coercion”) and used Honda to illustrate the concept.
The last several paragraphs deal with the problem of externalities in matters of public health and why coercion (including vaccination) is not optimal.
I replied to another commenter who showed very little reading comprehension. For that reason, I won’t name him. This commenter wrote:
Do we know these two authors are vaccinated or not ?
They don’t reveal
But judging from their education level and age
they are vaccinated, and boosted
and yet, they encourage others NOT to do what is best to stay safe
these tow [sic] authors just have to do what is best to earn their paychecks, via viewpoints of (anti-science) conservatives
I replied:
So when we wrote, “We both strongly favor vaccination against Covid-19,” that didn’t tip you off that we would encourage others to be vaccinated?
I thought of another response just now dealing with the commenter’s claim that we “just have to do what is best to earn [our] paychecks.” I’ll share it here. When the commenter read, assuming he did read, the statement in the first paragraph, “one of us (Mr. Hooper) has spent years working and consulting for vaccine manufacturers,” did he think that Charley wasn’t earning a paycheck for helping vaccine manufacturers? Surely he must have understood that consultants almost always get paid. And does he think that “encouraging others NOT to do what is best,” in this case, presumably, getting vaccinated, would be a good way to earn a paycheck from vaccine manufacturers?
READER COMMENTS
Alexandre Padilla
Dec 27 2021 at 4:59pm
David,
I did not comment on the WSJ site, but I did post a link to your op-ed on Facebook and put the following comment about this passage:
“Economists understand how one person can impose a cost on another. But it takes two to tango, and it’s generally more efficient if the person who can change his behavior with the lower cost changes how he behaves. In other words, to perform a proper evaluation of policies to deal with externalities, we must consider the responses available to both parties. Many people, including economists, ignore this insight.”
It’s true. One thing to add is that sometimes doing nothing is also the efficient solution if the costs of doing something to both parties are greater than the costs of doing nothing. Sometimes the responses available to both parties are more costly than the problem the responses would attempt to mitigate or to solve. I would argue that in politics “doing nothing” is never an option, but economists who understand Coase’s analysis also understands that doing nothing even in the case of externalities can also be the efficient answer in some circumstances. To be sure, in the case of COVID-19, doing nothing might not be the efficient answer. Again, it depends of how we calculate the costs involved for each alternative policy regimes.
David Henderson
Dec 27 2021 at 5:36pm
Good point.
Zeke5123
Dec 29 2021 at 8:17am
In law (torts specifically) this concept is called the learned hand formula. It should’ve been known to each lawyer who helped craft these rules.
Jon Murphy
Dec 27 2021 at 5:20pm
With respect, I don’t think it’s fair to put the blame on Merriam-Webster here. Rather, I suspect they’re just reacting to the changing language. Many people have been using “anti-X” to describe both being against a certain idea (eg vaccines) and against policies (eg vaccine mandates). Being against minimum wage is equated with being against poor people. Being against government imposition of global warming policies is equated to being a “climate denier.” Being against universal health care is equated with being against health care. And so on.
I think Merriam-Webster is picking up on a trend. The popular language is blurring the distinction between choice and coercion. Not MW.
David Henderson
Dec 27 2021 at 5:28pm
You write:
So in your view, Merriam-Webster has no agency in this?
Jon Murphy
Dec 27 2021 at 6:04pm
Limited. They’re doing their job: describing words as they are used. Language is a spontaneous order, abd unfortunately the language is changing to allow this confusion.
Vivian Darkbloom
Dec 27 2021 at 6:39pm
“a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination.”
I would think that the purpose of Merriam-Webster would be to provide clear and accurate definitions. The use of the conjunction “or” doesn’t do that. It conflates two entirely different positions, as David correctly points out. To me, it’s as if Merriam-Webster doesn’t recognize the long-standing definitions of “anti-” and “vaccination”.
I would rather accept an entry such as the following:
A person who opposes the use of vaccines against the SARS-Covid virus;
The term used for rhetorical and political purposes to intentionally conflate a person who opposes the use of such vaccines with a person who is opposed to regulations mandating such use.
I trust that the second sense solves your issue with Merrian-Webster’s role of describing words as they are used. In fact, in my humble opinion, my version serves that purpose better.
David Henderson
Dec 27 2021 at 7:23pm
Well done. Thanks, Viv.
