Tweeted South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, roughly quoting her recent CPAC speech and quoted in a Philip Bump WaPo column with the aggressive headline "Kristi Noem leans into her people-can-choose-to-die-if-they-want-to 2024 messaging."
Here's the text of the column that might support the headline:
What’s fascinating about this argument is that it’s actually immune to a seemingly challenging response — um, but a lot of people died — using a straightforward rhetorical trick: pinning those deaths on the personal choices of the dead.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean people chose to die! People individually assessed risk and chose which precautions to take, but they were hoping not to die, I think we can presume. A lot of people died — it's true — but does Bump know how the deaths correlated to the choices people made?
For example, I almost never wore a mask because I didn't like mask-wearing, but what I did instead was avoid going places where I was close enough to other people to need a mask. I kept my distance. That was an individual choice, and I won't say that's why I never got Covid (or never had any condition that caused me to get tested for Covid). I don't know!
Bump acknowledges that Noem's position is "a natural extension of a conservative small-government philosophy: If people want to put themselves at risk from the virus, who are we to stop them?" It's not that people want risk. It's that people are balancing risk against freedom. The question is just whether to let people do their own balancing. Noem's "leaning" is just the conventional conservative preference for individual choice. Bump leans in the conventional progressive direction, allocating more choices to government.
You probably know which way you lean, so it's an old topic, perhaps too dull to write a column about. To disguise the dullness, they cobbled together the adjective "people-can-choose-to-die-if-they-want-to."
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13 comments:
Mike writes:
"It is maddening to see such purposeful density from Bump. Progressives believe we can choose our gender even if we haven’t seen puberty yet. They believe you should be free to choose a life subsidized by tax dollars if work is too challenging. They believe a woman should be able to change her mind and end a pregnancy at any point up to and including the moment a “fetus” crowns. But deciding whether or not a bad flu outbreak warrants wearing a mask or not or working or not is just too fucking important to leave to free adults to choose. Got it!"
William writes:
"If today is an average day, tens of millions of Americans will walk
someplace for some reason, and about 17 of them will be hit by a car and
killed. (Source: Governors Highway Safety Administration [the "Click It
or Ticket" people], 6,721 pedestrian traffic deaths in 2020.) Did those
seventeen people "choose to die"? The entire concept is ludicrous, yet
entirely indicative of the way progressives try to abuse the language to
accomplish policy objectives."
LA_Bob writes:
"For example, I almost never wore a mask because I didn't like mask-wearing, but what I did instead was avoid going places where I was close enough to other people to need a mask. I kept my distance. That was an individual choice, and I won't say that's why I never got Covid (or never had any condition that caused me to get tested for Covid). I don't know!"
The most reasonable position anyone can take. We really don't know why one person gets and dies from COVID and another does not. We presume many, many things. It's true old, fat people mostly suffer the worst fates, but not all do, and not all young, slender people are spared. The potential for randomness in the data is enormous, and this fact confounds the nonsense of state-by-state comparisons.
For example, there is evidence -- not proof -- that catching a cold (a "rhinovirus", for example) just ahead of coronavirus protects against infection. How do you model something like that? How many other virus-to-virus interactions might there be? How many other confounders are there we have not even imagined?
Bump neatly ignored North Dakota in his comparison. North Dakota had restrictions and "did" but slightly better than South Dakota. What does that say about the value of restrictions? What does it say about the value of restrictions anywhere besides the Dakotas?
Scanning the comments to the WaPo article leaves me astonished so many people believe without reservation that government action can guarantee protection against the pandemic. Really? That's a lot of faith there.
And now there's evidence -- not proof -- the vaccines may be slowly failing. They appear to show reduced effectiveness over time and not that much time either.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccines-reasons-for-concern-part
Folks, this is life. We don't know it all, and we shouldn't pretend we do.
Owen writes:
"I like your analysis of Bump’s hit piece. I heartily disagree that freedom isn’t worth talking about, at length. I want to be free to do that!
