Op-Ed: Uniform COVID-19 mandates caused major unforeseen consequences

Originally published in Broad + Liberty.

Calculating the exact number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. has proven difficult, making the impact of the pandemic an evasive and often subjective matter. As of February, an algorithm developed at University of Texas Southwestern estimates that 21.5% of the population has been infected. This number is almost triple previous estimates.

However, as high as Covid-19 case count estimates may be, they pale in comparison to other statistics pertaining to our response to the pandemic. At the peak, roughly 94 percent of Americans were under lockdown orders. While complete data is unavailable, according to Yelp.com data over 163,000 businesses were temporarily closed, and almost 100,000 of those closures will be permanent, with roughly 1,000 of the permanent closureslocated in the Philadelphia area.

But this overwhelmingly strict response to the pandemic hasn’t only hit businesses. It has perpetuated a mental health crisis that affected one in four Americans prior to the lockdowns.  

According to the authors of a new study from Yale, not only has the pandemic increased pre-existing stressors, but the policy response…

Read more at Broad + Liberty.