Category: reason

We all know freedom isn’t free, but its actual price has long been a mystery.

That’s no longer the case thanks to the work of three Australian researchers who have estimated out how much people are willing to pay for the sweet blessing of liberty by comparing changes in home prices and rents in and outside of areas affected by their country’s strictest pandemic lockdown regime.

Beginning in March 2020, the government of the Australian state of Victoria ordered businesses statewide to close and people to shelter in their homes except when engaging in a few permitted activities like receiving medical care or shopping for essential goods.

These restrictions were eased in June. But a second wave of COVID-19 cases in July saw the Victorian government impose another lockdown regime, this time with a crucial difference.

Everything inside the boundaries of Metropolitan Melbourne, the state’s largest city, was subject to draconian “Stage 4” restrictions that prohibited pretty much all social activity. People were even prevented from travelling more than five kilometers from their homes.

The areas of the state located outside this boundary—which public officials called the eyebrow-raising “Ring of Steel”—were subject to less severe restrictions that were also eased more quickly.

It wasn’t until November 2020 that areas inside and outside the Ring of Steel were both operating under the same public health restrictions.

In a paper uploaded to SSRN last week, Deakin University professors Chyi Lin Lee and Jian Liang, and Qiang Li of New South Wales University exploit the policy differences on either side of the Ring of Steel to tease out the monetary value people placed on not living under a COVID security state.

These researchers used a database of home sales and rental transactions to measures changes in home values and rents in suburban communities located within a few kilometers of the Ring of Steel boundary during the successive stages of Victoria’s lockdowns.

Focusing on home sales and rents in suburban communities just a few kilometers from the Ring of Steel, researchers said, helps them filter out price declines that would have come from a general fall in demand for dense urban living within municipal Melbourne during the pandemic.

During Victoria’s first March-to-June lockdown—when the whole state was subject to the same restrictions—these researchers found no statistically difference in the change in home prices and rents within 2.5 kilometers of the Ring of Steel boundary.

But during the second lockdown between July and November 2020—when the Ring of Steel was established—home sale prices within the boundary dropped by 1.8-3.1 percent when compared to home sales outside of it. Researchers found a similar divergence in rents.

This divergence in home sale values and rents grew to 6.3-7 percent from November 2020 to January 2021, when the Ring of Steel was lifted and public health restrictions were eased in both areas.

Liang, Lee, and Li argue that this reflects peoples’ continued worry that a harsh lockdown would be reimposed in the metropolitan Melbourne area.

“These findings indicate that the residents perceive that the area within the Ring of Steel faces a higher risk of lockdown restrictions,” they write. “The perception of lockdown risk drives demand from the area with a high lockdown risk to that with a low lockdown risk.”

Their paper notes that government officials repeatedly stressed the importance of Ring of Steel as a pandemic fighting measure, which they say contributed to the perceived fear that more lockdowns would be on the horizon.

Using this decline in rents, Liang, Lee, and Li estimate a weekly cost of public health restrictions within the Ring of Steel at $14 to $34 million. That figure, researchers note, is likely an underestimate given that areas outside Metropolitan Melbourne were not totally free of public health restrictions.

The natural experiment created by Victoria’s Ring of Steel provides certainly provides an interesting opportunity to measure how much value people put on being free from some of the harshest pandemic restrictions we’ve seen in the developed world.

Domestic migration within the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic plausibly tells a similar story. A paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas in November found that the pandemic, while generally leaving pre-COVID migration patterns untouched, did accelerate an out-migration from America’s largest urban areas.

Fed researchers Jason Brown and Colton Tousey chalk this up people’s attempt to mitigate the perceived risk of COVID-19 that comes with living in a dense urban area and their desire to escape strict lockdown measures—which have generally been harshest within the country’s largest cities.

Unlike in Melbourne, however, rents and occupancy rates are shooting up from pandemic-era lows in major U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco.

That could plausibly be explained by policymakers in those cities shying away from costly and broadly unpopular lockdowns and capacity restrictions. Those have been replaced by mask mandates and vaccine passport systems, which liberal city dwellers have found to be more tolerable or even desirable.

