How much did the COVID-19 shutdown cost the American economy?

[Mick]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

[BostonCard]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

Given that the typical value of a statistical life in the US is about $10 million, it seems the intervention was worth it.

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/20/how-value-life/

That’s what is called the value of a statistical life, and it is the dollar value assigned to a theoretical human life — $10 million when you do this calculation today.

BC

[teejers1]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

Given that the typical value of a statistical life in the US is about $10 million, it seems the intervention was worth it.

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/20/how-value-life/

That’s what is called the value of a statistical life, and it is the dollar value assigned to a theoretical human life — $10 million when you do this calculation today.

BC

We're not going down this road again, are we?  
Does the analysis you link figure that every life is worth the same, no matter the age/condition?

[BostonCard]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

Given that the typical value of a statistical life in the US is about $10 million, it seems the intervention was worth it.

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/20/how-value-life/

That’s what is called the value of a statistical life, and it is the dollar value assigned to a theoretical human life — $10 million when you do this calculation today.

BC

We're not going down this road again, are we?  
Does the analysis you link figure that every life is worth the same, no matter the age/condition?

Yes, that is government policy, and is the standard that EPA applies to environmental regulation, OSHA applies to occupational hazards, and the NHTSA applies to auto safety.  The George W. bush administration considered changing to a standard that valued some lives more than others, and it was not well received.

BC

[fanofourforebears]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

This kind of reporting and study reminded me of this scene from Back to School. 

Are we going to just believe this it true without questioning things?  Where is the investigative journalism in reporting on the study?  Where is the link to the study and the support for the number of lives saved and the total cost to the economy?  Is Government spending, the cost of not being able to do such and such, being forced to do such and such, and the ruin of many a small business included in the total cost arrived at by the HEC Paris study?

[JustAnotherFan]

According to researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan, it cost the American economy $169 billion and saved an additional 29,000 lives, about $6 million per life.

https://news.yahoo.com/169-bn-29-000-liv...40202.html

Now imagine what if the effort wasn't undermined by public officials and opportunists who saw it as a way to strengthen their power at the expense of human lives. Imagine if it was an all hands on deck approach that would have saved an additional ... let's say 230,000 lives (and counting) and in doing so would have allowed the economy to have better weathered the storm. That would have been a steal from this cost per life approach, and from the 'what type of society do we want to live in' approach.

[fanofourforebears]

Now imagine what if the effort wasn't undermined by public officials and opportunists who saw it as a way to strengthen their power at the expense of human lives.

 
Indeed! Imagine if those opportunist and public health officials and Governor's had it in for the economy too?

Imagine if it was an all hands on deck approach that would have saved an additional ... let's say 230,000 lives (and counting) and in doing so would have allowed the economy to have better weathered the storm.

We can hope.  But dare we imagine what might happen if American's, small businesses and our souls can't take much more of this? Most of the numbers you quote are not as well supported as you might think. There is probably more support for this alt media post and some pretty troublesome times going forward than for the numbers being reported as Covid-19 deaths. What happened to the flu? What if most of the flu cases and deaths are being counted as Covid-19? Is this imaginable? Not saying any of this is true, but we all can imagine and come up with our own version of reality and what we can anticipate for the future. How about facts, how about real support? Well, one can go to the world economic forum and confirm things, read Klaus Schwab's books, etc.. See the plans that the Elites have for most of us. It is time to take personal responsibility and to open our eyes and see the world we once knew just might passing away. All the while many of us are trying to put the jigsaw puzzle for Covid-19 together missing so many pieces and with plenty of counterfeit ones next to the board. Well the demise of so many things we hold dear just might be gone for good and all without scarcely a shot being fired. But what if the next shoe to drop is a different kind of shot about to be heard throughout the world? Why are so many nations calling up the troops? The cost have been of immense proportions since we first heard of Covid-19, but what if these costs have very little to do with fighting or not fighting an illness, but are being caused and endured for some other purpose or purposes?

[2006alum]

I think this forum is getting infected with the alternative facts crew. Anyone who links to an article from "Alt-Market. Us" whose title is "America’s Economy Cannot Survive Another Lockdown, And The Cult Of The Reset Knows It" and talks about "globalists," "the great reset," "the new world order" and Biden's forthcoming plan to impose martial law is not genuinely curious, they're a conspiracy theory-pushing propagandist. Thanks for playing, but I'll take a hard pass.

