I predicted way back in very early 2020, that, if our public health measures, such as social distancing, masking, etc., worked, then there would be a revisionist chorus shouting that we didn't need to do them. And, as I expected, it happened. Even including such people as Bari Weiss.
Bottom line: Flu deaths went down by a factor of 10 (~3000 vs. a typical year, ~30,000) for three flu seasons running. That is: Social distancing worked. It certainly saved many thousands of lives and likely prevented the collapse of the medical system in the USA in the hardest-hit areas.
Once things went "back to normal" we had a much harder flu and cold (and RSV, other viruses) season, especially among children. This is the expected result.
I don’t know much about Steven Hamilton, but I’m amazed his co-author Richard Holden is still presenting himself as an expert in the economic effects of covid in Australia after outing himself early in 2020 as an economist who doesn’t know how to do economics.
As someone who does CBA and economics for a living, i can say that if a graduate displayed the same combination of methodological sloppiness and utter hubris, i’d be reaching out to HR.
I guess as long as you reach the ‘correct’ conclusion, the fact you’re spouting rubbish doesn’t matter. Certainly didn’t stop him becoming the ‘go to’ for media outlets through 2020 and 2021.
To be clear, that CBA would’ve almost certainly demonstrated the opposite of the point he was trying to make - i.e., that lockdowns were a terrible idea - if he had gone back and amended his calculations to account for the age of victims.
As far as i know he never acknowledged his error, nor clearly his conclusion on lockdowns.
Whatever your preexisting views on the virtues of the Australian response, i wouldn’t be reading this book for additional insight.
Love your work Josh. Your podcast is so interesting and engaging.
On this episode: The guest is an economist not a public health expert. He glossed over the second half of Australia's lockdowns that were extensive and involved military personal patrolling the streets of western Sydney. There was no acknowledgment of the long term impacts on our children who endured prolonged periods of home schooling, no discussion about the inequality of locking down someone who has a swimming pool and backyard versus locking down someone sharing a room in an apartment in western Sydney, no discussion about the health implications of shutting down "elective" but life changing/restoring surgery and no discussion about the State v State nature of our response that had the Premier of Queensland saying "Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders" and WA shut off completely from the rest of us for most of the pandemic. Whilst I agree that, given what we were seeing overseas, we needed to go hard early (I was calling for this at the time), we didn't then adjust our response appropriately as things changed over the course of two years. The media and our governments were overly focused on daily Covid counts which just served to heighten everyone's fear and anxiety. Australian's gave into authoritarian rule for a prolonged period of time. There are so many ways in which our response could be better next time. Love to hear a public health expert talk to Josh about this.
Full disclosure...I know little about economics. My question is about these so-called-property rights the guest describes in rhe concert example. What's the resolution? It's been my experience that the dancers get to stand and there's absolutely no payment to the sitters who want to see. Where venues enforce sitting, there's no payment to the frustrated dancers. Maybe this is a poor example.
I dispute the intro. As the Australia expert, I have brought up the country’s COVID response to both people in medicine and public health and to random civilians. In almost every case, my response was a blank stare. Hardly anyone knew what Australia’s COVID policy or experience was, or had any opinion on it, positive or negative. There was a whole online brouhaha about the detention centers used for quarantine, but that was one of those things that no one who isn’t on Twitter has even heard of.
The Australian experience is certainly interesting, but I don’t know that it’s really applicable to the rest of the world. Australia has secure borders, low population density, a mild climate with a lot of outdoor spaces with fresh air, and an enormously compliant populace. New York City has precisely none of those things. I’m very skeptical that there was ever an R<1.0 scenario for the U.S. or Europe. During the brief period where it might have been possible, that was still when the mainstream consensus was that COVID was no big deal; the main concern in January 2020 was to make sure that the Chinese New Year parade did not get spoiled by anti-Chinese sentiment created by the virus. Virtually no one was talking about it as a public health emergency at that point. By the time there was any impetus to do something about it, it was probably already too late.
The way this discussion was framed also ignored a lot of on the ground realities. Implementation of policies requires trust in authorities. Virtually every American was on board with lockdowns and masking in April 2020, including in deep southern rural areas. The trust breakdown occurred for a variety of reasons, many of them totally justified. Let’s say the same public health people who signed off on the post-George Floyd riots as an exception to lockdowns had somehow come up with the perfect COVID policy right after that. Who in their right mind would have listened to those people or their associates? The continued questions about the U.S.’s role in the research that allegedly caused the pandemic in the first place are also a live issue here that doesn’t really apply in Australia.
Most of the policies that were controversial in the U.S. are things like packing COVID positive people into nursing homes or forcing vaccines on children or closing down open air parks, the net impact of which was likely negative even in this analysis. Some places that were islands did shut down access; there really wasn’t a ton of controversy about that. The high risk older people in the U.S. overwhelmingly adopted vaccines voluntarily; there wasn’t a ton of controversy about that either. As it stands, the COVID era is a health disaster in the way that Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster; a lot of people died, but this is probably attributable to bad policy as much as to the event itself.
I predicted way back in very early 2020, that, if our public health measures, such as social distancing, masking, etc., worked, then there would be a revisionist chorus shouting that we didn't need to do them. And, as I expected, it happened. Even including such people as Bari Weiss.
