The Pandemic Policy U-Turn: Partisanship, Public Health, and Race in Decisions to Ease COVID-19 Social Distancing Policies in the United States

We explore the US states’ evolving policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic by examining governors’ decisions begin easing five types of social distancing policies after initial case surge in March–April 2020. Applying event history models original data on state policies, we test relative influence health, economic, and political considerations their decisions. find no evidence that differences economic conditions influenced when governors began easing. Governors states with larger recent declines deaths per capita improving trends new confirmed cases positivity were quicker ease. However, politics played as powerful a role epidemiological conditions, driven primarily party affiliation. Republican made U-turn from imposing measures toward those week earlier than Democratic governors, all else equal. Most troubling all, Black populations eased more quickly, despite Americans’ higher exposure infection SARS-CoV-2 subsequent death COVID-19.