Language and lockdowns

ITHACA — Our recent experience with COVID-19 and the word “lockdown” once again illustrates the power of language to influence our lives and well-being. The infinite variety of reality, and the finite number of words and phrases we have to describe it, creates an inescapable philosophical challenge to articulating policy. Adding to the challenge is our tendency to regard a person’s usage of certain words as a signal of their political ideology.

In managing the pandemic, much of the policy discussion has coalesced around lockdowns. But reducing the issue to a binary question (Should we lock down or not?), or even a linear one (How much should we lock down?), oversimplifies a complicated problem.

In the real world of pandemic management, there are a thousand dimensions to policy. For example, governments can lock down bars while keeping schools open, or ask people who do not wear face masks to remain at home while allowing those who do to go outside. They can also insist on social distancing for vulnerable populations while imposing fewer restrictions on those with immunity to COVID-19. To ignore these choices when designing so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions is to court disaster.

That said, one big pattern that has not received enough attention is the geography of COVID-19. The difference between the Americas and Europe, on one hand, and Africa, Asia, and Oceania, on the other, in terms of cases and deaths is too great to be attributed to policy alone.

For example, it would be utterly disingenuous for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to proclaim the success of his pandemic policies by comparing his country’s crude mortality rate (CMR) — the number of COVID-19 deaths per million people — of 76 with Spain’s CMR of 964. In fairness, it would be equally fallacious to say that US policy has failed because America’s CMR is 827 while that of Vietnam, a much poorer country, is only 0.4.

The geographic pattern is so marked that there has to be an explanation in terms of past illnesses and immunities, viral strains, ecology, or some other factor that we are yet to identify. To see the effect of policy, we need to make within-region comparisons (as I recently argued in a co-authored paper for the Brookings Institution).

The experience of India also demonstrates the risks of lockdown semantics. On March 24, the Indian government announced a “lockdown” that supposedly was even more severe than those in Europe, often described as the strictest possible. The problem with this policy became evident after a week or two. The authorities had made no provision for the country’s poor migrant workers who, stranded in urban centers without work or pay, had no choice but to walk hundreds of miles back to their homes, mostly in the countryside. So, although India’s cities, towns, and economy were locked down, the opposite was true of 23-40 million migrant workers. For them, this could be described as the “Great Unlocking.”

This misstep is now showing up in the statistics. India’s number of daily COVID-19 cases rose without interruption for six months, a trend seen in very few places. India’s CMR of 99 is now the highest among South and East Asian countries (and higher than in most of Africa), largely because the “lockdown” actually unlocked the coronavirus and scattered it nationwide.

But instead of lamenting the past, we need to move on. At least until a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, all countries need different forms of tailored, limited lockdowns and rules of behavior. And as far as possible, this should be implemented through persuasion and leadership rather than by police enforcement.

Here is one suggestion. We have to begin to rely on people who have already had COVID-19 and are now immune. Instead of resorting to compulsion, we should offer people with certified immunity attractive pay to take jobs that involve physical human interaction and contact. This will help to keep supply chains open and the overall economy running.

Once governments take the lead, market forces will kick in and do the job. As we discuss in the Brookings paper, this option is not risk-free. But it has huge potential, and economies that develop a functioning “immune labor market” can reap big benefits. Project Syndicate

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Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank and chief economic adviser to the Government of India, is professor of economics at Cornell University and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.