[ThTh1] This LA Times article, headlined “COVID lockdowns saved lives without harming economies” drew a lot of fire this week. The headline is a disaster. Michael Hiltzik’s article admits that lockdowns and related restrictions harmed economies. What it argues is that these things harmed the economies less than “herd immunity” approaches did or would have. Let’s unpack this argument because I think this is an important debate we need to start having.
First of all, I must once again emphasize that lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are not the same thing, and our debate would be much improved if we kept that in mind. Lockdowns are where people are forced to stay in their homes. Almost everything is shut down except for utilities and food distribution. It’s how Wuhan got control of the initial outbreak and how Italy got their outbreak under control.
There is little doubt that such lockdowns work at least in terms of controlling the virus. And if the outbreak can be brought down within a few weeks, you can quickly go back to normal life and the economy can rebound. But the key point is “if the outbreak can be brought down within a few weeks”. Your lockdown has to be fairly airtight so that the virus actually stops circulating. Otherwise, the virus continues to spread, people stop complying and you’ve gone through all that pain for nothing. This is why the WHO and most public health experts have moved away from lockdowns as a control mechanism.
Lockdowns were rarely deployed in COVID and almost never after the first few months. What where deployed were stay-at-home orders and similar restrictions that tried to manage the outbreak rather than end it. They basically split the baby, allowing more economic activity but contemplating more spread of the virus. In the end, you might end up with more economic pain; a restaurant that is shut down for a month and then re-opens might recover better than one that can only do take-out for six months. But they are also more doable.
So that’s the theory. What’s the evidence? The LA Times article is based heavily on this analysis by Noah Smith. I strongly recommend reading it. Noah notes out that countries that did a hard lockdown in the early days got the virus under control faster and had stronger economic 2020s than countries that didn’t. In the end, the virus came back in the fall with variants. But we also had far better treatments and the initial use of the vaccine. This was the whole concept of “flattening the curve” and it worked.
But he also points out this: countries, states and communities that issued stay-at-home orders showed no more of an economic hit than countries, states and communities that didn’t. The reason is that places that didn’t implement stay-at-home orders had higher overall infection rates. So, their economic activity declined because people were being infected and dying:
Let’s do a little thought experiment. Suppose in City A, they lock down. People stay home. The economy gets hurt, but the virus gets suppressed and infections go to a low level. Eventually, they can start to reopen safely, and they don’t immediately get another wave of COVID because there just aren’t that many sick people in town. But in City B, they don’t lock down. 80% of people stay home because of fear, so the economy gets clobbered anyway. But the 20% who go out end up spreading the virus, raising the infection rate to a high level. That causes more fear, and eventually even the 20% who were going out get scared enough to stay home. But now it’s too late — infection has a higher baseline, and takes much longer to go down. So, the fear lasts longer, and so does the economic pain.
The data now supports that thought experiment. If you want to see it taken to the greatest extreme, just look at India right now. Thanks to a massive outbreak of COVID, their economy is crashing and will almost certainly end up worse than it was in 2020. We are seeing what would have happened with a herd immunity approach: even more economic pain combined with even more death.1 But you don’t even need to go that far. Just look at Sweden. Early in the pandemic, herd immunity advocates pointed at Sweden as an example of how a herd immunity approach was superior. Well, here we are a year later. Sweden did not experience the catastrophe that Indian is, since many Swedes stayed at home anyway and Sweden doesn’t have the same social, economic and cultural issues that India does. But they did did take a bigger economic hit than their neighbors along with three to seven times as many deaths per capita. When you look at the Scandinavian countries, you can see clear evidence that stay-at-home orders saved both lives and jobs. The claim that you must choose between saving the economy and stopping the virus is simply not true.
There is no approach to COVID — none — that is going to result in zero economic pain. An unconstrained outbreak is an economic disaster, as India is showing right now. Even a controlled outbreak is going to cause pain because, stay-at-home orders or no, most people aren’t going to risk death to watch a movie. The only thing that truly saves the economy is beating the virus. Maybe not 100% but certainly down to manageable levels.
One of the things we’re going to have to figure out is where the tradeoff is. At what point do the methods used to control the virus cause more economic and social damage than the virus itself? The evidence after a year of COVID suggests it is well away from “do nothing”.
But…we’re still figuring this out. It’s tricky because government and private behavior do not always align. Take masks for example. States that repealed mask mandates earlier this year have seen no more infections than states that kept them: mask-wearing depends more on personal choice than law. On the other hands, states that mandates masks in schools saw significantly fewer infections among schoolchildren. Do mask mandates work in schools but not in the general public? Perhaps.
