Mortality in Norway and Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic: A comparative study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876034123003714

by Manheim • 3 years ago

3 2 3 years ago

audunw• 3 years ago

The cost of the Norwegian lockdown is calculated to be about 270 billion Norwegian crowns (corresponding to 25 billion €), or about 4600 € per citizen.

It think it’s very problematic to try to estimate the cost of saving lives like this.

Let’s say the government pays for a restaurant worker to stay at home. Yes, that’s a real cost of implementing the lockdown. But what’s actually happening in the real world?

A worker got to stay at home rather than work. For some people this could be a positive. Maybe some others would prefer to work, yeah, but not the majority I’d guess. Especially considering the stress of being forced to be highly exposed to a new virus, that you don’t know whether will kill you or not.

And, people did not get to eat at a restaurants. That could be considered a loss. Economic activity that could have happened, didn’t. But I think that’s a sacrifice most of us were glad to make. I was certainly just glad to have a period where we focused more on close family in our homes.

Paying for those workers to stay at home was certainly expensive in monetary terms. But let’s say you - perhaps an office worker - and a restaurant worker, sat down and looked at how it practically affected your two lives. Would you have said that it was truly comparable to a 9200 euro expense? Yeah, maybe there was 9200 euros worth of going out, travelling, etc that you didn’t get to do. But many of us spent an equivalent amount of money and time on other enjoyable things instead.

We also know a lot of productive work happened in this period that is not recorded by GDP figures. Like, many people that were forced to stay at home and couldn’t work, worked on home renovation projects. If you had hired a contractor to do it, it’d have counted as economic activity, which we’d consider positive. But if you do it yourself, essentially financed by the government paying you not to do your regular job, it’s somehow negative for the economy.. even though a similar unit of work was done.

dent9876543• 3 years ago

I agree with you that the reduction to financials is problematic.

But for me, the reason is that the reduction misses out harms such as lost education, and time spent with near to end-of-life relatives.

Don't forget also that most of the financial costs are not paid they are debts that most countries will continue to service for many years. We all will, through our taxes.

It also misses the cost per life saved. Here, I agree, we could do with more colour. For some, the saved life will have given them a truly new lease. But I suspect many — to be blunt — did not survive much longer. Are 40 more QALYs worth €4k? For sure. But I'm not so sure an elderly relative would knowingly trade one more year if it meant forgoing visits with grandchildren, and so on. For this kind of discussion, we simply don't have the data. But I hope you will agree that the judgement "right or wrong" needs to really engage deeply in the topic — it must go far beyond the raw 'accounting costs', and I hope you would concede that it's not a slam dunk in favour of lockdown.

Mortality in Norway and Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic: A comparative study

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