[Farm93]

I think this forum is getting infected with the alternative facts crew. Anyone who links to an article from "Alt-Market. Us" whose title is "America’s Economy Cannot Survive Another Lockdown, And The Cult Of The Reset Knows It" and talks about "globalists," "the great reset," "the new world order" and Biden's forthcoming plan to impose martial law is not genuinely curious, they're a conspiracy theory-pushing propagandist. Thanks for playing, but I'll take a hard pass.

We will all "enjoy" links like this for at least two years since the national GOP leaders will not be able to satisfy the social media cravings of those that yearn for conspiracy theories.  

FWIW - The deaths are not the full societal health cost.   The long hauler COVID survivors will ring up big costs over time.   Some of those survivors will require expensive pharmaceuticals, frequent medical tests and scans, ongoing counselling, and disability payments for years. 

Most can agree that it sucks that we didn't do the shutdown right.   At some point I am confident the USA will create a commission to note what SHOULD have happened.   It likely would quantify how much the federal government's COVID-19 approach cost the USA at the end of this pandemic in any of the metrics we often use as a nation when compared to nations that did a better job.   It presumably would consider lives lost, disabilities, health care costs, education deficits, fiscal deficits and/or economic growth.

It needs to happen because global pandemics will remain a challenge in the future.   We have to learn from this experience to avoid repeating it in the future.

To break it down, it essentially will ask how can we be more like New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and less like Brazil and Mexico for the NEXT global pandemic?

[BostonCard]

The premise of the OP may have been wrong.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

But among countries with available GDP data, we do not see any evidence of a trade-off between protecting people’s health and protecting the economy. Rather the relationship we see between the health and economic impacts of the pandemic goes in the opposite direction. As well as saving lives, countries controlling the outbreak effectively may have adopted the best economic strategy too.

It wasn't imposing the COVID-19 shutdown that cost the American economy, but rather failing to control the pandemic.

BC

[Goose]

To break it down, it essentially will ask how can we be more like New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and less like Brazil and Mexico for the NEXT global pandemic?

Goodness I hope they don't approach it that way. While I think it will be useful to look at the approaches used in areas that were relatively successful in containing the epidemic, it is abundantly clear IMHO that the approaches used in these nations would be largely ineffective in the USA. New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan are islands that are relatively easily isolated from outside infections. They also have much smaller populations than the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea are relatively homogeneous culturally so obtaining compliance is much easier than in the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, and South Korea also have governments that have frequently used major force to control the population.

I believe that we need to first look very hard at what will work here in the USA to prevent us from getting in a situation where we have community spread in many places. We have avoided previous pandemics by doing this, but in fact we were aided by the type of disease and some very good luck. We need to greatly beef up our capability to do this. This will include plans to safely repatriate US travelers when epidemics start in other nations. It may involve considerable inconvenience to travelers, but we are going to need the capability. We have too many people and too many points of entry to just ignore the issue. Once it gets going inside the USA, controlling it isn't ever going to be easy.

We also need to improve our local health departments ability to respond to outbreaks and control them early. IMHO the public needs to be educated to the idea that public health enforcement exists and will be used! We have the legal mechanisms in place because we previously used them to deal with localized epidemics. Our current politicians seem to believe that the population will simply revolt if they try to enforce isolation/quarantine. That has to change. The public has to know that these steps will be taken and will be enforced. In all the nations you cited as better examples (except Japan), that is the case. The local tracking and tracing capability needs to be maintained adequately to handle an outbreak, but that is pointless if there is no enforcement. We are experiencing that right now and have been for months.

The third arm of the changes we need was outlined by Tony Fauci in his conversation with the Dean of the medical school. We need to develop the capability to create antivirals "on demand" to attack things like COVID-19 early on. The "warp speed" effort to develop a vaccine is great, but this type of effort will always take many months because you have to vaccinate a large percentage of the population to gain an effect. In the meantime, you can't have people dying in large numbers. The only way to avoid lockdowns is to treat the disease successfully. We are getting there with COVID-19. 
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousd...definition

However, right now things like this take too long. We need more "generic" methodologies that deliver an effective treatment in weeks or at most two months. Is this easy? No. Can it be done? Probably. We are on the edge of being able to do it. Make it a priority and it will happen. This is the type of  approach that the public will like, because they don't have to do anything but fund it. No loss of freedoms or annoying isolation requirements. Money will be made as well. What's not to like? As a side benefit, we may actually cure the common cold.

