What matters the most in curbing early COVID‐19 mortality? A cross‐country necessary condition analysis
研究识别出延迟首次响应、政治分权、老年人口和城市化是导致110国早期新冠高死亡率的四个必要条件，强调快速公共卫生反应对降低死亡的关键作用。
COVID-19 represents a turbulent problem: a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous crisis, in which bounded-rational policymakers may not be able to do everything right, but must do critical things right in order to reduce the death toll. This study conceptualizes these critical things as necessary conditions (NCs) that must be absent to prevent high early mortality from occurring. We articulate a policy-institution-demography framework that includes seven factors as NC candidates for high early COVID-19 mortality. Using necessary condition analysis (NCA), this study pinpoints high levels of a delayed first response, political decentralization, elderly populations, and urbanization as four NCs that have inflicted high early COVID-19 mortality across 110 countries. The results highlight the critical role of agility as a key dimension of robust governance solutions-a swift early public-health response as a malleable policy action-in curbing early COVID-19 deaths, particularly for politically decentralized and highly urbanized countries with aging populations.