My frequent co-author Charley Hooper, Stanford epidemiologist and economist Jay Bhattacharya, and I met for lunch in Palo Alto on Friday. See pic above.
Not surprisingly, much of what we discussed was the ways in which Twitter, at the behest of various major players, tried to shut Jay down. He was so often accused of wanting to kill people and it seemed to be for at least one of the three reasons: (1) he pointed out that young children were at an extremely low risk from Covid and, therefore, there was little basis for shutting down schools; (2) he noted that so few economists were pointing out one of the most basic principles in economics–TANSTAAFL, which means there are tradeoffs; and (3) he reminded people that we do develop immunity to coronaviruses.
If people, including Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, hadn’t tried so hard to shut him down, just think how different the discussion might have gone.
Fortunately, Jay’s head is, in the words of one of my two favorite poems, “Invictus” (which was also the favorite poem of Nelson Mandela), “bloody, but unbowed.”
READER COMMENTS
AMW
Apr 10 2023 at 10:55am
Citation?
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2023 at 11:05am
There’s a lot written out there on it. Probably the most comprehensive is AIER’s FOIA request. The Twitter Files also show a coordinated effort to silence these folks.
AMW
Apr 10 2023 at 4:53pm
Yes, I read the emails from the FOIA request. There’s nothing in them that suggests Fauci or Collins did anything to shut Battacharya down in the sense of preventing him from publicizing his views. Those emails just show them (mostly Fauci) looking to publicly rebut his views, which is totally legitimate.
Are Fauci and Collins specifically implicated in the Twitter Files?
Jon Murphy
Apr 10 2023 at 4:59pm
You and I have very different views on what “rebut” means if you think coordinated slandering in the media counts as rebuttal.
Yes. As I recall, Twitter execs worked hand in hand to ensure “shadowbanning” happened of things they disapproved.
steve
Apr 10 2023 at 9:02pm
I read the Twitter files and dont remember them trying to shut him down working hand in hand with Fauci and Collins. AS Taibbi finally admitted when he was recently interviewed there were essentially no requests to stop postings. There were warnings sent and then Twitter decided what to do, mostly ignoring the warnings. The groups making the warnings did make them a bit more strong when the specific tweets were asking people to send their credit card numbers, Social security numbers and other data to people that were obviously scamming.
Bhattacharya is correct that we would have developed immunity, we would have just had a lot more people die as the trade off.
Steve
Todd K
Apr 12 2023 at 4:18pm
Sweden shows this is not true. Norway does as well since their lockdown didn’t slow down the spread of coronavirus according to their health department. Steve is also ignoring lockdown related deaths and a much lower quality of life including for children when schools were closed for 18 months.
Jon Murphy
Apr 12 2023 at 4:25pm
There’s no reason to think that. In fact, there’s some new research coming out that indicates lockdowns could have caused more deaths by discouraging vaccinations (see here, in particular Section IV).
Let me ask you this: why don’t you think people would adapt to the virus?
Mark Bahner
Apr 12 2023 at 10:42pm
Hi Jon,
What does “people would adapt to the virus” mean? That their behaviors would change, or that their bodies would change once they had gotten the virus and not died?
Presuming it’s that peoples’ behaviors would change, what changes are you thinking of, and what benefits do you think would occur from the adaptation?
Grand Rapids Mike
Apr 12 2023 at 11:58am
The data on COVID seems clear if you were older and had health issues it was deadly. The younger and healthier one was the COVID impact was significantly reduced. Some how the measures to deal with COVID could not deal with this disparity. The preference function for the kill rate was definitely tilted to the older and sicker. Many countries have recognized that fact and eliminated or reduced the use of the vaccine on younger people.
Beyond that why the US would fund the COVID research in a Chinese Lab is beyond me. As noted the DOE has in effect confirmed the fact of the Chinese lab source. DOE funds nuclear research with very strict controls as does the NRC, and very strict oversight.
I might say that COVID experience has exposed there is another more serious strain, it’s called Totalitarianism on the left, something warned about by George Orwell.
robc
Apr 13 2023 at 1:50pm
I very early on coined the phrase “Over 40 or overweight”.
You can nitpick about details of the phrase (maybe it should be 50, overweight doesn’t cover all applicable health conditions, etc), but it appears to be accurate.
rick shapiro
Apr 13 2023 at 9:37am
I am amazed that all this discussion in an ECONOMICS blog is oblivious to something that economists should be well aware of: risk needs to be factored into any evaluation of present value. At the time in question, scientists were struggling to understand the type of threat posed by covid; witness the blind alley of droplet/contact transmission. The enormous death rates of other thereogenic corona viruses encounterd in the previous two decades (fortunately with minimal human-to-human transmission) fully justified extraordinary precautions before vaccines became available.
robc
Apr 13 2023 at 1:59pm
Nothing prevented an individual from taking extraordinary precautions if they judged the risk to be high.
It is making risk decisions for others that is the problem.
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