Governors face agonizing tradeoffs as they weigh business reopenings against the higher coronavirus death tools likely to result.
Relaxing business closures and stay-at-home rules could cost 13,000 lives in Texas and 12,000 lives in Georgia by September 1. But it will also preserve $3.4 billion in statewide income in Texas, and $1.7 billion in Georgia. New York’s tougher restrictions will save 5,000 lives, but cost $2.4 billion in lost income.
Most states don’t meet the Trump’s administration’s criteria for relaxing restrictions meant to contain the virus, which include a prolonged decline in confirmed cases and flulike illnesses. But states such as Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and Colorado are easing restrictions anyway, allowing some businesses to operate under new sanitary guidelines.
The Rand tool allows some additional tinkering with state-by-state scenarios under six different levels of restriction, ranging from no limits at all to the kind of strict rules in place in New York, New Jersey and California. Here are some of the results for four highly populated states and Georgia, which has the most lenient rules in place among states with significant infection rates.
Extrapolating to determine the income gained per death when comparing moderate and strict measures yield these figures:When evaluating the impact of government policies that affect public health, analysts place a statistical value of about $10 million on each human life as a way of measuring the appropriate amount of risk a policy may cause or mitigate.
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