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April 1, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:02:35
Delingpod 65: Prof. Don Siegel
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Welcome to the Delling Pod with me, James Dellingpole.
And this is a special edition of the Delling Pod brought to you by my friends at Ricochet.
Before I introduce this week's incredibly exciting special guest, and I'm really excited to have him on the show.
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Now, My special guest this week, Professor Donald Siegel, who is Foundation Professor and Director at the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.
And I discovered him Please call me Don.
Thank you.
Don, I loved your piece.
Please, will you just tell our listeners what the piece was about?
Well, we are in the midst, Jim, of the grandest social experiment in history.
And it's been designed by public health officials, right?
And we are unwilling subjects in this grand social science experiment.
And one of the points that we made in the piece is that when you conduct a social science experiment, you are obligated by law to get the informed consent of your subjects.
And we have not provided our informed consent because we haven't been informed about the true costs, duration, and risks associated, and even the benefits have been a little unclear as well, of this so-called project.
So it is unethical in many ways, the process by which these draconian policies And these are unprecedented draconian policies.
Never before in history has a healthy population been quarantined on the basis of some theory, right?
Social distance theory, which is supposed to be what we need to do to so-called flatten the curve.
So we adopt these draconian I would argue on American policies to achieve that goal.
Now, what's actually happened?
What's actually happened?
The government has confiscated wealth.
It has stolen private property.
It has developed this wonderfully Orwellian term, you are either essential or non-essential.
I love that.
I mean, I wish Orwell were alive.
He would love that language.
And if you are in a so-called non-essential business, you cannot work in that business, or, you know, work opportunities are limited.
And if you are a business owner, your property has been confiscated.
And you have been prohibited from running your establishment.
So this is the nature of this social experiment.
And the other thing that we pointed out in the article is that there's another pernicious force at play here, which is the crazed media, which is sensationalizing the spread of the virus.
And vastly overestimated the potential damage that the virus could create.
If you turn on a television, and even Fox News to be honest with you, 100% of the coverage is about the spread of the virus and how we have to, you know, work to stop the spread of the virus.
They don't talk about the negative consequences of these draconian policies.
That doesn't seem to be of interest to the media.
And then, of course, you know, for a while they were kind of telling us that, look what happened in Italy, and we have to avoid that, and we need these draconian policies to, you know, to avoid that situation.
Instead of looking, as they should have, at South Africa—I'm sorry, South Korea— So, we had a choice.
Now, in the article, we didn't say that we shouldn't engage in social distancing.
But we had two choices, I believe.
One was to rely on individuals and organizations to adapt their behavior, as they did.
They absolutely did.
I work at an institution that has adapted to this crisis very effectively.
And other individuals and organizations have voluntarily adapted their behavior.
And, you know, it probably would have worked as well as these mandatory restrictions that are being imposed, this widespread shutdown.
So we said there was an alternative, but policymakers chose instead To listen to these single-minded public health officials who only have one goal in mind and do not care about the other costs associated with these draconian policies, and of course they don't care about the fundamental assault on our civil and economic liberties.
So that was a point we made.
We also drew on Kahneman's availability entrepreneur theory, availability cascades, Which kind of explains why we've adopted these draconian policies.
And then we argue that we need to consider all both the intended and unintended consequences of these draconian policies.
And we're seeing that now.
We're seeing a massive increase in unemployment.
We know that these mandatory stay-at-home policies and massive unemployment will lead to increases in domestic violence and suicide.
And we had an option which was to address the problem, you know, adopting some social distance policies, and we're not arguing for eliminating all those, but we should be able to address the problem at the other end.
And so we argue that, of course, governments should end these mandatory shutdowns.
And the other really dastardly thing that's going on is that we don't know when this is going to end.
We didn't put this in the article, but I think we're getting close to what economists call a sunk cost fallacy.
So we've invested so much in this social distancing strategy, extreme authoritarian, Chinese-style authoritarian policies, that we will not be able to get out of this for a long time.
Because flattening the curve doesn't end the spread of the disease.
There's likely to be a second and a third wave of spread.
So that's kind of what we said.
And it's gotten worse since we've written the article.
In my own state, the governor has decided to extend the shutdown for another month in the face of 20 deaths in the whole state.
Some of these death figures have been overstated.
But anyway...
Rob and I got an email yesterday from someone in New Zealand, which has 780 cases and one death, and they've shut down their country as well.
So this is just the single worst public policy decision and kind of strategy that I've ever seen in my life.
Yes, and I imagine you've been around the block, Don.
I'm not going to be so rude as to ask your age, but you must have seen a few examples of stupidity in your time.
Well, I'm 60 years old, but we had a choice.
