Saving lives helped the economy

Noah Smith

Now that vaccination is finally liberating us from Covid, said Noah Smith, we should thank lockdowns for saving hundreds of thousands of American lives. Copious research shows that despite strong public resistance and spotty compliance, social distancing restrictions on bars, restaurants, and indoor gatherings cut transmission rates by about 50 percent. Had we all simply gone about business as usual, the death toll would have been far worse—more than 1 million. Research has also shown that sensible “fear of the virus”—not government restrictions—is what drove most people to avoid restaurants and other crowded spaces. A study found that store visits in Iowa, where there were no shutdowns, declined nearly as much as they did across the border in Illinois, where there were stay-at-home orders. “Nothing illustrates the benefit of lockdowns better than the case of Sweden,” which refused to impose restrictions. A year later, Sweden’s death rate has been more than triple that of Denmark and about seven times that of Norway—and Sweden suffered a greater decline in GDP. The choice “between human lives and dollars of GDP is a false one.” Reducing the number of infections and deaths “helped the economy.”