Economic impact of lockdown states vs. "Open" states

[uclaLabrat]

Ruh roh...on balance the death toll in locked down states was lower, and economic impact was also less. Interesting to see how the data stacks up in the future.
Comparison of economic impact vs. Covid lockdown

 

[soulcougher73]

Interesting. I'd wager the stricter the guide lines the more likely people felt safe enough to get out and spend. The looser the guidelines the more scared people were to go out and spend amongst unmasked strangers.

 

[fskimospy]

Ruh roh...on balance the death toll in locked down states was lower, and economic impact was also less. Interesting to see how the data stacks up in the future.
Comparison of economic impact vs. Covid lockdown

My bet is at the end a lot of the 'lockdown' regulations were not useful, but again as I always harp on no state in the US ever locked down in a serious way, even for a single day.

I'm of course pulling this out of my ass but I would not be surprised if the large majority of the difference comes down to mask adherence and mask mandates. People like DeSantis shot their state in the foot by discouraging an intervention that was nearly free and highly effective. Trump didn't help either, of course, making mask wearing a political issue.

 

[fskimospy]

Interesting. I'd wager the stricter the guide lines the more likely people felt safe enough to get out and spend. The looser the guidelines the more scared people were to go out and spend amongst unmasked strangers.

Yes, as the article mentions (and as people were arguing from the very beginning) it's fear of the virus that mostly inhibited economic activity, not public health measures. It's why airline travel cratered along with everything else despite there never being any restrictions on airline use. Controlling the virus and reviving the economy was never an either/or, it's always been the same thing - unfortunately Republicans refused to accept this.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I’ll play deplorable to make this thread interesting. Remember this is role play.

Stupid liberal fake news making something with a 99.6% survival rate into a big fake panic. This scared people too much and made them wear masks and gloves while they were in their cars or home ALONE! Liberal States had tons of Elder home deaths they’ve hid, liberals hate old people and blacks too.
Fauci fake Doctor didn’t help by talking to reporters so much about not needing masks then suddenly masks make everything better and wash our hand which now turns out that dirty hands are no more risk for the China Virus.

 

[woolfe9998]

My bet is at the end a lot of the 'lockdown' regulations were not useful, but again as I always harp on no state in the US ever locked down in a serious way, even for a single day.

I'm of course pulling this out of my ass but I would not be surprised if the large majority of the difference comes down to mask adherence and mask mandates. People like DeSantis shot their state in the foot by discouraging an intervention that was nearly free and highly effective. Trump didn't help either, of course, making mask wearing a political issue.

Mask adherence may explain better health outcomes, but the article is actually saying that states like CA did better than states like Fla or TX economically speaking (GDP), meaning the increased lockdown and duration of lockdowns did not hurt those economies relatively speaking.

I say suck it DeSantis. He went on and on about lockdowns harming the economy, and not only did we have fewer per capita cases and deaths than FLA, but we did better on GDP as well.

 

[UNCjigga]

Just speaking from my own personal experience, vaccines made all the difference. Earlier on in the pandemic, it helped that I lived in a community known for quality healthcare and a large pharma/biotech presence. That meant people here generally were more cautious and masks were everywhere. That helped me feel safer when it came to ordering takeout, going to the store and generally participating in the economy.

But my family still didn’t feel comfortable with out-of-state travel, air travel, hotel stays and such until we got vaccinated (and we’re still taking precautions because our kids are too young to be vaccinated atm.) Now we’re planning beach trips, getaways for the 2 of us, even potential coast to coast air travel in the next few months. Slowly getting back to normal, but vaccinations made it possible. I think my state is still only at 36% fully vaxxed and I’m hoping we can double that before back-to-school.

 

[soulcougher73]

I’ll play deplorable to make this thread interesting. Remember this is role play.

Stupid liberal fake news making something with a 99.6% survival rate into a big fake panic. This scared people too much and made them wear masks and gloves while they were in their cars or home ALONE! Liberal States had tons of Elder home deaths they’ve hid, liberals hate old people and blacks too.
Fauci fake Doctor didn’t help by talking to reporters so much about not needing masks then suddenly masks make everything better and wash our hand which now turns out that dirty hands are no more risk for the China Virus.

NYT review: "Fanatical Meats performance left much to be desired. He should probably stick to the B rated horror slasher flicks he built his acting chops on. He did not play a very convincing deplorable."

Ouch. Rough critics....

 

[uclaLabrat]

My bet is at the end a lot of the 'lockdown' regulations were not useful, but again as I always harp on no state in the US ever locked down in a serious way, even for a single day.

I'm of course pulling this out of my ass but I would not be surprised if the large majority of the difference comes down to mask adherence and mask mandates. People like DeSantis shot their state in the foot by discouraging an intervention that was nearly free and highly effective. Trump didn't help either, of course, making mask wearing a political issue.

