Am J Epidemiol. 2021 Jun 1;190(6):1075-1080. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwab062.
Increasing hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the United States and elsewhere have ignited debate over whether to reinstate shelter-in-place policies adopted early in the pandemic to slow the spread of infection. The debate includes claims that sheltering in place influences deaths unrelated to infection or other natural causes. Testing this claim should improve the benefit/cost accounting that informs choice on reimposing sheltering in place. We used time-series methods to compare weekly nonnatural deaths in California with those in Florida. California was the first state to begin, and among the last to end, sheltering in place, while sheltering began later and ended earlier in Florida. During weeks when California had shelter-in-place orders in effect, but Florida did not, the odds that a nonnatural death occurred in California rather than Florida were 14.4% below expected levels. Sheltering-in-place policies likely reduce mortality from mechanisms unrelated to infection or other natural causes of death.
美国和其他国家因 COVID-19 住院人数的增加引发了关于是否恢复大流行早期采用的就地避难政策以减缓感染传播的争论。这场争论包括声称就地避难会影响与感染或其他自然原因无关的死亡。检验这一说法应该会提高重新实施就地避难的收益/成本核算。我们使用时间序列方法比较了加利福尼亚州和佛罗里达州的每周非自然死亡人数。加利福尼亚州是第一个开始、也是最后一个结束就地避难的州，而佛罗里达州的避难开始得较晚，结束得较早。在加利福尼亚州实施就地避难令而佛罗里达州没有实施的几周内，非自然死亡发生在加利福尼亚州而不是佛罗里达州的几率比预期低 14.4%。就地避难政策可能通过与感染或其他自然死亡原因无关的机制降低死亡率。
