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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Excellent article by David Craig, full of useful information.
When you look at his estimated cost of £2,500,000,000 to be lavished upon hostile alien men who have abandoned their families to break into Britain and scrounge off British Taxpayers, and compare it to the UK Defence Budget for 2024, you find that the government will fund the Muslim Army by cutting the British Armed Forces budget by £2,200,000,000.
In the old days, there was a word for this. Begins with “T” followed by “reason”.
Something else which is growing, according to statistics, is street crime in London. Much like Johannesburg or Lima, wear that Rolex at your peril. Not great for attracting visitors, really;
”On March 28, Thursday, former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen took to X to voice his concerns about the staggering rate at which street crimes in London are rising.
Resharing a post by @CrimeLdn, which had posted a video of a recent knife attack on a train in London, the cricketer labelled London as “a disgrace of a place”.
“WTAF is this now in London?!?!?! London was once the most amazing city. It’s an absolute disgrace of a place. • You cannot wear a watch of any value. • you cannot walk around with your phone in your hand. • women get their bags and jewellery ripped off them. • cars get smashed in for a quick smash and grab. • there’s this rubbing in the video below. @SadiqKhan must be really proud of what he’s created?!” Pietersen captioned his post.
Data from Watchfinder & Co. last year revealed that between 2015 and 2022, the number of stolen watches in England and Wales nearly doubled, from 6,696 to 11,035.
More than 6,000 of the thefts in 2022 took place in London.
Rowley is the representative for a region of Westminster Council that is near the Middle Eastern-populated Edgware Road neighbourhood of central London.
The borough is also home to a few of the city’s most wealthy neighbourhoods, renowned retail avenues, and many of the tourist attractions that draw in approximately 4.5 million people annually.
It is, however, also the “most dangerous” area of London, according to the CrimeRate database, with a crime rate that is 215 per cent higher than that of the entire city and 265 per cent higher than that of the entirety of England and Wales.”
https://www.opindia.com/2024/03/whats-wrong-with-london-cricketer-kevin-pietersen-raises-concern-over-spike-in-street-violence-in-uk-capital/
The Liberal Progressive virus is spreading across the western world faster than covid on speed. —Symptoms include a slight dizziness at the prospect of punishment or discipline. A brain fog when it comes to attributing blame to individuals for their crimes. Confusion and disorientation by the blaming of society for the behaviour of perpetrators of crime. Vomiting at the prospect of concern for victims. A point-blank refusal to think you need help for your condition.
That clown in the photo and his useless colleagues couldn’t run a bath.
Incompetence > Malice
They don’t become politicians by knowing wtf they’re doing. They become politicians because they don’t know wtf they’re doing.
Remember the Elephant in the room. ———-NET ZERO. ——-Net Zero is a policy designed for growth reversal. It is deigned to lower living standards. It is a policy to restrict growth. The whole idea of Sustainable Development is that the living standards and consumption patterns of populations of the wealthy west are —TOO HIGH. ——Or as Maurice Strong told us some years ago “Isn’t the only way for the planet too survive is if Industrial Society collapses, and isn’t it our responsivity to bring that about”. ——Politicians of both main stream parties speak with FORKED TONGUE.
Stuff the economy.
Let’s say we concrete over the whole country with warehouses. Fill them with cheap immigrant labour. The GDP increases. Large corporates pay their CEOs vast salaries. The tax revenue funds an even bigger administrative state.
So what?
There’s more to our way of life which you can’t price but is being destroyed by Westminster.
The policy settings conducive to high rates of economic growth are well established; low taxation, low regulation, secure property rights, and cheap and reliable supplies of energy. For the past twenty-five years UK governments have followed the opposite policies and predictably growth has slowed and has now ceased. Hunt and Sunak ought to be hanging from lampposts for their part in destroying freedom and prosperity.
I think about 620 lampposts will be needed.
The time-serving useless idiots in the Lords can just be let go.
Now an extra £1.5bn can be added that the prime minister of foreign affairs, Baron Dave of Loserville, has handed to Ukraine. Glory to UKrainia!
I think they’re running a deliberate scorched-earth policy – making it impossible for the incoming Labour Government to do anything differently – even IF it wanted to. Politics is a game to these people: they don’t give a 4X about the devastation they are causing to the lives of “ordinary” people.