Greg G
Dec 28 2021 at 5:54pm
David I think you and Vivian are misunderstanding Jon’s very good point.
The job of a dictionary is to describe the language as it is ACTUALLY used not how it WOULD BE used IF people were to speak more clearly and accurately than they really do.
Like it or not, describing people opposed to vaccine mandates as anti-vaxxers is a common enough usage that it is appropriate for the dictionary to reflect this. This really is often used as a shorthand way of saying “anti- vaccine mandates.” This does not mean you need to employ this usage or stop arguing against it. It does mean your beef is not with the dictionary. Many words are used in two or more different ways. In such cases it is entirely appropriate that the dictionary describes two or more possible meanings.
I always find it amusing when libertarians complain other people’s word choices are incorrect. Language is by far the most libertarian of all human institutions. Everyone gets to decide for themselves what the words they speak and hear mean. The penalty for getting it “wrong” is that you may not be understood the way you want to be. That’s the problem with libertarianism. The minute you give people the freedom to choose they start making choices you don’t like such as using “anti-vaxxer” as shorthand for persons opposed to vaccine mandates.
Many people believe that language is, or ought to be, based on logic. It is not. It never has been despite the fact that many usages are logical. It is convention all the way down and conventions are constantly changing. That’s why reading centuries old English can feel like reading a foreign language. That’s why all attempts to show anything other than social convention as the basis for word meanings have gone down in flames.
There are many popular language conventions I find deplorable. I don’t use those conventions and sometimes tell people why I deplore those conventions. I never blame the dictionary.
AMT
Dec 28 2021 at 8:26pm
No. Many, many words have broad definitions that span multiple different ideas. The “or” does not mean the definition is incorrect.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monster
“an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure”
Notice, these are entirely different classes of things. That doesn’t mean the definition is incorrect. You’ll find many examples in the English language.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/let
“to give opportunity to or fail to prevent”
Again, there are significant distinctions between these two concepts. We might wish that words only ever had a single meaning, but that is, extremely obviously, not the case.
Jens
Dec 28 2021 at 8:17am
Language is a spontaneous order
true.
Alexandre Padilla
Dec 27 2021 at 6:31pm
David and Jon,
Here’s the link to the Merriam-Webster dictionary on how they define or redefine words in the dictionary:
“To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it’s used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.
Each day most Merriam-Webster editors devote an hour or two to reading a cross section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and electronic publications; in our office this activity is called “reading and marking.” The editors scour the texts in search of new words, new usages of existing words, variant spellings, and inflected forms–in short, anything that might help in deciding if a word belongs in the dictionary, understanding what it means, and determining typical usage. Any word of interest is marked, along with surrounding context that offers insight into its form and use.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-words-into-dictionary#:~:text=To%20decide%20which%20words%20to,the%20language%20as%20it's%20used.&text=Any%20word%20of%20interest%20is,into%20its%20form%20and%20use.
Andre
Dec 29 2021 at 9:12am
“cross section”
This is the crux of the argument, isn’t it? The M-W arbiters of definitions claim to be reading a cross section, but they’re clearly not.
Over the past year, we’ve seen on-the-fly literal redefinition of dictionary words in response to administration positions on issues.
To me, the press and the dictionary have become textbook (ha!) examples of slavishness to the administration. As opposed to, say, speaking truth to power.
With anti-vaxx, you have a disputed definition being lumped in with an unrelated definition into a composite definition.
Being against vaccines and being for vaccines but against mandates are two different things, no matter what AMT thinks. The fact that two-thirds of the public might agree with the combo definition doesn’t make it correct.
If you call a tail a leg, a dog still has only four legs.
Andre
Dec 29 2021 at 9:19am
“I’m an anti-vaxxer – I’m pro-vaccine, but against mandates.”
Said no one, ever.
AMT
Dec 29 2021 at 11:20am
That’s not even close to what I said. I said words can, and very often do have multiple meanings. So even though those ARE different things, that doesn’t mean the definition is incorrect.
Please read more carefully.
Zeke5123
Dec 29 2021 at 8:24am
I cannot escape the feeling that there is a feedback loop here — there has been a lively debate about what it means to be anti vaxx. The dictionary coming down on one side of the debate seems to be putting a thumb on the scale of a lively debate. So now the debate can be ended to pointing to the dictionary and the proponents of that can keep saying “I am right — the dictionary confirms it” which means they will use the phrase more thereby validating the dictionary definition.
