Thanks on Fauci; he has been too much above criticism. I read a riveting account, whose source alas I don't remember, saying that the reason east Asia, including Australia and New Zealand did well in controlling COVID, and all the West poorly, is that in the East they adopted the goal of eliminating COVID, and in the West tried to manage it. Fauci I believe championed the 'manage' and 'flatten the curve' idea, which was responsible—aside from the huge contribution of Trump—for our mess up.
My impression is that he did not push an "eliminate" goal because he assessed that the Federal administration and many state governments were totally unwilling to do what it would take. He could resign in protest of that fact; he could shout about it and try to push for it, but get ignored and possibly frozen out; or he could go along with a "managing" approach. And people would listen to him more and implement that strategy better, if he looked like a champion of that approach from the get-go.
Most Western countries could never have sealed their borders to the extent that a COVID elimination strategy requires, due to their dependence on truck-borne international trade.
Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan were all isolated island nations which did their international trade entirely by container ships (whose crew need never leave their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be quarantined within the airport until they flew out again).
What a great post! Of course it won't change anything though.
What surprises me is how obvious these lies are to a reasonable semi-intelligent person. I found multiple studies demonstrating the benefits of masks back in Feb 2021. It was really shocking how many pundits fell in lockstep with it.
I'm sure the free trade arguments are similar to most major political issues. Immigration, police, gun control, etc... everything is dumbed down for the great good.
I must say the whole "we lied about masks on purpose to avoid people hoarding them" argument never sounded very convincing. There are lots of things we successfully ensure only government can purchase. Uranium would be a possibly silly example, but if you don't like that one, think of guns in most European countries. Governments could have said "Sure, PPE works, but first we must ensure that medical staff has them so it wouldn't be possible to by it in your local pharmacy for the next 3 weeks. In the meantime, make your own mask using some old clothes or something, it's better than nothing." What I think is a much more plausible explanation is that scientists really were not sure if the simple non-N95 masks help, and instead of saying "we are not sure at this moment" they said "they don't work".
I think your take is more accurate. They didn’t have studies showing whether spread was droplet or aerosol early on—they could have said masks might help, but they don’t like to make equivocal statements.
I think you missed my point. Of course some people would do that if possible/allowed. The point of my comment was that government could regulate that - simply make PPE illegal to appear on shelves of supermarkets and pharmacies, i.e. ensure only government can legally buy PPE directly from the producers. If you can successfully do that with tons of other stuff (e.g. guns in Europe), there is no reason to believe the ridiculous narrative "you cannot regulate PPE, so we had to lie it doesn't work".
Also, if one is worried that healthcare workers would sell their masks to ordinary citizens you can also make that illegal.
"We lie to stop people from buying things" sounds more like cartoon idea of government than anything resembling the reality. Governments have the power of regulating things and they would have done it with PPE if that was really the problem.
I was one of those 1 in 100 ppl btw. Wore exclusively legit N95 masks for the list 6 months. Now just wear cloth after getting 1st pfizer shot two weeks ago. Main thing is N95s are NOT comfortable and CRAZY uncomfortable at first until you get used to it. So even most of the hardcore paranoids like me wouldn't use them.
One of the main advantages of the N95 is the tight fit created by the behind the head loops. If you have an over the ear looped KN95 tie knots at the end of each loop until it will just barely fit and youll get that full seal that matters so much
Also by that point you couldn't "go out and get one" even getting a KN95 was near impossible at that time. Only huge orders were being dealt with directly to hospitals for N95s. You couldnt go on Amazon back then.
I mean the US government was basically throwing endless cash at manufactures to get them during that initial surge. There were times where n95s on tarmacs headed for France were diverted to the US because we agreed to pay way more. It was an ugly fight for even countries getting them nevermind regular joes.
Governments can literally just commandeer all masks and mask imports/ production and redistribute them to healthcare workers- that is something governments can do. Just don't give people the option to buy them...and they won't buy them (okay maybe some illegal market, but thats not really an issue due to proportion). Those that require them most get the most effective masks, the rest make do, and once production catches up they become a commercial product again. Similar is already done for strategic resources, just declare masks a strategic resource.
"they decided to push a simplified fable in order to push back against what they saw as society’s innate tendency toward protectionism. They decided America couldn’t handle the truth."
Agree with the overall message of the piece.
