The most recent EconTalk with Russ Roberts interviewing Tyler Cowen is quite good. They cover a lot of territory and Tyler has a lot of insights about culture, among other things. Tyler also, to his credit, even points out predictions and thoughts on which, he realizes in retrospect, he was wrong.
There’s one issue, though, an important one, on which Tyler still has trouble admitting he’s wrong: the Great Barrington Declaration.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Russ Roberts: Should we have followed something akin to what the Great Barrington Declaration folks are suggesting: Extreme care with people over the age of 70 and 80 and letting other people mostly go about their business?
Tyler Cowen: That’s not my read of what the Great Barrington Declaration [GBD] actually called for.
Russ Roberts: That may not be fair to them. That’s my read. Yeah.
Tyler Cowen: A lot of the people connected with that institution [DRH note: by “that institution” Tyler means the American Institute for Economic Research] have made very dubious predictions and not backed down from them. They’ve told us that a lot of the cases are phony. It will all be over by–fill in the month. But, it’s typically some time that was a while ago. Very passive attitudes or even hostile attitudes toward vaccines. And, making lockdown the only issue.
I think when you look at the overall entire framing of Great Barrington, it’s been extremely harmful. It has led libertarian and conservative movements in the wrong direction.
The emphasis should have been, all along, deregulating the process of getting good vaccines out there quickly. And, if you look at what the Great Barrington people did on that it was remarkably little until very late in the process. And, you even have Jeffrey Tucker, well into fall, saying, ‘Vaccines, what vaccines? We need to let everyone get infected.’
Russ Roberts: I’m more interested–
Tyler Cowen: So, I’ve been very much opposed to their program as a whole. Though some parts of it, if you present in isolation, do in fact make good sense.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I’m think of Jay Bhattacharya, who on this program I thought was quite sensible about the idea of locking down everyone seems remarkably inefficient and puts an enormous cost on people who are at relatively low risk.
Yeah, I have nothing to say about the more institutional implementation of that Declaration [GBD]. But, the original Declaration [GBD] and the epidemiologists and economists who were involved, the three people, made some sense to me. But, yeah, I’m not interested actually in those other side-agendas.
Tyler Cowen: It’s not independent from the other agendas. And they also systematically overestimate how many lockdowns are in operation.
So, past a certain point most parts of the United States, schools aside, have been mostly open. My state of Virginia, virtually all stores have been open for really a long time. One may or may not agree with that. But, there has not been a major lockdown for a long time in most of the Southeast, and indeed many other parts of the county.
Notice what happened. Russ tries as gently as he can to get Tyler to answer his question about the GBD. Russ summarizes the GBD in one sentence. And I think Russ does a great job of that. Tyler says that’s not his read of the GBD but doesn’t say how the GBD differs from what Russ has summarized.
Instead, Tyler engages in classic “guilt by association.” Tyler says, “A lot of people connected with that institution have made very dubious predictions.” But the issue Russ asked about was not “that institution” but the GBD. Then Tyler names someone: “And, you even have Jeffrey Tucker, well into fall, saying, ‘Vaccines, what vaccines? We need to let everyone get infected.'”
I don’t know if Jeff Tucker said exactly what Tyler said he said, but it doesn’t matter: Jeff Tucker is not one of the authors of the GBD. I had lunch with Jay Bhattacharya on Tuesday and asked him point blank: “Did Jeff Tucker write or edit any part of the GBD?” Jay’s answer: No.
This is not a small issue. Had we focused on protecting the vulnerable and n0t locking down the young and healthy and keeping children out of school, we would be in a lot better shape today, with fewer COVID deaths of the elderly and less destruction of the economy.
Here, by the way, is the Great Barrington Declaration. See if you think Russ did a good job of summarizing it.
READER COMMENTS
Michael Koehler
Apr 9 2021 at 7:44pm
That’s an interesting take on this discussion. I suggest that you are seeing this through your pre-conceived views
For the record I largely agree with Tyler on this. The GBD struck me as more driven by desired state than facts.
I acknowledge that my personal experience informs my views on this and I acknowledge that I may be biased by that experience. I know more under 65s who died in the last year from Covid19 and no one over 70.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 9 2021 at 8:11pm
Mr. Koehler:
You wisely recognize that your own personal experience is not necessarily a good guide to the reality of Covid. According to the CDC, Covid in the U.S. ‘targets’ 81 percent of its lethality to people 65 and older, 59 percent of its lethality to people 75 and older, and 31% – nearly a third – of its lethality to people 85 and older. This disease is not one that poses a major threat to the typical person.
As for the Great Barrington Declaration, it is based on well-established public-health principles – or, at least, such principles as were long established and accepted until early 2020. Here, for example, is an op-ed published on March 20, 2020, in the New York Times by Dr. David Katz – an op-ed that pretty much recommends what less than five months later was recommended in the GBD to such absurd and mindless ridicule.
Jens
Apr 10 2021 at 2:09am
“””
This disease is not one that poses a major threat to the typical person.
“””
A lethality distribution that is very progressive with respect to age does not indicate that a disease is not a major threat to the typical person. That’s simply a non sequitur. The same is true of death himself and death is not the only consequence of disease. You simply did not say anything about what a major threat to the typical person is, but denied its actuality. Text about nothing.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 11 2021 at 4:09pm
Jens: You’re correct that “A lethality distribution that is very progressive with respect to age does not indicate that a disease is not a major threat to the typical person.” My apologies for being less than precise in my comment. So let me reword: A disease with a lethality distribution that is very progressive with respect to age, and whose infection-fatality rate is about 0.15%, is not a major threat to the typical person.
