Preventing COVID-19 Fatalities: State versus Federal Policies

TL;DR

This study uses a stochastic epidemiological model to analyze how federal versus state-level COVID-19 policies impacted death tolls in the U.S., highlighting the importance of early federal intervention.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic SIRD model with interstate mobility to quantify the effects of federal mandates versus state policies on COVID-19 fatalities.

Findings

Over two-thirds of U.S. COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented with early federal mandates.

State policies alone significantly reduced fatalities in some states.

Early federal intervention could have saved many lives by late November 2020.

Abstract

Are COVID-19 fatalities large when a federal government does not enforce containment policies and instead allow states to implement their own policies? We answer this question by developing a stochastic extension of a SIRD epidemiological model for a country composed of multiple states. Our model allows for interstate mobility. We consider three policies: mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and interstate travel bans. We fit our model to daily U.S. state-level COVID-19 death counts and exploit our estimates to produce various policy counterfactuals. While the restrictions imposed by some states inhibited a significant number of virus deaths, we find that more than two-thirds of U.S. COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented by late November 2020 had the federal government enforced federal mandates as early as some of the earliest states did. Our results quantify the benefits of early actions by a federal government for the containment of a pandemic.