One contention is that protectionism is innate. It seems to be more cyclical than innate. COVID accelerated the trend towards more protectionism, but a more open trade stance could very well materialize beyond the current trend.
Could you point me to a posting that more directly points out all the many ways people can be losers in free trade? That would be slightly more useful for my web site.
That would be excellent. it would be sure to stir up a hornet's nest. It may be beyond your area of expertise, but pointing out the money behind the propaganda (instead of just how it is wrong) would make it even better.
This is excellent writing! Is China still given an exception as far as obeying WTO rules? Maybe if they'd been forced to play fair it would've been different. Too late now.
China is obeying WTO rules. China joined the WTO as a "developing country", meaning it got more lenient treatment in several ways. There are no objective standards requiring "developing" countries to be treated as "developed" countries based on some economic milestones. Many westerners (at least, many American politicians) assumed that China would quickly drop its "developing" status as a matter of national pride. They haven't done so, and have no reason to, other than pride.
The free trade example lets economists of way too easy. There was a ~60 year period where economists didn't entire careers lying either to themselves or the public about taxes and regulation. Where total BS "science" was invented, pretending economics was physics and they were discovering God's truth that their laughably fantastical libertarian ideology didn't in fact make life dramatically worse than it could be for nearly everyone in society. Because if you invent structural equations from whole cloth, it's the same as Einstein, right? Mankiw and the fresh waters continue to carry the legacy, but at least now the profession as a whole is starting to emerge from the fantasy world.
Ah yes those master economists that told us "Just buy cars from Japan, look they're cheaper!", "Just import seasonal labour, look its cheaper!", "Import x, its cheaper". When economies are fundamentally interacting nexuses of expertise, which (I think) is pretty fundamental ( eg you don't get cars without expertise in rubber, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, distribution and transportation management, civil engineering....) so the more nexuses of expertise you remove (by outsourcing, eg to Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam), obviously your economy is going to suffer in the long run (even if you do enjoy the momentarily cheaper products) because its less likely the nexuses in your country are going to interact to produce something new/viable.
And then the tax thing. Oh yes, people who snowball a market by passing a threshold very much deserve billions of dollars a year. Bezos, who didn't invent a) the internet b) warehouse management c) websites/the web d) home delivery, really deserves all that tax free value for utilizing these pre-existing services effectively. Its a joke.
Nice economist move. Negate what I said. Snidely and confidently "in fact" a retort that is provably false, given there's a vast array of think tank jobs and academic chairs for economists funded by those who want intellectual rationalization for getting government out of the way of (or, to be fair, assisting in, which counts as a govt intervention) their rent extraction. Then ad hominem. Congratulations! You're 3 for 3 in feeling superior while making no argument at all!
I worked 10 years altogether in academia, including with some economists, have a PhD in statistics focused on Bayesian modeling and computational statistics, and have read my share of macro (and finance) papers. The kind of macro theory that leads to things like major public policy recommendations literally can't be anything but fantasy, or mathified ideology, since there's never more than ~3 applicable observations to model if you're being honest.
Yes there are modeling techniques to make predictions not illegitimate (though still inaccurate), but those are statistics, not theory. Which of course can't lead to claiming with integrity all the neoliberal utopian BS that dominated public discourse for 3 generations and did vast damage for everyone except China (and we'll see how that works out in the longer run). And from which we're barely starting to emerge.
What, specifically, do you believe is false? I believe you are making claims which do not stand close attention to detail, and work only as a formless, factless, emotional denunciation.
This is so spot-on. I am an economist by training and can see in retrospect how this all played out.
Here's another point: I think open-border Ds are now making the same mistake. Free trade and open borders have similar effects on workers...not exactly, but similar. Free immigration, for whatever benefits it has to mankind, makes some people worse off. And we don't compensate those people and never will. They tend to be the most marginal folks in the labor market....people with criminal records, substance problems, behavioral or cognitive problems...the worst-off in the free-market system. Employers bring these folks on board only when they basically have to, and an abundant pool of immigrant workers makes this unnecessary. So, open borders, when it comes to Americans, makes the worst-off worse off. That violates a Rawlisan rule for how the just society should work. And it's really bad politics. Open borders advocates should be held accountable for this and not allowed to gloss over it.
