Briggs: Eric Holcomb's COVID leadership shined when it mattered most

The Republicans trashing Gov. Eric Holcomb's pandemic response are counting on everyone to forget what happened in 2020.

GOP candidates for Indiana governor are depicting Holcomb's record as government overreach while Attorney General Todd Roktia is accusing the Holcomb administration of using erroneous COVID-19 data as a basis for violating citizens' liberty.

If you're nursing resentment over mask mandates or business closings, it's easy to nod along to revisionist history. The pandemic was a traumatic whirlwind and we've memory holed the timeline. But Holcomb skillfully navigated the things he could control — which wasn't much — and made sound decisions at a time when no one knew what they were doing.

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The Trump lockdown

Republicans appealing to Indiana primary voters describe Holcomb as a uniquely oppressive leader during the pandemic.

But, if you look back to the blurry days of March 2020, you'll see that former president Donald Trump was the person who told Americans to avoid gatherings of 10 or more people, halt unnecessary travel and stay out of bars and restaurants. Then Trump extended those guidelines until April 30.

To the extent that we experienced a COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020, it was the Trump lockdown. Trump eventually soured on those policies and abdicated leadership altogether, leaving governors to go it alone.

That led to a messy year in which states had to navigate a once-in-a-century pandemic while learning about a new virus on the fly and balancing health risks, individual freedoms, economic considerations and politics. It was an impossible job. The recent finger wagging at Holcomb, including by his own lieutenant governor, is cynical and based on a fictional version of how the pandemic played out.

Consider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who would later run for president as a conservative hero who kept Florida open. DeSantis locked down Florida and didn't let bars or movie theaters reopen until June 2020 — and, then, only at 50% capacity. Even by late September, Florida cities could still limit restaurant capacity to 50% and schools kept mask mandates in place until the 2021-22 school year.

Meanwhile, Holcomb the tyrant enabled Indiana restaurants to open at 75% capacity and bars at 50% in June, while also reopening music venues. In many ways, Indiana returned to normal faster than Florida.

Holcomb did keep Indiana's mask mandate in place until April 2021, about the time when vaccine eligibility opened to everyone 16 and older. Several other states ended their mask mandates at the same time, including Alabama, a notably dark-red state.

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Indiana crushed the vaccine rollout

These rules, referred to in health care jargon as nonpharmacologic interventions, were flailing attempts to keep COVID-19 at bay until the real solution arrived: vaccines. That's where Holcomb's administration shined.

Indiana outpaced most states, including all neighbors, at distributing COVID-19 vaccines in early 2021, despite getting stiffed on supplies and while working with one of the most vaccine-hesitant populations in the nation.

That's because the Holcomb administration developed an efficient distribution system based on age, which saved lives in Indiana while other states slowed down to target recipients based on occupation or race.

Anyone in Indiana who wanted a COVID-19 vaccine could get it by March 2021. More than half of states in the U.S. lagged behind that, in many cases by weeks.

Unfortunately, by the end of April, vaccine demand trailed off. Now, only about 39% of Indiana residents are up to date on COVID-19 vaccination, below the national average of 43.2%, according to the federal data. That's indicative of problems that extend well beyond Holcomb.

Indiana is an unhealthy state

My real-time theory of the pandemic was that governors should maintain strict rules until everyone had access to a vaccine — and then all restrictions should go away. That led me to frequent criticism of Holcomb throughout 2020 as he loosened executive orders faster than I would have liked.

In hindsight, those pre-vaccine policies barely seem to have made a difference in outcomes — and there's still no universal scoring system for deciding which states succeeded and failed. The Council on Foreign Relations ranks Indiana 10th for its pandemic response, while the Commonwealth Fund puts Indiana at No. 37.

As a matter of public health, Indiana fared poorly during the pandemic. Indiana ranked 31st in all-cause excess deaths, as 18% more people died than would have normally been expected between March 2020 and January 2022, per a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Is that because Holcomb failed to keep people safe? Not exactly. It's because Indiana was an unhealthy state long before COVID-19 showed up and the state's population was especially vulnerable to a disease attacking older people with cardiovascular problems.

"Pandemic mortality was greater in states where obesity, diabetes, and old age were more prevalent before the pandemic," the paper notes.

In that sense, the best pandemic response is a forward-looking investment in public health — and that's what Holcomb has been doing.

There's not much evidence that Holcomb could have saved more lives with stricter rules. The restrictions he did enact were very much in line with other Republicans who are in good standing with the conservative base. Meanwhile, Holcomb delivered access to life-saving vaccines faster than most of his peers.

For a pandemic in which health experts repeatedly got things wrong and everyone was just doing the best they could to figure out what to do, Holcomb's record holds up pretty well.

Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or james.briggs@indystar.com. Follow him on X and Threads at @JamesEBriggs.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana got COVID-19 mostly right, despite Republican criticism