Stated differently, the dictionary should be slow to make changes to definitions that differ from historical use when that usage is being hotly debated. Or they should have some different destination (“New debated use”).
Kevin Roberts
Dec 27 2021 at 6:21pm
David, hello. Didn’t have a chance to read the WSJ article.
As I understand it. Government decisions are usually coercive.
Think of laws and regulations at a country, state o municipal level.
Lets replace coercion made the pandemic worse with these examples:
“Coercion made charging taxes worse.”
“Coercion made respecting traffic lights worse “.
“Coercion made enforcing my property rights worse “.
“Coercion made polio vaccination worse”.
The universal question should probably again be: what are the limits to my personal rights vs others rights.
The big issue here is: if I have to protect myself against covid-19 because others choose no to vaccine, why should I pay taxes, respect traffic lights, or be made responsable for any externality my personal choices affect others”. ?.
Might as well not have any types of laws or regulations that coerce me. Lets make everything voluntary.
David Henderson
Dec 29 2021 at 10:08am
I think that to comment on the overall article, you would have to read the whole article. As I wrote, I will post this next month.
You commented on the title. We didn’t choose the title; the editor did.
JP
Dec 29 2021 at 1:18pm
If I’m understanding the point the authors are making, there is no free lunch for a government to coerce. In order to coerce, the government must harm someone. Who decides that harm and to whom? The government decides. You can’t pretend no one is harmed.
example –
a gentleman I know loves mandates and zoom school because his daughter is a teacher. So, to him, these policies are great and are serving the greater good. He praises the government for recognizing the negative externalities born by his daughter. This is first-level thinking.
On the second-level, what he ignores is that a child in his daughter’s class has a mother who is a nurse. This nurse is working hard to serve her community and may be at the end of her rope. She accepts the risk of school for her daughter. She outsources education to her local school. And the government just dumped the job of school teacher on her “for the greater good.”
The teacher gets to avoid germs from children. The nurse gets to serve her community yet again. Nothing is free. You can’t pretend one side is more sanctimonious without recognizing both, or you shouldn’t anyway.
Of the parties involved, we can account for the risks each is taking in both worlds. But, here comes another level:
The teacher can quit. So can the nurse. The teacher can be replaced with someone young and immune. The nurse can go on strike. When the government decides the externality, it should also use tools to support the actors making moves that are best for them rather than dictating. It should not always coerce; it should remove frictions to movement.
We asked FedEx truck drivers with diabetes to work double shifts so Ironman triathletes could hide… for the greater good? We actually did that. Hmmm…
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 1 2022 at 4:26am
I’m not sure of the conceptual point. Individually and collectively (government at different levels), should act taking into account the effects our actions on others. Some coercive actions of the government are justified if they reduce negative externalities at least cost. The teacher I know would have preferred to continue in person but was willing to teach less effectively and at greater effort in order to reduce the spred of the virus among families by the mixing of children in schools. The degree of spreading in schools was probably overestimated om most places and the cost in instructional efficiency was probably underestimated so most of those decisions seem mistaken in retrospect, but the parameters of those models were unknown at the time.
Mark Barbieri
Dec 27 2021 at 6:53pm
I would have preferred that, instead of mandates, they exposed the non-vaccinated to more of the costs of not being vaccinated. They should have done things like requiring a supplemental Medicare plan covering COVID hospitalizations for the unvaccinated. I think the Kroger grocery chain increased health care costs and reduced paid leave for the unvaccinated. Leave people the freedom to choose, but make sure that they accept the cost for their choice.
Michael
Dec 27 2021 at 7:29pm
To me “antivaxxer” has always meant someone who opposes vaccines, not vaccination mandates. At best that’s a new (and dubious) use of the term. I might call someone who spreads misinformation about vaccines (of the sort we’ve seen spreading rampantly among antivaxxers) an antivaxxer also.
I think there’s substantial overlap between people who oppose vaccines and people who oppose vaccine mandates but the groups are not one and the same, as noted in this thread.
