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  • Fauci’s Mask Flip-Flop, Explained (by Economics)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Last summer in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he had no regrets over advising Americans against wearing masks in public spaces early in the pandemic, even though his recommendations changed months later.

    “I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct,” said Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease advisor. “We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm’s way every day to take care of sick people.”

    Fauci was referring to comments he made on 60 Minutes in March 2020. During that interview, Fauci said “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” noting they should be used only for sick people as source control.

    “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is,” said Fauci. “And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

    Fauci’s about-face on masks was not without controversy, but it had some excuse given its context. A public health official lying to the public he is responsible for protecting (for whatever the reason) is no small matter. But one could also see Fauci’s explanation as a “noble lie” designed to make sure the people who needed masks most would get them.

    Newly released emails, however, suggest that when Fauci said in March that there was no reason for healthy individuals to wear masks, it wasn’t to prevent a mask shortage—it was because he believed it.

    This week the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News released hundreds of pages of Fauci’s emails, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

    The emails contain many revelations. Among them is an email reply Fauci sent to one Sylvia Burwell, presumably the same Sylvia Burwell who served under President Barack Obama as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

    Burwell, who was slated to travel, had asked Dr. Fauci for his advice on the use of face masks. Fauci’s reply, dated February 5, 2020, is included in its entirety below.

    “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”

    The email is important because it shows Fauci was saying privately in February 2020 precisely what he was saying publicly in March 2020. The fact that Fauci was sharing this information privately with Burwell undermines his claim that his recommendation to not wear masks was motivated by fear of causing a mask-purchasing stampede.

    In other words, there’s every reason to believe that Fauci was simply sharing his genuine medical opinion, which corresponded with the scientific consensus and the World Health Organization at the time, that masks (particularly cloth ones purchased at retail stores) are ineffective at keeping the virus out and may cause riskier behavior by giving wearers a false sense of protection.

    The obvious question, of course, is what would prompt Fauci to change his medical opinion on masks. The answer can perhaps be found in basic economics.

    Public Choice Theory, a field pioneered by the Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan, applies economic theories and methods to the analysis of political behavior. As Buchanan saw it, public choice is “politics without romance.” It questions the widely accepted notion that those engaged in public service are motivated primarily by “the common good.” This is not to say Buchanan was suggesting that public officials are uniquely malevolent. On the contrary, public choice theory rests on the assumption political actors are pretty much like everyone else in that their decisions are shaped by self-interest and incentives.

    Geoffrey Brennan, a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina and a professor of political science at Duke University, notes there’s a misguided tendency to see public agents as “benevolent despots” instead of regular people.

    “When you ask what should government do, you also imply that those in government are motivated to try to choose the very best policies for the public good,” said Brennan in a 2020 discussion on public choice theory. “When it comes to political agents it’s surely a mistake simply to assume that what motivates a person exclusively is their desire to do good.”

    He continued:

    “After all, the winning assumption in economics is that ordinary folk operating in markets are motivated predominately by self interest. Why should we assume politicians and bureaucrats are motivated any differently than anyone else?”

    Both publicly and privately, early in 2020 Fauci said masks were an ineffective, unhelpful way for individuals to protect themselves from COVID-19. His public opinion on the matter changed, and it changed at a time when masks became bitterly divisive (as they were a century ago during the Spanish Flu).

    Masks became so politically polarizing that even top government officials could be hit with a social media ban for posting that masks were unhelpful. Indeed, this is precisely what happened to Dr. Scott Atlas, who at the time was a top member of the White House coronavirus task force. In that environment, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Fauci flip-flopped to “fall in line” for the sake of his political career.

    To be clear, we don’t know for certain what motivated Fauci’s decisions. It’s certainly possible he became convinced (or convinced himself) masks were necessary because asymptomatic spread was a greater risk than he previously believed. (Though research shows asymptomatic spread cases are rare and are unlikely to contribute to the spread of the virus in a meaningful way.)

    What we do know is that public choice theory can help us better understand what motives besides public health may have helped Fauci change his mind (consciously or subconsciously).

    It shows how political incentives can often be at odds, not only with the public good, but with truth itself.


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • The New York Times Finally Discovers Unintended Consequences

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The New York Times published an article on Friday under a simple headline: “Covid Absolutism.”

    The article opens by noting that during public health emergencies, absolutism—the idea that people should cease any and all behavior that creates additional risk—is a tempting response. Times writer David Leonhardt gives various examples of this “absolutism” on display in America today.

