Working Paper: NBER ID: w31525
Authors: Andrew Atkeson
Abstract: The CDC reports that 1.13 million Americans have died of COVID-19 through June of 2023. I use a model of the impact over the past three years of vaccines and private and public behavior to mitigate disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to address two questions. First, holding the strength of the response of behavior to the level of daily deaths from COVID-19 fixed, what was the impact of vaccines on cumulative mortality from COVID-19 up through June 2023? And second, holding the pace of deployment of vaccinations fixed, what would have been the impact of stricter or looser behavioral responses to COVID-19 deaths on cumulative mortality from COVID-19 over this same time period? In answering the first question, I find that vaccines saved 748,600 lives through June 2023. That is, without vaccines, cumulative mortality from COVID-19 would have been closer to 1.91 million over this time period. In answering the second question, I find that behavioral efforts to slow the transmission of the virus before vaccines became widely administered were critical to this positive impact of vaccines on cumulative mortality. For example, with a complete relaxation of these mitigation efforts, vaccines would have come too late to have saved a significant number of lives. Earlier deployment of vaccines would have saved many lives. I find that marginal changes in the strength of the behavioral response to COVID-19 deaths within the range of those responses estimated with the model have a significantly impact on cumulative COVID-19 mortality over this time period.
Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccines; Cumulative Mortality; Public Health; Behavioral Response
JEL Codes: I00; I12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| vaccines (I19) | cumulative COVID-19 mortality (J17) |
| behavioral efforts (D91) | cumulative COVID-19 mortality (J17) |
| vaccines + behavioral efforts (I12) | cumulative COVID-19 mortality (J17) |
| earlier vaccine deployment (H56) | cumulative COVID-19 mortality (J17) |