Daniel B
Dec 27 2021 at 11:44pm
Ever since reading “Externality and COVID-19” (a study from the Southern Economic Journal) several months ago I’ve become pretty skeptical of externality arguments involving COVID-19. IIRC the short version of the study is that many COVID-19 “externalities” are actually internalized. To give an analogous example from the study, smoking imposes externalities on other people via second-hand smoke (which is pretty irritating in my experience). But let’s say the smoking occurs in a restaurant which I knew allowed smoking. The externality is actually internalized, because when I went into the restaurant I implicitly accepted the risk of getting exposed to smoke. That risk was accounted for in my decision – it was reflected in a compensating difference, such as lower prices, better food, faster wait times, higher wages (applicable if I’m an employee of the restaurant), etc. If the risk weren’t compensated adequately enough for me, then obviously I would eat/work somewhere else.
The restaurant smoking example is not fundamentally different from a fully booked restaurant where you’re going to have to wait at least an hour to get a table. People going to restaurants impose an externality on you and me; because of them, we have to wait longer to get the food we want at those places. But the externality is internalized via the restaurant’s prices and other compensating differences (e.g., the insanely high quality of the restaurant “is worth the wait”).
Similarly with COVID-19. “Residual infection risk that visitors face from the on-site behaviors of other visitors is infection risk that they face contractually and thus risk that does not impose on-site external costs. If you choose to visit a site that, say, requires masks but does not limit the number of simultaneous visitors, the cost of the remaining infection risk that you face as a result of the on-site behavior of other visitors must by your reckoning be compensated adequately by the site… No matter the form compensation takes, it must at least equal the cost to you of the residual on-site infection risk created by the behavior of other visitors or you would not willingly visit the site. That cost is therefore internalized.”
Notice the similarity of “the number of visitors” problem here to my fully booked restaurant example. Both increase risks – of infection and wait times, respectively. But the “on-site” externalities are internalized. The study distinguishes those externalities from “cross-site” externalities. My decision to use a subway during this pandemic does not account for the effect my behavior has on the infection risk for the other sites I’ll be going to – such as the people at my next destination, the supermarket, who are probably more vulnerable to infection in consequence. Cross-site externalities are the uninternalized externalities to be concerned about – and even these are partially internalized as the study discusses. For those we have to understand the Coase Theorem’s insight that “the person who can change his behavior with the lower cost” should be the one who changes his behavior.
David Henderson
Dec 28 2021 at 9:51am
Daniel,
I did an article on this (smoking in restaurants) in Econ Journal Watch about 15 years ago. If you’re interested, tell me and I’ll post a link.
Daniel B
Dec 28 2021 at 7:03pm
Found it here and an unpersuasive criticism of it here. The critics just assert that there’s no way for the restaurant owner to compensate for smoke exposure but that’s baloney as your paper and my verbose post here demonstrate. They also focus way too much on the intentions of businessmen (“how are they to know that the information is biased? “). Even if businessmen were fooled by the tobacco industry, they don’t survive by producing what the tobacco industry wants, but by producing what consumers want. And a lot of them want smoke free places. The critics’ argument is analogous to saying that people are “biased” by their racism and therefore won’t hire blacks and other minorities. There’s simply too much competitive pressure for them to refuse hiring minorities, and there’s simply too much competitive pressure for businesses to indulge the tobacco industry.
Sorry for my verbosity 😛
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 28 2021 at 3:41am
The issue of coercion in vaccines is that it goes both ways. The non-vaccinated person probabilistically makes the other person sick. That is coercion, too.
robc
Dec 30 2021 at 7:33am
No it isnt. Read the long post just above yours.
If you choose to associate with unvaccinated, there is no externality. You have already internalized the risk. Hermits choose not to internalize the risk.
Daniel B
Dec 31 2021 at 4:16pm
Even if the unvaccinated are using “coercion” against us, what kind of “coercion” are we talking about? A few months ago an analysis of Delta variant death statistics from the CDC concluded that a vaccinated person is likelier to die of a bee sting than of COVID-19. My understanding of the Omicron variant is that it isn’t as deadly as the Delta variant, so these statistics are as relevant as ever.
Mark Brady
Dec 28 2021 at 3:52pm
Readers may be interested to learn that the Oxford English Dictionary informs us that anti-vax (noun and adjective) precedes anti-vaxxer (noun) by almost two hundred years.
Edward Jenner in a letter dated 18 November 1812 writes, “The Anti-Vacks are assailing me, I see, with all the force they can muster in the newspapers.”
The first recorded use of anti-vaxxer provided by the OED is from 2001. “The anti-vaxers [sic] are only too pleased to help.”
