Stay-at-home and face mask policies intentions inconsistent with incidence and fatality during US COVID-19 pandemic
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AbstractIn addition to the United States CDC recommendations, many states imposed stay-at-home (SAH) and mandatory face mask (MFM) orders during COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to characterize the relationship between SAH and MFM approaches with the incidence and fatality during the pandemic period until the 2020-08-23 (about 171 days). States with SAH orders showed potential decreases of infection and fatality during SAH period (about 45 days). However, many results in this study were inconsistent with the intent of public health strategies of SAH and MFM. There were similar incidence rates among SAH + MFM, SAH + no-MFM and no-SAH + no-MFM states. After normalized to population density, there were no significant differences in total positive cases, average daily new cases and average daily fatality among the 3 groups during the pandemic period. This study suggested that SAH and MFM orders in the general public alone, probably have limited effects in lowering transmission and fatality. From the policy-making level, if we cannot strictly isolate contagious patients with effective contact tracing, we presume that following the CDC recommendations could be appropriate in helping mitigate the COVID-19 disaster and limiting collateral social-economic damage with close monitoring of healthcare capacity.
