David, is there an actual scientific consensus on what covid policy should be? This is a really
great question, because there are people who hear the question, can't we just empirically
determine the right covid policy? And the problem with the question is that it ignores
that every choice is subject to trade offs. So I'll give you an example.
It has been determined beyond a doubt that given. That the contagion is mostly happening indoors,
if you limit indoor exposure without masks to other people, you dramatically reduce your risk
of giving to giving or getting the virus from someone. Most contagion is happening within homes
and it's being brought in from elsewhere. And of course, you reduce the risk of bringing it in
from elsewhere. If when you go to work, if you're working indoors or go to the grocery store or you
wear a mask. OK, so it can be easy to say that's the science. But when you talk about policy,
you're talking about a tradeoff. There are people I disagree with them, but there are people.
I walked by a guy on the street the other day who chastised me for wearing a mask in a bakery
as required by the bakery, who say, well, OK, that may be the science of masks, but I don't believe
the trade off is worth it. The trade off being I don't like the way I look and it's uncomfortable.
That's a trade off. And the science can't tell you if that trade off is worth it because it
relates to values. Fundamentally, the the bigger one, you know, that that would apply
is temporary shutdowns during spikes slow the transmission when they are adhered to. And
there's a very interesting article I recently read about. You know, a lot of Latin American countries
on paper have the strictest shutdowns and yet the virus is out of control. What's happening? Well,
people aren't abiding by the shutdown and there's no enforcement of the shutdown as
often as is the case. So even if you determine temporary shutdowns that are very finely tuned
are clinically effective and they also minimize societal harm in terms of economic harm,
and you're feeling like your personal liberties have been taken away. These are like targeted, OK,
it's still a trade off, right? You still have to say, well, this is the this scientific policy.
This policy has been shown scientifically to reduce transmission by this amount. It lowers the
are not from something to something lower than that. You still have a counter to that
and you still have to decide based on your values, whether it's worth the trade off. So
I think that when we're asking the question, what is the scientific consensus on covid policy,
what you're really saying is how much do different policies reduce transmission? That the societal
question, the government question, the cultural question, the economic question is what is the
economic cost? What is the psychological cost, depression or separation of people, loneliness,
et cetera, economic, all this other stuff. And that is a different question than simply what
works scientifically. And to me, I continue to be shocked that people are insisting on this.
We we can't do all of this because we have to save the economy. We can't shut down this. We
can't do that. We give all this all this different stuff. How are people still thinking that it's
economy versus health, if we seriously had dealt with the virus at the beginning,
there might have been an initial economic hit that would have been harder. But we're a year in. We're
on Spike three. While most European countries are only on the second spike, we've got one of
the highest death rates in the world. If you look at the deaths relative to our population, it's
completely off the charts. So the the idea that we're also dealing with false dichotomies about
it's either health or the economy, the economy has suffered greatly and will continue to suffer.
And we're doing disastrously poorly when it when it comes to health. So we might imagine that all
that matters is understanding the scientific consensus like targeted and accu accurate,
really well done. Lockdown's work to prevent the spread if people really do it.
But there are downsides. Depression, maybe people drinking a business, permanently shutting down
economic problems, all that stuff. But there is no consensus about what is worth it. And
that's where the conflict is coming from. Now some people are making legal arguments.
A government, a state government mask mandate is unconstitutional. No, it's not. But there are
real questions about what we believe is worth it, and we came out on the wrong side of it, lastly,
that that's the important thing to know, which is if we had actually had consensus
on, you know, a two month, we're 10 months in, we're almost a year. And
we had done a proper two month shutdown and really done everything that that should have been done.
We could have had a relatively normal summer in many parts of the of the country,
as many European countries did. That's that's the unfortunate reality.
And getting consensus, we can better get consensus on the scientific, even though you
still have people who say masks don't actually work, shutdowns don't actually work. Well,
if people don't wear the masks correctly or if you announce a shutdown but don't adhere to it yet,
that won't work. But if you do it right, it does. Where we have not been able to get consensus
is what is worth doing and what are people willing to tolerate. And part of it goes back
to the complete bungling by the federal government at the very start of this entire thing. We've
got a great bonus show for you today. Make sure to sign up and get instant
access at join Pakman Dotcom. We'll see you on the bonus, Jeff.