Are COVID-19 Vaccines Safe?: Some Thoughts For Those With Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccines for COVID are being distributed in the United States at a much faster rate than I would have expected. In two to four weeks, the United States is expected to reach the point in which the supply of vaccines is going to outpace the demand of vaccines. As of April 28, 2021, 54.2 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine. This would normally be good news for the goal of herd immunity, which is when a high enough percentage has developed immunity (either through contracting the disease or getting vaccinated) in which the spread of a disease is highly unlikely. The reason why I hold back on expressing joy in "returning to normal" is because herd immunity now has another obstacle: vaccine hesitancy. 

Vaccine hesitancy is the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate against contagious diseases. Morningstar Consulting provides some interesting insight on those who are vaccine-hesitant. Below are some demographic trends on who is vaccine-hesitant, but I want to touch upon the "why" for a moment. Those who are unsure about the vaccine (as opposed to those who simply refuse to vaccinate) have a few reasons to not vaccinate. The most often-cited reasons are concerns about the side effects and worried about the vaccines having moved too quickly through the clinical trials. There are other reasons (e.g., questioning the effectiveness of the vaccines, perceived unlikelihood of contracting COVID), but I want to touch upon safety and the rate at which the vaccines were produced because they seem to be the major drivers of COVID vaccine hesitancy. 

I understand the issues of safety and whether a vaccine development with the name of "Operation Warp Speed" meant we rushed things or cut corners. I expressed these very concerns back in October and had correctly predicted that it would be difficult to persuade a significant percentage of citizens that the process was not needlessly hastened. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to get a vaccine appointment. The hesitancy went rushing through my mind. Ironically, I was more unnerved about getting the vaccine than I was throughout the rest of the pandemic. In November, I had COVID with two strains of pneumonia, and the unknowns of the vaccine were more distressing than the unknowns of what having COVID would mean for me. Granted, I'm a healthy thirty-something that exercises regularly, which is significant because a study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine released a study this month showing that regular exercise greatly reduces the likelihood of severe COVID (Sallis et al., 2021). 

In spite of hesitating, I surpassed the worries, fears, and trepidations and I received my first Pfizer dose. First and foremost, I had to remind myself of the messaging I had been using throughout the pandemic: there is no such thing as living a zero-risk life. There are only tradeoffs. There is a risk to getting the vaccine, but there's also a risk of not getting the vaccine. Clearly, the risk is higher if you're in a high-risk category, such as being elderly, immunocompromised, or simply living an overall unhealthy lifestyle that would make fighting off an infection all the more difficult. 

If you don't believe me, ask rock star Ted Nugent. Throughout the pandemic, he flat-out denied that coronavirus existed. He thought it was a hoax, at least until he contracted COVID-19. When he had COVID-19, it was so bad that he thought he was dying. We will talk more about risk momentarily, but I want to emphasize the point of "a zero-risk life" because society has become so risk-averse during that this pandemic that many have come to think that a life without risk is possible. It is how "follow the science" resulted in implementing onerous lockdowns with zero evidence, keeping schools closed when evidence showed that schools are not super-spreaders, and people became obsessed with cleaning surfaces, even thought the likelihood of catching COVID-19 through a contaminated surface is next to nil. 

Fear has been used to keep most citizens compliant with the regulations, regardless of how much or little evidence there actually is. That motivation of fear is now being used to keep people from getting vaccinated. I'm not arguing for living a life without fear. There are things that can and do kill people. We need to find the balance between making sure fear doesn't paralyze us from living and being so fearless that we are oblivious to that which could harm or kill us. After all, that is the point of risk assessment. To do that, we need facts about the vaccine development. We cannot be so scared of COVID-19 that we take the vaccines without asking any questions. We also cannot be so scared of the vaccine that we refuse a vaccine, facts be damned.

This is why before getting my vaccine, I talked with multiple friends in the medical community, ranging from doctors and biologists to chemists and virologists. I also did my own research because I am an applied social sciences researcher by profession and it is what I do generally. I consider myself as someone who as a healthy dose of skepticism, and it has fared well for me over the years. I have to keep in mind that I can be both skeptical of the vaccine and what would happen if I did not get the vaccine. With so many other things in life, I wondered about alternate scenarios. Even so, I chose to get the vaccine. What I outline below are facets I discussed with my friends in the medical community and what I found through research. So what are reasons to believe that getting the vaccine is significantly safer relative to not getting the vaccine? 

