Fight the pandemic with better public policies

It’s become increasingly clear that President Donald Trump and much of the Republican leadership have behaved irresponsibly in failing to take basic precautions against COVID-19. Less commonly understood is how even a “thinking man’s approach” can lead to a kind of recklessness. Therein lies a lesson: Fighting this pandemic requires better policies, as education alone is unlikely towork.

The sad truth is that even if each individual’s choice is rational, it can lead the collective to some undesirable places.

Consider a person such as myself. I have no reason to believe I’ve been infected, and have had two negative test results following some travel. I am also aware that many COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, meaning I might have caughtC OVID-19 and not known. Since I’ve had some lengthy trips (with distancing), andmy household is small to begin with, I could have been carrying the virus without infecting others close tome.

The more time passes, the more I wonder if I have, in fact, contracted an asymptomatic version of COVID-19. The chance of thatwas quite small in February, but as each month passes it becomes modestly more likely. That realization could easily nudge many people into taking just a bit more risk.

Another train of thought considers the possibility of having a preexisting protective immune response, perhaps from T-cells. Experts are not sure of the likelihood or magnitude of this effect, but some have suggested that asmany as one-third of Americans may have some built-in protection.

Again, as the months pass, it’s rational for me to upgrade the probability that I have such a protective immune response. With the passage of time, Iwill feel more protected than I used to.

The basic reasoning is straightforward: Since I haven’t caught a bad form of it by now, I must be relatively safe. Many Americans may ormay not grasp the finer points of the immunology and the Bayesian statistical reasoning, but that is a very commonsense kind of response.

And so such people will take more risk — to the detriment of the broader community. Yet it is hard to say those individuals should feel guilty, as they don’t seem to have had the virus themselves, nor have they seen any concrete signs of having transmitted it to anyone else. Shaming them is thus unlikely to succeed, and in fact it might alienate them and turn them against public-health measures more generally.

It is missing the point to call these people stupid. In fact they are the opposite, as they are willing to change their conduct in response to observed evidence. This is rational behavior, but it is not an ideal quality to have in the citizenry during a pandemic of this kind. Preferable would be amix of innate fear and an anti-virus, pro-social-norm dogmatism.

Unfortunately, the problem gets worse. You might think all the recent data showing cases rising in many U.S. states and parts of Europe would make people more cautious. But sometimes such reports have the opposite effect. If the risk is going to be around for a long time, many people infer — rationally, fromtheir individual point of view— that they need to get used to it.

For purposes of contrast, assume that I knew the pandemic would be over within aweek, and I just had to stay inside my home for that long. Thatwould be psychologically bearable because therewould be a clear end in sight. In economic terms, I would engage in “intertemporal substitution,” meaning that Iwould save upmy socializing until after the virus had cleared.

But nowit seems that COVID-19 risk will be here throughout the winter, possibly at a heightened level. And with every new report of vaccine delays, the despair grows. Alot of people are going to respond to this state of affairs not by isolating themselves but by accepting more risk.

One of theworst things about not controlling the virus early is that it has created a class of citizens who are deciding to adapt to COVID-19 rather than avoid it. Theway forward is through better coordinated public policy— including testing and tracing, prevention measures and speedy health-care responses— rather than labeling individual Americans as stupid or misguided.