The Evidence Base Against Lockdowns Grows: Why Lockdowns Are Ineffective and Very Likely Cause Deaths

"Stay home, stay safe." This was the mantra at the beginning of the pandemic that was used to solidify the justification the lockdowns. By shutting down workplaces, schools, and other venues, as well as staying home, the lockdowns were meant to lower the rate of transmission of COVID-19, and by extension, save lives. The so-called conventional wisdom stated that the cost of the lockdowns was worth the lives that we would save during this pandemic. I'm not going to get into the costs of the lockdowns right now. I will save that for another time since it will require much more detail. I simply want to ask whether lockdowns reached their primary goal of saving lives. 

I expressed my concerns about the lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic. My concerns ranged from overestimation of the fatality of COVID-19 to the costs of the lockdowns and the burden of proof of such a policy prescription. I also bemoaned the lack of an evidence base for lockdowns. Speaking of a lack of an evidence base, there was no evidence base prior to the pandemic. Why? Because there was no instance in human history prior to this pandemic in which we isolated healthy individuals en masse. It was standard epidemiological understanding that it does not make sense. In September 2019, the well-renowned Johns Hopkins University stated that lockdowns would be the least effective manner to control the spread of a pandemic (p. 57). In October 2019, the World Health Organization said that isolating those who were not sick is not recommended because it had no rationale (p. 16). In short, using lockdowns to try to slow down the slow of coronavirus was not "following the science." 

Now that we have a pandemic in which we ignored the science and went through the social experiment of isolating the healthy en masse, we have better an evidence base as to whether lockdowns are good public policy practice. Have lockdowns actually saved lives? 

Earlier this week, economists from the University of South California and RAND Corporation released a paper asking this very question (Agrawal et al., 2021). The authors analyzed data across 43 countries and all 50 states in the United States. What did they find? A one-week increase in shelter-in-place [SIP], also known as lockdowns, was associated with a 2.7 percent increase in excess deaths per 100,000 individuals (p. 13). The big picture takeaway from the authors is that "we fail to find that SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths (p. 4)." 

Three reasons suggested by the authors for the findings are a) people would have adjusted their behavior, with or without SIPs, b) SIPs increased deaths of despair, and c) reduction in non-COVID-19 healthcare increased excess deaths. If you need more details on the rationale behind such reasons, you can view my analyses last year here and here.

You might be thinking that this is one study, even if it authored by economists from prestigious institutions. The reality is that the aforementioned study is hardly the only study questioning the efficacy of lockdowns. If you are looking for something comprehensive, the American Institute of Economic Research provided a list back in December 2020 of 35 other studies showing that inefficacy of lockdowns. The list I provide below is a good sampling of studies from reputable sources, a majority of which are from 2021, showing why lockdowns are ineffective:

• A study from The Lancet (Chaudhry et al., 2020) concluded that "government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality." To the lockdown's credit, they provided improved patient recovery rates. So if lockdowns did not provide a reduction in critical cases or mortality, what played a major role in mortality or critical cases? Obesity and smoking prevalence negatively affected these factors, whereas nurses per capita and GDP per capita had a positive correlation.
• An economist from the University of Chicago provides further insight (Mulligan, 2021), specifically with regards to transmission rates at home versus work. The conventional wisdom was that the level of confinement at home would provide for lower transmission. However, households were shown to have a higher transmission rate. Why? Because the mitigation efforts in the workplace (e.g., universal mask wearing, screening, social distancing) were effective. These safety protocols used in the workplace were not used in homes. 
• Researchers from Tel Aviv University used mobility data to determine if lockdowns save lives (Loewenthal et al., 2020). These researchers were actually expecting lockdowns to help. What they found was no statistical correlation between lockdown severity and COVID-related fatalities. The authors continued to state that while social distancing matters, strict lockdown policies were not necessary. 
• Professors at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy found that lockdowns "had no detectable health benefits, only modest effects on behavior, and small but adverse effects on the economy (Berry et al., 2021)." The reason for the ineffectiveness, per the professors, is that people were social distancing before the lockdown measures were in effect. While the lockdowns did not affect social behavior, the authors nevertheless emphasize the importance of social distancing behavior. 
• Stanford researchers concluded that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPI] (e.g., lockdowns) were no more effective than less-restrictive NPIs (Bendavid et al., 2021). The researchers even postulate that increased intra-household density and transmission because lockdowns forced people to stay indoors more frequently. In other words, the lockdowns provided no significant, beneficial effect.
• An economist from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia conducted a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns (Allen, 2021). Some valid points are made in this cost-benefit analysis. The first is that the lockdowns were ineffective because the voluntary changes mimicked lockdowns. Second, the lockdowns were not able to prevent non-compliance to the extent required. Third, many of the earlier studies did not disentangle the effects of government restrictions from voluntary behavior (Plus, earlier studies relied more heavily on modeling). Fourth, and most importantly, there is a lack of correlation between lockdown stringency and COVID deaths per capita. Basic statistics teaches that without correlation, there is no causation, i.e., lockdowns did little to nothing to prevent COVID deaths. 
• French researchers used a Pearson correlation test to determine what most greatly caused COVID deaths (De Larochelambert et al., 2020). Regarding lockdowns, the researchers found that "stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemic, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate." What did appear to be linked with the death rate, according to the study, include high chronic disease levels, countries within the 25°/65° latitudinal strip, lower temperatures combined with lower UV levels, countries with a higher life expectancy and its slowdown, and metabolic risk factors (e.g., inactive/sedentary lifestyle, obesity).
• Although not a study per se, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology [CSPI] has a lengthy, but very nice piece called The Case Against Lockdowns.

