Now she tells us.
Martha Olney, an emeritus economics professor from UC Berkeley, tweeted that the American Economics Association lost about $900,000 on its recent meeting in New Orleans. Phil Magness, replying to her, claimed that it was due to the AEA’s “absurd pandering to Covidian zealots.”
I’m sure that was a factor; I don’t know how important a factor. But Olney’s response was shocking.
She wrote:
Huh? I’m guessing that means you’re not here. Like all mask mandates, it’s more a suggestion than anything else. As is true everywhere. Take care of others, or do your own thing. Your choice.
Wow! I knew of a few people, Phil being one, who said that they wouldn’t go to the AEA meetings because of the mask mandate. But now she says that a mandate doesn’t mean you have to; no, it means that you may if you want to.
Phil replied by pointing to the actual AEA statement that preceded the meeting. There was no hint that it was a “suggestion.” Here’s the statement:
COVID-19 REQUIREMENTS
All registrants will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to have received at least one booster to attend the meeting. Those who are unable to be vaccinated or boosted for health or religious reasons should contact assa@vanderbilt.edu for information about an exemption. High-quality masks (i.e., KN-95 or better) will be required in all indoor conference spaces. These requirements are planned for the well-being of all participants. Participants are also encouraged to test for COVID-19 before traveling to the meeting.
Notice the distinction between the rules about vaccinations and masks and the suggestion about being tested. The former are requirements, aka mandates. The latter is a suggestion. I doubt that more than 20 percent of potential attendees assumed that when the AEA said there was a masking requirement, it didn’t really mean it.
But Professor Olney doesn’t give up. She responds:
I suppose things are different depending on where we live but even in highly mask wearing SF Bay Area, a “mandate” is not enforced. That was my assumption re ASSA and also is what I’ve observed here.
I doubt that more than 20% of potential attendees, when they read the rules, assumed that the AEA didn’t really mean it.
READER COMMENTS
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:31am
I saw your reply on Twitter and was also surprised by it, like Olney was. In my experience when a venue requires testing or vaccination that’s a clear testable thing and a strong commitment and they stick to it.
With masks, people who refuse have, in my experience, done so with impunity throughout the pandemic. That isn’t to say no one is called out on it ever it’s just to say that masks have never been stringently enforced and I’ve always been around people not wearing them.
Maybe Monterey is just a very different environment but in my experience mask enforcement has always been incomplete.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:33am
And maybe that’s ok at this phase of the pandemic when vaccines are available I’m just saying it is utterly foreign to how I and I suspect many other people have experienced enforcement of mandates.
Michael Hammock
Jan 10 2023 at 7:48am
I don’t know about public mask mandates; I haven’t lived in a place that had them. I have been at a public university whose administration wanted to mandate masks but was not allowed to do so, and therefore danced around the issue by saying masks were “expected”. There was no mandate, and few students wore masks.
Medical facilities here, by contrast, required masks. Some still do. When people come in without masks they are asked to put a mask on, and provide a (probably not every effective) surgical mask if the patient lacks a mask. Primary and secondary public schools required masks for a time, and enforced that mandate.
All of which is beside David’s point. The statement clearly distinguishes between what is required and what is encouraged, and a reasonable reader would infer that the distinction was written because it means something. Whether that affected people’s decisions to attend is unclear, of course.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 7:58am
There is evidence that, at least for some people, the mandate did affect their decision to attend. Then the mandate was first announced, the AEA got a ton of flack on Twitter and other places for it and some folks pulled out or altered plans.
The mask (and vaccine) mandates do not explain the entirety of their deficit, of course (probably the single biggest factor was their refusal to hold the job market in person). But, on the margin, it certainly reduced quantity demanded by increasing costs.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 9:23am
You were surprised to learn that most people think “mandate” means “requirement” rather than “suggestion”? And that is complete nonsense about the Bay Area being different. They’re some of the most insane about it. Here’s a story about a Bay Area school in Mountain View starting out with a mask mandate in August of 2022 (yes, 2022) and sending a 4-year-old home because he wasn’t wearing a mask: https://abc7news.com/mountain-view-whisman-school-district-students-covid-19-masks-video-student-sent-home-no-mask-theuerkauf-elementary/12140927/. I guess they must have been confused over definitions.