JFA
Apr 11 2021 at 9:26pm
Don,
I’d be careful taking that number at face value. The authors are very quick to note that IFR differs significantly between countries and within countries. I doubt it is that low for the US, as it would imply a 100% infection for the US. Also, I was a fan of Ioannidis before Covid, but he hasn’t quite put his best foot forward during this whole thing. I would certainly be wary of any mean presented without a standard deviation put next to it.
Eric Johnson
Apr 11 2021 at 11:09pm
If we debating US policy, and I think we are, a IFR estimate of 0.15% is, frankly, not credible.
JFA
Apr 12 2021 at 7:18am
Also note that the relevant data is not just limited to the IFR but also the probability of infection.
zeke5123
Apr 12 2021 at 10:19am
This is more a response to JFA (but for some reason having trouble responding directly to him).
0.15% IFR can be explained without assuming 100% of the US has been infected; the numbers counted as COVID deaths are wildly overstated. There are a few things that are facts:
There are financial incentives to count deaths as COVID deaths
We know that in some states that audited death certificates COVID deaths appear materially overstated (e.g., some don’t detail any respiratory issues).
We know the WHO promulgated guidelines to count as COVID deaths anyone who tested positive for COVID, regardless of whether the death appeared connected to COVID.
We know there were basically no reported flu deaths, etc. (i.e., some were likely misattributed to COVID).
The response to these objections are “excess deaths.” But that seems to assume the answer; is it really hard to believe that unprecedented lock down and fear mongering couldn’t cause significant increase in deaths (e.g., deaths of despair, delayed emergency medicine, increased homicide rates).
Prof. Boudreaux posted a link at Cafehayek to an article that used extremely high level math to show how COVID deaths could easily be a fraction of the reported number (e.g., around 120k). Even that author acknowledged that his number was not correct. But the points he raise make it appear very likely that the number of COVID deaths is less than what was reported AND provides explanation for the excess deaths.
If COVID deaths are 5x overstated, then a 0.15% IFR is perfectly reasonable.
JFA
Apr 12 2021 at 12:56pm
I don’t really buy the story of Covid deaths being undercounted. First, if you are assuming that Covid deaths are actually 1/5 the reported number, then a 0.15% IFR would the total number of cases at 73 million. That’s only twice the number of reported cases. I’m skeptical that testing is missing only half the number of infections and have thought the number of infections is probably around 3-4 times the reported amount. Using an IFR of 0.5% (which is what the CDC has used for it’s scenario planning) and using the number of reported deaths would give an infection number of 110 million. That makes more sense to me. I understand it’s more of an intuitive response, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s just that I see people who don’t believe the reported death number usually say Covid has been around for a lot longer and so many people have already had it while also saying the IFR is low (and close to the flu). In fact, Ioannidis has been one of those people who has said that infections have been extremely underestimated and is now saying the IFR is close to the flu. It can’t be both. I’m not saying you (Zeke) are doing this, but that’s the pattern I see.
Second, the number of excess deaths is incredibly consistent with the number of covid deaths. In fact, if you look at the CDC data, the correlation between weekly covid deaths and weekly excess deaths is 0.97. When you look at it by state, a similar pattern emerges (in states that have had “lockdowns” and states that have been out of lockdown for a while). It is really strange that Covid-19 deaths track excess deaths pretty closely. For 2020, excess deaths were ~450k (using the upper bound for excess deaths) and covid deaths were ~390k. If it’s just the financial incentive to list C-19 on the death certificate, how do the doctors know to match the number of excess deaths so closely.
Here’s the R code. I encourage anyone to graph it. I’d ignore the data after January 2021 due to reporting lags.
library(dplyr)
library(foreign)
library(stringr)
library(magrittr)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)
library(cowplot)
library(gridExtra)
library(directlabels)
library(ggrepel)
library(gghighlight)
library(lubridate)
library(tidyr)
library(zoo)
library(scales)
library(tsibble)
options(scipen = 999, digits = 2)
# Data Preparation
excess = read.csv(‘https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/xkkf-xrst/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD&bom=true&format=true%20target=’, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
excess1 = excess %>%
filter(Type == “Predicted (weighted)” & Outcome == “All causes”) %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(ï..Week.Ending.Date),
week = week(date),
year = year(date),
yearweek = floor_date(date, “1 week”),
e_deaths = ifelse(Exceeds.Threshold == “true”, Observed.Number – Upper.Bound.Threshold, 0)) %>%
select(yearweek, e_deaths, Observed.Number, Upper.Bound.Threshold, State, Exceeds.Threshold)
excess2 = excess %>%
filter(Type == “Predicted (weighted)” & Outcome == “All causes, excluding COVID-19”) %>%
mutate(date = as.Date(ï..Week.Ending.Date),
week = week(date),
year = year(date),
yearweek = floor_date(date, “1 week”),
nonc19 = Observed.Number) %>%
select(yearweek, nonc19, State)
cdc_cov_deaths = left_join(excess1, excess2, by = c(“yearweek”, “State”)) %>%
filter(year(yearweek) >= 2020 & State == “United States”) %>%
mutate(c19_deaths = Observed.Number – nonc19) %>%
select(yearweek, e_deaths, c19_deaths)
#Plot excess deaths and c-19 deaths
cdc_cov_deaths %>% filter(yearweek < max(yearweek)) %>%
ggplot(aes(x = yearweek)) +
geom_line(aes(y = e_deaths), color = “blue”) +
geom_line(aes(y = c19_deaths), color = “red”)
JFA
Apr 13 2021 at 11:34am
Also, Zeke were you referring to this Cafe Hayek post: https://cafehayek.com/2021/03/some-covid-links-91.html?
zeke5123
Apr 10 2021 at 9:35am
At this point, anyone disagreeing with the statement that COVID almost entirely harms the very old is not a serious commentator on COVID. I appreciate you correcting the record, but if at this point people don’t know that what will change their mind?
