I've been doing some homework on the economics of social distancing, and its implications for reopening. Not surprisingly, the Trump admin is refusing to do cost-benefit analysis 1/ washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
But there have been a couple of studies estimating the payoff of social distancing relative to letting the virus rip. They conclude that the cost in GDP so far has been well worth it 2/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/upl…
I'll add a back-of-the-envelope answer to a related but somewhat different question: what would the payoff have been to moving more quickly? Columbia researchers estimate that locking down a week earlier would have saved 36,000 lives by May 3 3/ medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Meanwhile, we have a pretty good estimate of the effect of lockdown on GDP: around -10% (NOT 40% — that's an annualized growth rate). That's approximately $40 billion per week 4/ frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/…
Now, total deaths that would been avoided is more than the 36,000 avoided by early May; even 40K is lowballing it. But even that means $200 billion if we use a fairly standard estimate, taking the differential effect on older people into account, of $5 million per life 5/
The pressing question, of course, is the cost/benefit of the rush to reopen. I don't have the numbers to do that calculation, but my strong guess is that it looks like a really bad idea. And uncertainty should be grounds for more caution, not less 6/
Of course, we aren't having a rational debate here: if the economy were really the issue, Trump would be doing everything he could to get people wearing masks. But still worth noting that deaths versus the economy is a false choice. For most of us, not dying is worth a lot 7/
