We all should have panicked in January
People often say things like “stay calm and don’t panic.” But there are situations where panic is the appropriate response. In retrospect, it would have been far better if Americans had panicked in January and February in response to the Covid-19 threat. Had we done so, it’s likely that more than 100,000 deaths would have been prevented in America, and our economy would have taken a smaller hit (in the long run; last winter it would have taken a bigger hit.) We would have looked more like Australia.
When there’s a pandemic, people panic by engaging in extreme social distancing. They also ignore the experts and wear masks on their faces. But that’s exactly what we all should have done back in February!
Of course this is a jab at Trump’s silly justification for lying—that he was trying to prevent panic. All Trump has done over the last 4 years is try to create nonstop panic about Muslim immigrants, crime, China, and a million other so-called threats. Whatever you think of Trump, preventing panic is not high on his agenda:
Obviously Trump was not trying to prevent panic, he was trying to cover up the problem. He’s been against social distancing, testing, masks, indeed almost everything that works.
On the other hand, this isn’t really about Trump, as the policy failure last winter involved 99% of our society, including bloggers like me. Trump was especially bad for an especially long period, but the entire establishment (both political parties) blew it last winter. We all should have panicked.
Off topic: The GOP campaign is not particularly effective this year, with one exception. The SJWs are creating lots of Trump voters through their misguided cultural revolution:
Wisconsin was the decisive state in 2016, and it likely to pick the winner again this year. And now you have Jill Stein supporters in the badger state trending toward Trump because they are so annoyed by “microaggression” seminars.
I never attended Bentley’s diversity seminars, but several of the people I spoke to who did described it as an awful experience. One was literally in tears by the end of the seminar. When Trump is re-elected in November, the SJWs will be able to take credit. Perhaps it’s all part of their “heightening the contradictions” strategy for world revolution.
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13. September 2020 at 20:25
Republican governors love to panic during hurricanes and Chris Christie panicked during Hurricane Sandy and it made him very popular. I would argue Trump was on a course to losing in January and so he needed to do something to change the course of his campaign and pulling a Chris Christie was exactly what he needed to do…unfortunately Trump has poor political instincts while surrounding himself with yes men so they told him the economy was going to get him re-elected so he didn’t want to rock the boat.
13. September 2020 at 20:58
It’s 1972.
The new young angry left won’t stop until Dems lose AGAIN, and they finally cast the entire newbie generation under the bus.
Hunter Thomposn referred to it as death of Camelot, the ceath of Freak Power, he wrote about it for 25 years…
It comes down to this: The left must ALWAYS remember to Fear & Laothe.
13. September 2020 at 21:04
Well, if I get to define what is “panic” I’ll agree that panic is a good thing. The appropriate “panic” approach would have been to create capacity of rapidly do screening tests for millions of asymptomatic people so they could self isolate until the next test or symptoms requiring medical treatment. Wearing masks is appropriate if someone “panicked” at the thought of possibly infecting other people.
13. September 2020 at 23:16
(speculative) It’s finally dawning on me that this election is going to be a complete shit show. It’s going to take weeks to decide and it will probably be decided by lawyers. Consider: there’s expected to be 85 million mail-in ballots, the media has been playing up the election fraud angle for weeks, Hilary has said that Biden “should not concede under any circumstances”, and they are now playing up Trump’s alleged military comments to drive a wedge between him and the military. No one will believe in the outcome of this election.
14. September 2020 at 00:16
I am happy to report I agree with Scott Sumner (actually I usually do on big issues, such a human rights are good, government is often more clumsy than not, and that central banks should target NGDPLT).
At long last, there may be some sanity entering the race dialogue (well, maybe we are getting a dialogue, instead of a monologue).
https://www.newsweek.com/princetons-president-wrong-university-not-systemically-racist-opinion-1530480
I went to state universities more decades ago than I would want to say. We are talking Nixon, Ford, Carter. Even back then, the universities were favoring non-white applicants. Maybe that is good. It was not racism. Racism on campus was heavily frowned upon and overt racists were not tolerated (not that I met any).
If there are any horseplayers out there, this presidential campaign looks like a cheap claiming race at a second-tier track. You read the Daily Racing Form, and conclude, “None of these horses can win.”
14. September 2020 at 00:52
” Had we done so, it’s likely that more than 100,000 deaths would have been prevented in America,”
I don’t see why Scott continues to pull numbers out of thin air about a topic he knows very little about.
