Life came to a screeching halt in March for most of us here in Michigan. Was the stay-at-home Executive Order handed down by Governor Whitmer aggressive? You bet. Did it save lives? A new study says it saved thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of lives.

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The study, conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and Oxford University shows that states that implemented highly aggressive stay home orders were much more successful at mitigating the spread of the COVID-19.

Likewise, researchers fear that as most states relax rules governing the number of people allowed to congregate in one place and increasing mobility, the spread of the disease could once again increase. According to this report, Michigan could experience a second wave of the disease in the fall.

Newsweek broke down the numbers here:

"In an unmitigated epidemic, you might expect that 70% to 80% of the population might be infected, that's 7.4 million people infected with COVID-19," said Seth Flaxman, a senior lecturer in Imperial College London's mathematics department, using Michigan's population of 9 million to determine the estimate."

The formula assumes that 1% of those infected would die from the disease. 1% of 7.4 million is 74,000, meaning that without any measures in place, that's how many people may have died from Coronavirus in Michigan. Grim as it seems, that's well over ten times the number of people in Michigan who have succumbed to the disease.

According to Newsweek, Michigan's stay-at-home order were among the strictest in the country.

 

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