Since the start of the pandemic, one of the main justifications for lockdowns – at least in democratic Western countries – has been the “externality argument”. This is the argument that government is justified in restricting our freedom in order to prevent us from harming others – which we might do by transmitting a deadly virus.
As the scientist Richard Dawkins stated back in September:
You can argue over whether masks, handwashing, banning groups etc are effective. What you can NOT argue is that you are personally entitled to take the risk as a matter of individual liberty. You risk other lives as well as your own. It’s just elementary epidemiology.
Proponents of this argument sometimes appeal to John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which states, “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.
While the “externality argument” does have merit, the situation is more complicated than its proponents would have us believe. In a recent article for the Southern Economic Journal, the economists Peter Leeson and Louis Rouanet explain why.
Before getting to their arguments, it’s worth explaining what an “externality” actually is. In short, it’s a cost imposed on someone who did not agree to bear that cost. The classic example is pollution. When a factory releases toxic waste into a lake, this may poison the water, leading to illnesses or deaths among users of the lake. Since the lake users did not agree to be poisoned, the release of toxic waste is an externality. And most people would say it justifies government intervention.
However, the externalities associated with COVID-19 aren’t quite like this, as Leeson and Rouanet point out. First, when one individual transmits the virus to another, this has both negative and positive effects. It has a negative effect on the person who catches the virus. But it has a positive effect on vulnerable people who are self-isolating, since each infection reduces the time until herd immunity. And the sooner herd immunity is reached, the sooner those people can return to the community.
Second, COVID-19 externalities are often self-limiting. Since most people would prefer not to catch the disease, they have an incentive to avoid behaviours that increase the risk of transmission (such as attending large gatherings). This is in contrast to the factory example, where the owners have an incentive to release as much waste into the lake as possible. And indeed, evidence suggests that voluntary social distancing has much more impact on the epidemic’s trajectory than mandatory lockdowns.
Third, many interactions that result in transmission occur on privately owned sites that individuals enter voluntarily (e.g., shops, restaurants, cinemas). Absent force or fraud, there is therefore no on-site externality. What’s more, since businesses compete for customers, they have an incentive to take measures that reduce customers’ risk of infection (e.g., increasing ventilation or imposing capacity limits).
Fourth, the main externalities associated with COVID-19 are actions taken by individuals at one site that affect the infection risk of others at different sites. For example, if someone attends a party that results in a super-spreader event, he and all the other party-goers impose costs on society by increasing the general level of infection. This requires individuals and businesses to take measures to reduce the risk of infection they and their customers will face.
While there is a case for government intervention to reduce “cross-site externalities”, the total costs of such externalities are limited by the cheapest measure that can be taken to avoid them. As the authors note, if “an individual can avoid infection with certainty by wearing a hazmat suit, then under no circumstance can the external cost imposed on him exceed his cost of wearing a hazmat suit.”
However, there does seem to be a weakness in the authors’ argument. While it may be true that healthy adults enter privately owned sites voluntarily, and are capable of taking measures to reduce their risk of infection, the same cannot be said of frail elderly people living in care homes and hospitals. And of course, a large percentage of fatal infections have occurred in precisely these settings.
A frail elderly person living in a care home does not voluntarily accept the risk she faces in the same way that a healthy adult entering a restaurant voluntarily accepts the risk he faces. The interactions associated with care homes and hospitals therefore require further analysis.
One issue the authors don’t touch on is the externalities of lockdowns themselves. While lockdowns may correct for costs that some people impose on others in terms of higher infection risk, they impose new costs on everyone – regardless of whether you contribute to the externalities of viral transmission. (And of course, the evidence suggests they don’t have much impact on viral transmission anyway.)
Even if you’re not convinced by their arguments, Leeson and Rouanet’s article is worth reading in full.
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“A frail elderly person living in a care home does not voluntarily accept the risk she faces in the same way that a healthy adult entering a restaurant voluntarily accepts the risk he faces. The interactions associated with care homes and hospitals therefore require further analysis”
Surely this simply means that there are some places where infection control is warrented? Limiting agency staff (in order to stop site to site transmission), asking NHS personel to be extra careful and having times in shops set aside for them would be some of these.
Also what of the externalities of lockdown? Mental and physical health problems caused by lockdown, especially on the young, cannot be justified.
Lockdowns increase the time it takes for natural herd immunity to build up and along with other similar measures, they could delay the build up indefinitely.
