Why Didn’t the Lockdowns Work?

I wanted to share with you an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal from Donald L. Luskin of TrendMacro, assessing his company’s findings on the results of the lockdowns:

TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported cases of Covid-19 in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction. That is measured not by the mandates put in place by government officials, but rather by observing what people in each jurisdiction actually did, along with their baseline behavior before the lockdowns. This is captured in highly detailed anonymized cellphone tracking data provided by Google and others and tabulated by the University of Maryland’s Transportation Institute into a “Social Distancing Index.”

Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.

It could be that strict lockdowns were imposed as a response to already severe outbreaks. But the surprising negative correlation, while statistically weak, persists even when excluding states with the heaviest caseloads. And it makes no difference if the analysis includes other potential explanatory factors such as population density, age, ethnicity, prevalence of nursing homes, general health or temperature. The only factor that seems to make a demonstrable difference is the intensity of mass-transit use.

We ran the experiment a second time to observe the effects on caseloads of the reopening that began in mid-April. We used the same methodology, but started from each state’s peak of lockdown and extended to July 31. Confirming the first experiment, there was a tendency (though fairly weak) for states that opened up the most to have the lightest caseloads. The states that had the big summer flare-ups in the so-called “Sunbelt second wave”—Arizona, California, Florida and Texas—are by no means the most opened up, politicized headlines notwithstanding.

The lesson is not that lockdowns made the spread of Covid-19 worse—although the raw evidence might suggest that—but that lockdowns probably didn’t help, and opening up didn’t hurt. This defies common sense. In theory, the spread of an infectious disease ought to be controllable by quarantine. Evidently not in practice, though we are aware of no researcher who understands why not.

We’re not the only researchers to have discovered this statistical relationship. We first published a version of these findings in April, around the same time similar findings appeared in these pages. In July, a publication of the Lancet published research that found similar results looking across countries rather than U.S. states. “A longer time prior to implementation of any lockdown was associated with a lower number of detected cases,” the study concludes. Those findings have now been enhanced by sophisticated measures of actual social distancing, and data from the reopening phase.

There are experimental controls that all this research lacks. There are no observable instances in which there were either total lockdowns or no lockdowns at all. But there’s no escaping the evidence that, at minimum, heavy lockdowns were no more effective than light ones, and that opening up a lot was no more harmful than opening up a little. So where’s the science that would justify the heavy lockdowns many public-health officials are still demanding?

I think I can explain their results simply. The lockdowns weren’t lockdowns. The notion of a “lockdown” in which 50% of workers aren’t locked down is absurd on its face. That’s not a lockdown; it’s lockdown theater.

What could have been done? The list is enormous. Operations of the package delivery services, e.g. UPS and FedEx, could have been suspended. Government workers not engaged in emergency services could have been furloughed. Grocery stores and pharmacies could have been limited to curbside pickup or delivery only. Transit services could have been shut down. Health care and other essential workers could have been directed not to commute, perhaps making lodgings in or nearby their hospitals, etc. available to them. You can come up with additional steps on your own.

I would submit that such a lockdown would have been intolerable for three weeks let alone for the three months during which they were actually imposed. But that’s what a lockdown entails.

Quarantines can work but not of most of the population and certainly not of half of the population. Voluntary quarantines aren’t quarantines. Neither are quarantines without penalties for violation. They also must be of limited and defined duration. Not “as long as necessary”.