Coronavirus and the Failure of Big Government, Part V

January 16, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

I wrote a four-part series last year about coronavirus and big government (here, here, here, and here), so it goes without saying that the first two lines of this tweet deserve some sort of accuracy award for hitting the nail on the head.

But the sentiment expressed in the last line of the tweet also deserves some sort of award.

I don’t know if the award should be for false hope or naive expectation, but I am sadly confident that everything will stay the same. Or perhaps get even worse.

Simply stated, instead of the deregulation that’s needed, here are some more likely outcomes.

• The World Health Organization will get rewarded with a bigger budget and more power, notwithstanding its failures.
• The Centers for Disease Control will get rewarded with a bigger budget and more power, notwithstanding its failures.
• The Food and Drug Administration will get rewarded with a bigger budget and more power, notwithstanding its failures.

Why am I so pessimistic? Because I understand “public choice,” which is the application of micro-economic analysis (things like incentives) to the behavior of politicians and bureaucrats. In other words, people in Washington act in ways to advance their own interests.

Just in case all this isn’t clear, here are a few headlines and tweets to drive the point home.

We’ll start with an understatement.

And here are examples of that failure.

Starting with a column in the Wall Street Journal.

And this tweet.

FDA officials wanted to engage private sector in February and were told to stand down. For many weeks, admin didn't get private sector involved as virus spread. It's a mistake now seen by many in the administration as one of the biggest response flaws. https://t.co/MxFXCFe3we https://t.co/JlmVmkGhqf

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 17, 2020

There are many more headlines that tell tragic stories.

From the Houston Chronicle.

Here’s a very sad and succinct headline.

Government intervention also hurt in little ways.

This tweet tells us the lesson we should learn.

"The fact that these inflexible regulations can easily be discarded in times of crisis demonstrates the absurdity of those policies in the first place. If throwing out the regulations leads to good outcomes now, they should stay off the books later." https://t.co/AyUSqx3zfF

— The FGA (@TheFGA) April 12, 2020

As does this tweet as well.

This should be a major takeaway from the U.S.’s wasted February. Centralized regulation was perhaps the biggest problem. https://t.co/yz18GM0BD0

— Ben Thompson (@benthompson) April 15, 2020

One of Trump’s great failures was protectionism.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that trade barriers also hurt the fight against the pandemic.

And here’s a tweet about the FDA’s bungling.

Bottlenecks are caused by rigidity of FDA approved protocol for testing.

It says use kits for RNA extraction sold by two specific firms that can’t keep up. Labs give up.

Meanwhile academics show that you you can skip the RNA extraction step. No matter. Not approved.

— Paul Romer (@paulmromer) April 11, 2020

Don’t forget that bureaucracy and big government also caused problems in other nations.

Such as the United Kingdom.

Public Health England—in response to The Sun—have confirmed by omission that they:

1. Rebuffed help from commercial labs;
2. Did not pursue a mass testing strategy.
3. Are too incompetent to be put in charge of a mass testing strategy.

Here’s what we know pic.twitter.com/ujbBvfGTRi

— Matthew Lesh (@matthewlesh) April 21, 2020

Sounds like the bureaucrats in the U.K. want to compete with the FDA and CDC for some sort of incompetence award.

NEW | "If Public Health England refuses to cut through the red tape and allow testing to take place in facilities outside of its direct control extremely soon, countless lives will be needlessly lost. Let’s get on with it.” – @JasonReed624 https://t.co/fJt2SaN3Yg

— Free Market Conservatives (@FMConservatives) April 9, 2020

There was a better response in Germany because the private sector played a much bigger role.

And the German approach was better than the United States as well.

One secret of Germany’s success in averting COVID deaths was that it had no limits on private testing — the opposite of what our @US_FDA did. https://t.co/rA8pwNSYd7 @businessinsider

— Dean Clancy (@DeanClancy) April 5, 2020

Needless to say, the WHO also deserves some negative attention.

Indeed, it should come with this warning label.

And we’ll close by shifting back to the failure of government in the United States.

This column from the New York Times captures the real lesson of the past 12 months.

P.S. At the risk of outing myself as a libertarian, this image tells us everything we need to know. As does this collection of cartoons.