Five years ago, at the urging of federal officials, much of the United States locked down to stop the spread of Covid. Over time, the action polarized the country and changed the relationship between many Americans and their government.Michael Barbaro speaks to Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, two prominent political scientists who dispute the effectiveness of the lockdowns, to find out what they think will be required when the next pandemic strikes.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Guest: Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, authors of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed UsBackground reading: As the coronavirus spread, researchers worldwide scrambled to find ways to keep people safe. Some efforts were misguided. Others saved millions of lives.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Hilary Swift for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: Were the Covid lockdowns effective in saving lives?
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.
Right. And prompted by you two and what you wrote, I went in and looked at this study. What it says is that while there is, like you just said, low evidence, that it was plausible that these kinds of interventions could help mitigate the spread of the virus. What do you make of that word plausible?
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.
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.
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.
You're citing this WHO study, but how widespread, how dominant would you say this skepticism of these kinds of interventions as effective, as worth the cost, as practical and scalable, how widely would you say that view was held before the pandemic?
Well, yeah, the World Health Organization was one study, but there was another one in 2019 by Johns Hopkins, which came to similarly skeptical conclusions about these various non-pharmaceutical interventions, school closures, mask wearing, and so on and so forth.
Earlier, in 2011, the UK government did a pre-pandemic planning document and similarly argued that in times of modern transportation around the world, these non-pharmaceutical interventions could not be counted on to significantly slow the spread of a virus. And so I would say that that was the dominant view.
There were, of course, mathematical modelers who were prominent in the George W. Bush administration. They were more optimistic, not based on huge amounts of data, but based on scientific modeling projections. They believed that these measures could work.
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Chapter 2: What was the role of political scientists in analyzing Covid lockdowns?
Another factor was the report that came out of Imperial College London, the optimistic modeling projections about non-pharmaceutical interventions. That's Neil M. Ferguson. His report projected something like 2 million deaths in the United States by August 2020.
Right, kind of the reporter around the world.
The reporter around the world, one of the most influential, it looks like, reports that was ever issued. And it was that that Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx carried into Donald Trump's office, leading to a news conference on March 16th that recommended school closures and other measures.
So I'm glad to see that you're practicing social distancing. That looks very nice. That's very good. I want to thank everybody for being here today. This afternoon, we're announcing new guidelines for every American to follow over the next 15 days as we combat the virus. Each and every one of us has a critical role to play.
My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible, avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people, avoid discretionary travel, and avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and public food courts.
this what we're mentioning now the guidelines when you look at them carefully i believe if the people in the united states take them seriously because they were based on some rather serious consideration back and forth some may look at them and say they're going to be really inconvenient for people some will look and say well maybe we've gone a little bit too far they were well thought out
So take a look at the guidelines, read them carefully, and we hope that the people of the United States will take them very seriously because they will fail if people don't adhere to them. Thank you.
I signed an executive order directing nearly all of our 9 million residents to quite simply stay at home.
That we direct a statewide order for people to stay at home.
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