Current Covid “vaccines” of any type are meant to cause the body of the injected person to switch on the manufacture of Sars-cov-2 spike proteins, which are by their very nature will cause damage to the body. The even worse news is that it would appear that there is no off switch for this production of spike proteins and so the “vaccinated” will continue to be an infectious liability both to themselves and to others until the day they keel over and die. As such, death will never be too far away for those who have unwisely put their faith in Bill Gates and his corrupt henchmen who infest the UK government.
I was of the understanding that the production does switch off but I could be wrong. Have to research that.
I think the timecourse has not been studied, shockingly. Not in humans.
The manufacturers were not required to characterise that distribution & effects of the covid19 vaccine, “becauc
Can’t live like that though can you
Indeed, you can’t HAVE any form of life PERIOD, as even the act of procreation is to pass non-consensual risks onto one’s offspring.
I read somewhere a few years ago that some teenage nutter had sued his parents for having him and causing him all the distress that entails, (for him). Unreal.
By Dawkins’ reasoning, driving should be prohibited and we should lock down every winter to prevent any virus with the potential to kill. Absurd.
Ha ha you got in 3 seconds before me. Yes, it IS absolutely absurd!!
Erm. Since when was Richard Dawkins an epidemiologist?
He isn’t and neither does he understand the meaning of the word.
It’s not a matter of epidemiology.
Indeed, as should any pastime that includes any risk whatsoever such as football, rock climbing, hiking, etc. All these things have the potential for externalities. where do we stop?
Dithering Dawkins has been slowly losing the plot for years, and this ludicrous statement should be treated with the contempt it deserves. If his point were applied diligently to many human activities/enterprises it would require the state to stomp down on them.
Car driving? BANNED Bicycling? BANNED Motorbikes? BANNED Travelling of any sort (for example by purchasing a seat on an aircraft/bus/train that might crash and harm others…) BANNED Sport? BANNED Skiing? BANNED Surfing? BANNED Boating? BANNED Betting on horseraces and thus encouraging the possible loss of life of the participants and/or their horses? BANNED Growing pollinating flowers in one’s garden that might cause hayfever/asthma sufferers a sever respiratory reaction? BANNED Waving at someone across the road that might be misinterpreted and cause a car accident? BANNED.
Will you please stop giving them ideas, Although I say that partially in jest many of the activities you have listed were already seriously restricted before last year. If we go back a little further than that anyone predicting the current situation would have immediately been classified as a conspiracy theorist (among other things).
It would seem we have reached the point now where we only have to hint at an outrageous suggestion and our beloved leaders will take it as a challenge to force it into legislation.
Arr, Geoff lad, let that old scallywag Boris and his band of reprobates do their worst!! We’ll then give ’em what for; won’t we, me ‘andsomes?
Visions arising of putting all the troublemakers – Boris, Whitty, Hancock, Fergusion into a shipping vessel and wishing for a time machine to transport them back into a bad storm off the Cornish coast somewhere where the locals are hoping for precisely that – to make off with any useful goods on the ship for themselves after a shipwreck. If only….and yes I can say that about Cornwall because one of my parents persisted in calling me half-Cornish (her half) LOL.
ah, Jamaica Inn, by creepy Hitchcock.
Back in the 80s when the seat belt law was introduced, I argued that it was the thing end of the wedge, that once you accepted that the government could force you to do something and punish you if you refused because it was for your own good, then you relinquished free will and there would be no end to it as they would simply carry on down this road. Logically, anything you do that involves personal risk can be banned for your own good and you would have nowhere to go because you had accepted that the state could decide for you. I wasn’t arguing against wearing seat belts, I was arguing that no one should be able to force you to do so. I was roundly derided, it was pointed out to me that the grief and hardship of families, how it affected other parties, (including the NHS of course), and so on made such a small sacrifice worthwhile. It was horrible of me to put personal liberty above such things. I pointed out time and again that I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t wear a seat belt, I was arguing that it was beyond the government’s remit to interfere in our lives in this way. I gave up because absolutely no one I spoke to cared or could see the potential. Now look where we are.
Good points B.F.F. – well masde.
I’m sure we can all add to your excellent list of things that would be banned. Bee keeping for example, as your bees might sting someone who then dies from anaphylactic shock. BANNED.
And what about the massive ‘externality’ of the lockdown itself?
There is a good article on AIER how ‘negative externality’ argument can be brought to absurd levels and abused in order to force in a less free society:
https://www.aier.org/article/the-new-enemies-of-the-open-society/
I’m not going to go into the fact that even if you accept that public health trumps individual freedom, covid19 is in no way some unprecedented disease that justifies lockdowns, restrictions, etc. Also there is much unknowns about particular modes of transmission, and until you know 100% sure how it is transmitted and if that can infect someone and put them in danger, you cannot ban basic individual liberties.
