More than three years after the Covid pandemic emerged, the data are in: State governments that implemented stringent restrictions ended up contributing to long-lasting economic and social problems and other health impacts.
Economist Wayne Winegarden and policy associate McKenzie Richards of the nonpartisan, pro-free-market Pacific Research Institute recently authored a research brief detailing how more-severe Covid-19 mitigation policies — namely lockdowns, masking mandates, school and business closures, and social distancing — led to reduced infection and mortality rates, but at the expense of record unemployment, negative economic growth, and worsening educational outcomes.
The “No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs” brief, the title of which was inspired by the famous Thomas Sowell quote, examines the state of the research around the unintended consequences of Covid-19 measures, so that policy-makers might formulate a better response in the event of another major pandemic.
States with fewer restrictions saw slightly higher infection and mortality rates but also proved significantly more resilient to the negative economic and social consequences of Covid than their more restrictive counterparts. In other words, the large disparities in employment rates, economic growth, and children’s educational progress outweighed the small health benefits, according to the authors.
“The states that implemented policies categorized as more stringent tended to have fewer COVID-19 infections and fewer COVID-19 mortalities per 100,000 people,” the authors write. “These states have also experienced increases in other causes of mortality that may fully offset the reduction in COVID-19 mortalities, larger economic consequences, and larger education losses for children.”
In addition to the dire economic consequences of lockdowns, Covid-19 restrictions exacerbated non-Covid health risks such as cancer. Many Americans were either unable or unwilling to undergo screenings during the pandemic, which led to delayed diagnoses and surgical interventions. About 9.4 million cancer-screening appointments were lost due to the pandemic, according to a 2021 study published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Oncology journal.
The study found that, while infection and mortality rates trended lower in more restrictive states in the early stages of the pandemic, that effect began to dissipate in April 2021, at which point mortality rates in restrictive and non-restrictive states achieved near parity.
From the onset of the pandemic up until April 2021, less-restrictive states saw an average of 10,200 cumulative infections per 100,000 residents while more-restrictive states experienced 8,011 infections per 100,000, according to the findings.
Average mortality rates followed a similar trend during that period, with high-intervention states averaging 159 deaths per 100,000 residents and low-intervention states averaging 156 per 100,000.
Iowa was the least restrictive state as of April 2021, followed closely by Florida, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Texas. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the most restrictive states, in order of stringency, were Vermont, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Virginia, Washington, and New York.
Those restrictive states suffered significant economic losses. Between December 2019 and November 2022, employment levels in high-intervention states decreased by 1.6 percent but grew by 1.2 percent in low-intervention states. High-intervention states also saw their share of the national economy and the national food/accommodation sector drop by 0.04 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, from 2019 to 2022.
Educational deficits also proved severe, with average math scores taking the biggest hit of any subject. Reading scores, meanwhile, mostly stayed the same across low- and high-intervention states.
The research brief, published last month, came after some institutions, including schools and a Hollywood studio, re-implemented mask mandates at the end of August into September, only for them to be lifted soon after.
The authors argue that such non-pharmaceutical precautions did not significantly benefit Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic and recommend better methods to handle another potential public-health crisis.
In an emailed statement to National Review, Winegarden stressed he wanted to provide an economic perspective on the “effectiveness of the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic” by focusing on trade-offs — a key aspect of the policy-making process.
By learning from the negative effects of Covid-19 restrictions, U.S. policy-makers should tailor future pandemic policies to “tightly target the most vulnerable populations while minimizing the costs students and working adults must bear,” Winegarden and Richards concluded in their brief.
To achieve that goal, such policies should allow schools and businesses to remain open, implement non-pharmaceutical intervention policies only in nursing homes, hospitals, or other areas that contain vulnerable populations, and make cheap and accurate testing available for everyone, Winegarden told National Review.
“Understanding the impacts from these policies is imperative not just to understand the past, but because it is possible, even likely, that we will be impacted by another pandemic,” he said. “The ability to respond more effectively to the next pandemic is crucial.”