Autism, Vaccines, and Why the CDC Cannot Be Trusted to Separate Fact from Fear

Having access to accurate and evidence-based healthcare information is an essential ingredient for a well-functioning society in the 21st century. People rely on trusted sources to understand risks and make well-informed decisions for their health and that of their loved ones. As such, even subtle shifts in public-health messaging can have seismic effects. For instance, last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed its website on "Autism and Vaccines." 

The CDC's update claims that "The claim 'vaccines do not cause autism' is not an evidence-based claim because the studies have not ruled out that infant vaccines cause autism." The CDC did not update the website because there was a shift in the research that found something completely different, such as the case with smoking not being good for your health. No, this was merely a shift in messaging from an HHS Secretary with an axe to grind when it comes to vaccines. Needless to say, the Autism Science Foundation, Infectious Diseases Society of America, and Scientific American did not react positively to the change, and rightfully so. Before delving into what this debacle reveals about the CDC, it helps to start with the scientific reality of vaccines and autism itself.

The Scientific Consensus on Vaccines and Autism

In case it is not clear, it behooves us to iterate that decades of rigorous research has studied the topic and found that vaccines do not cause autism, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has illustrated. The National Academy of Medicine reviewed epidemiological data and found no association or causal mechanism between vaccines and autism (Casadevall, 2016). More recently, a large Danish study covering over 1 million children show that there is no link between aluminum in childhood vaccines and autism (Andersson et al., 2025).

The Burden of Proof and the CDC's Messaging

This piece today is not a treatise on the science of vaccines and autism, but is in part to show that the CDC doing is a classic sleight of hand by shifting burden of proof. While the CDC may claim to act out of precaution, its phrasing shifts the burden of proof unfairly and creates unnecessary fear. If someone claims that vaccines cause autism, they must be the ones to present evidence of that claim. Decades of research have been conducted and consistently found zero association, which means that the burden was met and failed. By saying that the link "has not been ruled out," it has developed a standard so vague that anything is possible. By that "logic," that would mean that Bigfoot, Santa Claus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are unresolved scientific questions simply because there is no evidence that disproves their existence with absolute metaphysical certainty. That is not how evidence-based research works, and that is certainly not how the CDC should communicate risk, although the CDC shifted the burden of proof in such a fashion during the pandemic when it came to face masks. 

The CDC's History of Mistrust: The COVID Pandemic

Although the University of Minnesota said that the CDC is no longer trustworthy in light of this website change, I would argue that the CDC has not been trustworthy for a long while when it comes to disseminating evidence-based health information. If there was any time to show that the CDC could not be trusted with such a task, it was during the COVID pandemic. In 2021, I wrote a piece entitled Let's Go Back to Ignoring CDC and Federal Health Guidance Like We Always Have. As my piece shows, there were multiple missteps, but I will cover two today.

The first is with face masks. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC said face masks were unnecessary. Then in April 2020, the CDC did an about-face and pushed for face masks, even though the science did not change. I do not want to debate the details, but do want to point out that the CDC's approach increased public confusion while eroding trust when the guidance shifted. 

The second is about school closures. As I illustrated as early as July 2020, schools did not need to close down during the pandemic. The CDC went into fear mode instead of realizing that children have low COVID transmission rates. As a result, the school closures delayed children's educational attainment while eroding their social and mental health for a statistically insignificant benefit, especially relative to the costs.  

Other Historic Examples of CDC Risk Aversion and Bad Advice

The pandemic was not the only time that the CDC took missteps out of risk-aversion or fear. This trend has existed for a number of years and well before the pandemic. Here are a few examples of this phenomenon:

• Raw milk: The CDC has strongly warned against the consumption of raw milk. This zero-risk approach limits personal choice and voluntary risk management, which is something I advocated for in 2016.
• Blood donation of men who have sex with men (MSM): Since the 1980s, the CDC had consistently categorized MSM as a "high-risk" donor group and maintained conservative deferral recommendations even when modeling studies show that shorter deferrals would only minimally increase residual risk. By clinging onto the precautionary principle instead of assessing individual risk, what happened was that the CDC contributed to unnecessarily reducing the donor pool while increasing stigma of gay men.  
• Zika travel bans: In 2016, the CDC recommended a blanket travel ban for pregnant women. It didn't matter that a CDC study showed that risk was minimal above 2,000 meters (Cetron, 2016). As a result of this zero-risk approach, it ended up having an impact on tourism upwards of $63.9 billion.
• West Nile Virus (WNV): In the early days of WNV (1999-2002), the CDC's guidance was highly risk-averse, emphasizing worst-case outcomes while recommending extensive outdoor avoidance and large-scale pesticide spraying. Aside from the insecticide-related illness caused by the spraying, the large-scale pesticide spraying diverted resources from other more targeted and sustainable measures (e.g., larval source reduction, biological control, trap-based adult mosquito control).
• Tuberculosis (TB): In the 1990s, the CDC recommended TB screening for all healthcare workers. This policy led to widespread unnecessary testing, strained resources, and minimal additional benefit in low-risk groups (e.g., Larsen et al., 2002). As a result, it prompted later revision to a risk-based strategy instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. 

The Pattern of CDC Mismanagement

There are other examples of CDC incompetence. What I will say is that the CDC changing its "Autism and Vaccines" website is not an anomaly. It demonstrates how the CDC has mismanaged public health information over the years and how it is slow to update guidelines due to bureaucratic inertia. Recommendations should weigh both risks and benefits, and the CDC's embrace of the precautionary principle above all else shows that it is incapable of doing so. This behavior shows how a top federal agency can mislead millions on scientifically proven topics and how healthcare can become propagandized, whether it was with the COVID pandemic or the latest anti-vaccine crusade. 

When political influence seeps into scientific communication, it undermines public trust in scientific guidance. This certainly was the case when the Biden administration politicized the COVID vaccines, which resulted in the spillover effect of people having less trust in all vaccines. Plus, trust of various health authorities is in decline (KFF). The CDC's recent website change can make parents delay or avoid vaccines, which could increase the risk of preventable disease. More generally, this erosion of trust from the CDC can make matters more difficult in future disease outbreaks.

Recommendation: Reassessing CDC Authority

At a minimum, the CDC should have greater scrutiny and auditing to make sure its information with regards to health recommendations is accurate. However, I do not think that is sufficient given its history because the CDC has proven time and again that federal government health messaging cannot be taken at face value. The CDC should go back to its original role of tracking and containing outbreaks of diseases. The CDC's mission creep is costing lives because precaution without nuance creates harm, needlessly consumes resources, and erodes public trust. Having such a fallible institution in charge of providing evidence-based information is clearly not its forte. 

If the CDC should not be in charge of providing public health directives, who should be? There is the possibility of entrusting it to private organizations. Alternatively, local- or state-level public health agencies can be responsible. At least that way, accountability is higher since the impact is more localized. Why is that the case? 

Ultimately, public health guidance should be accurate, measured, and accountable. Centralizing authority in a single, risk-averse federal agency has shown time and again that even well-intentioned directives can produce harmful unintended consequences. By decentralizing responsibility, we can ensure that the guidance is closer to the populations it affects, is more transparent, and is more responsive to real-world risk (e.g., Rigby et al., 2024; Sessions, 2012). Only by aligning responsibility with accountability can we hope to provide public health recommendations that are both scientifically sound and practically effective, rather than by bureaucratic impulse or political whim. 

