Citizen Mobility, Lockdowns, and the Limits of Political Leadership

This article addresses the effectiveness of government mandates on citizen mobility and whether mandated lockdowns contained the Covid-19 virus from March 2020-June 2021. All states and nations in this study (with the exception of Sweden) used legal strictures to constrain mobility in attempting to contain Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths per million. Of 13 cases examined here there were three statistically significant relationships between mandated lockdowns and hospitalizations and deaths per million, and these correlations are negative. Mandated lockdowns decreased citizens’ movement, but lockdown efficacy decreased over time. State mandated lockdowns did not have a statistically significant impact on decreasing the spread of Covid-19 deaths or hospitalizations. In addition, the more stringent the lockdowns, the greater the economic damage.