Human beings have millions of different types of germs (each with billions of particles) in them and transmit them all the time. We live in a world of germs. Human body and its basic functions such as breathing, etc. cannot be criminalized or proclaimed as “negative externality”. It is in no way the same as spilling chemicals into the lake. The equivalent of spilling chemical into the lake would be if someone took a capsule with the virus and spread it on purpose among crowds.
Also, you may or may not transmit the virus. There is a probability involved. Maybe epidemiologists can work with these probabilities to average over population and guess how fast the virus will spread, but in the domain of law and humanities, probability cannot be used as concept of criminality or negative externality. This is another reason why comparison with spilling chemicals into the lake doesn’t work. You know 100% that they are spilling and they know it to. You don’t know if you have the virus, or if you have that you will transmit it, or that the person will get sick.
In the end, how negative externality concept was abused in this coronamania times shows weakness of libertarianism to protect against this madness, and its difference with its partner (classis) Liberalism. In my opinion Liberalism is what is worth fighting for and stands as resistance to this corona craziness.
Stopped reading after ‘Since the start of the pandemic’
THERE WAS NO PANDEMIC, JUST A LOT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLBOYS BEING VERY, VERY STUPID
The argument that people have no right to act freely in case it endagers others is absolutely moronic.
Pretty much everything we do causes harm to others, directly, indirectly or hypothetically.
You go buy strawberries from the supermarket? Argh! You’ve contributed to the exploitation of the strawberry picker and pollution of the air with the transport used.
You buy a new phone? Argh! You’re contributing to excavation of metals from the ground, which is associated with poor work conditions and work-related injury!
You go to a psychotherapy session? Argh! You’re adding to the emotional burden of the already stressed clinician risking them to burn out.
You wear a (f-ing) mask? Argh! You’re contributing to mask-production sweatshop exploitation, and then your mask ends up in the sea killing sea turtles.
So what’s the solution?
Dig a large hole and jump in it!
I vote for Richard Dawkins to lead by example.
You can’t do that!!! It would potentially endanger the lives of those in the rescue services that have to come and get you out.
Who’d bother to get Dawkins out?
As usual, all of this turns on the evidence, data……but, where available, a great deal of the data is junk….and the government has not even relied on data, preferring dotty models/modellers.
Even the legend that is Lord Sumption has opined that no-one sensible would deny that there has been a pandemic.
But the definition of pandemic appears to be a moveable feast and the data to support it unreliable, lacking context. So lockdowns lack any justification whatsoever, even leaving aside rights, freedoms, externalities and what have you…….
‘According to World Health Organization data, each year, two-thirds of global deaths are not registered with local authorities. That’s a total of 38 million annual deaths that aren’t part of any permanent record. Not only are the numbers not part of any global death tally, but the cause of death is also not recorded — leaving policymakers without critical information about population trends and health.
Now, that vast undercount of deaths might be changing — thanks to the virus. It’s pushed the science of death-counting into the international spotlight, highlighting the importance of strong and developed death registries.’
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/25/914073217/why-the-pandemic-could-change-the-way-we-record-deaths?t=1620061584653
‘At the other extreme, 81 countries collect data of very low quality or do not register deaths at all. All low-income countries and two-thirds of lower-middle-income countries fall in this category.’
https://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/registered_deaths/text/en/
In short, lockdowns all over the world amount to no more and no less than simple socialist fascism.
One of the main problems with weighing up theoretical arguments for and against restricting liberty is that it is very clear that if you accept that restrictions can in some cases be justified governments will abuse that to impose restrictions that cannot be justified, and are not afraid of using state money and power to create the impression that they are needed when they are not.
Governments simply cannot be trusted with such power, which is why we should hold firm to the line that certain restrictions can never be used, regardless of the circumstances.
Dawkins is a Marxist, which is why he didn’t publish the “Self-Interested Gene” noticing that genes cooperate as they specialise.
Interesting article, particularly this bit:
We already have a partial figure for the cost of the externality in respect of business and furlough support – this was paid to people and businesses who lost income due to the effects of government (and consumer?) action – third party costs.
This figure will be understated, as there are third party costs that have not been compensated for (e.g. delayed healthcare treatment and the costs associated with that). Even without factoring these into account, we could have a theoretical third party cost of each (theoretical) life saved. I suspect that the cost is very high.
