BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Last year at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, reasonable people disagreed about the benefits versus costs of widespread, government-ordered shutdowns. Some said the steps were necessary to stop the spread of a deadly virus, while others said cases could be contained through other measures that weren’t as harmful to the economy.
America’s state system of government has allowed both sides to test their theories in the real world, with Democratic-leaning states generally tending toward shutdowns while states with Republican majorities mostly opted for less restrictive measures.
While there were merits to both arguments at the beginning of the crisis, it’s becoming more and more clear that the decision to keep doors to businesses open, while using restrictions such as face masks and maximum occupancies, has been just as effective at slowing COVID-19 while not hurting jobs and incomes nearly as much.
Example 1A comes from Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis felt skeptical that shutdowns were the right course to take, according to an opinion piece published Saturday in the Wall Street Journal. Instead he let most essential businesses reopen after the initial two-week shutdown last March, allowed beaches and residential construction to start earlier than most states, and then started a phased reopening of nonessential businesses, such as barbershops and restaurants, in May.
The governor took heat for it, but now Florida’s economy is far stronger than states such as California and New York that continue to have onerous restrictions on doing business in the name of slowing the virus. To wit, Florida’s employment declined 4.6% in 2020, against an 8% drop in California and New York, and leisure and hospitality jobs, the most hard-hit sector, fell 15% in Florida versus 30% in California and 39% in New York, according to the Journal. Florida’s economy shrank less, real estate is booming, and schools have been five days per week in person since the fall.
That has not come at a substantially different cost in health outcomes. Florida’s death rate, despite its older population being more susceptible to dying from COVID-19, is in the middle of the pack and only slightly higher than California’s, with a much younger population, the Journal piece by Allysia Finley reported. Florida’s death rate among seniors is 20% lower than California’s and 50% lower than New York’s, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo cost thousands of lives by forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients released from hospitals, then tried to cover it up.
“We’ve shown people that you can have a good time, you can be safe, and you can make the decision that’s best for you,” DeSantis was quoted as saying.
What it seems like is that until the vaccine came around, the virus was going to continue to spread absent a complete shutdown of the entire economy, which no one on either side of the aisle was willing to accept.
Now that the vaccine is proving effective, many states continue to cling to shutdowns despite their ineffectiveness. They should look to Florida for the right path to take.
• Charlie Smith is a graduate student in applied economics at Western Kentucky University. He was formerly the editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress.