So Scott, you must also know how many lives were lost when governors Cuomo, Murphy (NJ) and Wolf (PA) ordered Covid-19 patients into nursing homes for weeks. You must also have a good estimate of how many died during the lockdowns due to increases in drug overdoses, suicides, people having heart attacks and not going to the doctor and people who couldn’t get cancer screening. In the UK with 67 million people, the latest estimate is that between 20,000 and 60,000 will die prematurely due to not getting a cancer screen that they otherwise would have received. If similar in the U.S., then between 100,000 and 300,000 Americans will die prematurely because they couldn’t get a cancer screening. (The actual number won’t be known for at least 6 months.) Almost all will be between 45 and 80 years old.
14. September 2020 at 03:30
The most impactful actions that could’ve been taken are probably all deregulation: test approval, vaccine approval, medical supply trade, price gouging. Yet a deregulation president with control over every federal branch has failed to make progress on any of these. He made trade worse. These would’ve been easier to sell in a “panic” than ever before, especially during partisan times when people are not sensitive to policy.
14. September 2020 at 04:34
I agree that Trump screwed up the US response to covid-19 and that he had a lot of company screwing up. In fact we can see the result of all the miscommunications to this day. Our response has never become consistent and thought out. And the bad responses to covid-19 just reflect the existing and worsening divisions in this country.
But the screwed up response to covid-19 is not nearly the worst thing done by Trump.
Trump is a racist. He has encouraged white supremacist groups and even praised killing by the police and other “law and order” groups. You know retribution is good and necessary! Who needs due process anyway!
Whatever good Trump has done is overwhelmed by his racism. His racism inflames the worse divisions in our nation and brings out the worst in us.
That is why he should not be reelected.
14. September 2020 at 04:46
ee–
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-11/Hundreds-of-thousands-have-been-given-Chinese-COVID-19-vaccines-THnoo6BcFG/index.html
Hundreds of thousands have been given Chinese COVID-19 vaccines without a single infection
Updated 14:31, 13-Sep-2020
Cao Qingqing
Hundreds of thousands of people have been given two Chinese COVID-19 vaccine candidates as part of an emergency program, without a single case of infection or adverse effects, a senior official of a state-owned vaccine developer has said.
The two vaccines, developed by China National Biotec Group (CNBG), are expected to enter the market as soon as this December, and two shots will cost less than 1,000 yuan (about 146 U.S. dollars), said Zhou Song, the company’s general legal counsel.
They are still undergoing phase three trials for safety and efficacy – usually the last step before regulatory approval – in more than 10 other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Peru, Morocco, Argentina, and Jordan, since the epidemic has been basically put under control in China.
The two vaccine candidates, together with another one developed by Beijing-based Sinovac, have been approved for civilian emergency use after reliable results in phase one and phase two trials.
The emergency program began in late July, allowing “high-risk” groups, such as medical workers, diplomats, and people who traveled to foreign countries still struggling with the pandemic, to be vaccinated.
—30—
They say the vaccines work, not dangerous. The CCP is gearing up production.
Moral of the story?
Democracies are clumsy, often institutionally corrupt, and intellectual pollution is rife.
Fortunately, COVID-19 will kill a much lower share of the US population than did the Asian flu of 1957-58. No one panicled back then, and hardly anybody stopped anything. Commerce went on.
A tale of two eras.
14. September 2020 at 05:29
A unified response was never possible in the US. The left would have cried foul if trump went nuclear shutting the southern border which we would have had to do to prevent the virus getting in from the south. Power is too diffused in the US to have done the steps necessary to shut down. And thats at the same time when all the other Western Countries had failed responses. And our tasks of closing things down is much much harder.
In the end if I voted I’d vote for Trump, but its mostly because the things I fear the most are on the left – Bernies socialism and identity politics.
14. September 2020 at 05:36
Scott: “We all were wrong, everyone was wrong, but Trump was the most wrong”
Scott:”likely” would have saved 100,000 lives if we all panicked in February”
Notice, at least he did not say Trump caused the 100,000 deaths. Although it feels like he did—or that maybe under different circumstances he would have caused them, even if he did not.
I am glad that Scott knows the answer of what should have been done, after the fact. I am sure he figured out some sort of cool science which got him to his 100k+ number.
The real answer is we do not know any of this. Pehaps the best “would have could have” is “if China did not do lab experiments in the middle of a dense province and/or did not have open air live food markets”–none of this would have happenned.
But the one thing Scott knows for sure is that even if Trump did not make it worse he could have.
14. September 2020 at 07:20
Michael – realistically trump would have needed to have closed NYC down much earlier. That’s where the big initial spread happened. And due to NYC being hub the likely place that led to spread throughout much of the country. But Cuomo was in the same camp as trump on avoiding panick – so wouldn’t have happened.
