It’s going to take many years to sort out what Covid policies worked well under what conditions and what Covid policies worked well considering the trade-offs. That’s complicated stuff. In the meantime, here’s a simple policy comparison:
Ok, the Covid mortality rate for states without a mask mandate was almost twice as high as for states with a mandate. Simple cause-and-effect? Unlikely, although mask mandates probably played a role. But that’s just my opinion, not a result of hard-core research and not taking into account possible confounders, like the people’s compliance with state mandates and social distancing recommendations.
Here’s another comparison:
There were a surprising number of states that prohibited broad-based vaccination mandates. Less surprising, these states had higher Covid mortality rates than states without prohibitions. But did mandate prohibitions have a significant impact on state vaccination rates, especially for vulnerable groups? Or did the prohibitions have little independent effect on vaccination rates - or, by extension, Covid mortality rates? It’s possible the higher Covid mortality rates in no-mandate states were driven largely by popular attitudes about Covid and coercive government and if these attitudes were widespread and deeply felt, broad-based vaccine mandates may have been relatively ineffective anyway.