We could have, and I think other countries are starting to realize this, we could do what South Korea did, which is have a more measured approach.
To social distancing and making sure that we get the government out of the way.
By the way, the other point we made in the article is these people that are designing our public policy and shutting down these economies, for example, in America, the most powerful man in America today is Anthony Fauci.
Right?
Yes.
Because he has convinced policymakers that we need to shut down the American economy.
And he has actually said that he wants us to overreact.
He's actually said that.
He's admitted that.
That when this is all over, he hopes that people say that we overreact.
He, by the way, just published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which you may have seen, and it concludes as follows.
I'm reading from this article that he wrote.
This suggests, meaning his findings, that the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza, in parenthesis, which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%, or a pandemic influenza.
Similar to those in 1957 and 1968 rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS which had larger fatality rates.
So we're overreacting and we're getting advice on how to formulate our policies from the Center for Disease Control I mean, you want to talk about an over-example of government failure, this is the classic example of it.
And they have a single goal in mind, and they would shut down the economy until they're going to shut it down until they achieve that goal.
And I think that's wrong.
Yes, what you say is indeed very, very frightening.
Public health officials and scientists are really only interested in one thing, which I suppose you could call us-covering.
They want to be...
They want to come out of this leaving no one able to say that they neglected any opportunity to close down this disease.
But they don't think about the bigger picture, do they?
Because they're scientists, they're not economists, they're not politicians.
And I share your concerns that if politicians are not making these decisions, if they're deferring to these party pre-scientists, then we may end up with policy which completely ruins the economy to deal with a minor problem.
They're already doing it.
There's already massive unemployment and massive losses of consumer welfare.
The other thing I would point out, you know, I teach in a school of public administration and public policy, so most of our students end up in the public sector.
Where do you think the money comes from to fund the public sector?
It comes from quote-unquote non-essential businesses.
So let me talk about Arizona.
We have shut down this economy, it'll be for six weeks, during the height of our tourist season.
The convention centers are empty.
The hotels are empty.
The airport's empty.
No business establishments.
No venues are open.
Every single sports facility.
They shut down the gyms.
Everything.
There's no revenue coming in.
And that funds the public services.
So this is the single most...
This is masochism.
It's a masochistic and idiotic public policy.
And by the way, those are just the intended...
And direct consequences.
Let me give you an example of an unintended consequence.
There was an article in Nature that came out, I think it was last week, that said that they have stopped doing clinical trials on non-COVID drugs.
So, they're not doing clinical trials on drugs that actually kill a lot of people.
Cancer, for example.
Think about how research labs and universities have been disrupted by this, where people are trying to develop drugs to treat other diseases.
Despite what Dr.
Fauci thinks, this is not the only problem going on in the world.
There's a diversion of resources.
From dealing with other problems, which are important, like cancer, heart disease, you can go on and on.
Because work has stopped, people are not going to work, and I don't know where to begin.
Yes.
Well, Don, you come from an economics background, so you understand things like the concept of opportunity cost.
And isn't part of the problem that most, certainly in Britain, there are lots of very, very frightened people, low information people, who have been frightened and terrified by the media, which is on the lookout for what I call the great white defendant.
Do you remember in the Bonfire of the Vanities, the There's this search for the great white defendant, because that will sort of prove the justice system isn't biased against black people.
And the equivalent of the great white defendant now is the young person with so-called no underlying health conditions who dies.
The papers are on this search.
They're always looking out for these young people, people who are essentially outliers, because as we know, your chances of dying of coronavirus, if you're young, are very, very, very small indeed.
And yet the media is whipping up this hysteria and frightening low-information people who do not understand.
There's a phrase that I constantly hear, which is that, you know, I value human life more than the economy, as though the economy is this thing which only benefits the rich and that it doesn't affect anybody else.
Now, how can politicians and governments operate sensibly in an environment where the media and a kind of terrified publish are pushing them towards ever more stringent policy?
Yeah, as we said in the article, this is the other pernicious force, is this crazed media that...
I mean, this has everything they want.
As you know, there were two previous pandemics during the Obama administration, and there were crickets.
There was no coverage at all of those pandemics.
And by the way, those ailments were much more severe.
Even now they admit...
That, you know, the fatality rate is 0.66%, and that's probably an upper bound.
So this is not a fatal disease.
They act like this is the bubonic plague.
But it's rational for them to do this.
I don't blame the media.
They're just maximizing profit.
Of course, they have an extreme bias against this administration, so it's perfect.
They can simultaneously destroy the economy and they can blame all the damage as they will.
And currently, I'm sure they're doing this.
I haven't paid attention, but I'm sure they're blaming it on the administration.