And in case anyone wonders, anti-vaccinist is recorded as early as 1822, anti-vaccinator in 1869, and anti-vaccinationist in 1883.
In the nineteenth century, the opposition to compulsory vaccination was based on an appeal to individual rights as well as seeking to refute the medical case for mandatory jabs. In 1853 the Anti-Vaccination League in London was founded in response to the Vaccination Act of that year. (The Act made vaccination compulsory for all infants in the first three months of life and made defaulting parents liable to a fine or imprisonment.) It wasn’t until 1867 that the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was founded, and 1874 that the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter appeared. It therefore seems that at one time the opponents of compulsory vaccination called themselves anti-vaccinators even though I dare say some of them were not opposed to vaccination as a personal choice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123944/ (and scroll down for links to the scholarly literature)
Vivian Darkbloom
Dec 29 2021 at 8:08am
My copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (1991 edition) doesn’t contain the word “anti-vax”, “anti-vaxx”, or “anti-vaccinist”. Neither does my Third International Webster’s Dictionary.
I don’t subscribe to the most recent edition of the OED, but I doubt the definition, if any, would differ from the definition available from Oxford online:
“a person who is opposed to vaccination, especially a parent who does not wish to vaccinate their child because they believe it could be harmful”.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/anti-vaxxer?q=anti-vaxxer
See the difference?
Greg G
Dec 29 2021 at 10:17am
Yes, of course it’s possible to “see the difference” between different dictionaries. If that wasn’t the case there would be no reason to have more than one dictionary.
And if it wasn’t commonplace for some people (and a growing number of people) to use “anti-vaxxer” as verbal shorthand for “person opposed to this vaccine mandate” then there wouldn’t be a good reason for this blog post in the first place.
But that IS a usage common enough to justify a blog post urging against this commonplace usage…and ALSO commonplace enough for a dictionary to note how the word is actually used by many people like it or not.
If this wasn’t actually a common usage it wouldn’t have you so agitated.
robc
Dec 30 2021 at 7:35am
The dictionary should include the new definition as an alternative, not mix with an or.
That way the two definitions stay distinct, showing the distinction in the way its used.
Greg G
Dec 30 2021 at 10:03am
Your wish has been granted.
When I Googled the meaning of “or” the first definition I got was “a conjunction used to link alternatives.”
When Merriam -Webster separates two possible meanings with the conjunction “or” they are plainly telling you that these are distinct alternative usages.
robc
Dec 30 2021 at 1:33pm
No, that isnt correct. Do definition 1 and definition 2. The or doesnt imply 2 separate definitions but two separate cases that are accepted by all users.
Fast – moves swiftly or not at all.
vs
Fast 1) moves swiftly
2) stays in place
steve
Dec 28 2021 at 11:00pm
Have there ever been successful widespread vaccinations without mandates? Absent mandates do we still have smallpox, measles, polio rampant in the community?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00267-1/fulltext
Steve
David Henderson
Dec 29 2021 at 10:09am
I’m not sure of the answer to your question.
steve
Dec 30 2021 at 10:39am
I cant find any instance where we did not have widespread, successful vaccinations without mandates. Maybe it happened but I cant find it. It does look like when you look at stuff like smallpox, measles, polio that there were significant outbreaks until we had mandates. My best guess, based upon history, is that absent mandates we have much higher levels of these diseases persisting. So I think if you are an absolutist you decide that no matter how high the death toll you dont impose mandates, but I dont know how many people think that way.
Steve
Daniel B
Jan 4 2022 at 3:32am
“Much of Europe enjoys broad coverage without mandates, whereas poor countries’ edicts are often honoured in the breach. Even among countries with similar gdp per person, those with mandates do not vaccinate more—perhaps because only places with low uptake resort to coercion.”
The last sentence is especially important when considering the link Steve posted. The places that mandate vaccines are not the same as places that don’t, and that’s a factor The Lancet doesn’t seem to consider. For example, it’s probably true that more people in Mandate Country would voluntarily get vaccines than people in Non-Mandate Country. This article has some data on differences; places with Biden voter majorities tend to be likelier to impose mandate. It also casts some doubt on the idea of vaccine mandates.
My reply to commenter Thomas Lee Hutcheson also has some must-read data for those who favor vaccine mandates.
Comments are closed.