Tyler Cowen had a great take calling out the tradeoff implied by this paper, raising the question of if a 18m total lockdown (the upper bound of the recommenda

Tyler Cowen had a great take calling out the tradeoff implied by this paper, raising the question of if a 18m total lockdown (the upper bound of the recommendation in this paper) is even a reasonable thing from a society/utilitarian perspective. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/herd-immunity-time-consistency-and-the-epidemic-yoyo.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/he... Alternatively, let’s say we start off being really strict with shutdowns, quarantines, and social distancing. Super-strict, everything closed. For how long can we tolerate the bankruptcies, the unemployment, and the cabin fever? At what point do the small businesspeople, one way or another, violate the orders and resume some form of commercial activity? What about “mitigation fatigue“? Again, I fear we might switch course and, again, end up with the worst of both worlds. We would take a big hit to gdp but not really stop the spread of the virus. I also can imagine that we keep switching back and forth. The epidemic yoyo. Because in fact we find none of the scenarios tolerable. Because they are not.