Conclusion: It might seem intuitive to have lockdowns slow down the rate of transmission enough to save lives. What has played out in the data is different, including a lack of correlation between lockdown stringency and COVID deaths. If anything, the lockdowns could have caused more deaths than saved. We have seen multiple factors contribute to the ineffectiveness of lockdowns. People were already social distancing prior to the lockdowns, and would have done so regardless of regulations. Lockdowns increased deaths of despair. Non-COVID health concerns were delayed, thereby creating more health problems than preventing. Lockdowns forced people to spend more time indoors, which increased transmission. Such lifestyle factors as obesity, smoking, and being sedentary played a major role in severe COVID cases and mortality. There is no shortage of explanations of what affected COVID mortality or morbidity more so than the lockdowns.

Given what we all went through during lockdown, it must be shocking or jarring to hear that we endured it for nothing. A lockdown might seem like a nice way to placate the fear or a way to seem to take control over a virus with the real potential to kill you. However, the growing amount of evidence shows that lockdowns do not fulfill its goal of saving more lives than it takes. Since we went through so much pain and sacrifice to so little effect, this should truly make us ponder whether the lockdowns were worth all the costs. 

Why We Should All Celebrate Juneteenth

Up until this past week, the last time a federal holiday was enacted into law was during the Reagan Administration when Martin Luther King, Jr. Day became a federal holiday. For the first time in nearly forty years, we have a new federal holiday: Juneteenth. This past week, both the House and the Senate passed bipartisan legislation enacting Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Since 62 percent of Americans know little to nothing about Juneteenth (Gallup), the first question I have to ask today is "what exactly is Juneteenth?" 

Aside from being a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth," Juneteenth is a holiday in the United States celebrating the Emancipation of African-American slaves. While the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1862, the Union was unable to enforce the edict in the Confederate States. It was on June 19, 1865, that Union Army General Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for African-American slaves in Texas. The reason why April 9, 1865, which is the date that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, was not chosen is because it took a few weeks for the people of Texas to get the memo. June 19, 1865 represents the moment that all African-American slaves within the United States were effectively freed from slavery. 

With critical race theory, the 1619 Project, the protests subsequent to George Floyd's murder, and all the other politics surrounding race relations in recent U.S. history, I have to wonder about the origin of Juneteenth. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), who was one of the 14 Representatives that voted against the Juneteenth bill, argued that "it is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country." 

The main issue with Rosendale's argument is that Juneteenth is not new. As the Congressional Research Service brings up in its primer, Juneteenth celebrations date back to 1866. Texas was the first state to make it a state holiday in 1980. All but two states in the Union had it as a state-level holiday prior to Congress' enactment this week. All of this is to say that Juneteenth predates our modern-day concepts of political correctness, wokeness, or cancel culture.

This leads me to ponder Juneteenth in contrast to the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July commemorates the day in which the Declaration of Independence was signed: July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence established the ideals upon which this country was to be based, including that "all men are created equal" and that we are given the unalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

This brings up an interesting theme: ideals versus reality. Ideally, the Founders wanted a nation built upon freedom and equality under the law. The reality was much different. Thomas Jefferson, along with other signers of the Constitution, were slaveholders. We don't need anyone chiming in from modern-day times to point out the incongruence between theory and practice. Frederick Douglass did a fine job in his 1852 speech entitled "What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass called the celebration of the Fourth of July a sham, the boasted liberty an unholy license. For Douglass, the Fourth of July was "mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy." Given the historical context, Douglass was spot-on. Why have a holiday celebrating freedom and equality under the law when only some had said freedom? The Fourth of July represents the day that freedom was granted to some. Juneteenth represents the day that freedom was granted to all in the United States. 