[Farm93]

To break it down, it essentially will ask how can we be more like New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and less like Brazil and Mexico for the NEXT global pandemic?

Goodness I hope they don't approach it that way. While I think it will be useful to look at the approaches used in areas that were relatively successful in containing the epidemic, it is abundantly clear IMHO that the approaches used in these nations would be largely ineffective in the USA. New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan are islands that are relatively easily isolated from outside infections. They also have much smaller populations than the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea are relatively homogeneous culturally so obtaining compliance is much easier than in the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, and South Korea also have governments that have frequently used major force to control the population.

I believe that we need to first look very hard at what will work here in the USA to prevent us from getting in a situation where we have community spread in many places. We have avoided previous pandemics by doing this, but in fact we were aided by the type of disease and some very good luck. We need to greatly beef up our capability to do this. This will include plans to safely repatriate US travelers when epidemics start in other nations. It may involve considerable inconvenience to travelers, but we are going to need the capability. We have too many people and too many points of entry to just ignore the issue. Once it gets going inside the USA, controlling it isn't ever going to be easy.

We also need to improve our local health departments ability to respond to outbreaks and control them early. IMHO the public needs to be educated to the idea that public health enforcement exists and will be used! We have the legal mechanisms in place because we previously used them to deal with localized epidemics. Our current politicians seem to believe that the population will simply revolt if they try to enforce isolation/quarantine. That has to change. The public has to know that these steps will be taken and will be enforced. In all the nations you cited as better examples (except Japan), that is the case. The local tracking and tracing capability needs to be maintained adequately to handle an outbreak, but that is pointless if there is no enforcement. We are experiencing that right now and have been for months.

The third arm of the changes we need was outlined by Tony Fauci in his conversation with the Dean of the medical school. We need to develop the capability to create antivirals "on demand" to attack things like COVID-19 early on. The "warp speed" effort to develop a vaccine is great, but this type of effort will always take many months because you have to vaccinate a large percentage of the population to gain an effect. In the meantime, you can't have people dying in large numbers. The only way to avoid lockdowns is to treat the disease successfully. We are getting there with COVID-19. 
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousd...definition

However, right now things like this take too long. We need more "generic" methodologies that deliver an effective treatment in weeks or at most two months. Is this easy? No. Can it be done? Probably. We are on the edge of being able to do it. Make it a priority and it will happen. This is the type of  approach that the public will like, because they don't have to do anything but fund it. No loss of freedoms or annoying isolation requirements. Money will be made as well. What's not to like? As a side benefit, we may actually cure the common cold.

Goose - 
The USA is an island in terms of this pandemic. At least as much as Canada and definitely more than Norway or Germany.   Those that initially delivered the virus to the USA in December-February came via airplane.   Just like they did in Australia, New Zealand.

I don't know what the government will discover, but rest assured POTUS46's government will not just assume our citizens are too selfish or too diverse to get better results next time.

The connective tissue between the Asia Pac nations is far, far greater than you apparently understand.   And each of them has far more travel to and from China then we had pre-COVID.   A major reason they did better is because they took the painful lessons of SARS and MERS and had plans in place for something like COVID-19.  

Brazil and Mexico had COVID-19 deniers in office, and they too have paid a steep price.

It won't be hard to connect this all up.

Brazil, Mexico BAD RESULTS - Don't do those things.   Deny the problem, resist testing
Asia Pacific Region GOOD RESULTS - Do those things.  Prepare, take decisive action, never trust China's word, etc.

In the end it will be a bit like earthquake, hurricane, or a brush fire.

You hope they don't happen, but you know they will.
You hope the officials in charge will identify the hazard quickly, but your community plans need to go beyond one leader calling the shots.
You know your citizens may prefer to ignore the problem, but through awareness and preparation you can expect better results when it happens.

Those countries that are great can do those tasks to protect their citizens from known threats. 
Those that aren't great often look at others and say it can't happen here because (insert excuse).

I will opt for the greatness, exceptionalism path.   :)

[oregontim]

To estimate “excess deaths” due to public policy, the US has 4.2% of the world population, and 17.5% of world’s Covid deaths. If we had only 4.2% of the deaths, that would be 60K. The estimated excess deaths, by that measure, is 186K. 