I recall you and others (myself included I think) making that exact argument pretty much throughout: open up all you want, people ain't coming back unless case rates fall, with the exception of those who thinknits a hoax. And those people will generally suffer worse outcomes.

So far the data seems to back that up. Again, be interesting to see how it plays out in the future with respect to the recovery.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

NYT review: "Fanatical Meats performance left much to be desired. He should probably stick to the B rated horror slasher flicks he built his acting chops on. He did not play a very convincing deplorable."

Ouch. Rough critics....

Hey I thought I did pretty well with short notice.

How about this:
Hospitals were just writing everyone died from Corona to get extra money. I know a guy who was in a motorcycle accident and his death certificate says he died from COVID. Also all the old people in care they lied and said those people died from age related problems because liberal governor didn’t want people to know how many senile people were dying.

**yes first part was said nearly word for word from a bullshitter deplorable I know**
I need to thank the forums because when he said this I said “That’s horrible what was the guys name I may know him” and later followed up with “the people who died on 9/11 where they killed by a building collapse or by a terrorist attack?”

 

[Sunburn74]

I think the analysis done probably paints an incomplete picture. Economic recovery state by state is complicated to analyze because yes some of it could be COVID related but some of it could be supply chain issues or related to pandemic outcomes in specific industries. Lets say you're an imaginary state where 100% of your GDP comes from restaurants. Even if you do a great job with lockdowns, your state is going to have less recovery than a state like california where a lot of the industry is big tech (where workers can continue work at home). I pick restaurants but you can sub it out for other industries that could be impacted by COVID (tourism, manufacturing, etc etc). There's also all the issues with how you count certain things like unemployment.

I think conceptually they are probably right (in general if a health crisis is the reason for your economy shutting down, those that do a better job will have earlier recovery) but I think it'll take multiple analyses of different aspects of economic recovery to really nail it down.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Ruh roh...on balance the death toll in locked down states was lower, and economic impact was also less. Interesting to see how the data stacks up in the future.
Comparison of economic impact vs. Covid lockdown

lol I'll have what you're smoking detective dipshit.

Unemployment Rates for States

www.bls.gov

 

[fskimospy]

I think the analysis done probably paints an incomplete picture. Economic recovery state by state is complicated to analyze because yes some of it could be COVID related but some of it could be supply chain issues or related to pandemic outcomes in specific industries. Lets say you're an imaginary state where 100% of your GDP comes from restaurants. Even if you do a great job with lockdowns, your state is going to have less recovery than a state like california where a lot of the industry is big tech (where workers can continue work at home). I pick restaurants but you can sub it out for other industries that could be impacted by COVID (tourism, manufacturing, etc etc). There's also all the issues with how you count certain things like unemployment.

I think conceptually they are probably right (in general if a health crisis is the reason for your economy shutting down, those that do a better job will have earlier recovery) but I think it'll take multiple analyses of different aspects of economic recovery to really nail it down.

The article pretty directly address your concerns.

 

[fskimospy]

lol I'll have what you're smoking detective dipshit.

Unemployment Rates for States

www.bls.gov

Lol - look at who didn’t read the article.

 

[KMFJD]

Hey I thought I did pretty well with short notice.

How about this:
Hospitals were just writing everyone died from Corona to get extra money. I know a guy who was in a motorcycle accident and his death certificate says he died from COVID. Also all the old people in care they lied and said those people died from age related problems because liberal governor didn’t want people to know how many senile people were dying.

**yes first part was said nearly word for word from a bullshitter deplorable I know**
I need to thank the forums because when he said this I said “That’s horrible what was the guys name I may know him” and later followed up with “the people who died on 9/11 where they killed by a building collapse or by a terrorist attack?”

you forgot to mention the reason why so many people died of covid : Hospitals intentially said they died of covid so they can get more of that sweet federal money!

 

[Fanatical Meat]

you forgot to mention the reason why so many people died of covid : Hospitals intentially said they died of covid so they can get more of that sweet federal money!

I know, I fixed that on post #10

 

[KMFJD]

I know, I fixed that on post #10

im blind

 

[Fanatical Meat]

im blind

Nah that’s cool, I do it all the time

 

[abj13]

I hope additional supporting research comes out like this so asshats like Jay Bhattacharya can eat his words. This is a Stanford medical economics researcher who said that lockdowns were the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made." At least he was exposed for conducting crappy research back when the first serology studies were coming out.

 

[Sunburn74]

The article pretty directly address your concerns.

I read the article and don't think it really does. Their defense is that large states have diversified economies but that's a very general defense. What is diversification exactly? States can still have heavy draws in one or two industries despite being large and having a semblance of diversification (my retirement portfolio is diversified but its still a lot of tech stocks for example). They are trying to state that large states are equally diversified across all industries but that's not the case, and its relevant particularly if the effect size isn't that large.