This brings up another tension: progress versus the continued need for improvement. Getting rid of slavery was a major step in bringing us closer to equality. At the same time, it is not as if things were hunky-dory for African-Americans after June 19, 1865. The Civil War was followed by nearly a century of African-American citizens being de jure and de facto treated as second-class citizens, including Jim Crow laws, the racial terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, and Plessy v. Ferguson. The Civil Rights movement, with the culmination being the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was another major milestone that represented a turning point in racial relations and those ideals enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Even so, U.S. history since 1964 shows that progress still needs to be made. 

The culmination of these thoughts is why everyone should celebrate Juneteenth. The events leading up to Juneteenth most directly affected African-Americans. Historically, African-Americans have been the ones most likely to celebrate Juneteenth. While I acknowledge the impact the events surrounding Juneteenth have had on African-Americans, the themes surrounding Juneteenth are universal. 

Juneteenth is first and foremost a celebration of liberty over slavery, much like the Jewish celebration of Passover. Juneteenth reminds us that freedom is not just for some people. Freedom is for all people, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or political beliefs. Any well-functioning democracy entails protecting the rights for its entire populace, and we should be mindful of that moving forward. 

Second, Juneteenth is an opportunity both to acknowledge African-American history as a part of the tapestry of U.S. history while bringing us closer as a society. Part of living in a pluralistic democracy is to be able to embrace others' differences, and ideally, celebrate our neighbors' histories. I view Juneteenth as a time to celebrate freedom generally and African-American history specifically, not to mention our commonality as human beings.  

Third, Juneteenth teaches us that we are to acknowledge our flaws while celebrating our achievements. The march towards progress or freedom isn't linear, consistent, or without bumps in the road. We as a country have made great strides, but we are also a work in progress. In addition to celebrating our progress, we should also look forward and ask ourselves where we would like to head. 

I hope you all have a Happy Juneteenth!

Has COVID Resurrected the Concerns Behind Zombie Firms?

Once in a while, I get friends who like to submit requests on topics I can cover. One such topic is that of zombie firms during the pandemic. What is a zombie firm or zombie company? A zombie firm is a company that earns just enough to continue operations and servicing debt, but is incapable of paying off of debt. More specifically, a common definition of a zombie firm is a business coverage ratio of less than 1 for three consecutive years. They are called "zombies" because they are close to insolvency but do not quite make it to that level. The term "zombie firm" was coined during Japan's "Lost Decade," which refers to Japan's economic stagnation in the early 1990s when Japan's asset price bubble burst. The Congressional Research Service provides a nice primer on the topic.

Why are zombie firms so problematic? As the Bank of International Settlements [BIS] brings up in their study on the topic (Banerjee and Hoffman, 2018), zombie firms are a problem because they are less productive and crowd out more profitable firms (also see Caballero et al., 2008). How so? Under normal circumstances, these firms would exit the market and make way for newer and more productive firms. However, zombie firms stay afloat because they have access to an abundance of credit, much like we have seen when the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to lower interest rates to near-zero or created emergency lending programs in response to the pandemic. For more information on zombie firms and weak productivity, you can read OECD resources here.

On the one hand, I feel better about zombie firms now than I would have a year ago because the economy is recovering. Zombie firms tend to die a natural death once the economic situation improves. This is why I am happy to see unemployment benefits be curtailed by states: lavish unemployment benefits slow down economic recoveries. The sooner we can recover, the sooner we can lower the rate of zombie firms. 

On the other hand, I worry about how monetary policy plays a role in keeping these firms afloat. While there is a potential case for such lending from the Federal Reserve in the short-run in terms of boosting aggregate demand and increasing employment and investment, what happens in the long-run is that the credit is based on firm size or sector, thereby creating a misallocation. This is another reason why low or negative interest rates are problematic beyond the short-term: because such rates lock economies into a vicious cycle of anemic economic growth, much like we have seen in the European Union and Japan. 

The Peterson Institute for International Economics is correct in saying that we need to push the economy above potential. As long as we create an economy with tax, regulatory, and trade dynamism, we can help reduce the rate of zombie firms. 