Well, it's almost getting to the point where people should use them as a negative indicator.
You know, I hate to say that, but why is 100 percent of the coverage about, you know, how how we're going to have shortages at hospitals?
We're going to have shortages, by the way.
It's always, we're going to have this problem.
If we don't, you know, implement these draconian policies, we're all going to end up in the ER. And the ERs are going to be understaffed.
Right?
I mean, that's the message that you're getting.
You better go along with this.
You better, you know, not even question these authoritarian policies because you're an enemy of the state.
I mean, I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.
It's really scary.
I know.
Isn't that one of the frightening things that...
As members of the Anglosphere, I think you Americans and we British have congratulated ourselves on being much more reasonable than, say, countries like Germany, which created Nazism, like Russia, which had the Soviet Union.
We've always looked at the more hot-headed races or those geared towards tyranny and felt superior to them.
But if there's one thing we've learned from this experience is that Well, for example, I learned that the mayor of Los Angeles has closed down 25 miles of beaches and that people who go surfing are being fined.
This seems to be utter madness and a terrible overreaction and also actually counterproductive because it's stopping people taking exercise and probably leading people to be very frustrated.
Have you been surprised by what you've seen in your own country?
Yes, I have.
And they're doing the same thing in Florida, it sounds like.
It's horrendous.
And when does it end?
I mean, the other problem here is there's no exit strategy.
Even if you go along with this, and I don't, I don't buy this idea that we need to adopt these draconian policies.
Where's the exit strategy?
When will these public health officials be satisfied and let us go back to normal?
And I think it's going to be a long time if we keep relying on their misguided and maniacal focus on this ailment.
So are you familiar with the character of Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings?
No.
Okay.
Well, Wormtongue is this grisly agent of evil who smooth talks the king into really bad, bad policy.
And I think in this scenario, Dr.
Fauci is Wormtongue.
So how—and poor old Donald Trump is in his thrall because, of course, if he goes off message now, if he starts changing his tack and ignoring the advice given to him by worm-tongue Dr.
Fauci, he instantly opens himself to the charge, which the Democrats will be eager to pursue, of not doing enough to avert this terrible crisis.
So if you were Donald Trump, how would you get round this problem now?
Oh, that's a tough one.
You know, I would try to explain, and it's always hard to rely on rationality.
There were two approaches here.
One is this Chinese-style communist approach, which we seem to be, as you point out, enthusiastically adopting, right?
Yeah, it's liberal fascism.
It is.
It's total fascism.
I mean, you haven't seen this since Woodrow Wilson, basically, have you?
Well, that was one approach.
And as I said, it's been disheartening to see even so-called Republican conservatives enthusiastically adopting these authoritarian, communist, you know, that approach.
The other was a more measured approach, as in South Korea.
And by the way, relying on individuals to adapt and organizations to adapt, which they were doing.
Jim, we were doing this.
We were all enthusiastically, voluntarily adopting social distancing and all the ramifications of that, which have been enormous.
You know, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that there's value in...
Look, I've been practicing social distancing all my life.
I'm not too crazy about being around people, so this doesn't bother me very much, but most normal people, not academics, We like to be around people.
They like to go to bars and restaurants.
So we've totally eliminated that and ignored that and adopted this Chinese-style communist authoritarian shutdown approach instead of relying on individuals and organizations to do the right thing.
And that would have been the American approach.
That would have been the approach that's consistent with American values that we have.
Yes, we're responsible.
And I think you cannot say, and this is why I applaud, you know, Trump and even the folks on Fox News who I think are misguided.
They're trying to be responsible, Jim.
They want to do the right thing.
They're patriotic.
But they're following the wrong plan.
They're following this Stalinistic authoritarian plan, and they should have developed a uniquely American plan.
Now, do you think that Trump can explain that to Americans?
I don't know.
That's the problem, yeah.
Yeah, I don't think that the average American is sophisticated enough to have it explained to them that way or Maybe.
I don't know.
I'm not a politician.
You said that, but actually, as you've pointed out, the media has focused purely on the disease aspect and not on the, this will hit you hard in your pocket, this will destroy your livelihood, this will...
Maybe the media should start making the case for that.
Well, that's why I say the most evil agent here is not Dr.
Fauci.
He's not evil.
He's just single-minded.
You can't blame a public health official for maximizing a single objective function.
That's all he knows.
That's all he's been trained to do, as you can see in his article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which just came out.
I don't blame him.
I don't blame our president.
I blame the media.
The media has been...
I've never seen a more irresponsible...
And it's just incredible.
Because what they're doing, Jim, is even worse than what you said.
What they're doing, in addition to focusing all of their attention on the disease and the spread of the disease, and as you pointed out, searching for the People who normally look like these outliers, right?