Mandate the Shot, Not the Choice: Why Florida Should Support Vaccine Requirements with Opt-Outs

The COVID pandemic might be behind us, but the vaccine debate is not. I am not surprised that people did not react kindly to lockdowns so harmful that we still feel their impact in 2025, ineffective face mask mandates, useless travel bans, and deleterious school closures. In aggregate, the COVID pandemic response entailed some of history's worst public policy choice in an era of peace. That being said, there is difference between a proportionate response to such carnage and having the pendulum swing too far to the other extreme. 

Last week, the Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said at a press conference that he plans to eliminate all vaccine mandates for Florida, including for children in public schools. Setting aside him inflammatory remark of equating a vaccine mandate to "slavery", he made a distinctively libertarian appeal: "Who am I to tell you what you should put in your body?" 

I have advocated for the right to consume marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms, engaging in sex work, not being forced to take a COVID vaccine, selling one's organs for cash, adults having consensual sex with whichever adults they want, eating and drinking what you want (including raw milk and processed foods), and using birth control. This is my way of saying that I understand that few freedoms are more fundamental than what one puts into their body.   

I can understand how the COVID pandemic played a role in this decision. COVID vaccines had newer technology (mRNA) that was politicized from the onset and used executive orders to implement. Furthermore, herd immunity is not possible with COVID, which was evident as early as 2021. The politicization of COVID health measures and COVID vaccines was an overreach by the government. Plus, with the COVID vaccine mandate, it was either get the shot or lose your job. There was no third option. All of these reasons point to why I argued against a COVID vaccine mandate in 2021, both because of the nature of the vaccine and because of how the mandate was imposed.  

Ladapo was hired during the pandemic due to his reputation against harmful COVID interventions. He shaped Florida's COVID response to be focused on medical freedom over public mandate. I pointed out last year the heavy-handed approach with COVID vaccines eroded trust in all vaccines among many Americans. This distrust is now bleeding into policy, as reflected in Florida's move to repeal all vaccine mandates.

For such diseases with legacy vaccines as measles, mumps, and polio, it is unfortunate that Ladopo is conflating them with the COVID vaccines. Ladapo's view is consistent with medical freedom and bodily autonomy. So why is it that I take issue with the COVID vaccine mandate but not for legacy vaccines? There are decades of clinical data showing that legacy vaccines reduce mortality and morbidity with minimal risk. There is generally bipartisan support for the legacy vaccines and were supported by the legislative process, not executive orders. Most importantly, herd immunity is also achievable for many of the legacy vaccines.   

The reality is that completely removing the vaccine mandates increases the risk of outbreaks. A couple of multinational systematic reviews of school vaccine mandates show that immunization mandates generally increase vaccination uptake (Greyson et al., 2019; Lee and Robinson, 2016). This is good because these vaccines are shown to reduce morbidity and mortality, whether that is measles, chicken pox, or rotavirus. The World Health Organization's Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) was shown to have averted 154 million deaths from 1970 to 2024 (Shattock et al., 2024). Since vaccines are shown to avert deaths, not having enough children vaccinated undermines herd immunity. 

Much like I expressed with water fluoridation, outcomes are better when there is an opt-out option for such health interventions. Unlike with water fluoridation, there is the ability to have an opt-out option for a vaccine mandate. There are already 28 states that have religious exemptions for a vaccine mandate, as well as 16 states that allow for it on personal or philosophical grounds. An opt-out process should entail something such as a formal written exemption and signing a waiver stating that you acknowledge risks to others. 

As long as an opt-out exists for those who do not want to, society can balance the public health concerns with the matters of personal autonomy. Most will comply with the mandate by default, thereby maintaining herd immunity in most instances (with rare, localized outbreaks taking place) and making sure others are not harmed along the way. The minority that is opposed, which is about 21 percent per recent polling from Harvard, can opt out without state coercion. This "least restrictive means" approach to public health establishes public health standards while still allowing for personal refusal.

Dr. Ladapo's approach appears to be a win for freedom at first glance. In practice, it is a lose-lose for public health and for freedom. Libertarianism is supposed to defend liberty up to the point until it causes harm to others. By discarding minimal requirements for proven life-saving measures, the state of Florida abandons decades of research while exposing its citizens, children in particular, to avoidable risks. A mandate with a clear opt-out option upholds liberty while protecting individual autonomy and public safety. 

Worse still, this could ironically invite more government intervention, whether in the form of emergency powers in the event of an outbreak, a higher burden on state medical services that increase healthcare costs, or federal preemption from the CDC that could undermine Florida's sovereignty. A pragmatic path respects both freedom and evidence. In trying to protect freedom at all costs, Florida may end up sacrificing both liberty and life. A smarter, liberty-respecting state would choose a middle path that trusts people without abandoning its responsibilities. 

How Lockdowns and Other COVID Measures Have Caused Suffering, Even in 2025 (Part I)

Tomorrow, on March 11, marks the five-year anniversary of when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic. China responded to COVID by implementing draconian lockdowns and the world has not been the same ever since. Who cares if there was no evidence for lockdowns and that the pandemic guidance set by such organizations as WHO and Johns Hopkins advised against lockdowns? With Sweden being the notable exception, the world followed suit in terms of locking down the economy. Did the lockdowns help with preventing more death? No, it did not. 

If anything, the lockdowns increased excess death, which is not a surprise when non-COVID healthcare was postponed in 2020 and lockdowns exacerbated mental health. Lockdowns also could not pass a sniff test when it came to a proper cost-benefit analysis, meaning that we ended up paying way more than we should have. While the lockdowns are a thing of the past that almost all of us would prefer to forget, the truth is that the effects of those lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) still live with us today. Since I live in the United States, I take this from a mostly U.S.-based perspective, but will cite other studies when available. In Part I, I want to cover the health-related costs that have reverberated as a result of the lockdowns.

There is still a backlog in healthcare created by the lockdowns. Only allowing hospitals to deal with COVID-related maladies was not a decision taken by the coronavirus, but a policy decision made by humans. Although the NIH does want to acknowledge it was a policy decision, NIH at least acknowledges that there is still a backlog in health services from the pandemic that we are still dealing with today (Pratt, 2024). In November 2022, I analyzed a study that showed that delaying preventative screening resulted in missing one million cancer screenings in Europe. There is no doubt that the delayed procedures and screening have resulted in a backlog that continues across healthcare systems in multiple countries to this day. 

Lockdowns exacerbated obesity rates. There was definitely an issue with obesity prior to the pandemic. However, obesity rates worldwide increased considerably (Nour and Atlinas, 2023), including the United States. With people stuck at home, many people changed their daily habits for the worst, whether that is less physical activity, worse dietary practices, or more sedentary activities (e.g., watching Netflix). That does not count the COVID-induced stress. Another study from the WHO confirmed this trend for children in Europe. The data from the United States indicates that those obesity rates have not declined since the pandemic, which is intuitive since it is not easy to shed those negative habits once started. Given the numerous negative health effects of obesity, this high obesity rate continues to put strain on healthcare systems all over the world.  

