Tracking the Economic Impact of COVID-19 and Mitigation Policies in Europe and the United States (original) (raw)
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Review of Economic Perspectives
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Archives of Public Health, 2022
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*******NOTE TO READERS! PLEASE FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION TO THE PAPER ABOVE (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A HETEROGENOUS KIND). *********** We explore daily new infections of COVID-19 in the United States from January 22, 2020 to May 17, 2020 and factors influencing the trajectory of new infections. Using daily county level infection data and state shutdown orders (SSOs), we first show that new infections fell significantly faster in areas targeted by SSOs. We then demonstrate that the magnitude of the effect on new infections depends upon the strength of the intervention, with "Shelter in Place" orders having the largest effect. We show social distancing (as measured through cellphone "ping" data), is inversely related to new infections. Last, we close by demonstrating that the county responses to SSOs, depend upon the county's characteristics. ***Note to readers: This version is different from the original. There was an error caused by updated data and this caused large changes in some of the analysis. All of the changes occurred in section 4.2 and due to the contemporaneous nature of social distancing and state shutdown orders. We did not see these changes. We apologize for such carelessness.****