Influence of State Reopening Policies in COVID-19 Mortality

By the end of May 2020, all states in the US have eased their COVID-19 mitigation measures. Different states adopted markedly different policies and timing in reopening. An important question is how the relaxation of mitigation measures is related to the number of casualties. To address this question, we compare the hypothetical case in which the mitigation measures are left intact to the actual data. We find that different states have shown significant differences in the number of deaths, possibly due to their different policies and reopening schedules. Our study provides a gauge for different state approaches and can serve as a guide for implementing best policies in the future. Our data also points to the fact that the face mask mandate has the strongest correlation with the death count of all of the mitigation policies.