We can only confidently dismiss this hypothesis if we would expect that lives saved due to a decrease in pollution would be noticeable over a two and a half yea

We can only confidently dismiss this hypothesis if we would expect that lives saved due to a decrease in pollution would be noticeable over a two and a half year span. This seems unrealistic because air pollution tends to cause injury over a longer period of time (for example, contributing to heart disease or various cancers in adult life if the individual was exposed to pollutants as a child). By contrast, COVID can kill within weeks.