Sakuraba A, Sato T. COVID-19 mortality and gross domestic product loss: A wake-up call for government leaders. World J Clin Infect Dis 2021; 11(2): 35-37 [DOI: 10.5495/wjcid.v11.i2.35]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Atsushi Sakuraba, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States. asakurab@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Virology
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Infect Dis. Apr 25, 2021; 11(2): 35-37 Published online Apr 25, 2021. doi: 10.5495/wjcid.v11.i2.35
COVID-19 mortality and gross domestic product loss: A wake-up call for government leaders
Atsushi Sakuraba, Toshiro Sato
Atsushi Sakuraba, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Toshiro Sato, Department of Organoid Medicine, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan
Author contributions: Sakuraba A contributed to the conceptualization, methodology, and writing; Sato T edited and approved the final draft.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest directly relevant to the content of this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Atsushi Sakuraba, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States. asakurab@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
Received: February 17, 2021 Peer-review started: February 17, 2021 First decision: March 17, 2021 Revised: March 30, 2021 Accepted: April 8, 2021 Article in press: April 8, 2021 Published online: April 25, 2021 Processing time: 65 Days and 1.4 Hours
Abstract
Government leaders have struggled to reduce the infection and deaths due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as well as to keep the economy and businesses open. There is a large variation of mortality and damage to economy among countries. One possible cause leading to the large variation is the manner in which countries have delt with COVID-19. Some countries or regions such as China, New Zealand, and Taiwan, acted quickly and aggressively by implementing border closures, lockdown, school closures, mass testing, etc. On the other hand, many European countries, United States, and Brazil delayed their decisions to implement these restrictions and measures. No study has assessed the correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) and COVID-19 mortality. In the present study, there was a negative correlation between GDP and COVID-19 mortality suggesting that countries that failed to control the virus (larger COVID-19 mortality) would see a larger decline in GDP. Governmental leaders should act fast and aggressively when making decisions because data shows that countries who have run after two hares have caught neither. Furthermore, citizens of each country need to do their own part by following guidelines and practicing social distancing and mask wearing, which are considered the most effective, easiest, and cheapest measures that can be taken, so that repeated lockdowns can be avoided.
Core Tip: There is a large variation of mortality and damage to economy due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among countries. In the present study, we demonstrated that there was a negative correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) and COVID-19 mortality suggesting that countries that failed to control the virus would see a larger decline in GDP. Some countries or regions (China, New Zealand, and Taiwan) have acted quickly and aggressively to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which resulted in relatively small damage to the economy. Governmental leaders should act fast and aggressively when making decisions because data shows that countries who have run after two hares have caught neither.
