I bookmarked a prediction about the coronavirus by supply-sider Scott Grannis one year ago …
I bookmarked a prediction about the coronavirus by supply-sider Scott Grannis one year ago …
As I mention from time to time, I read a number of economic observers with whose opinions I usually strongly disagree, partly because it is good to consider other points of view, and partly because some compile excellent and interesting data, even if I disagree with their conclusions about what the data means.
The “Calafia Beach Pundit,” Scott Grannis, is one of those writers. His chart work is frequently compelling and often challenging. But, when it comes to the ideologically inspired response to COVID-19, he has been out of his mind.
So almost exactly one year ago, on March 27, 2020, I bookmarked one of his observations and forecasts, because I expected that the truth would be very different than he thought:
Since the normal flu season began last October, the CDC estimates that as many as 45 million Americans have come down with one form or another of the flu, and roughly 45,000 have died from complications of the flu. That works out to about 250 deaths per day. In all of the US, and for the year to date, covid-19 has been tied to only 1700 deaths. Simply put, this is not a pandemic and is very likely not going to become one, especially given the draconian measures that have been imposed across the country to date.
…. What we really need right now is to recognize that this virus is not a pandemic or a mass killer. It’s probably more like an unusually nasty flu. We need to lift the economic shutdown as soon as possible and get back to work. Trump is right.
Now that we’re one year later, let’s see how it panned out. There have been over 30 million *confirmed* cases of the coronavirus. The 550,000 who have died is over 10x the number who typically “have died from complications of the flu,” and over 300x the “only 1700 deaths” from coronavirus he touted.
But not only has Grannis never acknowledged his gargantuan error, the one thing he has remained constant about is that there should be no restrictions on economic behavior which might curb the spread of the deadly toll of the virus. There is literally no set of facts that would cause him to change his mind. Just like his supply-side mania. There is simply no set of facts that would ever cause him to deviate from his mantra that tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations are the cure for everything.
This is the one I saved: “Israeli Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt has predicted that no more than ten Israelis will succumb to COVID-19 – and even less with the new restrictions – since the number of cases is so few. “His Nobel Prize is in chemistry. I guess nobody explained to Levitt that humans don’t behave like chemicals.
Nobel laureate: surprised if Israel has more than 10 coronavirus deaths
I see where Elon Musk tweeted: “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases too by end of April”Heh.
Mindful of Berkeley’s hippies of the 60s. Thanks, zum beiden.
I feel similarly about him. It bugs me to no end how people who are obviously very smart can have such huge blindspots. It makes me question whether I have a bunch of dumb ideas whose idiocy I am completely oblivious to. At the bottom of the post there is another quote which has also aged quite poorly:
———–
GAME CHANGER:
Coronavirus cure: French researchers completed new additional study on 80 patients, results show a combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin to be effective in treating COVID-19
We now have a very effective treatment protocol for covid-19. This renders obsolete all previous projections/forecasts of the disease’s evolution.
———–
“It bugs me to no end how people who are obviously very smart can have such huge blindspots.”As a geneticist, I can tell you that in humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked.
And yet, in retrospect, I’m not sure whether I ought to care. According to the Imperial College reports that triggered all the panic, they figured that if “we” didn’t “do something”, we’d lose around 0.6% of the population, who would lose, on average, around 10 years of life expectancy. In other words, we’d have lost 3 weeks of life expectancy. And it soon became obvious that the real risk was closer to maybe 1 week. And with the passage of time, it became obvious from the “dashboards” that while death rates varied regionally, and Draconian-ness of lockdowns and such varied regionally by a lot, there was not all that much correlation. (Even the smug Germans aren’t doing as well as they had thought.)
Now, if the Devil came to me, or had come to me, with an offer of a mere, utterly trivial, extra week of life-expectancy, in exchange for trashing over a year of my life and giving up civil liberties (that my father had taken actual serious risks for) forever, I would tell him in very rude language to buzz off. And after seeing the ultra-weak effectiveness of the “gotta do something” “actions”, it would be even ruder still. It remains that the absolute-zero of risk is simply unattainable in this universe – no matter how loudly and endlessly oppressive-government Utopians might blather, and no matter how much self-serving puritanical moralizers might splutter.
So I guess that actually, in the end, yes, I just don’t care.
Yes, this is no worse than the flu. When the flu first broke out in the human population in 1918, it wound up killing 20-50 million people. More American soldiers died of the flu than of German bullets. A novel virus can be very destructive. Measles and smallpox devastated Native Americans. When people say that this virus is like the flu, they seem to neglect the enormous impact of the flu.
