I’ll have a longer piece on the Covid-19 disease in the next few days, but right now I do have one good idea for how to reduce spreading of the virus: furlough the Transportation Security Administration for 30 days.
Think about it. When you go through the airport, you often get touched by TSA employees and your belongings get touched even more frequently. The TSA employees wear gloves to protect themselves but not to protect you. How often do you see them take off their gloves and put on new ones? I used to travel about once a month and I’ve never seen them do it. So those gloves could easily transmit the virus.
The TSA portion is the most dangerous part of your airplane trip. And it could be ended easily if Trump and the Congress really took this seriously.
We already know that the TSA is incompetent in many ways and that the main threats that have been stopped have been stopped by other passengers. (It’s true that the TSA might have stopped threats we don’t know of, but given everything we know about government agencies, do you really think that if they stopped a big threat, they wouldn’t be bragging about it?) You can argue that they stop threats just by being there and so there are attacks that would have occurred but didn’t, and that’s a good argument. But as I’ve said a number of times, 9/11 changed how we passengers will react–that’s the unlearned lesson from United flight #93–and the most important reform that came out of it was not the TSA but the locked doors to the cockpit.
But even if the TSA were competent, the odds that it’s preventing even one major terrorist attack per year are small. There are so many vulnerable places in the United States that terrorists could attack. How about some K-12 school? The fact that they’re not doing so suggests that terrorist threats are not that big.
Meanwhile, if we believe the Covid-19 disease is serious, and I do, then we should act that way and furlough the TSA. My prediction: If we did it for 30 days, there would be zero terrorist attacks on airlines over that time.
HT2 Todd Zywicki.
READER COMMENTS
Arnold Kling
Mar 13 2020 at 11:48am
Right on, David. If I were flying, I would much rather concede some terrorism risk in exchange for less germ-spreading risk.
And maybe people would decide that they would like that trade-off to be made permanently.
David Henderson
Mar 13 2020 at 1:34pm
Thanks, Arnold.
I agree about what people start to think, which is probably one of many reasons that it won’t be tried.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 13 2020 at 11:54am
“Meanwhile, if we believe the Covid-19 disease is serious, and I do, then we should act that way and furlough the TSA. My prediction: If we did it for 30 days, there would be zero terrorist attacks on airlines over that time.”
I’m sorry but this has to go down as one of the dumbest comments I’ve read in some time. The blunt fact is airline travel is tanking because of COVID-19. Conventions, sporting events, and a raft of other stuff is being suspended. Many businesses & other organizations have no travel policies other than essential stuff. Warren Buffet just cancelled the in person Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting which draws 20,000 or so to Omaha every year. International air travel to some destinations is now ZERO because your chances of being placed in quarantine or having troubles getting back will be difficult.
Seeing no airline terrorist activity in the next 30 days is a result of nobody flying.
Peter
Mar 13 2020 at 12:47pm
Well in that case, regardless why, why are we paying TSA? Is it just a make work welfare program now?
David Henderson
Mar 13 2020 at 1:37pm
You wrote:
Absolutely false. People are flying.
Also, note Peter’s comment. If you’re right, then TSA shouldn’t even be at the airport.
Finally, watch your manners, buddy. The other part of your comment is unbecoming of you.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 13 2020 at 2:51pm
There have been clips on television showing virtually empty airports starting yesterday. People were flying a week ago but you need to look at what the flight numbers look like for the next month. Cancellations did not start happening until last week and many of those are prospective for events happening in the next two months. You might not appreciate my opening statement but I think what I said is factual. I don’t think you can make any judgement until you see what numbers are going forward.
Regarding the TSA, we have Trusted Traveller and are rarely inconvenienced. We always carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer with us and use it as needed. As to whether TSA performs a worthy job or not, I’ll leave that to the politicians who are seldom capable of making a rational decision.
Jon Murphy
Mar 13 2020 at 3:18pm
To Prof. Henderson’s point, airlines are cutting back, but not 100%. Delta, for example, announced they are cutting back 40%, but that still leaves 60% capacity. This is not a total global shutdown. If terrorists wanted to target airplanes, there are still many opportunities to do so.
David Henderson
Mar 13 2020 at 4:52pm
You don’t get an answer from me until something is forthcoming from you. You can do it privately if you wish. I think you know what I mean.
Mark Z
Mar 13 2020 at 11:47pm
I don’t think it’s so obvious that declining air travel would tank the likelihood of a terrorist attack. Why would terrorists hijack an airplane? Mainly, I assume, to crash them into buildings, not to just kill passengers. So would a terrorist be less inclined to hijack a mostly empty plane for that purpose? Maybe slightly. I might reduce his casualty count by a few percent, but not dramatically. The plane’s capacity as a weapon is it’s main attribute to a terrorist.
Now, it is probably less likely that a mostly empty plane will be hijacked, flown to another country, and the passengers ransomed, but I don’t think that’s what we’re all most concerned about; mostly we’re concerned about another 9/11, and a terrorist has about as much incentive to do that with an empty plane as a full one (in fact, maybe more so, as the likelihood of passenger interference is much lower).
