Working Paper: NBER ID: w28760
Authors: Andrew Atkeson
Abstract: I use a model of private and public behavior to mitigate disease transmission during the COVID pandemic over the past year in the United States to address two questions: What dynamics of infections and deaths should we expect to see from a pandemic? What are our options for mitigating the impact of a pandemic on public health? I find that behavior turns what would be a short and extremely sharp epidemic into a long, drawn out one. Absent the development of a technological solution such as vaccines or life-saving therapeutics, additional public health interventions suffer from rapidly diminishing returns in improving long-run outcomes. In contrast, rapidly implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions, in combination with the rapid development of technological solutions, could have saved nearly 300,000 lives relative to what is now projected to occur.
Keywords: COVID-19; Epidemics; Public Health; Behavior
JEL Codes: C0; I0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| behavioral responses (D91) | trajectory of the epidemic (F44) |
| behavior (C92) | mortality outcomes (I12) |
| non-pharmaceutical interventions (O35) | long-term death toll (J17) |
| endogenous response of behavior to disease prevalence (I12) | dynamics of the epidemic (C69) |