While discussing this topic still seems nearly impossible in France, The New York Times has begun to open the debate on Covid-19 lockdown policies in its March 19, 2025 episode of The Daily podcast. The show features two prominent political scientists from Princeton University who have just published a book on the subject: “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.” Not only did lockdown policies fail to achieve their expected outcomes, but they also weakened democracies and may help explain the failure of the Democratic Party in the U.S., as well as of left-wing parties elsewhere.
Host Michael Barbaro acknowledges that the podcast does not typically invite academics, preferring conversations between journalists. However, the importance of the analysis by Professors Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee warranted an exception. In an unusually long 50-minute episode, Barbaro invites them to present their conclusions on the public health strategies implemented during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
The authors of In Covid’s Wake are not easily dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Professor Frances Lee is a leading authority on public policy development, and Professor Stephen Macedo specializes in democratic theory.
The project initially stemmed from Stephen Macedo’s concern about progressives’ lack of critical reflection on key topics like immigration, abortion, and especially Covid-19 policy. He originally wanted to address all of these themes, but the depth and weight of the Covid-related issues led him to focus solely on that topic.
Indeed, left-wing politicians can be criticised for abandoning a position more in line with their humanist, solidarity-based values. Lockdown policy was the consecration of a system of distrust of all, of isolation of the individual with all the psychological consequences. Left-wing politicians can be accused of failing to protect the most vulnerable. The restrictions mainly protected the privileged classes, who could move to their second homes and work remotely. Those most vulnerable to covid, the working classes crammed into flats and the foreign population already suffering from conditions that made them susceptible to the virus (obesity, diabetes, etc.), were forced to continue working to provide so-called basic necessities, food for society or care in hospitals, bringing the virus home with all its consequences for families. It can be argued that side effects (the undesirable effects of a policy) are inevitable, but do we really have good results to justify them?
The answer is less obvious than it might seem, because as Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee have noted, there is (still?) a lack of critical reflection on the subject. That’s why they committed to a rigorous analysis of political choices, deliberations, and institutional errors made during the pandemic. They also examined how institutions that should have guided society—journalism, science, academia—actually performed during Covid-19.
Their conclusion: these institutions failed. “There was premature political consensus. A reluctance to revisit assumptions. Intolerance of dissent and criticism. This harmed our policies and our ability to adjust course as we learned more,” they explain. “It felt almost immoral or inappropriate to even question the feasibility or relevance of the measures being proposed.” Decisions of such magnitude should have involved broader democratic deliberation, which never took place.
Stephen Macedo points out that before Covid, there were many pandemic planning documents anticipating respiratory pandemics. In 2019, the WTO had already considered non-pharmacological, social measures (distancing, school closures, wearing masks, compulsory quarantines, bans on public gatherings, personal hygiene, etc.). Although everyone agreed on the need to find a vaccine, all these social measures were hotly debated. The preparatory documents indicated that they would be very costly. We knew that the closure of factories would affect the livelihoods of workers. We also knew that there would be psychological and family problems. Isolating people, who are social creatures, has a number of side effects. But all the plans showed that there was no solid evidence to justify such isolation. When all the measures were examined one by one, the impact was judged to be very small. In fact, 4 measures were completely discredited: quarantine of exposed people, border closures, entry/exit controls and contact tracing. The WHO was not the only institution to evaluate social measures, and we can also cite studies by the Johns Hopkins Institute and British reports from … 2011. When the pandemic broke out, everyone was urged to follow the scientific advice, but there was no solid body of evidence to support the decisions being made.
Why were these ineffective policies implemented anyway? According to the authors, the WHO published a glowing report praising China’s lockdown strategy—without addressing the authoritarian nature of the Chinese regime. That model was then adopted by Italy, a democratic country.
It is worth remembering that Italy was then governed by a coalition of two inexperienced populist parties, the 5-Star Movement and the far-right Northern League. France also bears much of the responsibility for the turn to containment. Considered a rational country with a solid medical culture – the country of Pasteur – it has unfortunately been forgotten that the containment decision was taken when President Emmanuel Macron, young in politics, was left alone to steer the country while his entire government team was focused on the 2020 municipal campaign, including the health minister and the prime minister. ….
Frances Lee notes that under immense public pressure and a sense of impending catastrophe, politicians gave in to magical thinking, embracing the optimistic forecasts of social distancing advocates. Back then, people spoke of “flattening the curve in two weeks“—a hope that quickly collapsed under the weight of reality. Long-term reflection was completely absent. The public discourse focused entirely on death counts, pushing aside other concerns that were no longer being voiced by public officials or health experts.
“Public health success depends on public buy-in. But there wasn’t enough public deliberation. Too much power was given to a small group of experts—mostly in public health and epidemiology. There should have been broader discussion, involving multiple disciplines and the whole of society. Individuals were asked to make sacrifices. They had a say, a chance to choose between the risks and their values: should they visit their elderly relatives in hospital? Should they go to church on Sunday or refuse to attend a funeral? This debate was all the more crucial because the victims were unequally distributed. Some had to suffer to protect others. The so-called ‘essential’ workers were not protected by the measures. They were asked to bear the social burden of the pandemic alone.“
“The measures were not designed to save everyone. At best, they may have saved some. But the question today is: did they really save any? Because if you look at the data, the states that imposed the toughest restrictions did not necessarily do better.“
Yet, while the numbers were poor, despite the increasing number of injunctions to comply with lockdowns or stay-at-home orders, health officials showed very little tolerance for reopening the debate on these social measures and on the need to change course, as illustrated by the reception of the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020.