Were harsher measures to come back, people might vote with their feet again and decamp for smaller, freer metro areas—even if the cost of doing so goes up a few percentage points.

The post How Much Would You Pay To Escape Australia's COVID 'Ring of Steel'? appeared first on Reason.com.

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In November 2021, I was a commentator in response to the 26th Annual Frankel Lecture at the University of Houston Law Center. The keynote was delivered by Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen on “Academic Freedom and Discrimination in a Polarizing Time.” Responses were delivered by Berkeley Law School Professor Khiara M. Bridges and me. You can view a recording of the event here.

My paper on “Academic Freedom and the Mission of the University” will be published as part of the symposium issue of the Houston Law Review later this year. I have now posted a draft version at SSRN.  From the abstract:

The utility of academic freedom depends on the particular mission of a university. In a system in which institutions of higher education are dedicated to truth-seeking and the advancement and dissemination of human knowledge, then robust protections for academic freedom for scholars and instructors is essential to effectuating that mission. As American universities adopted this as their central mission, the groundwork was laid for the development of ideas and practices of academic freedom in the United States. Academic freedom is much less useful, or even counterproductive, if universities prioritized some other mission over truth-seeking. Unfortunately, there are several competing missions currently in play around universities, and to the extent that any of them become central to how we understand the rationale and operation of American universities then academic freedom as a meaningful set of protections for dissident scholars will eventually suffer.

You can download the full paper here.

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“It’s time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city…come[s] to an end,”” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, at a December 14, 2021 press conference. “It comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement.”

We need to be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city,” continued Breed, who declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin district a few days later, leading to an increased police presence in the epicenter of the city’s growing homelessness and addiction crisis. 

It was a moment that outraged the city’s progressive political establishment and was a major turnaround for Breed, who after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 called for “ending the use of police in responding to non-criminal activity.” She was roundly criticized by groups like the Coalition on Homelessness, who called the move an “expansion of strategies that have been tried and failed” that would contribute to the “instability and poor public health outcomes” of people living on the streets. 

Michael Shellenberger, author of the new book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, called Breed’s new “tough love” approach a “big step in the right direction.” The homelessness crisis, he says, is actually an addiction and mental health crisis enabled by progressive policies that permit open-air drug scenes on public property, prevent police from enforcing laws against crimes, and undermine the creation of a functional mental health care system. 

Reason spoke with Shellenberger, who’s a Bay Area activist and writer best known for his work on environmental issues and support for nuclear power. We talked about his foray into social policy, his critiques of both progressive and libertarian politics, Breed’s new approach, and how Shellenberger thinks America’s big cities can clean up their streets without grossly violating civil liberties. 

“Why is it that cities that ostensibly care the most about poor people, minorities, people suffering mental illness and addiction…Why do they treat them so terribly?” asks Shellenberger. “Is it a lack of housing? Is it a lack of rehab? What’s going on? So [answering those questions is] the reason for the book.”

Watch the full interview above.

Music credits: “Stay Strong,” by Iamdaylight, via Artlist

Photo Credits: Pax Ahimsa Gethen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Michael Shellenberger, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Drew G Stephens, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Foundations World Economic Forum, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Interview by Zach Weissmueller, edited by Adam Czarnecki, opening graphic by Regan Taylor.

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A new episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast from the Academic Freedom Alliance is now available. Subscribe through your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode.

In this episode I talk with Raymond Issa and Danaya Wright of the University of Florida. They are members of the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom, which has released an interim report on academic freedom issues being experienced at UF. The committee was launched in response to the university’s effort to block professors in the political science department at the university from serving as expert witnesses in a voting rights lawsuit against the state. The administration claimed that providing such testimony would be a conflict of interest with those of the university as a branch of the state government. Academic Freedom Alliance, among others, objected to this decision, and the university eventually relented. A lawsuit against the university on this matter is still ongoing. The committee report discusses details of that case, but also provides new details on other instances of faculty being pressured to adjust their behavior out of concern for how state politicians might react. The committee’s investigation is continuing. In the podcast, we review the situation at the University of Florida and the findings of the committee thus far.