Let's Go Back to Ignoring CDC and Federal Health Guidance Like We Always Have

About a couple of weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made an abrupt change in its recommendations for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Instead of recommending face mask usage in various public settings, the CDC decided to recommend that vaccinated individuals are safe in almost every indoor and outdoor scenario: "You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart." Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the Director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], also said that day that vaccinated people do not need masks while outdoors. While this might come off as a step in the right direction or a warranted sigh or relief, it made me ask a vital question: why are we listening to the CDC or Fauci in the first place? 

You might think that listening to the government experts is the way to go in the middle of a pandemic. After all, those who work at such organizations as the CDC, FDA, and NIH have a good amount of topical expertise. Normally, I would be for heeding good advice from experts. However, I hesitate to take my COVID-related advice from the government, especially given how the U.S. federal government has operated on this front. For one, the CDC has historically and institutionally been an exceptionally cautious agency in terms of its advice. If you look at some of the advice that government agencies in the past have given, it is amazing how many Americans ignore it:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends eating two cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables a day. According to the CDC, only 1 in 10 eat the recommended amount.
• The CDC defines "moderate drinking" as one alcoholic drink for women and two alcoholic drinks for men. The CDC also says that 2 out of 3 Americans drink above moderate levels at least once a month. 
• The CDC also recommends that pregnant women avoid drinking all together, even though 1 out of 9 pregnant women drinks anyways. 
• The CDC doesn't want you smoking, yet 14 percent of Americans smoke regularly.
• The CDC would like for people to exercise at least twice a week. How many people are successful? According to a 2018 CDC report, just 23 percent get enough exercise.
• The CDC recommends at least seven hours of sleep, but 1 out of 3 Americans do not get enough sleep.

I'm not here to say that all the aforementioned recommendations are bad or inaccurate. However, when it comes to the main indicators of good diet, exercise, and adequate sleep, Americans generally disregard what the government recommends them. But it's not just that. The government dropped the ball with its initial response to the pandemic. In April 2020, I detailed 15 ways in which pre-existing government policies got in the way of an adequate response. Both the CDC and FDA botched mass testing. FDA regulations delayed rollout of face masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizers. This is to say nothing of state and local regulations, but I'm going to keep my focus on the federal government today. Let's see a few examples of how the federal government handled their response to the pandemic and how they went about recommendations:

• Face Masks at Onset of Pandemic: At the beginning of the pandemic, there was mixed messaging about wearing masks. The federal government went from recommending that we do not wear masks and subsequently recommending that we do masks, with mask shortages being cited as the reason for the initial guidance. In short, it was acceptable to mislead the public on masks because we did not have enough masks at the beginning. Can you see how people can be confused when someone like Fauci said at the beginning of the pandemic that we do not need masks to Fauci wearing two masks at the beginning of 2021?  
• School Closures: Last summer, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Dr. Anthony Fauci were arguing in a Senate Committee hearing about whether schools should be open. Back in the summer, Fauci thought that children were a high enough risk. Fauci got around to admitting in November that children were unlikely vectors of COVID. The data did not change in the interim to justify a change. As I pointed out in July, there was plenty of evidence to show that schools could be open. Fauci chose to ignore the evidence because it was politically expedient to do so.
• Herd Immunity: At the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci thought that herd immunity would be around 60 percent. Later in the year, he increased it to 70 percent and eventually upped it to 85 percent. According to an interview Fauci had with the New York Times, he did not base his estimation on science. He looked at polling data. When he saw that at least 60 percent were willing to get the vaccine, he increased his estimate to encourage people to get vaccinated. Granted, herd immunity can be an elusive concept since still do not know how long immunity, either that from the vaccines or natural immunity lasts. But it's harder to take an estimate seriously when it is based on a gut reaction. 
• Outdoor Transmission Risk: Earlier this year, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that the risk of outdoor COVID transmission was about 10 percent. That figure was based on a study released in February (Bulfone et al., 2021). It turns out that one of the co-authors of that study said that Walensky misrepresented the study and over-exaggerated the risk of outdoor transmission. It looks like outdoor transmission risk is lower than 0.1 percent. That really only happened either in large crowds or if you were in someone's face. Plus, that was before vaccines. Given that vaccines are shown to be effective at minimizing COVID spread, the odds are even lower....so low that the CDC finally got around to recommending that fully vaccinated people can be outdoors (and most indoor venues) without a mask. Walensky exaggerated by the order of two magnitudes to try to be needlessly stringent. Let that sink in for a moment. 
• Fully Vaccinated People (CDC): Back in March, the CDC was much more strict and arbitrary with its recommendations for fully vaccinated people, e.g., fully vaccinated people should only hang out with other vaccinated people. As I argued last month, vaccines are safe and effective. Since vaccines were meant to be the end-game to get us back to a "pre-pandemic normal," it would follow that fully vaccinated people are safe to more or less resume living as they had prior to the beginning of the pandemic. However, that is not what happened. I would surmise that the CDC remained strict up until its May 13 interim recommendation to try to get more people vaccinated. But if little to nothing changes, why bother getting vaccinated? While I am glad that the CDC changed their tune, I would also contend that the initial recommendation based on stringency actually impeded the vaccination campaign.
• Face Masks for Fully Vaccinated (Fauci): On May 18, Fauci wanted to explain the confusion over the CDC's new mask recommendations for the fully vaccinated. While interviewing with Good Morning America, he said that he did not want to give mixed messaging before the CDC recommendations, and then proceeded to say that the chance of getting infected while indoors was low. Contrast to when Fauci was testifying before the Senate a couple of months earlier when he was wearing two masks while vaccinated. He got into a heated argument with Senator Paul (again!) about why fully vaccinated people should wear masks. Paul accused Fauci of practicing "theater," and Fauci vehemently disagreed. It looks like Paul was right after all: wearing masks for the fully vaccinated is political theater. 