It will be a long time before we can say for certain which policies worked best, let alone which minimized the economic damage. And the rules that apply to the initial outbreak of COVID may not apply to future outbreaks, let alone other diseases that might be heading our way. But the early evidence indicates that many of the policies that saved lives also saved jobs.
It’s vital that we have continue to have these discussions. And it’s incredibly vital that we have them without the certainty that the LA Times headline tried to inject into the debate or the certainty that those responding to it did. We know some stuff. We don’t know everything yet. And science is how we will move to a place of not knowing a bit less.
[ThTh2] While we’re on the subject…anti-mask mandate folks are jumping on Biden for describing the repeal of mask mandates as “Neanderthal thinking”. But Neanderthals were actually very intelligent. I sometimes wonder if they were more intelligent than humans.
[ThTh3] You may have heard that a COVID variant broke out among the New York Yankees. The data shows the vaccine worked as advertised. Most of those exposed weren’t infected. Those who were infected were asymptomatic. Only one coach got sick, and it was a mild case. And a new study indicates that the AstraZeneca vaccine is working against the India variant. We continue to get great news on the effectiveness of these vaccines. Let’s hope it continues. And that the news on side effects continues to be good.
[ThTh4] And speaking of things we don’t know; we may be significantly underestimating the number of lives COVID has taken. While I agree with the overall conclusion — especially as most of the uncounted are in developing countries — I do think they overshoot the mark a bit.
[ThTh5] What, still not done with COVID? OK, I swear this is the last one. But there is more evidence trickling in to support the lab leak theory for the origin of the virus. I don’t think we’ll ever know for certain. But China’s opacity on this issue isn’t helping.
[ThTh6] It turns out: mammals might be able to breath through their intestines. So, if you get sick in the future, doctors might literally blows oxygen up your …
[ThTh7] When I started graduate school, one of the embarrassing inconsistencies in the field was that the age we estimated for the universe’s oldest stars was higher than the age we estimated for the universe itself. This is not as dumb as it sounds. Those two ages were obtained through very different approaches. One used models of stellar evolution, the other used the expansion of the universe. And the uncertainties in both numbers was quite high. Within a decade, the problem disappeared. Improvements in our understanding of stellar evolution dropped the age of the oldest clusters to just above 13 billion years. And our discovery of dark energy pushed the age of the universe to just shy of 14 billion years.
So, the current argument over Methuselah’s Star does not phase me. The two estimates are within uncertainties of each other. And we are currently trying to improve our understand of both stars and the universe, which may move those ages to a more sensible alignment. Honestly, the fact that they are so close to each other at all is testament to how well science works. It’s as if you tried to measure the length of a football field with your tongue and with a corvette and got almost the exact same answer.
[ThTh8] I am not at all persuaded by the claim that Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster. The argument hinges heavily on the idea that Bitcoin computing can be supported with carbon-free energy (as it is in Iceland) while ignoring the reality that much of it is supported by coal (specifically, coal in China). It responds to the reality that Bitcoin uses hundreds of thousands of times as much energy per transaction by claiming that since Bitcoin transactions tend to be very large ($16,000 on average), we should judge on a per dollar basis, which seems backward to me, especially if Bitcoin is going to be an actual everyday currency rather than an investment vehicle.
[ThTh9] A ranger just made one of the biggest fossil discoveries in California history.
[ThTh10] A few years back, an XKCD cartoon pointed out that electronic communications travel faster than seismic waves. So, it was possible, if an Earthquake went off in one state, that people in other states would see it show up social media before they felt it. Then it literally happened. The 2011 Virginia earthquake was felt all across the United States and many people literally saw it on social media before the seismic waves hit them.
A new early warning network will now exploit this by sending out instant alerts to people in the Western US when an earthquake is detected. This could potentially give people vital seconds to get to safety.