Of course that’s a gross estimate, and it depends on data of questionable accuracy in many countries. But it subjects our estimate to the worldwide average, rather than cherry picking certain countries. All it really means is that the actual number is probably more than 150K.

[Goose]

The USA is an island in terms of this pandemic. At least as much as Canada and definitely more than Norway or Germany.

Yes, but those two were not in your initial list. I would agree that Canada and Germany are much more similar to the US than the nations you originally cited.

 Those that initially delivered the virus to the USA in December-February came via airplane.   Just like they did in Australia, New Zealand.







I don't know what the government will discover, but rest assured POTUS46's government will not just assume our citizens are too selfish or too diverse to get better results next time.







The connective tissue between the Asia Pac nations is far, far greater than you apparently understand.   And each of them has far more travel to and from China then we had pre-COVID.   A major reason they did better is because they took the painful lessons of SARS and MERS and had plans in place for something like COVID-19.

No, not at all like Australia and New Zealand. How many ports of entry does Australia have? New Zealand? Taiwan? Very very few compared to the USA. I do agree with you that Taiwan and Australia in particular did respond very quickly to CLOSE those ports of entry early in the epidemic, particularly in Taiwan. They then reopened some of their (few) ports of entry with mandatory enforced quarantines for all entrants, including returning citizens. We in the USA can do almost the same thing, but it is going to be much more difficult because we have so many more ports of entry. It will require a major organized effort that is not ad-hoc. We will need plans much much bigger than the counties in your initial list. Easier to do when all you have to control is Taoyuan. We also have problems more like Germany (and Canada) that there are many people who cross the border every day for work. The countries in your initial list don't have that problem. What we do there is a question indeed.



As far as what Biden et al will do regarding assumptions about US citizens compliance maters a bit, but not much. It is what the County Health Offices like Dr. Sara H. Cody believe and do that matters. The POTUS doesn't have the power to enforce the quarantine/isolation requirements inside a given State. The Governor and the County Health Officers (as delegated from the State) do. Right now, even with Trump in office, they could. They are not doing so not because they fear Trump but rather because the County and State politicians fear for their political well being. They fear riots in the streets if they go into a neighborhood and arrest somebody who isn't isolating. The POTUS can encourage more serious enforcement, but until the local politicians believe the public will accept it, it isn't happening, no matter who is POTUS. That is an education and information operation that needs to go on at all levels, but particularly the local one.

[BostonCard]

To break it down, it essentially will ask how can we be more like New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and less like Brazil and Mexico for the NEXT global pandemic?

Goodness I hope they don't approach it that way. While I think it will be useful to look at the approaches used in areas that were relatively successful in containing the epidemic, it is abundantly clear IMHO that the approaches used in these nations would be largely ineffective in the USA. New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan are islands that are relatively easily isolated from outside infections. They also have much smaller populations than the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea are relatively homogeneous culturally so obtaining compliance is much easier than in the USA. Thailand, Vietnam, and South Korea also have governments that have frequently used major force to control the population.

I believe that we need to first look very hard at what will work here in the USA to prevent us from getting in a situation where we have community spread in many places. We have avoided previous pandemics by doing this, but in fact we were aided by the type of disease and some very good luck. We need to greatly beef up our capability to do this. This will include plans to safely repatriate US travelers when epidemics start in other nations. It may involve considerable inconvenience to travelers, but we are going to need the capability. We have too many people and too many points of entry to just ignore the issue. Once it gets going inside the USA, controlling it isn't ever going to be easy.

We also need to improve our local health departments ability to respond to outbreaks and control them early. IMHO the public needs to be educated to the idea that public health enforcement exists and will be used! We have the legal mechanisms in place because we previously used them to deal with localized epidemics. Our current politicians seem to believe that the population will simply revolt if they try to enforce isolation/quarantine. That has to change. The public has to know that these steps will be taken and will be enforced. In all the nations you cited as better examples (except Japan), that is the case. The local tracking and tracing capability needs to be maintained adequately to handle an outbreak, but that is pointless if there is no enforcement. We are experiencing that right now and have been for months.

