Pareto-based evaluation of national responses to COVID-19 pandemic shows that saving lives and protecting economy are non-trade-off objectives

Marek Kochańczyk,Tomasz Lipniacki

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-81869-2

Marek Kochańczyk, Tomasz Lipniacki

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81869-2

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Abstract

Countries worldwide have adopted various strategies to minimize the socio-economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Stringency of imposed measures universally reflects the standpoint from which protecting public health and avoiding damage to economy are seen as contradictory objectives. Based on epidemic trajectories of 25 highly developed countries and 10 US states in the (mobility reduction)–(reproduction number) plane we showed that delay in imposition of nation-wide quarantine elevates the number of infections and deaths, surge of which inevitably has to be suppressed by stringent and sustained lockdown. As a consequence, cumulative mobility reduction and population-normalized cumulative number of COVID-19-associated deaths are significantly correlated and this correlation increases with time. Overall, we demonstrated that, as long as epidemic suppression is the aim, the trade-off between the death toll and economic loss is illusory: high death toll correlates with deep and long-lasting lockdown causing a severe economic downturn.

Highlights

Countries worldwide have adopted various strategies to minimize the socio-economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
We show that when the strategies of multiple countries are juxtaposed, there is effectively no trade-off between the death toll and the economic loss
We demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between the population-normalized cumulative number of COVID-19-assigned deaths and cumulative lockdown

Summary

Introduction

Countries worldwide have adopted various strategies to minimize the socio-economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Most European countries have chosen the suppression strategy that aims to limit the exponential growth of the outbreak and reduce daily new cases to a small number. A third strategy, in which it is anticipated that, on the contrary, no effective vaccine will be available soon and long-term containment is not realistic, is to rely on mitigation and acquisition of herd immunity This strategy had been initially declared in the UK but was promptly abandoned due to a rapid increase in the death toll and the threat of overwhelming the health system. A similar relation is observed for excess deaths and decrease of GDP in the first half of 2020 We interpret this result by dissecting the impact of testing and nation-wide quarantine on the effective reproduction number

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