Listen to the whole thing here.

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From yesterday’s decision by Judge Sarah Merriam in Doe v. Gerken (D. Conn.) (now Stubbs v. Gerken):

[P]laintiffs, each of whom is or was a student at Yale Law School, allege that two deans of the Yale Law School, along with the Law School’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, “worked together in an attempt to blackball” plaintiffs from the prestigious job opportunities that are typically available to Yale Law School students. Plaintiffs allege that defendants “attempt[ed] to blackball” them from such opportunities “as retaliation” for plaintiffs “refusing to lie” in support of Yale University’s investigation of a law school professor.

Pursuant to Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “[t]he title of the complaint must name all the parties[.]” “This requirement, though seemingly pedestrian, serves the vital purpose of facilitating public scrutiny of judicial proceedings and therefore cannot be set aside lightly.” … “Identifying parties in a proceeding is an important dimension of publicness, as people have a right to know who is using their courts.” …

Courts have, however, “carved out a limited number of exceptions to the general requirement of disclosure of the names of parties, which permit plaintiffs to proceed anonymously.” … “[P]seudonyms are the exception and not the rule, and in order to receive the protections of anonymity, a party must make a case rebutting … the presumption of disclosure.” …

Plaintiffs contend that the Court should allow them to proceed anonymously because their “claims are highly sensitive and personal in nature.” Plaintiffs specifically contend that the use of their real names “will lead to further dissemination[]” of defendants’ alleged “harassing, false, defamatory, and retaliatory statements[]” about plaintiffs, which is “likely to result in social stigmatization.” …

Contrary to plaintiffs’ contentions, this action does not involve highly sensitive matters of the type recognized by other Courts in the Second Circuit. This case does not involve minors, allegations of sexual misconduct, or some other truly sensitive matter…. “[C]ourts have found that evidence of embarrassment, social stigmatization, and economic harm provides an insufficient basis for proceeding anonymously.” In sum, “courts should not permit parties to proceed pseudonymously just to protect the parties’ professional or economic life.” …

Second, plaintiffs have not adequately demonstrated that defendants or others will retaliate against them for filing this lawsuit. Plaintiffs rely on the alleged past retaliatory actions of defendants (which defendants categorize as “false”), but offer nothing to support the contention that “[f]urther identification of Plaintiffs poses a risk of retaliatory harm.” Here, defendants are aware of plaintiffs’ true identities. “[I]f a plaintiff specifically fears retaliation by defendants or their associates, prior disclosure to the defendants of the plaintiff’s identity might moot any request for anonymity.” For the same reasons, plaintiffs have not made an adequate showing that disclosure of their identities presents other harms….

Next, plaintiffs’ identities have not been kept confidential. John Doe in particular has been publicly identified by various media outlets. The Court takes judicial notice of this information as set forth in defendants’ briefing. “A plaintiff’s interest in anonymity is weakened where anonymity has already been compromised.” … [T]his factor also weighs in favor of disclosure.

The Court has considered the other factors [set forth by Second Circuit precedent on pseudonymity] and each generally weighs in favor of disclosure. Specifically: (1) plaintiffs are not particularly vulnerable to the harms of disclosure based on their status as graduate students (“If a plaintiff is not a child, this [vulnerability] factor weighs against a finding for anonymity.”); (2) plaintiffs are not litigating against a governmental agency; and (3) the public’s demonstrated interest in this litigation is furthered by requiring plaintiffs to disclose their identities…. “As a rule, lawsuits are public events and the public has a legitimate interest in knowing the facts involved in them. Among those facts is the identity of the parties…. This is not a case that involves abstract challenges to public policies, but rather particular actions and incidents. Thus, open proceedings benefit the public as well as the parties and also serve the judicial interest in accurate fact-finding and fair adjudication. Indeed, it is the kind of case that further the public’s interest in enforcing legal and social norms.”

