2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Linguistics

Demography

Philosophy

Case fatality rate

Government (linguistics)

Virology

Association (psychology)

Economics

Development economics

Outbreak

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Censorship

Psychology

Politics

Political science

Demographic economics

Democracy

Psychotherapist

Population

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Internal medicine

Sociology

Medicine

Pandemic

Disease

Economics Letters

More democratic countries are often expected to fail at providing a fast, strong, and effective response when facing a crisis such as COVID-19. This could result in higher infections and more negative health effects, but hard evidence to prove this claim is missing for the new disease. Studying the association with five different democracy measures, this study shows that while the infection rates of the disease do indeed appear to be higher for more democratic countries so far, their observed case fatality rates are lower. There is also a negative association between case fatality rates and government attempts to censor media. However, such censorship relates positively to the infection rate.

Democracy and COVID-19 outcomes