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Researchers find no statistically significant link between how strict a state’s lockdown measures were and its excess mortality rate

Lockdowns during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic did little to prevent deaths from COVID-19 but had negative effects on unemployment rates and employment growth, researchers from the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (RMCOEH) found in a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Researchers compared mortality data from 2020 in each U.S. state to data from the previous three years to determine COVID-19’s effect on mortality. They then evaluated the mortality data in the context of lockdowns, using state “openness” scores as determined by a firm that tracked COVID-19 policies throughout the U.S. and adjusting for factors such as age, sex, race and rates of cardiovascular disease. The openness scores were calculated based on states’ policies in March 2020, December 2020 and February 2021.

The researchers found no statistically significant link between how strict a state’s lockdown measures were and its excess mortality rate. States with stringent lockdowns did, however, experience higher rates of unemployment and reduced employment growth compared to states that implemented less restrictive COVID-19 measures.

Dr. Matthew Thiese, PhD, a professor at RMCOEH and one of the study’s authors, said the research indicates that lockdowns have not been an effective strategy to combat COVID-19. It also suggests that policymakers should avoid implementing lockdowns or other social distancing measures during any future coronavirus surges.

“It’s clear in our findings that lockdowns did not offer the kind of protection from COVID-19 that states that implemented them had hoped,” he said. “But they did have clear negative impacts on employment.”

RMCOEH Director Dr. Kurt Hegmann, MD, another study co-author, said the results point to the dire need for large-scale reviews of the collective response to the coronavirus pandemic so public health officials and government agencies can be better prepared for similar crises in the future.

One key lesson from the COVID-19 response, he said, is the importance of avoiding basing policy on mistaken assumptions, such as the initial belief that the coronavirus spreads primarily through respiratory droplets, which typically don’t travel more than 6 feet before falling to the ground, rather than aerosols — tiny fluid specks that can linger in the air and cover significant distances. Measures such as lockdowns and social distancing would be expected to be less effective against aerosol-based viruses than those mainly spread through droplets.

Decisions from public health officials and policymakers regarding virus-fighting measures early on in the pandemic may have been different had they understood that COVID-19 spreads primarily through aerosols.  

“It is imperative that we learn from what went right in the pandemic response, as well as the many things that went wrong,” Dr. Hegmann said. “We have a tremendous opportunity to utilize these lessons to become better prepared for the next pandemic, and we must not move on without closely examining our collective response over the last two-and-a-half years.”

Two resident physicians in the RMCOEH Occupational Medicine Residency program, Trevor Pugh and Kyle Jarnagin, were also co-authors on the study, along with Dr. Jeffrey Harris, a professor at the University of Washington.