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This one should stir up some strong emotions...

Is preventing Covid-19 deaths worth a severe recession? The answer depends on controversial assumptions about the pandemic's lethality-
[reason.com]

In a paper published on Monday, three economists address the tradeoff between COVID-19 containment and economic activity in the United States. They estimate that "the optimal containment policy increases the severity of the recession but saves roughly half a million lives in the U.S." According to their model, aggressive control measures more than double the decline in aggregate consumption. The lead author, Northwestern University economist Martin Eichenbaum, says the difference would amount to an additional reduction of $1 trillion over the course of a year. That comes out to roughly $2 million for each life saved, which looks like a bargain compared to the $9.3 million per-life value used in the model.

SpikeTalon 10 Mar 26
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As all governments around the world face and struggle with the potential economic catastrophe this virus is causing, requiring that all the none essential work force engine, stay’s home to allow the virus to dye off naturally around our communities, for what could be a required probable time frame of 3 months, Is it probable and feasible to organize a global pause on all monetary financial transactions?
Can all monetary activities cease internationally and thus eliminate all financial insecurities on all aspects of society that would require a bailout or cash infusion now and going forward. No rents, loans, wages, medical, credit services, food stuffs etc. will be traded, but halted globally.
Continue to support the distribution of critical food and medicine and other critical item distributions to support sustenance for citizens of all walks of life and circumstances for this virus dye off period.
Can this be a true ‘out of the box’ solution, in effect offering a total pause on commerce occurring during this time. Massive bailout packages will cause enormous burdens and have real potential unforeseen challenges for years to come but a complete international financial pause may be a truly unprecedented global bailout solution. Stop money requirements. And this may require that all trades prior to the stock market drops are reversed. No one profits from the virus period. Just a thought.

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From the same paper: "At what point do the costs of their interventions outweigh the expected benefits? But the answer to that question hinges on assumptions that are controversial, impossible to verify based on existing data, or both.

The value that Eichenbaum et al. assign to each life saved is similar to the number calculated by Vanderbilt University economist W. Kip Viscusi based on labor market data. But it is arguably too high, since it does not take into account the age distribution of COVID-19 deaths, which are concentrated among the elderly."

it's a pretty harsh thing to do a cost benefit analysis on economic value/human life.
lots of people still hate on Ford motor company for doing that with regard to their infamous Pinto models in 1970s

@iThink, Yes, and some of us will have nothing to do with those kinds of rationalizations.

[nationalreview.com]

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