David Henderson
Apr 9 2021 at 9:46pm
You wrote:
Of course you’re free to make any suggestion you want. It doesn’t address my point. My point is a narrow one: Russ Roberts did a good job of summarizing the GBD and Tyler said that wasn’t his take without saying what his take is.
So if you’re willing to stick to the issue I raised, in what way do you think Russ got it wrong?
Philo
Apr 11 2021 at 12:47pm
. . . and did Tyler really think Russ got it wrong, or did he simply confuse the Declaration itself with the broader views of some of its supporters?
AMW
Apr 9 2021 at 9:33pm
Can you flesh this out a bit? What sort of protections of the vulnerable are you envisioning that were not enacted as part of the regulations/lockdowns that were implemented?
Don Boudreaux
Apr 10 2021 at 10:18am
I don’t wish to speak here for David, but I’m guessing that he’ll agree with my reply to you, AMW. The answer to your question is straightforward: Don’t lockdown entire populations – don’t close schools – don’t shutter businesses; instead, focus protection on the vulnerable, who overwhelmingly are very old and ill people. Devote resources to protecting them, and let everyone else go about life normally.
The fact that the vulnerable are, of course, among those who are locked down and out under general lockdowns does not imply, as your question might be taken to imply, that there is little to no difference between the policy recommended by the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration and the general lockdowns.
AMW
Apr 11 2021 at 6:24pm
The problem I see with a targeted approach is that as the prevalence of the virus increases in the communities surrounding vulnerable populations it would become much more likely that the virus would find a way into those vulnerable populations. Suppose you live in a village below sea level and there is a breech in the dike. You can try to caulk up the homes of those who can’t swim, to make them watertight. But as the water rises it’s going to find its way into an awful lot of those homes.
Am I missing something here? I’m open to correction.
Christophe Biocca
Apr 10 2021 at 10:53am
The glib answer would probably be “don’t force nursing homes to accept not-yet-recovered patients back in”, but that was mostly an unforced error (though it was motivated by a desire to free up hospital capacity).
But generally nursing homes did extremely poorly in pretty much every jurisdiction I know of, and focusing efforts on that would have helped. One issue that was discussed is that the workers in these places often work in multiple of them to make ends meet. With the kinds of amounts that were spent on broad attempts at controlling the coronavirus, you could easily double/triple the wages of every worker in nursing homes, conditional on them working at only one place, and generally submitting themselves to extra testing and isolation to make sure they don’t bring in the infection. At one extreme you replace the current day-job approach to a live-in approach so that the entire nursing home has no one coming in or out for months at a time.
Philo
Apr 11 2021 at 12:55pm
The regulation of nursing homes could have been tightened, but most old or ill people–ill in ways that made them especially vulnerable–live independently and would have to protect themselves. Without any government diktats, vulnerable people can shun social contact, wear masks, and, in general, decide for themselves what risks to run.
Jim Dunning
Apr 11 2021 at 7:29pm
Two things hard not to note—
(1) Mainstream media did its best to not publicize that four out of five COVID deaths were over 75 years of age. Most news outlets focused on the heart-string-tugging stories of young parents being hospitalized and dying and pretended that most of the deaths involved people with gray hair (Google up the wall-sized montage of faces of COVID victims ABC News used all last year…).
(2) The CDC threw the elderly under the bus in its initial vaccine plans last November, again, for marketing optics.
Jim Dunning
Apr 11 2021 at 7:30pm
*”and pretended that most of the deaths did not people with gray hair…”
(need to proofread more)
Kevin Dick
Apr 9 2021 at 10:19pm
I’m glad you’re staying on Tyler about this. Frankly, his reasoning baffles me–not least because he seems reticent to clearly state his reasoning. Such a refusal would, of course, be perfectly acceptable–if he weren’t clearly criticizing other people’s reasoning.
Matt Borgard
Apr 9 2021 at 11:06pm
No, I think Tyler’s spot on, actually, and I don’t agree that extending criticism of the Declaration to statements its original authors and most famous defenders have offered in defense of it is guilt-by-association. After all, the entire point of a letter like this is to say “look how many smart people agree with us!” Which is fine, but if that’s the case, you open yourself up to some of those smart people saying dumb things on the topic.
But okay, even if we want to focus solely on the Declaration itself, I think the biggest evidence that it was wrong is that the oft-highlighted focus on “but how many deaths will results from diminished mental health?!” was complete and utter wrong.
mike
Apr 13 2021 at 3:53pm
Agree with your point that the recent data on suicides possibly being lower during covid cuts against some of the anti-lockdown arguments that have floated around for the last year.
Disagree with your point that “who agrees with an argument makes it weaker or stronger”. I could find some absolute loons who agree with the opposite position of the GBD. That in and of itself doesn’t invalidate the anti-GBD position.
Paul from Thedullchannel
Apr 10 2021 at 4:23am
Over past few years I more and more got the feeling that Tyler is playing “giant intellectual internet troll”. I do not mean this disparagingly…I think it is his way of stimulating discussion. Therefore I really no longer pay attention to his views…not sure if what he states are his views anyway.
