The regulatory state and the passage of time

The mere passage of time as an explanatory factor is underrated in public choice and regulatory economics, though Mancur Olson understood it well. Here is an update on the new CDC guidelines for school reopening:

For months, President Biden has been urging schools to reopen, and promised that guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would help them do so safely.

At the same time, public health experts including some at the CDC said available evidence suggested schools could safely open as long as precautions were in place. That raised expectations that the nation’s K-12 education system might accelerate its return to in-person learning.

But the much-anticipated guidelines released Friday were, in fact, more measured than some expected, with full in-person schooling recommended only when levels of community transmission are quite low, a standard that almost no place in the U.S. meets today.

Here is the full article. The American Federation of Teachers is happy, but six feet between all students for virtually all districts is a non-starter. No matter what you think of the substance of the school reopening issue, it takes only a modicum of sense to realize if you tell people that six feet of distance is needed, in essence you are saying that a safe reopening is impossible altogether. Here is the rant of a “progressive” parent.

You will notice that these regulatory factors are another reason why the speed premium during a pandemic is so high — if you wait too long to fix the core problem, the regulators, slow though they may be, will encumber just about everything.