Social distancing a week earlier could have saved 36,000 US lives, study finds

Had the US begun social distancing just one week earlier, the country would have prevented 36,000 deaths through early May, according to researchers at Columbia University.

Had action been taken two weeks earlier, by 1 March, 54,000 fewer Americans would have died of the virus, the researchers determined.

“It’s a big, big difference,” Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and the leader of the research team, told the New York Times. “That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths.”

Using infectious-disease modeling to examine the spread of the virus from mid-March, the epidemiologists were able to track how reduced contact between people slowed the virus’s transmission.

The country remained social and open for business for much of March, including for sports, political rallies and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Only 500 coronavirus infections had been reported nationwide at the time.

By April, large clusters were evident, including in major cities like New York.

From modeling, epidemiologists were then able to test how the spread would have been changed by lockdown, producing a slower transmission rate in the weeks prior. The researchers found that even small changes would have prevented the worst exponential growth.

The Trump administration rejected the study’s findings, and took the Times to task for publishing a detailed timeline of how Trump downplayed the outbreak.

“What would have saved lives is if China had been transparent and the World Health Organization had fulfilled its mission,” a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, told the Washington Post. “What did save American lives is the bold leadership of President Trump.”

Although the president banned travel from Europe on 13 March, he frequently dismissed reports of the virus’s spread as “fake news”, insisting that the “USA [is] in great shape” because the government had it “totally under control”.

“At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that,” he tweeted on 9 March. “Nothing is shut down, life and the economy go on.”

Internal emails and memorandums later revealed that, privately, Trump had been warned of a “full-blown Covid-19 pandemic” and “1-2 million” American deaths.Federal officials’ first caution to stay at home and avoid large crowds did not come until 15 March.

Deere said federal officials made the best decisions possible given the information available to them at the time.

“You could sit there and point the finger at whoever you wanted to,” researcher Shaman said. “In truth, each of us is going to draw his or her own conclusions about where blame may be assigned.”

US states are reopening, despite an increase in confirmed cases. Shaman and his team estimate that because of a lag between when infections occur and symptoms appear, more confirmed cases and deaths will probably result from a lack of extensive testing and tracing.

The US is expected to reach 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus by 1 June, if not before.