THTH1 –
As a scientist I agree with this conclusion. Unfortunately, politicians and politicly appointed policy makers never will. They crave certainty because they refuse to accept that its ok to be wrong and change course based on new information. Pundits know this, which is why they so often speak in certain tones about scientifically weak political decisions. For that matter most people don’t deal well with uncertainty, much less real statistical probability. We may learn more through science, but I have zero expectation that it will improve the quality of our discourse on the subject, much less subsequent policy making.Report
ThTh7: See kids, this is why you want to avoid heavy metal poisoning. See how long you live!Report
Nice.Report
I find it amazing how many Americans freak out about “lockdown” in the United States. The United States had nothing close to a lockdown even in States that took COVID more seriously. There were always exceptions for “essential businesses” because of lobbying and local influence that would have been scoffed at in the rest of the world. No municipality or state in the United States required citizens to only travel within a small radius of their apartment for food shopping and medical appointments with a pass. Spain’s lockdown produced a black market for dog rental so people could be outside for a bit in the early days.
There was nowhere in the United States that could or even attempted to be like this. At any point during 2020, I could have traveled the entirety of California by foot if I wanted to or I could have traveled to any part of the United States. There were states that requested out of state residents quarantine upon entry but as far as I can tell this was more of a suggestion/beg without enforcement mechanism. When my partner traveled back to Singapore in December 2020, she was escorted to quarantine by government officials at arrival and kept in a hotel room for two weeks. It would have been more if she tested positive.
Yet the libertarian party still posted a fever dream tweet recently about how “lockdown” was a “trial run.”Report
White people suddenly had the government imposing on the the way black and brown people have always had the government imposed on them. Many of those white people chose to be whiney cowardly snowflakes about it and threaten all manner of horrid civil war-esque responses against their own governments. Its tragic, but it wasn’t nearly as violent as it could have been, which I suspect played a huge role in the seeking if the lest plausible “lockdown” response available.Report
“Lockdown” is an overheated term, but so is “freak out”. It’s reasonable to note that the left has a fondness for top-down approaches. When we’re in a public health crisis that understandably calls for economic and social restrictions, and we’re being told at the same time that institutional racism in police departments is a public health crisis, of course I’m going to notice the similarity in phrasing, and suspect similarly aggressive solutions. I think it was Chip who recently dismissed any limit on government.
If you want to make a bsdi argument about the right and an inclination toward the use of the military or the police, I think it’s wrong but I’ll listen to the argument and I won’t accuse it of being a freakout.Report
Part of the noisiness of trying to analyze Covid responses is that “mask mandate” is not the same as “mask compliance”.
The outcome doesn’t depend much on what the governor or mayor says, but on what the people actually do. But measuring mask compliance is difficult.Report
ThTh9: In another life, I’m better at math and science and I am a paleontologist. I love this stuff.Report
Are you me?Report
You don’t catch them. They catch you.Report
Speaking of COVID, the Ohio lottery ploy is apparently working well but a group sees it as discrimination and is suing to stop it. They could use better proofreaders: https://twitter.com/jesseltaylor/status/1397624535583690754?s=20Report
Colorado has decided to have a lottery, with five weekly drawings for a million dollars. Under my understanding of the rules — which may be flawed — I make it about a 50/50 bet that all five winners will come from the group of 3 million people who had had at least one shot before the lottery was announced.Report
Do you think that’s a problem? Or just an interesting possible outcome?Report
I think its a problem if the real aim is to get more people to move from reluctant to vaccinated. paying people who have started the process to finish the process isn’t really as effective IMHO.Report
People are bad at calculating risk AND odds. A vaccine hesitant who is persuadable by a million dollar lottery would never even consider the implications of people who’ve already started the process being eligible.
Vaccine lotteries are a good idea and they’re not very expensive and have pretty much no down side except for those of us on the left who feel icky about incenting people this way (and such people need to get over it). I think they should be used widely.Report
Or paying me, who finished the process weeks ago.Report
People found the COVID-19 pandemic traumatic but I think many low or medium level white collar workers found the experience quite relaxing. Working at home meant they didn’t have to get up early for the commute to work, could play with their pets during lunch, and not have to deal with traffic to get home. Closing many entertainment venues saved them a lot of money. I know that my job stress was a lot less during the high pandemic because the immigration system was closed for a big chunk of it and I was just writing appeals and briefs.Report
ThTh4 – Well, if we’re going to complain about headline writing, I have to comment on “the number of lives COVID has taken”. Excess deaths aren’t a measure of the number of lives covid has taken; they’re a measure of the number of unexpected lives lost. The number checks the departure from expected (average) deaths. Those may be presumed to be caused by covid or higher-level effects of covid.
It shouldn’t be called a measure of the lives that covid has taken. On one side, the measure implicitly cancels out the deaths of old and seriously ill covid victims. On the other, it includes the lives that covid policies have taken. Note that those deaths aren’t proof that our policies were wrong, but they shouldn’t be called lives lost to covid.Report
John Cena chose money over democracy: https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/a-tale-of-three-hostage-videosReport
I used to think that it was funny to see people toe the CCP’s line in public.
