BET ON EMERGENCE.

Jonah Goldberg writes, "Central Planning Didn’t Flatten the Curve."  It's not clear yet how the plague is playing out (and the alleged good news out of China is going to last about as long as those cheap vacuum cleaners at Walmart).

It’s almost surely the case that the models were wrong to one degree or another for the simple reason that any model is only as good as the data fed into it. With imperfect information — partly thanks to the outrageous dishonesty of the Chinese government and the grave missteps of the World Health Organization — it was inevitable that the models would never be more than best guesses. We’re far from out of the woods, but the fact that “only” some 60,000 Americans may die instead of 240,000 seems like something to celebrate, not an excuse to scapegoat officials who scrambled to save lives.

Modelling is even more difficult when you're starting from scratch: very few cases to extrapolate from, and of necessity a large margin of error.  And, yes, policy people have to have some sort of basis from which to extrapolate, and the people who hold the levers of power, er, the monopoly on violence, might have to claim some basis for their authority.  The Favor of the Gods went out either with Ragnar Lothbrok or Louis XVI.

Still, there’s an interesting assumption common to both sides of the debate: that the government is responsible for all of this. Both defenders and the critics start from the premise that government diktats are the only variable here.

My American Enterprise Institute colleague Lyman Stone, an economist based in Hong Kong, makes the case that the essential variable in “flattening the curve” isn’t central planning but behavior change. Many businesses closed down well before they were ordered to. Millions of people practiced social distancing and refused to get on planes not because they were commanded to, but because they were convinced this was a wise course of action for themselves and their loved ones.

Yes, and laid in a few spare supplies before the closure orders, and dialed back their social activity.  Mr Goldberg anticipates, correctly in my view, that the return to something resembling business as usual will also be emergent.

Information doesn’t just come from governments. The death tolls in Italy and New York probably did more to change behavior on the ground than all of Trump’s press conferences or Dr. Anthony Fauci’s TV appearances.

And this raises another complication for those who think the government can just “re-open” the economy with the flick of a switch. Trump and all of the governors could lift the stay-at-home orders and federal advisories tomorrow. That wouldn’t necessarily fill the restaurants, airplanes, or stadiums. People would still need to be convinced it’s safe. Such persuasion comes via clear, believable information, not orders from on high.

And that’s how it should be in a free society.

Amen.