Americans tend to think of open borders, from their own perspective, which is limited. An example: on perfect open borders scenário poor Americans ( that are often rich under non-American standards) would be able to make arbitrage out of the US, it could be in the form of opening a business in poor countries, or even enjoying some cheaper life (which would bring more income to those countries, making fewer people flee to the US). From the foreigner's,perspective the US concentrates on certain sectors like p&d and finance, that no other country has (maybe UK), so it's a natural path for qualified immigration, and as even poor people get better lifestyles than poor's from other countries, you end up in scenario where its better to be poor in the US than in almost any other country.
Yeah, I feel like our experts do not give the public the opportunity to live up to expectations. Like, if Fauci, Birx, Redfield, etc, could have presented a united front, every time they had the opportunity to speak, to say, "Home-made masks work, and we encourage you to use them. We're going to work with manufacturers to ramp up production of surgical masks and N95 masks, but please, please don't buy them right now unless you really need them, because you wouldn't want to end up denying that mask to a nurse who needs it more than you. We promise we will be out here to let you know when there's enough supply." And yeah, some people would've taken an "I've got mine and screw you" attitude. Some people would've tried to buy up the supply to re-sell it for a quick buck (at which point you'd be justified in coming in with anti-price-gouging measures to confiscate the supply and distribute it to healthcare providers, using the authority of the DPA and other laws pertaining to emergencies). But I think _most_ people would've been able to handle that message.
I think the idea that medical professionals were engaged in coordinated deceit over the value of masks in order to protect the PPE supply chain is an after-the-fact rationalization. The CDC had made the same recommendation in the years before Covid.
- What study do you think has the most accurate representation of estimated job loses because of trade liberalization (broken down by country ideally)? Just trying to quantify the extent to which job lose is a function of trade and not other factors (automation, right to work, etc.).
In regards to Donald Trump, you might be getting the cause and the effect backwards. We might not have gotten Donald Trump had there been some honesty around the losers of our free trade agreements. We might’ve gotten some government action to help the people in need. Electing Donald Trump was probably in part a reaction to low wages and lack of jobs.
Thanks for a great article. From a public communications perspective another casualty is a general loss of trust in experts. This is captured by Michael Gove's comment that people have 'had enough of experts' (this was during the UK's referendum on whether to leave the EU in which nearly all economists were ardent remainers vs the majority of voters who wanted to leave). When experts are economical with the truth on trade it can have consequences for all experts (and the government policies they advise) including on whether people believe experts that vaccines are safe. At the level of tabloid headlines people don't really distinguish between economists, scientists, epidemiologists etc. My old boss used to ask audiences how long you have to wait to win back a (bank) customer's trust once you've lost it (answer, till you die).
This is cool and all, but from the perspective of trying to figure out what's going on in the world, the primary question is "when should I believe experts?"
And recent events have led me to the rule of thumb "there is no link between expertise and truth that isn't verifiable with small to medium effort from a smart and thoughtful layperson" and COVID has led me to "usually I am smart and thoughtful enough; certain twitter ppl are better" (I guess those ppl are expertise experts??)
As an example of when to believe expertise: I have absolutely no idea how vaccines are made -- that expertise is far beyond me -- but I can understand the data pretty well (https://xkcd.com/2400/), and I have enough general context to think that the auditing/study/etc was conducted well/rigorously. Yay experts! Experts are straight up wizards in this case afaict.
On the other hand, to keep things current, I would consider the general attempt to minimize/ignore/deny fact that some vaccines (e.g. Moderna, Pfizer) appear to be a lot better than others (e.g. J&J -- still really great) a recent noble expert lie in public health -- here is a well-made (but ultimately dishonest in my opinion) case that argues for this lie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A. The real case, I assume, is that herd immunity is reached faster if we roll the vaccines out ASAP (which J&J helps with), even if some are less good, rather than having to wait for more Moderna/Pfizer -- and this makes everyone better off collectively. But asking some people to sacrifice for the greater good feels kind of bad and maybe they won’t, so let’s go with the noble lie instead. [EDIT: also possibly actually it's better to be vaccinated now with a less good but still amazing vaccine than to wait I guess? But this seems highly variable depending on personal behavior w.r.t COVID risk].