High substance abuse rates persist. Back in May 2020, I expressed concern about how the lockdowns were going to cause mental health issues. Sadly, I was right. To deal with the stress of the pandemic (including the lockdowns and the job losses incurred), 13 percent of Americans went to substances to try to ease their woes. A 2024 study from the University of South California found that the pandemic-era increase in alcohol use persists. A similar phenomenon happened with opioid usage, one that is prevalent enough where Trump used it as a pretext to start a trade war. Given that it is difficult to end substance abuse or addiction, it is understandable that high substance use rates would still be with us even after the stress of the pandemic is behind us. 

There unfortunately is less trust in public health institutions. Americans trust their doctors less than they did pre-pandemic. There is also more skepticism about non-COVID vaccines because of all the hullabaloo of trying to force people to take vaccines. With greater skepticism, there are now measles outbreaks. Measles vaccines are effective. Measles outbreaks should be a thing of the past, but that becomes more difficult when the mistrust with the COVID vaccines spills over into all vaccines. With all the half-truths, faux pas, and recommendations not based in science coming from Dr. Anthony Fauci, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and the Biden administration about COVID, it is clear why, at least in a U.S. context, there is less trust when public health officials politicize a pandemic.

Don't you worry! I have more to cover in Part II. 

Public Health "Experts" Did Not "Follow the Science" During the Pandemic: 2024 Edition (Part II)

Misinformation was abound during the COVID pandemic. It did not come from the skeptics, but from the so-called public health "experts," as well as governments purportedly fighting misinformation to deflect from its own misinformation campaign. Speaking of which, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations recently released a report criticizing "We Can Do This," which was a $900 million HHS advertising campaign aimed at promoting various pandemic measures. Whereas Part I of this blog series focused on the scientific aspects that had public policy implications (e.g., natural immunity), this Part will cover the misinformation from the U.S. federal government that was masquerading as science. More specifically, I will use the aforementioned House report to illustrate the misinformation.

Vaccine misinformation. It is true that the Pfizer vaccines were shown to be 95 percent effective at preventing disease. However, the Food and Drug Administration made clear in its December 2020 emergency use authorization announcement that they did not know how long the vaccines last nor that it would prevent COVID transmission (House, p. 8). As I pointed out in October 2022, the Pfizer CEO did not know either. This misinformation is significant because the CDC was pushing vaccines to get back to "a pre-pandemic normal," even saying that "you will not get COVID if you get vaccinated" or that "vaccinated people do not carry the virus." This argumentation was the basis for COVID vaccine passports and vaccine mandates, and yet it turned out to be unsubstantiated.

Face mask flip-flopping. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Surgeon General, the World Health Organization, and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man who claims that he represents science, were against the use of face masks (House, p. 10). In April 2020, the CDC did an about face and campaigned for mask wearing, even though there was zero scientific rationale for the about face. 

This reversal set the scene for other inconsistencies in messaging, a topic I covered as early as May 2021. By the end of 2020, the WHO had limited and inconsistent evidence on face masks for healthy individuals, which is hardly "following the science." Although the data were becoming clearer in 2021 about face masks' ineffectiveness at preventing COVID transmission, it took until January 2022 for the CDC to admit that cloth masks and face coverings do not work. It was not until December 2022 until Biden's former COVID coordinator Ashish Jha to finally admit that "there is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well." Yet CDC Director Rochelle Walensky showed that she does not care about scientific evidence or rigor by continuing to advocate for face masks in February 2023. 

Mask mandate on domestic and international travel. Shortly after entering the White House, Biden imposed a face mask for most forms of international and domestic travel (House, p. 13). You can read my December 2021 analysis on why face masks on airplanes was especially ridiculous. 

School closures. Children were not at an elevated risk of transmitting COVID, a reality I pointed out as early as July 2020. Yet school closures were an integral part to the CDC's response to the COVID pandemic. Not only that, the American Federation of Teachers' President, Randi Weingarten, worked with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to prolong school closures (House, p. 14-15). Not only did the school closures do nothing to help with COVID transmission, but it harmed children in terms of educational attainment, lower future earnings, and shorter life expectancy.  

Conclusion. If you are a taxpayer in the United States, you should be livid. Taxpayers coughed up nearly $1 billion for the government to spread COVID misinformation that ended up harming Americans and upending millions of lives. There was no discussion about the balances between the costs and benefits or a proper risk assessment conducted. There was only fear-mongering in the name of public health. This merits repeating. The government did not have our best interest at heart during the pandemic. 

If we want the American people to have trust in public health officials, an inquiry asking tough questions and holding actors responsible would be a good start. There should also be better oversight over evaluating the safety of vaccines, as well as better data collection on adverse vaccine reactions. Transparency and accountability would be great hallmarks, as well. Finally, the government should not be in the business silence dissenting opinions, especially given how off-base the government was on a myriad of pandemic-related topics. It will take a lot of work to reform HHS in such a manner, but it beats not learning from this pandemic and having the government make the same stupid mistakes during the next pandemic.

Vaccine Mandates Likely Caused Greater Unemployment for Healthcare Workers

Although the COVID pandemic is further in the rearview mirror, especially with an upcoming presidential election, the effects of the policy response to the pandemic still remain. Lockdowns caused multiple negative outcomes, including lost educational attainment, greater mental health issues, greater food insecurity, erosion of liberal democracy, and wider economic inequality on the global scale, to name a few. The lockdowns were by far the biggest policy mistake during the COVID pandemic. I would call it the greatest peacetime public policy in human history. 

There was another policy decision that had unintended, negative consequences: the vaccine mandate. My position during the pandemic was that I was in favor of the vaccines but against the vaccine mandates. The opposition I had was strong enough where I created a list of 10 reasons to be against the COVID vaccine mandates. One of those reasons was that I was worried that a vaccine mandate would cause greater unemployment in the labor market. What about the labor market for healthcare workers specifically? 

This is a question that economists from George Mason University and William Paterson University answer with their paper, Promoting Public Health with Blunt Instruments: Evidence from Vaccine Mandates (Abouk et al., 2024). As the authors point out, it was unclear whether the vaccine mandates would incentivize or disincentivize healthcare workers to work. On the plus side, the perceived public safety could have relaxed worker shortages. On the other hand, there could be more workers that are skeptical of the vaccine, thereby creating a shortage. Here is how the state-level vaccine mandates played out for healthcare workers:

Our findings suggest that vaccine mandates may have worsened healthcare workforce shortage: following adoption of a state-level mandate, the probability of working in the healthcare industry declines by 6%. Effects are larger among workers in healthcare-specific occupations, who leave the industry at higher rates in response to mandates and are slower to be replaced than workers in non-healthcare occupations. 

In March, I detailed another negative unintended consequence of vaccine mandates: increased vaccine skepticism for all vaccines. Ignoring the scientific process, evidence, and cost-benefit analysis while propagating fear had an abysmally large amount of consequences that we feel to this day. If the findings of the aforementioned study end up being correct, then we are confounded with yet another unintended consequence of COVID-era policy stupidity. By trying to make things safer with the vaccine mandate, it looks like the vaccine mandates made things less safe by causing workers in a vital industry to leave. This once again shows the cure of good intentions is more than likely not worse than the disease itself, a lesson that seemingly continues to be lost on many public health officials.