“I thought everyone knew mandate meant suggestion”… that’s a classic motte and bailey if I’ve ever seen one.
Other examples of covid mandates meaning requirements: doctors’ offices across the country, the Kennedy Center in DC until Nov 2022 (yes, 2022 again), Wolf Trap in the DC area not letting the unvaccinated in during the summer of 2021, airlines until the CDC rescinded the *mandate*.
“it is utterly foreign to how I and I suspect many other people have experienced enforcement of mandates.” It would be wouldn’t it if you are following the mandates. If you follow the rules (and bury your head in the sand), then you wouldn’t really know what happens when someone breaks the rules. I guess those businesses that were fined for not enforcing mask mandates could have used yours and Olney’s legal counsel to get the fines thrown out: https://abc7news.com/sonoma-county-mask-order-coronavirus-california-face-masks-fines/6360848/. Next time your doctor tells you that you need a mask, say no and see what happens. Next time your kids’ school tells them they are required to have a mask, say no and see what happens. Next time your airline says mask are required, try saying no and see what happens: https://www.wcvb.com/article/mask-incident-logan-airport-boston-february-2-2022/38967401.
God bless… “In my experience when a venue requires testing or vaccination that’s a clear testable thing and a strong commitment and they stick to it.” How is testing and vaccination more testable than wearing a mask? Vaccination proof and negative test are about the most easily faked things around (do you not recall the stories over fake vaccination cards). But you’re saying that showing up without something covering your face is somehow… less testable?
Yours and Olney’s comments show an extreme ignorance such that y’all should really take some course about observing reality or they show extreme disingenuousness such that y’all should just be ashamed for making any public utterance. You do know that words mean something, right?
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:40pm
JFA you seem to think I’m saying there were no mask mandates. There were, of course. There still are. I have to wear a mask in the doctor’s office and I’ve never seen anyone unmasked there. What I said was Olney’s comment wasn’t shocking to me because for years now every large venue without sensitive public health significance (like a doctor’s office) has had lots of non-compliers who successfully don’t comply.
Olney’s description of the facts on the ground was my assumption of what the facts on the ground would be. It wasn’t shocking because it’s been reality for years now.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 12:58pm
“What I said was Olney’s comment wasn’t shocking to me because for years now every large venue without sensitive public health significance (like a doctor’s office) has had lots of non-compliers who successfully don’t comply.”
None of your comments were about only large venues until you got called out for repeating Olney’s comments that “mandate” basically means “suggestion”.
“With masks, people who refuse have, in my experience, done so with impunity throughout the pandemic.”
I provided several examples where that was not the case. Do you think you would be let in to the San Francisco Symphony without a mask when they required one (I don’t know if they still do but as of June 2022, they did. I know at the Kennedy Center in DC, you would be asked to either put on a mask (and handed one if you didn’t have one) or be asked to leave. And your comment that maybe Monterey is different from SF… good God almighty… the contortions of “logic”.
Again… if it’s not a requirement, then why say it is one? Especially when they got called out on it months before the event and had ample time to change the language.
But if you actually only meant large venues, then please don’t be offended by people not understanding you… you obviously don’t think there is much content to definitions.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 1:04pm
JFA –
My comment was about the conference, which is a large venue. I definitely did not say all venues. If the non-specificity lead you down an odd interpretive path where you think I am saying there was literally no space where mandates could or would be enforced I’m happy to clarify, but I never said anything about this being true of all spaces.
Sure, it’s a big country.
I agree, but alas I’m not on the AEA organizing committee.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 1:24pm
I won’t belabor my other points. But I’ll give a couple of options and a question.
An organization explicitly states in the rules that masks are required to attend a conference. The organization’s conferences rules made national headlines and the organization didn’t make any adjustment to those rules after the coverage.