I saw the podcast with Jay and I found most of the reasoning for the GDB quite sensible and after one year of lockdown and looking at Sweden or Florida actually vindicated. That there are some idiotic side agendas is beside the point, the pro lockdowners have their share of side agendas too.
Alan Goldhammer
Apr 10 2021 at 8:15am
Michael Koehler pretty much gets things right. Back when I was covering COVID-19 research in my daily newsletter I discussed the GBD in great detail. This commentary by David Henderson and the response by Professor Boudreaux prolong the fractious and IMO wrong debate about the impact of pandemic policies. I previously commented on Roberts interview with Dr. Bhattacharya which was also flawed.
I believe that Professor Cowen gets one thing wrong. He mentioned that the Southeast came through the pandemic better than other regions. This must come as a surprise to those living in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama where mortality was higher than normal. If he is restricting his definition of Southeast to Florida, there may be a kernel of truth.
Confirmation bias is powerful as the wonderful new book by William J. Bernstein, “The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups”, points out. Often those in the middle don’t even recognize their own bias.
zeke5123
Apr 10 2021 at 9:31am
Michael Koehler doesn’t get this right, because the immediate discussion here was not whether the GBD was correct but whether TC was being honest in his debate. Neither Michael nor you can make the claim that TC was being honest; you say he was correct. However, TC was not honest. Instead, he created, intentionally or not, a strawman as Prof. Henderson demonstrates. TC can still be right that the GBD was correct, but this argument doesn’t prove it.
I think both you and MK are incorrect on the GBD. The main insights by the GBD were: (i) lockdowns (including soft lockdowns) are very costly, (ii) COVID mortality is almost entirely among the old; especially the very old, and (iii) therefore it makes sense to eschew lockdowns and do focused protection on the elderly. This is to avoid the harms caused by lockdowns while also allowing you to use more resources to specifically target the elderly (i.e., if your target is the general population, then your resources are spread over the general population; instead, if your target is the elderly, then your resources are spread over a smaller population).
No one but no one can successfully argue that (i) and (ii) are “driven by desired state than facts.” I personally think (iii) makes perfect sense in light of (i) and (ii). Indeed, that seems to be the specific policy Florida has followed to great success (though not even as extreme as GBD founders would push — they would push for seemingly more resources shuttered toward the elderly).
zeke5123
Apr 10 2021 at 9:32am
For some reason this responses was formatted oddly when submitted. Re submitting for readability.
Michael Koehler doesn’t get this right, because the immediate discussion here was not whether the GBD was correct but whether TC was being honest in his debate. Neither Michael nor you can make the claim that TC was being honest; you say he was correct. However, TC was not honest. Instead, he created, intentionally or not, a strawman as Prof. Henderson demonstrates. TC can still be right that the GBD was correct, but this argument doesn’t prove it.
I think both you and MK are incorrect on the GBD. The main insights by the GBD were: (i) lockdowns (including soft lockdowns) are very costly, (ii) COVID mortality is almost entirely among the old; especially the very old, and (iii) therefore it makes sense to eschew lockdowns and do focused protection on the elderly. This is to avoid the harms caused by lockdowns while also allowing you to use more resources to specifically target the elderly (i.e., if your target is the general population, then your resources are spread over the general population; instead, if your target is the elderly, then your resources are spread over a smaller population).
No one but no one can successfully argue that (i) and (ii) are “driven by desired state than facts.” I personally think (iii) makes perfect sense in light of (i) and (ii). Indeed, that seems to be the specific policy Florida has followed to great success (though not even as extreme as GBD founders would push — they would push for seemingly more resources shuttered toward the elderly).
JFA
Apr 10 2021 at 10:16am
I’m interested in what you think Michael Koehler was right about. The only claim he makes is that he knows more under 65s that have died and knows no one over 70 that has died.
I have no reason to doubt that that was his experience, but the relevance of his experience to the debate over lockdowns and GBD is pretty much nil. 80 percent of covid deaths in US have been of people 65+, 95 percent are 50+. Looking at overall covid mortality by state, I don’t see a clear regional difference, and I wouldn’t take any claims about state mortality seriously unless those claims adjusted for population age distribution and household structure.
The story of the pandemic is much messier than simplified stories people like to tell. We can see that in how De Santis and Cuomo were portrayed in the news all last year. Focus on ideas and data and learning rather than refuting and trying to win arguments.
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2021 at 11:11am
In those three states, mortality (adjusted for population) is higher than the national average. For the rest of the Southeast, it’s at or below the national average. Source: CDC COVID Data Tracker.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 10 2021 at 9:52am
Mr. Goldhammer:
What, exactly, did Mr.Koehler get right? David’s main point in the post – as he notes in his reply to Mr. Koehler – is that Tyler did not answer Russ’s question about what he, Tyler, finds to be mistaken or wrongheaded about the Great Barrington Declaration. By responding to Russ’s question with a statement about what Jeffrey Tucker said, Tyler avoided answering Russ’s question.
And in your comment here, you, too, provide no substance on the question of what, specifically, is mistaken in the recommendation of the GBD to use Focused Protection rather than general lockdowns. You merely say that David, and I in my comment above, “prolong the fractious and … wrong debate about the impact of pandemic policies.”
I realize that you link to some stuff that you’ve written, but in your comment above it would have been helpful for you to summarize what you believe to be mistaken with the substance of the GBD. Surely such a summary is possible. Saying only that it “prolongs” a debate says nothing about the document’s substance. If the document’s substance has merit, then it’s a darn good thing that it prolongs the debate!