That's kind of what you're looking for.
Looking for these outliers of young people who get it rather than...
The things we know are that people who get this disease and are more likely to die from it are older people who have a lot of risk factors that would probably die of something else anyway, right?
Yes.
But what they're doing is worse than that because they are completely ignoring the suffering that's gone on the last three weeks.
The people who've been laid off, the business owners who've had their property stolen from them, In a heartbeat, by the way, no due process, just in the name of public health, entrepreneurs who've worked all their lives have had their property and their capital and their establishments stolen from them.
And do you see stories about that in the media?
Do you see stories?
No, I don't.
Suicides?
Do you see stories about the consequences of these draconian policies?
I don't.
I mean, maybe they're out there somewhere, but I don't see them.
Do you get any sense?
I must say, Don, talking to you, you're the kind of professor I'd like my kids to have.
And I rather fear that you are the exception in academia.
Am I right that most professors in social sciences are probably saying, yeah, more shutdown now, bigger government?
I think a lot of people are saying that I post some of my stuff on Facebook and I've gotten some very nasty replies.
Oh, have you?
Oh, tell me.
Tell me.
What have you had?
Well, the kind of reactions you just stated.
When our article appeared in the Jerusalem Post, we had several of my academic colleagues who Yeah, who said, you know, again, we need to do more.
We need to be more like the Chinese, apparently.
We need to adopt more authoritarian policies.
And what?
Be like the Chinese who gave us this virus in the first place because they didn't admit it?
That's another issue.
The timing of this is really...
But I'm not a...
You know, I don't know about that.
This is really strange.
No.
But...
Can I ask, Don, did lots of people say to you that you didn't value human life, that yours is the kind of heartless attitude that really we can do without and actually every human life is important and we should focus on that?
Well, that's insanity and I responded to that.
Yes, I did get that kind of comment.
So what's your response to that?
Well, first of all, we don't spend...
20 million dollars or whatever the money sum is to save a human life.
We just don't do that.
Economists have looked at the cost of saving a life and public policies don't justify that.
I mean, you may think, you know, it's politically correct to say that every life is precious, but we don't implement policies that Well, I suppose the obvious example would be there are many, many road deaths a year.
But if we acted on that, if we wanted to reduce that number to zero, then we'd probably have a regulation which said that no vehicle could travel faster than five miles an hour.
And yeah, that would have the effect of cutting down deaths, but it would also be fatal to the road-based economy, wouldn't it?
Well, you know, what we teach in economics is the importance of trade-offs and decision-making.
Yes.
Yes, we could save lives by, I suppose, outlawing cigarettes, outlawing alcohol, as we tried in the past.
But there was a conscious decision that this was a bad policy.
And so, you know, in the case of prohibition, for example, right?
Right.
But yeah, I might get, I'll be honest with you, I may need to go into the Witness Protection Program after this interview.
I wanted to ask you about, more about, as an economist, tell us more about trade-offs, because I think a lot of people don't quite understand what this means.
Well, I mean, in considering the costs of imposing these draconian policies, we have to be honest about the consequences of imposing these policies, not just the direct consequences that we talked about before.
By the way, the other thing that needs to be mentioned that we didn't mention yet Is how dangerous this precedent is.
That now that we've established that when there's a pandemic, that it's okay to take away people's property and to shut down, and their liberties, of course, and shut down industries, this is going to continue to happen.
We've now set a precedent for that.
But, no, there's all kinds of trade-offs here.
Because what we haven't considered is where the revenue is going to come from to pay for the public services, right?
Including public health, by the way.
Dr.
Fauci's salary is funded by people who work in non-essential industries.
Well, there's one thing we can cut straight away then, rather usefully, I think.
If we cut Dr.
Fauci's salary, then maybe that would get us out of this mess.
Well, I don't want to demonize him.
He's just doing his job, which is to focus on single objective function.
And, you know, the problem is that policymakers are following his advice too much.
And he knows that his predictions are flawed.
As Professor Epstein has pointed out, the behavioral assumptions behind these models are horrendous.
They assume that individuals and organizations are not going to be able to adapt and innovate, and that doctors can't develop better treatments for this disease.
You saw how much resistance there was when Trump pointed out that there may be an effective treatment.
Yeah, chloroquine.
Yeah, well, and there are others out there that are trying to develop these things, which of course would further reduce the severity of the disease.
So it wouldn't be such a big deal.
Do you think that there is some element within the left which actually sees this crisis as an opportunity and actually has no interest in it ending anytime soon because they're advancing all their leftist objectives of bigger government?
Well, I'd rather not weigh in on that, but I'll tell you that the timing is pretty amazing.
