A companion piece - from a very different source - to "Covid-19: The Stupidity Of Lockdowns" which pointed out, among many other things, that until the year 2020 AD the idea of locking down healthy people, as opposed to quarantining the sick, was not even in the public health lexicon.
From Collateral Global, August 29:
The lockdowns of Spring of 2020 were likely responsible for much more of the decline in economic activity than the consensus among economists admits.
As professional economists, we have watched the response of much of the economics profession to COVID-era lockdowns with considerable surprise. Given the evident and predictable harms of lockdowns to health and economic well-being, we expected economists to raise the alarm when lockdowns were first imposed. If there is any special knowledge that economists possess, it is that for every good thing, there is a cost. This fact is burned into economists’ minds in the form of the unofficial motto of the economics profession that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
From the depths of our souls, economists believe that the law of unintended consequences applies to every social policy, especially a social policy as all-encompassing and intrusive as lockdown. We economists believe that there are trade-offs in everything, and it is our particular job to point them out even when the whole world is yelling at the top of its voice to be quiet about them. It may still be a good idea to adopt some policy because the benefits are worth the cost, but we should go in with our eyes open about both.
‘The moral zeal with which lockdown proponents pushed the idea of costs undoubtably played an important role in sidelining economists.’
That lockdown would, in principle, impose overwhelming costs on the population at large is not surprising. The scope of human activity touched by lockdown is overwhelming. Lockdowns closed schools and playgrounds, shuttered businesses, and barred international travel. Lockdowns told children they could not visit their friends, put masks on toddlers, and dismissed university students from campus. They forced elderly people to die alone and prevented families from gathering to honour their elders’ passing. Lockdowns cancelled screening and even treatment for cancer patients and made sure that diabetics skipped their check-ups and regular exercise. For the world’s poor, lockdown ended the ability of many to feed their families.
Economists, who study and write about these phenomena for a living, had a special responsibility to raise the alarm. And though some did speak, most either stayed silent or actively promoted lockdown. Economists had one job—notice costs. On COVID, the profession failed.
There are personal reasons for this docility that are easy to understand. First, when public health officials first imposed lockdowns, the intellectual zeitgeist was actively hostile to any suggestion that there might be costs to pay. The lazy formulation that lockdowns pitted lives versus dollars took hold of the public mind. This provided lockdown proponents with an easy way to dismiss economists whose inclination was to point out costs. Given the catastrophic toll in human life that epidemiological modellers projected, any mention whatsoever about pecuniary harm from lockdown was morally crass. The moral zeal with which lockdown proponents pushed this idea undoubtedly played an important role in side-lining economists. No one wants to be cast as a heartless Scrooge, and economists have a particular aversion to the part. The charge was unfair given the costs in lives that the lockdowns have imposed, but no matter.
Second, economists belong to the laptop class. We work for universities, banks, governments, consulting agencies, corporations, think tanks, and other elite institutions. Relative to much of the rest of society, the lockdowns posed much less harm on us and maybe even kept some of us safe from COVID. Narrowly speaking, lockdowns personally benefited many economists, which may have coloured our views about them.
‘The U.N.’s forecasts of the health impacts of this economic collapse were especially dire for children; they predicted hundreds of thousands of children in the world’s poorest countries would die.’
In this essay, we will leave these personal interests aside, though they are important, and focus only on the intellectual defence that some economists have put forward for their defence of lockdown. That economists have human weaknesses and interests that might render them less willing to speak taboo thoughts or against self-interest is not surprising. More interesting are the reasons (inadequate, we believe) that economists have given for their support of lockdowns since, if correct, they would provide a rational defence against the charge we make in this essay that the economics profession, as a whole, has failed to do its job.
Spring 2020
In April 2020, the United Nations’ World Food Program warned that 130 million people will starve as a result of the stumbling global economy. The U.N.’s forecasts of the health impacts of this economic collapse were especially dire for children; they predicted hundreds of thousands of children in the world’s poorest countries would die. They would be collateral damage from the Great Lockdown, as the International Monetary Fund termed it last Spring.
It was natural to expect scores of economists to refine these estimates and quantify how our response to the virus in rich countries would hurt the world’s poor by disrupting global supply chains. Such work would increase awareness of the costs of our response to the virus.
‘With few exceptions, economists most decidedly did not lean into quantifying lockdown harms either in developing countries or rich countries.’
Our supposition of economists’ sense of duty to the world’s poorest was well justified. For decades economists have fiercely defended the global economic system on the grounds that it has helped lift more than a billion people out of extreme poverty and increase life expectancy everywhere. The global economy has some significant flaws—vast inequality and climate change are often noted. But the worldwide network of trade has an essential role in facilitating economic development that brings sustained improvements to the lives of the world’s poorest, economists have argued.
The expected rush to quantify the global collateral damage from rich countries’ lockdowns never materialized. With few exceptions, economists most decidedly did not lean into quantifying lockdown harms either in developing countries or rich countries.
Precautionary Principle and Lockdown Love....
....MUCH MORE