• Currently available COVID vaccine data. Whether it is Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson and Johnson, the FDA reports pointed out that were no serious or prevalent safety concerns during clinical trials. Even with the blood clot issue in the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, that was less than a 1 in a 1,000,000 likelihood, which is much lower than the probability of 1 in 20 getting a blood clot if you got a severe enough case of COVID in which you were hospitalized. Regarding short-term data, it has been found that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were shown to have over 90 percent effective (about 67 percent effective for Johnson & Johnson). Essentially, the vaccines are shown to be efficient at preventing getting COVID-19 generally, even more effective at preventing moderate-to-severe cases, and all the while, adverse reactions are extremely rare (e.g., Baden et al., 2021; Polack et al., 2020). 
• We still do not know how long the COVID vaccine lasts, nor do we know of long-term health effects. These are completely valid concerns to have, and ones that I share. At the same time, there are already concerns about the long term-effects of COVID, commonly known as long COVID. Other diseases have resulted in long-term effects, including, but not limited to, the West Nile Virus, the Spanish Flu, celiac disease, and diabetes. If you are going to be scared of the unknowns of the long-term effects of the vaccine, you also need to be scared of the unknown, potential long-term effects of COVID-19. That argument cuts both ways if you are going to be consistent with having the unknown dictate your life.
• Until we have such data on long-term effects of the vaccines, we can use other licensed vaccines as a proxy. What we do know is that currently licensed vaccines are not shown to have long-term effects, certainly at the likelihood at which people are concerned (UC-Davis). Throughout vaccine history, if an issue is to arise, it has reared its ugly head within the first two months. More than two months have passed since the clinical trials and beginning with mass vaccination. If vaccine issues are most likely to happen within the first two months, wouldn't we have noticed by now? 
• 5/7/2021 Addendum: As mentioned above, vaccine history suggests problems are most likely to arise within the first two months, which means we should have enough vaccine data to infer something about safety. I want to do an apples-to-apples comparison on the likelihood of dying from COVID versus dying from the vaccine, and to do so with assumptions generous to the vaccine-hesitant. According to a Stanford professor and scientist (Ioaniddis, 2020), the median infection fatality rate across 51 countries is 0.23 percent. This assumption about IFR is generous because the estimates for the IFR has ranged from almost 0.0 percent to 1.6 percent (Gøtzsche, 2020). Per the CDC's vaccine database, there have been 245 million doses administered as of May 3. There have been 4,178 deaths reported for those who had the COVID vaccine. For argument's sake, let's assume that all of those deaths were caused by the vaccine. That still means 0.0017 percent likelihood of dying from the vaccine. What is the relative likelihood that you will die from COVID versus dying from the vaccine given those generous assumptions? If you do the math (0.23/0.0017), it means that you would be 135 times more likely to die from COVID than you are from the vaccine.
• Already-existing vaccine research. The idea of a vaccine is not new. Vaccine development has existed for about 200 years, and that has resulted in the development of highly effective and highly safe vaccine platforms. As the technology improves, the timeline for such development shortens, as we will see shortly. The challenge is not developing the vaccine platform, but making sure that the right viral antigens are safe and effective for humans (University of Chicago). I'm not here to say there has never been a single issue related to vaccines in the entire history of man, but vaccines generally have had an overall good track record historically. Like with other technological developments, the quality of safety gets better over time. To quote FactCheck, "No vaccine or medical product is 100 percent safe, but large randomized control trials, reviewed by multiple groups of experts, revealed no serious safety concerns and showed that the benefits [of vaccines] outweigh the risks."
• We had a head start in terms of coronavirus research. The media loves to peddle the idea that COVID-19 as a "novel virus." That, of course, is to stoke fear and boost their ratings of the supposed unknownness of COVID-19. The fact of the matter is that COVID-19 is hardly a novel virus. As a matter of fact, there are hundreds of coronaviruses, according to the National Institutes of Health. Prior to COVID-19, the two most famous coronaviruses were severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). We did not start from scratch on COVID-19 research. We already had research from SARS and MERS that provided a foundation for the COVID vaccine research and development process. Plus, scientists have been studying coronaviruses for the past 50 years, including the structure, genome, and life cycle of coronaviruses. 
• mRNA technology is not new. It is true that mRNA technology, the technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, has not been previously used to produce a marketable product (i.e., licensure). At the same time, scientists have been researching mRNA technology for about four decades now. As for mRNA vaccines specifically, that has been in the works for about a decade. It has been used in the clinical trials to develop vaccines for Zika, rabies, and influenza. To quote the Word Health Organization, "mRNA vaccines are not live virus vaccines and do not interfere with human DNA." mRNA vaccines are not based on live virus. The spike protein is primed in our immune system and disappears forever, just like it has for so many other already-proven vaccines.
• Global collaboration. As soon as the genome sequence was discovered in January 2020, it was shared with scientists throughout the world. Since then, there has been a high level of collaboration in terms of sharing research results with other scientists. This collaboration is a continuation of what was developed during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks, including the Coalition for Economic Preparedness. The collaboration is important because the more information scientists have and share with one another, the faster they can produce a vaccine. 
• There was unprecedented funding in COVID vaccine development. Vaccine development is a financially risky endeavor for pharmaceutical companies. It costs billions for a vaccine that may never work. A lack of funding is one of the primary reasons that vaccine development can be dragged out over a period of years. In the case of COVID-19, there was a lot of money allocated. With Operation Warp Speed under the Trump Administration, $18 billion was allocated to offset the price of vaccine development. Additionally, the government taking on the financial risk meant that the earlier clinical stages were consolidated.
• Enrollment numbers for COVID clinical trials. One of the reasons that vaccine development has historically been long is because finding a sufficient number of participants. Phase III of clinical trials typically require 3,000 participants. For less common diseases, filling up those spaces can take years. Given the prevalence of COVID-19, it was easy to accumulate trial participants. The Moderna trial had 30,000 participants, which is well above average. Not only did we see an adequate number of participants, but the larger-than-average sample size of participants should inspire greater confidence because the findings have greater statistical significance. 
• Cutting through the red tape. Normally, it takes two months to a year because there is so much administrative work before a trial can even begin. With the urgency of the pandemic, regulatory agencies prioritized the vaccine studies and essentially cut through much of the red tape. This is significant because as the libertarian Cato Institute points out, the FDA approval process is so long to begin with that it actually costs lives. Let's hope that cutting through this red tape is not a one-time occurrence. 
• Review process. One argument used against the vaccines is that only emergency use authorization (EUA) is being used by the FDA. The reason is because that the medium-to-long-term effects are not understood. They instituted what is referred to as rolling reviews. Instead of reviewing all the data once at the end of the clinical trial, the data were reviewed throughout the trial on an ongoing basis. More to the point, there are independent bodies that monitor both the data and the safety, as well as the ethics of the clinical trials. Even well after the EUAs and the rollouts of the vaccines, the vaccines will continue to undergo rigorous monitoring and evaluation to make sure that there are no widespread, long-term effects. What is going on in terms of oversight is far from the notion peddled by anti-vaxxers that it was simply thrown together with no consideration for safety.
• Vaccine development was streamlined. With a global pandemic such as this one, time was of the essence. Under an accelerated timeline, stages in the vaccine development process either overlapped or occurred simultaneously. Even when the clinical trials were ongoing, the funding from Operation Warp Speed was already being used to simultaneously manufacture the vaccine doses. Also, vaccine developers were able to combine Phases II and III because they had so many participants. For more information on how the vaccine process was streamlined while still assuring safety protocols, please see the video from the World Health Organization below.

