COVID19 National Policies
Because this was the first pandemic in modern time, the shutdowns were unprecedented. No one knew the potential financial, social, and medical impact. The financial costs of the shutdowns were obvious- closed restaurants, job furloughs, job loss, food pantry lines, etc. However, like most everything in public health, the health benefits were invisible. It’s hard to show the impact of infections and deaths that never occurred.
A VERY recent scientific study showed how the U.S. policies (and in other countries) impacted COVID19 spread. And, more interestingly, WHICH policies were most effective and which policies had NO impact on disease spread.
This figure comes directly from the preprint of the Nature article. See below for proper reference. In short, any horizontal line that does NOT cross the vertical line had an impact. So social distancing, quarantining, and working from home all WORKED. However, any horizontal line that DOES cross the vertical line had NO impact. So, for example, schools closing did not have an impact on COVID19 spread in the US.
Translation: Our sacrifices are/were worth it in regards to slowing down COVID19. Specifically, by social distancing, quarantining, and working from home, we were able to prevent 4.8 million diagnosed cases and 60 million actual cases. For the next wave or next pandemic, we can use this information to shut down more effectively.
Love, your local epidemiologist
Source: This was a peer reviewed article published in Nature, which can be found here: https://www.nature.com/arti…/s41586-020-2404-8_reference.pdf. The full reference is… Hsiang et al., (2020) The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID19-pandemic. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2404-8