Some countries may have herd immunity

By Tyler Cowen.

"Here is the abstract of a new paper by Axel S Lexmond, Carlijn JA Nouwen, and John Paul Callan. So herd immunity yes, but at some point after fifty percent:

We have studied the evolution of COVID-19 in 12 low and middle income countries in which reported cases have peaked and declined rapidly in the past 2-3 months. In most of these countries the declines happened while control measures were consistent or even relaxing, and without signs of significant increases in cases that might indicate second waves. For the 12 countries we studied, the hypothesis that these countries have reached herd immunity warrants serious consideration. The Reed-Frost model, perhaps the simplest description for the evolution of cases in an epidemic, with only a few constant parameters, fits the observed case data remarkably well, and yields parameter values that are reasonable. The best-fitting curves suggest that the effective basic reproduction number in these countries ranged between 1.5 and 2.0, indicating that the curve was flattened in some countries but not suppressed by pushing the reproduction number below 1. The results suggest that between 51 and 80% of the population in these countries have been infected, and that between 0.05% and 2.50% of cases have been detected; values which are consistent with findings from serological and T-cell immunity studies. The infection rates, combined with data and estimates for deaths from COVID-19, allow us to estimate overall infection fatality rates for three of the countries. The values are lower than expected from reported infection fatality rates by age, based on data from several high-income countries, and the country population by age. COVID-19 may have a lower mortality risk in these three countries (to differing degrees in each country) than in high-income countries, due to differences in immune response, prior exposure to coronaviruses, disease characteristics or other factors. We find that the herd immunity hypothesis would not have fit the evolution of reported cases in several European countries, even just after the initial peaks; and subsequent resurgences of cases obviously prove that those countries have infection rates well below herd immunity levels. Our hypothesis that the 12 countries we studied have reached herd immunity should now be tested further, through serological and T cell immunity studies.

They offer an implied exposure estimate of 72% for Afghanistan, 67% for Ethiopia, 74% for Kenya, and 80% for Madagascar.  Pakistan clocks in at 72%, South Africa at 71%.  Notice those are not case counts, rather it is working backwards, using a model, to infer exposure rates from the data we do have, assuming that not all cases are being measured."

Americans’ poor health paved the way for COVID-19 deaths

By Andrew G. Biggs of AEI.

"Social media was briefly taken over by data purportedly showing that only 6% of Covid deaths were from the virus alone, leading some to conclude that Covid’s true death toll was only a small fraction of the reported 169,000 death. These claims were false. But they provide new perspective on how America’s ill health paved the way for the death of thousands of our citizens.

The Center for Disease Control’s September 2 release of Covid death data generated an internet firestorm: according to the CDC, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.” Ninety-four percent of Covid deaths had so-called comorbidities such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity. This led to internet claims that the true Covid death toll is just 10,000 Americans, undercutting our nationwide economic, social and educational lockdown.

In fact, doctors regularly report multiple causes of death, including factors – such as respiratory failure – that a Covid infection might itself have caused. Moreover, the number of “excess deaths” in 2020 – that is, the additional deaths this year relative to what might be expected from prior years’ experience – is similar to the 169,000 deaths for which Covid was listed as a factor.

However, the CDC data do make an important point: that Americans’ poor state of health, mostly related to our own lifestyles, made the U.S. dramatically more vulnerable to Covid.

To date, the United States has suffered 56 Covid-related deaths per one million Americans, a death rate more than twice that of Canada and five times that of Germany, leading to claims that the federal or state governments have mismanaged the Covid response. That may be true.

But U.S. policymakers also suffered under the handicap that Americans entered the Covid pandemic in much poorer health than citizens of other developed countries. For instance, over 27,000 U.S Covid deaths list diabetes as a comorbidity, accounting for 16% of total Covid-related fatalities. But what if instead of having the highest diabetes rate among rich countries the U.S. had the same rate as Australia, with less than half the U.S. level? The same holds for obesity, listed as a comorbidity in 4% of Covid cases. Forty percent of Americans are obese, the highest in the developed world and over twice the OECD average. U.S. death rates from heart disease are also higher than most European and Asian countries. Hypertension is listed as a comorbidity in 22% of Covid deaths. If Americans simply had the same health status as other high-income countries, it is likely that tens of thousands of lives could have been saved.

Most Covid-related comorbidities are lifestyle-related. General practitioners tell me that their Type 2 diabetes patients can tell you their weight and know how it relates to their illness. They know that by losing weight their can reduce their risk of blindness, limb amputations or death. They simply aren’t able to do it.

Obviously, many other issues affect Covid death rates, from preexisting factors such as population density and mobility to policy responses including testing and quarantining. But had our country been in better health when Covid hit, our death toll almost surely would have been smaller. Americans should know that, under threat from Covid, poor personal health could leave their children orphans.

Some argue for sugar taxes, but the problem goes beyond sugar alone. Americans consume about 25 percent more calories per day than Dutch citizens, for instance, while exercising less. These are difficult issues to address using the typical policy levers.

Instead, public officials could exercise the bully pulpit, just as they did with cigarette smoking. Public statements, advertising and educational campaigns slowly helped shift our culture away from smoking, such that less than 15% of Americans smoke today, versus 42% in the 1960s.

We can’t do much today to reduce the comorbidities that made us so susceptible to Covid-19. But by strongly encouraging healthier lifestyles we can better prepare for the next pandemic, while improving Americans’ quality of life and cutting our sky-high healthcare costs."

Freedom and Mythology: Did Joseph Campbell have Libertarian Tendencies?

 YES!