Conclusion: I'm not here to tell you that you must get a vaccine because I am not one for vaccine mandates. After all, you should have control of what goes into your body and what does not. At the same time, it would be a good idea to get one. If you are nervous about getting a vaccine, it's totally understandable. I felt the same nervousness you did. Fear of the unknown is common, especially when it comes to knowing what the future holds. 

If you are worried because the vaccine development process was shorter than it historically has been, remember what I outlined previously in terms of detailing the vaccination development process. So much fell together in place when developing the COVID-19 vaccines. We already had a foundation for researching COVID-19 vaccines that is decades-old. The political and social urgency cut the red tape, increased global collaboration, and provided ample funding, the latter of which is a major component of vaccine development. We were able to streamline vaccine development processes, which shaved off years of what would have previously been considered "standard." The process was not rushed or sloppy since all the steps with the same level of oversight were taken. Rather than think of it as rushed, think of it as streamlined. 

If you are worried about long-term effects, remember that other vaccines have historically been proven to not have prevalent long-term issues. Also keep in mind that we still do not known the long-term effects of contracting COVID-19. If you are going to be skeptical about vaccines because of the unknown, maybe the unknowns of the long-term effects of COVID-19 should make you skeptical about your skepticism.  

If you are worried because of safety issues, remember the following. The vaccine development process for COVID-19 went through the same safety protocols and oversight that other vaccines have. The vaccines are shown to be safe (at least in the short-run) and are effective at preventing the contraction of COVID-19. Getting more people vaccinated will not only help slow the spread of COVID-19, but it will also bring us that much closer to ending the pandemic. Even for those of you who are skeptical, I can say that based on what we know about COVID vaccines, other vaccines, and the vaccine development process generally, the benefits are most likely to outweigh the risks. So if you have not received a COVID vaccine yet, please make an appointment. 

Yellen and Global Minimum Taxation: A Policy Idea of Maximum Nonsense

Earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opined that we are on a global race to the bottom in corporate taxation. Yellen is worried that countries are on the path towards ever-lower corporate tax rates, which would be problematic in her eyes because without stable tax systems, we would not be able to fund "essential public goods." With a global minimum tax, such a tax regime would mean that a multinational company pays the same minimal corporate tax rate, regardless of which country they are located. 

