A further Saturday link

1. An AEA Covid response by Joshua Gans.  He comes up with just one conference with a proper mask mandate, albeit a weaker and more subjective one than what the AEA is proposing.  Even my hospital doesn’t do the same.  He cites Comic Con San Diego, but subsequent, more recent Comic Con events don’t seem to have the mask mandate any more.  So maybe that isn’t such a good example.

Gans can’t cite any policy from any government either, except for one Australian government regulatory conference in Brisbane.  At some point “the CCP” may occur to him as another answer.

But I welcome the publicity, even if he does describe my post as “whining.”  (“Pissed off” would be a more accurate read.)  I don’t think the AEA policy can survive the light of day, so the more people who attack my view the better.  Gans also does not consider that almost any individual can be safe enough with a sufficiently good mask — internalize the externalities yourself!  Gans should try a trip to Copenhagen or Zurich, two highly irresponsible cities that refuse to take care of their citizens, apparently.

As for some of the rest of you, there is no analytic inconsistency in favoring much weaker Covid regulations over time.  As more people vaccinate, more people have caught Covid, more people have access to good privatized masks, and as we develop remedies such as Paxlovid, restrictions should in general become far more lax.  If you don’t understand that, you never understood the case for Covid regulation in the first place.

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