Is there a point of prohibiting Christmas traveling?
Peter Singer on tradeoffs of lockdowns...
This article was originally published on 11/29/2020 for my informal email list. I’m re-posting some of my earlier newsletters here as a gradual process to shift to Substack.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was the busiest day at US airports since the pandemic began. TSA screened more than 1.07 million people at US airports on Thanksgiving eve. However, to put things in perspective, this number was still down 41% on the same Wednesday last year.
People seem to be very positive about the chance of a return to normal life starting in the summer of 2021, but Thanksgiving and Christmas both pose Covid super-spreader event risks. If so, the U.S. would have to return to tighter restrictions, possibly leading to weaker economic performance and more social “turmoil.”
(In)famous investor Bill Ackman went on TV a few days ago and said that more people will die in the next few months because of the relaxation given the optimistic news of vaccines.
Yes, the vaccines are hopeful, but herd immunity won’t happen soon (see chart at end of email about vaccination rates). I largely agree with his assessment. The enthusiasm for traveling will likely peak this winter holidays season, and this winter will be a dark winter not because people are all staying home and being lonely, but because the death tolls will continue to shoot up.
The federal government can come out with a strong mandate prohibiting Christmas traveling, but I seriously doubt they would because:
I chatted with Peter Singer again last week about the economic tradeoffs and justifications for lockdowns (see our earlier interview here). Singer thinks that the general question is too broad. There are different degrees of lockdowns – some have the goal of eliminating the virus – like South Australia went into an extremely stringent 6-day lockdown last week, but they only did that in hope to eliminate any small pockets of outbreaks. If the total elimination of the virus is a realistic goal, then going into lockdown may be worth the economic cost because you can fully return to normalcy after a short pain. That is very different from the US and Europe, where it’s clearly not a realistic goal anymore. The US can go back to lockdown, but you won’t go back to normalcy after it anyways, so the public and government are much more reluctant to do it again. The debates on economic trade-offs are more nuanced than what's being presented here, so if you're interested in learning more, please let me know.
The cases have already been going up for many weeks, and there's no intention from the government to federalize the decision making (definitely not under Trump, and even doubtful under Biden after January). No effective travel restrictions or lockdowns can be placed without a federal mandate and coordination.
Preventing people from celebrating Christmas?! That's a political suicide in America... It'd be interesting to observe whether Democrat governors would give any strong mandate on that front. I doubt they would do much beyond issuing some "recommendations" which are clearly losing credibility after scandals like California Gavin Newsom's violations of his own guidelines and such...