The impact of COVID-19 public health and social measures on years of potential life lost.

Abstract

Background: To determine the impacts of statewide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related public health and social measures (PHSMs) and attempted pandemic mitigation measures on years of potential life lost (YPLL).

Methods: The "openness score" of each state during the COVID-19 pandemic was obtained using two open-source sites, the Multistate openness score and the Wallethub openness score. These scores combined various PHSMs, such as restrictions on gatherings and closing various types of businesses. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder database, the differences in prepandemic (2017-2019) and pandemic excess mortality were calculated in terms of YPLL and then compared to the openness scores using univariate regression modeling.

Results: States that instituted more restrictive PHSMs as measured by openness scores failed to experience reductions in YPLL. On the contrary, there were trends toward statistical significance associating greater YPLL with the institution of more stringent PHSMs (p = 0.109 and p = 0.080 for Multistate and Wallethub, respectively).

Discussion: This study suggests restrictive PHSMs were ineffective for improving mortality in this pandemic and trended toward increasing mortality in the younger population, presumably from other, non-COVID-19 causes.