An organization says masks are optional. Alternatively, they make no mention of masks whatsoever.
Do you think the masking behavior at those conferences would be different?
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 5:41pm
Sorry to hear that, that sucks. It sounds like our kids are about the same age and I can sympathize with how difficult the pandemic has been with kids.
That having been said, the way you’re trying to tie the terrible experiences you’ve had is unfair and just not pertinent to the point Olney’s making or that I am. I’m sorry it happened to you and I agree with you on some of the less justifiable measures you mention but don’t come attacking or misconstruing me over it.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 9:51am
You were surprised to learn that most people think “mandate” means “requirement” rather than “suggestion”? Have you had your head in the sand for 3 years? And that is complete BS about the Bay Area being different. They’re some of the most insane about it. A Bay Area school in Mountain View started out with a mask mandate in August of 2022 (yes, 2022) and sent a 4-year-old home because he wasn’t wearing a mask. I guess they must have been confused over definitions.
“I thought everyone knew mandate meant suggestion”… that’s a classic motte and bailey if I’ve ever seen one.
Other examples of covid mandates meaning requirements: doctors’ offices across the country, the Kennedy Center in DC until Nov 2022 (yes, 2022 again), Wolf Trap in the DC area not letting the unvaccinated in during the summer of 2021, airlines until the CDC rescinded the *mandate*.
“it is utterly foreign to how I and I suspect many other people have experienced enforcement of mandates.” It would be wouldn’t it if you are following the mandates. If you follow the rules (and bury your head in the sand), then you wouldn’t really know what happens when someone breaks the rules. I guess those Sonoma County businesses that were fined for not enforcing mask mandates could have used yours and Olney’s legal counsel to get the fines thrown out. Next time your doctor tells you that you need a mask, say no and see what happens. Next time your kids’ school tells them they are required to have a mask, say no and see what happens. Next time your airline says masks are required, try saying no and see what happens (people have been booted off planes for not wearing masks).
God bless… “In my experience when a venue requires testing or vaccination that’s a clear testable thing and a strong commitment and they stick to it.” How is testing and vaccination more testable than wearing a mask? Vaccination proof and negative test are about the most easily faked things around (do you not recall the stories over fake vaccination cards). But you’re saying that showing up without something covering your face is somehow… less testable?
Yours and Olney’s comments show an extreme ignorance such that y’all should really take some course about observing reality or they show extreme disingenuousness such that y’all should just be ashamed for making any public utterance. You do know that words mean something, right?
(My first comment had links and got stuck in the filter, google is a wonderful tool… feel free to use it to fact check me.)
Dylan
Jan 10 2023 at 11:32am
I agree that you shouldn’t use the term mandate if you instead mean mask use is encouraged, and the surprise by people that someone would interpret mandate to mean an actual mandate is a bit much.
However, I would say that is how many organizations have been using the term for much of 2022. I went to a fair number of big events over 2022, almost all had language about requiring masking and/or vaccination proof, and at least since March ’22, none have actually required it, and very few people in attendance were wearing masks. I had assumed that the language was drafted when we first started doing some in person things again, and then no one wanted to be the person to remove the language, so it stuck even though it was no longer being observed.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 11:52am
“I had assumed that the language was drafted when we first started doing some in person things again, and then no one wanted to be the person to remove the language”
This is a charitable interpretation, but it had been a large point of contention when the rules were published back in September. Here is what was posted at the top of the conference registration page: “To attend the 2023 ASSA Annual Meeting, all on-site registrants will be required to present proof of having received an FDA authorized vaccination series, including a booster. High-quality masks (i.e., KN-95 or better) will be required in all indoor conference spaces. These requirements are planned for the well-being of all participants. Participants are also encouraged to test for COVID-19 before traveling to the meeting.” My understanding is that the language was all new because the 2023 conference was the first one in-person after Covid and wasn’t just some hold over language from prior conferences.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 11:55am
You’re correct. The last two were not held in person at all. They chose that language.
