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Austen's avatar

What do you suppose P is as a function of lockdown duration? If it's not linear, then percentage change in duration doesn't give percentage change in P.

If, for example, much of cost P was incurred before mid-April (via multiplier effect of early job losses), then percentage change in lockdown duration overestimates dP/P in your polls.

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Jacopo's avatar

I think there are in fact three local optima: (1) completely squashing the virus (2) just enough measures to avoid hospitals being overrun ("flattening the curve") and (3) not doing anything except for things like hand-washing, and accepting the death toll. It is intuitive for me that a small policy variation from each of them would result in a net loss. A lot of the debate comes down to which local optimum you believe to be the global one. Right now many western countries cannot agree internally on what to pick and compromise between (1) and (2), with obvious sub-optimal results. Your analysis shows that US are on the side of (2) with respect to the local maximum between (1) and (2), but does not resolve the underlying debate. "Pick one and implement it, it would be strictly better" of course is also a good position that we should hear more often. (2 is also really difficult to reach exactly)

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