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Notes -
Remember the COVID lockdowns, when billions of school children were confined to their rooms not so much because there was a reasonable suspicion that they were positive, or because they would be competing for ICU beds if infected, but frankly because their freedom was a price the adults were willing to pay to delay the spread of the disease a bit while keeping the economy going?
Contrast with the Hantavirus. Now, I am emphatically not saying that the MV Hondius should have be dealt with using Hegseth's patented double-tap method, even though the utilitarian case seems a bit stronger than for most of his other targets due to tail risks.
But it seems to me that the Hondius should be a Dutch problem, as it is sailing under the Dutch flag. Now, if the Netherlands had cut a deal with Spain to quarantine the people aboard the ship in Tenerife, or even to fly them back to the Netherlands in a charted plane, that would still seem reasonable. Instead, it was apparently decided that the potentially infected people are the problem of their respective states, and they were quickly repatriated (apart from the crew, which is mostly quarantined in Rotterdam because the Philippines were unwilling to just charter a plane to allow their countrymen the luxury of being quarantined on their home soil).
Now, I am an utilitarian. Out of about 200 people on that ship, three have died (so far -- at least another is in 'serious condition'). Without bothering to search for the ages of the victims, let's call it 60 life-years lost (but feel free to refute that). Arbitrarily, let's decide that a life in quarantine has a quality factor of 0.5 (because half the people like Netflix and half would prefer biking instead). Locking up ~200 people for about six weeks each might thus cause a loss of 12 QALYs. The point being that even without considering the the potential for superspreaders, a quarantine would seem proportional.
Yes, containing the cruise ship outbreak would not stop a pandemic if the strain is pandemic-grade, as it is likely endemic in Argentina. However, I do not think this refutes its purpose. You might as well say "sooner or later, that naive tourist walking through the slums will get murdered for his wallet by someone, so I might as well stab him right now".
Culture war angle: different countries are going to handle the quarantine slightly differently:
vs MAHA:
Currently, while some people near me claim that this will be the next pandemic, I am taking the fifth until Scott publishes one of his trademark 'much more than you wanted to know' articles. Long incubation period and high mortality (in humans -- the cute little rodents are fine!) certainly form a nice basis if it evolves to be more transmittable between humans. Of course, the WHO tells us that everything is fine, but these are basically the same people who told us that masks will not prevent COVID. (And the perspective of the other side is not very helpful either -- I would sooner take military advice from Hegseth than I would take medical advice from Kennedy.) On Polymarket, a Hantavirus pandemic in 2026 trades at around 10%. This is obviously limited by the usual effects -- even if you believe that the probability is zero, 10% gain over seven months or so is not that great of a return of investment. It would be useful if there were pandemic bonds traded on the open market (so one could compare their prices to what they are usually), but from what I can tell there are none.
The school closures were useless because by then it was far too late, and even then it was already established the virus was not nearly as deadly as feared especially among young people. For the vast majority of people, Covid was like a bad cold.
if the Hantavirus can be confined to the ship, then a stronger case can be made for quarainte, with appropriate monetary compensation.
Out of money put options on index funds can also accomplish this. The problem is these tend to be cash incinerators 95-99% of the time. If you throw 1% of your net worth on these , you can make a nice profit if this is a repeat of Covid...a few people did this in early 2020. This is unlikely though, from Google "Hantavirus is generally not highly contagious between people and does not spread like common respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 or flu."
Yes put prices would be a good indicator. And a big reason why you know polymarket market isn’t legitimate or sized. It’s not that 13% isn’t a great return - you could actually easily arb it with index puts. Bet no at 13% and buy a certain amount of index puts with the 13%. Cross collateralize them.
If a pandemic occurs again
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