Finally, “[t]he public interest in scrutinizing judicial proceedings combined with the prejudice [defendants] would face from defending against claims prosecuted by an anonymous person at trial far outweigh [plaintiffs’] interest in not suffering professional embarrassment and any concomitant financial harm.” …

Plaintiffs, each of whom is or was a law student, should appreciate that “[l]itigation is quintessentially public and public disclosure is in general an inherent collateral consequence of litigation.” {Indeed, should this case proceed to trial, plaintiffs will likely testify as witnesses in open court. Thus, whether now or at a later stage of litigation, plaintiffs will have to face “public disclosure” that is “an inherent collateral consequence of litigation.”}

As I noted in December, this result was very likely, given the weight of the precedent on the subject, though not a foregone conclusion. For more on pseudonymity, see this article draft.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose previous advice about face coverings as a safeguard against COVID-19 paid little attention to large differences in the effectiveness of different mask types, recently revised its guidance to acknowledge that N95 respirators work better than reusable cloth masks or disposable surgical masks. As with earlier changes in CDC guidance, it is not exactly clear why the agency waited so long to highlight useful information about COVID-19, although the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant may have something to do with it.

The CDC’s prior advice about “Types of Masks and Respirators” mentioned N95 masks as one option without giving any clear indication of how effective they are compared to the alternatives:

Masks are designed to contain your respiratory droplets and particles. They also provide you some protection from particles expelled by others.

Respirators are designed to protect you from particles, including the virus that causes COVID-19, and in doing so they also contain your respiratory droplets and particles so you do not expose others.

CDC continues to learn more about the effectiveness of different types of masks and respirators for preventing COVID-19.

The CDC noted that N95s “filter up to 95% of particles in the air when approved by NIOSH and proper fit can be achieved.” But it did not provide any corresponding estimate of how effective cloth masks are, and its advice about when an N95 might be appropriate was opaque. “Some situations may have a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 than others,” it said. “So, you may want to consider the type of mask or respirator to wear depending on the situation.”

The CDC’s examples of “some situations” included using public transportation, especially in crowded conditions for extended periods of time; “taking care of someone who is sick with COVID-19”; and “working at a job where you interact with large numbers of the public.” It also mentioned that people who are especially susceptible to COVID-19 because they are “older,” have preexisting medical conditions, or have not been vaccinated might “want to consider the type of mask or respirator” they wear. Regarding N95s specifically, the CDC’s most direct advice was this: “When supplies are available, individuals may choose to use a basic disposable N95 respirator for personal use, instead of a mask, in some situations.”

By contrast, the CDC’s latest guidance about mask types, published on Friday, acknowledges that “some masks and respirators offer higher levels of protection than others” and that “properly fitted respirators provide the highest level of protection.” It warns that “loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection,” while “layered finely woven products offer more protection, well-fitting disposable surgical masks and KN95s offer even more protection, and well-fitting NIOSH-approved respirators (including N95s) offer the highest level of protection.”

The CDC adds that “a respirator may be considered in certain situations and by certain people when greater protection is needed or desired,” although it also suggests that the more effective masks “may be harder to tolerate or wear consistently.” The reference to limited supplies of N95s has been excised. So has the warning that N95s are incompatible with “certain types of facial hair,” which linked to this amusing illustration indicating that soul patches, Zorro mustaches, and side whiskers are OK, while goatees are questionable and Garibaldi beards, wet noodles, and Dali mustaches are right out. The CDC does still note that “gaps can be caused” when “a respirator is worn with facial hair.”

While the “disparity” between N95s and cloth masks “is widely known to the general public,” The New York Times says, “the update marks the first time the C.D.C. has explicitly addressed the differences.” Two years into the pandemic, the Times is saying, the preeminent U.S. disease control agency—the authority on which Americans are supposed to rely for timely, scientifically informed advice about how to protect themselves and their neighbors from COVID-19—is finally acknowledging an important fact that “the general public” already knew. The implication is that Americans are better off disregarding what the CDC says and seeking alternative sources of information.