If the government were to potentially have any legitimate role in pandemic response, at least from a libertarian standpoint, it would be to give solid, evidence-based recommendations for the public to follow. As I have already shown, that has been far from the case during this pandemic. Messaging on the most important aspects of flattening the curve and non-pharmaceutical interventions have been mismanaged. It has further eroded the American people's trust in experts, which further contributes to the post-truth world in which we live. All that has been accomplished with such arbitrary and inconsistent messaging is rendering the CDC more irrelevant. 

I think this leads to another point: we gave too much credence to the likes of the CDC. As their history has shown, they are going to be stricter than most Americans can handle. Plus, given the mismanagement, we should not be leaving it up to the CDC or Fauci to tell us how to live our lives. As Robby Soave at Reason Magazine points out, "Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway." As much as fear has driven so many personal decisions and as much as risk assessment has been eroded as a concept, I hope that we can get back to living our lives without unreasonable fear and without needing approval from the federal government to do so. 

Why We Shouldn't Heed Israel-Palestine Conflict Analysis From Such Comedians As Trevor Noah or John Oliver

La plus ça change, la plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That is certainly how I feel about the Israel-Palestine conflict. There were a few recent events that led to the altercation between Israel and Gaza. One is the Sheikh Jarrah incident in East Jerusalem, a legal dispute over property rights and paying rent. Protests began over an eviction of six Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Jewish landlords, a property which has been owned by the Jewish community since 1876. Without getting into "whose fault it is," there was also a clash between Israeli police and Muslim worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque at the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Hamas issued Israel an ultimatum to cease its police and military enforcement of Israeli law. Israel ignored it by reinforcing its borders with Gaza. Hamas fired rockets into Israel targeting civilians. Israel returned fire by targeting military outposts and now there is outrage on both sides. 

All of this escalated conflict led to celebrities throwing in their two cents. The Daily Show host Trevor Noah was one of the earlier "commentators," framing the conflict in terms of power balance. Comedian John Oliver proceeded to outdo Trevor Noah by accusing Israel of "war crimes" and "apartheid." Needless to say, neither one of these comedians are a fan of Israel based on their monologues. Today, my goal is to take on their pseudo-intellectual comments and show where they both went wrong. 

The nature of Hamas. Before getting into any of what Noah or Oliver had to say about what is going on in the Middle East, I think it is best to ask ourselves who Hamas is. Hamas is a terrorist organization that is governing the Gaza Strip. Calling Hamas a terrorist organization is not my opinion or an attempt to call names. Hamas is officially designated as a terrorist organization by such entities as the United States, Australia, and the European Union. Hamas is oppressing its own citizens, according to the NGO Freedom House. Life under Hamas is so authoritarian that I feel sorry for the Gazan civilians that are used as pawns in Hamas' ploy. Hamas' original charter called for the annihilation of Israel. Even its 2017 revision of its charter does not recognize Israel and views Israel strictly in adversarial terms. How do you broker peace with an enemy who would solely be satisfied if you no longer existed? 

