The Impact of Public Safety Measures on the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States Assessed By Causal Model-Based Projections of the Pandemic

Abstract: The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization. Since then, the disease has spread all over the world, with the United States becoming the country with the highest number of cases. Governments around the world have undertaken varying degrees of public safety measures, including recommendations and ad campaigns for improved hygiene practices, enacting social distancing requirements and limiting large public gatherings, and stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. In the United States, while the response has varied greatly from state to state, we clearly see that the effect of these public safety measures is significant and, if these measures continue to remain in effect, or are expanded to a nationwide lockdown, the pandemic can be controlled and the disease likely overcome with mitigated consequences. In this paper, we model the spread of the novel coronavirus using a causal model. We find that, with continued lockdown measures, the United States can, according to this model, limit the total number of infections to ~1.35 million and the total number of deaths to ~72 thousand. A 60 day lockdown can save countless lives.