Yellen wants an equitable system in which there is a "more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations, and spurs innovation, growth, and prosperity." From Yellen's point of view, it would mean less tax evasion and greater tax competition. It's nice to throw around such lofty words as "equitable." The Governor of Illinois tried it in 2019-2020 when trying to pass the "Fair Tax," a failed attempt to convert the State's flat income tax into a progressive tax. The problem is that such exalted language is a guise that covers up the myriad issues with global minimum taxation. 

Is There Really a Race to The Bottom? There are some smaller countries with 0 percent corporate tax, and yes, global average of the corporate tax rate has dropped since 1980. But has there been a race to the bottom? According to the Tax Foundation's report on 2020 corporate taxes, 140 out of 197 countries (or 71.0 percent) have a corporate tax rate between 20 and 30 percent. The worldwide average is 23.4 percent (25.9 percent when weighted by GDP), while the unweighted global average is 23.5 percent for OECD countries. The rate are not as high as they were in 1980 (at around 40 percent global average), but they began to plateau in the past decade. Plus, if there were a race to the bottom, [nearly] everyone would be doing it. What we see is that only nine countries lowered their corporate taxes from the 2019 to 2020 calendar year (Tax Foundation). A far cry from "race to the bottom."  

What about corporate tax revenues? You would think that with Yellen's rhetoric, a lower corporate tax rate would mean less tax revenue. The libertarian Cato Institute collected the data of 22 OECD countries dating back to the year 1980. Cato found that as corporate tax rates fell, corporate tax revenue as a percent of GDP generally increased. Why? Because lower corporate tax rates meant increasing business activities that subsequently generated more income. Since "sufficient tax revenue" was one of Yellen's perceived gripes, the fact that reality is contrary to Yellen's perception undermines Yellen's case. 

Why the Corporate Tax Is Such a Poor Life Choice. Whether there should be tax harmonization is another discussion for another time. But out of all of the taxes you could have chosen, why the corporate tax? To quote the OECD from a past report, the same organization now helping Yellen to create this taxation system, "corporate taxes are found to be the most harmful for growth." As I have documented before (see here and here), the corporate tax is one of the worst taxes, and not just because of its effects on economic growth. It reduces productivity of labor, disincentivizes investment, creates a double taxation effect, creates a huge tax burden, and results in a majority of the tax incidence paid by laborers (Tax Foundation, 2017). What is the point of talking about a corporation's "fair share" when most of the tax is paid by the everyday worker?  

So What If Corporate Tax Rates Are Lower? As already outlined, higher corporate tax rates do not mean more revenue. If the past forty years have taught us anything, it is the opposite. There is greater tax revenue, which is a win for the government. It is a win for shareholders because they earn more profit. Lowering the tax rate is also a win for workers since they pay most of the tax incidence of a corporate tax.

A lower corporate tax rate is a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. As one example: according to a study from Ernst and Young, the U.S. companies lost $510 billion in the mergers and acquisitions from 2004 to 2017 because they were inadequately positioned when it came to corporate tax competitiveness. Less developed countries use a lower corporate tax rate to attract investment and help along with economic development so they can compete in the global market. Just ask Ireland or Paraguay. And let's consider that nations might want to lower the corporate tax rate to balance between the priorities of collecting revenue and minimizing the aforementioned harms that the corporate tax causes. 

Political Feasibility. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from such an arrangement. It wouldn't be countries with lower corporate tax rates (e.g., Ireland, Paraguay). It would be those who already have higher corporate tax rates, such as France and Germany. Although the U.S. federal corporate tax rate is 21 percent, keep in mind that President Biden is looking to raise the tax rate to 28 percent, which is above the global average rate. It's as if the United States wants the revenue, and is willing to strong-arm other countries out of their competitive advantage to get it. Also, taxation is one of the privileges of sovereignty. Another reason that it is unlikely to happen: because it means up giving up power (not to mention greater tax revenue). There have been efforts towards corporate tax harmonization in the European Union, but to practically no avail (Chelyadina, 2019). If you cannot even get a monetary union to cooperate in tax harmonization, what makes  you think that you will get the rest of the world to do so? And none of this even gets into implementation hurdles (Tax Foundation), but I digress.

Conclusion: To recap, there is no race to the bottom. Corporate tax rates were too high, and the data suggest this by showing a correlation between lower corporate tax rates over the years and higher corporate tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. Countries with lower corporate tax rates enjoy competitiveness in the global markets, and they will be hard-pressed to give such an advantage up. Heaven forbid if other countries compete with the United States in the global marketplace! Winston Churchill once said that a trait of socialism is that it is the gospel of envy and that its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. It looks like Yellen wants to share the misery equally, except within the narrower context of corporate taxation. 