Lessons Public Health Officials Should Learn from the COVID Pandemic But Probably Won't

Last week was the four-year anniversary of when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. For those who have been reading this blog, you will know that I have been highly critical of the government's response to the pandemic. That is why it was nice to read this report from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity that is entitled "COVID Lessons Learned: A Retrospective After Four Years." The co-authors of this report include Steve Hanke from Johns Hopkins, Casey Mulligan from the University of Chicago, and former Trump advisor/current health policy fellow at Stanford University Scott Atlas. Here is a list of the lessons that they thought to be most important. 

1. Leaders should calm public fears, not stoke them. This is good advice even when it is not a pandemic. If we exaggerate fears without considering the costs, we get the catastrophic impacts that fear-obsessed decisions wreak, as we will see in subsequent points. 
2. Lockdowns do not work to substantially reduce deaths or stop viral circulation. This was established epidemiological knowledge and was part of pandemic guidance provided prior to the pandemic. Leaders and decision-makers across the world ignored the advice and gave into panic. Unsurprisingly, lockdowns did little to reduce COVID deaths. If anything, lockdowns increased excess deaths.  
3. Lockdowns and social isolation had negative consequences that far outweighed benefits. Sadly, I called this one in May 2020, as well as pointing out in April 2020 how the lockdowns would adversely affect the economy. Lockdowns ended up causing or exacerbating multiple negative consequences, including deteriorating mental health, increased child and domestic violence, greater food insecurity, widened economic inequality, social polarization, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and erosion of liberal democracy. 
4. Government should not pay people more not to work. Here is another one I called in early 2020.  The more the government pays to stay at home, the less likely they will want to work. As I wrote in 2023, that ended up being the case, much like it was during the Great Recession. 
5. Shutting down schools was a major policy mistake with tragic effects on children, especially the poor. I expressed my issues with school closures in July 2020. It turns out that school closures ended up doing considerable harm to children. Even the Left-leaning New York Times got around to admitting as much this week. 
6. Masks were of little or no value and possibly harmful. I was mildly for a temporary face mask mandate at the beginning of the pandemic, even in spite of conflicting information. That is because there was at least mechanistic plausibility that they could work, which is better than the lockdowns (See Point #2) or school closures (See Point #5). But my support waned to the point of being against the mandates. Then I was against using face masks to fight COVID because it became clear that face masks were ineffective in slowing the spread of COVID.  
7. Government should not suppress dissent or police the boundaries of science. Attempts to shut down discussions under the guise of "fighting information" not only led to the erosion of scientific inquiry, but also democratic norms. 
8. The real hospital story was underutilization. As the authors bring up, the real issue was that hospitals were underused because hospitals were doing as little as possible to treat non-COVID disease. Postponing preventative healthcare in 2020 has created problems to this day. A whole slew of preventible diseases went undiagnosed, which has resulted in a backlog that still affects our public health systems.
9. Protect the most vulnerable. It was clear as early as March 2020 that COVID had a profound differential in risk between the elderly and the immunocompromised versus everyone else. We should have had different protection for the vulnerable while allowing everyone else make their own choices based on their own risk tolerance so we can avoid the societal disruptions and havoc that the blanket mandates caused. 
10. Warp Speed: Deregulate but don't mandate. There were considerable regulations that existed prior to the pandemic that made our response to COVID worse. That is why it was nice to see the government cut red tape to make the vaccines happen. As the authors bring up, "the original vaccine was well-matched to then-circulating variants, and there was a sharp drop-off in hospitalizations and deaths." In spite of the earlier vaccines' success, the government had no business mandating vaccines, especially since the vaccines did nothing statistically significant to stop COVID transmission. 

As you can tell from this list, public health mandates in response to the pandemic were one fiasco after another. Former NIH Director Francis Collins eventually issued a mea culpa in which he realized he was too close-minded when it came to COVID restrictions. Fauci recently admitted that social distancing at six feet was bunk and that vaccine mandates increased vaccine hesitancy. Even so, I have not seen anything to suggest that public officials have asked the tough questions to the point of making significant change. I think in part, ego will play a role because it is difficult for a politician to admit they contributed to one of the worst peacetime public policy decisions in human history. Another factor is that it is election year and there are many other topics to focus on now that the pandemic is in the rearview mirror. As much as I wish they would learn from past mistakes, I would not be surprised if a similar level of stupidity took over during the next pandemic. 

Study Suggests That COVID Vaccine Mandates Created Greater Skepticism About Non-COVID Vaccines

I remember back in the days of the pandemic when I was excited about there being COVID vaccines. It meant that we could, at least in theory, put the pandemic behind us and find at least a semblance of a pre-pandemic normal. Yes, I was hesitant about getting a COVID vaccine, but once sifting through the science and getting past the hesitancy, I felt comfortable enough to get my vaccine. 

Although I had been in favor of COVID vaccines, that did not mean I was in favor of vaccine mandates. That is part of being libertarian. Simply because I think something is good personally does not mean I think that the government should force it onto people. That had been my take on this issue: I was in favor of COVID vaccines, but I was also against vaccine mandates. As a study from BJM illustrates (see figure below), there were potential negative unintended consequences (Bardosh et al., 2022). 

In September 2021, I created a list of ten reasons as to why the government should not mandate COVID vaccines. One of those reasons was that it would erode trust in the government. The vaccine mandates ended up having a spillover effect of distrust. It is not only regulatory oversight that fewer people trust. This excerpt came from a recent study from the National Academies of Science (Rains and Richards, 2024) and gives yet another reason to be against vaccine mandates:

We used state-level data from the CDC to test whether vaccine mandates predicted changes in COVID-19 vaccine uptake, as well as related voluntary behaviors involving COVID-19 boosters and seasonal influenza vaccines. Results showed that COVID-19 vaccine adoption did not significantly change in the weeks before and after states implemented vaccine mandates, suggesting that mandates did not directly impact COVID-19 vaccination. Compared to states that banned vaccine restrictions, however, states with mandates had lower levels of COVID-19 booster adoption as well as adult and child flu vaccination. 

The first finding here is that vaccine mandates did not incentivize or accelerate vaccine intake. What is worse is the second finding: vaccine mandates are likely to have disincentivized people to take COVID-19 boosters and flu vaccinations. Why did people resist? To quote the authors, "the theory of psychological reactance serves as one longstanding explanation for why freedom restrictions in the form of governmental mandates cause people to reject the advocated behavior or otherwise have unintended consequences." 

In other words, this visceral reaction to vaccine mandates was entirely predictable (also see Mtimkulu-Eyde et al., 2022). If individuals feel that their freedoms are unduly being infringed upon, the more likely they will retaliate. Vaccine mandates are part of a larger pattern of public health policy throughout the COVID pandemic. 

We were told to lock down large swathes of the economy, even though there was no evidence that lockdowns work. On the contrary, prevailing pandemic guidance right before the pandemic told us not to implement lockdowns. It turns out lockdowns caused much more harm than prevented it. There was more opposition to face masks as it became clearer that face masks are not effective in preventing COVID transmission. A similar phenomenon happened with school closures, travel bans, and figuring out whether COVID vaccines would prevent COVID transmission. 

What was becoming plain as day as the pandemic progressed was that the powers that be who were bludgeoning the people with "Follow the Science" were in fact ignoring the science. I would contend that by the time the vaccine mandates came around, people were fed up with pandemic restrictions that were not based in science. It is "too little, too late" that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was initially a proponent of vaccine mandates, admitted in a congressional testimony this year that COVID vaccines are likely to have increased vaccine hesitancy for years to come. 