Dylan
Jan 10 2023 at 12:30pm
Got it. Thanks for the clarification. I had been referring in general to conferences I attended last year. Had not heard anything about the AEA conference until reading this post.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 12:37pm
I believe (but I wouldn’t put money on it) that the AEA conference is the last major economics conference to go back to in-person (and I know it is the only one with these onerous requirements). Southerns went back to in-person two years ago. So did Easterns. Not sure about Westerns.
Phil Magness
Jan 10 2023 at 10:23am
If they meant the mask mandate as merely a suggestion, the AEA should have phrased it as such. They were given multiple opportunities to do so in the months leading up to the conference. The excessively stringent Covid rules made national news when they were announced last summer, and I know that several people wrote the AEA to voice their objections. The AEA offered no clarification, and only doubled down on language describing it as a requirement.
By the way, Daniel, didn’t you voice objections in multiple fora after the 2021 SEA meeting in Houston, complaining about how you thought the GMU/free market attendees were insufficiently devoted to masking?
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 10:44am
Phil, I saw Olney’s replies to you, and when she started talking about lived experience, I threw up in my mouth a little bit. There lies a descent into madness when only one’s lived experience (excluding reason, the experience of others, and dictionaries) can provide the meaning of words.
John Hall
Jan 10 2023 at 12:23pm
Do you have a link?
David Henderson
Jan 10 2023 at 12:28pm
I provided the links in my post.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 12:44pm
Here’s the relevant link: https://twitter.com/MarthaOlney/status/1612097262498242560.
“So I assume you were operating on an assumption that the enforcement mechanism would be what you’ve experienced where you live. Other’s assumptions were based on their lived experience. Our lived experiences differ because we live in different places.”
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:49pm
Phil: I agree, if the AEA was not going to put the resources into enforcing a mask mandate they should not have called it that. Enforcement costs are venue dependent. In a doctor’s office it’s relatively easy to enforce. In a supermarket or a large conference it’s not.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:51pm
I don’t think I would have used the euphemism “free market attendees” if I meant libertarian, but yes I did note that masking was extremely low in the sessions I attended organized and well attended by libertarians.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 7:08am
Good to know that “mandate” really just means “suggestion.” I’ll be sure to explain that to the TSA when I skip the mandated security screening.
Sarcasm aside, her response is telling: it’s mandated, but really a suggestion, because of lax enforcement. If it was truly a suggestion, the point about enforcement would be irrelevant.
Andre
Jan 10 2023 at 8:33am
Economists get a remedial lesson in incentives.
Don Boudreaux
Jan 10 2023 at 9:18am
People who see little or no difference between the meaning of “required” and “suggested” (or “recommended”) ought not be in the business of scholarship (or teaching). For when a purported ‘scholars” words have no meaning other than what that ‘scholar’ insists at the moment those words mean, that ‘scholar’ – far from communicating productively with his or her peers or with the public – sows only confusion.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 9:41am
Don I think you’re confusing people who don’t see a difference between those two words (of course there is a difference) and people who correctly anticipate that certain real world experiences do not match what’s written in paper.
I wasn’t going to go to the AEA meeting because our HES panel was not accepted, but if it was I would go hoping lots of people would mask but fully expecting many wouldn’t and that the AEA wouldn’t do much about it (And how could they? It’s not like they’re going to have an AEA police going around sessions and if someone refused what would they do? Is it plausible they’d eject them?).
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 10:09am
When you say “fully expecting many wouldn’t and that the AEA wouldn’t do much about it”, how many do you think is many, and do you actually think that everyone (or even most) wearing a mask think that the mandate wouldn’t be enforced in some way. I’m gonna bet that there would be a group of people who would go around, getting names, and reporting them to the AEA. Then the AEA might refuse registration next year to that person. And if a maskless person is presenting a paper… I would imagine that paper has a much lower likelihood of showing up in the Papers and Proceedings (other things being equal. Or perhaps that person sends a future paper to one of the AEA journals. Given how petty academia can be, is it not appropriate for one to think that not following the requirements now might negatively affect future publication prospects? And is it not appropriate for one to think that there would be less likelihood of these negative consequences if mask were formally only encouraged rather than formally required?
