## 1 Introduction  
This study aims to provide solutions to one of the problems faced when managing the COVID-19 pandemic, namely timely decisions regarding the implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and preparation of the health system. In other words, this involves adjusting the timing of decisions to anticipate the epidemic dynamics and avoid uncontrolled spread in a country or territory, as well as ensure that the health system has sufficient capacity to provide care to the sick. Obviously, these political decisions can sometimes be difficult to understand for the population. An easy-to-understand model may be helpful for the population to become aware of the necessity of stronger measures before it is too late. The spread of a pandemic initially involves an almost exponential growth, counter-intuitive to the human mind. Although this type of growth is common in nature--bacterial proliferation, nuclear and polymerization chain reactions, etc.--it is not something that is perceived in the macroscopic world in which mankind lives since it opposes our life experience, which is limited to the linearity and proportionality scale of our own lives [1]. Perhaps this explains both the lack of understanding of the general population about the need for NPIs, as well as the slowness and weakness of some governments to implement them [2; 3; 4]. The pandemic has wreaked havoc worldwide. It has severely impacted the lives of many people, affected the health of millions of COVID-19 patients and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths (40.79 million confirmed cases and 1.12 million deaths as of 21 October 2020 [5]). In addition, it has had an extraordinary impact on the economy, employment, and equality [6; 7; 8]. Furthermore, the pandemic will have deep implications regarding our progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), having serious negative effects on most of them [9]. COVID-19 has affected all countries of the world, but its impact has been quite different between countries and even between regions within a country, even among neighboring nations with similar socioeconomic characteristics and similar cultures. The set of NPIs [10] adopted in all countries has been effective to flatten the epidemic curve [11; 12; 13] and has been essentially the same in most countries, although they differ in intensity and severity, but its effectiveness is closely related to the timing in which different measures and restrictions were adopted to mitigate the spread of the disease. Like in a forest fire, the earlier an intervention is applied, the greater its efficacy. With regard to OECD countries, given that coronavirus-positive patients started to be confirmed on the same date, the most reasonable explanation for the differences in the pandemic impact would be the management of the pandemic. This has been the subject of studies such as that published by the University of Cambridge in the 2020 Sustainable Development Report [9]. This report includes a chapter that compares the early control of COVID-19 in the 33 OECD countries and calculates a pilot index (Index COVID-19) between 4 March and 12 May. The highest score in the ranking, i.e., the optimum management, was reached by South Korea (0.90), followed by Latvia (0.78). Spain is in the last position (0.39). [PERSON] and [PERSON] [14] highlighted the effectiveness of NPIs' implementation, as well as the importance of their early application. They found a drastic reduction in coronavirus spread in Spain since the date on which the state of alarm was decreed throughout the country on 14 March [15]. They assessed that the lockdown was effective at stopping the spread of the pandemic. Using a counterfactual essay, they estimated that the lockdown reduced the number of potential COVID-19 cases by 79.5%. In addition, the number of cases as of 30 April would have been reduced by an additional 12.8% if it had been implemented a week earlier, which could have prevented the collapse of many hospitals in Spain.