Frances Lee
Appearances
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I think under the pressure of the crisis, the public demanding action with the sense of catastrophe unfolding, I think they indulged in a great deal of wishful thinking. And so when advocates of non-pharmaceutical interventions recommended these measures and and were optimistic about it, they heard what they wanted to hear.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, there was a sense that with the two weeks to slow the spread, that we get control of this thing. It'll go up, there'll be a peak, and then it'll come down, we'll defeat it. This will be done in a few months. So there was optimism that this could be over with in short order.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
But there just wasn't a lot of long-term thinking of any sort around this, and a great deal of hope that long-term these measures wouldn't be in place.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I would also add on this point that it's not just that there were costs, it's that the costs were inequitably distributed so that some would suffer to protect the lives of others. I mean, the pandemic restrictions did not protect essential workers from exposure to COVID. And so they were being asked to bear the societal burden of disease.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
So I think we have to confront the nature of these restrictions, that it's not a matter of saving everyone's life. It was saving some. I mean, that was all they could have achieved, is to save some. It's a question as to whether they saved any, in that, as we look back, the places that imposed tougher restrictions did not do better.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
How can we coexist with anti-science people? What can we do to survive the ignorance?
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
The Great Barrington Declaration is a strategic plan. I mean, it's one page long and it just lays out a different approach and then invites people to think carefully about how it might be implemented, how one might engage in the effort of protecting the vulnerable, like more COVID testing of people who interact with the elderly.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
More help, you know, organized society-wide help of, you know, getting groceries and taking them to the elderly. Like, you know, looking for ways to reduce the risk of those who were at most risk of severe outcomes. That was what they hoped to initiate with the Great Barrington Declaration was then a discussion that might develop more fully paths to implementing this strategic plan.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
But instead, they were denounced. They were presented as if they wanted people to die. Their motives were profoundly questioned. And that happened also at the highest levels of the U.S. scientific establishment. Just explain that.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Well, the question presupposes that the measures that we were taking were working. They were not protecting the essential workers. And if we're not going to be able to contain the virus, if it's going to continue to spread through society, if it's going to become endemic, then aiming at protecting those at most risk makes more sense. It's a matter of what you see as the future trajectory here.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
So at the outset, states across the board implemented stay-at-home orders. 43 states put them in place. Of the seven states that did not, all but one had broad business closures. So there was great unity of response across the country, and these measures were hugely popular. Something like 87% of Americans supported the measures at the time of their implementation.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Where we began to see policy divergence is in the reopening process. Democratic-leaning states maintained these stay-at-home orders two and a half times longer than Republican-leaning states. Democratic-leaning states were slower to reopen schools, dramatically slower to reopen schools.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
They maintained more stringent restrictions in terms of business closures and which businesses could reopen and when and on what timeline and whether you'd have to have outdoor dining or whether restaurants would be closed again in the winter of 2020. So there were substantial policy differences between red states and blue states over the course of the pandemic.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
And at the time that the vaccine rollout began, there was no difference between red states and blue states in their cumulative COVID mortality over the course of the crisis.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
No difference. The difference begins to emerge in the post-vaccine period. And that's where you begin to see blue states faring better than red states. So that by the end of the time series we examine in our book, which stops in January 23rd, Republican states had 30% more COVID mortality than Democratic states.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
That's correct. This is what we can see as we look back. We can see that there was a great deal of variation in how states responded, but that variation doesn't correlate with variation in COVID outcomes as measured by mortality from the disease, as reported to the CDC.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
And we control for factors like the age structure of the state population, the percent with obesity, the percent who live in urban areas. And, you know, other demographic factors likely to affect a state's vulnerability to the virus.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Well, individuals of sufficient means to stay home can protect themselves individually. But what works for individuals may not work for society as a whole.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
That's right. Another explanation is, of course, that it matters greatly who is being infected. It was only highly lethal in certain populations. And so if you were not protecting those in nursing homes, but you were keeping the teenagers and the college students locked down, you're not going to achieve anything in terms of reducing COVID mortality.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
We also didn't know when the virus reached the United States. There's evidence from antibodies in blood banks that the virus was already here in December of 2019. So it had already been spreading for months before the first lockdowns occurred. And data from cell phone mobility shows that lockdowns begin to break down after just a few weeks. So they're not sustainable for human beings either.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Human beings could not comply over the long haul. You know, there's evidence that these measures made a difference for transmission, but there's not evidence that these measures were effective at reducing COVID mortality. And so that's just where we are. We need to do more study to understand what happened during the pandemic.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
