Do Covid Precautions Work?

Daily life in red and blue America has continued to be quite different over the past few months. It’s a reflection of the partisan divide over Covid-19. Consider:

• In the country’s most liberal cities, many people are still avoiding restaurants. The number of seated diners last month was at least 40 percent below prepandemic levels in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Cambridge, Mass., according to OpenTable. By contrast, the number of diners has fully recovered in Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, Charlotte, N.C., and Austin, Texas, as well as in Oklahoma, Nebraska and New Hampshire.

• Residents of liberal cities like New York, Washington and San Jose, Calif., are still spending significantly more time at home and less at the office than before the pandemic began, according to Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based research group. In more conservative places, the rhythms of daily life have returned nearly to normal.

• During the Omicron wave, schools in heavily Democratic areas were more likely to close some classrooms or require that students stay home for extended periods.

• Mask wearing remains far more common in liberal communities than conservative ones.

These stark differences have created a kind of natural experiment: Did Omicron spread less in the parts of the U.S. where social distancing and masking were more common?

The answer is surprisingly unclear.

Nationwide, the number of official Covid cases has recently been somewhat higher in heavily Democratic areas than Republican areas, according to The Times’s data. That comparison doesn’t fully answer the question, though, because Democratic areas were also conducting more tests, and the percentage of positive tests tended to be somewhat higher in Republican areas.

No single statistic offers a definitive answer. When I look at all the evidence, I emerge thinking that liberal areas probably had slightly lower Omicron infection rates than conservative areas. But it is difficult to be sure, as these state-level charts — by my colleague Ashley Wu — suggest:

The lack of a clear pattern is itself striking. Remember, not only have Democratic voters been avoiding restaurants and wearing masks; they are also much more likely to be vaccinated and boosted (and vaccines substantially reduce the chances of infection). Combined, these factors seem as if they should have caused large differences in case rates.

They have not. And that they haven’t offers some clarity about the relative effectiveness of different Covid interventions.

Vaccines, above all

The first lesson is that Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe illness. Here are the same four states from the above charts, this time with death rates instead of case rates:

The messiness of the previous charts has given way to an obvious pattern: Covid death has been far more common in red America. Over the past three months, the death rate in counties that Donald Trump won in a landslide has been more than twice as high as the rate in counties that Joe Biden won in a landslide, according to Charles Gaba, a health care analyst.

The second lesson is that interventions other than vaccination — like masking and distancing — are less powerful than we might wish. How could this be, given that scientific evidence suggests that mask wearing and social distancing can reduce the spread of a virus?

Early in the Omicron wave, at least one expert accurately predicted this seeming paradox. Dr. Christopher Murray, the founder of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, wrote an article for The Lancet, a medical journal, arguing that interventions like masks would have “limited impact on the course of the Omicron wave.”

I followed up with him by email, and he offered a helpful explanation. Although masks reduce the chances of transmission in any individual encounter, Omicron is so contagious that it can overwhelm the individual effect, he said.

I’ve come to think of the point this way: Imagine that you carry around a six-sided die that determines whether you contract Covid, and you must roll it every time you enter an indoor space with other people. Without a mask, you will get Covid if you roll a one or a two. With a mask, you will get Covid only if you roll a one.

You can probably see the problem: Either way, you’ll almost certainly get Covid.

This analogy exaggerates your chances of getting infected, but it still highlights the basic reason that masks and distancing have had a limited effect. “It really is a function of the extreme intensity of Omicron transmission,” Murray told me.

A 95 percent drop

Together, these two lessons can point the way to a sensible approach to Covid in the coming months.

One, nothing matters nearly as much as vaccination. A continued push to persuade skeptics to get shots — and to make sure that people are receiving booster shots — will save lives.

Two, there is a strong argument for continuing to remove other restrictions, and returning to normal life, now that Omicron caseloads have fallen 95 percent from their peak. If those restrictions were costless, then their small benefits might still be worth it. But of course they do have costs.

Masks hamper people’s ability to communicate, verbally and otherwise. Social distancing leads to the isolation and disruption that have fed so many problems over the past two years — mental health troubles, elevated blood pressure, drug overdoses, violent crime, vehicle crashes and more.

If a new variant emerges, and hospitals are again at risk of being overwhelmed, then reinstating Covid restrictions may make sense again, despite their modest effects. But that’s not where the country is today.

Related: Hawaii became the final state to announce it would drop its indoor mask mandate. And my colleague Dana Goldstein looked at the “alarming” amount of pandemic learning loss, with the biggest effects on students who are Black, Latino, lower-income, disabled or not fluent in English.

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More on Russia and Ukraine

• “I am hoping that the walls defend us.” Hospitals in Ukraine have become perilous places.

• One of the world’s largest superyachts is docked in a small Italian town. Is it Putin’s?

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Opinions

A humiliated Russia would be very dangerous, Thomas Friedman argues.

Memories of the pandemic’s traumas will fade. That’s a good thing, says Scott Small.

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A Times classic: Octopuses are smart as heck.

Advice from Wirecutter: How to brush a dog’s teeth.

Lives Lived: The environmentalist Maggy Hurchalla tangled with developers as sprawl proliferated from Miami to West Palm Beach. She died at 81.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A sports betting scandal

The N.F.L.’s season-long suspension of Calvin Ridley, a wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons, is notable because sports betting is now a ubiquitous part of the football experience.

After the Supreme Court cleared the way for legal sports gambling in 2018, the league struck deals with betting companies. Their ads are everywhere during N.F.L. broadcasts; some pregame shows even make picks against the spread. This has made the sport unwatchable for some recovering gambling addicts, The Times’s Kurt Streeter wrote.

Ridley was suspended for placing three multigame bets — each of which included a bet on his own team to win — one week when he wasn’t playing. He said the wagers totaled $1,500.

Many on social media have criticized the punishment, accusing the league of hypocrisy. But the severity is the point, Josh Kendall writes at The Athletic: “The league is making a loud statement that no player should think its new approach to sports betting means they should get any ideas.”

Football news: Aaron Rodgers is staying with the Green Bay Packers, and Russell Wilson is joining the Denver Broncos.

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were outgrowth and wrought. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Place for a contact (three letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Join The Morning tonight for a virtual event and ask two public health experts about the state of the pandemic.