It really is.
Three weeks ago, we had the strongest economy in the world.
As a result of this ridiculous, as we said in the article, this grand social experiment, we have destroyed the American economy.
We have destroyed it.
And I don't see the exit strategy here.
I really don't.
Are you getting any far support from any of your fellow academics?
Because, I mean, your piece really stood out, but surely there must be other people saying this stuff.
There are, and there are even some, you know, some economists are saying, listen, we have to be honest here.
There has to come a point...
Where we say, look, these policies are choking off economic growth.
And there are lots of unintended consequences.
I mentioned the one before, which I think of as very serious.
The fact that we're not developing drugs for other diseases, for example.
You know, that inflammation is slowing down because of this.
But there are lots of other unintended consequences that we're not even aware of yet.
Not to mention the suicide, not to mention domestic violence, not to mention the fact that people are going to lose respect for the law.
I mean, there's a possibility of civil unrest here.
Yes.
They're not going to stand for this.
Especially in states.
Well, this is the other dynamic that troubles me.
The media is trying to send out this message that we have to all engage in shared sacrifice.
I mean, that's the message I'm getting, is that if things are terrible in New York City, then they have to be terrible everywhere else in the country.
Yes.
And if they're not terrible, then we're not doing enough to contribute.
We're not sacrificing enough.
The American people have sacrificed a lot already.
30 million people out of work?
Entrepreneurs who've had their property stolen from them?
Businesses that may never come back?
I mean, what climate are they living on?
We've already...
Do you have any explanation for this?
For example of my own...
I mean, I'm not trying to whine about my sacrifices or my family's sacrifices, but because I'm lucky I have a job.
I really am lucky.
I consider myself lucky.
And my work, we've adapted.
We've adapted to this crisis.
But, you know, my family moved here for two reasons.
One, to be close to my wife's father, my father-in-law, who's in a nursing home and is in really, really bad condition before the crisis.
She can't visit her father.
My wife hasn't been able to visit her father for the last four weeks.
Number one, we came to this area Because this Phoenix has a charter school for autistic kids.
And we were able to get our son in this charter school.
That's gone for the whole rest of the semester.
So all of those autistic kids who really desperately need to be educated physically, not online.
They already do enough stuff online.
That's been eliminated.
We've sacrificed that.
So how do you quantify that?
How do you quantify that?
I don't know.
But that's just one example.
I mean, you know, the American people have already made enormous sacrifices.
And we're willing to make more.
We're willing to go along with some of these policies.
I think most of us would voluntarily, and we have changed our behavior.
But I think we're going down the wrong road, Jim.
I really do.
Tell me, have all US states adopted this kind of policy of competitive masochism, whereby they compete to see which can impose the most stringent rules?
Or have there been exceptions?
Have some states come out of this looking more reasonable?
Not all states have shut down, but it's growing.
I mean, Arizona...
I announced it several days ago.
I was joking with you before.
I think it should have been announced today because it's April Fool's Day.
Yes.
That would have been more appropriate.
But anyway, it was announced a couple of days ago and put into effect yesterday.
So which states have been the most kind of liberal or libertarian, let's say?
I haven't followed it, but I'm sure I know that there are states that haven't.
You'd have to ask somebody else.
I'm so impressed about what's happened in my own state.
And, you know, 20 deaths, and they shut down the state for a month.
During the height of the tourism...
That is shocking.
And yeah, no, I'm appalled by that.
Now, one of the reasons that this madness is happening, you explained in your piece, and you've brushed on it, but I'd like you to go into more detail.
You quote the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.
And I think you quote an extract or an idea that he explores in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
Is that right?
Tell us about the availability cascade, because I think this is really interesting.
Yeah, the availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, and it may start from media reports of a very minor event, this is according to Kahneman, and leads up to public panic and large-scale government action.
So he points out that on some occasions you've got a media story about a risk, Which is very attractive to some segments of the public.
The public becomes aroused and worried.
And this emotional reaction becomes a story in and of itself, which we've seen.
That leads to additional coverage in the media.
The media is trying to maximize profit here.
So their ratings go up when they cover this panic.
And they've got the numbers on, the Johns Hopkins numbers.
And that in turn, the fact that people are paying attention to it, And the coverage in the media, which is nonstop, even on Fox News, in turn produces greater concern and involvement.
And then he points out that when you have this availability cascade, you have what he calls availability entrepreneurs or individuals or organizations who work to ensure that there's a continuous flow of worrying news.
And then the danger is exaggerated by the media, and there's competition among media in terms of who can exaggerate it more.
Right?
So anyone who argues that The panic is unjustified, is ignored or, you know, marginalized.
Or worse, yeah, marginalized.
