Pandemic tradeoffs: US residents’ perceptions of detrimental outcomes associated with COVID lockdowns

Abstract

Policies designed to prevent COVID-19 deaths arguably yielded trade-offs with other adverse outcomes associated with lockdowns. In a nationally representative study of Americans, we queried participants about how tolerant they were of these trade-offs, expressed as binary choices. We asked participants—by putting them in the shoes of a medical policymaker—to choose one adverse outcome (of a pair) to prevent and one to allow. Participants expressed greater desire to prevent child abuse, intimate partner violence, and deaths associated with economic downturns than COVID deaths, suggesting that the public perceived that detrimental effects of the lockdowns are more regrettable than potential additional COVID deaths.