Body Count Argument. One of the main arguments used by these comedians is that a higher body count means that one side is right. Rather than look at motive, intent, or morality, Noah tells us that we should "ask who is dead and who is alive." Oliver similarly argues that because there are ten times as many casualties on the Palestinian side as their are on the Israeli side, the higher body count makes the Palestinian side right. 

For one, the appropriateness or moral justification is not based solely on how many civilians die. But let's ask ourselves why the disparity exists in the first place. Hamas uses its citizens as human shields by planting its military complexes amongst residential areas. Its goal is to maximize casualties so that the international community, including Noah and Oliver, can feel a sense of outrage and support a terrorist organization. Conversely, Israel uses the Iron Dome to protect its citizens, something that Oliver takes issue with. Israel's goal is to minimize civilian casualties. Why should Israel doing a better job at protecting its citizens render Israel the bad guy? If it were not for Iron Dome, there would be considerably more dead Israelis. If the goal is equality, how many Jews need to die to make Noah or Oliver happy? 

Power Balance and Military Might. One of the main arguments that Noah particularly uses is that because Israel is more powerful, it has more responsibility. He analogizes the situation to a teenager fighting his younger, four-year-old brother. Let's forget that most sibling rivalries do not entail one sibling trying to kill the other, as we see with Hamas trying to exterminate Israel. Essentially, the argument that both Noah and Oliver make are that "if you are weaker, you are in the right." By that "logic," that would mean the Taliban was right, as were the white nationalist protesters at Charlottesville in 2017. Military might does not have bearing on whether one side is right or not. If anything, both sides have a moral obligation to behave properly in a time of war, something which Hamas does not care about at all. All Noah and Oliver do in framing the problem in such a way is to absolve Hamas from any responsibility. 

Let's bring up another point about military might. While Noah acknowledges that "Israel could crush Gaza 'like that,'" what he glosses over is that Israel has not done so. Those who criticize Israel love to lob the argument of "Israel is being disproportionate." If Israel were to be proportionate, it would use all of its military might to indiscriminately target civilians, which is exactly what Hamas has done for years. But Israel does not do that. It does its best to target military outposts only, which is all the more challenging when Hamas intentionally hides among civilians. Using civilians as human shields is a tactic that even the United Nations has criticized on more than one occasion. Israel even gives a one-to-two-hour warning to Gazan citizens, a painstaking courtesy that no other army has extended in such a situation. Military experts actually have lauded Israel for doing such a good job at minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties (Merriam and Schmitt, 2015).

What Would You Do? It's a fair question to ask, but it was one that neither Noah nor Oliver bothered to ask. How would the United States react if it were attacked? We have an idea: it's called Pearl Harbor. Could any country say that they would not defend their borders if their civilians were indiscriminately barraged with rocket-fire from a belligerent entity? Hamas has set its genocidal intent on Israel before, and has done so unambiguously. Noah and Oliver imply that Israel should just "sit back and see what happens" because they allege Israel is the oppressor. There have been multiple times in history where Jews were expected to "sit back and take it," and I can tell you it did not turn out well. If someone says they want to wipe you out of existence, that is the sort of threat you take seriously. 

Oliver criticizes Israel for attacking civilian areas, but conveniently forgets is that this conflict is a war. As we already brought up, Hamas hides amongst its citizens and uses them as human shields. As previously mentioned, Israel does its best to minimize civilian casualties. At the same time, civilian casualties during wartime are as lamentable as they are inevitable, an inevitability that is acknowledged by the Rome Statute [Article 8(2)b(4)]. 

Conclusion. If nothing else, this has reminded me why I don't take my opinions on foreign policy from celebrities. They presented themselves as objective, unbiased observers of the conflict when they were far from it. Although Noah and Oliver have First Amendment rights to say what they want, there is still a moral obligation to not propagate one-sided lies, especially given the media influence they have. 

I did not cover the West Bank today mainly because the current military conflict is with the Gaza Strip. Even so, Oliver's accusation of there being apartheid of Palestinians (particularly in the West Bank since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip back in 2005) is a baseless one (see my previous coverage of the allegations of Israel being an apartheid state here and here). My analysis today also does not cover treatment of Israeli Arabs within Israel's borders, something both Noah and Oliver briefly touch upon. Am I here to say that Israel is perfect? As I have said before and will say again, no nation-state is perfect. There are a lot of complexities within that part of the world, but other developed countries also have their issues with how they treat minorities. It does not render the United States, France, or Denmark apartheid states. I'm not here to say that Israel does not have serious internal issues (because it does, like any country), but it is disingenuous to disproportionately criticize and demonize Israel while ignoring or minimizing much more egregious human rights violations (e.g., the civil war in Syria or literal concentration camps in China). 

