COVID-19 International Evidence: Some Notable Puzzles

Federico Mandelman

Policy Hub, 2020, vol. 2020, issue 14, 10

Abstract: This article uses international evidence to argue that we still have limited knowledge about the efficacy of widely used preventive actions, such as social distancing and face masks, in containing the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus. I document three puzzles. One, Peru enacted unprecedented lockdowns early in the pandemic, which led to a record contraction in economic activity. The country’s residents also adopted near-universal face mask usage. None of these actions, however, prevented Peru from experiencing the world’s highest per capita mortality rate from the virus. Second, southeast Asian countries practically did not register cases despite being closely interconnected to the source of the virus and adopting rather lax viruscontainment policies. Third, sub-Saharan African countries were largely spared from the virus, despite being considered very high-risk countries at the onset of the pandemic. I also discuss some emerging hypotheses that could explain these puzzles. Rather than rebuffing proven preventive actions like social distancing and face mask usage, this article highlights the limited knowledge we still have on this novel disease.

Keywords: COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E19 I19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/resea ... -notable-puzzles.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:a00068:99114

DOI: 10.29338/ph2020-14

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Policy Hub from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Robert Sarwark ().