Owning Up to America’s Covid Pandemic Failures

A report recently released by the National Center for Health Statistics revealed that during the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, life expectancy in the U.S.—the most basic measure of national well-being—declined by a stunning 2.7 years, from 78.8 to 76.1 years, the lowest level since 1996. Put simply, the pandemic erased the effects of a quarter-century of progress in medical innovation and healthier lifestyles.

These losses weren’t distributed evenly across the population. Life expectancy declined by 3.1 years for men but 2.3 years for women. Asian Americans showed the smallest loss (2.1 years), compared with whites (2.4), blacks (4.0), Hispanics (4.2), and Native Americans/Alaska Natives (6.6). For every group, the decline among men was substantially higher than that among women, and the overall difference between men and women widened from 4.8 years to just under 6 years, a gap last seen in the mid-1990s.

Compared with its peers, the U.S. fared poorly during the past two years. In 2020 the U.S. loss of life expectancy was more than three times the average of other advanced nations. In 2021, while most of its peers regained some lost ground, the U.S. continued moving in the wrong direction. As a result, the life-expectancy gap between the U.S. and peer nations expanded by nearly two years.

Public education presents a similar picture. The just-released report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed a historic drop in achievement among fourth-graders. Between 2020 and 2022, overall reading and math scores fell by 5 and 7 points, respectively, to lows not seen in decades. As with life expectancy, groups that lagged behind the national average tended to do the worst. In math achievement, for example, black students lost 13 points and Hispanic students 8 points, compared with 6 points for Asian students and 5 for white students. The differences were even more stark between high- and low-achieving individuals. At the top, NAEP scores in reading and math fell by an average of 2 to 3 points; at the bottom, by 10 to 12 points.

Differences in resources during periods of remote learning accompanied achievement gaps. Students in the top quarter of achievement reported much higher levels of access to computers, high-speed internet, quiet places to work and regular help from teachers than did students in the bottom quarter. Reinforcing these differences, 67% of high-achievers expressed confidence that they could tell when they weren’t understanding a lesson, compared with only 32% of low-achievers. It’s hard to ask for help if you don’t know when you need it.

Here, as with life expectancy, there is evidence emerging that we could have done better. Although overall student-achievement results for our European peers aren’t yet available, a recent academic paper studied Swedish primary school students and found no achievement losses during the pandemic. Moreover, low-achieving students and those from low-income families did about as well as those who ranked higher on these measures.

Unlike most of its peers, including other Nordic countries, Sweden kept its primary schools open throughout the pandemic. Without additional research comparing Swedish educational achievement with that of countries such as Norway and Denmark, we can’t know whether Sweden’s distinctive policy choice made a decisive difference.

Still, there were many signs that remote learning wasn’t working well in the U.S.—and that keeping schools open would have created only modest health risks for students. Keeping public schools closed even after vaccines became widely available created economic distortions from which we are still recovering.

Granted, many American parents and teachers would have resisted Swedish-style policies. Trust in government is much higher in Sweden than in the U.S., making it much easier to gain public acceptance for Stockholm’s tough policy calls. To be better prepared next time, we need to evaluate the impact of our educational policy choices relative to the available options.

This is but one piece of the broad inquiry our country needs. Early this year, Sens.

Bob Menendez

(D., N.J.) and

Susan Collins

(R., Maine) proposed a bipartisan bill establishing a 9/11-style independent commission to examine our response to the pandemic and to make recommendations that would help us do better in future health emergencies. Congress should pass their bill and get started.