But before establishing support for this answer, we must ask why this is an important question for libertarians.  Campbell's scholarship, as exemplified in perhaps his most famous book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, proposed that the human psyche is the same everywhere in the world and for every time period because the myths of all cultures, as stories of heroes, have similar patterns (here he follows Jung-more about this later).  According to Archer Taylor (1964), his scholarship on the hero's journey is very similar, yet more detailed, than others working on the same problem (p. 128).  He even saw the entrepreneur as "the real hero" in capitalist society (see excerpt of interview at the end of the article). If Campbell's thinking, which is a result of studying many cultures, can be shown to support libertarian philosophy, it would greatly add to the cause of freedom and limited government around the world.

            Before examining his views in relation to libertarian philosophy, a few comments on the nature of myths and mythology are necessary.

            Campbell was not alone in his view that myths are reflections of the psyche.  It is a standard belief that not only are myths symbolic representations of our psyches, but that the role of the hero in myth is universal and that myths help to instruct individuals in charting a course for their own lives.  This assertion is based on the work of psychoanalysis.  This is because in myths, according to Campbell (1968) "symbolic expression is given to the unconscious desires, fears, and tensions that underlie the conscious patterns of human behavior" and that understanding the myth puts us in touch with "the deep forces that have shaped man's destiny and must continue to determine both our private and our public lives" (p. 255-6).   Leeming (1973) shares this view (p. 9) along with, according to Barnaby and D'Acierno (1990), a large number of Jungian interpreters (p. 3).  Jung (1951) himself said "Myths are original revelations of the pre-conscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious happenings..." (p. 101).

            In addition to influencing film makers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Campbell was well respected. The psychologist James Hillman said "No one in our century, not Freud, not Thomas Mann, or Lévi-Strauss, has so brought the mythical sense of the world back into our everyday consciousness" (Cousineau, 1990, p. 178). Campbell's model of the hero's adventure is also quite similar to Leeming's (1973) and Mircea Eliade's (1990, p. 39).  Segal (1990) shows that Campbell's hero is Jungian (p. 42) and similar to Erik Erickson's in that the hero's journey is a quest for personal identity (p. 34).  Jung (1956) himself said that the hero archetype represents this need of the human psyche (p. 178).  Eliot (1990) reports that, in fact, Jungian therapists use Campbell's work in guiding their patients' journey (p. 232).  Even modern Freudians see myths as a useful tool (Segal, 1990, p. 44).

            This is also an era in which mythology is being used to understand economics.  Silver (1991) analyzes the ancient economy through mythology while Putka (1993) reports that business case studies are now being written which compare literary figures, including heroes, to business managers (p. A1).  Even two business professors at Stanford University, Catford and Ray (1991), have written a popular book on mythology partly inspired by Campbell.  So it is not surprising that Eliade (1990) wrote "The mythic imagination can hardly be said to have disappeared; it is still very much with us, having only adapted its workings to the material now at hand" (p. 42).

            One question that arises in trying to promote heroism is the question of is the hero trying to do good work or trying to rise above and gain control over the rest of society.  Our society has a tendency to think the latter.  This may be due in part to the decline in reading mythological texts and other stories about cultural heroes in our educational system.  If we could reverse this trend, we would no longer have to fear the hero (Silber, 1989, ch. 3, "Of Mermaids and Magnificence").  If heroes represent the elite, I think Campbell would have agreed with Silber.  He said:

           

"Sport is really an elite experience.  You can't have a game where everybody wins.  But there's an awful lot of that kind of thinking in our sociological thinking now where nobody should be beating anybody else and let's fix it so he can't.  Then you spend the rest of your life looking at a movie to see whether you can see a real elite performance.  That's where life really is-in the upper brackets, not the lower ones" (Cousineau, 1991, p. 220).

David Justin Ross made a similar argument on the need for heroes in literature and how they teach values in his article "Boy's Fiction and the Dumbing of America" from the April 1993 issue of Liberty.

            Given the importance of mythology and Campbell's contributions to the study of it, how do they relate to libertarianism?  It may surprise many to learn that Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers "The state is a machine" in "The Message of the Myth," the second televised segment of the popular PBS series The Power of Myth.  This condemns the state in Campbell's view because the machine can crush our humanity, a serious problem the entire world, including the United States, faces today.  But this rejection of mechanized government is just one of several ways in which his ideas can be seen as supporting libertarian philosophy.  The first is his support of individualism.  The second is his support of the ideas of the founding fathers and limited government.  The third is Campbell's surprisingly similarity to some ideas of the economist Milton Friedman, a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism.  The fourth is an anti-Marxist sentiment.  The fifth is the above mentioned view of the state as a machine.  Each of these will be discussed in more detail below.  Campbell's view of the mechanized state is discussed last.

            To begin with the first category, individualism,  Campbell (1988) said, while discussing the story of the Holy Grail, that "[E]ach of us is a completely unique creature and that if, we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience, not someone else's." That is, not the experience of some government bureaucrat that is imposed on us.  It is hard to have your own experience if you are controlled by the state (p. 151).  This great Western Truth (p. 151) is opposed to the Orient where "the individual is cookie-molded"  (p. 151).  He underscored this with:

"The best part (emphasis added) of the western tradition has included a recognition of and respect for the individual as a living entity.  The function of the society is to cultivate the individual.  It is not the function of the individual to support society"  (p. 192)" 

Furthermore, the troubadour courage to love that grew in the middle ages against the opposition to the church became the basis of individualism and validated individual experience as opposed to tradition  (p. 187)