As recently as October of 2019, the World Health Organization counseled against the very kinds of policies that the GBD counsels against. You write as if the change in policy recommendations that swept the globe in the first quarter of 2020 should be treated as having settled the matter so conclusively that any further debate is not only pointless but downright harmful. Yet given the number of voices speaking out against – and the amount of evidence presented against – the efficacy and acceptability of lockdowns, it should be obvious that this debate is hardly closed in favor of lockdowns and against counsel of the sort that was commonplace until early last year and that is at the core of the GBD.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 10 2021 at 9:56am
I second what is said above by zeke5123, whose comment I did not see until after I posted my own reply to Mr. Goldhammer.
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2021 at 10:52am
Tyler does try to get around the “guilt by association” fallacy by arguing that the GBD is tied up inextricably with the “side-agendas” of AIER:
That statement strikes me as bizarre coming from one who teaches and runs various institutions at a university. All AIER did was host the authors and subsequently promote the GBD. Institutions do that all the time, but it doesn’t follow that the institution’s agendas (however we wish to define that term) are inseperable.
For example, GMU hosts me, provides me with lots and lots of resources, and promotes my work. Does it logically follow, then, that my dissertation ought to be judged by whatever the Sociology Department is churning out? Or by the words of the Administration? Of course not! People would reasonably balk at such an idea. And yet that’s exactly the argument Tyler is making.
Thomas Strenge
Apr 10 2021 at 10:52am
Alan Goldhammer, I believe you might accuse of confirmation bias while suffering from confirmation bias. It appears that severe obesity is associated with negative Covid outcomes. For years, the Southeast in general, and I would say “Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama” have been associated with higher rates of obesity.
Thomas Strenge
Apr 10 2021 at 11:33am
I think what GBD gets more right than CDC/WHO is accounting for what is unseen vs what is seen. A gentleman named Bastiat wrote an essay about that. Anecdotally, my first son was born in March 2019. The labor and delivery hospital, best in our metro, was full. My second son was born this March. The same labor and delivery hospital was almost empty.
Scott Sumner
Apr 10 2021 at 12:37pm
My problem with the GBD is that it seems to underestimate the difficulty of separating the young and the old. If my daughter lived her life “normally”, that makes it far more likely that I would have died of Covid-19. That’s not to say that this is a bad idea (her life is probably more important), but they underestimate the downside of their proposal—it would have meant hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.
David Henderson
Apr 10 2021 at 2:02pm
You write:
I don’t see how unless by “normally” you mean that she does everything exactly the same, including visiting you as often. But if that’s what you mean, then that contradicts their advice to focus protection on the elderly. I took “normally” to mean that your daughter could go into restaurants, could go to work, etc.
You write:
What’s your basis for that estimate?
Scott Sumner
Apr 10 2021 at 8:12pm
My daughter lives at home. And I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the number on Covid, and am highly confident that the approach they are suggesting would result in many addition deaths.
Todd Kreider
Apr 11 2021 at 9:10am
The available data do not back this claim at all.
For one, it is very difficult for a child to transmit coronavirus to an adult. So much so that researchers in Europe have considered that even when a child was believed to have transmitted the virus to an adult, what often happened was that the adult really got the virus from an adult near by.
Dylan
Apr 11 2021 at 11:31am
I don’t believe Scott’s daughter is a child.
David Henderson
Apr 11 2021 at 12:06pm
Thanks for clarifying about your daughter’s situation.
I get that you’re highly confident about your estimate. My question, though, is “what’s the basis for your estimate?”
Scott Sumner
Apr 12 2021 at 3:42pm
I wouldn’t be able to explain in a comment section; it’s based on many hours of me reading the data, and forming my best estimate. There are literally hundreds of data points that went into this estimate.
But here’s one example. Suppose all of the US suffered death rates comparable to the harder hit states. In that case, there would be hundreds of thousands of extra deaths. In my view, the GBD herd immunity approach would result in death rates at least comparable to the harder hit states.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 10 2021 at 2:34pm
Scott: You write as if the proposition that lockdowns save lives is indisputable. Why? There’s a good deal of evidence that lockdowns have little to no effect on Covid case counts and deaths. See, for example, here and here.
And there’s much evidence that lockdowns increase the risk of mortality and morbidity from other ailments and injuries. See, for example, here and here.
John Tierney – no slouch as a science reporter – recently summarized reasons for being leery of lockdowns even on the narrow grounds of promoting health.
The proposition that lockdowns save lives, in short, is very much in dispute. And rejection of this proposition is at the core of the Great Barrington Declaration.
You can disagree, as many people do, with the arguments and evidence mustered against lockdowns. But your description of the authors of the GBD as “underestimating” the downsides of the Focused Protection approach makes it appear as if you suppose that the authors looked, at best, only casually at the evidence and then carelessly argued against lockdowns. Given the evidence (and more) linked to above, any such supposition about the authors of the GBD is surely mistaken.
Even ignoring all non-health effects, the response to Covid-19 should not be to minimize Covid cases and fatalities. It should be to minimize the incidence of all serious illnesses and fatalities regardless of cause. In this way the authors of the GBD engage in sound economic-style thinking of a sort that is avoided by those who focus exclusively on reducing Covid.
Don Boudreaux
Apr 10 2021 at 4:12pm
Here’s more on Scott Sumner’s comment. He writes: “My problem with the GBD is that it seems to underestimate the difficulty of separating the young and the old.”
Why is it less difficult to separate the young and the old under lockdowns than under the Focused Protection approach endorsed in the Great Barrington Declaration? Why is locking down entire populations less difficult than focusing protection on the vulnerable? For the life of me, I can’t see why.