Like, if a proper comparative study were done in the US, I would bet a lot on Moderna/Pfizer doing better; would bet a pretty large amount on M/P doing better with only one dose; would bet a moderate amount on Moderna/Pfizer doing better even on other strains. I don't really know what the experts would do; I don't know why they say the things they say — I honestly would guess a lot of experts would be happy taking J&J, in line with their words!
With economics, [EDIT] actually thinking about it again, I don't know much, but I also will assume that expert speak on economics is more or less noise if I don't understand it. Like I do not believe what economists say is consensus, or what people say economists say is consensus. I am not a mind reader, I can't tell when they will and won't lie. With free trade, it seemed intuitively clear that there would be and were bad consequences to lots of people in the US -- I've heard like overall maybe 5-10 hours (?) worth of like theoretically-based everyone-wins-with-free-trade content from economists, and it didn't make much sense to me, which makes me believe it less.
Also re: the last bit, it maybe doesn't apply super well (tyranny is a bit of a strong word), but the vibe of old CS Lewis quote is apt:
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
During the Mask Debacle, my summary of why we were being lied to, and in such a bald faced manner, was “They think you’re stupid”.
If I’m being fair, I have also been partial to J telling K in Men In Black “A person is smart, people are stupid”, but since neither Fauci nor anyone else has a neuralizer (or maybe they do, I can’t seem to remember), best to act as if people will remember being treated like children.
Thanks on Fauci; he has been too much above criticism. I read a riveting account, whose source alas I don't remember, saying that the reason east Asia, including Australia and New Zealand did well in controlling COVID, and all the West poorly, is that in the East they adopted the goal of eliminating COVID, and in the West tried to manage it. Fauci I believe championed the 'manage' and 'flatten the curve' idea, which was responsible—aside from the huge contribution of Trump—for our mess up.
My impression is that he did not push an "eliminate" goal because he assessed that the Federal administration and many state governments were totally unwilling to do what it would take. He could resign in protest of that fact; he could shout about it and try to push for it, but get ignored and possibly frozen out; or he could go along with a "managing" approach. And people would listen to him more and implement that strategy better, if he looked like a champion of that approach from the get-go.
I think he should have laid out the options and the costs—hundreds of thousands of lives—in any case.
Most Western countries could never have sealed their borders to the extent that a COVID elimination strategy requires, due to their dependence on truck-borne international trade.
Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan were all isolated island nations which did their international trade entirely by container ships (whose crew need never leave their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be quarantined within the airport until they flew out again).
This sophistry is nauseating
Well that's just, like, your opinion man
Nice.
Did you read it?
What a great post! Of course it won't change anything though.
What surprises me is how obvious these lies are to a reasonable semi-intelligent person. I found multiple studies demonstrating the benefits of masks back in Feb 2021. It was really shocking how many pundits fell in lockstep with it.
I'm sure the free trade arguments are similar to most major political issues. Immigration, police, gun control, etc... everything is dumbed down for the great good.
I must say the whole "we lied about masks on purpose to avoid people hoarding them" argument never sounded very convincing. There are lots of things we successfully ensure only government can purchase. Uranium would be a possibly silly example, but if you don't like that one, think of guns in most European countries. Governments could have said "Sure, PPE works, but first we must ensure that medical staff has them so it wouldn't be possible to by it in your local pharmacy for the next 3 weeks. In the meantime, make your own mask using some old clothes or something, it's better than nothing." What I think is a much more plausible explanation is that scientists really were not sure if the simple non-N95 masks help, and instead of saying "we are not sure at this moment" they said "they don't work".
I think your take is more accurate. They didn’t have studies showing whether spread was droplet or aerosol early on—they could have said masks might help, but they don’t like to make equivocal statements.
Why do you think people wouldn’t have went out and bought healthcare workers’ masks if told to wear cloth ones?
I think you missed my point. Of course some people would do that if possible/allowed. The point of my comment was that government could regulate that - simply make PPE illegal to appear on shelves of supermarkets and pharmacies, i.e. ensure only government can legally buy PPE directly from the producers. If you can successfully do that with tons of other stuff (e.g. guns in Europe), there is no reason to believe the ridiculous narrative "you cannot regulate PPE, so we had to lie it doesn't work".
Also, if one is worried that healthcare workers would sell their masks to ordinary citizens you can also make that illegal.
"We lie to stop people from buying things" sounds more like cartoon idea of government than anything resembling the reality. Governments have the power of regulating things and they would have done it with PPE if that was really the problem.
