The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on U.S. Cumulative Deaths from COVID-19

It is hard to think of a topic area where the Republican Party, the right-wing, and (many by no means all) MR commentators are so far off base.  Here are some new results from Andrew Atkeson:

…I find that vaccines saved 748,600 lives through June 2023. That is, without vaccines, cumulative mortality from COVID-19 would have been closer to 1.91 million over this time period. In answering the second question, I find that behavioral efforts to slow the transmission of the virus before vaccines became widely administered were critical to this positive impact of vaccines on cumulative mortality. For example, with a complete relaxation of these mitigation efforts, vaccines would have come too late to have saved a significant number of lives. Earlier deployment of vaccines would have saved many lives. I find that marginal changes in the strength of the behavioral response to COVID-19 deaths within the range of those responses estimated with the model have a significantly impact on cumulative COVID-19 mortality over this time period.

Here is the full paper.  By the way, in case you are wondering I did write some columns arguing we should reopen the schools (and I strongly encouraged my own institution, GMU, to reopen in the fall of 2020, when asked for advice.  Mercatus reopened once our landlord allowed us to.).  But I am glad that for instance normal NBA games with full crowds were not up and running in the usual manner in November of 2020.