I noted recently that the British Government still hasn’t published a cost-benefit analysis of lockdown, more than a year after the first one was implemented. Instead, the task has been left to academics and others working outside of government, who’ve found that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits.
Now two economists based in Bolivia have attempted something similar at the global level. What they’ve done isn’t quite a cost-benefit analysis, as I’ll explain, but it puts the vast costs of lockdown into perspective.
Lykke Andersen and Alejandra Rocabado compared changes in the quantity and quality of life during the first year of the pandemic. They focus on a sample of 124 countries, which collectively account for 96% of the world’s official COVID-19 death toll.
To measure the quantity of life lost in 2020, the authors used the total number of excess life-years lost. And to measure the quality of life lost, they used the percentage reduction in the Google mobility index, averaged across different categories (retail, residential, etc.)
To simplify their analysis, the authors assume that “a 100% reduction in mobility for a year is equal to a lost year of life”. In other words, if average mobility fell by 20% in a country, then everyone in that country lost 1/5th of a quality life-year. This is a strong (and arguably unrealistic) assumption, but it’s useful for trying to get an overall sense of what happened.
The authors find that the world lost 48 million life-years due to people dying from COVID-19, but lost 1.25 billion quality life-years due to reductions in mobility. This means that the loss in quality of life was 25 times larger than the loss in quantity. The only three Western countries where the ratio was less than 2 were Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
How big is the 48 million number? As the authors note, “Every year, at least twice as many life years are lost due to children dying of diarrhea.” (Note that a child who dies of diarrhoea loses 50 or 60 life-years, whereas the average victim of COVID-19 loses only 5 or 10.)
One caveat is that data on excess deaths are not available for many developing countries, so in these cases the authors had to use official COVID-19 deaths, which are almost certainly undercounts. On the other hand, they used estimates of the average number of life-years lost per death that look to be on the high side. Overall, the 48 million number probably isn’t too far off the true amount.
Another point worth noting is that one can’t attribute the entirety of the 1.25 billion number to the impact of lockdowns. Some reduction in mobility would have happened anyway, due to voluntary social distancing. But even if it were cut in half, the total loss of quality life-years would still be 12.5 times larger than the loss in quantity.
Whether you buy their conclusions or not, Andersen and Rocabado’s paper is worth reading in full.
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So far I like the cut of Milei’s jib. A breath of fresh air and common sense.
Billing the head of JSO would certainly be appreciated. A pay up or porridge deal should do the trick.
I strongly disagree.
“Security” is an imposition by the state. Its the state that wants to deploy police officers to provide “security” so it should foot the bill itself.
Although, of course, the state has no income. It’s income cones from shaking down the public.
It didn’t take Milei long to act like a hypocrite.
You are total granite Stewart always totally consistent.
JSO can protest and I would not charge them for security, but I would certainly charge them or jail them for damaging art works, buildings etc.—- Damaging things is not legitimate protest. ———I would expect no leniency if I had a JUST START OIL T short on and threw paint at my bank window, and I don’t think I would get any.
Its that thing that the left don’t do terribly well. Consequences for their actions…
I strongly disagree.
“Security” is an imposition by the state. Its the state that wants to deploy police officers to provide “security” so it should foot the bill itself.
That’s not really true. In 2017, there was a G20 meeting in Hamburg. These are traditionally also gathering points of the (so-called) anticapitalist/ anarchist hard left who’ll stage ‘protests’ against them. The city was essentially stripped of police in order to ensure the safety of all the meeting politicians. Because of this, the protestors went rioting in several city districts, smashing up and looting shops, torching cars etc.
Milei’s argument still doesn’t hold water, though: The largest parts of these costs will have been paying all the security-related government employees who would have needed to be paid come rain or shine, ie, regardless of the demonstration. And the actual numbers deployed were chosen by the government for some reason only known to it. People have freedom of assembly, however, should they actually assemble, fines in the order of thenthousands of dollars will be issued to people not guilty of any criminal conduct effectively means There’s no freedom of assembly.
I tend to agree
My starting point would be that the right to peaceful public mass protest is sacrosanct and charging people for it isn’t appropriate. If people are engaging in deliberate obstruction then they should be moved on or arrested. The greyer area is when the obstruction is a natural result of a lot of people being in the same place at the same time. I think it’s reasonable to encourage protestors to choose where they go in order to minimise inconvenience to others without losing the impact of the protest but I don’t feel that coercion is warranted
I like the idea of charging JSO for any damage done, then passing that on to donors. Never happen though
What a Christmas gift, that headline really did make me laugh out loud
Good for Milei, if I’m not mistaken a similar principle applies to football matches and pop concerts, so why not.
If you truly believe in what you’re protesting, you’ll be happy to foot the bill, in the knowledge that you will be safe while protesting and as a taxpayer you will not get further burdened.
Merry Christmas everyone, have a good one.
Yep, we are on the same page Jane.
Have a lovely Christmas
There’s a very real danger that this could end up being the thin end of the wedge. Once a government charges protesters blocking roads during a protest it’s a very small step to charging other protests for the policing costs involved and before we know it protest is the preserve of the well off.
The best solution would be to massively increase the fines given to people who have been found guilty of breaking the law during a protest to help cover the cost of dealing with their law breaking rather than simply charging groups who organise a protest.
“massively increase the fines given to people who have been found guilty of breaking the law”
I largely agree with your comments but the problem is that the legal system is now largely corrupted. JSO routinely break the law with their pathetic vandalism and deliberate road closures. Bill the tw#t funding this crap and things might change. If he doesn’t pay send him down.
Looking forward to the day when Extinction Rebellion are charged for the disruptions they cause. 10,000 motorists on the M25 x £10.42 an hour…. A few days of that will soon drain ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ the George Soros funded twats of funds.
Damn right.
“a heavy deployment of police, paramilitary officers and anti-riot forces, cost 60 million pesos, or about £57,500, at the official exchange rate.”
We should employ Argentinian police. At those prices we could fly them over here to deal with protests and riots and fly them back and it’d still cost less than using ours.
Yes that’s 1,043 pesos to the pound if my calculator is correct.
They will also strip protestors of Welfare. That’s going to hurt.
No. Just those protesters who block streets – if I understood that correctly.
Mind you that also means they expect to be able to identify these people.
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Have a peaceful Christmas everyone.
In order to do this they must be closely surveilling the event and have the technology to trace the protesters they have identified. Its easy to applaud the concept of charging the protesters but the mechanics involved in that process are part of the apparatus of the surveillance state which, I think, most here would be against.
Correct. Trudeau tried it against the Canadian trucker protest during Covid. Not just cutting off welfare payments but freezing their bank accounts. I don’t think many on here would have supported that action.