Were Extreme Measures Necessary?

Instapundit quotes the following from The Wall Street Journal (behind paywall) concerning the (non)efficacy of state-mandated lock-downs.

A new analysis by The Sentinel, a Kansas nonprofit, compares the 42 states that shut down most of their economies with the eight that did not. The latter group includes mostly rural states with some small metropolitan areas: North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah. Private employment on average fell by 7.8% between May 2019 and May 2020 in these states while plunging 13.2% in the others.

Per-capita Covid fatalities in states that stayed open were on average about 75% lower than those that locked down. One reason is that deaths in most states, regardless of whether they locked down, have been concentrated in nursing home facilities and minority communities that have higher rates of underlying health conditions and multigenerational housing.

Understanding that different circumstances require different responses, the President gave states great leeway to do what fit their needs. We have already observed the natural social distancing which is inherent in rural living. Maybe those 8 states didn’t shut down because their experience with the virus wasn’t extreme.