Discussion Paper
Impacts of COVID-19: Mitigation Efforts versus Herd Immunity
Kopecky, Karen A.; Zha, Tao (2020-04-27)
The rapid spread of COVID-19 is having devastating effects on the global economy. With death curves beginning to bend, governments will soon need to determine when and how to relax lockdown measures. The crucial question is: what are the public health consequences of reopening the economy? In this article, we argue that the observed decline in daily deaths could be due to two scenarios: social distancing measures and herd immunity. Both the widely used SIR model and the data collected thus far cannot distinguish these two scenarios. Such an identification problem generates a large degree of ...
Policy Hub , Paper 2020-3

Journal Article
Impacts of COVID-19: Mitigation Efforts versus Herd Immunity
Kopecky, Karen A.; Zha, Tao (2020-04-17)
The rapid spread of COVID-19 is having devastating effects on the global economy. Governments around the world have been forced to pursue lockdown policies in an attempt to stem the spread of this deadly disease and bend the death curve. With death curves beginning to bend, governments will soon need to determine when and how to relax lockdown measures. The crucial question is: what are the consequences of reopening the economy? In this article, we address this question by studying both the model and the data and discuss the challenges we face moving forward.
Policy Hub , Volume 2020 , Issue 3 , Pages 13