A Comparison of National and International Approaches to COVID-19-Related Measures

A Comparison of National and International Approaches to COVID-19-Related Measures. RAND Corporation. Mahshid Abir et al. January 29, 2021.

To track how well different countries and U.S. states are responding to the pandemic—and to make valid cross-country and cross-state comparisons—uniform measures are needed for key indicators, such as case identification/testing, hospitalization, mortality, and excess mortality. The authors of this report examined measures used in the early stages of the pandemic (December 2019–May 2020) and found tremendous variability in how different countries and U.S. states measure and report on COVID-19 indicators. The authors make recommendations for the use and development of measures that would allow for more standardized and valid comparisons. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 104 pages].

An Estimation of the Economic Costs of Social-Distancing Policies

An Estimation of the Economic Costs of Social-Distancing Policies. RAND Corporation. Aaron Strong, Jonathan William Welburn. May 4, 2020.

Many state and local officials are making social-distancing policy decisions based on the actions of other locations rather than through a decisionmaking framework that evaluates these measures and their reduction of the spread of coronavirus disease 2019. To help provide one piece of that information, RAND researchers developed a series of economic models aimed at filling in the gap and at estimating a rough order of magnitude of the economic consequences associated with a small set of social-distancing policies. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 18 pages].