Back

Optimal mobility restriction minimizing COVID-19 and excess suicide deaths in Japan

Kurita, J.; Sugawara, T.; Sugishita, Y.; Ohkusa, Y.

2021-03-02 public and global health
10.1101/2021.02.28.21252644 medRxiv
Show abstract

BackgroundStrict countermeasures for COVID-19 outbreak such as lockdowns and voluntary restrictions against going out might have reduced mortality because of COVID-19 directly, but might have raised suicide rates. ObjectWe examined best policies for minimizing overall mortality attributable to COVID-19 directly, and excess mortality by suicide because of COVID-19. MethodWe regressed the estimated excess mortality attributable to suicide deaths against mobility-restrictive measures. Mortality attributable to COVID-19 directly was estimated through association between the effective reproduction number and mobility. We sought the best mobility restriction for minimizing overall deaths. ResultsSignificant association was found between mobility and suicide, but the data were very few. Results showed the best mobility level as 65.5, which represents a 34.5% reduction in mobility from the normal level. Discussion and ConclusionAn overly restrictive policy inducing lower than optimal mobility led to higher total mortality.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.