It is very unlikely that we would have gotten to 100% prevalence in any world, which would be necessary for 1% of the U.S. to die. With all the superspreader dynamics, you would likely reach heard immunity at something like 50% prevalence, maybe even less than that, and we are about 40% of the way there. This also completely ignores age-related effects. The average life-years lost per covid death is ~10-15, since the average person who dies of COVID is much older.
This all results in a VSL closer to 1/10th of the value you cited (~2 for only getting to 50% prevalence and a factor of 5 for age-related effects). Then, if you take into account that we aren’t actually on track to prevent most of the relevant deaths (we are already at 20% historical prevalence and are likely to reach 30%-40% before widespread vaccine adoption, suggesting that we are likely to end up with 60-70% of the relevant deaths, compared to the world with zero lockdowns), the numbers really aren’t looking good.
This makes the total calculation come out to more something like a counterfactual $1T in VSL terms. I think with that, it’s looking pretty unlikely to me that the lockdowns we had were worth it, even just taking into account the economic effect of this year (not to mention that the total impact and length of lockdowns is likely to extend substantially into 2021). I also think this year will have a large number of highly negative long-run effects on institutions, political tension and long-term health for lots of people that will make the overall cost of the lockdown greatly exceed the deaths that were prevented.
Back in March, there was a lot of concern that uncontrolled spread would overwhelm the medical system and some hope that delay would improve the standard of care. Do we have good estimates now of those two effects? They could influence IFR estimates by a fair amount.
Also, my understanding is that the number of infections could’ve shot way past herd immunity levels. Herd immunity is just the point at which the number of active infections starts declining rather than increasing, and if there are lots of active infections at that time then they can spread to much of the remaining people before dwindling.
It is very unlikely that we would have gotten to 100% prevalence in any world, which would be necessary for 1% of the U.S. to die. With all the superspreader dynamics, you would likely reach heard immunity at something like 50% prevalence, maybe even less than that, and we are about 40% of the way there. This also completely ignores age-related effects. The average life-years lost per covid death is ~10-15, since the average person who dies of COVID is much older.
This all results in a VSL closer to 1/10th of the value you cited (~2 for only getting to 50% prevalence and a factor of 5 for age-related effects). Then, if you take into account that we aren’t actually on track to prevent most of the relevant deaths (we are already at 20% historical prevalence and are likely to reach 30%-40% before widespread vaccine adoption, suggesting that we are likely to end up with 60-70% of the relevant deaths, compared to the world with zero lockdowns), the numbers really aren’t looking good.
This makes the total calculation come out to more something like a counterfactual $1T in VSL terms. I think with that, it’s looking pretty unlikely to me that the lockdowns we had were worth it, even just taking into account the economic effect of this year (not to mention that the total impact and length of lockdowns is likely to extend substantially into 2021). I also think this year will have a large number of highly negative long-run effects on institutions, political tension and long-term health for lots of people that will make the overall cost of the lockdown greatly exceed the deaths that were prevented.
Back in March, there was a lot of concern that uncontrolled spread would overwhelm the medical system and some hope that delay would improve the standard of care. Do we have good estimates now of those two effects? They could influence IFR estimates by a fair amount.
Also, my understanding is that the number of infections could’ve shot way past herd immunity levels. Herd immunity is just the point at which the number of active infections starts declining rather than increasing, and if there are lots of active infections at that time then they can spread to much of the remaining people before dwindling.
I agree