Because N95s are easily and pretty cheaply available and yet at most I see 1 in 100 people wearing one
I was one of those 1 in 100 ppl btw. Wore exclusively legit N95 masks for the list 6 months. Now just wear cloth after getting 1st pfizer shot two weeks ago. Main thing is N95s are NOT comfortable and CRAZY uncomfortable at first until you get used to it. So even most of the hardcore paranoids like me wouldn't use them.
One of the main advantages of the N95 is the tight fit created by the behind the head loops. If you have an over the ear looped KN95 tie knots at the end of each loop until it will just barely fit and youll get that full seal that matters so much
Also by that point you couldn't "go out and get one" even getting a KN95 was near impossible at that time. Only huge orders were being dealt with directly to hospitals for N95s. You couldnt go on Amazon back then.
I mean the US government was basically throwing endless cash at manufactures to get them during that initial surge. There were times where n95s on tarmacs headed for France were diverted to the US because we agreed to pay way more. It was an ugly fight for even countries getting them nevermind regular joes.
Governments can literally just commandeer all masks and mask imports/ production and redistribute them to healthcare workers- that is something governments can do. Just don't give people the option to buy them...and they won't buy them (okay maybe some illegal market, but thats not really an issue due to proportion). Those that require them most get the most effective masks, the rest make do, and once production catches up they become a commercial product again. Similar is already done for strategic resources, just declare masks a strategic resource.
"they decided to push a simplified fable in order to push back against what they saw as society’s innate tendency toward protectionism. They decided America couldn’t handle the truth."
Agree with the overall message of the piece.
One contention is that protectionism is innate. It seems to be more cyclical than innate. COVID accelerated the trend towards more protectionism, but a more open trade stance could very well materialize beyond the current trend.
It's really a shame that you don't have a title that describes this as being about lies about free trade.
I want people to have the fun of discovering what it's about as they read! :-)
Could you point me to a posting that more directly points out all the many ways people can be losers in free trade? That would be slightly more useful for my web site.
I don't know of one yet, but I can make one.
That would be excellent. it would be sure to stir up a hornet's nest. It may be beyond your area of expertise, but pointing out the money behind the propaganda (instead of just how it is wrong) would make it even better.
If you know there is money behind the propaganda, as you put it, you can yourself tell us who paid who and how much. Please do so.
A good, recent, starting place is "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer.
Then, if you have appetite for more, I have an index of 17 more references like that: http://critiques.us/index.php?title=History_of_Libertarianism
Some of them are less than book length. Billions have literally been spent on right wing/libertarian economic propaganda.
I would love that too!
This is excellent writing! Is China still given an exception as far as obeying WTO rules? Maybe if they'd been forced to play fair it would've been different. Too late now.
China is obeying WTO rules. China joined the WTO as a "developing country", meaning it got more lenient treatment in several ways. There are no objective standards requiring "developing" countries to be treated as "developed" countries based on some economic milestones. Many westerners (at least, many American politicians) assumed that China would quickly drop its "developing" status as a matter of national pride. They haven't done so, and have no reason to, other than pride.
The free trade example lets economists of way too easy. There was a ~60 year period where economists didn't entire careers lying either to themselves or the public about taxes and regulation. Where total BS "science" was invented, pretending economics was physics and they were discovering God's truth that their laughably fantastical libertarian ideology didn't in fact make life dramatically worse than it could be for nearly everyone in society. Because if you invent structural equations from whole cloth, it's the same as Einstein, right? Mankiw and the fresh waters continue to carry the legacy, but at least now the profession as a whole is starting to emerge from the fantasy world.
Ah yes those master economists that told us "Just buy cars from Japan, look they're cheaper!", "Just import seasonal labour, look its cheaper!", "Import x, its cheaper". When economies are fundamentally interacting nexuses of expertise, which (I think) is pretty fundamental ( eg you don't get cars without expertise in rubber, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, distribution and transportation management, civil engineering....) so the more nexuses of expertise you remove (by outsourcing, eg to Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam), obviously your economy is going to suffer in the long run (even if you do enjoy the momentarily cheaper products) because its less likely the nexuses in your country are going to interact to produce something new/viable.
