Authors of ‘In Covid’s Wake’ on their criticism of the government’s pandemic response

Geoff Bennett:

Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic, and that launched widespread shutdowns, mandates for masks and vaccines, and had an enormous social and economic impact.

William Brangham speaks with the authors of a new book that's sharply critical of how the U.S. responded to the crisis.

William Brangham:

that new book is called "In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us."

And it looks back at how critical American institutions, the government, academia, and the press among them, performed during the pandemic, and how their response inflamed distrust, cracked down on dissent, and cost the country tremendously.

Its authors are two political scientists from Princeton University, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. And they join us now.

Welcome to you both.

One of the main themes of this book, as it seems to me, is that, in the early, crazy days of this pandemic, as our leaders were debating lockdowns, how to respond, that any dissent over or real debate about the costs and benefits of those actions was squelched.

Stephen Macedo, Co-Author, "In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us": Well, it's interesting.

In March 2020, as the lockdowns were being enacted in the United States and across many Western countries, there were dissenters who spoke up in March. Some very well-known people warned that these measures were unlikely to be successful and would be very costly.

And then consensus seemed to develop in April and May that these kinds of strategies enacted by the Chinese and that had been implemented in Italy, national lockdown and across much of the United States, that that was the correct strategy, that everyone needed to be on board for it, that there needed to be a sense of vital unity, that government, the academy, science, journalism all needed to pull together, and that this was what we were going to do and that this is what we needed to do.

And, indeed, at that point, voices of dissent became scarce. Social media companies began removing some postings that were at odds with government messaging, and dissent dwindled over the summer and into the fall.

William Brangham:

Frances, one of the things that was a real revelation to me was how you document in the book that, prior to COVID, that there was a good deal of analysis done about what happens if a respiratory virus does emerge.

And the consensus or some version of a consensus was that lockdowns are not that effective and that they would cost society enormously.

Frances Lee, Co-Author, "In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us": Yes, there had been a tremendous amount of work planning for what to do when the next pandemic arrived.

And we took measures in the early going of the pandemic that were at odds with the recommendations. They had been recommended against in some cases. There was a World Health Organization report from November 2019 that looked at what was known about all the proposed non-pharmaceutical interventions.

William Brangham:

This is masks, shutdowns, isolation, testing, tracing, et cetera.

Frances Lee:

Business closures, school closures, looked at what was known about the effectiveness of each of those measures. And across the board, the report states that the evidence base for the effectiveness of each of them was poor.

And so it's so striking that you get six months later and those measures are being employed all around the world, with policymakers saying that they're following the science. And, of course, it's quite obvious that all of those measures have tremendous costs.

So, as policymakers are weighing their alternatives, there's uncertain benefits, but certain costs.

Stephen Macedo:

I mean, there's one thing — other thing in those pre-COVID pandemic plans that's relevant to this question, which is, those plans warn that science — that government officials, public officials will be tempted to adopt these measures, these stringent lockdown measures, to show that they're in charge, to…

William Brangham:

To say, hey, we got this.

Stephen Macedo:

Yes, exactly, to take control.

And those pre-COVID plans are emphatic in advising experts and public health officials to be frank with the public about the thin evidentiary basis for them and the certainty of costs. So that was ignored.

Then, of course, there was the World Health Organization, a mission that went to China, came back after spending a week there and endorsed the Chinese strategy of lockdowns without qualification, and said that the entire world should follow this path of strict lockdowns to suppress the virus.

There was a prediction that came out of — based on mathematical models out of Imperial College London that predicted 2.2 million deaths in the United States by August 2020 if we didn't implement these suite of measures that led to a kind of panic, I think, and a failure to consider rationally the costs of these measures and the likelihood of their success.

William Brangham:

There are a lot of public health experts who look at our experience and say, both in the heat of the moment and in what we have subsequently learned, that keeping people apart, that social distancing initially was a critical part of protecting people.

And I wonder what — what's your take on that?

Frances Lee:

Well, that was a theory that, if we could keep people apart, that we could buy time before vaccines became available. But it had not been tried on any large scale.

And I think what was being overlooked during that planning was the large share of the work force that would have to continue on the job regardless is about…

William Brangham:

The so-called essential workers.

Frances Lee:

Essential workers is about a third of the work force who had to continue doing their jobs in person all through the lockdowns.

And so the virus has to continue to spread under those conditions.

William Brangham:

When you look at how different states reacted here in the U.S., we did see wildly different responses, some employing very strict policies, others being a little looser.

What does the evidence show about how those states worked out?

Frances Lee:

There were lockdowns across the U.S.; 43 governors issued stay-at-home orders. Where you began to see the divergence in policy across the U.S. is in the reopening process.

Democratic states stayed locked down for 2.5 times as long as Republican states. Even as Democratic states began to reopen, they still maintained more restrictions than Republican states. But when you look at cumulative COVID mortality at the time the vaccine rollout started, there's no difference between states that pursued more stringent COVID containment policies and states that were more lax.

We can't conclude from this that means these measures don't work, but it means that there's still a lack of evidence that they do work.

William Brangham:

Especially in light of what we now know as the psychological, economic, academic cost for children, for people, for businesses all over this country.

Frances Lee:

And also the fiscal costs, the amount of borrowing that was necessary to finance the shutdowns. It's roughly equivalent as a share of GDP to what we spent on The New Deal and the 2009 financial rescue combined.

William Brangham:

Does your authorship of this book help you give us a sense of how we ought to do things differently if and when, most likely when, the next pandemic comes?

Stephen Macedo:

Yes, I would say so.

I think we need to make sure that we're open to dissent and that we're open to dissent when it comes from the other side. One of the things that we found is that the pandemic became very polarized. Democratic states were on one side. Republican states were on the other side.

We should have been more open to criticisms that were associated with the other side. That, I think, applies to science. The science became politicized, journalism, unfortunately. And I think even universities, to some extent, have been reluctant to ask some hard questions about our COVID experience because of the partisan inflection of some of these issues.

William Brangham:

There are so many other elements in this book, social media, free speech, as you're saying, the debate over masks. Can't get to those all here.

I want to thank you both so much. The book is called "In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us."

Frances Lee, Stephen Macedo, thank you both so much.

Stephen Macedo:

Thank you, William.

Frances Lee:

Thank you.