    “People continue to scream at joggers, walkers and cyclists who are not wearing masks. The University of California, Berkeley, this week banned outdoor exercise, masked or not, saying, ‘The risk is real,’” he writes. “The University of Massachusetts Amherst has banned outdoor walks. It encouraged students to get exercise by ‘accessing food and participating in twice-weekly Covid testing.'”

    Examples like these are virtually endless. They invite two key questions, Leonhardt notes: How effective are these behaviors in reducing the spread of the virus? And is there a downside?

    As Leonhardt notes, many of these actions are essentially a kind of “hygiene theater,” the subject of a recent article in the Atlantic written by Derek Thompson.

    The phrase basically speaks for itself. According to Leonhardt, these actions are not rooted in science, and are primarily a form of theatrical presentation that will have little or no actual impact.

    “Prohibiting outdoor activity is unlikely to reduce the spread of the virus, nor is urging people always to wear a mask outdoors,” he writes. “Worldwide, scientists have not documented any instances of outdoor transmission unless people were in close conversation, Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told me.”

    So the answer to Leonhardt’s first question—How effective are they at reducing the spread of the virus?— is not difficult to answer: they’re not effective.

    The second question, and its answer, is more interesting.

    One might be tempted to argue that these theatrics still produce positive outcomes, since they are likely to make people more conscious of the pandemic and slow the spread of the virus.

    Taking extreme precautions is simply “playing it safe.” What’s the harm in that?

    The answer is, “plenty.” First, Leonhardt argues it’s not part of human nature to live in a perpetual state of extreme caution.

    “Taking every possible precaution is unrealistic,” he writes. “Human beings are social creatures who crave connection and pleasure and who cannot minimize danger at all times.”

    Perhaps more importantly, he argues that extreme caution can backfire and produce outcomes that have the opposite of their desired effect. He uses the AIDS crisis as an example, pointing out that demonizing sexual intercourse and trying to frighten people away from it had the unintended consequence of increasing unsafe sex.

    A similar phenomenon appears to be at work today.

    “Telling Americans to wear masks when they’re unnecessary undermines efforts to persuade more people to wear masks where they are vital,” Leonhardt writes.

    For many, this statement probably doesn’t sound particularly noteworthy. It basically has the ring of common sense, a variation of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, one of Aesop’s famous parables, which taught that false alarms can harm humans by inhibiting their ability to detect actual danger.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has been a case study in “unintended consequences,” a term popularized by American sociologist Robert K. Merton in the twentieth century. Basically, it’s the idea that virtually every action comes with outcomes that are not foreseen or intended.

    The French economist Frédéric Bastiat alluded to this concept in his famous essay, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.”

    “In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects,” Bastiat wrote.

    The problem, he noted, is that humans rarely pay attention to the unseen or unintended effects of a given action or policy. Ignoring these outcomes is one of the great mistakes in public policy, the Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman once observed.

    Unfortunately, ignoring unintended consequences and focusing on intentions is precisely what we saw in 2020, and nobody has been more guilty of this than the Times.

    If you search for articles discussing the unintended consequences of COVID-19 policies, which are boundless, you’ll find virtually nothing on their site. I was able to find two articles using the phrase “unintended consequences” of COVID lockdowns.

    One article, published in September, is a profile of Dr. Bonnie Henry, a Canadian physician and British Columbia’s top doctor who spoke of minimizing the unintended consequences of government interventions. The other is an article in May that discussed how lockdowns could result in a surge of mental illness.

    This dearth of coverage is unfortunate. The Times is one of the most influential papers in the world. It has immense reach and a news staff of 1,300 people. And yet—our tiny writing team at FEE has produced more articles on the unintended consequences of lockdowns than the Grey Lady.

    No one is served by ignoring unintended consequences. (Well, maybe politicians.) If we’re to understand the damage wrought in 2020 and prevent it in the future, lockdowns must be judged by their actual consequences, not what they were designed to achieve.

    And the adverse unintended consequences of lockdowns are legion.

    The fact that even the New York Times is finally beginning to discuss the unintended consequences of COVID-19-inspired actions is a sign that we may be, however belatedly, moving in the right direction.

    WATCH: What Cobras Can Teach Us About Incentives


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • The Sneaky Trick a Public Health Official Used to Make Mask Mandates Look Super Effective

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    As of early August, 34 US states mandate the use of masks in public to limit the spread of COVID-19.

    The efficacy of face masks has been a subject of debate in the health community during the pandemic. Because health experts disagree on their effectiveness, countries and health agencies around the world, including the World Health Organization and the CDC, have done a reversal on their mask recommendations during the pandemic.