"In fact we all know —here, let me speak for everybody!— that Bump’s not interested in getting at the facts of the SD case; how infection and mortality might correlate with other behaviors like self-isolation, social distancing, “podding” (horrible neologism), masking/not masking, and sheer chance. No, Bump is interested only in a drive-by smear of the SD Governor and by extension her audience, all of whom, we are invited to infer, are just as ignorant and cruel as she."
I respond:
Yes, this reminds me... it's not just balancing risk and freedom, it's also making individualized decisions about how you will deal with different risks. I was very risk averse, and yet I avoided mask wearing, because I could get distance. Some people stayed inside all the time. I went out a lot, but I chose my times and places so I could maintain distance. I know some people would have liked to require everyone to stay indoors at home, but I went out and did my usual sunrise run — no problem at all keeping far from anybody else.
Stephen writes:
“... people can choose to die....” More phony media messaging intending to incite division by prolonging an ideological battle where critical thinking should have carried the day. “Choose to die?” Really? What are the odds, nimrod?
My son and his wife in their 30s recently recovered from Covid after non-life threatening discomfort. They live in Africa without sophisticated medical support. In fact, it seems evident by now that aside from false “reporting” by the media, erroneous — for one reason or another — data from the medical community and hysterical Democrat politicking, this is the norm.
Thousands of elderly people died, thousands of businesses went under and millions, particularly children, suffered unnecessarily because much of the Covid response was dictated by political hacks and incompetents cheered on by the leftmedia rather than by a calculated assessment of facts and probabilities.
And it continues.
Stephen writes:
Your treatment of Bump on Noem leaves out what I take to be his most important point.
"Except, of course, that a lot of people killed in the resulting car accidents might be dying from the personal decisions of others, just as many of those infected with the coronavirus in her state were probably infected while the pandemic was raging despite their own efforts not to be."
This point is repeated at the end of the article, where Bump points out that Noem's speech ignores effects on third persons.
The result of your treatment is to suggest that people who decide not to take covid precautions are only endangering themselves and have no impact on the freedom of others. But that's obviously not the case. If I refuse to wear a mask in public places or to observe social distancing during a pandemic, I am creating risks for others, as well as for myself. And even in libertarian philosophies, regulation is appropriate to prevent risks of harms to third persons, no? Put another way, doesn't Noem's approach privilege the right to be reckless, even if recklessness results in harm to others?
So why edit that point out?
I left it out because I can't copy the whole article and I chose to focus on the inflammatory aspect of the headline, which is what felt bloggable to me. I think the argument about harming bystanders is well known.
Alex writes:
"You wrote, "but does Bump know how the deaths correlated to the choices people made?" I'm willing to bet that he wants to avoid that very discussion, because the reality is that COVID deaths correlate with long-term lifestyle choices, such as obesity, smoking, etc., and not wearing a mask. They also correlate with the choices politicians made, specifically choices regarding how to handle the elderly and others in assisted living who were ill, along with the choice to ban Ivermectin and HCQ. Mask mandates quickly became a distraction from the continued incompetence of many state and local governments, and a means for leftwing Karens and bureaucrats to virtue signal."
Jeffrey writes:
Here are the states’ C-19 death rates, ranked from high to low. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/
And here are the state’s case counts over time. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states
There are strong regional correlations (plains states look like plains states, southeast like southeast, etc.), and seasonal correlations. But there are no correlations with mandates. For example, California, with extensive mandates, has had a 30% higher death rate than Idaho, with much more relaxed mandates, which were scarcely enforced.
It is also worth noting that the entire US peaked over about a three-week period, which is another argument against the effectiveness of mandates.
Philip Bump has engaged in textbook cherry picking. Whether through unconscious confirmation bias, or intentional propagandizing, who knows?
