It is hard to think of a topic area where the Republican Party, the right-wing, and (many by no means all) MR commentators are so far off base. Here are some new results from Andrew Atkeson:
…I find that vaccines saved 748,600 lives through June 2023. That is, without vaccines, cumulative mortality from COVID-19 would have been closer to 1.91 million over this time period. In answering the second question, I find that behavioral efforts to slow the transmission of the virus before vaccines became widely administered were critical to this positive impact of vaccines on cumulative mortality. For example, with a complete relaxation of these mitigation efforts, vaccines would have come too late to have saved a significant number of lives. Earlier deployment of vaccines would have saved many lives. I find that marginal changes in the strength of the behavioral response to COVID-19 deaths within the range of those responses estimated with the model have a significantly impact on cumulative COVID-19 mortality over this time period.
Here is the full paper. By the way, in case you are wondering I did write some columns arguing we should reopen the schools (and I strongly encouraged my own institution, GMU, to reopen in the fall of 2020, when asked for advice. Mercatus reopened once our landlord allowed us to.). But I am glad that for instance normal NBA games with full crowds were not up and running in the usual manner in November of 2020.
The post The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on U.S. Cumulative Deaths from COVID-19 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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