David Henderson at EconLog [https://www.econlib.org/looking-back-at-covids-authoritarian-regimes/] has a critical assessment of the collective response of US society to the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately, much of the criticism of the legal and regulatory response was on "principle," its restriction on individual freedom. Fair enough. But since there was also the "principle" of regulating the externality of spreading infection, the net effect was zero effective opposition [1].
What was the right response? Each individual should have taken what was for them the most cost-effective measures, given their assess met of cost, benefits and risks, to protect themselves and their families and to avoid spreading the disease to others. Firms, public offices, schools, and voluntary associations like synagogues, churches, temples and mosques should have done the same to prevent people that used their spaces from spreading the disease among themselves. Local officials should have regulated the operations of spaces where people meet to cost effectively reduce the spread of the disease.
Clearly this is not what happened and most of the blame falls on CDC and FDA for not fulfilling their roles. CDC did not provide either public or private local decisionmakers with changing, up-to-date information about how to use their local knowledge of circumstances -- prevalence, number and distribution of vaccinated -- benefits of alternate measures for reducing spread such -- masking, reduced proximity ventilation -- and costs in terms of work and meeting days disrupted so that THEY could have made well informed decisions. Instead of information CDC gave out vague national level recommendations that suspiciously changed very little as circumstances changed.
Messaging about vaccines placed far too much emphasis on “safety” from side effects, possibly creating more aversion than it prevented, instead of on how effective vaccines were at protecting the receiver and avoiding spread (although the latter proved much less than initially thought). Messaging about masking, who was protected more, the wearer or those around them and the relative effectiveness for either of what type of mask was thoroughly muddled.
FDA dragged its feet on facilitating the availability of cheap rapid screening tests that could have allowed for more self-isolation of the infected and test-to-enter as an alternative to venue closure. Development of vaccines was rapid by historical standards, but could have been better by explicitly considering costs of delays in testing, using data from other countries, and testing alterative paradigms like first shot first, fractional dosing while supplies were scarce, and human challenge trials.
Local decisionmakers were not faultless. There was almost no basis for restricting outdoor activities and venues. Ventilation and test-to-enter were apparently not considered as alternatives to closure and severe capacity limitations. Were the costs of all remote education adequately considered?
The media also performed badly. Far too much coverage went into how frightened or worried one should FEEL instead of how to use available information to deduce what it was cost effective to DO. There was (and still has been) little investigative reporting of the reasons for acknowledged failures by CDC, FDA, and public officials. Why did officials make the decisions they did?
At the national level restrictions on international travel were nowhere near enough to prevent international transmission, but highly disruptive and costly. Again, inadequate consideration of making sure the cost of prevention did not exceed the benefits.
The result was a patchwork of under and over reaction leading to both greater disease burden and higher costs of disruption than was necessary and severe undermining of the credibility of FDA and CDC. Not only did these errors lead to unnecessary costs, but unnecessarily made local responses to COVID into national political issues.
[Standard bleg: Although my style is know-it-all-ism, I do sometime entertain the thought that, here and there, I might be mistaken on some minor detail. I would welcome comments on these views.]
[1] Critics of the response made a point of their costs, but by not comparing the costs to the benefits or advocating other lower-cost actions, the criticism had little force.
Good post.
From today's NYT:
Educational costs; no spread reduction benefit. Paywalled for me but hopefully some reader will open and see if the reports discuss how/why the error was made. https://nl.nytimes.com/f/newsletter/gDT3PezyvtcZy2zbip1Hpg~~/AAAAAQA~/RgRn2tgUP0TiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyNC8wMy8xOC91cHNob3QvcGFuZGVtaWMtc2Nob29sLWNsb3N1cmVzLWRhdGEuaHRtbD9jYW1wYWlnbl9pZD0yOSZlbWM9ZWRpdF91cF8yMDI0MDMxOCZpbnN0YW5jZV9pZD0xMTc4Nzgmbmw9dGhlLXVwc2hvdCZyZWdpX2lkPTU4NDE0NTQ4JnNlZ21lbnRfaWQ9MTYxMDk1JnRlPTEmdXNlcl9pZD1iNjViYmU0OThlMGQ1MWIyNzJkMmIxMjcyOGY2MmI1YVcDbnl0Qgpl4hRT-GViNLyJUhh0aHV0Y2hlc29uMjAwMEB5YWhvby5jb21YBAAAAAM~