The powers Trump had he may have been able to stop the virus from getting into the US and delayed the spread a few months. NYC would have had an outbreak when Florida had an outbreak. But the big outbreaks stil would have occurred pre-vaccine.
14. September 2020 at 08:13
Todd, you said:
“So Scott, you must also know how many lives were lost when governors Cuomo, Murphy (NJ) and Wolf (PA) ordered Covid-19 patients into nursing homes for weeks.”
Exactly as I said. The governors should have panicked. Thanks for confirming my argument.
ee, Good points.
Larry, Exactly.
Sean, Trump is running against Biden.
Michael, Doesn’t it get tiresome having to defend the indefensible, day after day?
14. September 2020 at 09:17
Scott, the governors did panic, which is why they made that bone-headed order of putting Covid-19 patients into nursing homes with the frailest and most vulnerable of the elderly.
14. September 2020 at 09:26
Scott,
I’m glad you started to criticise the left, very glad indeed.
14. September 2020 at 10:11
Another excellent Scott Sumner column. When Sumner sticks to a topic outside his expertise, viz., outside of monetarism, I tend to agree with him. He should stick to talking about topics he knows nothing special about.
@Todd Kreider @Michael Rulle – the 100k number Sumner posits is not meant to be a specific number but more of a rhetorical number. And he’s right.
@ everybody: Scott has inferred this point, from today’s NY Times:
Perhaps the most surprising finding from the poll was this: In the four swing states — Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin — a larger share of voters said “addressing law and order” was a more important campaign issue to them than said “addressing the coronavirus pandemic” was.
On first glance, these law-and-order concerns may still seem to help Biden. More voters trust him to do a better job on several related issues — including violent crime, unifying the country and handling the protests — than trust Trump. But it’s not quite that simple.
Remember: Most Americans have already made up their minds about the election. Their answers to poll questions about which candidate they trust on specific issues are almost meaningless at this point. The bigger issue is how undecided and uncommitted voters feel.
Biden’s problem is that, on the broad issues of crime and policing, he appears to have a larger group of soft supporters — people who could flip — than Trump does.
14. September 2020 at 10:15
Are the any American politicians of note that were advocating policies that would have produced a better situation in the USA by the end of February? I don’t think so, but I’m all ears, and by then the barn door was open and the horses out, at least as far as BosNyWash (Covid capital of Earth) was concerned.
The performance of America this summer has been disappointing, but is it a coincidence that it’s the states on the southern border that have been hit hardest? The geographical fingerprints of the pandemic are hard to miss.
As of right now, 5 of the 7 hardest hit countries in terms of deaths per million are in South America, which was basically untouched through March. (Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador).
Given that it’s winter down there, this is not an encouraging trend for anyone. The game is not over. What do countries that clamped down hard do now? Stay closed for another year?
It’s possible that BosNyWash and London have stumbled into something like herd immunity. We’ll see.
14. September 2020 at 16:28
Todd, You have it exactly backwards. They put them there because they thought there was little risk.
Jason, You said:
“I’m glad you started to criticise the left, very glad indeed.”
LOL, I’ve been criticizing the left for 50 years. Stop making a fool of yourself.
14. September 2020 at 16:31
Brian, You said:
“The performance of America this summer has been disappointing, but is it a coincidence that it’s the states on the southern border that have been hit hardest?”
It has nothing to do with the border. Is South Carolina near the border?
14. September 2020 at 17:18
NJ, NY, MA, CT, RI are #1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.
LA and MS are #5 and 7.
DC, MD, DE, PA are #8, 12, 13, and 14.
IL, MI, IN are #10, 11, 18.
GA, SC, FL are #14, 16, 17.
There are anomalies, e.g AZ on the high side, WI on the low side, which might be interesting to explore, but for the most part, geography dictates results.
14. September 2020 at 17:27
Brian, Mardi Gras in New Orleans mimicked the density and international population of the NEC at the very worst time.
14. September 2020 at 17:34
Brian, had the Super Bowl happened March 1st South Florida would have had numbers very close to New Orleans. So the Super Bowl has concerts and big parties in the days leading up to the game that appeal to more than just football fans which would have been super spreader events. Spring Break in Florida wasn’t a super spreader event because you still needed some international appeal in the early days to introduce the virus into the population.
14. September 2020 at 17:52
Brian, April is when politicians started publicly advocating policies that were most effective IMO. Politicians started wearing masks in April (any earlier?). Foster + other congressmen sent a letter to the FDA asking for expedited vaccine approval and challenge trials on April 20th.