And if it’s only a suggestion, why the pretense of making it a requirement?
Yours and Olney’s comments are the best proof that some people just live in alternate realities (and just in case you hadn’t guessed, you are the some people I’m referring to).
Phil Magness
Jan 10 2023 at 10:45am
Re. “I’m gonna bet that there would be a group of people who would go around, getting names, and reporting them to the AEA.”
Your bet is correct. In fact, we can look to conferences at earlier points in the Covid era when maskers engaged in similar behavior. This happened at SEA in Houston in 2021.
Texas was not under a mask mandate at the time, so the only people in the hotel with masks on were conference attendees. There were multiple conference attendee busybodies who took it upon themselves to enforce masking on anyone who they deemed insufficiently masked up. Some of them hounded the conference staff when they didn’t get the response they wanted. I saw this happen repeatedly in the public areas of the hotel. A random heavily-masked Covidian SEA attendee would walk up to complete strangers and hector them about not having a mask, or even about their masks not covering their noses.
In fact, I distinctly remember one particular SEA attendee complaining all over Twitter and Facebook about how, in his view, other economists were insufficiently masked in certain rooms of the Houston conference.
His name was Daniel Kuehn.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:54pm
The construction of this comment leaves things a little vague, but to be clear I never mentioned decisions not to mask to anyone at the conference (and certainly didn’t “hector”). I don’t think Phil is accusing me of it, but in the interest of clarity I wanted to point out that Phil is presumably referring to someone else here, if it happened at all.
I did mention low masking in libertarian sessions although I doubt I mentioned it more than once or twice and I’m almost positive I didn’t mention it on Facebook since I don’t usually talk work there, although I could be misremembering.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 11:57am
So, then, the AEA had an enforcement problem. They weren’t making a suggestion. They made a requirement and didn’t enforce it (if the mandate was truly a suggestion, then enforcement is irrelevent).
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:55pm
Right.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 1:41pm
So you agree Olney is wrong to say the mandate was a suggestion?
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 2:00pm
Jon – I think you’re reading Olney differently than I am. She didn’t make the policy as far as I know and is not speaking for the AEA. When she said “I’m guessing that means you’re not here” that read to me like she was describing the facts on the ground, and the facts on the ground are that it wasn’t being mandated it was being suggested. People were going around without masks. This isn’t shocking because (as Olney notes) that’s what happens everywhere. Her experience on that is my experience.
You seem to read her as giving some kind of policy guidance on behalf of the AEA. I don’t think she’s doing that. If she were I guess I’d still agree with her that that’s what it looks like in practice, but I’d also agree with David that this shouldn’t be framed as a mandate.
David Henderson
Jan 10 2023 at 11:18am
Both Martha Olney’s tweets that I quoted and Daniel Kuehn’s comments above remind me of this passage from Alice in Wonderland:
If you use a word and choose the meaning, even if it differs from the dictionary meaning and common usage, then you are throwing out the idea of communicating.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 12:46pm
David, re:
Yes, but “mandate” wasn’t my word it was the AEA’s word. If I were organizing the conference and knew we wouldn’t be requiring it I would have said that we shouldn’t call it a mandate. But as I said, unlike you I am not shocked at all (and apparently neither is Olney) that it wasn’t an actual mandate.
I concur with your point in this comment, but you’re directing it at the wrong person!
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 2:01pm
Daniel,
If you agree that “requirement” and “mandate” mean something other than “suggestion”, why are you confused that people thought the AEA meant that masks were required when it said… you know… that they were required?
If you think that using different language would have an impact, then you are, at least implicitly, saying that people have different expectations about what will and will not be allowed, and that it is not weird for people to have expected some enforcement of the mask requirement (contrary to your claims about people would just go maskless with impunity). Of course enforcement is imperfect, but using “required” instead of “optional” sets different expectations. So why are you confused at people thinking mask were required?
