  The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes, COVID-19 was
declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization. Since
then, the disease has spread all over the world, with the United States
becoming the country with the highest number of cases. Governments around the
world have undertaken varying degrees of public safety measures, including
recommendations and ad campaigns for improved hygiene practices, enacting
social distancing requirements and limiting large public gatherings, and
stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. In the United States, while the response has
varied greatly from state to state, we clearly see that the effect of these
public safety measures is significant and, if these measures continue to remain
in effect, or are expanded to a nationwide lockdown, the pandemic can be
controlled and the disease likely overcome with mitigated consequences. In this
paper, we model the spread of the novel coronavirus using a causal model. We
find that, with continued lockdown measures, the United States can, according
to this model, limit the total number of infections to ~1.35 million and the
total number of deaths to ~72 thousand. A 60 day lockdown can save countless
lives.
