Abstract
Background
Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated people’s lives around the globe and, even with the start of vaccination efforts in late 2020, the virus is likely to continue to affect global economies and individual routines long after the end of 2021. As a result, numerous pandemic-related analyses have been completed. However, few of these studies focus on the impact of pre-existing societal and economic factors that may have played a role in the spread of COVID-19. This study evaluated the impact of social and economic freedoms, gross domestic product, and population density in nations around the world on COVID-19 cases, deaths, testing and vaccination rates.
Methods
To explore the effects of social and economic freedoms, gross domestic product, and other parameters on the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple datasets, including the Economic Freedom Index and the Human Freedom Index were used, along with COVID-19 data, to examine both direct and indirect relationships. The K-Means clustering algorithm was used for many analyses.
Results
High economic and social freedoms were associated with increased numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths throughout 2020. Countries within the highest category of economic freedoms reported their first COVID-19 case 44 days before and their first virus death 91 days before low-economic-freedom nations, on average. Countries with the highest overall freedoms exhibited average COVID-19-stringency scores of 4.4, 12.85, and 4.49 points less than countries in the lowest freedom categories for the Spring, Summer, and Fall of 2020, respectively, representing less strict pandemic responses. Despite these relationships, countries with higher overall freedoms had a lower average fatality rate of 2.03% compared with countries in the lower freedom categories of up to 2.98%. Freedoms were also shown to correlate with other pandemic-influencing factors, including GDP, political systems, and population density.
Conclusion
High economic and social freedoms were associated with increased numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths throughout 2020. Future analyses should address whether the enjoyment of freedoms can be balanced with the preservation of safety to improve responses to future pandemics.
Poverty in the Indonesia-Malaysia border province (case study in West Kalimantan Province)