The situation either inside Israel's borders or in the West Bank has more historical, legal, and moral nuance than the situation with Hamas, which may not be saying much given who Hamas is. With Gaza, it is clear-cut. Hamas is a known terrorist organization knowingly and belligerently targeting Israeli civilians. It has no qualms with oppressing its own citizens, disregarding norms about warfare, or using violence towards its desire to see a world without Israel. Israel unquestionably has the moral high ground when it comes to the conflict with Hamas. The fact that Oliver or Noah cannot see the qualitative difference between Israel and a terrorist organization such as Hamas makes me wonder why anyone listens to them in the first place. 

Biden's COVID Vaccine Patent Waiver Won't Help and Will Probably Do Harm

In this pandemic, it is a race between getting people vaccinated and the growth of the COVID variants. If we can get enough people vaccinated quickly enough, it would mean reaching herd immunity, or at least close enough to herd immunity where we can minimize the spread of variants. Last week, President Biden's administration advocated for an idea to accelerate vaccine production: waiving intellectual property (IP) protections for the COVID vaccines. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that the U.S. would support the World Trade Organization (WTO) petition of India and South Africa to suspend IP protections so that generic manufacturers can manufacture their own versions of COVID vaccines. Tai's argument is that "desperate times call for desperate measures." To help fulfill the demand for the vaccines, Tai assumes that removing the IP protections will translate in a ramped-up manufacturing and production of vaccines. There are a few issues with the assumption of the Biden administration. 

First, IP protections are a moot point since Moderna already has foregone its patent protections for its vaccines. Plus, three COVID vaccine manufacturers licensed their technologies to Indian manufacturers. The fact that none of the other vaccine manufacturing companies have seized the opportunity to create their own version of the vaccine suggests that IP protections are not the issue. 

Second is that there is a misdiagnosis of the problem by the Biden administration. The assumption is that the bottleneck is being caused by the IP protections. Per the previous point, that is unlikely to be the case. As financial services company Morningstar mentions in its market assessment, removing IP protections will not affect the market. Adar Poonawalla, who is the CEO of the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, made the same argument. The main issue is manufacturing capacity, specifically with building safe and efficient mRNA manufacturing that is at scale. This is all the more true considering that vaccine technology is so complicated that it cannot be reverse-engineered the same way that other pharmaceuticals can be. 

Third, we might not have a supply shortage for much longer. If we assume that current vaccine manufacturers are accurate with their projections, we should have enough doses for 7 billion doses by the end of the year.

Fourth, the waiver will not help countries in need receive the vaccines in time. As the Biotechnology Industry Association points out, "Handing needy countries a recipe book without the ingredients, safeguards, and sizable workforce needed will not help people waiting for the vaccine. Handing them the blueprint to construct a kitchen that -- in optimal conditions -- can take a year to build will not help us stop the emergence of dangerous new COVID variants." 

Finally, it might go beyond simply not doing any good. It could end up doing harm, as the American Intellectual Property Law Association illustrates. The purpose of IP protections is to incentivize innovation and collaboration. It takes millions of dollars to fund such research and development efforts, not to mention other risks undertaken. If the IP protections are waived in this pandemic, it would establish a precedent to undermine incentives to create treatments and vaccines in future pandemics. 

How do we deal with the issue of the current supply shortage? One solution is to continue to build upon current global vaccine partnerships (e.g., COVAX). Another is to replace the patent system with a prize system, which would keep the incentives for inventors in place while making sure monopolistic or oligopolistic power takes place. In any case, all Biden's move would do is to give false hope and could very well undermine IP protections for the foreseeable future.

The Latest Child Tax Credit Modifications Will Cost More Than a Pretty Penny: Let's Not Make Them Permanent

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once say that you never let a crisis go to waste. The government certainly does that in respects to expanding power and clout in an emergency. We saw that when the U.S. government spent $1.9 trillion on a supposed relief bill that had little to do with pandemic relief. One of the features of that bill, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 [ARP], was the expansion of the child tax credit [CTC]. Per the IRS, the goal of the expansion is to reduce child poverty. The ARP's CTC expansion has three main components. The first is that the maximum credit increases from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child ($3,600 if the child is under 6 years old). Second, the CTC now includes 17-year olds. Third is that the CTC is now fully refundable. The last part is important because as the Tax Policy Center (TPC) points out, it makes the tax credit more accessible to households in the lowest quintile. 