This is what happens when you politicize a pandemic and, by extension, a vaccine. People are less likely to trust public health officials to give basic health guidance in the future. More to the point, people feel distrust about other vaccines that have nothing to do with COVID. Vaccine opt-outs were already increasing prior to the pandemic (Hargreaves et al., 2020), but COVID vaccine mandates made matters worse. If this trend indeed holds out in the medium-to-long-term, do not be surprised that we see outbreaks of diseases we thought were relics of the past, whether that is measles or polio. That is the power that Big Government has when playing fast and loose with emergency powers and thinking they know what is best for our health.  

Do Economic Incentives for Vaccines Backfire? Not in the Short-Run

"If you pay someone to do something, they are more likely to do it." This economic principle rings true in practice. It is a basis for the labor market. While some people volunteer their time, people generally work if provided a salary and benefits. This concept holds outside of the labor market, such as when people are giving or selling organs to another. While the power of a financial incentive is sensible and provable, it ended up being controversial during the pandemic. 

Such states as Ohio and Maryland provided financial incentives to get vaccinated because they figured that people would be more likely to get vaccinated. There were others that were worried that the financial incentive could backfire and erode trust in public health officials. How so? Essentially, the thinking goes along the lines of "I never received money for a vaccine before. What is so bad about this that they have to pay me to take it?" Or alternatively, "If I should trust the vaccine, why do you have to pay me for it?" In September 2020, I recognized that while a financial incentive could theoretically help, there was also the hurdle of convincing people the vaccination production process was not rushed. I later illustrated in April 2021 how the vaccine development process was streamlined, as opposed to rushed. But again, the issue with such health campaigns is perception, not so much reality. 

How did it play out in practice? Did the vaccine incentives lower the likelihood of people taking vaccines? Last month, a systematic review of 38 studies covering the topic of economic incentives of vaccine uptake was released in Preventative Medicine (Khazanov et al., 2023). It looks like the answer is that it did not lower that likelihood. None of the 38 studies showed a negative impact on vaccine uptake. Most of the studies found that it positively impacted vaccine update. The authors concluded that "fears of incentives decreasing uptake are not supported by the evidence." 

Based on this systematic review, it seems that financial incentives do help with vaccination rates. There is one concern I find remaining: future vaccine campaigns. COVID is the first global pandemic in which the human race had to ask itself questions about incentivizing vaccination to stop the spread of a potentially deadly disease. Will the politicization of this pandemic affect future pandemics? Will people now expect financial incentive for future vaccinations? I can speculate until I am blue in the face, but I suppose time will tell.

Pfizer Director on COVID Vaccines & Transmission: Another Reason Why Vaccine Mandates & Passports Were Unnecessary

A European Parliament hearing from October 10, 2022 is making the news.  While it might seem to be normal parliamentary business, the testimony provided was quite revelatory. The testimony included representatives from Pfizer and Curevac to discuss manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. The quote that was most notable was when European Parliamentary member Rob Roos of the Netherlands asked if the vaccines were tested to see if they can prevent COVID transmission. Pfizer Director Janine Small testified that the vaccines were not tested for prevention of COVID transmission (see Roos' tweet below).

🚨 BREAKING:

In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission.

"Get vaccinated for others" was always a lie.

The only purpose of the #COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated.

The world needs to know. Share this video! ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/su1WqgB4dO

— Rob Roos MEP 🇳🇱 (@Rob_Roos) October 11, 2022

The fact-checkers at AP News found this to be misleading since "Pfizer never claimed to have studied the issue before the vaccine market's release." In a similar vein, Reuters' fact-checkers wrote about how preventing transmission was "not required, not promised." Let's forget for a moment that the Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on the Today Show in September 2020 that "their decision will not only affect their lives...but will affect the lives of others. If they don't vaccinate, they will become the weak link that will allow this virus to replicate."

While purporting to fight misinformation, the fact-checkers at AP News and Reuters hope you do not notice the slight-of-hand with their semantics or what the Pfizer CEO said on live television. The FDA did not require transmission to be tested. That much is true, but that is beside the point. The fact that the vaccines would stop COVID transmission was a repeated talking point from government officials:

• In May 2021, Biden said "if the unvaccinated get vaccinated, they will protect themselves and other vaccinated people around them" and said in a CNN town hall in July 2021 that "you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations." 
• When pushing for his vaccine mandate in September 2021, Biden reiterated that getting people vaccinated is "about protecting yourself and those around you." 
• Dr. Anthony Fauci said in May 2021 that vaccinated people become "dead ends" for coronavirus. 
• April 2021: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky that "Our data from the CDC suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus" and that they are unlikely to spread it to others.
• French government official Jean-Michel Blanquer similarly stated that being vaccinated does not risk contaminating others. 
• In 2021, Austria had a lockdown on the unvaccinated to prevent them from transmitting the virus. 

I can list more examples, but I think you get the idea by now. Multiple countries mandated that people get vaccinated. There were plenty of jurisdictions that required COVID passports to go to restaurants or shopping, not to mention COVID passports to enter countries in 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The primary underlying rationale of COVID vaccine mandates and COVID vaccine passports was to protect others from getting infected with COVID. 

When I criticized Biden's failed attempt at a vaccine mandate in September 2021, I listed 10 reasons why it was faulty. One of those reasons was the following: if the vaccine is what protects the vaccinated (as opposed to making sure everyone is vaccinated), why force the unvaccinated to take it? 

Plus, it was anything but clear in 2021 that the vaccines prevented transmission. I went through the data in December 2021 to find that while vaccines helped with severe cases of COVID, they did little to nothing to prevent transmission. I wrote that piece while the Delta variant was the predominant strain. Since Omicron is even more transmissible than Delta, it stands to reason there are similar issues with COVID transmission. After all, the CDC found that in February 2022, 64 percent of adults and 75 of children had been infected by the Omicron variant of COVID.

Here is my main line of questioning for today:

If Pfizer didn't know, what inside information did Biden, Fauci, or any other government official have to justify their push for vaccine mandates? 

How could your vaccine mandate-loving neighbor who yelled at the unvaccinated because their choice to not get vaccinated "could kill grandma" possibly have known more about vaccines and transmission than the companies manufacturing and distributing the vaccines? 

To answer these questions non-rhetorically, they did not know. Government officials did not have adequate information, clinical data, or other inside information regarding vaccines' effect on transmission before thrusting vaccine mandates or vaccine passports onto the populace. Not only did they not know, there was evidence showing that the vaccines did not prevent transmission. 

Just so we are clear, this is not to say that COVID vaccines are useless. Quite the opposite! I have written on multiple occasions that the vaccines are effective because they prevent severe COVID, COVID-related hospitalizations, and COVID deaths (see here, here, and here). A September 2022 paper from the Lancet shows how the COVID vaccines saved anywhere between 14.4 to 19.8 millions within the first year of vaccination (Watson et al., 2022). To throw more nuance into the mix, the Danish government does not recommend that people under 50 get their booster shot. The main success of the COVID vaccines is individual protection of one's health, not societal protection.

The efficacy of vaccines based on certain metrics does not negate that the vaccines were not particularly helpful when it came to COVID transmission. It certainly does not excuse government officials using faulty rationale to pass problematic policy or various media outlets going along with it. 

