Infectious Diseases and Government Growth

摘要

The costs of government responses to health crises will initially be understated because the long-term effects are long and variable and will become evident only in the future. Expansions in government power are reversible but are often sticky due to corresponding changes in people's ideology regarding the appropriate role of the state in relation to the citizenry and to political economy factors such as vested interests and legal precedents regarding acceptable behaviors by the state (Higgs 1987). Moreover, expansions in state power associated with responses to infectious disease can expand into other areas of life and persist for decades after the public-health crisis ends. These realities offer reason for prudence and caution during public-health crises, where there are often calls for government to act quicldy and decisively. Both infectious disease and the various institutions that constitute human society are complex systems. Given limited human reason, interventions will necessarily be simple relative to the complexity of the systems being intervened upon. This discrepancy will result in a range of unknowable and possibly negative "system effects" (Jervis 1977), which can be both immediate and long term.