There are ways to tackle the question (you could look at specific industries and compare state to state trying to control for all other factors) but that's getting into the weeds.

 

[HomerJS]

Lol - look at who didn’t read the article.

Who said he could read?

 

[fskimospy]

I read the article and don't think it really does. Their defense is that large states have diversified economies but that's a very general defense. What is diversification exactly? States can still have heavy draws in one or two industries despite being large and having a semblance of diversification (my retirement portfolio is diversified but its still a lot of tech stocks for example). They are trying to state that large states are equally diversified across all industries but that's not the case, and its relevant particularly if the effect size isn't that large.

There are ways to tackle the question (you could look at specific industries and compare state to state trying to control for all other factors) but that's getting into the weeds.

Looking at specific industries wouldn't be better though because economies are interlocking things and the question we are trying to answer is if the economy as a whole does better, and specific industries could be highly sensitive to restrictions as you mention. Better to look at the whole thing.

I don't think this paper is the last word or anything but at least from the article's description it makes an honest attempt to account for your complaints and does so in a reasonable fashion because there's no really great way to compare two states 2000+ miles apart. Still, it adds to the evidence that good virus police was good economic policy too.

 

[Jhhnn]

lol I'll have what you're smoking detective dipshit.

Unemployment Rates for States

www.bls.gov

Gawd. That chart is completely meaningless in the greater context of the previous year.

 

[vi edit]

I read the article and don't think it really does. Their defense is that large states have diversified economies but that's a very general defense. What is diversification exactly? States can still have heavy draws in one or two industries despite being large and having a semblance of diversification (my retirement portfolio is diversified but its still a lot of tech stocks for example). They are trying to state that large states are equally diversified across all industries but that's not the case, and its relevant particularly if the effect size isn't that large.

There are ways to tackle the question (you could look at specific industries and compare state to state trying to control for all other factors) but that's getting into the weeds.

Same for me. Florida is heavily dominated by tourism. Not that Cali isn't, but it's not remotely the same. A large majority of CA's tourism is it's own residents. Same isn't true for FL.

Investopedia

Investopedia is the world's leading source of financial content on the web, ranging from market news to retirement strategies, investing education to insights from advisors.

www.investopedia.com

"The Golden State is the tourism powerhouse of America, generating $140.6 billion in 2018, and accounting for over one million jobs. With its national parks, tourist attractions like the Golden Gate Bridge and Disney Land, plus expansive beaches and wine country, California has a variety of tourist hotspots throughout the state, making it the most visited state in the U.S. What's interesting to note is that Californians are their own largest pool of tourists: Roughly 80% of visits are made by state residents themselves. "

Hell I'd wager that states that had legalized weed faired better than those that didn't just from weed sales over quarantine.

 

[manly]

UCLA Andersen is highly reputable, so I have no particular reason to doubt this reporting. Having said that, I suspect the truth could be somewhere in the middle. Certainly there was and is pent-up demand for things like restaurant dine-in, as we saw when businesses were able to reopen before and after the winter apocalypse. Some consumers simply rush back to indoor dining despite the level of community transmission. Is this desire for "normalcy" and consumption tempered by most people paying attention to "conditions on the ground?" Certainly.

There's a part in the article that specifically explains why the California economy held up well, and it has nothing to do with NPIs.

[The UCLA report also suggests that “the answer lies in the structure of the California economy.” In California, “sectors with a high degree of human contact” — that is, “leisure and hospitality, education, retail trade, and health care and social services” — contributed only “0.3 percentage points to annual GDP growth over the decade preceding the pandemic.” But last year, “they accounted for 75 percent of the state’s job losses.”

Meanwhile, the sectors driving growth in California — “information, professional and business services, manufacturing and financial services” — weren’t hit nearly as hard. That helps to explain the discrepancy between the state’s unemployment rate and its overall economic performance. UCLA expects “many of those lost jobs to return.”]

Yes, as the article mentions (and as people were arguing from the very beginning) it's fear of the virus that mostly inhibited economic activity, not public health measures. It's why airline travel cratered along with everything else despite there never being any restrictions on airline use. Controlling the virus and reviving the economy was never an either/or, it's always been the same thing - unfortunately Republicans refused to accept this.

A mystery to me (and others) is how Floriduh avoided a worse outcome from its lax state-wide pandemic response. I've been told here that private businesses could require masks, so that partly explains things. Others claim the FL numbers are fudged, so we may never know.

I don't think this paper is the last word or anything but at least from the article's description it makes an honest attempt to account for your complaints and does so in a reasonable fashion because there's no really great way to compare two states 2000+ miles apart. Still, it adds to the evidence that good virus police was good economic policy too.

One thing I know is that dead people can't consume goods and services.