More fundamentally, my problem with those who reject the Focused Protection approach endorsed by the Great Barrington Declaration is that they seem to underestimate the difficulty of the economy running when productive activity is massively obstructed with lockdown commands and severe travel restrictions. This difficulty lingers even when lockdowns are eased as long as there is – as there is – the lingering threat that lockdowns will be re-imposed the minute a rise in case or death counts is sensationalized by the media and the Covidocracy utterly out of proportion to the actual risks.
My problem with those who reject the Focused Protection approach endorsed by the Great Barrington Declaration is that they seem to underestimate the difficulty of grinding to a halt, or severely obstructing, ordinary social interactions. Cancel your Thanksgiving plans. Cancel your Christmas plans. Cancel Mardi Gras. Cancel your Passover seder. Cancel Spring Break. Cancel the proms. Cancel graduation ceremonies. “Teach” over Zoom. Go to school over Zoom. Go to work, if you’re lucky enough to be a member of the Zoomourgeois, from home through your computer screen. You can’t dine at restaurants. You can’t drink at bars. You can’t go to sporting events. You can’t go to the theater, to concerts, or to the multiplex.
Don’t forget to keep your masks on while you socially distance at weddings and funerals.
Wanna travel for work or pleasure? Of course!* (*You must, of course, agree to subject yourself to weeks of quarantining.)
Feeling bad? Unless your symptoms are of Covid-19, you’d better stay home rather than go to the doctor’s office or even to the hospital.
Covid lockdowns and mask mandates are inhuman. Under them, we are treated like lab vermin who are to be protected from Covid at all costs, including the costs of suffering from other illnesses and from injuries.
My problem with pro-lockdowners is that they seem to underestimate the difficulty of suspending our humanity.
Scott Sumner
Apr 10 2021 at 8:14pm
I have not advocated lockdowns.
Scott Sumner
Apr 10 2021 at 8:18pm
The GBD says:
“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal.”
I’m in the vulnerable group. So I should not be “allowed” to live a normal life?
My problem with the GBD is that they seem to think a herd immunity approach is best, even before a vaccine is available.
David Henderson
Apr 10 2021 at 10:04pm
Scott,
You wrote:
Of course you should. And they didn’t say you shouldn’t. To say that group A should be allowed to do something is not to say that group B should not. You seem to be committing a logical fallacy here. I’ve forgotten the name but I think you can recognize it.
You also say “I have not advocated lockdowns.” Can I take that to mean that you oppose lockdowns? And if you do oppose lockdowns, what exactly were you objecting to with respect to your daughter and your own risk?
KevinDC
Apr 11 2021 at 10:05am
I think the fallacy you’re thinking of is the fallacy of affirming a disjunct, which equivocates between “or” and “xor” (the “exclusive or”). The former indicates two (or more) options, the later for two (or more) options which are mutually exclusive. It takes the form of:
This is a logically fallacious argument – the first premise is not an “exclusive or,” so A does not exclude B. In this discussion, the argument seems to be:
This is an invalid argument. The conclusion does not follow from the premises. In order for this argument to be valid, premise one would need to be an “exclusive or,” and say something along the lines of “Either the healthy or the vulnerable…” But the GBD explicitly rejects that dichotomy – it says:
May participate – but not must participate. It also acknowledges the need to develop “approaches to multi-generational households,” which would describe situations like Scott is facing where he (as someone who is vulnerable) shares a household with someone who isn’t. The idea that those who share a household with vulnerable people should take greater precautions isn’t exactly a controversial point among critics of lockdowns. But there are also tens of millions of people who are neither vulnerable, nor share a household with someone who is, who have still been kept away from their jobs, their friends, their schools, opportunities to socialize, etc. This has been inflicting a tremendous amount of emotional and psychological suffering on a huge number of people. I’m not a utilitarian, but if I was, I’d be strongly opposed on that basis to lockdowns that include low risk people living in low risk households.
When schools were shut down, we were told something along the lines of “Little Johnny needs to be kept away from school, because even though Covid isn’t dangerous to him, if he catches it and then hugs grandma, then she will be at terrible risk.” The next question would seem to be “Okay, does that mean if little Johnny stays away from school, he will be allowed to give grandma a hug?” And the answer was – no, he has to be kept away from grandma regardless. This makes no sense. If grandma needs to to be kept away from little Johnny regardless, then keeping him away from school and away from his friends and bereft of socialization during his most formative years while also providing no additional benefit to grandma is a terrible idea, even for a utilitarian. Now, if little Johnny and grandma share a household, that changes things – it might very well make sense to keep little Johnny away from school. (Or it might not – Emily Oster has made a convincing case that prospect of school openings causing increased Covid spread is unsupported by the data.) But Scott has said on many occasions that he believes the vast majority of hunkering down (and the cessation of economic activity that came with it) was the result of voluntary behavior changes, rather than imposed lockdowns. Given that Scott believes people are in fact this proactive regarding the risks, it seems hard to see why people shouldn’t be allowed to make these decisions at a household level, rather than a “one size must fit all” basis for everyone.
Scott Sumner
Apr 12 2021 at 3:52pm
To begin with, the term “lockdown” is poorly defined. I pretty much oppose all regulations forcing people to stay in their homes, or closing any outdoor facility. People should be free to move around.
For schools, I supported the shutdown of public schools in the spring of 2020, but have opposed the more recent public school shutdowns. Private schools should be free to make their own decision.