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 2:06pm
Because over the last three years I’ve seen a lot of mandate non-compliance.
You’re right, different language would result in different behavior. That doesn’t mean when I read that the AEA is mandating masks I’m going to go in there expecting it to actually happen in all cases. As I said in my first comment, what Olney reports is not shocking to me and that’s based on my past experiences.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 3:23pm
I feel like we’re talking past each other. I don’t think anyone is saying that mandates are always 100 percent enforced, but the fact that there is a mandate suggest some kind of enforcement (I listed a few things above that could occur that are not just getting kicked out). What I think David and Phil (and mostly everyone else here) was surprised at was the sentiment expressed in Olney’s comment (and your agreement) “Like all mask mandates, it’s more a suggestion than anything else. As is true everywhere.”
I don’t think that Ms. Olney has been too many places (much less everywhere) because this is just simply not what any mandate actually means. And given you agree that behavior would be different under different wording, it’s hard to understand why you are confused (as it’s clearly an indication that people understand that “required” and “optional” mean different things). I’ve been to several places with mask mandates (large venues, small venues, etc.) across the country (including northern California) over the past 3 years. Where there has been a requirement to wear a mask, there has alway been a sea of masks with a few unmasked faces, and where there has been enforcement (e.g. the Kennedy Center or the Baltimore Aquarium), there are only masked faces. Just because there are a few rule breakers does not make the mandate a mere suggestion. If people thought of it that way, then more people would have gone maskless much earlier. As any economist should know, even when enforcement is limited, there is always the threat of some stochastic sanction when rules aren’t followed (e.g. that’s how speed limits work in the US). Now it could be that ex post, people realize that the mask mandate is de jure a suggestion and more people take off their mask, but that is not the case ex ante (especially when the organization with the mask requirement sticks to with it even after national newspaper coverage of the requirement).
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 3:42pm
So what’s the bottom line for you here JFA?
If your bottom line is that you think it would be even more accurate to write: “Like all mask mandates, it’s more a suggestion than anything else. As is true in most cases where to varying degrees mandates are not complied with.” then I am totally fine with that suggested revision. That’s clearer, more precise, more accurate, etc. If that’s your bottom line, though, it seems like nitpicking and isn’t so interesting to me particularly because this is a Twitter thread. That doesn’t mean you can’t care about it it just means I don’t care much about it.
If your bottom line is instead that there’s something “shocking” that this would be the situation at the AEA meeting then we definitely disagree on that, probably for various reasons. In any case I think we’ve run this one into the ground.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 4:53pm
Am I surprised that not everyone wears a mask? No. But I think critiquing the sentiment “all mandates are just suggestions everywhere” as utterly inaccurate is not nitpicking. I gave you various examples of where mask mandates were enforced and there are many others. I my community, my wife (who happened to be wearing a mask at the time) was cussed at because my kids were not wearing masks while walking on a public sidewalk on a windy but hot summer day (that was in 2020). My neighbor was berated for not wearing a mask in a public park while his kids played on the playground (that was in 2021). (Note that those are 2 incidences in which there wasn’t even a mandate in place but people were trying to enforce one.) My 4 year old was forced to wear a mask through June of 2022 at school when there was no good reason to (they don’t wear them well and they take them off for nap time… what were people thinking?!). And again, I’ve been to large venues where mask requirements were in force through November of 2022.