            The second category is Campbell's support and approval of the Founding Fathers and their belief in limited government and individual reason.  This is indicated in a number of ways.  The first is that Campbell (1988) agrees that all men are capable of reason, thus knowing God:

"That is the fundamental principle of democracy.  Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be"  (p. 25) 

Although  democracy is not necessarily synonymous with libertarianism,  to Campbell, it meant the rejection of anyone being granted "special authority."  This is certainly an ideal of libertarians, that no one has a monopoly on truth.  The second is that Campbell felt we moved away from reason and the ideals of limited government found in the Declaration of Independence when we "rejoined the British conquest of the planet" (p. 28) in World War I.  According to him America fell from the ideal, moral high ground of the pyramid (symbolized by the eye at the top of one on the back of the dollar bill) by breaking Washington's pledge in his farewell address to stay out of European affairs.  The third is that in general, Campbell was very taken by the symbolism of the Founding Fathers.  He felt that they had a great understanding of mythology,  using this knowledge to create a new nation based on individual liberty and limited government (p. 25).

            In the third category of his support for libertarian thinking, some of Campbell's views (or at least instincts) are similar to three ideas of Milton Friedman's.  The first is that they both condemn "the man of system."  Campbell states this clearly while speaking of the character Darth Vader from the Star Wars movie trilogy.  He is critical of him being an "executive of a system" who has no humanity (see p. 10 for more details). Friedman (1978) writes about this.  The man of system is a government planner, a bureaucrat who wishes to impose his own ideals on society (p. 18).  In what way is Campbell similar?  Although earlier it was noted that Campbell (1988) contrasted the West's individualism with the conformity of the East, he does mention what he thinks is a good Oriental idea:  "You don't force your mission down people's throats"  (p. 63).  Also, "Instead of clearing his own heart, the zealot tries to clear the world" (Campbell, 1968, p. 16)  Both Campbell and Friedman fear the planner who will force his system on the rest of us.  Campbell's (1988) views on this are best expressed in his comments on Darth Vader, the evil dark lord of the Star Wars movie trilogy.

"Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity.  He's a robot.  He's a bureaucrat living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system.  This is the threat that we all face today.  Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system so that you are not compulsively serving it?  It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought.  The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action" (p. 144)

This point will be addressed again in the section on the state as a machine.              The second way in which Campbell and Friedman are similar is their view on the ultimate end or goal of life. Friedman (1962) objected to the old adage that "the end justifies the means." He felt it was better to state that "the ultimate end is the use of proper means" (p. 22).  The appropriate means are "free discussion and voluntary co-operation" (p. 22).  This is similar to not only Campbell's (1988) emphasis on democracy and individualism but also to one of his favorite quotes from Karlfried Graf Dürckheim: "The real end is the journey" (p. 230).  That is, it is being able to go on your own journey that counts, not the destination.   For both of them, life is living by the right process.  For Campbell this is taking your own individual journey.  This is not in conflict, and probably consistent with, Friedman's ideal of free discussion and voluntary cooperation. 

            The third way in which Friedman and Campbell are similar may be more instinctual, not always expressed-that is, a shared sense of ultimate reality.  One of Friedman's (1984) books is called The Tyranny of the Status Quo.  The title gives us an idea of his sensitivity to an issue deeper than just the left-right debate.  Of the bureaucratic establishment's reaction to the Reagan administration's attempt to reduce taxes and regulations in its first few months in office Friedman says "The tyranny of the status quo asserted itself. Every special interest group that was threatened proceeded to mount a campaign to prevent its particular governmental sinecure from being eliminated" (p. 2).  These feelings and actions show up in the following passage of Campbell (1968):

"... the mythological hero is the champion not of things become but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo:  Holdfast, the keeper of the past.  From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is great and conspicuous in the seat of power; he is enemy, dragon, tyrant, because he turns to his own advantage the authority of his position.  He is Holdfast not because he keeps the past but because he keeps" (p. 337).

Both Friedman and Campbell see the status quo as a monster that acts a tyrant over creative people.

            The fourth category of Campbell's support for libertarianism, his anti-Marxist sentiment, is seen where he discusses Don Quixote.  In Campbell (1988) Quixote had "saved the adventure for himself by inventing a magician who had just transformed the giants he had gone forth to encounter into windmills" (p. 130).  Heroes used to live in a more spiritually alive world.  Quixote used his imagination to make it more alive.  Why is our world today not spiritually alive?  Because the world

"... has become to such an extent a sheerly mechanistic (emphasis added) world, as interpreted through our physical sciences, Marxist sociology, and behavioristic psychology, that we're nothing but a predictable pattern of wires responding to stimuli.  This nineteenth century interpretation has squeezed the freedom of the human will out of life" (p. 130-1).

Although not a new critique, it is a devastating condemnation of Marxist thinking from an individualistic perspective.  When the state is a machine, the world is mechanistic, people are predictable, and central planning of economies is justified.  Campbell opposes this,  exalting the freedom of the human will over these machine views of man.

            Campbell (1988) prefers, as in the Hindu idea of karma, that "you have no one to blame but yourself" (p. 161) for your problems.  He also implies that Marx was wrong when he "tells us to blame the upper class of our society" (p. 161).  Again, Campbell rejects Marxism and favors individualism.

            The fifth category involves Campbell's view of the state as a machine.  To him, this makes the state a monster, an instrument that imposes its will   or system on individuals, crushing our humanity and creative spirit.  Since the state is a machine, it is a kind of technology.  The message Campbell (1988) saw from the movie Star Wars is an old but powerful one:  "technology is not going to save us"  (p. xiv).  Luke Skywalker uses the Force (which, according to Campbell, symbolizes the human heart and intuition) instead of a computer to destroy the empire's dreaded death star, a machine that can itself destroy entire planets.