What happened in the EU parliamentary meeting is another example of how governments around the world ignored the science to force onerous COVID regulations on the people, whether it was harmful lockdowns, counterproductive school closures, all-but-useless mask mandates, or ineffective travel bans. Neither the media nor various governments want us to pay attention to these finer points because they would rather deflect the harm the suffering they caused with putting fear-mongering over actual science. 

While Biden declared the pandemic is over, what we the people need to do now is make sure that the lockdown lovers, Covidians, and indeed everyone who was responsible for wreaking such havoc on our institutions and way of life do not get to write a revisionist, bastardized version of history to make them look vindicated. We need to hold a light to what was inflicted upon this generation so future generations do not suffer.

Recap of Top Libertarian Jew Blog Entries for 2021

This time of the year is a time of reflection on what has transpired during the current calendar year. Last year, I was hoping for less craziness than there was in 2020. Between the pandemic, economic downturn, and social unrest, last year was unhinged. While 2021 was not as bad as 2020, 2021 still had more than its fair share of insanity. 

As the pandemic continued into its second year, it remained a major topic in the media and among political pundits. On my blog, the pandemic was a topic that accounted for over a third of my blog entries for the 2021 calendar year. I was hoping that it would have been less considering that safe and effective vaccines were made available (see April 2021 analysis here). There was a brief moment in which the CDC said that the unvaccinated could go around doing normal activities unmasked. My response to that CDC recommendation in May was that the CDC has botched messaging throughout the pandemic and that going back to normal means ignoring what the CDC has to say by enjoying life regardless. Maybe now, we could stop people telling us to "follow the science" while ignoring the science. That was wishful thinking on my part. 

We went from "two weeks to flatten the curve" to "wait a little longer to help hospitals" to "wait until we have a vaccine" to "get enough people vaccinated." But along came the Delta variant, and with that, the goalposts moved once more. To keep Delta in check, President Biden called for vaccine mandates. I covered the topic no less than four times this past year in which I pointed out the problems with vaccine mandates (see here, here, here, and here). 2021 was also a year in which we procured enough data to conclude that the lockdowns were both ineffective and harmful from a public health standpoint. And let's not even get into the unhelpful travel bans or mask mandates (see here and here). All of this lunacy made me realize that the pandemic will not come to an end when COVID-related hospitalizations or deaths get low enough, but when we as a society get used to accepting risk once more. 

But don't you worry. There was enough craziness to go around that the pandemic did not need to hog all the spotlight. 

• Cancel culture was another major news item. Take the Dr. Seuss controversy in which the Dr. Seuss Foundation cancelled the publication of six of Seuss' less-known works. I came to multiple conclusions on that debacle, most notably that the woke Left are the moral prudes of our time and that a small group of emotionally fragile and intellectually weak individuals should not have their sense of being offended determine what is acceptable for the rest of us. 
• In a similar vein, there was cancel culture controversy surrounding comedian Dave Chapelle's Netflix special The Closer. He made jokes offending all sorts of people, but the jokes that got the most ire were those on the theme of transgender individuals. You can read my analysis here, but I was reminded of the value of comedy, the importance of free speech, and that the fragility of the woke Left is both at odds with learning to agree with those disagree with you and the essential pillars that make up a free, democratic society. 
• In terms of economic disarray, I offered my takes on the supply chain crisis and the shortages in the labor market. 
• And let's not forget the debacle with the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. While the woke Left tried to make it about race (which is odd considering the case was about a white guy shooting four other white guys in self-defense), it showed how little many on the Left believe that there is a such thing as a "good guy with a gun." The spoiler here is that defensive gun usage (DGU) is way more prevalent than the Left would care to admit. 
• But if we do want to get into the topic of race, I tackled the topic of critical race theory (CRT). Contrary to what the Left would like to believe, CRT is not about simply about having a dialogue about race or making sure we are not ignoring the nastier parts of history. CRT is a simplistic, fatalistic worldview that believes that U.S. institutions are inherently racist and [one of] the only attributes of a human being that matters is the color of one's skin. 
• On the brighter side of race relations, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. I wrote a piece on why we should all celebrate Juneteenth in the United States.

I wish you all a Happy New Year! May it be less out of whack than 2020 and 2021 were. 

Abortion Advocates Who Abandon "My Body, My Choice" By Favoring Vaccine Mandates Do So For No Good Reason

"My body, my choice." It is a mantra that has defined the modern-day feminist movement, particularly when it has come to the theme of abortion. The idea behind the mantra are the concepts of bodily autonomy and freedom of choice. I thought the idea of bodily autonomy amongst those who are pro-abortion was sacrosanct.....at least until the pandemic came along. What the phrase "my body, my choice" has taken on a different meaning in the political arena. The phrase "my body, my choice" is no longer solely used by the pro-abortion crowd. Those who are anti-mask or anti-vaccination have been using the mantra. This unsurprisingly has been a controversial move. 

The pro-abortion Left is angry at what they view as an appropriation and misuse of the phrase. To quote an article from Vogue, "For Republicans, it's a case of government regulation for thee but not for me." There is overlap between the anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers and those who are anti-abortion. It is inconsistent for those who argued against the "my body, my choice" argument in the abortion debate to use it when it comes to mask mandates or vaccine mandates. 

However, that inconsistency cuts both ways. Many who had been using the argument "my body, my choice" when it came to abortion have abandoned the idea when supporting vaccine mandates. Just to cite some examples, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was recently at a pro-abortion rally in which he said, "You cannot have the government attempt to take away your right to control your body. It cannot happen in America. We have to fight it, every one of us." This is the same Mayor de Blasio that had no problem mandating that all private-sector workers be vaccinated by December 27 of this year. 

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg opined that abortion restrictions are an "infinitely more invasive form of biopolitical control" than vaccines. Actress Whoopi Goldberg also lost it over the Supreme Court's recent abortion ruling because she takes issue when "you tell me what I need to do with my doctor and my family." Goldberg is also in support of vaccine mandates. I am not saying that everyone on the Left is for abortion and/or vaccine mandates, much like not everyone on the Right is against those policies. What I am saying is that the Left is more likely to be pro-abortion and pro-vaccine mandate.

Someone who is anti-abortion but says "my body, my choice" when arguing against vaccine mandates is just as inconsistent when someone who is pro-abortion abandons the argument "my body, my choice" for vaccine mandates. Which of these is more egregious? I would hazard to guess that a lot of that would depend on where one falls on the political spectrum. In any case, it is safe to say that political expediency plays a larger role than ideological purity or caring about the consistency or coherence of an argument. 

In spite of the political Left and political Right being inconsistent, there seems to be a fair bit of legal precedent established in recent years. The Roe v. Wade case notwithstanding, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of bodily autonomy in numerous occasions, including the purchase and use of contraceptions (Griswold v. Connecticut), not being subjected to experimental drugs or therapy without one's consent (United States v. Stanley), refusing medical treatment that can save one's life (Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health), and marrying whichever consenting adult you would like (Loving v. Virginia; Obergefell v. Hodges).   

