Greenwald: Cost-Benefit Analysis of COVID Issues Deemed Off-Limits

Glenn Greenwald writes:

In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit or crude terms, is foundational to public policy debates — except when it comes to COVID, where it has been bizarrely declared off-limits.

If we treated car safety the same absolutist way that we treat COVID safety, we would ban automobiles.

cars

In the above video (min 22) Greenwald points out that we are entirely ignoring the mental health damage being done by lockdowns, especially the mental distress and damage caused when children are prevented from attending school in person. That said, don’t ignore the small total deaths by COVID among children, even in the era of the Delta Variant.

Greenwald

[Supplemented August 31, 2021] Krystal and Saagar of Breaking Points discuss the insanity of the refusal to conduct cost-benefit analyses re COVID issues. This is the same point made by Glenn Greenwald and it is a excellent discussion. Go to 18 min mark:

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Avatar of Bill Heath
    Bill Heath August 25, 2021 Reply

    The only possible justification is as a practice run for a real pandemic. This was a common cold virus.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth August 25, 2021

      I think that I am coming close to agreeing with you given that we have vaccines.

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth January 18, 2023 Reply

    I received significant pushback at the beginning of the pandemic when I suggested that we should use a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether to close schools. Factors in my mind were loss of quality education and the extremely low/almost non-existent disease risk to children. Now this, from the WSJ:

    According to an annual survey of school leaders conducted by the federal Institute for Education Sciences, schools saw a 56% increase in “classroom disruptions from student misconduct” compared with a typical school year before the pandemic. There’s also been a 49% rise in “rowdiness outside of the classroom,” in places such as cafeterias or hallways. Actual “physical attacks or fights between students” are up by one-third, and threats of the same have increased 36%.

    Whatever the impact of pandemic education protocols on this behavior, student suspension policies pushed by the political left are no doubt making matters worse. Under President Obama, the Education Department released a study showing that black students are suspended from school at higher rates than white students and concluded that the only possible reason for the disparity was racism. Similar studies have shown that whites are suspended at higher rates than Asians, but progressives stop reading after they find the statistic that fits their preferred narrative. Thus, the administration subsequently issued letters of guidance to school districts that said federal officials would consider higher school-discipline rates among blacks to be evidence of racial discrimination.

    The response, predictably, was a reduction in suspensions, which led to more disruption and bullying and to students feeling less safe—especially black students. A federal survey from 2017 found that 37% of black students nationwide reported being bullied, the highest percentage of any racial or ethnic group. A policy intended to fight racism wound up harming black kids the most. Equity strikes again!

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