Mandatory shutdowns of certain private businesses should only occur under very extreme circumstances, and in my view have been greatly overdone. I went to a movie last summer and see no reason to force the closure of movie theaters. For the most part, I’d prefer that public authorities rely on persuasion, say recommending that people dine outdoors. Forced closures of some businesses might make sense in a very few cases of extreme hospital overload, or for very brief periods as a way of preventing a major outbreak.
I would add that I believe lockdowns are likely to occur more frequently when we start with the GBD approach, because once it fails the public panics and demands lockdowns, rather that the New Zealand approach of trying to entirely eliminate the virus.
Student of Liberty
Apr 11 2021 at 2:53am
Then, your daughter would be part of the people who need to take particular actions to protect you. If these actions saved you thank to everybody else being locked down in their homes, they should work when nobody but your daughter is locked down in their home.
Your daughter being allowed to live a “normal” life does not mean she has to if she thinks a different one is safer, for herself or for you.
As for me, I would like to be able to chose how I live my own, independently from your daughter’s.
Michael
Apr 10 2021 at 12:57pm
This bit of the declaration falls in the “easier said than done” category, especially as regards multi-generational households. The single greatest risk factor for contracting Covid-19 is coming into contact with someone who has it, and the vulnerale cannot be completely walled off from the outside world.
While he was on Econtalk, Dr. Bhattacharya criticized what he called mischaracterizations of the GBD:
So, per, Bhattacharya on Econtalk, the GBD is not a “lit it rip” strategy or a “herd immunity strategy,” and reporting on it that way is mischaracterization. But ther GBD itself says:
That’s not a “let it rip” or “herd immunity” strategy??? Could have fooled me.
The GBD very clearly advocates an approach that, had it been adopted, would have led to greater spread of the virus among those who aren’t deemed vulnerable, while simultaneously not offering a whole heck of a lot in the way of reasons to be encouraged that the vulnerable could be effectively shielded from the higher viral prevalence in the general population.
It offers only handwashing (ineffective) and staying home whole sick (ineffective against a key aspect of Covid-19 infectiousness – asymptomatic spread) as prophylactic measures against spread. It explicitly advocates against work from home as a general measure. It advocates for the resumption of activities that had been associated with superspreader events (large gatherings, such as ‘arts, music, sport and other cultural activities.’
It does not even contemplate the risk of more infectious variants, somethign that we would have seen sooner than we did under the GBD framework.
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2021 at 2:23pm
Which leds to the question: why, then, would lockdowns work?
Michael
Apr 10 2021 at 3:34pm
Measures that limit the spread of the virus protect everyone against exposure. In most of the US, the risk of contracting Covid is greater today than it was last summer, because there are more people carrying the virus around today than there were back then. That means that an unvaccinated senior cituizen who lives with their adult children is at greater risk of contracting Covid today than they would ahve been last summer. Nothing in the GBD offers anything in the way of protection for such individuals.
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2021 at 4:06pm
That’s not really an answer to the question.
Michael
Apr 10 2021 at 6:02pm
It wasn’t a serious question.
Jon Murphy
Apr 11 2021 at 10:58am
Oh, but it is. If targeted lockdowns cannot be effectively enforced, why would one thing general would?
Michael
Apr 11 2021 at 2:21pm
First of all, and backing up a bit, I don’t read the GBD as being solely a statement about opposition to government mandated lockdowns. What I oppose in the GBD is that it appears to be, Dr. Bhattacharya’s denials notwithstanding, a “let it rip” strategy. By which I mean, the GBD seems to oppose not only lockodowns but a lot of the not-government-mandated measures that individuals and businesses have taken. The GBD criticizes working from home for non-vulnerable workers, for example. Why? Makes no sense, outside of a desire to see some, perhaps many of those people get infected.
I think that in any society that is “letting it rip”, it will be very hard to shield all of the vulnerable. Intergenerational households are one obvious way that vulnerable people could be exposed. But in a world where we are letting it rip, people who work at nursing homes and hospitals are more likely to be infected and to infect the vulnerable.
zeke5123
Apr 12 2021 at 10:24am
The US government has spent trillions trying to do …things… to make COVID more palatable. The US economy has lost a significant amount of GDP.
You don’t think a focused protection strategy where the government took 1.5 trillion and targeted seniors while messaging to everyone else “go about your normal life” that we couldn’t protect seniors better than we do now where they receive a fraction of the 1.5 trillion; while they are still dying; where their kids’ lives are being ruined.
Michael
Apr 12 2021 at 12:30pm
Perhaps it could, but that would depend on what is actually done, and this suggestion, like the GBD itself, is short on detail.
What are we doing with the $1.5T that is to be dedicated to protection of seniors? How is that money going to be put to use to protect a senior who lives in a nursing home? Alone, in their own residence? With their adult children who work outside the home? The one thing we can say with confidence is that if everyone else was living their lives as though there were no pandemic, the rates of infection in the general population will be higher, making it more likely that seniors will be exposed when they come into contact with non-seniors.
What does “go about your normal life” mean? Are you joining the GBD in advocating against working from home for those who are able to do so? To what end? If, before March 2020, I typically dined in restaurants twice per week, does “going about my normal life” mean I’m obligated to keep doing that despite the obvious risks?
zeke5123
Apr 12 2021 at 8:24pm
Some things they could do with seniors:
Provided free or heavily subsidized testing kits (e.g., junior wants to come visit; he is tested before hand).
Provide free grocery deliveries.
Provide income stabilization for those still working (i.e., pay them not to work).
Create temporary living quarters for those living in multi-generational housing
I could probably think of others, but those are off the top of my head.