The third arm of the changes we need was outlined by Tony Fauci in his conversation with the Dean of the medical school. We need to develop the capability to create antivirals "on demand" to attack things like COVID-19 early on. The "warp speed" effort to develop a vaccine is great, but this type of effort will always take many months because you have to vaccinate a large percentage of the population to gain an effect. In the meantime, you can't have people dying in large numbers. The only way to avoid lockdowns is to treat the disease successfully. We are getting there with COVID-19. 
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousd...definition

However, right now things like this take too long. We need more "generic" methodologies that deliver an effective treatment in weeks or at most two months. Is this easy? No. Can it be done? Probably. We are on the edge of being able to do it. Make it a priority and it will happen. This is the type of  approach that the public will like, because they don't have to do anything but fund it. No loss of freedoms or annoying isolation requirements. Money will be made as well. What's not to like? As a side benefit, we may actually cure the common cold.

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.

BC

[Goose]

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.



BC

Not quite true, BC, IMHO. The epidemic never got out of control in Taiwan and New Zealand. Not very many brought COVID-19 in. Taiwan acted quickly and closed down it's airports and isolated the few cases it did have. Lots easier to do when you only have one main airport. It then put in place strict quarantines on entering people. For a long time they had a grand total of 18 cases. Similarly, New Zealand had very few cases when it shut down travel into the country, 4 as I recall.. Obviously it has few ports of entry (airports if you will, but seaports are also an issue), so it can do that easily. We didn't do that. We didn't have a plan to do that.  So, in that sense they managed the situation much better. They were better prepared and had an easier task. How many international ports of entry (airports and seaports if you will) exist in the USA? Lots, and we had neither the plan nor the will to shut them down very early on.

It may be true that the big outbreak in NY was unavoidable because there were already too many positive people in the country by the time we had the cases in Washington state. However, I have also heard it said that there was a big "inoculation" caused by people returning from Europe in response to the China travel restrictions and that this drove the epidemic there. Be that as it may, the US certainly had an out of control situation that these other nations did not experience. We then didn't manage it well, but it is easier to manage a controlled outbreak than one in the "community spread" status, which we never actually exited.

[Mick]

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.
BC

Not quite true, BC, IMHO. The epidemic never got out of control in Taiwan and New Zealand. Not very many brought COVID-19 in. Taiwan acted quickly and closed down it's airports and isolated the few cases it did have. Lots easier to do when you only have one main airport. It then put in place strict quarantines on entering people. For a long time they had a grand total of 18 cases. Similarly, New Zealand had very few cases when it shut down travel into the country, 4 as I recall.. Obviously it has few ports of entry (airports if you will, but seaports are also an issue), so it can do that easily. We didn't do that. We didn't have a plan to do that.  So, in that sense they managed the situation much better. They were better prepared and had an easier task. How many international ports of entry (airports and seaports if you will) exist in the USA? Lots, and we had neither the plan nor the will to shut them down very early on.

It may be true that the big outbreak in NY was unavoidable because there were already too many positive people in the country by the time we had the cases in Washington state. However, I have also heard it said that there was a big "inoculation" caused by people returning from Europe in response to the China travel restrictions and that this drove the epidemic there. Be that as it may, the US certainly had an out of control situation that these other nations did not experience. We then didn't manage it well, but it is easier to manage a controlled outbreak than one in the "community spread" status, which we never actually exited.

There are four international airports in Taiwan.

There are slightly over 5,000 commercial airports in the United States and over 14,000 airports for private use, along with a little over 300 military airports.  American air carriers transported 111.1 million international passengers, and foreign air carriers transported 122.5 million international passengers to and from the United States in calendar 2018 on 1,621,000 flights, per the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Perhaps a slightly different degree of difficulty to shut down international travel in the USA versus that of Taiwan.

[BostonCard]

Being an island is not a protection from COVID in the days of airplanes.  The United States did not get COVID-19 because of people poring over the border from Mexico or Canada; we got it from people with the disease flying arriving at airports.  And Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, etc. all had planes bringing people with COVID-19 in.  The pandemic was out of control because we mismanaged it; the pandemic was kept under control at other countries because they managed it better.
BC

Not quite true, BC, IMHO. The epidemic never got out of control in Taiwan and New Zealand. Not very many brought COVID-19 in. Taiwan acted quickly and closed down it's airports and isolated the few cases it did have. Lots easier to do when you only have one main airport. It then put in place strict quarantines on entering people. For a long time they had a grand total of 18 cases. Similarly, New Zealand had very few cases when it shut down travel into the country, 4 as I recall.. Obviously it has few ports of entry (airports if you will, but seaports are also an issue), so it can do that easily. We didn't do that. We didn't have a plan to do that.  So, in that sense they managed the situation much better. They were better prepared and had an easier task. How many international ports of entry (airports and seaports if you will) exist in the USA? Lots, and we had neither the plan nor the will to shut them down very early on.

