Is the Network of World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Associated With COVID-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Severity?

Background TheWorld Economic Forum (WEF) has spawned a global network of elites called Young Global Leaders (YGLs) with significant influence on large corporations, politics, academia, and media. This article scrutinizes the idea that through this network, the WEF had a significant influence on the scale and scope of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We tested for associations between the country-level distribution of YGLs and the intensity and duration of the implemented NPIs summarized by the Government Response Severity Index (GRSI). Materials and methods The number and category of YGLs per country was extracted from the WEF website. We also extracted the maximum and median GRSI values for three time periods: (i) the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic (March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2020), (ii) the height of the second wave in Europe (December 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021), and (iii) the approximate first year (March 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021). Being a precondition for causality, any association between the total or category-specific number of YGLs and the GRSI values in each time period was evaluated using Spearman’s ρ correlation coefficients and polynomial regression, respectively. Results There was a highly significant positive correlation between the total number of YGLs in a country and the median (ρ = 0.36, p = 2.5×10(-7)) and maximum (ρ = 0.34, p = 1.6×10(-6)) GRSI during the second wave of the pandemic, but not during the first wave. The total number of YGLs was also a significant predictor of higher median GRSI during the second wave of the pandemic in the best-fitting (four-degree) polynomial regression model (p<0.01); additional significant and positive predictor in this model was a country’s location within Europe or South America, respectively (p<0.01). Investigating an influence-weighted number of YGLs in business, politics, and civic society separately yielded no significant associations with NPI severity for any of the three time periods. Conclusions As there were significant correlations during the second, but not the first wave of the pandemic, we conclude that the WEF might not have been the origin of but rather an echo-chamber or amplifier for certain opinions and strategies that were formed and implemented during or before the first months of the COVID-19 crisis. Future qualitative studies may reveal putative causal mechanisms underlying our observed correlations.