Conversation

2) as with many, this one doesn’t bother attempting a cost benefit analysis. If it did, it would maybe notice that the claimed annual damages from the flu are around $50b. How about it’s proposed countermeasures?

11:03 AM · Oct 15, 2021Twitter for iPhone

3) well, US GDP is $20T, so we have 0.2% to play with—0.4% if you double it to include endemic COVID. Maybe his proposed interventions would halve the risk—back to 0.2%. That’s the equivalent of missing 1 day per year of work.

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4) the proposed interventions include: A) vaccines. I think the cost of this alone is ~ 1 work day per year. B) Zoom instead of meetings. Much of our business wouldn’t have happened without in person meetings. C) staying home if you have a sick housemate (already 1/year)

5) D) semi-constant mask wearing … So his proposed solutions outweigh their claimed benefit by something like 5-10x. What’s up with that? Well, mostly he never bothered checking the cost vs benefits. If he had, he would have been forced to clean up his post.

6) one thing: I’m skeptical of the quoted cost of $11-90b/year for the flu, and comparable for endemic COVID. I would have guessed higher under his assumptions. Also, though, people are shockingly willing to permanently sacrifice significant %s of their productivity!

7) and, finally, the article is unimaginative. It purports to consider the long game, but ignores the possibility—I’d say the _probability_—that COVID-19 won’t be the world’s last pandemic. What happens when we keep layering them on?