Forcing other countries to raise their corporate taxes and create a de facto cartel isn't going to do anyone any favors, especially given the harmfulness and inefficiencies of the corporate tax. Plus, it ignores the fact that fiscal spending in the United States has gotten out of control. In 2020, we spent $5.3 trillion in coronavirus-related spending. This year, the Democrats were able to get a $1.9 trillion so-called "relief bill." Biden is now proposing $2.3 trillion in additional fiscal spending for a supposed infrastructure bill in which less than 30 percent of the spending has to do with traditional infrastructure. My advice to Yellen and Biden is this: cut back on fiscal spending and create a tax code that spurs U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace instead of hindering it. 

When "Follow the Science" During the Pandemic Meant Not Following the Science

During this pandemic, I can say that a few new pet peeves emerged. At the beginning, it was the phrase "stay home, stay safe." There was another equally annoying mantra that became popular within the past year: "Follow the science." Those who were advocating for lockdowns, mask mandates, and other closures and regulations used it to try to establish legitimacy. 

"Follow the science" is a feel-good slogan. After all, who wouldn't want to follow a seemingly objective, straightforward process of determining what is valid and what is not? At the very least, it works to delegitimize those who disagree with your viewpoint because "only an idiot wouldn't believe in the science." In practice, "follow the science" actually meant something entirely different from actually having scientific facts rationally inform policy decisions. Let's take a look at a few major examples to see what I mean by this assertion, shall we?

Lockdowns. This ends up first on my list not only because of the onerous nature of the lockdowns, but also because there was no "following the science." Prior to this pandemic, there was never a time in human history where we decided to isolate the healthy. That was the case for good reason. In September 2019, Johns Hopkins suggested that quarantine would be the least effective in controlling the spread (Johns Hopkins, p. 57). To make this point even stronger, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report on non-pharmaceutical interventions in response to epidemics and pandemics. This report was written in October 2019, which was shortly before this pandemic began. Guess what their recommendation was for dealing with those who weren't sick? Well, here it is:

"Home quarantine of exposed individuals to reduce transmission is not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be difficulties in implementing it (p. 16)." 

Putting healthy people in lockdown was not "following the science." Quite the opposite! The WHO had a game plan in which it said that isolating the healthy was not recommended, and the world ignored it. Instead, we threw ourselves into what I would consider the largest social experiment in human history. There was no cost-benefit analysis done and no evidence base to support it. I expressed my concerns early on (see here and here), ranging from economic costs and non-COVID health costs to social unrest and global instability. We need to wait for the dust to settle because it will take years to find out the effects of what these lockdowns have had on society. Preliminarily, I could cite a study from Stanford University researchers showing that lockdowns were ineffective in slowing down the transmission of COVID (Bendavid et al., 2021). In any case, I'm willing to bet I will write on this topic multiple times in the future. I don't know how that research will pan out (although I can take an educated guess), but I can safely state right now that the politicians implementing the lockdowns did anything but "follow the science." 

Travel and Immigration Restrictions. For months, multiple countries have either shut their borders completely to international travel or have been restrictive enough to significantly damage their economies. The theory is that because COVID is transmitted through people, anything that reduces the movement of people should help. How useful are such restrictions? 

I covered Trump's ineffective immigration ban executive order back in April 2020, but I want to keep this to travel restrictions generally. In April 2020, the Cato Institute released a policy brief on the topic of travel restrictions. At the beginning of the pandemic, influenza research would have been the most relevant for determining the efficacy of travel bans. As the Cato Institute shows, travel restrictions are only effective if they have not reached another country. At best, they only delay the spread of the disease for a few weeks, especially since stopping travel on a global level is unfeasible and unenforceable. The pre-COVID research showed that travel restrictions are unable to stop the spread of a given pandemic. This also seems to have been the case with COVID-19, as well (e.g., Chinazzi et al., 2020). 

As University of Washington public health expert Nicole Errett points out, such targeted initiatives as domestic travel screening, patient monitoring, vaccine development, and general emergency readiness are more effective (and certainly more based in science) than travel bans. Essentially, any country that still has travel bans (which is almost all of them) is not following the science. 

Cleaning Surfaces. I have seen countless people scrubbing and cleaning surfaces, whether at such places as the grocery store, the gym, or on an airplane, in the hopes that they won't contract COVID-19 from touching a surface. According to the CDC's primer on COVID and surface transmissions, the probability of getting COVID in response to touching a contaminated surface is less than 1 in 10,000. This, of course, assumes that the surface you are touching is indeed contaminated, which is to say that the odds of getting COVID from touching any given surface is even less likely. 