            Earlier it was seen how Campbell viewed Darth Vader.  He was an undeveloped human individual, a bureaucrat living in terms of an imposed system.  Campbell further explains how this is significant with:

"The fact that the evil power is not identified with any specific nation on this earth means you've got an abstract power which represents a principle, not a specific historic nation.  The story has to do with an operation of principles, not this nation against that.  The monster masks that are put on people in Star Wars represent the real monster force in the modern world"  (p. 144).

The significance of this passage is clear when linked with an earlier passage:

"Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in service of man.  When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world today" (p. 8).

So Campbell was concerned about the "monster state" in our modern world.  Darth Vader served the monster state as a bureaucrat and as a result hid his human face behind a monster mask. This implies that a state that demands service from individuals not only turns them into monsters but is monstrous itself, although it is not clear how far Campbell would have gone in making this claim.  This is why libertarians, as did Campbell, think that the state should do whatever it can to promote individuality and individual rights.  The mechanistic, Marxist view Campbell spoke of in relation to Don Quixote is perhaps what has brought on this monster state.  If human beings were "nothing but a predictable pattern of wires" then socialism and economic planning might make sense.  But obviously it does not since socialism has failed.  But here too, Campbell (1988) provides a useful interpretation.  It is in relation to the Holy Grail:

"The theme of the Grail romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid to waste.  It is called a waste land.  And what is the nature of the wasteland?  It is a land where everyone is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you're told, with no courage for you own life.  That is the wasteland.  And that is what T. S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land.

                "In a wasteland the surface does not represent the actuality of what it is supposed to be representing, and people are living inauthentic lives.  'I've never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.  I've done as I was told.' You know" (p. 196).

Bill Moyers then asked the question "And the Grail becomes?"  Campbell answered with "The Grail becomes the-what can we call it-that which is attained and realized by people who have lived their own lives.  The Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness" (p 196-7).  Unless you have a minimal state, individuals are not really living their own lives.  Furthermore, Campbell says that "there are some societies that shouldn't exist" (p. 198).  The societies that try to crush the individual spirit eventually "crack up" (p. 198).  This explains the conditions in Eastern Europe today.  The socialist systems blocked a re-circulation of spiritual energy by preventing people from walking their own paths.  Any system that prevents energy flow from outside the status quo will collapse due to entropy.  This is explained in what Campbell (1968) called the monomyth in  (following James Joyce):

"The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.  A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder:  fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man"(p. 30).

Too much government control will create a wasteland.

            This is all seen much more clearly in an exchange between Campbell and Moyers from the second televised segment of The Power of Myth called "The Message of the Myth."

Moyers:  Do you see some of the new metaphors emerging in the modern medium for the old universal truths that you've talked about, the old story?

Campbell:  Well, I think that the Star Wars is a valid mythological perspective for the problem of is the machine-and the state is a machine (emphasis added)-is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?  And humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. 

[As the unmasking of Darth Vader scene from the movie The Return of the Jedi  is shown, Campbell continues:]

Campbell:  The father (Darth Vader) had been playing one of these machine roles, a state role; he was the uniform, you know?  And the removal of that mask-there was an undeveloped man there.  He was kind of a worm by being the executive of a system.  One is not developing one's humanity.  I think George Lucas did a beautiful thing there.

Moyers:  The idea of machine is the idea that we want the world to be made in our image and what we think the world ought to be.

[Campbell seemed to agree or at least offered no dissent to this statement of Moyers.]

            Campbell put this in a slightly different way when he also discussed the movie Star Wars:

"Here the man (George Lucas) understands metaphor.  What I saw was things that had been in my books but rendered in terms of the modern problem, which is man and machine.  Is the machine going to be the servant of human life?  Or is it going to be master and dictate?  And the machine includes the totalitarian state, whether it is Fascist or Communist it's still the same state. And it includes things happening in this country too (emphasis added); the bureaucrat, the machine-man."

                What a wonderful power the machine gives you-but is it going to dominate you?  That's the problem of Goethe's Faust.  It's in the last two acts of Faust, Part Two.  His pact is with Mephistopheles, the man who can furnish you the means to do anything you want.  He's the machine manufacturer.  He can manufacture the bombs, but can he give you what the human spirit wants and needs?  He can't.

                This statement of what the need and want is must come from you, not from the machine, and not from the government that is teaching you (emphasis added) or not even from the clergy. It has to come from one's own inside, and the minute you let that drop and take what the dictation of the time is instead of your own eternity, you have capitulated to the devil.  And you're in hell.

                That's what I think George Lucas brought forward.  I admire what he's done immensely, immensely.  That young man opened a vista and knew how to follow it and it was totally fresh.  It seems to me that he carried that thing through very, very well (Cousineau, 1990, p. 181-2).

Later, when asked if the state should redistribute income for a more equal distribution, Campbell further criticizes an excessive role for the state with:

"In an equitable distribution system you never level people up, you always level down.  And civilization comes from what's on top.  And it's one thing to be equitable and give everything away;  it's another thing to be equitable and give away yourself.  Then you really can't help anybody, can you?  That's a little bit like the ego-self problem.  In actual economic situations this is complicated by the specifics of the situation, and I can't talk about that" (Cousineau, 1990, p. 225).