“John Stuart Mill of his own free will on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill”
The difference between the logic employed in the SARS2/covid situation and all previous public health situations is the use of ‘asymptomatic’ as a threat to others as defined by a RT-PCR test. In every other situation people had to show symptoms to be classified as ill with viral load and therefore able to pass on the disease. With this situation the healthy are categorised as a threat and need treating as such.
Puncture this ‘logic’ and it all evaporates. The RT-PCR test is at the heart of this madness.
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
“Externality”???? There’s one group of nutters anthropomorphising animal needs, and now another group hell bent on denying the natural biological “rights” of humans. Like the freedom to breathe unimpeded. What is this Napoleonic obsession with enumeration, prescription and control? It seems to me that the externalties that need control are those thrust on the rest of us individuals by corporations and governments. Most of the diseases that used to slay humans are defeated by clean water, sanitation, and nutrition. Seems that the vested interests now need to create disease, or the fear of it, for their own ends.
Everything carries a risk, including staying safe on the sofa to avoid a mild viral illness. A few days lounging around, you lose muscle mass and tone, end up weak as a kitten and wobbly on your feet. Never do any exercise to improve coordination and balance – your proprioceptive feedback and reflexes go. You’ll fall and break a hip when you trip, instead of having that practised saviour reflex ready to spring into action to regain balance. Spend all day every day in a chair, muscles, tendons etc shorten to those lengths and unless you stretch them everyday through exercise you’ll look like you’re still sitting down even when standing.
Sports and exercise carry a risk, you might injure yourself. Might. Don’t do exercise and you WILL develop multiple issues that will eventually disable you.
I have no doubt that not acting like a normal, biological human will also eventually kill you, through failure to develop and maintain immunity. Similarly for cognitive processes, keep children in a restrictive social settings, with adults acting as masked wierdos, they will not develop the mental skills they need to function as normal adults.
This deserves a cigar, but I’ll keep it for myself as it would only contribute unnecessary existential risk to your long term well being.
Just don’t smoke that thing without a government sanctioned app on your phone that traces where all the cigar smoke’s gone. Can’t have you externalising your cigar smoking habits onto other people without a proper accounting.
‘Most of the diseases that used to slay humans are defeated by clean water, sanitation, and nutrition.’
This must be repeated over and over again. The greatest advancements in health were early in the 20th century because of these three elements. Compared to them, the vaccines, drugs and other exotic medications are trivial.
It is the vanity of science and medics that promotes the idea that their influence is great. Its nothing compared to the prior advancements.
Lockdown, at least as it has been conducted in most of Europe and North America, is probably the greatest distortion of the fundamental Social Contract since The Enlightenment itself.
The Social Contract is the notion that individuals surrender some of their freedoms to the power of the state in exchange for the protection that state control can bring.
In the Covid era, however, the State has used misinformation to force the bulk of the costs of Lockdown onto those least needing its (dubious) protections. Examples:
Closing schools, nightclubs and gyms imposes very high costs on young people, while being essentially meaningless to the elderly. In a particularly cruel irony the same British Government that closed schools and gyms managed to claim that garden centers, estate agents, and home improvement shops were “essential.” I think many 25 year old flat renters and 18 year old students might question that assertion.
This misallocation of the costs of lockdown would only have been possible with the cooperation of the media. Why they chose not to question the poor quality information being put out by the Government is a question for another day. But it is my assertion that the media has failed us at least as badly as political leaders.
Global perspective of COVID‐19 epidemiology for a full‐cycle pandemic
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13423
Global infection fatality rate is 0.15‐0.20% (0.03‐0.04% in those <70 years)
The problem with all this hullaballoo is that unless you have taken an Emergency Use Only, dangerous in the short, medium and long term, bio-reactive Covid “vaccine which isn’t a vaccine”, your risk of dying has not changed. If you have taken the vaccine, your risk of dying has likely gone up considerably. How much remains to be seen, but the risk could be very high. There may be an argument to be made that elderly people in their 80s have a clear benefit from the vaccine, but I’m not convinced by that at all, because the vaccine is itself a killer and the huge spike in deaths seen the world over following vaccine rollouts indicates that a massive coverup has taken place, so we cannot do proper analysis of whether it is genuinely worth these people taking it. Vaccine deaths have been relabelled as covid deaths, which has the effect of making Covid look more deadly than it is and the vaccine to look safer than it is.
The threat from Covid19 is exactly the same as the threat from influenza. Influenza, during the scamdemic, has gone walkies, nowhere to be seen. Influenza deaths have all but vanished, only to be replaced by Covid deaths. NHS staff have come forward to say that where they used to routinely test for influenza, they don’t any more, they only test for Convid.