And then the tax thing. Oh yes, people who snowball a market by passing a threshold very much deserve billions of dollars a year. Bezos, who didn't invent a) the internet b) warehouse management c) websites/the web d) home delivery, really deserves all that tax free value for utilizing these pre-existing services effectively. Its a joke.
I'd say most economists do NOT have a "fantastical libertarian ideology" but, rather, are pro-government intervention.
In fact, economists are incetivized to design government interventions in order to justify their jobs.
Your criticism of econ seems to be amateurish. Read Noah's columns on this ("Economics critics have it wrong" or something like that, on Bloomberg)
Nice economist move. Negate what I said. Snidely and confidently "in fact" a retort that is provably false, given there's a vast array of think tank jobs and academic chairs for economists funded by those who want intellectual rationalization for getting government out of the way of (or, to be fair, assisting in, which counts as a govt intervention) their rent extraction. Then ad hominem. Congratulations! You're 3 for 3 in feeling superior while making no argument at all!
I worked 10 years altogether in academia, including with some economists, have a PhD in statistics focused on Bayesian modeling and computational statistics, and have read my share of macro (and finance) papers. The kind of macro theory that leads to things like major public policy recommendations literally can't be anything but fantasy, or mathified ideology, since there's never more than ~3 applicable observations to model if you're being honest.
Yes there are modeling techniques to make predictions not illegitimate (though still inaccurate), but those are statistics, not theory. Which of course can't lead to claiming with integrity all the neoliberal utopian BS that dominated public discourse for 3 generations and did vast damage for everyone except China (and we'll see how that works out in the longer run). And from which we're barely starting to emerge.
What, specifically, do you believe is false? I believe you are making claims which do not stand close attention to detail, and work only as a formless, factless, emotional denunciation.
Walk through a theoretical inflation model. Show me where I'm wrong. Honestly I'd love to be.
Yeah I agree. We’ve known for some time the adverse effects of free trade policies to developed economies.
This is so spot-on. I am an economist by training and can see in retrospect how this all played out.
Here's another point: I think open-border Ds are now making the same mistake. Free trade and open borders have similar effects on workers...not exactly, but similar. Free immigration, for whatever benefits it has to mankind, makes some people worse off. And we don't compensate those people and never will. They tend to be the most marginal folks in the labor market....people with criminal records, substance problems, behavioral or cognitive problems...the worst-off in the free-market system. Employers bring these folks on board only when they basically have to, and an abundant pool of immigrant workers makes this unnecessary. So, open borders, when it comes to Americans, makes the worst-off worse off. That violates a Rawlisan rule for how the just society should work. And it's really bad politics. Open borders advocates should be held accountable for this and not allowed to gloss over it.
Americans tend to think of open borders, from their own perspective, which is limited. An example: on perfect open borders scenário poor Americans ( that are often rich under non-American standards) would be able to make arbitrage out of the US, it could be in the form of opening a business in poor countries, or even enjoying some cheaper life (which would bring more income to those countries, making fewer people flee to the US). From the foreigner's,perspective the US concentrates on certain sectors like p&d and finance, that no other country has (maybe UK), so it's a natural path for qualified immigration, and as even poor people get better lifestyles than poor's from other countries, you end up in scenario where its better to be poor in the US than in almost any other country.
Yeah, I feel like our experts do not give the public the opportunity to live up to expectations. Like, if Fauci, Birx, Redfield, etc, could have presented a united front, every time they had the opportunity to speak, to say, "Home-made masks work, and we encourage you to use them. We're going to work with manufacturers to ramp up production of surgical masks and N95 masks, but please, please don't buy them right now unless you really need them, because you wouldn't want to end up denying that mask to a nurse who needs it more than you. We promise we will be out here to let you know when there's enough supply." And yeah, some people would've taken an "I've got mine and screw you" attitude. Some people would've tried to buy up the supply to re-sell it for a quick buck (at which point you'd be justified in coming in with anti-price-gouging measures to confiscate the supply and distribute it to healthcare providers, using the authority of the DPA and other laws pertaining to emergencies). But I think _most_ people would've been able to handle that message.
I think the idea that medical professionals were engaged in coordinated deceit over the value of masks in order to protect the PPE supply chain is an after-the-fact rationalization. The CDC had made the same recommendation in the years before Covid.
