Superiority of mild interventions against COVID-19 on public health and economic measures

TL;DR

This study shows that mild, continuous interventions during COVID-19 are more effective for public health and economic stability than strong, intermittent measures, based on analysis of Tokyo data.

Contribution

It introduces a causal loop analysis and quantitative modeling demonstrating the benefits of mild, sustained interventions over abrupt, intense measures.

Findings

Mild interventions prevent resurgence of cases.

Continuous measures have limited economic impact.

Intermittent interventions may cause case rebounds.

Abstract

During the global spread of COVID-19, Japan has been among the top countries to maintain a relatively low number of infections, despite implementing limited institutional interventions. Using a Tokyo Metropolitan dataset, this study investigated how these limited intervention policies have affected public health and economic conditions in the COVID-19 context. A causal loop analysis suggested that there were risks to prematurely terminating such interventions. On the basis of this result and subsequent quantitative modelling, we found that the short-term effectiveness of a short-term pre-emptive stay-at-home request caused a resurgence in the number of positive cases, whereas an additional request provided a limited negative add-on effect for economic measures (e.g. the number of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communications and restaurant visits). These findings suggest the superiority of a mild and continuous intervention as a long-term countermeasure under epidemic pressures when compared to strong intermittent interventions.