![]() In addition, those above age 70 were “advised to avoid social contact” and “visits to retirement homes” were banned. For instance, people were told “to avoid unnecessary traveling and social events, to keep distance to others, and to stay at home” if they had any symptoms. Still, the Swedish authorities merely advised-rather than ordered-citizens to adjust their behavior in the face of the pandemic. Specifically, we focus on Sweden: it stands out from its European peers in that its government opted against a lockdown in the first half of 2020, although its exposure to COVID-19 was not systematically different from the rest of Europe. In the present study, we explicitly account for changing infection dynamics as we quantify the lockdown effect on the basis of a purely empirical approach. NPI are thus found to be very effective in reducing infection growth and to reduce the number of deaths by about 95% according to an influential study. Several studies neglect these aspects and attribute any change in the growth rate of infections to lockdown measures or, more broadly speaking, to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). Second, people may adjust their behavior in the face of infection risk and restrain their social interactions voluntarily. First, the basic Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model assumes a constant infection probability, but predicts that infection growth slows over time as the pool of infected and susceptible people shrinks. We only make a first pass at quantifying the economic costs and ignore the social costs altogether.Ī major challenge in quantifying the lockdown effect is that infection dynamics are bound to change over time even in the absence of a lockdown-at least for two reasons. In this study, we focus on the health benefits and quantify the extent to which a lockdown limits the spread of COVID-19. In order to inform policy makers, it is essential to quantify both the costs and the benefits of lockdowns. ![]() But a lockdown might also entail severe economic and social costs. ![]() By imposing a lockdown, they may limit the spread of COVID-19 infections and deaths. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the globe, policy makers are faced with a trade-off. ![]()
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