If one could wave a wand and alter policy today the benefit would be enormous. It’s not too late. Tests are still too slow (a week at my local CVS). Target still has empty shelves. I still can’t go back to work. Cases are rising in my county.
14. September 2020 at 20:33
OT but in the ballpark from The Wall Street Journal:
Why Fed Officials Are Pushing for More Stimulus From Lawmakers
New research says spending, not lower rates, would do more to prevent deeper economic scars from the coronavirus pandemic….
—30—
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fed-officials-are-begging-for-more-stimulus-from-lawmakers-11600005600
At the ECB and the Fed, officials keep calling for more deficit spending…
14. September 2020 at 22:09
It is said very accurately: “All Trump has done over the last 4 years is try to create nonstop panic about Muslim immigrants, crime, China, and a million other so-called threats.”
14. September 2020 at 22:23
“We would have looked more like Australia.” Australia is in the middle of a months-long draconian lockdown right now, apparently to the chagrin of its own people [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54139669].
I’m not sure that our death and infection count in hindsight is inconsistent with our population risk preferences. Now that we’ve had many months of information about infections/deaths and how risk can be reduced, college students still seem to want to party, and the most protective and risk adverse of all people — parents protecting their children — seem to want their kids to play football, a decidedly non-distanced sport, and to return to classrooms, at least part time if not full time. Most people seem to be willing to take only no-cost or low-cost measures: if they can work from home with no loss of pay (office workers, unionized teachers, etc.) then they do so but, if they will lose pay (waiters/bartenders, hair stylists, food processing workers), then they seem eager to return to work, even in indoor workplaces. In general, there seem to be much more protests against too-strict measures than against too-lenient measures.
In hindsight, the biggest mistakes early were (1) the FDA didn’t approve non-CDC tests and (2) Covid patients were sent to nursing homes. I guess one could argue that (1) was a type of “non-panicking” in the sense of not issuing “emergency approval” of tests. But, non-approval was also driven by a type of over-caution
or fear — fear of approving an inaccurate test. Currently, the biggest problems we seem to be facing are reluctance to approve vaccines and rapid at-home tests. That is also driven by excessive caution over vaccine ineffectiveness and test inaccuracy although one could also argue that it reflects insufficient panic over a potential surge this fall and winter.
On the tweet, reading the denialism and self-delusion in the replies is eye opening. People that really, really want Trump booted from office, apparently, are unconcerned that a *Jill Stein and Obama voter* might vote for Trump. They also seem to think that said Stein-Obama voter is just pretending to be undecided but is actually an unpersuadable, closed-minded, closet-racist Trump supporter.
15. September 2020 at 00:47
Interesting headline from Political Calculations:
“Cumulative World GDP Loss From Coronavirus Pandemic Tops $11 Trillion
The estimated cumulative loss of GDP to the world economy since the coronavirus pandemic began in China now tops $11 trillion.”
—30—
If one posits that lockdowns and such saved 1 million lives globally, but that without lockdowns commerce would have gone on somewhat normally, that comes to $11 million in lost GDP per life saved. Mostly elderly with co-morbidities.
No one ever looks graceful comparing lives to dollars. You might as well do a Tik Tok dance on your grandmother’s grave celebrating your inheritance and throwing money at the grieving.
But the lockdowns are a very dubious policy tool.
15. September 2020 at 01:50
OT – paging Ben Cole – A recent (Sept. 14) scientific paper challenging that SARS-CoV-2 (the C-19 virus) is natural. Downloadable 26 page paper at: https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X2ByMSfivIX Excellent technical supplement to the Yuri Deigin paper.
15. September 2020 at 03:54
“On the other hand, this isn’t really about Trump, as the policy failure last winter involved 99% of our society, including bloggers like me. Trump was especially bad for an especially long period, but the entire establishment (both political parties) blew it last winter. We all should have panicked.”
The extent to which Trump (and bloggers like you) go to pretend that Donald Trump isn’t the President of the United States and the most powerful human being in this county, is staggering.
15. September 2020 at 04:15
At Ray Lopez. Of course 100K rhetorical, does not make it less ridiculous. I get the Trump is a joke argument, but in context, I.e., what his opponents have done and continue to propose, I find it completely unpersuasive. You know, I am sure that we can make every presidents a joke—-it could not be easier. But joke is not “racist”—-like our friend Larry beli
15. September 2020 at 04:18
Continue…..
believes.
On a more serious note, I noticed you mentioned there are different strains of this virus you named in a prior post. You used that in context of Europe versus Asia. One would think, that is far more important than Trump “was wrong” argument. I cannot find much on the these strains. Where can I read about them?
