The Covid-19 Pandemic and the ‘Tyranny of Tiny Risks’

Even the smallest potential benefit, regardless of cost, will be regarded as sufficient to justify masking

Letter to WSJ.

"In their Aug. 21 letter protesting Drs. Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner’s “The Case Against Masks for Children” (op-ed, Aug. 9), Drs. Jonathan Popler, Satyanarayan Hegde et al., fail to put the risk posed by Covid to children into perspective. The authors write—and we needn’t doubt—that masking “has been shown to reduce transmission” and that “the student population isn’t currently eligible for vaccination.”

But reduce transmission by how much and to what effect? This the letter writers do not say—a curious omission for authors who praise cost-benefit analysis. Nor do they say what obviously ought to be said: Covid poses virtually no health risk to children. Therefore, children’s ineligibility for Covid vaccination is as irrelevant as is their ineligibility for treatment for Alzheimer’s.

Washington University economist Ian Fillmore expressed a worry that even the smallest potential benefit, regardless of cost, will be regarded as sufficient to justify masking. The pulmonologists’ letter proves that Prof. Fillmore is right to worry about what he calls “the tyranny of tiny risks.” 

Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux  

George Mason University

Fairfax, Va."