Economics and epidemiology, revisited

The Economist was kind enough to reference my earlier blog post on this topic, from April 12, so I thought we should look at it again.  Please do reread it!  Here are my first two points:

1. They [epidemiologists] do not sufficiently grasp that long-run elasticities of adjustment are more powerful than short-run elasticites.  In the short run you socially distance, but in the long run you learn which methods of social distance protect you the most.  Or you move from doing “half home delivery of food” to “full home delivery of food” once you get that extra credit card or learn the best sites.  In this regard the epidemiological models end up being too pessimistic, and it seems that “the natural disaster economist complaints about the epidemiologists” (yes there is such a thing) are largely correct on this count.  On this question economic models really do better, though not the models of everybody.

2. They do not sufficiently incorporate public choice considerations.  An epidemic path, for instance, may be politically infeasible, which leads to adjustments along the way, and very often those adjustments are stupid policy moves from impatient politicians.  This is not built into the models I am seeing, nor are such factors built into most economic macro models, even though there is a large independent branch of public choice research.  It is hard to integrate.  Still, it means that epidemiological models will be too optimistic, rather than too pessimistic as in #1.  Epidemiologists might protest that it is not the purpose of their science or models to incorporate politics, but these factors are relevant for prediction, and if you try to wash your hands of them (no pun intended) you will be wrong a lot.

And:

I have not yet seen a Straussian dimension in the models, though you might argue many epidemiologists are “naive Straussian” in their public rhetoric, saying what is good for us rather than telling the whole truth.

Many people took umbrage at my points, but:

On this list, I think my #1 comes closest to being an actual criticism, the other points are more like observations about doing science in a messy, imperfect world.

I also queried about the political orientation of epidemiologists (among other matters), and that occasioned a great deal of pushback and outrage. Yet we saw during the summer that many of them were explicitly political and favoring the Left, willing to abandon their earlier recommendations to endorse demonstrations for a cause they strongly favored.  I am not sure how big was the resulting boost in cases or fatalities, but it did seem the American people concluded that you could ignore the rules if something was sufficiently important to you.  Like visiting your relatives for Thanksgiving, and we will be reaping that harvest rather soon.

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