Last week, Biden proposed the American Families Plan [AFP], a major spending bill focused on families and children. The Ivy League Wharton School of Business found in its analysis of the Plan that it would cost $2.5 trillion, which is $700 billion more than the White House estimate of $1.8 trillion. Included in the Plan are two modifications of the CTC. One is that the expansion in the ARP would be extended to 2025. The second is that the CTC would remain permanently refundable. Let's forget for a moment that the AFP as a whole is estimated to reduce the GDP by 0.33 percent by 2031 and increase the government debt by 6.2 percent by 2031 (Wharton). I previously covered the CTC in 2015 and 2016, but I really want to get into the issues with the recent expansion from the ARP and the proposal of the AFP.

The main argument for the CTC expansion is that of poverty reduction. The CTC helps to reduce tax liability for parents with dependents. If it reduces poverty, it must be a good deal, right? The Left-leaning Urban Institute estimates that the CTC from the ARP would reduce poverty by one percentage point, to 12.8 percent (Wheaton et al., 2021, p. 4). Similarly, the Left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities goes as far as estimating that the CTC and EITC in the ARP will collectively reduce child poverty by 40 percent. 

That sounds nice until you get into the issue of making the CTC refundable. On the one hand, it does provide greater access to the CTC for lower-income households. On the other hand, it takes a tax credit and de facto turns it into a direct cash transfer. The Right-leaning American Enterprise Institute puts those estimates from the above Left-leaning think-tanks into question with a report on child allowances (Winship, 2021). In this report, Winship outlines how government cash transfers such as the CTC substitutes work income, thereby undermining efforts to reduce unemployment. This is especially true since this will be the first time in U.S. history that cash benefits will be extended to nonworking parents. As an additional point, AEI scholar Angela Rachidi touches upon the fact that increases under the ARP will barely get many families above the poverty line, thereby doing little to create a long-term path out of poverty. 

We have already seen this phenomenon play out with another direct cash transfer: unemployment benefits. When unemployment benefits reach a certain level, they disincentivize work. As research from the Right-leaning Heritage Foundation illustrates (Rector et al., 2020), the Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC] did not succeed at reducing poverty or increasing employment. 

Seeing what has happened with other direct cash transfers such as unemployment benefits and the EITC, I am concerned that the refundability and the increase of the CTC size will act in contrary to the intent of poverty reduction and improving employment figures. In case diminishing the primary argument is not adequate, let's take a few other factors into consideration.

• Cost of the CTC. The Congressional Budget Office [CBO] estimated that the expansion under the ARP is going to cost us $88.8 billion over the next ten years. If we were to make the CTC permanent, the Right-leaning Tax Foundation found that it would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years.
• Tax Code Neutrality. The CTC is a provision in the tax code that incentivizes child rearing. Why should childless households pay for those who decide to have children? What business does the IRS have in punishing or rewarding people for the size of families they choose to have or whether to have children? 
• Getting At the Root of the Problem. Advocates of the CTC argue that childcare is too expensive. The issue with a CTC, especially one with refundability, is that it is de facto acts as a demand-side subsidy. What happens when you increase demand while supply stays the same? It increases prices, which is a point I have brought up with federal subsidies towards college loans and LIHEAP. So how does the CTC lower childcare prices?  It does nothing to address the rising cost of education, healthcare, or food. It does nothing to contribute towards welfare reform. It is just more money being handed out, which is the premise behind a direct cash transfer. If the cost of childcare is the problem, then we need to find ways to reduce the costs. I can save this topic for another time, but I will leave with one suggestion that was brought up by the libertarian Cato Institute (Bourne, 2018). Regulations on childcare facilities include stringent staff-to-child ratios. If we were to loosen the ratio regulations, it could lower childcare costs from 9 to 20 percent. If we were to put our focus on the drivers of high childcare costs, we could provide a more targeted and less costly solution to affordable childcare. 

October 8, 2021 Addendum: Researchers from the University of Chicago recently released a working paper on the effects of Biden's CTC requirements (Corinth et al., 2021). One result is that 1.5 million workers (or 2.6 percent of working parents) would leave the workforce. The second is that it will do nothing to reduce deep child poverty. Third, with the new data used in this study, it shows that the effects of reducing general child poverty have been overstated in other studies.