15. September 2020 at 08:41
The Republican governor of Alabama is telling everyone to panic!! Leave your homes!! We can’t save your life!! But wearing a mask is a step too far!
15. September 2020 at 13:58
@Gene Frenkle – here is the stem article on the strains of C-19 virus: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/researchers-hypothesize-that-a-highly-contagious-strain-of-the-coronavirus-is-spreading-but-other-experts-remain-skeptical/
You would do well to read the link I posted above at timestamp 15. September 2020 at 01:50. You will be well ahead of the curve, as this news will become mainstream in about two years. And, since it appears you are a Trump fan (unlike me), you’ll be pleased that Trump in fact is right about China being the origin of the virus. Unfortunately, the NIH moratorium on chimeric gain-of-function research (which Shi Zhengli ran afoul of, see the link above) was enacted by Obama in 2014 but reversed by Trump in 2017. But this moratorium probably would not have affected Shi’s research, since by 2017 Shi had already returned to Wuhan, and the moratorium was US based only. See more here: https://tinyurl.com/y4642exa (and if you can, sign this petition)
15. September 2020 at 14:18
BC, You said:
“In hindsight, the biggest mistakes early were (1) the FDA didn’t approve non-CDC tests and (2) Covid patients were sent to nursing homes. I guess one could argue that (1) was a type of “non-panicking” in the sense of not issuing “emergency approval” of tests. But, non-approval was also driven by a type of over-caution”
No, the biggest mistakes were not doing widespread social distancing and not wearing masks. Had we done those two things, we might have ended up more like Australia. Think about Mardi Gras as an example of what we did wrong. Look at the death rate in Louisiana vs. other southern states.
But yes, those were big mistakes too.
Bob, Well, I have called him by far the worst president in history, so there’s that. Seriously, do you know how to read? I said:
“Trump was not trying to prevent panic, he was trying to cover up the problem. He’s been against social distancing, testing, masks, indeed almost everything that works.”
Michael Rulle, Wait, you are asking Ray Lopez for advice on what to read to learn about Covid? Perhaps you should re-evaluate your sources of information.
15. September 2020 at 14:22
Ray, my point is Republican governors tell people to panic all the time and it generally helps them politically. So it was in Trump’s best interests to tell people to panic in February…but because he has such poor political instincts and is generally incompetent and a clown he believed telling people to panic would undermine the greatest economy in American history that his steel tariffs created.
Btw, I watched an American movie that takes place in China made in early 2018 and a plot point involves a virus outbreak in a Chinese province that is very infectious and the Chinese have masks handy when an American character gets sick. So apparently masks will be the “new normal” here going forward.
15. September 2020 at 15:33
Ray Lopez—
Interesting paper, though over my head.
Very troubling is that the lead author’s Twitter accounts has been suspended.
In any event, one would have to be rather naive to believe that the bat virus Covid-19 was natural, and just happened to evolve in Wuhan (where bats do not live), but where similar bat viruses were being manipulated in a bsl-4 lab.
A cover story for the coprophragic. A pending Disney movie?
15. September 2020 at 17:24
“Twitter suspends the account of Chinese scientist Dr. Li-Meng Yan after she published a paper with evidence that COVID-19 is a man-made virus created in Wuhan Lab”
https://techstartups.com/2020/09/15/twitter-suspends-account-of-chinese-virologist-dr-li-meng-yan-after-she-published-a-paper-with-evidence-that-covid-19-was-created-in-wuhan-lab/
Scott Sumner wants to panic. The Donks want to panic about Russian trolls in US social media, and the Russian stooge Trump.
Meanwhile Disney owns ABC.
NBCUniversal owns NBC, and MSNBC.
Viacom owns CBS. WarnerMedia owns CNN.
See the No Balls Association (NBA) for the approved response to China and Beijing/CCP pressure on US media and business.
You might even want to panic.
16. September 2020 at 02:23
“1. Has SARS – CoV- 2 been subjected to in vitro manipulation?
We present three lines of evidence to support our contention that laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2: “
https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X2HmFz-SmUn P3.
16. September 2020 at 08:55
Ben, Just keep citing “research” on China’s role in Covid that is funded by Steve Bannon. We all eagerly await such high quality and impartial research.
16. September 2020 at 13:10
Ben email me at ray lopez 88 at gmail and I’ll send you a summary of the Li paper.
18. September 2020 at 05:52
The SJWs do have A LOT OF good points but it regularly morphs into ugly indentity politics. And then the good points the SJWs make turn into only self serving (identity) politics for group A, B, C, ………..
Trump didn’t have any plan. He simply didn’t want to spend ANY money to prevent the spread of the virus. He’s such a cheap-cheat.