Saying words have meaning is not nitpicking. It’s ensuring that we can communicate with each other. Why would someone not expect to be berated by some masked crusaders either on social media or in person for not wearing a mask when it says mask are required? I think only someone who criticizes people on social media for not wearing masks would think that saying “all mandates are just suggestions” made any sense. I wouldn’t expect someone who supported keeping a mask mandate in July 2021 to understand that there’s more to life than just being germ free. I wouldn’t expect someone like that to understand that it was people like him who made kids get speech therapy for two years while they and their teachers were masked (why would you need to see mouths to learn mouth movements) and why many kids were too scared to take their masks off even when they were vaccinated. I wouldn’t expect someone who thinks that masks are some magic bullet that would have stopped the pandemic (https://twitter.com/D_Kuehn/status/1490154773215068161) to understand that mandates actually were imposed and enforced and just because 100% of people didn’t wear mask doesn’t give them the license to redefine the English language to make “requirement” mean “suggestion”. I know people want to engage in some great forgetting about what the last few years were like, but I gotta say, I suffered more at the hands of mask mongers like you than any anti-mask zealot.
Of course, I imagine you feel guilty for all the people you killed with flu and RSV and many other respiratory viruses by not masking earlier than Covid. I can’t imagine what that guilt is like.
JFA
Jan 10 2023 at 6:18pm
Daniel. I wanted to say that last comment I made was rather petty. I don’t really agree with you, but I got a bit too hot under the collar. I’m sorry for that.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 10 2023 at 10:54pm
Had this in the wrong thread above. No worries, and sorry that stuff happened to you:
Sorry to hear that, that sucks. It sounds like our kids are about the same age and I can sympathize with how difficult the pandemic has been with kids.
That having been said, the way you’re trying to tie the terrible experiences you’ve had is unfair and just not pertinent to the point Olney’s making or that I am. I’m sorry it happened to you and I agree with you on some of the less justifiable measures you mention but don’t come attacking or misconstruing me over it.
Procrustes
Jan 10 2023 at 5:07pm
The Humpty Dumpty quote was the first thing that came to mind when I read your post David. When I worked in a central government department in Australia I used to give my new staff two things to read – the Cabinet handbook and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That’s all they needed to know for government work.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2023 at 11:58am
Not going to lie: Olney’s implication that the AEA has a communication problem (and, subsequently, a credible commitment problem) doesn’t exactly paint the orginization in a better light.
vince
Jan 10 2023 at 12:54pm
Aside from the vocabulary problem, a little planning for the effect of the mask mandate (suggestion??) on attendance could have prevented losses.
Warren Platts
Jan 10 2023 at 2:08pm
If they wanted to impose requirements that made any sense, they would have required negative Covid tests and “suggested” that people be vaxxed & masked. Because the goal should be to prevent people from catching Covid while attending the conference, right?
But the so-called vaccine doesn’t reduce transmission, nor does it prevent infection. At best it reduces the severity of the illness once you contract Covid. Neither are there any large, controlled, randomized studies that show that masks have a significant effect. Moreover, the K95 masks cause such high CO2 buildups inside the mask, according to NIOSH regulations, they should only be worn for 15 minutes at a time.
At least a negative test requirement would lower the number of positive cases floating around the conference and that would achieve the desired goal of reducing new cases of Covid concrud…
Jose Pablo
Jan 10 2023 at 4:43pm
“a “mandate” is not enforced”
That’s a very interesting question. What, on Earth, could be the reason to issue a “mandate that is not going to be enforced“?
It should be, I guess, similar to the reason for having an international, very expensive, organization that has as its purpose (article 1) “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”
and, still, cannot condemn (let alone stop or punish the aggressor) the invasion of Ukraine.
Maybe Putin follows Professor Olney’s twits to form his own interpretation of “mandates”
EB-Ch
Jan 11 2023 at 4:23am
José Pablo, mandates are enforced only when “bad” people (acting individually or collectively) don’t comply with them. Here in Chile, we have a president struggling with who the “bad” guys are. When I lived in China in the 1990s, officials acted as if they knew well who the “bad” guys were. This is the kind of subtle difference you cannot make when developing theories or writing laws. In both theory and regulation, we assume everybody must comply with mandates but it’s a terrible assumption.
Knut P. Heen
Jan 11 2023 at 10:31am
The purpose is to trick people into believing that the mandate will be enforced. It is also a nice “we care” statement that fits well into today’s world of virtue signaling.
