Is lockdown an effective response to a pandemic, or would it be better to let individuals spontaneously reduce their risk of infection? New research suggests these two highly-debated options lead to similar outcomes.
The economic-pandemic model was created by an international team of researchers, to address some of the key policy debates of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to enable governments and policymakers to take tough decisions – and assess effective actions.
The modelling was tested using data from New York city responses to COVID-19 – and it predicted both death rates and the impact on the city’s economy of the first wave of the pandemic.
Professor Doyne Farmer, Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at INET Oxford, says the research paper is timely, given the COVID-19 inquiries across the world: “We are seeing governments across the globe begin their ‘moments of reckoning”.
Farmer adds: “According to some, lockdowns were not imposing any trade-off between health and the economy because, if the virus got out of control, the economy would be equally damaged. According to others, letting at-risk individuals spontaneously reduce their risk of infection would have led to the best epidemic and economic outcomes, with no trade-off. These debates have remained contested and unresolved.”
Farmer continues: “Our quantitative research helps provide evidence-based answers to these questions, suggesting that both lockdowns and spontaneous behaviour change lead to similar trade-offs between health and the economy. Those that claimed that there was no trade-off between health and the economy were not basing their belief in a quantitative model.”
The research paper makes a number of conclusions on the effectiveness of government interventions, including:
- Both stricter lockdown and strong behaviour change lead to more unemployment and fewer COVID-19 deaths.
- They lead to more jobs lost and to more lives saved among low-income workers, while they make less of a difference to high-income workers.
- Closing non-customer-facing industries such as manufacturing has little impact on infections but significantly increases unemployment. Untargeted, blanket lockdowns were sub-optimal.
- Delaying the start of protective measures does little to help the economy and worsens epidemic outcomes in all scenarios. Delays in response were very costly. The faster policymakers respond the better it is for both health and the economy.
Essentially, low-income workers were affected more by policy decisions, on either side of the health-economy trade-off. There is an important inequality aspect to take into consideration when designing policies. Stricter lockdown and stronger behavior change lead to more jobs lost and to more lives saved among low-income workers, while they make less of a difference to high-income workers. Thus, if policymakers judge that stricter lockdowns are necessary for overall public health, stronger economic relief is required for low-income workers, and likewise if lockdowns are eased or avoided, more public health support is needed for low-income families.
The new model provide a mechanism for the future. In New York City, the Comptroller’s interim investigation concluded that the substantial dual cost of the pandemic, both in terms of lives lost and economic hardship to residents and businesses, meant that it would be ‘critical’ that decision-makers are better prepared in future to respond ‘quickly, completely and effectively’.
The health-economy trade-off modelling appears in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The paper is titled “The unequal effects of the health–economy trade-off during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