That information has long been available. A laboratory study published in September 2020, for example, found that a valveless N95 mask was 99.9 percent effective at retaining droplets larger than half a micron generated by speech. While three-layer surgical masks and several kinds of cloth masks reduced the number of droplets detected by 80 percent or more, some designs—including a a “knitted mask” and a “two-layer cotton, pleated style mask” as well as a bandana—were substantially less effective.

A laboratory study published in October 2020 compared the effectiveness of different masks in several conditions involving two mannequin heads separated by 50 centimeters, one of which emitted “a mist of virus suspension through its mouth.” When the “receiver” was fitted with a mask, “a cotton mask led to an approximately 20% to 40% reduction in virus uptake compared to no mask.” The N95 mask “had the highest protective efficacy (approximately 80% to 90% reduction) of the various masks examined.” When the “spreader” had a mask, “cotton and surgical masks blocked more than 50% of the virus transmission,” while the rate for the N95 mask was 95 percent. When the edges of the N95 mask were “sealed with adhesive tape” to simulate a good fit, no virus was detected.

Similarly, a laboratory study published in December 2020 found that an N95 respirator blocked 99 percent of a simulated “cough aerosol.” By comparison, a “medical grade procedure mask” blocked 59 percent and a “3-ply cotton cloth face mask” blocked 51 percent.

In the real world, of course, masks may not be clean, well-fitted, or properly worn, which is one reason to be cautious about estimating the actual impact of general mask wearing based on studies like these. The CDC has long emphasized the importance of a good fit, and it is clearly concerned that more effective masks will prove to be less comfortable, meaning they are less likely to be worn correctly and consistently. It recommends that “you wear the most protective mask you can, that fits well and that you will wear consistently.”

Still, it is hard to understand why the CDC, once it decided that masks were a good idea after all, did not clearly and forthrightly lay out the pros and cons of different designs. It seems to be moving in that direction now because of the omicron wave, which prompted CNN medical analyst Leana Wen to declare that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations,” adding, “There’s no place for them in light of omicron.” But omicron was identified two months ago, and the latest data indicate that the current surge already has peaked in the United States, with newly reported cases beginning a sharp decline similar to what other countries have seen.

One of the CDC’s main functions is to provide the public with accurate, up-to-date information about communicable diseases, based on its own examination of the scientific literature. Theoretically, anyone can delve into journals like Science Advances, Aerosol Science and Technology, and mSphere for the answers that the CDC fails to provide. But since most people are not inclined to do that, it would be helpful to have an authoritative source that reliably summarizes the relevant evidence in a timely fashion. In this case and others, the CDC is effectively telling people to look elsewhere.

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Later today, the White House is expected to officially announce plans to send roughly 400 million high-quality, N95 masks to pharmacies and health centers around the country. From there, the masks will be distributed for free to anyone who wants one.

The Associated Press reports that the move is meant to encourage Americans to replace cloth masks with alternatives that better defend against the Omicron variant of COVID-19. In places where mask-wearing is mandated by government policy, at least some people will surely be happy to swap out their current masks for the free N95s.

If the “free masks” plan tracks earlier plans for distributing “free” vaccines and “free” testing, then we know how this will go. Some pharmacies will run out immediately while others will still have some in stock when the next pandemic arrives.

But the timing feels all wrong. As The New York Times’ David Leonhardt reported today, omicron is in retreat. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the White House to order the distribution of these masks months ago, when omicron first arrived on U.S. soil and federal officials started pushing Americans to wear N95 masks instead of basic cloth face coverings?

That, in turn, raises some serious questions about the national mask stockpile itself, which media reports say currently contains 750 million masks. If this is how they’re going to be distributed, essentially to whoever wants one, rather than on the basis of need, what is the point of having a stockpile for emergencies? Markets are perfectly capable of handling the distribution of N95 masks.

