RETRACTED ARTICLE: Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study

  1. R. F. Savaris
  2. G. Pumi
  3. J. Dalzochio
  4. R. Kunst

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Abstract

A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second wave of cases in Europe, in regions that were considered as COVID-19 controlled, may raise some concerns. Our objective was to assess the association between staying at home (%) and the reduction/increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in several regions in the world. In this ecological study, data from www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ , ourworldindata.org and covid.saude.gov.br were combined. Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included. Data were preprocessed and analyzed using the difference between number of deaths/million between 2 regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. The analysis was performed using linear regression with special attention to residual analysis. After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1.6%) comparisons were significant. With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-021-84092-1
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.13.20211284: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Merged database: Different databases from the sites mentioned above were merged using Microsoft Excel Power Query (Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows Version 14.0.7232.5000) and manually inspected for consistency.
    Microsoft Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)
    Details of preprocessing are described in Python script (Supplemental material).
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Despite its limitations, reported deaths are likely to be more reliable than new case data. Further explanations for different results in the literature, besides methodological aspects, could be explained by the complexity of the virus dynamic and its interaction with the environment. It is unwise to try to explain a complex and multifactorial condition, with the inherent constant changes, using a single variable. An initial approach would employ a linear regression to verify the influence of one factor over an outcome. Herein we were not able to identify this association. This study has limitations. Different from the established paradigm of randomized clinical trial, this is an ecological study. An ecological study observes findings at the population level and generates hypotheses (Pearce 2000). Population-level studies play an essential part in defining the most important public health problems to be tackled (Pearce 2000), which is the case here. Another limitation was the use of Google Community Mobility Reports as a surrogate marker for staying at home. This may underestimate the real value: for instance, if a user’s cell phone is switched off while at home, the observation will be absent from the database. Furthermore, the sample does not represent 100% of the population. This tool, nevertheless, has been used by other authors to demonstrate the efficacy in reducing the number of new cases after NPI (Delen et al. 2020; Vokó and Pitter 2020). Using different methodologie...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.13.20211284 on medRxiv