Resilience of countries to COVID-19 correlated with trust

We characterized > 150 countries' resilience to COVID-19 as the nationwide decay rate of daily cases or deaths from peak levels. Resilience to COVID-19 varies by a factor of similar to 40 between countries for cases/capita and similar to 25 for deaths/capita. Trust within society is positively correlated with country-level resilience to COVID-19, as is the adaptive increase in stringency of government interventions when epidemic waves occur. By contrast, countries where governments maintain greater background stringency tend to have lower trust within society and tend to be less resilient. All countries where > 40% agree most people can be trusted achieve a near complete reduction of new cases and deaths, but so do several less-trusting societies. As the pandemic progressed, resilience tended to decline, as adaptive increases in stringency also declined. These results add to evidence that trust can improve resilience to epidemics and other unexpected disruptions, of which COVID-19 is unlikely to be the last.

Automated summary

The study reveals that there is significant variation in the resilience of different countries to COVID-19, with societal trust and the adaptive increase in government interventions being positively correlated to resilience. Countries with higher background stringency tend to have lower trust and resilience. However, even societies with lower trust can achieve reductions in new cases and deaths. As the pandemic progresses, resilience tends to decline.