Rutgers Professor Emanuel Goldman wrote an article in The Lancet about the exaggeration of fomites being a form of transmission of COVID. Professor Linsey Marr, who is an airborne viruses expert at Virginia Tech University, went as far as saying that "there's really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten COVID-19 by touching a contaminated surface." 

Cleaning surfaces has its place, but it has been taken to an extreme, especially since COVID-19 transmission through surfaces is so rare. If I had to guess why so many people like doing in spite of the evidence showing its lack of effectiveness, it's probably to appear socially conscientious or some other sense of self-gratification. I'm sure Lysol is happy to make money off of this irrational obsession, but it does add a cost for businesses, one that is unnecessary for stopping transmission of COVID. I wouldn't be surprised if people in the future look at the obsession with cleaning surfaces the way we look at people back in the Middle Ages that tried to cure everything with leeches.  

Social Distancing: How Much? This is one of the key questions in terms of preventing the transmission of a respiratory disease. For months, those in the United States have been told to keep six feet away, as if it were some proven or consistent rule. 

Last month, the CDC had a press release outlining changes in operational procedure for primary and secondary schools. It changed its social distancing policy for schools from 6 feet to 3 feet because the CDC did not find any additional risk involved. You could argue that this could only apply to children, but it does bring some doubt as to the efficacy of more stringent social distancing rules. 

Additionally, since the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO's recommendation has been to keep 3 feet (1 meter) away from everyone, not 6 feet. If you want some nuance for the social distancing debate, look at the chart below from Massachussets Institute of Technology [MIT] researchers (Jones et al., 2020). In any case, what I can say is that there is no consistent and "determined rule" as to what is safe. Even asking the question of "what is safe" comes with some arbitrariness. If we all stayed isolated from one another, that would be safest. How much safer is six feet versus nine feet versus twenty feet? What is the marginal benefit from a few extra feet? With this much nuance, what does it really mean to "follow the science?" 

Face Masks. This is one of my favorites because wearing face masks has become so divisive in the U.S. political landscape. The premise behind face masks is that the covering of one's nose and mouth better captures respiratory droplets. The fewer respiratory droplets circulating in the air, the less likely that COVID-19 is to spread. It seems so intuitive that an imbecile should be able to figure it out, right? When this pandemic first started, I essentially did a literature review of the evidence for face masks, and the evidence was mixed. There was actually a lot of ambiguity because of this mixed evidence. As time passed, the evidence base grew, and it became more accepted of a practice. So many people think the science is "resolved," and yet it's not. As a matter of fact, here is what the World Health Organization (WHO) had to say in its December 2020 interim guidance entitled "Mask use in the context of COVID-19": 

"At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (p. 8)."

Almost one year into a pandemic, and the best that WHO can say is that the evidence is "limited and inconsistent." That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, which would explain why it advises the usage of masks as a part of a more comprehensive plan to flatten the curve. 

I'm not here to say that face masks have zero effectiveness. I have already written on the topic twice (see here and here), and I am mildly in support of increased face mask usage. The main reason is given the relatively low costs to wearing a mask, "better safe than sorry" is nowhere near as imposing or onerous as it was with the lockdowns. My support does come with a few caveats. One is that because of how germs dissipate in outdoor air, face masks are more effective indoors. Two, N95 and surgical masks are more effective than cloth masks. Three, the masks are much more effective for those with symptoms for those without. Finally, and most importantly, the efficacy is modest at best. Those who are walking around high and mighty thinking they are saving the world by wearing their mask should think twice. In the case of face masks, it's not downright ignoring the science. Since the scientific findings are ambiguous, no one is "following the science" per se when they are wearing the mask.

School Closures. I will keep this short since I covered the topic in July 2020. There still remains little evidence of the closures' efficacy, as is illustrated by an article in one of the world's oldest medical journals: the BMJ (Lewis et al., 2021). The top official for the WHO in Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, admitted in November that school closures do not work and should be avoided. Even the Left-leaning Washington Post came to terms with the lack of evidence in support of school closures for stopping the spread of COVID-19. Children, especially those in primary school, are not major transmitters of COVID-19. Schools have been shown not to be super-spreaders of COVID-19. As a result from not following the science, we have racked up a number of costs as a result (see list from UNESCO), including delayed development of children, lower student achievement, mental health for children and parents, as well as economic loss of both the parents now and future earnings of their children. 

Restaurant and Gym Closures. I analyzed these closures last December. Much like with the face masks, there is limited and ambiguous evidence. There is also some nuance. For example, capacity limits are more effective with restaurants than shutting them down. With gyms, the limited evidence suggests that social distancing, proper ventilation, and good hygiene practices minimize the spread of COVID-19. There have been gym and restaurant closures in various jurisdictions. The fact there are more effective measures that can mitigate transmission than blanket prohibitions meant that politicians who went with blanket prohibitions were not "following the science."

