[BostonCard]

Some of them trade off economic consequences against deaths. 

We trade off economic consequences against deaths all the time. The side effects of guns, cigarettes, alcohol, even automobiles...all of them play a part in massive numbers of deaths each year.  Medicine comes with side effects.  Sometimes they're worth it, sometimes not.

https://youtu.be/eSdNMRtvq5g?t=84

Yes, agreed.  Based on a number of methods (including the accepted cost/benefit of regulation), you can actually estimate how much we, as a society, values a life. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

It is kind of cold, but not crazy.  Based on what is paid for by medicare for hemodialysis, each additional year of life is worth $129,000 per year of quality life.  Based on regulatory standards, saving one life from an untimely death is worth between $7.9 million and $9.6 million.  So, based on the number of deaths so far (667), coronavirus has already cost $5.3 billion dollars.  If doing nothing winds up costing 300,000 lives (an optimistic assessment that presumes only about 5% of the population gets coronavirus), that would be a $2.4 trillion dollar cost just in lost lives.  That's about 10% of GDP over the course of a year.

In the nighmare scenario that 80% of the population gets coronavirus and 1% of those dies, and the mortality rate is 2.5 million (I don't think it will be this bad, but that's the worst case scenario based on what we know), then we're talking about $20 trillion in lost lives, which is just about the entire GDP of the country this year.

BC

[BostonCard]

Some of them trade off economic consequences against deaths. 

We trade off economic consequences against deaths all the time. The side effects of guns, cigarettes, alcohol, even automobiles...all of them play a part in massive numbers of deaths each year.  Medicine comes with side effects.  Sometimes they're worth it, sometimes not.

https://youtu.be/eSdNMRtvq5g?t=84

Yes, agreed.  Based on a number of methods (including the accepted cost/benefit of regulation), you can actually estimate how much we, as a society, values a life. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

It is kind of cold, but not crazy.  Based on what is paid for by medicare for hemodialysis, each additional year of life is worth $129,000 per year of quality life.  Based on regulatory standards, saving one life from an untimely death is worth between $7.9 million and $9.6 million.  So, based on the number of deaths so far (667), coronavirus has already cost $5.3 billion dollars.  If doing nothing winds up costing 300,000 lives (an optimistic assessment that presumes only about 5% of the population gets coronavirus), that would be a $2.4 trillion dollar cost just in lost lives.  That's about 10% of GDP over the course of a year.

In the nighmare scenario that 80% of the population gets coronavirus and 1% of those dies, and the mortality rate is 2.5 million (I don't think it will be this bad, but that's the worst case scenario based on what we know), then we're talking about $20 trillion in lost lives, which is just about the entire GDP of the country this year.

BC