Bart writes:
The key thing to understand is that the High Plains column of states -- ND to OK -- all of which have similarly smallish populations, demonstrated no statistically significant difference for infection, morbidity, hospitalization, or mortality.
Kansas, where I live, has a control-and-mandate-happy Democrat governor who issued nearly countless executive orders even when quite a few counties had ZERO infections. The net result was no different than South Dakota, where most of the cases were amongst immigrant meat plant workers not uncommonly living 20 to a house.
There was, however, a statistically-significant difference in the number of businesses wiped out and people unemployed, Kansas being the worst.
Temujin writes:
"I viewed this entire 'Noem speaks out' moment as Kristi huddling up with her advisors and noting that she went from strong, independent, conservative, female leading flavor of the day for Conservatives, to running a distant third as favorite to Trump and DeSantis. She needed to try to squeeze herself back in between Trump and DeSantis for a number 2 slot among Republican- or better put- Conservative hopefuls. DeSantis did have a shut down here in Florida, albeit a brief one. And we did have deaths here, but, we are also the 3rd most populous state. And a state filled with seniors. DeSantis took the then unorthodox move of protecting the nursing homes and senior facilities first- locking them down first. No one else in the nation was doing that when he did it. And he did it based on the readily available data at the time. The same data that Emmy winning Governor Cuomo ignored.
"Noem may have her day, but it may come down the road. In the meantime, she's still working on position and that is what this is about. Philip Bump is simply a useful tool in this."
John writes:
Pandemic risk balancing was the subject of a recent EconTalk podcast episode your readers might like to listen to. EconTalk is a fascinating podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of the Hoover Institute and president-designate of Shalem College in Isreal.
https://www.econtalk.org/don-boudreaux-on-the-pandemic/
Covid was a threat, without question, but one that individuals were in a position to assess the risk of it and mitigate their exposure like you did (and I did).
Should the government make these decisions (California) or should individuals (South Dakota). I believe individuals should make these risk assessment decisions, not the government.
Description of the episode:
"Economist Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talked about the pandemic with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Boudreaux argues that a perfect storm of factors created a huge overreaction, including unnecessary lockdowns that accomplished little at a very high cost in physical and emotional health. Instead, Boudreaux argues, we should have focused attention on the population most at risk of dying from COVID--the elderly and especially the elderly with co-morbidities. The conversation includes a discussion of externalities and the insights of Ronald Coase applied to the policies during the pandemic"
Gospace writes:
Ah, another discussion of the dreaded covid. Sounds like you, Ann, have managed to avoid it. Don't know if you've had any of the vaccines from this post- I haven't.
And I also haven't contracted the deadly covid. And I didn't socially distance. Didn't avoid people.And was one of the last to succumb to mask wearing. And- during the entire time they were required- never covered my nose as it interferes with breathing.Adn, I know I've been exposed. My wife had it in February 2020 when the "experts" told us it wasn't yet here. It was. Tests on stored samples show it in the USA back to November 2019. She had all the symptoms including the loss of taste and smell. Now I know medical experts will tell you that's also a flu symptom. Not a single person of the more than 100 I've mentioned this to have ever in their life lost taste and smell senses from the flu. Smell, yes, when their sinuses were so fouled with mucus they could barely breathe, but not both. My youngest was diagnosed with it within a day or two after starting the spring break that lasted the rest of the school year. Loss of taste and smell, that was it. And, he didn't mask in the house where we were! And another son later on in the summer who picked it up at work. The signature loss of taste and smell- and an overnight stay in the hospital with another common symptom at the time. When he stood up wearing the pulse oximeter in the ER the exertion caused his O2 level to drop like a rock. 25 minutes to the ER from our house. Drove him there and back, unmasked. Definite close exposure as defined by the CDC. Still didn't get it. Of course, we also know from the Diamond Princess and USS Theodore Roosevelt debacle that 30%+ of exposed never get it. So how am I sure I haven't had it? Haven't been one of those asymptomatic carriers? 7 consecutive blood donations with no antibodies. And last week I had to be swabbed because I haven't been vaccinated and had a pulmonary function appointment. Negative.