Did the Robert Lucas attend? Rational expectations are key here.
Jon Murphy
Jan 11 2023 at 8:52am
Daniel Kehun-
Yes we are reading her different. The problem with your interpretation is that directly contradicts what she actually said and makes no sense in context. We need to look at the entire context, not just one sentence. What she initially said, in the sentence immediately following what you quote, was:
That little word “all” is what the objections are about. Mandates, by definition, are not suggestions. If it were, then enforcement doesn’t matter.
Mandates are expected to be enforced. Otherwise, they are not mandates. I’m sure the many people in prison or paying fines for violating the mask mandate on airplanes would be shocked to hear that the mandate was just a suggestion, like all mandates. I’m sure the many servicemen and women who were discharged from the military for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate would be shocked to hear that the mandate was just a suggestion, like all mandates. I am sure the thousands of nurses and doctors that were fired in NY because they refused to comply with the state’s vaccine mandate would be shocked to hear the mandate was just a suggestion, like all mandates.
It is an utterly absurd claim by Olney to make that all mandates are just suggestions. Indeed, the whole conversation looks like someone coming up with post hoc justifications to explain what is patently obvious to literally anyone looking at the situation: their relatively extreme requirements led to a reduction in the number of attendees, which in turn contributed to their loss.
To highlight how absurd the whole story is, let me give a metaphor:
You teach a course. Ordinarily, it has 50 students each semester. One semester, you decide to increase the course required assignments. Enrollment drops to 10. Of those 10, 5 do not do the new requirements. Would you, the professor, be right in saying “Those required assignments were really suggestions. It’s wrong to think they reduced enrollment”?
Tl;dr: Olney is making a basic Econ 101 error (she’s ignoring the fact demand curves slope downward, yes even relatively inelastic ones) and compounding her error by redefining “mandate.” Your interpretation of her comments do not make sense in both the context of the larger discussion nor the sentence that immediate follows the quote you give.
Daniel Kuehn
Jan 12 2023 at 3:45pm
I’m not ignoring “all.” All mask mandates have some non-compliance, and you can work up a pretty good guess at non-compliance based on the context of a particular mandate.
Pretending she’s providing official guidance on what the AEA meant rather than explaining what was happening doesn’t make sense. And as I’ve noted, if I’m wrong and she actually imagines herself to be interpreting the policy of the AEA for the AEA obviously #1 I don’t think she really can, and #2 I don’t think they should say they’re mandating something if there’s no enforcement.
#2 is a spectrum of course too since enforcement is never perfect. I suppose you could require something and have relatively lax enforcement. But you’d imagine a requirement has at least some enforcement.
Jon Murphy
Jan 12 2023 at 6:31pm
Then they’re not suggestions.
Jon Murphy
Jan 12 2023 at 6:33pm
You keep repeating this and I don’t know why. No one has said that she is. We’re objecting to her interpretation of a mandate as a suggestion
BS
Jan 11 2023 at 10:29pm
Did the instructions actually state “High-quality masks (i.e., KN-95 or better) will be required in all indoor conference spaces.”?
Everyone’s discussing “mandate”, but all I see is “required” – which has no ambiguity whatsoever.
Jon Murphy
Jan 12 2023 at 5:58am
Yes. That quote is directly from tbe conference website and emails.
Which is why the Olney tweet is getting so much attention.
Mark
Jan 19 2023 at 10:47am
Well, we did have mask-mandates in Germany – and still do have some in some places (hospitals, visits to doctors, public transport in many regions). And I can assure you, many a non-wearer got fined. I know, ’cause I fined some. (Had no more courses to teach, thus volunteered for “Spezial-Kommando Corona” at my town’s Ordnungs-amt.) My town ended up fining twice as many as the average place, but all localities did it. “Verboten” still means verboten. – At the AEA, I might not have expected fines – even an eviction only in extreme cases – but reprimanding. – Words have meanings. The AEA should fund the purchase of a good dictionary. Oh, if they broke – for the better, it seems.
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