New Study Shows States With Least Restrictive Lockdowns Fared the Best – Opinion

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According to a new study titled “Final Report Card on State Responses to COVID-19,” states that implemented the least restrictive COVID-19 lockdowns performed far better than those that took the more draconian track.

The study, conducted by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, found that “states which maximized the individual freedoms of business owners, consumers, workers and parents – and allowed their citizens to make their own risk assessments without government mandates – had the best performance.”

The study also includes the following:

“It turns out that in most cases, citizens living in states with minimal government interventions – including Nebraska, Iowa, Florida, and others – were able to make wise health-conscious assessments without an abundance of government rules and mandates. These states came through the pandemic with the least amount of collective damage to their economies, the education of their children, and with health outcomes that were in most cases no worse than states that used more heavy-handed tactics to slow the spread.”

On the other hand, as Stephen Moore, a co-author of the study said, “Shutting down their economies and schools was by far the biggest mistake governors and state officials made during Covid, particularly in blue states.”

The data absolutely support Moore’s conclusion.

Consider.

In economic terms, there was an average increase of 2.8 percent in the unemployment rate for all 50 States and District of Columbia over the period of the pandemic. The states which kept their economy open did better than those that closed their doors. In Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, for example, unemployment rose by 0.9 percent and 0.2 percent respectively. The other end of the spectrum was Hawaii (8.2%), New Jersey (5.5%), and New York (5.4%).

Education: States that maintained their public schools open to in-person learning performed better than those who closed them for several months. According to the study:

“School closures may ultimately prove to be the largest policy error of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms. A study concluded that 13.8 millions years of human life were lost due to school closures in the last 2019-2020 academic year. A NIH study found that high school graduates have a life expectancy of 4-6 years higher than those who dropped out. The OECD estimates that learning losses from pandemic era school closures could cause a 3% decline in lifetime earnings, and that a loss of just one third of a year of learning has a long-term economic impact of $14 trillion.”

This is all the more surprising considering COVID-19 was not a threat to children.

Third metric, mortality, was assessed in the study. It showed that those states who remained open had lower death rates than those with long-standing lockdowns.

Per the study, “locking down businesses, stores, churches, schools, and restaurants had almost no impact on health outcomes across states. States with strict lockdowns had virtually no better performance in Covid death rates than states that remained mostly open for business.”

This should not be a surprise. A few months ago, Johns Hopkins released a similar study that found, “lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.”

This would be a nice thing if American mainstream media told the truth. This is unlikely, however, as the majority of media attention has focused on lockdown policies and criticized governors and elected officials for implementing less restrictive mitigation strategies.

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) The Heartland Institute’s senior editor.