Although he wisely avoids claiming any expertise in economics, his views support the notion that too much taking from the rich and giving to the poor by the government hurts incentives, which in the long run hurts everyone since total output falls.  The poor do not become richer; the rich become poorer.  But the idea of giving away yourself is consistent with what Campbell (1988) said:

"The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it.  The world without spirit is a wasteland.  People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top and so forth.  No, no!  Any world is a valid one if it's alive.  The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself"  (p. 149).

On often hears libertarians say "Utopia is not an alternative." I think that is what Campbell is saying here.  The idea that an individual can revitalize society  is found in the economic historian John Hughes's book The Vital Few:  The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress.  He argued that individual entrepreneurs played a vital role in the development of the American Economy.

            Finally, my own research, in a paper titled "The Creative-Destroyers:  Are Entrepreneurs Mythological Heroes?" I find that the entrepreneur is a hero, verifying Campbell's assertion mentioned at the beginning of the paper (which he never tried to verify).   I used Campbell (1968) for the comparison.  The more entrepreneurship that is allowed, the more creativity and authentic lives there will be.  Laissez-faire capitalism (i.e., a minimal role for the state) seems to allow for the greatest degree of entrepreneurship.  In Briggs and Maher (1989), Campbell says:

"There's a kind of regular morphology and inevitable sequence of experiences if you start out to follow your adventure.  I don't care whether it's in economics, in art, or just in play.  There's the sense of the potential that opens out before you."  (p. 25).

In Cousineau (1990), Campbell describes the profit in following your own adventure: "If you follow your bliss, doors will open up for you where they would not have opened up before.  They will also open up for you where they would not have opened up for anyone else" (p. 214).  This is ultimately the best life for an individual, no matter what the career path or time period.

       Before closing, religion, a topic closely related to mythology, and an important one for libertarians, must be discussed.  Campbell saw the two as closely related.  This need not cause problems for libertarians, who, according to the 1988 poll conducted by Liberty, tend to be less religious than the rest of society.  It was mentioned at the beginning of the paper that Campbell was a follower of Jung, who gave him (Campbell) "the best clues he's got" (Briggs and Maher, 1989, p. 123).  Campbell (1986) agreed with Jung's view of religion, that its purpose was to keep you from God or a real spiritual experience (p. 121).  If libertarians are less religious than others, perhaps this allows them a better chance for a real spiritual experience because they follow their own individual paths.  In fact, as stated earlier, Jung said that the hero archetype represented this need of the psyche (which he called individuation).  That is, you discover yourself by going on your own adventure.  Jung (1964) too, was critical of the state.  He saw our belief in the welfare state as childish (p. 85). According to Fordham (1964) he even thought that Western man's penchant for objective reality tended to rob the psyche of its value which leads to "the deification of such abstractions like the State" (p. 74).  Szasz (1988), who gives Jung a mixed but generally favorable review, saw him (Jung), as being less authoritarian than others in his profession and a proponent of individualism who tried to help others "find their own faiths as befits intelligent adults in the twentieth century" (p. 163).

       Campbell wrote very little on his preferences for the role of government outside what has been interpreted here.  Segal (1990) says that he was politically conservative (p. 21). Perhaps this was true for the role of government in the economy.  But given his strong support for individualism, his views would be the essence of libertarianism.  He would not likely have approved much regulation of personal behavior.  Of course, he seems to have never come out and said that he himself was a libertarian.  It would be foolish to make him into something after his death.  His views on the machine-like state and individualism could be interpreted as supporting the need for a welfare state that helps individuals against monopolistic capitalists.  He was occasionally critical of business and money making.  But he never said or wrote anything that indicated he supported socialism or the welfare state. His work and ideas do seem to support the values of individualism and limited government (see excerpt of interview at the end of the article).  These, along with his antipathy for imposed systems, tyrannical status quos and Marxist thinking seem to accord with libertarian thinking.

Tape #1901: "Call of the Hero" with Joseph Campbell interviewed by Michael Toms

New Dimensions Foundation audio tape from a live interview on San Francisco's radio station KQED

The following exchange was part of a discussion the question of:  What is creativity?

 

Toms:  In a sense it's the going for, the jumping over the edge and moving into the adventure that really catalyzes the creativity, isn't it?

Campbell:  I would say so, you don't have creativity otherwise.

Toms:  Otherwise there's no fire, you're just following somebody else's rules.

Campbell:  Well, my wife is a dancer.  She has had dance companies for many, many years.  I don't know whether I should talk about this.  But when the young people are really adventuring, it's amazing what guts they have and what meager lives they can be living, and yet the richness of the action in the studio.  Then, you are going to have a concert season.  They all have to join a union.  And as soon as they join a union, there character changes. (emphasis added, but Campbell changed the tone of his voice) There are rules of how many hours a day you can rehearse. There are certain rules of how many weeks of rehearsal you can have.  They bring this down like a sledge hammer on the whole thing.  There are two mentalities.  There's the mentality of security, of money.  And there's the mentality of open risk.

Toms:  In other societies we can look and see that there are those that honor elders.  In our society it seems much like the elders are part of the main stream and there is a continual kind of wanting to turn away from what the elders have to say, the way it is, the way to do it.  The union example is a typical one, where the authority, institution, namely the union comes in and says this is the way it's done.  And then one has to fall into line or one has to find something else to do.

Campbell:  That's right.

Toms:  And it's like treating this dichotomy between elders and the sons and daughters of the elders.  How do you see that in relationship to other cultures?

Campbell:  This comes to the conflict of the art, the creative art and economic security.  I don't think I have seen it in other cultures.  The artist doesn't have to buck against quite the odds that he has to buck against today.

Toms:  The artist is honored in other cultures. 