Postscript. The "follow the science" mantra comes with many issues. The one I detailed the most today is that those who justified restrictions with "follow the science" were not following the science. In some cases, the science was clear (e.g., cleaning surfaces) and was simply dismissed. In other cases, there have been vague, inconsistent, and/or limited findings, as we saw with face masks and the closures of restaurants and gyms. The social distancing aspect is complex because the distance could vary based on such factors as the activity, whether it is done indoors, and whether there are multiple people in the vicinity. What does one do when there is ambiguity or the situation requires a nuanced approach? 

There are more issues than asking what "follow the science" means. As the Cato Institute points out in a September 2020 policy brief on "trusting the science," science has its limits in what it can and cannot do. There is no straight-forward, objective way to proceed, as if it were strictly formulaic. One of the major reasons "follow the science" isn't adequate because we have to make value judgments. Those who love saying "follow the science" forget that science provides us insight to the pandemic and the nature of COVID-19 itself, but doesn't automatically imply a policy prescription. "Follow the science" doesn't factor in the economic, political, ethical, psychological, educational, or emotional considerations, not to mention civil liberties or other health considerations unrelated to COVID-19. 

"Follow the science" also doesn't eliminate risk because we cannot live in a world without risks. We don't have an option to eliminate risk. We only have options in which we ask ourselves what are acceptable tradeoffs.  One of the lamentable outcomes of this pandemic is a growing number of people act as if we could live in a risk-free world. As a society, we have let fear and hysteria get the better of us. That is not a point of hyperbole. A paper from Ivy League researchers showed how negative the coverage on COVID from U.S. media was (Sacerdote et al., 2020). 

"Follow the science" does not mean actually having the data collection from scientific experiments or the scientific process guide our decisions. It is a thinly-veiled guise to justify restriction on top of restriction. To be sure, there are restrictions that can help mitigate the transmission of COVID-19, but we are well past that point. Before the pandemic, I never understood the phrase "the whole world has gone mad." Given how I have seen so many people react to the pandemic, especially the "follow the science" crowd, it makes me more cynical about humanity, especially when it comes to the irrationality that has become so predominant in recent months. What I can hope for at this juncture is that people can see the motive for these restrictions, that it's primarily not about public health, but about fomenting fear, hysteria, and absurdity. I just hope we can surpass the damage that ignoring the science has done to us.

Let's Hope Biden's So-Called "Infrastructure Plan" Doesn't Become Law

Last month, Congress and the White House enacted a $1.9 trillion so-called relief bill in which there was little relief to be found. Let's not forget the other $5.3 trillion that was passed last year in coronavirus relief, aid, and "stimulus." If it was not enough that the U.S. government has driven our debt-to-GDP ratio to a new high, Biden wants to spend even more money. This time, it's not to deal with coronavirus, but rather to purportedly deal with infrastructure. Last week, Biden proposed an eight-year, $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, although the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts that figure at $2.7 trillion. When you look at it, Biden's plan is hardly original. It comes off as a combination of President Eisenhower's pitch to expand infrastructure back in the 1950s and the trope that Obama used in 2009 to justify the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [ARRA].

Before delving into the details of Biden's plan, I would like to ask even if we have an "infrastructure crisis," especially since if you look at the media, everything is a crisis. When the centrist Brookings Institution analyzed local transportation policy (Turner, 2019), they found that "the situation is obviously not worse than it was than 20 years ago. In fact, there are fewer potholes on the interstate." If anything, a 2020 research brief from the Cato Institute shows that infrastructure has been improving. I'm not here to say that our infrastructure couldn't use an upgrade, but rather that we are hardly in crisis mode when it comes to national infrastructure. Aside from a questionable sense of urgency, what other reasons are there to object to Biden's plan? 

Raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent would harm the economy. Biden is looking to undo the corporate tax rate cut from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and increase the federal corporate tax rate to 28 percent. We can ignore the fact that the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] found that higher taxes are not the answer to funding this. The only plausible way to generate the funds for federal investment without running a deficit is to cut non-investment discretionary spending (CBO, 2016, p. 13). 

There is the cost of raising the corporate tax rate. According to a February 2021 Tax Foundation analysis on Biden's proposed tax increase, such an increase would result economic output by 0.8 percent over the next decade, as well as eliminate 159,000 jobs and cuts wages by 0.7 percent. These findings do not surprise me. I have covered the topic of the corporate tax before (see here and here). I came across research from the OECD that found that corporate taxes are one of the most harmful to economic growth. They also reduce labor productivity, create a higher tax burden, shift the tax incidence to the working class (and not to the shareholders), and disincentivize investment. Speaking of investment.....

