Holistic Research Report of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has left no one untouched, impacting the lives of billions of people. Due to the variance in socio-economic, political, and even belief systems around the world, different geographies have chosen to combat the virus in very different ways. The objective of our independent research was to identify what factors played a role in certain countries having a “better” response than others during the COVID-19 pandemic and then to relate that back to the political and cultural characteristics of those countries. We first researched coronavirus characteristics and compared them to those of previous pandemics to understand, physically, why the virus is hard to stop. Our research finds that COVID-19 has relatively “average” characteristics for infection and case fatality rates, but the difficulty lies in the time delay from more extended incubation periods and testing results turnaround times. That, along with the disproportionate effect on people with weak immune systems and pre-existing conditions, has made the virus hard to prevent without strict lockdowns of large parts of individual economies. Using this knowledge as a baseline, we analyzed what factors led to some countries adopting more effective responses than others by examining the general government response timelines of six countries: Germany, France, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our analysis finds that the differing effectiveness of a country's COVID-19 response can be narrowed down to three main factors: reaction time, protective policy enforcement, and testing rates. Moreover, we find that the responses often mirror the social and political climate of the country.