But David’s 30 day prediction is, I think, a rather trivial prediction. If we had a 9/11 style terrorist attack every couple years, it would be consistent with near certainty of no terrorist attack in any 30 day period, but would still be far too high for most people’s comfort. I think most would like to achieve a level of security where they can be confident that hijackings are much rarer than merely enough to be sure it won’t happen in the next month. Not saying the TSA helps at all, but you probably need more than a 30 day guarantee here.
David Henderson
Mar 14 2020 at 12:34pm
You wrote:
It is trivial, because the probability is so low. That’s my point.
Re your second point, we don’t have good evidence on that. It would certainly be in my comfort zone because it would still be at least an order of magnitude safer than driving. But I can’t speak for others.
Brandon Reinhart
Mar 13 2020 at 5:24pm
Having just been at Sea-Tac yesterday, the articles about Sea-Tac being a ghost town are false. It was pretty busy. Austin-Bergstrom was also quite busy. Flight occupancy is down, but people are flying.
My impression is that the media is sort of cherry picking times and areas of airports that seem empty.
Brandon Reinhart
Mar 13 2020 at 5:26pm
BTW, I was selected for special screening (despite being pre-check) and had the same thought as you while being patted down. “This guy has been near hundreds of people today.” I suppose that doesn’t excuse the risk of traveling now, but in my case I had little choice.
David Henderson
Mar 13 2020 at 6:24pm
Thanks for those data, Brandon.
Thaomas
Mar 13 2020 at 8:25pm
At the very least turn airport security over to airports. Maybe some would experiment with different ways of trading off terrorism and Covid-19 risks.
Mark Z
Mar 13 2020 at 11:55pm
More experimentation would be nice. There is a lot of room for improvement. Requiring people to print their tickets or have them on their phones, for example, and getting rid of the touch screen kiosks is one that comes to mind.
Mark Bahner
Mar 14 2020 at 11:52pm
Where are your data for this statement? 🙂
If I fly a couple hours in a totally enclosed plane, and spend another hour or two in terminals waiting to board and to get my baggage, it’s hard for me to 15 minutes or less in the “TSA portion” are the most dangerous part of my trip.
P.S. I would really like to see if there wasn’t some way to screen passengers coming into airports for illness:
Fever screening at airports
David Henderson
Mar 15 2020 at 9:50am
You ask:
Good question. I’m relying on a FB friend, a law professor, who generally does a good job of summarizing articles. I probably should have done due diligence by checking out the WSJ article he was referencing.
Note, though, not that you haven’t, that my point doesn’t depend on this.
Mark Bahner
Mar 15 2020 at 12:42pm
🙂 Oh, well…a law professor referring to a WSJ article. That settles it…TSA screening must indeed be the most dangerous part of air travel, from a disease transmission standpoint. 😉
My brother often criticizes argument positions as being “university professor” positions. His criticism is that a “university professor” position is often entirely theoretical, without supporting data.
As I’ve already commented on Econlog, but will probably comment again ;-), this COVID-19 problem is a superb chance to gather actual data about what works and what doesn’t work, and what’s cost-effective and not cost-effective, regarding viral infection transmission. While attention is focused, worldwide, on COVID-19, we have a chance to actually see whether transmissions occurred *due* to air travel, or whether air travel simply involves people carrying the disease to their destinations.
It’s hugely important to know how what happens regarding viruses and airports. Maybe TSA agents are a danger. And maybe that danger would be significantly lessened by them wearing masks. Or rubbing their gloves with hand sanitizer every 10 minutes. Or whatever. My point is, let’s gather data, and discuss cost-effectiveness based on data.
Note that the data could be gathered in artificial settings…it wouldn’t be necessary to just rely on data from airports. Essentially a TSA station could be set up in a lab, and tested with innocuous microbes.
Yes, the TSA is a disaster (IMNSHO) (that’s “in my not so humble opinion”). They should be permanently furloughed (IMNSHO). But what really bothers me is that everyone is jumping on this COVID-19 problem as a way to do things they want to do anyway, regardless of whether it has any relationship to either addressing the current COVID-19 problem, or other potential future virus-related problems.
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste”
We need policy that is based on evidence, not on theories unsupported by evidence. And we need to separate policies that actually address the problem of virus transmission from policies that are not really related to that problem.
john hare
Mar 15 2020 at 8:34am
On the news this morning a TSA agent at Orlando International just tested positive. That being the airport I use, it got my attention. There were three possible conventions I might have flown to this year. For unrelated reasons, I didn’t, but if I had, one would have been early February, one in April, and one last week. The one last week would very likely have put me in close proximity with this agent. Not knowing the agents’ station, I can’t say whether this would have been any physical contact. I went to an auction yesterday, so I doubt that I qualify as paranoid, but this is not a good thing for the reasons pointed out in this post.
Mark Bahner
Mar 15 2020 at 12:49pm
That is very interesting! It would be very interesting to know how the TSA agent was infected, and whether the TSA agent transmitted the infection.
Mark Bahner
Mar 15 2020 at 11:58pm
Well, this is enough data for me! 🙁
Total TSA agents positive for coronavirus is now at least six
Comments are closed.