By using a standard benchmark of five hundred thousand dollars as the economic value of a year of life (or ten million dollars per life, regardless of age), we can estimate that one million coronavirus deaths (at the rough age distribution at which they occur) would be worth about six trillion dollars. Even at the highest end of a range of estimates of the consequences to our economy, including the expenditures by our government, we do not reach that sum. Strictly from an economic perspective, our response was commensurate to the threat posed by the pathogen. It’s a bad virus.
