Ideology, policy decision-making and environmental impact in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic in the US

  1. Juan Prieto-Rodríguez
  2. Rafael Salas
  3. Douglas Noonan
  4. Francisco Cabeza-Martinez
  5. Javier Ramos-Gutiérrez

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Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge for the health systems of many countries. It altered people’s way of life and shocked the world economy. In the United States, political ideology has clashed with the fight against the pandemic. President Trump’s denial prevailed despite the warnings from the WHO and scientists who alerted of the seriousness of the situation. Despite this, some state governments did not remain passive in the absence of federal government measures, and passed laws restricting mobility (lockdowns). Consequently, the political polarity was accentuated. On the one hand, the defenders of more severe public health measures and, on the other, the advocates of individual rights and freedom above any other consideration. In this study, we analyze whether political partisanship and the political ideology has influenced the way Covid-19 was handled at the outbreak. Specifically, we analyze by using a Diff-in-Diff model, whether the ideology of each state, measure at three levels, affected the decrease in the NO2 levels observed after the pandemic outbreak in the US. We distinguish three alternative post-Covid periods and results show that the State ideology has a robust negative impact on the NO2 levels. There is an important difference between Democratic and Republican states, not just in the scope and following-up of the mobility and activity restrictions, but also in the speed they implemented them.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.01.21262952: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

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    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.09.01.21262952v1 on medRxiv