While the hysteria marches on here in Europe, an interesting economics article came out in a decent journal on the political economy of that mass hysteria. Their abstract:
In this article, we aim to develop a political economy of mass hysteria. Using the background of COVID-19, we study past mass hysteria. Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria. We argue that mass and digital media in connection with the state may have had adverse consequences during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting collective hysteria may have contributed to policy errors by governments not in line with health recommendations. While mass hysteria can occur in societies with a minimal state, we show that there exist certain self-corrective mechanisms and limits to the harm inflicted, such as sacrosanct private property rights. However, mass hysteria can be exacerbated and self-reinforcing when the negative information comes from an authoritative source, when the media are politicized, and social networks make the negative information omnipresent. We conclude that the negative long-term effects of mass hysteria are exacerbated by the size of the state.
The main claim I find interesting is that they think a large state makes the hysteria worse, with the essential idea being that a monopoly provider of authoritarian knowledge has more potential to lock its population into false beliefs without a clear mechanism to get out of that, which raises the question of whether one should deliberately split the information-provision role of the state into competing camps.
In the same week, a rapid response comment on a pro-lockdown editorial by the British Medical Journal took that journal to task for its morality, anti-scientific views, and cosying up to power. While I totally agree with that comment, I do find it rather brave of the BMJ editors to put such a scathing critique of themselves on their website. They are certainly displaying tolerance of dissenting opinions! The short letter by a retired GP that doesn’t pull any punches and that names many instances of covid-congestion effects is over the fold. Continue reading