"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." — John Adams
Sometimes, the simplest story is the best one. With the COVID-19 pandemic, two fact-based stories stand out. First, getting vaccinated is the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, and your community. The evidence is overwhelming, whether we’re talking about rates of infection, hospitalization, or death. With more than two billion doses administered around the world, vaccination stands as a historic, unqualified success,
In Kansas, with our great variation among counties in vaccination levels, we have every reason to think that those counties with higher rates will experience fewer new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Thanks to the research done by KU scholars Donna Ginther and Carlos Zambrana we do have solid evidence that another tactic – wearing masks—makes a big difference on containing spread, seriousness, and deadliness of COVID-19. That’s the second major COVID story, a straightforward social science narrative of how well-informed policies can produce positive results.
When Governor Laura Kelly announced a mask mandate, taking effect in July 2020, just fifteen counties, mostly large ones, complied. Conversely, 68 counties never adopted any mask requirement. Such a stark division established ideal conditions for a natural experiment. That is, we can compare how counties with a mask mandate fared during the pandemic as opposed to those who never imposed such a policy.
Veteran researchers Ginther and Zambrama are not epidemiologists; rather, Ginther is a distinguished professor of economics and the head of KU’s multi-disciplinary Institute for Policy and Social Research. Their work is straightforward analysis of basic data, with a single, clear policy difference. Moreover, the mask/no-mask dichotomy almost certainly underestimates the impact of mask-wearing, given its focus on overall county policy, not the actual wearing of masks.
When the mask mandate took effect, COVID-19 rates were three times higher in mask counties; in less than four months this trend reversed, with cases twice as high in no mask counties. Similar reversals occurred for both COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. The simple mandating of mask-wearing significantly affected rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
By the July 3 start of Governor Laura Kelly’s mask mandate, the medical/scientific consensus was clear that this policy would slow the spread of COVID-19. But many politicians, in and out of Kansas, battled the mandate and politicized the policy.
They were wrong. Governor Kelly and her advisors were right. The study concludes that the mask mandate saved at least 500 lives in Kansas. Following the known facts proved the better policy.
OK, you might say, in this limited study, good policy proved a better choice. But so what? Well, here’s what, on two major issues.
First, Medicaid expansion, with its natural experiment between states that did and didn’t expand. As of 2018, the expansion states experienced at least 19,000 fewer premature deaths than they would have without expansion, and medical debt dropped almost $1500 per person.
Second, climate change. Thousands of studies form a consensus on the immense fiscal and health benefits of aggressively combatting climate change. It’s difficult for a single state to do much, but as a society the facts demand that we act.
Science is powerful. And per John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”
Burdett Loomis is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Kansas.