For that matter, why is the government sitting on a stash of 750 million masks after two years where mask shortages have been a recurring problem? Keep in mind, every mask that went into the federal stockpile—that is, every mask that will now be made available “for free” via the White House’s new program—is a mask that could have already been in use weeks or even months ago.

In fairness, it doesn’t seem like the stockpile was that large in March 2020—Politico reports that federal officials have “have worked to replenish” the stockpile “since the earliest days of the Covid-19 outbreak.” But it’s worth asking whether replenishing that stockpile was really the best use of federal resources in the middle of an ongoing pandemic. For months, Biden and his top public health officials have been urging Americans to wear N95 (or the similar KN95) masks as a defense against the omicron variant, while apparently also removing millions of masks from the marketplace in order to replenish a federal stockpile—as if having a few hundred million masks in storage for a future pandemic is more important than using them to fight the current one.

America produced an estimated 1 billion high-quality masks last year, so we’re no longer experiencing the dire shortages that marked the first year of the pandemic. Even so, masks haven’t been as readily available as they could be. It was widely reported last year that some Americans were turning to counterfeit N95s because of the difficulties in purchasing the genuine article.

Just last week, Politico notes, Biden talked about how obtaining high-quality masks is still “not always affordable or convenient” for some individuals. Shouldn’t his administration have to answer for contributing to that problem? Why was the federal government stockpiling masks at a time when those same masks were very much in demand?

All this accomplished was time-shifting the availability of masks. Because that’s what a stockpile is meant to do: shift the availability of resources from a time when demand is low and supply is high to a time when there is a crunch in supplies.

It’s certainly questionable whether this time shift was a productive one. The White House is making hundreds of millions of masks available now, after the omicron wave seems to have crested and started to recede in many parts of the country. If the distribution of masks from the federal stockpile takes as long as the White House’s planned distribution of free COVID tests, they likely won’t arrive in pharmacies and health clinics until early February.

So the operative question is: Are Americans better served by getting free masks in February than they would have been to have a higher number of N95 masks available for purchase in October, November, and December of this year? That equation does not seem to break in the Biden administration’s favor.

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From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

She’d heard rumors that the guy at the party had a history of problematic behavior toward women. So Syracuse University freshman Samantha Jones went right up to him and asked: Was he a registered sex offender?

Now, Syracuse is enforcing its ban on causing “mental harm” to punish the 18-year-old biology student for her question….

He reported the incident to campus police, who referred the matter to Syracuse’s Office of Community Standards. Last month, the University Conduct Board found Jones responsible for violating a ban on “[c]onduct, whether physical, electronic, oral, written or video, which threatens the mental health, physical health, or safety of anyone.” Jones has since been placed on disciplinary probation and is required to attend “Decision-Making” and “Conflict Coaching” workshops.

“Accusing someone of something that has no validity, especially being on a sex offender list can harm one’s mental health and safety,” wrote Syracuse administrator Sheriah Dixon in a December memo detailing Jones’ formal punishment. The problem with this assessment? Jones didn’t accuse the man of anything. The Conduct Board’s own findings conclude plainly that all Jones did was seek clarification about rumors.

Here’s the key excerpt from those findings:

For FIRE’s letter to Syracuse, see here. My view is that the law and university policy could generally prohibit continuing to talk directly to a person once the person tells you to stop, whatever the topic of the speech might be; we see that reflected in some telephone harassment statutes and similar rules (see Part I.A of this article for more).

But Syracuse’s ban on “conduct, whether physical, electronic, oral, written or video, which threatens the mental health … of anyone” is not such a policy. It doesn’t limit itself to speech to a person (it could easily cover speech about a person). It doesn’t indicate that it imposes this sort of “stop talking to me” rule. And is more generally vague and overbroad.

Syracuse is a private university, and thus not bound by First Amendment rules (though it is bound by a New York law that bars “arbitrary and capricious” private university decisions). But given Syracuse’s “commit[ment] to … freedom of expression,” I think it’s rightly faulted for having such a vague and broad rule, and for applying it the way it has here.

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