It may be true that the big outbreak in NY was unavoidable because there were already too many positive people in the country by the time we had the cases in Washington state. However, I have also heard it said that there was a big "inoculation" caused by people returning from Europe in response to the China travel restrictions and that this drove the epidemic there. Be that as it may, the US certainly had an out of control situation that these other nations did not experience. We then didn't manage it well, but it is easier to manage a controlled outbreak than one in the "community spread" status, which we never actually exited.

There are four international airports in Taiwan.

There are slightly over 5,000 commercial airports in the United States and over 14,000 airports for private use, along with a little over 300 military airports.  American air carriers transported 111.1 million international passengers, and foreign air carriers transported 122.5 million international passengers to and from the United States in calendar 2018 on 1,621,000 flights, per the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Perhaps a slightly different degree of difficulty to shut down international travel in the USA versus that of Taiwan.

Only 503 airports in the US serve commercial flights:

https://www.world-airport-codes.com/us-t...ports.html

[/url]

[url=https://www.world-airport-codes.com/content/uploads/2013/09/Top-US-Airports.png]lAccording to the 2011-2015 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), there are over 19,700 airports in the United States. 5,170 of these airports are open to the general public and 503 of them serve commercial flights.

52 US airports have IATA codes, which are the airports most likely to have regular international flights.

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/m...rports.htm

The US gets more inbound passengers than any other country in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 22nd, behind countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore.

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/b...ngers.html

BC

[Goose]

There are four international airports in Taiwan.

True, but aren't three of them colocated with Air Force bases? Pretty easy to control passengers in those cases.

There are slightly over 5,000 commercial airports in the United States and over 14,000 airports for private use, along with a little over 300 military airports.  American air carriers transported 111.1 million international passengers, and foreign air carriers transported 122.5 million international passengers to and from the United States in calendar 2018 on 1,621,000 flights, per the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Perhaps a slightly different degree of difficulty to shut down international travel in the USA versus that of Taiwan.

Most of these airports are not port of entries, so we really can't count them.

---

52 US airports have IATA codes, which are the airports most likely to have regular international flights.


https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/m...rports.htm



The US gets more inbound passengers than any other country in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 22nd, behind countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore.



https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/b...ngers.html



BC

Thanks for digging this information out. To do what Taiwan did, we would have required a plan at 52 different locations to take all passengers entering the county to accommodations where they could be housed for 14 days. Remember, there was no SIP in force, so we would have needed to do this when hotels were still serving domestic tourists. We had no plan to do this, so we would have needed to improvise 52 different plans. This also doesn't include seaports, of which there are probably 20 or so major ones and many more where you can clear customs. Remember how had it was to figure out what to do with ONE cruise ship? We ended up quarantining people at Travis.

The number of passengers per airport matters some, but not much. Each of the 52 locations handle enough passengers that we would need plans at each one, all of which have different geometry, different accommodations available/not available, different land transport options. Improvising a plan at one or two places is difficult, but probably can be done fairly quickly. Improvising 52 plans cannot, especially if the hotels aren't almost empty. Renting the rooms and guarding the buildings can be fun too. Ask the Australians. I think it is very fair to say our problem is much larger than Taiwan, New Zealand, or Korea had. Australia has more ports of entry than one might think, but they took quite a while to set up their quarantine system. All these nations had a current plan to do what they did, although there were varying degrees of problem when they had to do it.

The point is that even if we had the will to move when Taiwan did, we had no plan to do so and making/implementing that plan would have been pretty much impossible. Too many locations to wing it.

[BostonCard]

It probably would have meant consolidating international travelers into a handful of locations (maybe NY, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Chicago, and LA) and closing to international flights outside of the dedicated ports of entry.  That is not a trivial task, and would have required massively reducing the number of flights and travelers to cope (of course, the volume of travelers would have reduced dramatically anyways had people known they would have to quarantine for 14 days).

BC