You know what?
The phenomenon you describe sounds very similar to Irving Janus' concept of groupthink.
And also, it sounds, presumably you're familiar with Janice and Groupthink.
It also sounds very familiar, reminds me rather, of what they were trying to do, but didn't quite succeed with the whole climate change thing.
Again, you had this this kind of availability cascade of hysteria, journalists ramping up the scare, cherry picking evidence to anything that showed the world was going to hell in a handcart because of so-called climate change.
They got bigged up in the media.
Politicians then responded to this, keen to show that they cared about this apparently grave problem.
And it seems as though the climate change scare narrative has temporarily been supplanted by this because it seems kind of more real and urgent.
I don't know why.
Well, it's also, you know, again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this has done wonders for the environment.
So the climate change people, the Green New Deal fanatics, they love this because it slowed down economic activity.
Yes.
I mean, and our energy industry is going under.
Thanks a lot, right?
I mean, you know, this is...
You know, this disease, though, is a lot better than climate change because it's tangible.
You know, you can see...
You can see bodies.
Yeah, and of course the media is always out there to glorify it and to show...
You know, they actually think it's their responsibility to do this.
So they may have...
Some of them may have good motives.
I mean, they think it's their responsibility to report what's actually happening at these...
You know, the worst places, right?
They're going to focus on that.
You mean Northern Italy?
Well, exactly.
Right.
Northern Italy.
And I have to say, Don, I got onto this story in January.
I saw this was coming.
I saw this coming for two reasons.
One, I have a friend who specializes in black swan viral events.
He'd fought...
The second reason I knew was because I'd heard the...
I have contacts in China, and they told me what was going on in Wuhan, and they told me that...
It was clear that many, many more people were dying than the Chinese admitted, and many more people have died, possibly as many as 10 times, maybe as many as 40 times.
And we know this, for example, from satellites, I think, have shown the kind of the chemical constitution of pyres burning in areas.
And they've been burning a sort of mysterious organic matter.
Well, I think we can guess what that mysterious organic matter is.
So I do take your point.
At the same time, I wonder, is this, I mean, there must be something wrong with this virus.
I mean, surely it's it's got to be worse than flu.
No.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not trying to imply that this is not a serious public health crisis.
But as I said, there were two ways of dealing it.
One is the authoritarian communistic approach, which has been enthusiastically adopted by our policymakers at all levels, it seems.
And the other is a more measured approach.
Like the one that South Korea adopted, which would rely on some, maybe even some mandatory aspects of it.
That's fine.
But not this complete economic shutdown and relying on individuals and organizations to adopt and be entrepreneurial and figure out ways to deal with the crisis.
By the way, the other thing that needs to be mentioned, since apparently our policymakers want to adopt this authoritarian model, is it's not even clear.
Everyone seems to have bought hook, line, and sinker that this social distancing is going to flatten the curve and that that's going to lead to the best outcome.
There is this alternative hypothesis, the herd immunity.
Hypothesis, which other countries have adopted, which doesn't lead to the kind of draconian policies that you find with the Chinese model, right?
You know, this idea that people are not going to develop an immunity to this disease unless we let it spread.
Sure.
Have you had it yet?
No.
No.
And I don't even know anyone who has.
But the point is that other nations have adopted a more measured approach.
They haven't bought hook, line, and sinker into this, we've got to flatten the curve right away and adopt these draconian measures.
They've taken a more measured approach.
Yeah.
It's interesting, isn't it, that some of the countries that have taken a less draconian approach are the kind of countries that actually have tended towards authoritarianism.
I mean, the Asian countries tend to be much less liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word than we in the West.
You know, you think of Singapore with its draconian codes about not putting chewing...
You get fined for dropping chewing gum and things like that.
And yet these countries, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, have been much more, much less oppressive.
Tell me a bit about the South Korean policy.
What have they done there?
Well, the South Korean policy is they have adopted some, you know, they have shut down, they have had shutdowns.
But they've been limited.
And the most important thing about South Korea is they have massive testing.
So both Rob Sauer and I argue that we should address this issue on the supply side.
We should increase production of hospital space, ventilators, test kits, and of course engage in massive testing.
And the problem is, and this gets back to the government failure problem, the CDC wanted monopoly on the tests.
You may have heard.
Right.
That doesn't surprise me.
They restricted the development of tests, and testing was only available at certain restricted sites.
Now, one thing that Trump has done that's really great is involve the private sector.
See, this is what I mean about flexibility.
Dr.
Fauci's not going to come up with this because he doesn't know anything about it.
But Trump decided to get the private sector involved in the production of things that are needed to treat patients and for testing.
