Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19

摘要: Social distancing policies are critical but economically painful measures to flatten the curve against emergent infectious diseases. As novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spread throughout United States in early 2020, federal government issued social recommendations left states most difficult and consequential decisions restricting behavior, such as canceling events, closing schools businesses, issuing stay-at-home orders. We present an original dataset of state-level policy responses epidemic explore how political partisanship, caseload, diffusion explain timing governors9 mandate distancing. An event history analysis five across all fifty reveals important predictors political: else equal, Republican governors from with more Trump supporters were slower adopt policies. These delays likely produce significant, on-going harm public health.