Important note for this piece, I am not an economist or an epidemiologist.  For most of my career, my titles have begun with the word data:  data analyst, data engineer, data architect. Which means that I hate when people pull reports into excel and fiddle with the numbers, but I am fully capable of doing it. So that is what I am going to do.

Second note – if you were told there would be no math, you were lied to.

Age

COVID

FLU

%COVID

%FLU

Male

Female

Wt – Covid

Wt – Flu

All ages

23,358

5,530

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under 1 yr

0

11

0.0%

0.2%

74.14

79.45

0.0

0.2

1–4

2

28

0.0%

0.5%

71.77

77

0.0

0.4

5–14

1

39

0.0%

0.7%

64.86

70.08

0.0

0.5

15–24

21

38

0.1%

0.7%

55.2

66.25

0.1

0.4

25–34

183

124

0.8%

2.2%

45.9

50.53

0.4

1.1

35–44

462

195

2.0%

3.5%

36.64

40.97

0.8

1.4

45–54

1,257

483

5.4%

8.7%

27.85

31.75

1.6

2.6

55–64

2,993

1,018

12.8%

18.4%

19.72

23.06

2.7

3.9

65–74

5,093

1,216

21.8%

22.0%

12.75

15.35

3.1

3.1

75–84

6,429

1,225

27.5%

22.2%

7.31

8.95

2.2

1.8

85+

6,917

1,153

29.6%

20.8%

3.7

4.47

1.2

0.9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sum=

12.1

16.2

 

 

 

 

 

 

$ value =

$1,600,000

$2,100,000

Let me explain the chart above.  It is for Feb 1 – Mar 18.  Age is age ranges, COVID and FLU columns are confirmed CDC deaths between those dates (USA). Percent columns are percent of total deaths within those age groups. Male and Female is life expectancy for about the midpoint of the range. I used the average of the 2 for calculating the last 2 columns, which is the percentage * life expectancy.

The Sum is the sum of those weights, meaning the average life expectancy of those that died of COVID and Flu respectively.  $ value is that number multiplied by $129,000.  See more on that below.

First, lets discuss the life expectancy number. It is obvious a rough estimate, as I don’t have age by sex breakdowns and even within groups picking the midpoint is going to be off. But, most COVID deaths are with comorbidities, so at the worst I am overestimating life remaining, which makes this a conservative estimate for my final results.

The dollar value of a year of life came from Wikipedia. It is on the high end of estimates used, which is good. It also leads to a figure of about $9.9 million for a life from birth, which is near but a bit higher, than life numbers used by US government agencies (normally $8-9 million). So as crass as it is to assign a value to a year of life, that is a number used in the industry of doing these kind of crass things, so it works for me.

Now that I have calculated the average value of a life lost to COVID or Flu, would are we gonna do with that?

The Feds have spent about $6 trillion on stimulus packages (maybe more by the time you read this), dividing by $1.6 million gives 3.75 million lives. Is the $6T a good estimate of the damage the shutdown has done? Did the shutdown prevent 3.75 million deaths from the virus?

Okay, maybe that is a bad estimate of the damage to the economy.  I see estimates of 30-35% decline in GDP, which would be in the ballpark of $7T.  So it might be a good estimate.  However, much of the decline would have happened from people voluntarily social distancing and not going out as much.  Businesses would still be getting hurt and closed, so lets say that only about $2T is do to government mandate.  That is still over 1 million equivalent deaths.  I am willing to believe the shutdown has saved as much as 100k lives (and honestly, more likely delayed the deaths, not saved), but that works out to “only” $160 billion.  There isn’t much in the way of shutdown that costs less than that.

Finally, this is the kind of utilitarian calculation I hate.  My inner deontologist, who usually prevents me from even doing this kind of thing, is screaming about fundamental rights.  But, as usual, without doing any math he is right about the math too.

Barbie was right, math is hard.  Tell me in the comments where I screwed everything up.

 

Sources:

CDC for the morbid death stuff

Social Security for the morbid remaining life stuff

Wikipedia for the morbid value of life stuff