The bottom line is that the risk of dying from respiratory illness has not changed, only the labels have. So all this talk of Covid19 being some super-virulent mega killer is complete and utter, steaming, fresh as a daisy, bullshit. A mega killer it is not, every single measure introduced in its name is part of a psychological warfare operation, a campaign of pure terrorism, coming from the British government, which is a criminal organisation, and trusting criminals is stupid.
Michael Senger, the Attorney who penned the awesome “The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud” paper, has done a very good post recently looking at all the hysteria over Gain of Function research, and Rand Paul’s recent exchange with conman snake, Anthony Fauci. Michael quite rightly points out that the IFR of Covid19 is 0.15%, so the notion that some weaponised bat virus capable of wiping out the entire human race has been released is pure theater, part of the psyop.
Here is Michael’s thread:
https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1392211069381144582
Here is Michael’s stunning “The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud” paper:
The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud
https://ccpgloballockdownfraud.medium.com/the-chinese-communist-partys-global-lockdown-fraud-88e1a7286c2b
But I’ve got beef with Michael as well, because while he is happy to wax lyrical and pin all the blame on the CCP, he doesn’t do much to expose the close relationship between Soviet-Israel and China, or how Kissinger and Associates have sold the US out to China over decades. This is a very important part of the puzzle. Part of the reason China is where it is today because Israel has been gleaning tech property from US industry via “co-operation” agreements like the BIRD and the BARD and the BSF, which enabled the Israelis to sell the acquired tech to China. There has been asset stripping of the US while building up China with US tech, missle tech etc it’s all been sold to China, right under the nose of Uncle Sam. This has been going on for decades. Plenty of moles in the US have facilitated this, including Creepy Joe Biden. Saying “it was China what done it” is way too simplistic, there is much more to this than that. Some say the powers are deliberately collapsing the West and building up Russia and China and the East. That, to me, seems to hold a dam load of water as an argument, given what we are witnessing. The British government is equally full of traitorous snakes who are troughing away and cashing in on the “fuck everyone, if turning my own country into a Communist shithole makes me rich, so be it”. EXPOSE THESE TRAITORS.
Allow the CFR to explain:
The U.S.-China-Israel Technology Triangle
https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-china-israel-technology-triangle
And this pearler from Kissinger at a Chinese Banking Conference from 2017 is telling:
“China’s Belt and Road Initiative, in seeking to connect China to Central Asia, and eventually to Europe, will have the practical significance of shifting the world centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific and will involve the cultures of Eurasia, each of who will have to decide what relationship to this region they will seek, and so will the United States. This is why many of us urge the United States to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank when it was proposed by China”
this might be an argument if there were any evidence that Locdowns achieve anything in term sof reducing deaths.
However there isn’t (quite the contrary actually), so it is pointless to argue the toss.
I don’t really see how anybody can have any doubt now that this is all a vast softening up exercise for the coming climate lockdowns and carbon zero impoverishment.
Well we shouldn’t be surprised as it was on the cards, because despite the pandemic being over last year he continued with this farce.
Anyway a little light relief
https://youtu.be/HHkGwGrkIs8
Richard Dawkins states his argument is epidemiology. It absolutely is not , it is a moral or ethical point of view. The idea that stating something is ‘epidemiology’ makes it scientifically true is complete nonsense.
What a load of pretentious bollocks -just a re-framing of the ‘public good’ argument – one of the oldest scams of the totalitarian.
Sage Communist Takeover
‘Lockdown’ is a form of fascism and insanity copied from CCP China ludicrously imposed on populations who were hardly affected by COVID and moreover were largely perfectly healthy. The fact that they and masks are still being bandied about by the sociopaths ruling us as the main ‘tools’ fighting a disease that has all but died out clearly points to their covert reason: control of us all.
The subject of externality begs the question “of what is harm to others”. It is a variation on the Golden Rule – do unto others etc. The key issue then is what is in fact a minimal optimal life outcome for any person? Any measure which reduces this below minimum par is a external cost which that person (if only they knew it) could not agree to.
Therefore broadly speaking people as a matter of right should therefore be able to take any life cost/benefit risk consistent with obtaining minimal optimal life outcomes – and all people should be happy to reciprocally allow this because they would want it for themselves.
The question therefore becomes what is a minimal optimal life outcome – what really is our purpose. Is it mere survival? Is the purpose of living to try not to die, or is the purpose of life to positively live in some way? If it is more than just survival then the external cost of lockingdown living to achieve mere survival is enormous.