As nice as it is to cite legal precedent, those who were previously on team "My Body, My Choice" now argue that there are exceptions. A New York Times opinion piece recently made the argument that bodily autonomy is not an absolute. So did the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU, which has traditionally defended abortion with a bodily autonomy argument, did not find the bodily autonomy argument to be compelling in the case of vaccine mandates. Why? Although the ACLU recognizes a fundamental right to bodily integrity and to make one's own health decisions, the ACLU also argues that it is not an absolute. One's right to do something, or to not do something, should not harm others. Since the ACLU views vaccine mandates as protecting others, it is what the ACLU calls a "justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity."

Arguing that freedom has limits is not new, innovative, or radical. When I wrote my 30-plus-paragraph stance a couple years ago on why I am a pro-life/anti-abortion libertarian (with caveats, to be sure), I made that very argument supporting my stance against abortion. I used what is known as the non-aggression axiom. To quote Cato Institute scholar David Boaz, "No one has the right to initiate aggression against the person or property of anyone else." The non-aggression axiom states that as long as you are not directly harming anyone else with your actions, you are free to do what you want with your life. It is an axiom because there are limits, including murder, rape, fraud, and arson. I found that abortion violates the non-aggression axiom because it takes the life of another human being. 

Much like with the numerous pandemic restrictions, "follow the science" does not mean that an experiment is conducted and out pops an answer. What the science does with any health-related policy is that it informs our decision. Beyond that, we make value judgments. In the case of abortion, gestational development informs my view on when life begins. Those who are staunchly pro-abortion draw the line at birth, whereas those who are staunchly anti-abortion draw the line at conception. 

I draw the line at the eight-week mark for two reasons. One, it has developed the human organs and other features that make it discernibly human. Two, that is the point where an embryo becomes a fetus. Abortion is not simply a choice "between a woman and her doctor." If an abortion were more analogous to removing a tumor or a cyst, I would not have a single moral or ethical qualm with abortion. However, that is not the case. The fetus is not a clump of cells or a part of the mother's body. It is a human being with a unique set of human organs and unique DNA.  Whether we decide to give a zygote or a fetus legal standing is a separate consideration from whether they are biologically human beings or not. Again, the science informs our decisions, but does not dictate an answer about abortion policy because there are ethical, moral, and philosophical considerations. 

The same goes for the vaccine mandates. There are other considerations for vaccine mandates aside from the pandemic. There are civil rights, political freedoms, and economic costs to take into account. Also, there are potential side effects from the vaccines. No medical treatment is ever going to be 100 percent. At the same time, vaccines are still very safe and effective, so much so that the risk of getting vaccinated is still significantly smaller than the risk of contracting COVID. For the vast majority of people, the risk of statistically improbable vaccine reactions is outweighed by the risk of contracting COVID and having more than a mild case. Based on available clinical data, I am for people getting vaccinated for COVID. While I am pro-vaccine, I am anti-mandate. 

The explanation for the vaccine mandates, at least the one that President Biden used, is that we need the mandates to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. The vaccines are effective at preventing severe cases of COVID, COVID hospitalizations, and COVID-related deaths. If the vaccines are effective at preventing the nastier parts of contracting COVID, then there is no need to force those who do not want the vaccine. This faulty logic is one of the many reasons I am against the vaccine mandates. 

The ACLU and others who argue for vaccine mandates do so with the assumption that the unvaccinated are much more likely to contribute to the transmission of COVID. If that assumption proves to be false, then the argument for vaccine mandates, and by extension vaccine passports, crumbles. Yes, vaccines are effective at lowering severe COVID cases, COVID-related hospitalizations, and COVID-related deaths. As for COVID transmissions, vaccines are not nearly as effective. 

• Using data from 68 countries and nearly 3,000 U.S. counties, a study from European Journal of Epidemiology found that higher vaccination rates are not associated with lower rates of COVID cases (Subramanian and Kumar, 2021). To quote the researchers, "In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people." 
• In an August 2021 interview with Wolf Blitzer, CDC Director Rachel Walensky admitted that vaccines cannot prevent COVID transmission. 
• An October 2021 article from the renowned Lancet provides insight (Wilder-Smith, 2021), saying that "the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation."
• Another Lancet article from October 2021 suggested that those who are vaccinated are just as likely to spread COVID to those in their household as those who are unvaccinated (Singanayagam et al., 2021).
• A preprint case study shows that the vaccinated in Wisconsin have similar viral loads, and that 68 percent of individuals infected despite vaccination tested positive for COVID (Riemersa et al., 2021).
• A case study from a federal prison found no difference in transmission between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and concluded by warning that public health officials should assume that the vaccinated who become infected are no less infectious (Salvatore et al., 2021).
• Another preprint study showed a modest effect on transmission, but that by three months, the rate of transmission for the vaccinated was comparable to the unvaccinated (Eyre et al., 2021).

The existence of breakthrough cases and how vaccines have little to no impact on transmission rates has important public policy implications. 

1. First and foremost, vaccination status does not indicate whether a person is an active threat as it pertains to COVID. This means that vaccination status should not be used as a determinant to allow or deny access to a service (e.g., restaurant, concerts, entry to a country).  
2. A vaccine mandate is not a form of collective self-defense. There is no way to prove if an individual will be responsible for disease transmission, especially given how commonplace COVID is. Not everyone who is vaccinated develops immunity. As we have seen, it is possible to transmit COVID even when vaccinated. Conversely, some unvaccinated people never become infected. Furthermore, the unvaccinated who have natural immunity seem to have greater immunity than those who only have vaccine immunity. At a minimum, this should help remove stigma against those who do not want get vaccinated.  
3. It illustrates how pointless it is to use COVID cases as a metric for pandemic severity, especially at this stage. Governments should stop using COVID cases as a metric to justify pandemic restrictions, whether that is questionable mask mandates, ineffective travel bans, or lockdowns, the latter of which shows how the cure can be worse than the disease.
4. As safe and effective as COVID vaccines are, the primary benefit incurred is not of a societal nature, but of a personal, individual nature. As such, how we define the policy goal of herd immunity needs to change accordingly. 

I want to be clear that citing the aforementioned studies does not mean people should not get vaccinated. Quite the contrary! People should get vaccinated, even those who have natural immunity because hybrid immunity (the combination of natural immunity and vaccine immunity) provides the greatest protection (e.g., Goldberg et al., 2021; Goel et al., 2021). Even so, we should be honest about what vaccines can and cannot do. Just because vaccines are not particularly effective when it comes to transmission does not negate the fact that vaccines are very effective at preventing severe COVID, COVID-related hospitalizations, and COVID-related deaths. 

However, people should not be mandated to get vaccinated. Part of being free means living with the consequences of your choices, whether those are good or bad choices. People should chose what goes into their bodies, whether we are talking about food, alcohol, nicotine products, or vaccines. I think that remaining unvaccinated is generally ill-advised. At the same time, if we are to remain a free society, then "my body, my choice" (provided that it doesn't violate the non-aggression axiom) needs to mean something. 

In this context, it means that the unvaccinated need to live with the risk and the consequences of remaining unvaccinated. If that means they are more likely to be hospitalized, then so be it. That poor life choice is on them. Or to quote Democratic Governor Jared Polis, "At this point, if you haven't been vaccinated, it's your own darn fault." We do not deny those with unhealthy lifestyles healthcare access. We also do not mandate that people quit smoking and drinking alcohol, exercise three times a week, get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a day, or eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. While health is important, we do not treat it as an absolute. We should learn to live with the risk of COVID as humanity has done with other areas of life. 