    Reasonable and persuasive cases can be made both for and against the use of masks in the general population. Unfortunately, the science of masks and viruses is becoming less clear because of the politicized nature of the debate.

    A case in point is the Kansas public health official who made news last week after he was accused of using a deceptive chart to make it appear counties with mask mandates had lower COVID-19 case rates than they actually did.

    At a press conference, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Lee Norman credited face masks with positive statewide COVID-19 trends showing a general decline in deaths, hospitalizations, and new cases.

    Norman pointed to a chart (see below) that depicted two lines tracking cases per 100,000 people between July 12 and August 3. The red line begins higher than the blue line but then falls precipitously as it travels down the X-axis, ending below a blue line.

    Norman explains that the red line represented the 15 counties with mask mandates, which account for two thirds of the state’s population. The flat blue line represented the remaining 90 counties, which had no mask mandates in place.

    “All of the improvement in case development comes from those counties wearing masks,” Norman said.

    The results are clear, Norman claimed. The red line shows reduction. The blue line is flat. Kansas’s real-life experiment showed that masks work.

    It didn’t take long for people to realize something wasn’t quite right, however. The blue line and the red line were not on the same axis.

    This gave the impression that counties with mask mandates in place had fewer daily cases than counties without mask mandates. This is not the case, however. In reality, counties with masks mandates have far higher daily COVID-19 cases than counties without mask mandates.

    If the trends are depicted on the same axis, the blue and red lines look like this.

    Many Kansans were not pleased with the trickery.

    Kansas Policy Institute expert Michael Austin told local media that the chart clearly gives a false impression.

    “It has nothing to do about whether masks are effective or not. [It’s about] making sure Kansans can make sound conclusions from accurate information,” Austin said. “And unfortunately, the chart that was shown prior in the week strongly suggested that counties that had followed Dr. Norman’s mask order outperformed counties that did not, and that was most certainly not true.”

    Twitter was less diplomatic.

    The chart is deceptive.

    Worse, Norman also failed to note that the lines were on different axes until a reporter asked if the blue line “would get below the red line” if those counties passed mask mandates, which prompted Norman to mumble about different metrics and then admit that counties without mask mandates have lower case rates.

    “The trend line is what I really want to focus on,” Norman said.

    The deception prompted a non-apology from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment: “Yes, the axes are labelled differently … we recognize that it was a complex graph and may not have easily been understood and easily misinterpreted.”

    Dr. Norman, meanwhile, vowed to do better next time.

    “I’ll learn from that and try to [be] clearer next time,” he said following criticism from lawmakers.

    The episode is unfortunate because it further clouds the science and erodes trust in the medical experts individuals rely on to make informed decisions.

    It’s also ironic, because the controversy overshadowed the state’s positive data, which suggests masks may be working in Kansas. The chart may have been deceptive, but the data is correct and shows a 34 percent drop in COVID cases in counties with mandates in place.

    It’s quite possible that drop is linked to county orders mandating the use of masks. Then again, the order may have nothing to do with the drop. Correlation, we know, doesn’t equal causation. If it did, the surge in COVID-19 cases in California following its mask order would be “proof” that masks increase transmission rates.

    But science doesn’t work that way (at least it shouldn’t), and Dr. Norman knows this.

    Maybe masks are an effective way to curb transmission of the coronavirus, or maybe it’s largely ineffective or even harmful, like the Surgeon General stated back in March. The truth is we don’t yet know.

    What’s clear, as I noted last week, is that the top physicians and public health experts on the planet can’t decide if face coverings help reduce the spread of COVID-19.

    In light of this, it seems both reasonable and prudent that public health officials should focus less on forcing people to “mask-up” and more on developing clear and compelling research which will allow individuals to make informed and free decisions.

    This, after all, is the traditional role of public health: inform people and let them choose.

    Allowing individuals to choose instead of collective bodies is the proper and more effective approach, because, as the great economist Ludwig von Mises reminded us, individuals are the source of all rational decision-making.

    “All rational action is in the first place individual action,” Mises wrote in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. “Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”

    Mask orders aren’t just about public health. They are a microcosm of a larger friction at work in our society: who gets to plan our lives, individuals or the collective?

    Despite what many today seem to believe, society is best served by allowing individuals to plan and control their own lives.

    But individuals benefit from sound and reliable information. Sadly, that is something public health officials increasingly appear incapable or unwilling to offer.

    Jon Miltimore


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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