Libertarian pandemic

 "Libertarians in a pandemic" is a good essay by Jacob Grier expanding on many themes I've written about here, whether markets though imperfect might do a better job, or at least help on top of government. And if freedom might be better in a pandemic, where all the econ 101 market failures are present, just think how well markets might allocate, say toilet paper. 

There are libertarians in a pandemic, and it turns out they have some good ideas and insightful critiques.

Tests

Let's start with the testing snafu. Tests, of course, should be run by the government because there is a big externality. I want you to get tested so you don't give me the disease. How did the the government do, relative even to a free market? 

The American pandemic response was beset by government failure from the very beginning. In February of 2020, the most urgent priority in the United States was deploying COVID tests to identify cases, survey the extent of the virus’s spread, and attempt to contain it. Although the World Health Organization had already developed a working test, the Centers for Disease Control designed its own from scratch. The CDC test turned out to be unworkably flawed, reporting false positives even on distilled water.

Around the same time, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency. Ironically, one effect of this declaration was to forbid clinical labs from creating their own tests without first obtaining an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Bureaucratic hurdles — which included pointless requirements to send files by mail and to prove that the tests would not return false positives for MERS and the original SARS virus — slowed development. The early outbreak in Washington was uncovered in part by researchers simply defying the CDC to test samples without permission.

The net effect of the CDC’s and FDA’s decisions was to create a government monopoly on testing, leaving labs with a test that didn’t work and forbidden from producing their own alternatives. ...

Even now, the FDA stands in the way of rapid antigen testing that could help contain the spread of the virus. These tests are cheaper and faster than lab PCR tests and people can perform them at home. They’re also less sensitive than PCR tests, but they serve a different function. PCR tests are the gold standard for diagnosis, but antigen tests could catch cases when individuals are at their most infectious, often before symptoms occur. Unfortunately, FDA regulations currently require a medical consultation to use them, raising costs and eliminating the social benefits of widespread testing.

 My emphasis. FDA and CDC still don't get that their job is to stop the spread of a disease. 

. the government is doing worse than nothing about these tests. Not only has the government neglected to subsidize them, it has put up obstacles so citizens can’t pay for them. Regulations are actively denying individuals access to valuable information about their own bodies that would help them avoid unknowingly spreading the disease.

Epidemiologist Michael Mina is one of the leading advocates for getting government out of the way to deploy cheap, rapid at-home testing. “We must take account of what is before us and truly recognize the public health crisis we are in,” he recently urged the FDA and CDC. “We must support the public to legally test themselves, frequently, AT HOME.”

A libertarian would agree!

Would the market perfectly manage an externality? No. But by simply allowing us the basic right to know what's going on in our own bodies, we'd be doing a lot better than with government controls. 

Never needed regulations

Adapting to the pandemic entailed rapidly changing the way firms do business. In many instances, making necessary changes required waiving, repealing, or ignoring government regulations that stood in the way.

In the healthcare field, states responded by easing licensing requirements to allow medical personnel to practice across state lines and increase access to telehealth. 

Yes back in the day Medicare would not pay doctors to talk to you by zoom. 

In some states, ride-share companies expanded non-medical transportation and got into pharmaceutical delivery, thanks to waived regulations. The FDA relaxed enforcement of rules to speed the production of respiratory devices and personal protective equipment. The agency also allowed distillers to pivot from spirits to hand sanitizer, albeit with strict denaturing requirements that needlessly raised costs and reduced supply.

As indoor dining plummeted due to mandated closures and the risk of airborne transmission, the hospitality industry benefited immensely from cities allowing more use of outdoor spaces and expanding the legality of outdoor drinking.... Alcohol has been deregulated in ways that would have been unimaginable a year ago, with states tearing down barriers to home delivery and allowing bars and restaurants to serve cocktails to-go. ..

Which makes you think, 

All of it went to show how unnecessarily prohibitive the rules had been before COVID. 

... the pandemic has revealed how regulations often inhibit flexibility. In many cases — consulting our doctors over the internet, enjoying outdoor spaces, getting cocktails with our takeout — we’re simply better off without them.

Will they come back? Will we learn a general lesson about the nitwit regulations that strangle personal and economic life? Sadly, many regulations are there to prop up existing businesses and protect them from competition. The forces that brought them in the first place are still there, and I don't see a big deregulation ethic growing force in current politics of the right or left. Let's hope I'm wrong. 

Prisons are COVID Clusters. 

Lockdowns and Compensation

More Vaccines, Faster

Markets for Vaccines

Read the essay for good thoughts on all of these. 

A More Libertarian Pandemic

...Combatting the spread of infectious disease is a legitimate function of government under many libertarian conceptions, and the unprecedented scope of COVID justifies a lot of government activity that libertarians would find unreasonable in other circumstances.

Still, it’s worth contemplating what a more libertarian response to the pandemic would have looked like.

• We would have had more and better testing available during the earliest outbreaks when that would have helped slow the spread of the disease.
• We would have more and better testing now and the freedom to test ourselves at home, empowering us to discover when we are asymptomatic and contagious.
• We would have more vaccines, faster, available to more people.
• We would have smaller prison clusters, more people freed on compassionate release, and fewer of us imprisoned in the first place.

A lighter regulatory touch would allow affected businesses to adapt more effectively. Business owners and workers who suffered under shutdowns would have been compensated more justly, preventing permanent failures, while greater access to testing and vaccination would mitigate disruptions and help life get back to normal more quickly. Most importantly, fewer people would die.

These responses are not perfect, but then neither is relying on governments 

A gratuitous Trump insult follows, but I guess signaling that virtue is now required.