Campbell:  He is honored and quickly honored.  But you might hit it off, something that really strikes the need and requirements of the day.  Then you've given your gift early.  But basically it is a real risk.  I think that is so in any adventure, even in business, the man who has the idea of a new kind of gift (this is exactly what George Gilder says in chapter three, "The Returns of Giving" in his book Wealth and Poverty) to society and he is willing to risk it.  Then the workers come in and claim they are the ones that did it.  Then he (the entrepreneur) can't afford to perform his performance.  It's a grotesque conflict, I think between the security and the creativity ideas.  The entrepreneur is a creator, he's running a risk. 

Toms:  Maybe in American capitalistic society the entrepreneur is the creative hero in some sense.

Campbell:  Oh, I think he is, I mean the real one.  Most people go into economic activities not for risk but for security.  You see what I mean.  And the elder psychology tends to take over.

This discussion ended and after a short break a new topic was discussed.

References

Barnaby, Karin and Pellegrino D'Acierno, eds. (1990).C. G. Jung and the   Humanities, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Briggs, Dennie and John M. Maher (1989).  An Open Life:  Joseph Campbell         in Conversation with Michael Toms. New York:  Harper and Row.

Campbell, Joseph (1968).  The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton:      Princeton University Press.

Campbell, Joseph (1986).  The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. New York:  Harper and Row.

Campbell, Joseph (1988).  The Power of Myth.  New York:  Doubleday.

Catford, Lorna and Michael Ray (1991).  The Path of the Everyday Hero.  Los Angeles: Tarcher.

Cousineau, Phil (1990).  The Hero's Journey:  Joseph Campbell on His Life            and Work.  San Francisco:  Harper.

Eliade, Mircea (1990). Myths and mythical thought.  In A. Eliot The           Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters, and Others. New York:     Penguin/Meridian.

Eliot, Alexander (1990). The Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters, and         Others. New York: Penguin/Meridian.

Fordham, Frieda (1964).  An Introduction to Jung's Psychology.  Baltimore:            Penguin Books Ltd.

Friedman, Milton (1962). Capitalism & Freedom. Chicago: The University of        Chicago Press.

Friedman, Milton (1978). Adam Smith's Relevance for 1976. In F. Glahe   Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations. Boulder: Colorado Associated           University Press.

Friedman, Milton and Rose Friedman (1984). Tyranny of the Status Quo.    San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Gilder, George (1981). Wealth and Poverty.  New York:  Bantom Books.

Hughes, Jonathan (1986). The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jung, Carl G. and C. Kerényi (1951).  Introduction to a Science of Mythology:        The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis.  London:      Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Jung, Carl G., ed. (1964).  Man and His Symbols.  Garden City, New York:           Doubleday & Company Inc.  

Leeming, David A. (1973). Mythology:  The Voyage of the Hero.     Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

Morong, Cyril (1992).  The Creative-Destroyers: Are Entrepreneurs             Mythological Heroes?  Paper presented at the Western Economic            Association Annual Conference, July 1992.

Putka, Gary 1993.  Heroes of Business, Tragic or Not, Get Classical            Treatment:  School Compares Executives to Agamemnon and Jesus,      Other Persons of Renown.  The Wall Street Journal. 91(46): A1 and            A9.

Segal, Robert A. (1990).  Joseph Campbell: An Introduction  New York:    Penguin.

Silber, John (1989).  Straight Shooting:  What is Wrong with America and   How to Fix It.  New York:  Harper and Row.

Szasz, Thomas (1988).  The Myth of Psychotherapy.  Syracuse:  Syracuse    University Press

Taylor, Archer (1964).  "The Biographical Pattern in Traditional Narrative."            Journal of the Folklore Institute. I:114-129.

Response to Scott Keller on Qualified Immunity and the Common Law

By Jay Schweikert of Cato.

"The doctrine of qualified immunity protects public officials from civil liability, even when they break the law, unless a civil rights plaintiff can show that the defendant violated "clearly established law." This rule is nominally an interpretation of our primary federal civil rights statute, Section 1983, but that statute says nothing about any immunity, qualified or otherwise. And the recent scholarship of William Baude, which Justice Thomas himself has relied on in calling for qualified immunity to be reconsidered, argues that the background common law against which this statute was passed did not include anything like the across-the-board defense for all public officials that characterizes qualified immunity today. Rather, the general rule was strict liability for public officials who committed constitutional violations, with "good faith" only relevant to the extent that it was an element of particular torts; there was not, however, a generally applicable good-faith defense for state actors who acted unlawfully.

But a forthcoming article by Scott Keller, partner and appellate practice chair at Baker Botts, challenges this conclusion. His article, titled Qualified and Absolute Immunity at Common Law, focuses on four 19th century tort treatises, as well as various 19th century Supreme Court decisions, and concludes that "19th century common law did recognize a freestanding qualified immunity protecting all government officers’ discretionary duties—like qualified immunity today." He does note, however, the Court's modern immunity doctrines nevertheless depart in several ways from the 19th-century common law, most notably in that "qualified immunity at common law could be overridden by showing an officer's subjective improper purpose, instead of 'clearly established law.'"

This article is an important and ambitious piece of scholarship, and at first glance, it certainly seems to at least complicate the question of whether there were any free-standing immunities around the time that Section 1983 was passed in 1871. For example, he cites Wilkes v. Dinsman, 48 U.S. 89, 129 (1849), which states that "a public officer, invested with certain discretionary powers . . . cannot be made answerable for any injury, when acting within the scope of his authority, and not influenced by malice, corruption, or cruelty." Various 19th century tort treatises seem to express a similar point -- that executive officials, acting in a "quasi-judicial" capacity (what we would today call "discretionary functions") generally cannot be sued unless acting with some improper motive.

