The COVID-19 Disaster That Did Not Happen in Texas
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, lifted his statewide face mask mandate and his limits on business occupancy in early March, Democrats
warned that he was inviting a public health disaster. Yet a month and a half later, newly identified coronavirus cases in Texas have
fallen by more than 50 percent, and daily deaths have dropped even more.
Meanwhile, states with stricter COVID-19 regulations have seen spikes in daily new cases. This is not the pattern you would expect to see if government-imposed restrictions played a crucial role in curtailing the pandemic, as advocates of those policies assume.
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Conversely, face mask mandates and occupancy limits did not prevent COVID-19 surges in states such as
Michigan, where the seven-day average of newly confirmed infections has risen more than fivefold since March 1;
Maine, which has seen a nearly threefold increase; and
Minnesota, where that number has more than doubled. Cases also rose during that period, although less dramatically, in other states with relatively strict COVID-19 rules, including
Delaware,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and
Washington.
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While some researchers have
concluded that lockdowns had an
important impact, others
say there is
little or no evidence that they affected
mortality rates or
trends in cases. According to a
Nature Human Behaviour study of 226 countries published in November, "a suitable combination of NPIs [nonpharmaceutical interventions] is necessary to curb the spread of the virus," but "less disruptive and costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic ones (for example, a national lockdown)."