LAUSR

We model COVID-19 data for 89 nations and US states with a formalism that describes mathematically any pattern of growth with the minimum number of parameters (Elitzur, Kaplan & Zilberman, 2020), looking for correlations between "flattening of the curve" and preventive public policies. We find strong statistical evidence for the impact of the first implemented policy on decreasing the pandemic growth rate. Lockdown was not the first policy of any sample member, and we do not find statistically meaningful evidence for its added impact. A recent study (Brauner et al, 2020) reached similar conclusions from an entirely different approach. However, lockdown was mostly imposed only shortly before the exponential rise was arrested. The possibility remains that lockdown might have shortened significantly the initial exponential phase had it been employed as first, rather than last resort.