29 Comments

Yes, there a basic difference between seeing people as useful fir society, or society as useful to people. Under the second view , people can value their lives as much as they like, and order politicians to behave accordingly. Valuing more than the total amount of resources could lead to problems , but below that there is right level.

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Given that the value of a life year is several multiples of income, it seems like we also need to consider quality life years, not just GDP, lost to prevention. If someone can work from home during quarantine, their contribution to GDP may not drop at all but, clearly, they have lost some quality life.

A recent analysis claimed that US Covid deaths accounted for 2.5M lost life years. With a population of about 325M that works out to about 2.8 days per person. I'm pretty sure that most people would have been willing to lose much more than 3 days of lifespan to have avoided the last 7 months of prevention so, clearly, lost quality life from prevention is very large relative to that of Covid deaths when one considers how many more people lose quality life from prevention than die from Covid.

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It's important to note that the non-linearity of COVID goes away when considering heterogenous models

This is important, because the flip side of non-linearity means we should do everything possible, is non-linearity means we shouldn't bother doing anything, even the relatively cheap measures.

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The value of a life - to whom? The value to a life to the society would seem to be more like one year's income minus various expenditures that go back to society in taxes, etc - since that's what they collectively pay for it.

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Using a lifespan of 78, ave income of $63K, value of life year relative to income of 3.0, 1.5M deaths is $22T. Big. https://twitter.com/robinha...

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If we value life so high, then what is the loss to our society for the approximately 1.5 millions abortions performed in the US per year? The number of deaths recorded, either "with" COVID, or "from" COVID dwarfs the total number of deaths of unborn children due to abortions.

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If the regulations are there as a result of trying to prevent covid, even if mistakenly, then their negative side effects are also costs of prevention.

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People are generally staying away because they don’t want to be forced to socialize wearing masks and corralled like cattle into standing 6 feet apart. It isn’t Covid that people fear, it’s the insanity of lives over-regulated for what amounts to a mild cold for most (I had it early and yes it was this). Healthy people are considered infectious and people who previously had this are not considered well after many months (and a week of clinical sickness). This is insanity!

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Cooking a sandwich seems an odd thing to do.

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I you toast yourself a sandwich, no GDP gain. If someone else toasts it for you, GDP gain. Is there some kind of adjustment for this in these numbers? Same with childcare (though there it is one person caring for 15-30 kids vs one person caring for their 1-3 kids and not as stark as the sandwich example).

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If I had their total numbers, I could do a similar comparison. I don't know if that would also suggest great over-prevention or not.

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The vast majority of less work is NOT due to people too sick to work. It is due to people staying away from each other to avoid getting sick.

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How would you analyze China, where huge prevention efforts have limited GDP losses?

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Why do you assume the $7.6T of lost GDP is due to prevention? Part of that is obviously lost output because people are too sick to work, which is a covid harm.

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On the margin policy could encourage more or less prevention effort. Knowing if we have too much or too little overall should help inform that choice.

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Yes, I know. But from a policy point of view, it is not a useful way to view it for a number of reasons. When you evaluate a policy that reduces the need for other mitigation effort that are in use, it is best to view those other efforts as costs of the virus, as Cutler and Summers did.

And, unless you are going to consider "leave home and participate in the economy" emergency orders, and/or media control of the sort used by dictatorships to prevent people from learning about or being fearful of the virus, you have to accept a free public response as a given and as a harm and as a cost caused by the virus. This cost is highly non-linear., and it can only end by the virus being eliminated or nearly so. It is for all practical purposes in the same category as the lost years and long lasting debilitating conditions.

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