“Do they not know that others can see how transparent this is?”
When I realize that the CCP doesn’t particularly care about how transparent it is, I started thinking that it was less funny.Report
Money, it’s a hit
Don’t give me that do goody good bullsh*tReport
Here’s a good article from China’s POV:
Read the whole thing. The entire article is that good.Report
This is a state-run propaganda rag and it is pretty much BS.Report
This sounds very familiar.
Report
I think that one of the most important media-consumption skills a person can have is to read an article and realize when it’s naked propaganda fulfilling a political purpose rather than, oh, informing the reader.Report
The WashPo confirms.
Report
Is Trump that different from China, at the end of the day?Report
I don’t like Trump food.Report
At least Theon Greyjoy was being coerced.Report
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”Report
The point of public demands for apologies that become apologies isn’t to change anyone’s mind, its to demonstrate that you have that kind of power.
Chinese nationalists relatively recently discovered they had that kind of power and are getting awfully high on that feeling.Report
I’d assume that pro wrestlers are even more sensitive to the mood of the room than actors, so they’re going to be very easy to sway. Most other kinds of athletes have to block out the road-game crowd.Report
The important part of this is that it isn’t just John Cena the actor doing this.
He wouldn’t have done it had not the entire studio and production company and distribution network not put pressure on him.Report
Probably true, but China doesn’t just pressure random actors to make such statements, they go after those who have publicly said something that goes against the official messaging.
So Cena had to have, at some point, made a public statement about Taiwan, while forgetting that his comments are not limited to his Western audience. At a certain level, public figures need to start running things past their PR reps before saying them out loud.Report
“Honestly, I said I was a type A fan, not a Taipei fan!”Report
See, honest mistake! Nothing to see here folks…Report
Was that choice ever really on the table? I love Taiwan and hate the CCP about as much as anyone who’s not from Taiwan, but would refusing to pander to the CCP benefitted Taiwan in any way? There’s also a theory that explicitly emphasizing Taiwan’s independence actually makes the CCP more likely to invade, whereas with the status quo they can save face without doing anything. This is a big part of why Taiwan hasn’t officially declared independence.
So it’s possible the choice was just between more money and less money, or between money and democracy on one hand and neither on the other hand. But I don’t know. Geopolitics is hard and I don’t pretend to have a good understanding of it.Report
This is why I rarely voice an opinion on things like China & Hong Kong/Taiwan or Israel and the Palestinians.
Now the BS China is doing with new islands and crap to expand their territorial waters…Report
I didn’t read Smith’s analysis but does he control for the vastly different circumstances countries are in?
Island nations seemed to have a natural advantage because they can much more tightly control people coming into and going out of the country.
Different cultural values (as mentioned in your write-up above) really come into play. I read that Vietnam did an amazing job with the virus, but part of their approach included barring anyone entering the country, including citizens who were overseas. I don’t know much about Vietnamese culture and how well that went over there but I do not think that would be accepted by Americans.
And lastly — and this feels like a bit of a third rail but here goes — certain countries could more easily lockdown/shelter-in-place because they could reasonably rely on other countries not doing so and helping to provide for their own people.
As you say, even in a full lock down, food and basic provisions must be accessible. Where do those come from? Are they made in country or are they imported? If they’re imported, from where? What needs to be open in THOSE countries so that food can be exported? Because it’s not just food. It’s everything in the supply chain for food. And bandaids. And medicines. And tampons. And all the other *true* essentials.
And then we had countries where vaccine research was going on. What was needed to support and sustain all that?
None of this is to criticize countries that were able to lock down tighter and keep their numbers down. But it seems as if some countries simply didn’t have that option or, if they did take that option, it would have dramatically worsened conditions across the world. Maybe I’m overstating all this but it seems like comparing the economic and health outcomes of countries that could fully lockdown and count on other countries to keep them supplied and develop a vaccine to other countries that couldn’t do that is apples and oranges.Report
Its worth noting that business leaders are NOT buying the idea that workers are failing to return due to temporary increases in unemployment insurance:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/economy/retail-workers-child-care-best-buy/index.htmlReport
Good.
Although even if it was a bigger part of the issue than it is, I fail to see the problem with having employers bump up wages. I’d rather they be forced to do it to attract labor, than to be forced to do it by law.Report