by Sam L. Savage
"In this country, saving freedom is more important than trying to regulate lives through legislation," screamed the headline, and as a libertarian who resents a big blundering government pushing me around, I was sympathetic. The year was 1987, when states were mandating seatbelt usage, but similar tradeoffs between individual freedom and personal safety exist today. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Vaccinated America Has Had Enough, conservative columnist David Frum writes that for some people, “vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.” For these people, the increase in their civil liberty by not getting vaccinated is adequate reward to compensate for the risk imposed by the virus. In finance such a reward is known as a risk premium. But is this the best policy, even for the most freedom-loving of the vaccine hesitant?
By taking a chance-informed approach, we can explore alternatives that offer both more civil liberty and less risk than simply not getting the vaccine. First, the numbers. The data show that the vaccines are ten times more effective at preventing fatalities (99.5%) than gunshot wounds to the head are at causing them (95%). For purposes of argument, we will use the current daily death toll from COVID-19, of about 600 (although it is currently climbing), nearly all of whom are among the 30% of the population who are totally unvaccinated. So here is a thought experiment, NOT AN ACTUAL SUGGESTION, to stimulate discussion around alternative and potentially better tradeoffs between personal liberty and the risks presented by COVID-19:
The unvaccinated could both make a stronger identity statement and simultaneously reduce everyone’s risk if they got the shot, but then rewarded themselves with the freedom of not wearing their seatbelts!
The Risks
On the risk side, there is risk to others and risk to self. The risk to others is negligible when you don’t buckle up. But not getting vaccinated puts everyone at risk except the virus, which loves new hosts in which to mutate its way out from under the current vaccines. I estimate that the combined deaths per day among the unvaccinated from either COVID-19 or car crash is currently 600 to COVID-19 and 30 on the highway [1] for a total of 630. If those people all got vaccinated but removed their seatbelts, the numbers would change to about 3 deaths due to COVID-19 [2] and 55 to crashes [3] for a total of 58 per day. This is a reduction in risk of about 90% by simply interchanging one expression of personal freedom for another.
The Reward
With the seatbelts you get the increased personal freedom of not having to strap yourself down every single time you get in a car, but in addition, you have a choice of how forceful an identity statement you want to make. No one can tell that you haven’t been vaccinated just by looking at you, but with the seatbelts there are a range of options. If you want to keep your new liberated status to yourself and avoid being pulled over by the police, just save a piece of seatbelt after you cut it out of your car and hang it over your shoulder when you drive. On the other hand, if you really want to thumb your nose at authority, you can close the belt in the door and let it drag down the street, leaving a trail of sparks.
[1] There are roughly 100 highway deaths per day in the US, so 30% of the population would account for about 30 deaths.
[2] 0.5% of 600, or 3, would be expected to die even with the vaccination.
[3] Seatbelts are only about 45% effective at saving lives in a crash, so the 30 per day would go up to about 55 per day.
Copyright © Sam L. Savage 2021. All Rights Reserved.