And that is going to lead, as you know, it's already happened, to a substantial increase in the number of people who are tested.
We also have now, because of Trump, fast approval of drugs that are working and eliminating some of the bureaucratic restrictions.
That would, you know, affect our response to the virus.
So, you know, we have to do all of those things.
And we do need better data.
I'm not arguing that, you know, we don't need to collect more data.
We do.
We need better data.
And we need to, you know, pay for that if we have to pay for it.
But we don't need to shut down the economy.
And treat every single part of the country as if it's a mass unit inside New York City.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm with you.
I've already had the coronavirus.
I haven't had the antibodies test, but I'm 99% sure I certainly had all the symptoms.
And I must say, when you've had it, you feel very strongly that you ought to be allowed to go out into the world and get the economy going then, and also to help people.
I mean, we've got all manner of...
Of unintended consequences of this close down.
For example, what about old people's homes where they can no longer get their visitors because obviously they're terrified of the old people being infected.
But if there was an efficient antibodies test, those of us who have a degree of immunity could go out there, get the economy moving again.
Well, that's another issue.
But if you look at the numbers, the numbers are not very high.
The number of people, you know, the number of people, the number of cases is what, about 200,000 in the country now?
Well, that's measured cases.
We just don't know.
I mean, the research by Oxford University suggests that as many as 50% of the UK population may already have had it, because lots of people, lots of people anecdotally are reporting that they've had the symptoms.
They had them as early as December.
I had mine in February.
We know that the under-20s are often asymptomatic.
I'm sure all my family have had it.
When I was peak infectious, I went up to Durham University to speak in a debate.
I then mingled at student parties reluctantly because I was feeling rotten.
I then drove back for four hours with my kids in the car with the windows closed.
I mean, if they weren't infected by me when I was peak infectious, I really don't know how they could have been infected.
I mean, I just suspect that it's far more widespread than we think, which is good news in a way, by the way.
It's extremely good news.
Of course, you don't hear any good news on the reports, the media reports.
No, it's just maniacally focused on flattening the curve and reporting all the deaths and all the bottlenecks that occur.
Even before we move down the road to socialized medicine, you can imagine what it would be like under that system.
So you're a public policy expert.
Tell us what we should be doing.
What would be your dream scenario?
Well, my dream scenario is the one I mentioned.
Yes, let's assume that there's some merit to this social distancing.
Let's continue with individuals and organizations voluntarily adopting this policy.
That's not going to change.
That's not going to change, but we need to, well, we need to, first of all, have an exit strategy.
Our politicians need to tell us when these shutdowns are going to end.
You know, it's too late, because in most of the country, the shutdowns have already begun, right?
And we need to hold their feet to the fire, and I'm not sure how we do that.
Because they've assumed these dictatorial powers.
But I am not in favor of these mandatory shutdowns.
There's no way to justify that.
And I can't advocate it.
So I think we should ease up on that.
You know, spend money where we need to and target our resources to those areas that are most affected by this and deal with the, you know, supply side issues.
And we argued that in the article.
We also need to make sure that everyone gets tested.
Right?
And to continue to spend more on developing those tests and eliminating any of the bureaucratic restrictions on the tests and allow entrepreneurs and firms to innovate to develop more effective tests.
Looks like that's happening already.
But we need, you know, the government has just You know, enacted this so-called stimulus.
What we need is for the government to get out of the way.
You know, what the government has done is shut down industries and created mass unemployment.
And, you know, we've talked for a long time, almost an hour now, about the negative consequences of that.
What we need is for the government to get out of the way.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, I was wondering whether...
I mean, I know this is a bit of a fantasy.
This is wishful thinking.
But what we've seen is the expansion of government.
What we've also seen is some refreshing examples of red tape being cut.
And I'll give you an example of this.
When it first emerged that chloroquine was looking like a potentially promising treatment...
For coronavirus.
As I understand it, the reason chloroquine works is not because it kills the virus, because after all, malaria isn't a virus, it's a parasite.
But the reason chloroquine works is it's a zinc ionophore.
Which means what it does is it enables the cells to absorb zinc and it seems that zinc is very effective in disrupting the messages sent out by the virus, particularly disrupting what's known as the cytokine storm.
Anyway...
President Trump was quick to pick up on this.
It had been tried in China, it had been tried in other parts of Asia successfully.
I think most private doctors in the US now, a key part of their protocol is a combination of zinc and chloroquine.
Trump leapt on this and instantly the medical establishment, which I think probably swings left in the US, certainly the public health system swings left, And what they did instantly was start making reasons why chloroquine couldn't be adopted because, A, they said it was used for other diseases and they needed to be used for that, not for this one.
And another one was that it hadn't been, it wasn't permissible for it to be used for a non-malaria problem.