Slate Star Codex directly addressed this point a while back: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/
One Thing:
- What study do you think has the most accurate representation of estimated job loses because of trade liberalization (broken down by country ideally)? Just trying to quantify the extent to which job lose is a function of trade and not other factors (automation, right to work, etc.).
Maybe this paper? https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed019/1433.html
Thanks !
Hey Noah, great article!
In regards to Donald Trump, you might be getting the cause and the effect backwards. We might not have gotten Donald Trump had there been some honesty around the losers of our free trade agreements. We might’ve gotten some government action to help the people in need. Electing Donald Trump was probably in part a reaction to low wages and lack of jobs.
I think you’re correct about this. He was the only Republican candidate talking about jobs. Of course he talked about a lot of things...
Thanks for a great article. From a public communications perspective another casualty is a general loss of trust in experts. This is captured by Michael Gove's comment that people have 'had enough of experts' (this was during the UK's referendum on whether to leave the EU in which nearly all economists were ardent remainers vs the majority of voters who wanted to leave). When experts are economical with the truth on trade it can have consequences for all experts (and the government policies they advise) including on whether people believe experts that vaccines are safe. At the level of tabloid headlines people don't really distinguish between economists, scientists, epidemiologists etc. My old boss used to ask audiences how long you have to wait to win back a (bank) customer's trust once you've lost it (answer, till you die).
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14846995.michael-gove-was-right-the-public-are-sick-of-experts-research-suggests/
This is cool and all, but from the perspective of trying to figure out what's going on in the world, the primary question is "when should I believe experts?"
And recent events have led me to the rule of thumb "there is no link between expertise and truth that isn't verifiable with small to medium effort from a smart and thoughtful layperson" and COVID has led me to "usually I am smart and thoughtful enough; certain twitter ppl are better" (I guess those ppl are expertise experts??)
As an example of when to believe expertise: I have absolutely no idea how vaccines are made -- that expertise is far beyond me -- but I can understand the data pretty well (https://xkcd.com/2400/), and I have enough general context to think that the auditing/study/etc was conducted well/rigorously. Yay experts! Experts are straight up wizards in this case afaict.
On the other hand, to keep things current, I would consider the general attempt to minimize/ignore/deny fact that some vaccines (e.g. Moderna, Pfizer) appear to be a lot better than others (e.g. J&J -- still really great) a recent noble expert lie in public health -- here is a well-made (but ultimately dishonest in my opinion) case that argues for this lie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A. The real case, I assume, is that herd immunity is reached faster if we roll the vaccines out ASAP (which J&J helps with), even if some are less good, rather than having to wait for more Moderna/Pfizer -- and this makes everyone better off collectively. But asking some people to sacrifice for the greater good feels kind of bad and maybe they won’t, so let’s go with the noble lie instead. [EDIT: also possibly actually it's better to be vaccinated now with a less good but still amazing vaccine than to wait I guess? But this seems highly variable depending on personal behavior w.r.t COVID risk].
Like, if a proper comparative study were done in the US, I would bet a lot on Moderna/Pfizer doing better; would bet a pretty large amount on M/P doing better with only one dose; would bet a moderate amount on Moderna/Pfizer doing better even on other strains. I don't really know what the experts would do; I don't know why they say the things they say — I honestly would guess a lot of experts would be happy taking J&J, in line with their words!
With economics, [EDIT] actually thinking about it again, I don't know much, but I also will assume that expert speak on economics is more or less noise if I don't understand it. Like I do not believe what economists say is consensus, or what people say economists say is consensus. I am not a mind reader, I can't tell when they will and won't lie. With free trade, it seemed intuitively clear that there would be and were bad consequences to lots of people in the US -- I've heard like overall maybe 5-10 hours (?) worth of like theoretically-based everyone-wins-with-free-trade content from economists, and it didn't make much sense to me, which makes me believe it less.
Also re: the last bit, it maybe doesn't apply super well (tyranny is a bit of a strong word), but the vibe of old CS Lewis quote is apt:
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
During the Mask Debacle, my summary of why we were being lied to, and in such a bald faced manner, was “They think you’re stupid”.
If I’m being fair, I have also been partial to J telling K in Men In Black “A person is smart, people are stupid”, but since neither Fauci nor anyone else has a neuralizer (or maybe they do, I can’t seem to remember), best to act as if people will remember being treated like children.