So am I being careless? Living dangerously? Or properly evaluating my risks? You took reactive actions to avoid risk. Avoided crowds, Social distanced. "Properly" masked when you had to be near others. I took proactive measures. Added quercetin to my daily supplement regimen. Already taking Vitamin D. Nasal rinse daily- with xylitol in the rinse, with it's antibacterial and antiviral properties. (recently added erythritol also for same reason). Gargle every night with xylitol and now that and the erythritol. My old multivitamin didn't have zinc, changed to one with the MDR.
Both your reactive and my proactive measures have so far worked. Difference is- mine allow me to continue living a normal life without fear. I will continue to not get the vaccine. At age 66, and in good health, I'm of the opinion that injecting mRNA into the body to produce the spike protein, a known pathogen, both long and short term is far more dangerous to me than the effects I'll suffer if I actually get it. That one of my coworkers had a heart attack 2 weeks after the 2nd shot and another has been having heart palpitations since the first (he's not gone in for the 2nd) I'm certain is purely coincidental. (Do I really need to add a sarcasm tag?)
Then there's that 30% that never get dreaded covid number- presumably from prior exposure to a similar virus giving the body the tools to fight it off. I've spent time in Guam, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and other places where corona type viruses are more prevalent than here in the USA. Based on my known exposures to the dreaded covid, there's a significantly high chance I'm one of those.
Iain writes:
I spent most of my career as a risk manager. The plague brought out the crappy risk manager in a lot of folks, from senior policy makers to average people. And yet, people did choose how to manage their own risk, as they always do.
The way to manage just about any risk is to take a different one. Risk management is all about tolerances. If you don't like the low-probability high-severity risk of a plane crash, you are likely instead to take the comparatively high-probability low-severity risk of a car crash. Do you want to be invested in stocks or bonds or some of each and in what proportion? That's a classic risk management question, and completely dependent on your risk tolerance. People make those kinds of decisions every day: cross at the crosswalk or somewhere else; ride a bike with a helmet or without... Some people may be better risk managers than others, but the risks they choose to take depend on their own risk tolerances and their own perception of the risks. Masking or not masking is no different.
A major and common risk management failure is to ignore (or worse, not even look for) the alternative risks you take when you seek to avoid any given risk. Avoiding meat may lower your cholesterol, but it may shortchange you on protein. Keeping all your money in the mattress avoids stock market risk, but it also avoids stock market gains, and offers no hedge against inflation.
A problem with the plague was that it was, or seemed to be, an out-of-the-normal pattern risk for most people. Its frequency and severity were initially not well understood. This led an awful lot of people to focus on the risks of COVID but to completely lose sight of all other risks.
Science is messy (though the self-anointed Party of ScienceTM would have us believe otherwise), and as those studying the risks debated emerging information, emotion and politics began to affect people's judgment at least as much as the evolving knowledge did. Emotion and politics, in turn, affected some people's risk tolerances more than others'. Many public policy makers, not skilled in risk management beyond the risks to their own careers, catered to one noisy group or another, but the majority did seem to ignore all non-COVID risks. KristiNoem was not one of those people: she actually seems to have considered non-COVID risks and costs.
Ultimately we wound up with the unplanned natural experiment of a variety of policy prescriptions around the country and the world. In time, if we can study results dispassionately and rationally, we may learn a lot. But if we ignore context and non-COVID risks, we'll squander much of that learning opportunity.
The kind of nonsense put forward by Bump and the WaPo is just that: nonsense. It's not analysis, it's not science, it's not thorough, it's not even honest. It's a tendentious political swipe at people Bump and the Post don't respect and don't trust to make their own decisions. It's one more unneeded example of smug elitists looking down their noses at the great unwashed who just aren't as good as they are. In the technical parlance of risk management, it's crap.
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