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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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