Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
So what if it's 'difficult' to cost?
Are you suggesting that because it's 'difficult' to cost, the curtailment of liberties and other intangible consequences of lockdowns should just be valued at zero?
Might it? You're just speculating.
That's my point: We shouldn't be speculating.
Ummm. I'm pretty sure I know the correct answer to that one. Is it 'yes'?
There you go again: "might" there be "roughly equivalent" costs?
I say again: That's my point. We shouldn't be speculating. We should be formulating proper estimates.
Let me do some flipping around.
Let's say another country wants to invade and take over Australia. The new regime will initially control when and where we can travel, go to work and run businesses, but promises that we will 'eventually' be 'allowed' to make and implement those decisions ourselves.
Fighting a war with the other country will cost an estimated 150,000 Australian lives.
Why wouldn't we just surrender, in order to save those 150,000 lives? No lives lost and the 'only' sacrifices are things that are difficult to cost in dollar terms. The business case writes itself, surely?
Right, let's draw this argy-barge to a close because I do not have the time to be formulating "proper estimates" for non-financials.
If you want to compare a speculative 'let it rip' scenario to the actual solution that Australian Governments have pursued, run with a cost of around $450 billion (that's $350 billion for the federal response (including tax revenues foregone), $60 billion for the aggregate state based responses an $40 billion for the 'non-financials'). If that doesn't suit, put your own numbers in.
Lives "saved" - 35,000 if you use Sweden to calculate the likely deaths under a minimalist mitigation approach; 45,000 if you use UK/US.
Raw dollars/life saved is in the range $10 million - $12.9 million. Adjust to suit your needs.
We came into this with a Federal government with a two seat majority in the House and the minors controlling the Senate having to work under the Constitution with the various State governments, three or four of which were facing upcoming elections. A low/no-mitigation approach was never a realistic alternative. Either the states would have done there own thing or on the day we reached a deaths milestone (5,000 in total, 500 on one day, etc, take your pick ) the Federal government would likely have lost a vote of confidence.
If your going to compare our actual camel of an approach/outcome with a unicorn of a speculative scenario, gee, I wonder how that's going to play out? The problem of course is that unicorns aren't real.