Conditional persistence? Historical disease exposure and government response to COVID-19

Abstract

Drawing on the literature on cultural adaptations to historical disease exposure, we investigate differences in government containment policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesize that a higher historical exposure to disease resulted in a stronger government response to recent COVID deaths, particularly during the first year of the pandemic characterized by fundamental uncertainty. Our empirical analysis confirms this hypothesis, both for differences in government responses to disease dynamics between countries and for differences in state-level containment policies within the United States. Our results suggest that the impact of historical health legacies on contemporary policy may be conditional on the character of the public health risk at hand. Deep cultural norms, determined by historical experiences, may play a minor role most of the time but are activated in times of fundamental uncertainty. • High historic pathogen prevalence (HPP) may trigger strong intuitive disease response. • Countries with high HPP had stronger COVID-19 policy responses in 2020. • The same pattern appeared across U.S. states. • Early on, people in high HPP-countries were more anxious and supportive of curfews. • Historical behavioral norms seem to matter more in times of fundamental uncertainty.