I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, and there absolutely will be decades spend unravelling this. To address the parent question - one thing to keep in mi

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, and there absolutely will be decades spend unravelling this. To address the parent question - one thing to keep in mind is that states are extremely heterogeneous, and "Did or did not lock down/mask mandate/etc." isn't actually a binary variable, but a very difficult to measure continuous response of both policy and compliance.