Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
Rightyho then...
On your figures, we're paying $490 billion in 'real' costs (I reckon at $40 billion you're still underestimating the value of the non-financial costs) in order to save $200 billion (the value of 40,000 'statistical' lives, with the 40,000 being an over-estimate). I reckon it's closer to $600 billion 'spent' to save $100 billion in lives. And that $490 or $600 billion or whatever it happens to be now, is increasing by 100s of millions every DAY half the country's population is locked down.
Sooner or later...
("concision"? And you often don't 'get' sarcasm. Hmmm. Methinks you're not from 'around here'.)
$450 billion, $600 billion - call it $525 as an estimate with ±15 percent error bars. Is the spend more than the value of statistical life figure? Yes, most assuredly. Is it 'orders of magnitude higher'? No, most assuredly not.
Looking ahead, the data out of the UK (still somewhat early days) and Israel seems to be illustrating that 55-60 percent of the population fully vaccinated gets you out of the woods, relatively. We should hit that around early November.