My colleague Michael Cannon had an excellent blog the other day on the subject of the distribution of vaccines. He rightly concluded,
"Once governments have purchased vaccines, it’s not clear libertarian principles have anything useful to say about how they should distribute them. The question of how then to maximize social welfare—or alternatively, to reduce violent assaults—is an empirical one. It’s a fascinating question. But I’m not sure anyone knows the answer."
Too true. Libertarian principles indeed do not get us very far, especially in a situation where governments have made advanced commitments to buy vaccines. But, as Michael’s piece skillfully shows, we can, in principle, use economic logic to inform our answers.
The task at hand is to minimize the overall economic welfare costs of the pandemic—that means reducing the combined costs of lost lives, yes, but added to the costs of bad health, lost GDP, and, indeed, lost economic welfare from curtailed liberties or pandemic‐induced constraints on our activities. When the problem is set up in this way, one can see that a lot of the conversation so far has been inadequate.
As John Cochrane notes, a lot of the recommendations for distribution have simply implied that, after vaccinating healthcare workers, we should work down a list of demographic groups, starting with inoculating those with the highest death risks from COVID-19 and ending with those with the lowest. If it turns out the vaccine only reduces the symptoms of COVID-19 but doesn’t reduce our ability to transmit it much, that might be a reasonable position. But if the vaccine itself helps stop the spread of the disease among the vaccinated, then this is not necessarily the best way to go.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/economics-vaccine-distribution
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