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You're assuming that you can let the virus burn out of control without it having any negative effects on the economy. I'm going to be polite, so I'll just say t

You're assuming that you can let the virus burn out of control without it having any negative effects on the economy. I'm going to be polite, so I'll just say that assumption is unrealistic. Imagine that the virus did what it did in NYC or Lombardy, but did it in every city in the US. Given our understanding of the virus, this is very possible. Now forget the statistics: just think viscerally about what that would mean for schools, office jobs, retail businesses, hospitals. You'd get all those deaths plus the economic damage of a lockdown. This isn't an either/or. Basically: if we're not going to control this thoughtfully, we'd better pray that some as-yet-unknown effect stops the spread most places, or that people naturally socially-distance enough to stop it. I hope one of those happens, maybe it will happen, but I have zero reason to believe it will right now.

tripletao 6y ago
I'm not sure what makes you think I'm advocating "letting the virus burn out of control"? I specifically listed control measures that I advocated (masks, distance), and those alone seem to be mostly working for Japan without further restrictions--though I fully agree yet-unknown factors may mean those alone won't work in some other places. And I certainly agree the virus alone has economic impact, even if the government (recklessly) took no steps to control it. So do the math with the incremental cost in GDP for whatever intervention you favor, but remember that every extra percent of lost GDP is ~30k dead 75-year-olds in lost health care spending under the model above, even before considering any other economic impact. There is no safe path here, just different and uncertain tradeoffs.