The costs of the shutdowns on lost life-years is almost double that from COVID-19

See We must learn from the shutdown mistake by Vance Ginn, Chief Economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Excerpt:

"We take on risk every day, and even the shutdowns aren’t without risk. The data keep pouring in, demonstrating that in this case, the cure has been worse than the disease.

Researchers from top institutions looked at the data on fatalities related to COVID-19 and those losses of life from unemployment and missed health care due to the shutdowns. What they find is startling: “the disease has been responsible for 800,000 lost years of life so far” while the lockdowns are responsible for a conservative estimate of “at least 700,000 lost years of life every month, or about 1.5 million so far.”

In other words, the costs of the shutdowns on lost life-years is almost double that from COVID-19.
The value of life is hard to measure because each one is beautiful. That’s why it’s disturbing that the deaths from issues related to the shutdowns seem to be far exceeding those directly related to the disease.

Economist Casey Mulligan, who is a Professor at the University of Chicago and was recently the Chief Economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been tracking the daily cumulative costs of the COVID-19 pandemic at pandemiccosts.com.

Mulligan notes that these costs were at least $1.3 trillion in total, or $10,954 per household through May 22. This includes mortality costs and market and nonmarket costs of shutting down the economy.

And this is just through May 22.

Consider the lost economic output on an annualized basis of -5 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and of a projected record -40 percent in the second. Compare this with the growth we could have had if pro-growth policies in President Trump’s budget that I helped craft had been implemented, and that’s roughly $2 trillion in lost prosperity.

If you add the more than $9 trillion Congress has approved in financial assistance packages, then you’re talking about nearly half of the economy being redistributed in some capacity — in a very short period.

This is certainly the greatest disruption ever and the swiftest redistribution ever — both of which will cause massive distortions throughout our livelihoods, including for future generations, and will need to be corrected soon.

And now, states are asking for more federal bailouts (when they’ve already been authorized to get about $1 trillion). Bailouts will only enable blue states to extend their costly shutdowns and continue their poor fiscal policies, which long predate the pandemic. Yet House Democrats are prepared to grant the states’ requests, as they have passed another $1 trillion in state bailouts in the HEROES Act."