I invite everyone to look at the statistics for influenza deaths in the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22 flu seasons in the USA. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Week-Ending-D/r8kw-7aab/about_data (Click on the "Export" button. Large csv file, open in Excel or similar program.)
Bottom line: Flu deaths went down by a factor of 10 (~3000 vs. a typical year, ~30,000) for three flu seasons running. That is: Social distancing worked. It certainly saved many thousands of lives and likely prevented the collapse of the medical system in the USA in the hardest-hit areas.
Once things went "back to normal" we had a much harder flu and cold (and RSV, other viruses) season, especially among children. This is the expected result.
I don’t know much about Steven Hamilton, but I’m amazed his co-author Richard Holden is still presenting himself as an expert in the economic effects of covid in Australia after outing himself early in 2020 as an economist who doesn’t know how to do economics.
https://clubtroppo.com.au/2020/05/18/the-corona-cost-benefit-analyses-of-richard-holden-bruce-preston-and-neil-bailey-ooops/
As someone who does CBA and economics for a living, i can say that if a graduate displayed the same combination of methodological sloppiness and utter hubris, i’d be reaching out to HR.
I guess as long as you reach the ‘correct’ conclusion, the fact you’re spouting rubbish doesn’t matter. Certainly didn’t stop him becoming the ‘go to’ for media outlets through 2020 and 2021.
To be clear, that CBA would’ve almost certainly demonstrated the opposite of the point he was trying to make - i.e., that lockdowns were a terrible idea - if he had gone back and amended his calculations to account for the age of victims.
As far as i know he never acknowledged his error, nor clearly his conclusion on lockdowns.
Whatever your preexisting views on the virtues of the Australian response, i wouldn’t be reading this book for additional insight.
Love your work Josh. Your podcast is so interesting and engaging.
On this episode: The guest is an economist not a public health expert. He glossed over the second half of Australia's lockdowns that were extensive and involved military personal patrolling the streets of western Sydney. There was no acknowledgment of the long term impacts on our children who endured prolonged periods of home schooling, no discussion about the inequality of locking down someone who has a swimming pool and backyard versus locking down someone sharing a room in an apartment in western Sydney, no discussion about the health implications of shutting down "elective" but life changing/restoring surgery and no discussion about the State v State nature of our response that had the Premier of Queensland saying "Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders" and WA shut off completely from the rest of us for most of the pandemic. Whilst I agree that, given what we were seeing overseas, we needed to go hard early (I was calling for this at the time), we didn't then adjust our response appropriately as things changed over the course of two years. The media and our governments were overly focused on daily Covid counts which just served to heighten everyone's fear and anxiety. Australian's gave into authoritarian rule for a prolonged period of time. There are so many ways in which our response could be better next time. Love to hear a public health expert talk to Josh about this.
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Full disclosure...I know little about economics. My question is about these so-called-property rights the guest describes in rhe concert example. What's the resolution? It's been my experience that the dancers get to stand and there's absolutely no payment to the sitters who want to see. Where venues enforce sitting, there's no payment to the frustrated dancers. Maybe this is a poor example.
I dispute the intro. As the Australia expert, I have brought up the country’s COVID response to both people in medicine and public health and to random civilians. In almost every case, my response was a blank stare. Hardly anyone knew what Australia’s COVID policy or experience was, or had any opinion on it, positive or negative. There was a whole online brouhaha about the detention centers used for quarantine, but that was one of those things that no one who isn’t on Twitter has even heard of.
The Australian experience is certainly interesting, but I don’t know that it’s really applicable to the rest of the world. Australia has secure borders, low population density, a mild climate with a lot of outdoor spaces with fresh air, and an enormously compliant populace. New York City has precisely none of those things. I’m very skeptical that there was ever an R<1.0 scenario for the U.S. or Europe. During the brief period where it might have been possible, that was still when the mainstream consensus was that COVID was no big deal; the main concern in January 2020 was to make sure that the Chinese New Year parade did not get spoiled by anti-Chinese sentiment created by the virus. Virtually no one was talking about it as a public health emergency at that point. By the time there was any impetus to do something about it, it was probably already too late.
The way this discussion was framed also ignored a lot of on the ground realities. Implementation of policies requires trust in authorities. Virtually every American was on board with lockdowns and masking in April 2020, including in deep southern rural areas. The trust breakdown occurred for a variety of reasons, many of them totally justified. Let’s say the same public health people who signed off on the post-George Floyd riots as an exception to lockdowns had somehow come up with the perfect COVID policy right after that. Who in their right mind would have listened to those people or their associates? The continued questions about the U.S.’s role in the research that allegedly caused the pandemic in the first place are also a live issue here that doesn’t really apply in Australia.
Most of the policies that were controversial in the U.S. are things like packing COVID positive people into nursing homes or forcing vaccines on children or closing down open air parks, the net impact of which was likely negative even in this analysis. Some places that were islands did shut down access; there really wasn’t a ton of controversy about that. The high risk older people in the U.S. overwhelmingly adopted vaccines voluntarily; there wasn’t a ton of controversy about that either. As it stands, the COVID era is a health disaster in the way that Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster; a lot of people died, but this is probably attributable to bad policy as much as to the event itself.