Sep 27 2021
Various commentators over the years have pointed out that while the number of movies about the horrors of Naziism is large, as it should be, the number of movies about the horrors of Communism is small, as it shouldn't be. Recently, TMC showed a 1953 movie directed by Elia Kazan titled Man on a Tightrope. I recorded i...
Sep 27 2021
Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, may be everything a classical liberal wants to avoid. I will take him as representative of the federal bureaucracies that want to control cryptocurrencies and the emerging decentralized finance (“DeFi”) markets. (See Andrew Ackerman, “Stablecoi...
Sep 27 2021
I'm speaking on Build, Baby, Build in Nashville on Thursday night. Venue: The gorgeous Richland Country Club. Free for anyone with a .edu email address, and there is a lavish reception beforehand. And no mask requirement. If you come, be sure to introduce yourself! Register here.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 27 2021 at 12:56pm
Given the low vax rate in Tennessee and the no mask requirement, will this turn into a super spreader event?
Mark Brophy
Sep 27 2021 at 8:17pm
Let’s hope so, 18 months is already an excessively long delay.
BC
Sep 28 2021 at 10:19am
The state reproduction number R_t is estimated as 0.55 right now (by covidestim.org). They also estimate that about 61% of the population has been previously infected and, thus, may have at least some natural immunity. Daily infections peaked about a month ago. If the event doesn’t turn into a super-spreader event, will that cause you to update your priors about the effectiveness of masks and/or natural immunity?
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 27 2021 at 10:48pm
Why do you think organizers would not wish to reduce the risk of spread with a mask requirement. Granted that proof of vaccination would show more concern for attendee’s health.
Joel Pollen
Sep 28 2021 at 2:10pm
Not sure if this is a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it sincerely.
Given how politicized mask-wearing has become, the decision about requiring masks has a significant effect on attendance. In a place like Nashville, I’m pretty sure requiring them will reduce attendance on net. Seems pretty simple.
I find your second sentence interesting. It implies that not requiring masks or vaccination shows a lack of concern for the health of attendees, which you presumably think is a bad thing. Why do you expect a think-tank non-profit to require attendees of their events to make specific decisions about their own health? If they want to do that, why not also require attendees to have the MMR and influenza vaccines, or be screened for high blood pressure and heart disease?
Unsurprisingly to me, AIER is only interested in protecting their participants health insofar as it makes people more likely to come to the event and have a good time. They’re not in the health care business. They probably keep their event venue clean not to prevent attendees from getting sick, but because attendees want it to be clean. If people don’t want to wear masks to their event, how does it help the AIER to require it anyway?
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 28 2021 at 5:18pm
Your answer implies that AIER is willing to cause harm to its attendees (allow them to harm each other) if it increases attendance. I guess this could be and ethical position if they believe that the benefit to the attendees who would be put off by a vaccine mandate net of those who are put off by no mandate is greater than the harm they will suffer and cause, but it would seem to be based on some dicey combination of a) very high negative elasticity of attendance wrt the mandate, b) a low estimate of the harm done by having unvaccinated people in proximity to other people, or c) a high estimation of the benefit to those marginal people from attending (maybe because those who would be put off are the people who would benefit most from the conference?).
The issue of screening for heart disease is irrelevant as attending with hear disease produces no eternality for other attendees.
In principle the same calculations could apply for flu but the perception has always been that flu shots do not reduce onward spreading of flu plus flu is still a lot less serious than COVID. [On the other hand flu sots are not politicized so fewer people might be put off by a flu vaccine mandate.] I could see how the math could work for not flu vaccine mandate but for a COVID mandate
Christophe Biocca
Sep 29 2021 at 3:02pm
That was true the moment they didn’t ban driving to the event, since two people driving to it could conceivably have a car accident with each other (or, more likely, have car accident involving innocent bystanders). So is anyone holding any event of any kind anywhere. This is standard “proves too much” territory.
Comments are closed.