The Great Barrington Declaration was written by three scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford — well-known names with strong publication records. They were concerned about the cost of lockdowns and the disproportionate burden borne by essential workers and children. Instead of shutting down society as a whole, they proposed focusing protective efforts on vulnerable populations. It was already known that vulnerability to COVID was very unequally distributed among populations, especially affecting the elderly. The Great Barrington Declaration was a very clear strategic plan, an alternative approach that called for increased testing around elderly people, organizing services to help them with grocery shopping, and limiting risks. These authors were denounced, personally and morally attacked by the highest levels of the American scientific community. They were accused of promoting a strategy of herd immunity, of wanting to let the virus spread at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Emails from officials, which are now publicly known, recommended subjecting them to a “quick and devastating takedown.”
The disqualification of these recommendations would be understandable if the measures put in place had worked. But they did not protect essential workers, and the virus, which had become endemic, continued to circulate.
It was at that point that we began to observe the first political divergences in Covid management between the U.S. states. “Initially, most states adopted lockdown orders. 43 states imposed stay-at-home mandates. The other 7 mostly shut down their businesses broadly. These measures were immensely popular: around 87% of Americans supported them at the time they were implemented.
But then, we began to see political divergence. Democratic-leaning states maintained their measures two and a half times longer than Republican-leaning states. They reopened schools much later, maintained longer business closures, imposed stricter rules on indoor dining, etc. Yet despite these differences, as vaccination campaigns began, there was no significant difference in Covid-related mortality between these Democratic states and the others. And we controlled for factors such as age structure, obesity rate, level of urbanization, etc.“
Stephen Macedo points out that, in general, social measures to combat Covid only slightly reduced the transmission of the virus. “Even the most optimistic studies do not show a significant drop in deaths.
The virus spread too efficiently. Even if transmission was reduced by 15%, it did not result in significantly more lives saved. The lockdowns were full of gaps. Distancing measures were porous.
A third of workers had to continue working to maintain food supply, electricity, healthcare, etc.
It was impossible to truly lock down the entire economy or the whole workforce.“
And Frances Lee adds: “Moreover, we didn’t know exactly when the virus had arrived in the United States.
Antibodies found in blood banks indicate that it was already circulating in December 2019, meaning several months before the first lockdowns. Mobile phone location data shows that lockdowns collapsed after just a few weeks. That is not sustainable for human beings. People cannot stay locked up indefinitely.
There is no solid evidence to conclude that lockdowns reduced Covid-related mortality.”
On the other hand, the other costs to society were extremely vast. Society as a whole was affected. “We saw unprecedented declines in learning, measured by long-established indicators. Chronic absenteeism doubled at the national level — and remains high. The achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students widened and has still not recovered. In 2020, the Covid response, as a share of GDP, equaled that of the New Deal and the 2009 stimulus plan combined. And in 2021, we did a second New Deal. That amounted to 10% of the total cost of the American mobilization during World War II (1943). And only 10% of those funds were allocated to healthcare. The majority went to support businesses and individuals during the closures.“
“It is not for us alone to say what should have been done. These are societal, global decisions.” But given the amounts spent, one cannot help but think that those resources could have been used differently.
Conversely, admitting that all of this may have been for nothing is extremely difficult. “I think that’s why many people are still hesitant to look back on what happened,” concludes Frances Lee.
While those who questioned the policies put in place to fight Covid were quickly labeled as conspiracy theorists, the authors point out that it is the lack of transparency and the refusal to self-reflect that fuel conspiracy theories. If governments had recognized these questions as legitimate and had allowed debate, perhaps they would have lost some of the trust necessary to maintain authority — but they might also have benefited from it.
This is not stated openly by the authors, but one may consider that lockdown policies also had a lasting impact on the image of democracy worldwide, and even on the Democrats’ failure to stay in power in the United States.
As wealthy countries in the Global North locked themselves down, many poorer countries in the Global South — particularly in Africa — found themselves unable to implement lockdown measures.
They suffered the backlash of a sudden halt in trade, yet did not experience the predicted health disasters. Once the initial fear had passed, some came to realize that Western democracies, supposedly rational and exemplary, were also capable of authoritarian, even irrational decisions.
In the Northern countries, working-class populations felt betrayed. In the United States, even though Donald Trump initiated the first lockdowns, it was the Democrats who maintained the measures, despite growing contradictions. And because progressive parties claim to stand for ideals of social justice, they are always more vulnerable to disappointment. The right wing partys does not have to promise a better world; the left does.
If the left wants to win back hearts and minds, it will have to conduct a sincere reckoning of its behavior during the Covid crisis. This analysis could be the starting point.
Voir le script de l’émission en français, traduit rapidement via ChatGPT. Transcript of the podcast in english.
Leave a Reply