Vaccine mandates are not a "justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity," especially since vaccines do not prevent transmission in any significant way. There is no compelling case in which people should be forced to take a vaccine or lose their jobs and freedoms if they do not comply. At a minimum, I hope the courts see the folly of vaccine mandates and rule against them. Vaccine mandates do not have a place in a free society and they do not have a place in a society that ought to care about the results of scientific findings. 

What's Causing the Shortage in the U.S. Labor Market?: Fall 2021 Edition

2021 seems like it would be a better year than 2020. In spite of a Delta variant, we have safe and effective vaccines that have helped COVID become more manageable. One would think that as we get closer to the end of the pandemic, the economy would be getting significantly better. On the one hand, the recession did not last long. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the COVID recession lasted less than a quarter. On the other hand, the pandemic has really thrown the economy into disarray. A couple of weeks ago, I analyzed the main causes of the supply chain crisis that we are experiencing. 

Today, I would like to talk about a different abnormality occurring in the economy: a shortage in the labor market. As of the end of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that there were 10.4 million job openings. During the same time, there were 7.4 million unemployed (BLS). The labor shortage is perplexing because there are about three million more job postings than there are workers in the labor market. With more job postings than ever, you would think people would get back to work. Yet there seems to be a fair amount of reluctance to reenter the labor force. So what gives? I plan on covering the main theories as to why people are not entering the labor market. 

The COVID-19 pandemic. I understand that the counterproductive and harmful lockdowns caused businesses to be shut down, thereby creating a labor shortage. I can even understand how in 2020, people were afraid to take a job or go back into the office for fear of COVID. After all, the media was peddling fear throughout this pandemic (Sacerdote et al., 2020). But along came the vaccines in a record time previously thought impossible. In spite of the vaccine effectiveness, many people are still reeling from the aftermath of so much COVID fear. Ironically enough, a AP-NORC September 2020 poll found that the vaccinated are on average more fearful of COVID than the unvaccinated. This fear is so potent that I wrote a piece earlier this month about how this pandemic will come to an end when we as a society reach a point when we surmount fear and learn to manage risk once more. While hard to quantify, I think this residual fear will be in the background of the labor markets in the upcoming months.

Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefits and Other Welfare Benefits. Unemployment benefits normally have been given to temporarily help those who lost their job. My concern at the beginning of the pandemic was that if the benefits were so large that they were either comparable to or exceeded one's previous salary, it could provide a disincentive for people to return to work. Given that the UI benefits delayed economic recovery during the Great Recession, I was naturally worried. The Mercatus Center found that expanded UI benefits have discouraged unemployment (Farren and Kaiser, 2021). Analysts at Goldman Sachs measured the main causes for the labor shortage. What was at the top of the list? As we see below, the answer to that question is "Unemployment benefits."

There was certainly a fair amount of politicking when the federal UI benefits expired. But let's keep a few things in mind. One is that only the expansion that expired. The expiration did not apply to base UI benefits. Two, there has been the addition of the expanded child tax credit. Three, there are other welfare benefits that are available, including food stamps and TANF. Four, the economic stimulus payments received in 2020 gave households extra disposable income to save. This extra cushion in cash, whether it be used for savings, consumption, or to pay off debt, reduces the incentives to return to the workplace. 

Lack of Childcare. With the increase of remote work and childcare closures, parents had to deal with juggling their childcare duties and remote work duties. Intuitively, one would think that this lack of childcare would make it harder for parents (especially mothers) to reenter the workforce. However, economists from the Council of Economic Advisers found that parents generally did not lower their work-hours during the pandemic (Furman et al., 2021). That finding suggests that lack of childcare played a negligible role in the labor market shortage throughout the pandemic. With more schools opening up, the "lack of childcare" explanation becomes even less plausible. 

Low Immigration. One of the unfortunate remnants from the Trump administration was the low levels of immigration. In spite of Trump's fears, immigration has not shown to lower employment. If anything, higher immigration levels can increase employment. As the libertarian Cato Institute brings up, we can raise legal immigration by addressing the administrative processing delays and the low immigration caps. The Left-leaning Vox also provides an argument for increasing immigration to help deal with the labor shortage.   

Early Retirees. Retirees are becoming a larger portion of the U.S. population. After all, U.S. population is slowing in growth and the Baby Boomers (commonly defined as those who were born between 1946 and 1964) are opting not to work anymore. Some of this retirement was bound to happen, but much like we saw with remote working, the pandemic served to accelerate that trend. The Federal Reserve Bank at St. Louis brings up two main reasons for the acceleration of excess retirements in its research on the topic (Faria e Castro, 2021). 

The first has to do with danger to one's health. COVID-19 disproportionately affects those who are older, especially those in the sixty-plus crowd. It is understandable that in the worst pandemic in about a century, those who are close to retirement age (i.e., mid-to-late sixties) would rather avoid getting infected with COVID if they can help it. 

The Fed brings up a second reason: rising asset values made retirement more feasible. Although it is wise to diversify one's retirement account, it is also common practice that there is a large percentage invested in the stock market because of its high potential rate of return. This is where the monetary policy of quantitative easing (QE) comes in. QE keeps interest rates low and more money flowing through the economy. This expansionary monetary policy signals to the stock markets that the Fed is not afraid to continue to buy assets to keep interest rates low. Setting aside that QE can cause inflation or asset bubbles for a moment, one of its effects is increasing the value of the stock market. The fact that we are seeing historic highs in the stock market (e.g., NASDAQ, Dow Jones) gives those in their sixties more confidence to retire early. The silver lining is that the vast majority of those who are not of retirement age intend to look for work within the next twelve months (Goldman Sachs).

"The Great Resignation." Coined by psychologist Anthony Klotz, the "Great Resignation" refers to the phenomenon in which a multitude of employees are quitting their jobs. This "Great Resignation" is in part due to the burnout caused by the pandemic. Others are rethinking how work plays a role in their life, reassessing their career choices, and reevaluating their working conditions, whether it is compensation, benefits, work-life balance, promotional potential, or overall working environment. It seems have less tolerance for "sticking it out at my current job" than it did previously. As we see in labor data from the BLS, labor retention is becoming a greater problem that employers need to address if they want to keep their staff for the long-term.

Vaccine Mandates. One of my concerns behind Biden's vaccine mandate was that there would be a significant (or non-negligible) number of unvaccinated employees that would rather quit their jobs than be vaccinated. Preliminary survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that 5 percent of the unvaccinated have quit their jobs rather than get vaccinated. While there is already anecdotal evidence of this trend taking place, it is too soon to tell what sort of impact the mandates will have on the labor market. 

Postscript

Before writing this piece, I would have guessed that the unemployment benefits were the primary cause. Looking at the Goldman Sachs analysis, it seems to be the number one cause. In that sense, I was correct. At the same time, there are other factors that play into this labor market shortage, such as declining birth rates, a skills mismatch, and the list of multiple factors that I made above. What I will conclude with is that there are some issues with the labor market that will get resolved as this pandemic comes to an end. Hopefully, the Biden administration can lower the backlog of immigrants so we can increase the labor force that way. Conversely, there are other trends that signal that some of the people who left the labor market did so on a permanent basis. In any case, we are looking at a tight labor market for the foreseeable future.