Researchers defend Lancet COVID study against op-ed
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- Thomas J. Bollyky and Joseph Dieleman respond to a First Opinion op-ed by Marc Lipsitch and Sara Cody, saying it mischaracterized their 2023 Lancet study as a strawman to bolster a call for new county-level NPI research.
- The authors rebut four specific criticisms: they say their study assessed 10 policy mandates alongside mobility, mask-wearing, and vaccination behavior; explicitly addressed partisanship and social trust (noting trust played an 'outsized role'); and ran sensitivity analyses with starting dates across January, February, and March 2020.
- Lipsitch and Cody updated their original piece a week after being alerted to errors, conceding their study contains 'some analyses' of behavior and acknowledging the politics point, but made no mention of the trust findings, per the authors.
- Bollyky and Dieleman acknowledge their study did not find a statistical link between NPIs and deaths, but attribute that to confounding factors like diabetes, obesity, and healthcare access—not analytical flaws—and note nearly every U.S. state imposed mandates within a few weeks, making counterfactuals hard to model.
- The authors warn that misrepresenting their literature feeds 'Covid revisionism' and undermines public health preparedness, calling instead for 'rigorous and honest assessment' of the U.S. response.
Why it matters: The dispute centers on how the evidence base for COVID-era NPIs is interpreted at a moment when 'Covid revisionism' is actively reshaping policy debates. The authors' core claim—that their Lancet study's null finding on deaths reflects confounding variables, not methodological gaps—matters because it determines whether future pandemic guidance treats NPIs as a validated tool or a contested one.
