It's not just consumption. You (or I) would need to save for worst-case scenarios and get very few economies of scale: you can't have 0.001 of an epidemiologis

It's not just consumption. You (or I) would need to save for worst-case scenarios and get very few economies of scale: you can't have 0.001 of an epidemiologist on retainer. The government can at least pool risk (and everything) over the entire country.