God is in the rain: The impact of rainfall-induced early social distancing on COVID-19 outbreaks

We measure the benefit to society created by preventing COVID-19 deaths through a marginal increase in early social distancing. We exploit county-level rainfall on the last weekend before statewide lockdown in the early phase of the pandemic. After controlling for historical rainfall, temperature, a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Shenoy, Ajay, Sharma, Bhavyaa, Xu, Guanghong, Kapoor, Rolly, Rho, Haedong Aiden, Sangha, Kinpritma
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2022
Materias:
Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654737/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34923344
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2021.102575
Descripción
Sumario:We measure the benefit to society created by preventing COVID-19 deaths through a marginal increase in early social distancing. We exploit county-level rainfall on the last weekend before statewide lockdown in the early phase of the pandemic. After controlling for historical rainfall, temperature, and state fixed-effects, current rainfall is a plausibly exogenous instrument for social distancing. A one percent decrease in the population leaving home on the weekend before lockdown creates an average of 132 dollars of benefit per county resident within 2 weeks. The impacts of earlier distancing compound over time and mainly arise from lowering the risk of a major outbreak, yielding large but unevenly distributed social benefit.

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