And President Trump cut through that red tape, didn't he?
He did, and I mentioned that.
He false-trapped it.
And we're seeing the results of that.
Well, you asked for our recommendations.
First of all, there has to be an exit strategy.
We need to hear an exit strategy.
I don't want to hear from Dr.
Fauci or the public health officials, again, about, you know, because they don't know how to formulate an exit strategy.
Absolutely.
No, they don't.
It's not their game, is it?
It's not their area of expertise.
I love that phrase you use.
I'm going to keep using it.
Single objective function.
That's all that these kind of public health experts and epidemiologists and so on.
That's all they care about.
Their single objective function.
They're incapable of thinking about the bigger picture.
And God bless them.
They don't know how to formulate an exit strategy.
They don't even understand the consequences of what they're proposing.
Frankly.
They don't understand the economic, the psychological, and the sociological implications of shutting down.
I mean, they kind of poo-poo it, right?
They act like they're doing us a favor, for Christ's sake, this guy.
Well, maybe we'll lift it.
You know, maybe we can lift this.
Maybe a month from now.
Yeah, who died and left this guy?
I mean, where does this power come from?
I mean, it's incredible.
So, no, I would say to President Trump, We need you to formulate an exit strategy, and Professor Sauer and I believe that the most important steps to take to facilitate that exit strategy would be increased production of hospital space,
if needed, ventilators, test kits, massive testing, And all four of those things have already involved the private sector.
So I give the president and his administration a lot of credit for at least having the flexibility to get the private sector involved in the production of the ventilators, the test kits, massive testing and test procedures, and in the production of hospital space even.
You saw that Franklin Graham and his...
Organization has been involved in that and making sure that drugs are approved quickly that can effectively treat this disease, which by the way, I keep emphasizing this, you know, we know that the fatality rate is extremely, extremely low and we're acting as the bubonic plague.
So that's what I would propose.
But absolutely, immediately ending these mandatory lockdowns.
Yes.
I think you'll probably agree that this is not something one normally needs to tell President Trump, but I think he needs to grow a pair, doesn't he?
I think he needs to find it within himself to overrule all those siren voices who are urging him towards caution because reasons.
And he has to get the economy back going, get the world back to work, by example.
We have no civil society without a thriving economy.
We have no revenue to fund public services without a thriving economy.
So what we need from our president is an exit strategy.
What is the exit strategy?
And how do we get the economy moving again?
And we've heard enough from the public health officials We know that their models are imprecise, and they even admit that they're imprecise, and they even admit that they want us to overreact.
And we shouldn't be formulating our public policies strictly on the basis of advice from public health officials.
Yes.
Just finally, before we go, imagine if I were one of your more obtuse undergraduates and I came into your class and I said to you, I think that people's lives are more important than the economy.
How would you explain to me that the economy was actually sorta kinda important?
Well, you wouldn't explain that.
I mean, people are learning.
I mean, one of the unintended consequences here may be that our young people are learning the value of freedom and liberty.
Think of how many restrictions there are on what people can do.
I got up this morning, and because our governor had declared some kind of emergency shutdown, I could not go into my workout facility in my own apartment that I paid for.
I paid for this.
This is a service that I paid for, and I cannot consume that service.
And a lot of our young people have taken liberty for granted.
And now they understand that the government can wake up one day without any due process, which I talked about, which Robbie and I talked about in our article.
There was no informed consent.
They didn't even ask us if we're willing to give up our liberty.
They took it away from us.
They're taking it away from us right now as we speak.
We can't go to events.
We can't consume certain products or services.
We cannot do it.
We would be violating the law.
And I think young people are very quickly learning that these liberties are not very precious.
Right?
I mean, I think they're learning a lot sooner than they may realize how important Liberty is.
And having personal freedom and being able to interact with other people.
That's been taken away from them.
It's now a crime, by the way.
To work out a sin, for example.
It's a crime.
Well, from your lips to God's ear, I hope you're right.
I hope that this does see a resurgence in people understanding what liberty really means, because I very much fear that we're heading towards a very bad place.
And I just hope that people read your article and listen to what you've had to say today.
I think your case is very compelling, and I agree with it totally.
So thank you, Don.
Professor Don Siegel for being on the Delling Pod and I hope to speak to you again in happier times.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Thanks everyone for listening to the DellingPod.
Don't forget, if you can help me support me on Patreon or by buying a special friend badge, you'll find the details at the Ricochet website.
Also at my own website, DellingPoleWorld.com.
That's D-E-L-I-N-G-P-O-L-E World.com.
Thanks very much and be happy everybody.
Enjoy your enforced solitude.
Bye!
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