The Goldilocks Policy

Did the U. S. lockdown policy close too late, open too early, or otherwise? That’s the issue considered by Phillip Magness at American Institute for Economic Research (basically a libertarian thinktank). Using a “stringency index” published by the University of Oxford Blavatsky Blavatnik School of Government, he arrives at the following:

Any number of factors explain the development of the U.S. pandemic at the moment, with little connection to the timing of the lockdowns back in March or the tepid and bureaucratically managed reopening process.

Notably, severe COVID outbreaks appear to be overwhelmingly concentrated in nursing homes – a problem that is not meaningfully addressed by lockdowns, and which did not even figure into the considerations of the Imperial College model on which they were premised. We are also seeing the clear geographic dimensions of the pandemic’s spread. After ravaging the Northeast while it was under full lockdown, viral hotspots have now moved to previously unaffected areas – and irrespective of their remaining or reinstated lockdown policies, as California shows.

My own view is that local policies (whether national, state, or city) and practices have had relatively little effect on outcomes or the progress of the disease. What have really mattered are demographics and plain, dumb luck. If I had to pick one consequential behavioral factor, it would probably be social cohesion.