An in-depth historical evaluation of Keller's article is beyond my capabilities here, so I'm not going to offer a definite conclusion on how much to take from this. It certainly appears that Keller has mustered a strong case, and I'll admit substantial confusion on how to reconcile some of his evidence with the historical sources discussed in Will Baude's article, which seem to suggest just as persuasively the opposite conclusion.

On a first look, one possible explanation for this apparent contradiction may be the fact that 19th-century constitutional law included far fewer limitations on public officials than exists today. The Bill of Rights, of course, did not even apply against state officials until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, and it would take until the mid-20th century for the Supreme Court to incorporate most of those rights against the states. Therefore, in this context, saying that executive officers could not be sued unless they acted "with malice" doesn't necessarily imply that they were immune for constitutional violations -- because at least for state actors, there were few federal constitutional limitations on them in the first place.

But in any event, I am not a historian, and I will definitely be curious to see if a response from Will Baude or other academics can unravel this confusion with more scholarly acumen. Nevertheless, I will offer two reasons for skepticism about the article's more general conclusion -- that the modern qualified immunity doctrine has far more historical justification than has previously been believed (even if its not a perfect match):

First, whatever the general state of 19th-century common law, the relevant legal question here is whether Section 1983, which says that any state actor who violates someone's rights "shall be liable to the party injured," nevertheless was understood to incorporate by reference the full scope of these supposed common-law immunities. And on this point, it's absolutely essential to recognize that the Supreme Court itself, in a 1915 decision called Myers v. Anderson, rejected the application of any good-faith defense to Section 1983 itself.

Myers involved a Section 1983 suit against city officials who refused to register three black voters under a Maryland "grandfather clause" statute. In a related case, Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court held that such grandfather-clause exemptions to literacy tests violated the Fifteenth Amendment. So the ultimate question in Myers was whether these particular state officers could be personally liable for damages under Section 1983 for enforcing this unconstitutional statute. And the defendants in Myers made exactly the sort of good-faith, lack-of-malice argument that Keller says was well established in 19th-century common law. They argued before the Court that:

The declarations filed in these cases are insufficient in law, because they fail to allege that the action of the defendants in refusing to register the plaintiffs was corrupt or malicious. Malice is an essential allegation in a suit of this kind against registration officers at common law.

But the Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding as follows:

The nonliability, in any event, of the election officers for their official conduct is seriously pressed in argument . . . . But we do not undertake to review the considerations pressed on these subjects, because we think they are fully disposed of by the ruling this day made in the Guinn case and by the very terms of [Section 1983], when considered in the light of the inherently operative force of the Fifteenth Amendment as stated in the case referred to.

In other words, the Myers Court held simply that the statute was unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment, the city officials were enforcing this unconstitutional statute, so they were liable under Section 1983, QED. Whether or not the officers were acting with "malice" was irrelevant, given the plain terms of the statute. So, even if Keller is right about the general state of 19th-century common law, that itself doesn't make it obvious that this particular statute was meant to subsume those common-law defense. And in Myers, the Supreme Court held exactly to the contrary.

Now, Keller does briefly discuss Myers in a footnote, arguing that commentators "frequently overread" this decision "for the proposition that executive officials had no immunity from damages claims even in the early 20th century." His explanation appears to be that because Myers involved a racial discrimination claim, the defendants here -- by enforcing the unconstitutional statute -- necessarily had the sort of "discriminatory purpose" that would constitute "common law malice." In other words, Myers doesn't stand for the idea that malice is unnecessary to show liability under Section 1983; the defendants here just happened to be acting with malice, given the nature of the claim.

But if you look at what the Court actually said in Myers (the language I quoted above), it's clear this was not the rationale the Court was adopting. While the Court didn't go into much detail, note that the defendants explicitly argued that "[m]alice is an essential allegation in a suit of this kind." The Court could easily have said "yes, this is generally true, but malice is inherent to racial discrimination claims" or "malice is plainly established by the facts alleged." But that's not what the Court did. Rather, the Court essentially said this malice argument was irrelevant, given the ruling in the Guinn case (which held that such statutes were unconstitutional) and "by the very terms of [Section 1983]."

I think the only reasonable interpretation of this passage is that the Court was holding that the presence of common-law malice was simply irrelevant to Section 1983 suits -- all that matters is whether the defendants violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. Therefore, notwithstanding Keller's dismissal of this case, I think Myers is powerful evidence that no matter the general state of 19th-century common law, Section 1983 did not incorporate across-the-board good-faith defenses for all public officials.

Second, even if Keller is correct that Section 1983 was meant to incorporate a general, good-faith defense for executive officers, there is a massive difference between this sort of actual good-faith requirement and the "clearly established law" standard that characterizes modern qualified immunity. Keller acknowledges this distinction, of course, and explicitly discusses how it represents a divergence between the 19th-century common law and modern doctrine. But I think he understates just how massive a gulf there is between these two approaches. If we were to replace the "clearly established law" standard with an actual, good-faith defense, that would not be a minor, technical correction -- it would be a fundamental reshaping and substantial limitation of what qualified immunity actually is.

Notwithstanding that the Supreme Court has called the "clearly established law" test an "objective good faith" standard, the practical operation of the doctrine has nothing to with what a reasonable person would call "good faith." Under qualified immunity today, even if officers are explicitly acting in bad faith, even if they are intending to violate someone's constitutional rights, they can still receive qualified immunity, just because no court has confronted that particular set of facts before.