Phil Magness
Apr 11 2021 at 8:28am
Why would such a person not get a vaccine then?
Phil Magness
Apr 11 2021 at 8:34am
Ever notice how variants were not a widely feared or even discussed threat for almost a year of rampant and largely unmitigated spread around the world under the failed lockdown policies…then all of a sudden late last fall, a new “more infectious” variant started popping up every couple of weeks just as the political will to sustain lockdowns started facing its first serious challenges since this whole thing started?
Michael
Apr 11 2021 at 1:52pm
Are you implying that said variants don’t exist?
Don Boudreaux
Apr 11 2021 at 4:19pm
I don’t wish to speak for Phil, but I can guess his meaning, which is this: Noting that the variants suddenly began popping up in the late Fall when lockdown fatigue began setting in is not to suggest that the variants are not real. Instead, it’s to suggest that only in the late Fall did variants become headline-grabbing newsworthy. Mutating viruses are commonplace. Therefore, no one should have been surprised by this commonplace reality. Virus mutations were seized upon to keep Covid hysteria high. (Phil: If I’m mistaken, of course please correct me.)
Dylan
Apr 11 2021 at 10:06pm
As you said, variants are common and expected, and people were certainly talking about them much earlier than the late fall. But, it seems reasonable that they wouldn’t get extensive coverage in the media until 1) vaccines were nearing commercial availability, because up until then it didn’t really matter to a normal person, we didn’t have treatment for any variant, and 2) variants started appearing that a) seemed significantly more contagious and b) implied the potential to reinfect people* who had already been infected…something that was understandably quite alarming.
*Note, I’m actually writing this with my 2nd confirmed covid infection (after having also received one dose of vaccine)
Phil Magness
Apr 12 2021 at 1:06am
Don – that is precisely my point.
Virus mutations have been happening continuously since the start of the spread. They only became a headline-grabbing point of alarmism after other rationales for maintaining the lockdowns lost their salience in the media.
Michael
Apr 12 2021 at 6:56am
Instead, it’s to suggest that only in the late Fall did variants become headline-grabbing newsworthy. Mutating viruses are commonplace. Therefore, no one should have been surprised by this commonplace reality. Virus mutations were seized upon to keep Covid hysteria high.
Virus mutations have been happening continuously since the start of the spread. They only became a headline-grabbing point of alarmism after other rationales for maintaining the lockdowns lost their salience in the media.
So, the parts of these responses that I agree with is that the virus has been mutating since the beginning and that no one should have been surprised by it. I don’t think it was 100% predictable, though maybe it should have been expected, that the main impact of the variants would be increased infectiousness.
In any case, the concerns over the variants also arose at the time when they were identified and characterized and projected to become the most prevalent forms of the virus – projections that have been borne out.
I don’t buy the hysteria arguments at all, any more than I ever bought the (common among some) argument that on November 4th, 2020 all media interest in Covid-19 would vanish.
Dave
Apr 12 2021 at 3:11am
“ineffective against a key aspect of Covid-19 infectiousness – asymptomatic spread”
The alleged key role of asymptomatic spread is often mentioned, but a meta-analysis of household transmission calls its importance into question.
Household secondary attack rates from symptomatic index cases have been observed to be 18.0%, far higher than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%). These are among other members of the same household, who would of course be expected generally to spend a large amount of time in extended close contact with each other.
This admittedly doesn’t distinguish “presymptomatic transmission” among those who later develop symptoms, though that’s a different phenomenon – shorter time period – than the oft-repeated fear of asymptomatic spread.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102
David
Apr 10 2021 at 2:54pm
Some otherwise intelligent and well educated people show remarkably little imagination for what $2 trillion could do for the 76 million Americans over 60 years old.
Thomas Strenge
Apr 10 2021 at 5:47pm
Lawrence
Apr 10 2021 at 6:09pm
David, thank you for taking note of this double case of sloppy thinking (or worse, intentionally misunderstanding the GBD) on the part of Tyler Cowen. As I listened to this interview I was very, very disappointed to hear his evasion/misdirection. When I read or hear this kind of talk from a serious scholar, I ask myself: “How often does this fellow do this in cases where I’m not in a position to check up on his bias? Again, thanks for posting this.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Apr 11 2021 at 7:15am
The GBD seemed unduly binomial. Even if one’s objective function omits any concern for harm outside the “vulnerable” group, Are they not protected by reducing spread of the disease among the general population, e.g. massive screening to isolate infectious people, discouraging crowded, unmasked events, encouraging mask-wearing, social distancing, poor indoor ventilation? And by not focusing on what TO DO among the general population and the cost-benefit principles on which those measures should be taken, it left the door open to unnecessarily strict measures.
Michael
Apr 12 2021 at 4:04pm
This, exactly. If GBD was solely a statement against lockdowns or other govenrment mandates, it would be more defensible.
Pat
Apr 12 2021 at 12:51pm
Cowen spent a couple years pretending he was enamored with the insight of Ezra Klein. He knows a lot about mood affiliation because he’s constantly trying to differentiate himself from other libertarians. It leads to him making silly assertions like when he pretends that 600k deaths obviously disproves the idea that covid is mainly a threat to the old and sick.
Justin Chang
Apr 12 2021 at 1:01pm
Tyler Cowen presented his views about the Great Barrington Declaration here:
Great Barrington Declaration Is Wrong About Herd Immunity – Bloomberg
URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-15/great-barrington-declaration-is-wrong-about-herd-immunity?sref=htOHjx5Y
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