And so I think we need to confront our failures and our successes and learn from it.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Our data are consistent with that interpretation in that we begin to see a divergence after the vaccine rollout between states with high vaccine uptake and states with low vaccine uptake in their COVID mortality. At the aggregate level, States that had higher vaccine uptake do have better COVID outcomes in the period after vaccines were available.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
They're extraordinarily wide-ranging. I mean, this was a whole-of-society intervention, and so the whole of society was affected. I mean, we can start by thinking about the cost to education. We saw unprecedented drops in student learning as gauged by longstanding indicators of student progress. Chronic absenteeism from school roughly doubled nationwide, still elevated.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
The gaps that emerged in learning outcomes between the better off and the less well off students, they widened and they haven't begun to close since the pandemic ended and since schools reopened. Those gaps are still wider than they were. Those who are academically lagging before the pandemic were much worse off after the pandemic. I mean, we can go through the long—it's a long list of costs.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
The 2020 COVID response was equivalent as a share of GDP to both the New Deal and the 2009 stimulus package combined.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
And then in 2021, we had another New Deal all over again. It's roughly equivalent in terms of the demand on the U.S. Treasury to war mobilization in 1943. About 10 percent of the total cost went to health care. Most of it is going to sustaining businesses and individuals through the closures. That's the lion's share of COVID aid.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, that's where things stand. I think that's one of the reasons why there's a great deal of hesitance to look back at what was done and to take stock of it.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, this was, as was frequently said at the time, a whole of government, whole of society response. And it was undertaken without the normal deliberation that accompanies decision making of that degree of consequence. And, you know, I mean, I remember when the pandemic began that I had some doubts as to whether these measures were going to succeed.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
That's a larger question than I think we are capable of settling. What we can point to is the shortcomings in deliberation, in considering the costs, and in the equivocal and skeptical nature of the evidence when these measures were undertaken. And the doubts about what difference they made based on the data that we have now. That's why we think a larger conversation is necessary.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
It's not for us to say. I mean, there's the scale of the decisions we are talking about are society wide. They are global decisions. As I have reflected on the work that Steve and I were doing as we were writing, I'm struck by the tragedy if these measures didn't work.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
What the costs were, what else we could have done had we been able to make those kinds of public investments in something that was effective for other needs that we have as a society. It is excruciating to think about, but I think we owe it to ourselves to do so.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I think conspiracy theories are fueled by not asking these questions. I mean, this is obviously, there are many conspiracy theories around COVID. You know, the plandemic, you know, governments took these actions in order to assert more control over us. I mean, that kind of discourse, which exists.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
If government acknowledged these questions and tried to hash them out, yes, some faith might be lost, but also some faith would be gained. Okay.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, it was just a normal kind of skepticism about whether government policy would work, which is, you know, sort of bedrock to political science. I mean, that is one of our main topics of inquiry, whether government policy works or whether it has unanticipated consequences. And I was so struck at the lack of skepticism over the course of the pandemic about these measures.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, that quote is excruciating. You know, it goes right back to what you were asking us to confront a few minutes ago. How can you tell us that all this bought us nothing, that it was futile? I mean, it's extremely painful. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's a hesitation even to look back at all.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I mean, it was obvious that a large share of the workforce... Lack of skepticism from some. Yes, right. In the quarters, you know, that I travel in among academics or mainstream media, that's where there seemed to be little questioning. It was almost seen as sort of wrong or immoral to raise questions about whether this was feasible for most of the population.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
I'd just like to add on this 2019 World Health Organization study. The study was to examine intervention by intervention, which of them have evidence of effectiveness against a respiratory pandemic. And all of the measures were rated as having very poor evidence. So in other words, we don't know if these measures work. Four of them they recommended not to use under any circumstances.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Those four measures were quarantine of exposed persons, border closure, entry and exit screening, and contact tracing. So there were no assurances that these measures would work, but we were assured that they would have costs.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Well, they had been suggested. That's the reason why they are being studied. And of course, we know at some level that viruses transmit from person to person. So one can infer that separating people from one another, putting barriers between them ought to make a difference, or that there's a logic there.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
But the question is whether that could be scaled up to society or whether it would be sustainable over the course of a pandemic. There was no body of evidence around that.
The Daily
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
And so when it became the mantra of the pandemic that we should follow the science, there just wasn't a body of scientific work that undergirded the response that directed us to conclude that these measures were likely to be effective.