The effect of reopening policy on COVID-19 related cases and deaths

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Abstract

By May 29, 2020, all 50 states in the United States had reopened their economies to some extent after the coronavirus lockdown. Although there are many debates about whether states reopened their economies too early, no study has examined this effect quantitatively. This paper takes advantage of the daily cases, deaths, and test data at the state level, and uses the synthetic control method to address this question. I find that reopening the economy caused an additional 2000 deaths in the 6 states (Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas) that reopened before May 1 st by three weeks after reopening. It also increased daily confirmed cases by 40%, 52%, and 53% after the first, second, and third week of reopening, respectively. Moreover, contrary to scientists’ prescription that expanding tests is a necessary condition for reopening, these states witnessed a decline in daily tests by 17%, 47%, and 31% after the first, second, and third week of reopening, respectively.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.25.20139840: (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

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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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