The Latest from Cafe Hayek

(Don Boudreaux)

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This report, written by Sonal Desai, on Americans’ enormous misconceptions about the risks posed by covid-19 is well worth a careful read. It’s not long. (I thank my colleague Dan Klein for alerting me to this report.)

Here are some highlights:

Six months into this pandemic, Americans still dramatically misunderstand the risk of dying from COVID-19:

1. On average, Americans believe that people aged 55 and older account for just over half of total COVID-19 deaths; the actual figure is 92%.
2. Americans believe that people aged 44 and younger account for about 30% of total deaths; the actual figure is 2.7%.
3. Americans overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 24 and younger

by a factor of 50; and they think the risk for people aged 65 and older is half of what it actually is (40% vs 80%).

These results are nothing short of stunning. Mortality data have shown from the very beginning that the COVID-19 virus age-discriminates, with deaths overwhelmingly concentrated in people who are older and suffer comorbidities. This is perhaps the only uncontroversial piece of evidence we have about this virus. Nearly all US fatalities have been among people older than 55; and yet a large number of Americans are still convinced that the risk to those younger than 55 is almost the same as to those who are older.

…..

For the last six months, we have all read and talked about nothing but COVID-19; how can there be still such a widespread, fundamental misunderstanding of the basic facts? Our poll results identify two major culprits: the quality of information and the extreme politicization of the COVID-19 debate:

• People who get their information predominantly from social media have the most erroneous and distorted perception of risk.
• Those who identify as Democrats tend to mistakenly overstate the risk of death from COVID-19 for younger people much more than Republicans.

This, sadly, comes as no surprise. Fear and anger are the most reliable drivers of engagement; scary tales of young victims of the pandemic, intimating that we are all at risk of dying, quickly go viral; so do stories that blame everything on your political adversaries. Both social and traditional media have been churning out both types of narratives in order to generate more clicks and increase their audience.

The fact that the United States is in an election year has exacerbated the problem. Stories that emphasize the dangers of the pandemic to all age cohorts and tie the risk to the Administration’s handling of the crisis likely tend to resonate much more with Democrats than Republicans. This might be a contributing factor to why, in our survey results, Democrats tend to overestimate the risk of dying from COVID-19 for different age cohorts to a greater extent than Republicans do.

…..

This misinformation also causes another fundamental problem. The policy decision of what activities to keep shut and for how long is a very difficult and consequential one. It requires balancing two opposite effects of uncertain scale: on the one hand the benefits in terms of slowing COVID-19 contagion, on the other hand the harm to the economy and to people’s long-term health and livelihoods. This decision is strongly influenced by public perceptions of dangers, not only because politicians are sensitive to the public’s concerns but also because politicians are people too, subject to some of the same biases. Our poll results suggest fundamental misperceptions of the risk of death or serious adverse health consequences from COVID-19 could be distorting these decisions.

(Don Boudreaux)

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Nick Gillespie debunks the recent and inexcusably mistaken “highest single-day of COVID-19 deaths” report. Here’s Nick’s conclusion:

The COVID-19 story is a tough one, with new information emerging all the time. But the media, never infallible in the first place, seem increasingly prone to running stories that are not even internally consistent but instead are a hodgepodge of anxiety and apocalypticism. Under such circumstances, it’s more important than ever to develop razor-sharp media-literacy and bullshit-detection skills. Whether or not a coronavirus vaccine ever arrives, but can at least inoculate ourselves against the more obvious failures of the Fourth Estate.

Bruce Yandle writes that the U.S. economy isn’t improving fast enough.

James Pethokoukis: “If prosperity and freedom aren’t enough for you, there’s also the ‘moral’ case for market capitalism.”

Ben Zycher applauds the Trump administration’s reform of Obama’s misguided methane-emissions rule.

William McGurn praises the courageous Jimmy Lai. A slice:

Soon Jimmy will go to trial on charges from sedition to colluding with foreign powers. It’s utter rot, of course. If he finds himself facing prison, it is only because Communist China, for all its size and power, fears any Chinese who insists on speaking the truth.

In this way Jimmy might be thought of as Hong Kong’s Thomas More, the difference being that while King Henry VIII wanted More to speak up, Beijing wants Jimmy to shut up. In the more than two decades since Hong Kong was handed back to China, most Hong Kong elites have cut their consciences to accommodate their new overlords. Which leaves Jimmy Lai and his printing press as Hong Kong’s single most important counter to official propaganda.

My colleague Bryan Caplan wisely isn’t buying Paul Krugman’s skepticism about what economics can say about economic growth.

Art Carden reviews Steve Horwitz’s Austrian Economics: An Introduction.

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 107 of the late Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, Factfulness:

Yet here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.

Fears that once helped keep our ancestors alive, today help keep journalists employed. It isn’t the journalists’ fault and we shouldn’t expect them to change. It isn’t driven by “media logic” among the producers as much as by “attention logic” in the heads of consumers.

DBx: It is indeed a paradox, one with a significant impact. As the world becomes more and more safe, even small negative deviations from this trend become more and more unusual and, hence, noticeable and “newsworthy.” And these deviations – not understood in historical context – cause outsized anxiety and fear.

Ironically, this anxiety and fear can become self-fulfilling. Because, as Rosling notes, we human beings do not reason well regarding the long run when we are gripped by fear, fear leads us to make choices that in fact will make us worse off in the long run. Most obviously, fear leads us not only to tolerate the state grabbing more power over us, but even to demand that the state slap on us more binds and shackles. Yet bound and shackled, we cannot continue to innovate and create the prosperity that alone can truly reduce our exposure and susceptibility to the physical hazards that for so long mercilessly mowed down our ancestors.

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages xi-xii of Kristian Niemietz’s superb 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies:

Yet while socialists distance themselves from contemporary and historical examples of socialism, they usually struggle to explain what exactly they would do differently. Socialists tend to escape into abstraction, and talk of lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics.

DBx: The same escape into abstraction and expressions of aspirations is performed also by all advocates of industrial policy.

Nothing is easier than to express lovely aspirations. Equally easy is simply to suppose that the state possesses the combination of god-like power and god-like goodness necessary to transform these aspirations into reality. Much, much more difficult is the task of describing the institutional details that flesh-and-blood human beings will confront and the actions these individuals will realistically take to acquire the knowledge necessary to achieve outcomes remotely close to the lovely aspirations.