I’ve seen a lot of calls for cost-benefit analysis regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic damage we’re inflicting as we try to control it. I’m not sure it’s possible to do that with the information we have right now — we don’t really know how many people are asymptomatic, for example, and we’ll probably never know what would happen if we did absolutely nothing or took only minimal steps, since no country afflicted by this plague is trying this, uh, creative suggestion.
On top of that, there are countless things we might or might not try to measure and include. When it comes to the benefits of controlling COVID, you don’t just have the lives saved. You also have health-care costs, damage to the economy from people being hospitalized when they could be working (even if from home), and the misery of being intubated. Or not being intubated when you need it because the hospital ran out of ventilators.