The emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 quickly generated claims that the crisis had demonstrated the superiority of extensive welfare states and a failure of market economies. We conduct cross-sectional statistical analyses to test this claim with regard to first response and reported COVID-19 related deaths per 31 December 2020 (N = 164–200), using government spending as a central variable. The analyses confirm some of what is known from other studies: COVID-19 deaths associate positively and robustly with ageing and more obese populations. However, we find no statistically significant associations between various measures of government size and the number of COVID-19 deaths, alone or when controlled against demographic, political and economic factors. If anything, the general effectiveness of government services and the availability of hospital beds seem more important than the simple size of government or level of health care expenditures.

2020 年全球新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 大流行的出现很快引发了这样的说法：这场危机证明了粗放福利国家的优越性和市场经济的失败。我们使用政府支出作为中心变量，进行横断面统计分析，以根据 2020 年 12 月 31 日第一反应和报告的 COVID-19 相关死亡人数 (N = 164-200) 来检验这一说法。这些分析证实了其他研究中已知的一些信息：COVID-19 死亡与老龄化和肥胖人口呈正向且强烈的相关性。然而，我们发现，无论是单独衡量还是在考虑人口、政治和经济因素的情况下，政府规模的各种衡量标准与 COVID-19 死亡人数之间都没有统计学上的显着关联。如果说有什么不同的话，那就是政府服务的总体有效性和医院床位的供应情况似乎比简单的政府规模或医疗保健支出水平更重要。