How well have different societies managed to preserve the quality of life under COVID? Has wellbeing research, and positive psychology more generally, helped to predict which local and national strategies have been most successful? It is too soon for a definitive judgment, but important to scan the emerging evidence. For this assembly of evidence available from 2020 and the early months of 2021, I shall focus my analysis on a comparison between two quite different national strategies in facing the pandemic. One group of nations, covering fewer than 15% of countries, but more than 25% of world population, adopted a strategy early in 2020 to suppress community transmission to zero, and to keep it there. The second group, containing most national governments, adopted a variety of strategies ranging from initial denial to early attempts to ‘flatten the curve’ in order to preserve the capacity of health care systems to deal with the sick while attempting also to limit the effects of lockdown and other non-pharmaceutical interventions on a whole range of supports for happier lives, including social connections, family life, education and the economy.
The World Happiness Reports emphasize the happiness-supporting roles of healthy life expectancy, friends and family, freedom, trust, income and generosity. COVID-19 and the efforts required to deal with it, threatened health, income, and possibly freedom and social connections, while drawing on generosity, support from family and friends, and especially social and institutional trust, to improve and share quality of life.
What do the data show? First there has been a surprisingly wide-spread resilience of life evaluations in the face of deep and uncertain threats to lives and livelihoods. Second, a comparison of all aspects of life showed the virus-suppression strategy to be more successful, whether measured in terms of COVID-19 deaths, overall excess deaths, income, unemployment, or mental and physical health.