I think it would be great to post the same observation on Tyler Cowan’s Marginal Revolution and see if the comments would be the same…..
Nobody gets it right all the time and if you predict things you are going to be wrong a lot no matter how smart you are. Typically, these circumstances would cause a bit of humility but hubris often wins out. There is no excuse however for failing to see the linkage between a raging pandemic and a good part of the population staying out of restaurants, movie theaters, airplanes, cruise ships, etc. Perhaps I am being too egocentric but in the last year I am estimating that my wife and I refrained from around $10,000 in discretionary spending—much of it in Florida—because of the pandemic. And that is not counting the money we gave to barbers, pet kennels, ymca’s and restaurants without getting services because we wanted to support these businesses and could afford to do so. If the former president had addressed the pandemic instead of blowing it off, he probably would be serving a second term and my sister and 400,000 other Americans would be alive. And the economy would probably be better too.
“Nobody gets it right all the time and if you predict things you are going to be wrong a lot no matter how smart you are. ”
True words, which is why you should be humble about your uncertainty. I think he was being honest and thought there was little uncertainty about the pandemic being overblown. It isn’t so bad that he got the prediction wrong (after all, he is spectacularly unqualified with regard to medicine and epidemiology), rather it is his certainty is the real prognostication crime.
Re: “There is simply no set of facts that would ever cause him to deviate from his mantra that tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations are the cure for everything.”
That was something that was curiously missing. While there was a lot of compensatory government spending and a lot of proposed COVID cures, I can’t recall anyone proposing tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy as a cure for COVID. In retrospect, this is surprising. Maybe there has been a paradigm shift.
BTW Has anyone proposed injecting bleach into our ailing economy?
NewDeal et al.
illustrating something i have been saying for years, even to Joel (with whom I am glad to agree for once). all people, but most egregiously “smart” people, are almost completely unable to think about a new idea that conflicts with their old ideas. “smart people” seem to believe that because they are smart they don’t really need to think in order to be right about something. or know any more about something one step outside their expertise than the most ignorant man-in-the-street. add in a little political (psychological?) bias and we have the state of the world today. different from the state of the world two or ten thousand years ago only in the amount of information available (and yes, the fact that at some time some very smart people thought hard about some of that information).
PaulS
I think it is very likely the devil did come to you. Deciding that one person’s death amounts to only a tiny change in the nation’s death rate, and is therefore unimportant, is insanity… of the kind favored in hell.
[please understand that “hell” here is a literary device and not an endorsement of any religious belief.]
@Dale,I don’t know whether we agree or not. From what you posted, you seem to believe I posted that high intelligence and good judgement are mutually exclusive. That’s not what I posted. I merely observed that the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked: in genetics, that means that one doesn’t necessarily predict the other. There are plenty of intelligent people who have good judgement, too. I don’t know were you got the idea that ““smart people” seem to believe that because they are smart they don’t really need to think in order to be right about something. or know any more about something one step outside their expertise than the most ignorant man-in-the-street.”I’ve known plenty of men in the street that have crappy judgement–indeed, that’s often why they’re still in the street and envious of those who had the good judgement to move out of the hood.Maybe you could try demonstrating high intelligence *and* good judgement by avoiding cheap and lazy stereotyping, m’kay?
Joel,
wow, it’s a pleasure being back to being completely misunderstood by you. i do understand the difference between “does not correlate” and “is mutually exclusive.” I also know many “experts” who think they don’t have to think, or know anything about the subject they are talking about. i think that this is a result of the nature of human brains, which I think I know something about. though not an expert, i do know of some research that claims to demonstrate that “experts” outside their own field don’t think any better than the average sixth grader. I would define “own field” very narrowly. For example, many “economists,” even “non partisan experts” on Social Security opine freely without having carefully read the Trustees Report.
As for men in the street who have crappy judgement, yes, i have met them too. I said the experts judgement outside his field was no better that theirs. I did not say their judgement was better than the experts, or even good, or even non-crappy.
I hope you can understand the subtle grammatical differences between what i said and cheap and lazy stereotyping.
@Dale, I’ve always enjoyed your insights on social security.
Joel
thank you.
NDd:
I wish at times I had done the same. When I do go back and read what I wrote for the umpteenth (normally to see if it made sense), I am surprised at how close I was in content to the reality of the times. Not that I am believed or taken seriously.
It is a good post NDd.
Run,
I always take you seriously. Even when you go ack.