A theater is closed in response to the coronavirus outbreak in Winterset, Iowa, April 1.
Photo: Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressI read with disappointment T.J. Rodgers’s “Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No” (op-ed, April 27). The piece cites a single variable regression analysis and then draws a conclusion about how to handle the Covid-19 pandemic. I teach analysis in undergraduate and M.B.A. business school programs. If this sort of thinking was offered by a student on a homework problem, I would refer him or her to the first five minutes of class when I would have outlined why a complex process cannot be understood with a single variable.
Ed Cook, Ph.D.
University of Richmond
Richmond, Va.
Mr. Rodgers argues that in most places lockdowns don’t save lives. He mentions Sweden as a role model for a moderate policy. But Sweden has had over 2,200 deaths by April 27, compared with about 200 in Israel, with roughly the same population size.
But Mr. Rodgers’s data analysis is flawed on a deeper level. Government-imposed lockdown policies are only one factor in the equation. Microsoft Corp. sent its Seattle employees home to work on March 5, almost three weeks before the state of Washington issued a stay-at-home order. Amazon sent many of its Washington employees home a week later. Government lockdown policies provide too narrow a lens through which to view the Covid-19 pandemic and its public-health and economic consequences.
Moshe Y. Vardi
Bellaire, Texas
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Are Lockdowns an Efficient Way to Save Lives? - Wall Street Journal
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