Below are a few worthy links for your edification, along with a new feature for Bastiat’s Window—LAGNIAPPE. In the Andes, customers have traditionally asked vendors for “yapa” (from the Quechua for “a little more”). Spanish sailors turned it into “la ñapa,” and when they carried the expression to Louisiana, French-speakers made it “la gniappe,” or, ultimately, “lagniappe.” There, it came to mean a merchant’s little gift—a piece of chocolate to go with the wine you just bought. Or, more generally, a little unexpected something. Or, given the state’s infamous political culture, a bribe. In Bastiat’s Window, LAGNIAPPE will be some curiosity: a photo, a video, a quote, a poem, a brief story. Just a little something extra after the main story.
LINK #1: EXCESS MORTALITY
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’ve heard a great deal about “excess mortality,” but the meaning of the expression isn’t entirely clear. In the context of COVID, the idea was to get a handle on the question, “How many people died because of COVID?” One can count the number of people with COVID who died, but some of those died of COVID, while others merely died with COVID (i.e., dying of cancer while coincidentally COVID-infected). Some people, on the other hand, would have died in the absence of COVID but, thanks to the pandemic, did not die; examples would include people who weren’t killed in car wrecks because they were locked in their houses and people who didn’t die of the flu because they were isolated from other people. But then, others died because of the pandemic, but not of COVID; examples include those who committed suicide out of loneliness during the lockdown and those who failed to get life-saving medical procedures and tests because they were quarantined or medical facilities were shuttered.
In answering the question, “How did COVID affect the overall mortality rate?,” we would want to consider all of these things. For help in answering this, we turn to the statistical measure called “Excess Mortality”—the number of people who actually died that year minus the number we expected to die under routine circumstances. But getting that second number—those expected to die—poses great methodological challenges.
In “Excess Mortality: What is it really? Can you tell me expected deaths in 2023?,” Dr. Vinay Prasad explores the challenge of measuring Excess Mortality. As he says, “Before getting into endless debates about how to interpret numbers, we have to think about where the numbers come from. What was directly measured, and what is a guess. … Expected death is a guess.”
LINK #2: RACIAL CLASSIFICATION
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com has just launched Glenn’s Substack. One of his first entries is “The Idiocy of America's Racial Classification System: A conversation with Prof. David Bernstein.” Reynolds and Bernstein discuss the arbitrariness and irrationality of America’s system of official racial and ethnic classifications. A few choice morsels:
In defining “Black/African American,” the U.S. government relies on the one-drop rule established a century ago by white supremacists.
Sephardic Jews whose ancestors haven’t lived in Spanish-speaking countries for 500 years can claim Hispanic status under Small Business Administration rules.
The government’s definition of “Hispanic” includes Spaniards (a large percentage of whom are white), but not Brazilians (a large percentage of whom are people of color).
LINK #3: DOES GOD MAKE PENCILS?
At Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux dismisses a reader’s argument that Leonard Read’s classic 1958 essay, “I, Pencil” is some sort of creationist parable. Read used the example of a humble pencil to illustrate the unfathomable complexity of economic markets and, by extension, the impossibility of central planning. In “‘I, Pencil’s’ Point,” Don takes the reader’s comments to task, arguing, in essence, that Read wasn’t writing about God, and that, even if you think he was, it doesn’t diminish the parable’s value.
In 2012, the Competitive Enterprise Institute did a nice video version of Read’s essay. For those unfamiliar with “I, Pencil,” the essay, well-captured in this video, is a marvelous piece of didactic storytelling.
In 2014, Don Boudreaux did a really entertaining little video (“The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity”) on related themes. I suggest listening with headphones, as the producers added some really odd little sounds in the background; they always give me me a laugh.
LAGNIAPPE
To paraphrase a famous Sesame Street song, “one of these folks is not like the others.” In 1978, I was a reporter at a small-town newspaper in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I snapped the photo above at a political campaign event. Pictured from left to right were Attorney General and Mrs. J. Marshall Coleman, Governor and Mrs. John Dalton, soon-to-be-Senator and Mrs. John Warner, and Congressman and Mrs. William Wampler. Mrs. Warner was, of course, the legendary actress, Elizabeth Taylor.
I asked all eight to pose for the photo, but it wasn’t until I was in the dark room that evening, developing the photo, that I realized that I had something special. Seven of those pictured are looking every which way, grinning casually, eyes fixed on who-knows-what. Not Liz Taylor. Her famously violet eyes drill straight through the lens of the camera, her face posed absolutely perfectly. When you see this photo, your eyes are drawn immediately to Ms. Taylor. As the photo emerged from the developing fluid, I thought, “This is someone who has spent her whole life in front of cameras. This is someone who can conquer a scene without seeming to flex a muscle.”
Enjoy the weekend.
I’m enjoying hearing your take on these things …. Too often “national averages” skew the nation’s perceptions on what’s happening on the ground . The truth is local.
As the owner of an Assisted Living Community, the issue of COVID deaths and how to count them has largely been up to the local Health Department’s interpretation.
In a facility where our average resident is over 85 we can expect a certain number to pass from all of the usual maladies associated with extreme age.
While some deaths were deemed attributable to COVID, we did not experience a greater mortality overall within the population of the facility.
Interestingly, due to increased masking and visitation control, the incidence of Influenza and death as a result was dramatically reduced