Deleted member 2897
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Read pages 5 - 7 again. Goolsby and Syverson's explanation of the effects they estimated in Table 1 shows why they said what they did and why they did more then look at the graphs of logged visits. The Appendix Table they provide is also informative.
This has absolutely nothing to do with ignoring the data; indeed, it is their careful parsing of effects that reveals what the data are actually telling us; i.e. that the bottom fell out of consumer demand in leisure and entertainment before any re-opening and continued falling until states began to take their foot off the pedal. Even then demand (as measured by visits) only partially recovered.
I mean, their data says the opposite of their thesis - demand was almost 100% of normal and then fell off a cliff upon the shutdown. How they can conclude anything otherwise would be pure conjecture. The data is simply not there to show it had already fallen off a cliff. It’s right in their own graphs.
They’re also ignoring history, which was all the recommendations and regulations in between along the way. There were various rules around capacity, eating outside only, takeout only, and so on. It’s pretty shoddy work. States have records of all their executive orders and they’re all public. They can make timelines for each states rules and then look at the data that way.