Thread by @DrEricDing

What caused plummet in business—#COVID19 or lockdowns?

@Austan_Goolsbee’s shutdown study:

“By comparing counties w/ & without restrictions, only 7% points of the 60% point overall decline in business activity can be attributed to legal restrictions."

➡️Virus was the reason.🧵

2)
“Comparing consumer behavior within the same commuting zones but across boundaries with different policy regimes... While overall consumer traffic fell by 60% points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that.”
nber.org/papers/w27432

3) “Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly tied to the number of COVID deaths in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from larger/busier stores toward smaller/less busy ones in the same industry.”

4) “States repealing their shutdown orders saw identically modest recoveries--symmetric going down and coming back.”

5) “The researchers draw on cellphone data tracking consumer visits to 2.25 million individual businesses nationwide from March 1 to May 16. nber.org/digest/aug20/c…

6) “They isolate the impact of shutdowns by comparing foot traffic across businesses within commuting zones that span counties subject to differing legal restrictions on consumer and business activity.”

7) “The results were similar regardless of whether differences in restrictions arose because neighboring counties within a commuter zone shut down at different times or because some counties shut down while their neighbors did not.”

(➡️it was the virus not the lockdowns).

8) “Consumer traffic began to decline before legal restrictions were imposed and was closely correlated with the number of local COVID-19 deaths.”

➡️ again, it was caused by the growing pandemic, not by the policies. The drops PRECEDED the lockdown policies!!

9) “Reflecting the findings that consumer self-protection rather than legislated restrictions most affected consumer behavior, the researchers caution that **lifting lockdowns could have the unintended effect of discouraging consumer spending**.”

10) “If repealing lockdowns leads to a fast enough increase in COVID infections and deaths and a concomitant withdrawal of consumers from the marketplace, they might ultimately end up harming business activity." ⚠️

➡️lifting mitigation too fast can backfire and hurt businesses!!

11) this bring back the old McSweeneys classic from last year:

“SURE, THE VELOCIRAPTORS ARE STILL ON THE LOOSE, BUT THAT’S NO REASON NOT TO REOPEN JURASSIC PARK”


https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1258445854563852289?s=21

12) “you’ll be pleased to know that, rather than double down on our containment efforts, we’ve decided to dissolve the Velociraptor Containment Task Force altogether, and focus instead on how we can get people back into the park as quickly as possible.” mcsweeneys.net/articles/sure-…