There is near unanimity among economists I know that a war-level investment is needed on policies designed to directly counteract the spread of the virus. Any investment that will marginally reduce R_0 may have a return in the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars.https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1243142653845352449 …
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Let's try to get an order of magnitude sense of the returns that a policy like universal mask-wearing might have (and if such policies are not adopted immediately, the benefits of quickly evaluating their effectiveness).
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Table 2 https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202026.pdf … estimates total mortality risk of $60,000 per person in the US (adjusting appropriately for age in the VSL calculation).
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This model https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf … suggests that every reduction in R_0 by 0.2 reduces total deaths by roughly 10%.
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If our best estimate is 2.4, this means that a 10% reduction in transmission probability is worth about $6,000 per capita!
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Jason Abaluck Retweeted IWillStandByUSA
Next, how effective are masks? The evidence seems mixed: their most likely effect is in preventing transmission of the virus, and that is difficult to measure in RCTs. Countries where people wear masks appear to have much slower viral spread: https://twitter.com/IWillStandByUSA/status/1243630139633737729 ….
Jason Abaluck added,
IWillStandByUSA @IWillStandByUSA1/#masks4all flattens the curve of coronavirus spread The Asian countries that have stopped local transmission of the coronavirus are also those where everyone wears a mask, regardless of whether they are sick or not. pic.twitter.com/5utn5Yb4rr Please RT!Show this thread10 replies 63 retweets 128 likesShow this thread -
However, this could be due to other differences in the policy-responses in those countries such as earlier social distancing measures and more widespread testing.
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My read of the evidence is, masks likely provide little *protection* for healthy individuals outside high-risk environments (https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ …).
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However, simple surgical masks likely impede transmission. Existing trials were not powered to investigate transmission, and the mechanism is clear but no well-identified studies. So what should we do?
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1) Federal or state governments should immediately purchase a dozen cloth masks for everyone and strongly encourage everyone to wear masks when in public (perhaps even fine them if they don't).
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