The clearest example of this point is Jessop v. City of Fresno, in which the Ninth Circuit granted immunity to police officers who were alleged to have stolen over $225,000 in cash and rare coins while executing a search warrant. The court said that while “the theft [of] personal property by police officers sworn to uphold the law” may be “morally wrong,” the officers could not be sued for the theft because the Ninth Circuit had never specifically decided “whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to that warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment.” Obviously these officers were not acting in good faith, and no one contended otherwise. But because there was no prior case involving such outlandishly illegal misconduct, they received qualified immunity.

Indeed, in the law enforcement context, most police actions that are genuinely carried out in "good faith" will not violate the Constitution in the first place! After all, the touchstone for most Fourth Amendment questions is "reasonableness." A police officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment just because they arrest someone who turns out to be innocent or use force that, with the benefit of hindsight, was unnecessary. As I discussed in more detail here, the Supreme Court's decision in Graham v. Connor creates an “objective reasonableness” standard for excessive‐​force claims that is highly deferential to on-the-spot police decision-making. Basically by definition, an officer who is genuinely acting in good faith will not be acting "objectively unreasonably," which means they won't be violating the Constitution at all.

Another way of expressing this point is that, at least for police officers, there is not much of a gap between reasonableness and lawfulness. The only obvious example I can think of where you might say an officer is genuinely acting in good faith, but nevertheless violating someone's constitutional rights, is where they are carrying out a statute they reasonably believed to be constitutional, or acting in accord with judicial precedent that was governing at the time. There's a reasonable case for limiting liability in these context, and it's for exactly this reason that I suggested a legislative fix to qualified immunity could include safe-harbor provisions in these circumstances. This was also the policy judgment reflected in Senator Mike Braun's "Reforming Qualified Immunity Act," which included exactly these safe harbors.

But whether or not police officers should receive immunity in those limited circumstances, such cases would make up only a very small fraction of Section 1983 suits. Thus, in the mine run of cases involving law enforcement, replacing the "clearly established law" standard with an actual good-faith standard would be very close to eliminating qualified immunity entirely. 

* * *

In conclusion, I commend Scott Keller for a thoughtful and detailed article, and for contributing to the scholarship on such an important question. As I noted above, he makes a powerful argument that the common-law background on governmental immunity is, at the very least, more complicated than a lot of us previously recognized, and I look forward to the academic responses I'm sure this will provoke.

However, even if Keller is right about the 19th-century common law background, I remain skeptical that Section 1983 itself was meant to incorporate any kind of across-the-board defense for all public officials. And Keller himself acknowledges that the "clearly established law" standard, which is the defining feature of modern qualified immunity doctrine, is fundamentally at odds even with his interpretation of 19th-century common law. In my view, the case for eliminating qualified immunity -- or at the very least, eliminating the "clearly established law" test -- remains as strong as ever."

Low Vitamin D Levels Tied to Odds for Severe COVID

By E.J. Mundell of WEBMD.

"Low blood levels of vitamin D might heighten people's odds for severe or even fatal COVID-19, new research shows.

Taking in a healthy level of vitamin D may therefore "reduce the complications, including the cytokine storm [release of too many proteins into the blood too quickly] and ultimately death from COVID-19," said study author Dr. Michael Holick. He's a professor of medicine, physiology, biophysics and molecular medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

Vitamin D is called the "sunshine vitamin" because it's manufactured naturally by the skin upon contact with sunlight. But it can also be sourced through certain foods and supplements.

One respiratory health expert who wasn't involved in the study said the findings echo those of prior research.

"Several studies have brought to light that patients with vitamin D deficiency have a worse outcome in COVID-19," said pulmonologist and internist Dr. Len Horovitz, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "This is not surprising since vitamin D seems to have a beneficial effect on the immune system and wound healing."

In the new study, Holick and his colleagues assessed vitamin D levels in blood samples from 235 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The blood samples were also checked for an inflammatory marker called C-reactive protein and for the number of lymphocytes, a type of immune cell that helps fight infection.

The study couldn't prove cause and effect. But patients who were vitamin D-sufficient -- a blood level of at least 30 nanograms per milliliter -- had a significantly lower risk for serious complications from COVID-19, including losing consciousness, low blood oxygen levels and death.

Among patients older than 40, those who were vitamin D-sufficient were also 51.5% less likely to die from COVID-19 compared to those who were vitamin D-deficient or insufficient, the team said.

The study was published Sept. 25 in the journal PLOS ONE.

A prior study by Holick found that having a sufficient amount of vitamin D might also reduce the risk of becoming infected with the new coronavirus by 54%. Along with helping reduce the risks associated with the new coronavirus, being vitamin D-sufficient does the same against other viruses that cause upper respiratory tract illnesses, including the flu, according to Holick.

"There is great concern that the combination of an influenza infection and a coronal viral infection could substantially increase hospitalizations and death due to complications from these viral infections," he said in a university news release.

All in all, vitamin D could offer a simple and cost-effective way to combat the new coronavirus, Holick believes. "Because vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is so widespread in children and adults in the United States and worldwide, especially in the winter months, it is prudent for everyone to take a vitamin D supplement to reduce risk of being infected and having complications from COVID-19," he said.

But Horovitz noted that vitamin D might be a bit tougher to come by this year.

"During lockdown, people were indoors more and so their natural D level was lower than ever," he pointed out. "In people who don't take D, their level is usually low unless they take D as a supplement.

"I have been testing the level in all patients for years, and have found especially low levels since people have been indoors and quarantining," Horovitz said. "The dose is usually several thousand international units per day and can be tested with a blood test routinely.""