Stopping Coronavirus Not Correlated with Big Government Revenues or Perceived Capacity; Maybe It Just Takes Leadership?

The St. Louis Federal Reserve summarizes new research on government action, state capacity, and the spread of coronavirus. The research finds that bigger, more robust government, as measured by tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and the “government effectiveness index” (a measure of public perception of their government’s ability to get stuff done) doesn’t clearly correlate with better containment of the coronavirus pandemic.

But that doesn’t mean states and nations can’t do anything to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Australia and South Korea did something right: over the past year, they have kept their total deaths from coronavirus below 40 per million, while Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States have seen well over a thousand residents out of every million die. (April and October figures for the six nations listed are from the St. Louis Fed article; today’s figures for each nation and all figures for South Dakota and the world come from my Googling.)

	Deaths per million
Place	by 2020.04.15	by 2020.10.01	by 2021.03.17
Australia	2	35	36
Brazil	7	677	1,337
South Korea	4	8	33
United Kingdom	208	621	1,886
United States	79	625	1,636
Uruguay	2	14	209
South Dakota	7	267	2,161
World	18	131	343

Maybe fighting coronavirus doesn’t require big government. Maybe it just requires bold, science-based leaders who are willing to advocate and model simple personal actions that will prevent the spread of disease—wearing masks, washing hands, staying home—backed with a willingness to deploy tough enforcement measures on the few remaining knuckleheads and malcontents who refuse to comply for the common good. But whatever the perfect combination of leadership and policy, the rampant spread of coronavirus was not inevitable.