More federal dollars in investment translate into less net investment. The CBO calculated that each dollar of federal investment increases total investment by two-thirds of a dollar, i.e., for every dollar of federal investment, there is only $0.67 of actual investment (CBO, 2016, p. 4). To frame it in a slightly different way, when the federal government invests a dollar, state and local governments, as well as private actors, reduce their investment by $0.33. The joys of disincentive and the crowding-out effect! The CBO confirmed this in a separate analysis of highway infrastructure funding. Guess what the CBO found? A $1 increase in federal highway infrastructure grant money me that state and local governments reduce their spending from anywhere between $0.20 and $0.80 (CBO, 2018, p. 1).

Lower rates of return from public-sector investment. According to the CBO, the average rate of return on private-sector investment is 10 percent. For the public sector, that is 5 percent (CBO, 2016, p. 4). In other words, when the government invests, the rate of return is about half of what it would be compared to the private sector. 

Already-existing federal regulations will increase cost of capital projects. The federal government has a number of regulations that affect the cost of labor, which in turn, affects the rate of return mentioned above. The Davis-Bacon Act requires union-rate wages. Project labor agreements, which were enacted during the Obama administration, requires union-style work rules. As I discussed in 2017, "Buy America" provisions increase the cost of raw materials and equipment required for the projects. When you take out the competitiveness in the procurement process, limited options and labor market rigidities increase prices of projects. That means that we can invest in fewer investment projects, which is a way of saying that federal investment is inefficient. 

Electric vehicle subsidy seeks to benefit the wealthy. Part of the proposal is $175 billion to subsidize electric vehicles (EVs). Right now, EVs account for less than 1 percent of the vehicle fleet. By 2035, they are projected to be at 13 percent of the vehicle fleet (New York Times). Who disproportionately buys electric cars? The wealthy. Congressional Research Service found that 78 percent of those who purchase electric cars make over $100,000 annually. Aside from price, EVs are having issue gaining traction because of smaller ranges and longer refueling times. Technological development could change these factors and make EVs more accessible and more alluring. But at least in the short-to-medium-term, Biden's $175 billion is going to subsidize the wealthy. Plus, let us not forget that the production and charging of electric vehicles relies on fossil fuels. 

Biden's agenda with climate and electricity. Biden would like to have the United States have 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035. When I criticized the Green New Deal a couple of years ago, I pointed out that such associations as the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Academy of Sciences predicted that using carbon-free energy would not be feasible before 2050. On the plus side, Biden is not removing nuclear power from the equation, which is vital if the long-term goal is carbon-free electricity. 

Amtrak subsidies. Biden would like to subsidize Amtrak with $80 billion. Amtrak is tricky because of its quasi-public status. While it is run as a for-profit corporation, it still receives public funding. I haven't scrutinized Amtrak since 2013, but I would contend that privatizing Amtrak is a better solution than throwing money at a company that has lost money every year since it was founded in 1971. 

Much of this bill has nothing to do with infrastructure. CFRB correctly points out that $621 billion of the bill has to do with traditional infrastructure (i.e., transportation infrastructure). Biden seems to add the word "infrastructure" at the end of the other spending that he would like to incur and make it seem like it is an infrastructure bill when it comes off more like an omnibus spending proposal. Here is a list of some of the things in Biden's proposal not having to do with traditional infrastructure:

• $400 billion to expand home and community-based health services
• $213 billion to retrofit houses
• $100 billion to modernize public schools
• $100 billion in workforce development
• $35 billion in climate change research and development
• $25 billion to "advance racial and environmental equity"
• $25 billion to upgrade child care facilities 
• $12 billion for community colleges

Conclusion

I can point out research that shows that infrastructure spending does not boost the economy short-term (Krol, 2020). I can drudge up the Solyndra debacle or the billions spent on light-speed rail in California. What I will say is that this bill is an excuse for government to spend more money and shovel out pork while under the guise of "helping us out." In many respects, this proposal takes money from one hand and puts it into another, all the while slowing economic growth with deleterious tax policy. Biden is not fixing the problem. He is merely throwing money at a problem without any mechanisms for cost control. We can talk about user fees, shifting spending to state governments, or using tax incentives to spur research and development in traditional infrastructure, but what is clear is that federal spending on infrastructure projects is only going to make matters worse. 

4-16-2021 Addendum: I came across an Ivy league economic analysis on the plan from the Wharton School of Business. A few things that are projected as a result. One is a decrease of economic output by 0.9 percent. The second is a three percent decrease in capital stock. Third is a 0.7 percent decrease in wages by 2031, which is ironic given this is supposed to be a "jobs plan."