Tradeoffs and Knock-On Effects

Panagiotis Karadimas

Chapter Chapter 4 in The Covid-19 Pandemic, 2023, pp 71-95 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Apart from failing to tackle the pandemic, lockdowns caused serious side effects. In fact, policy makers did not take into account the fundamental tradeoff between the lives that are threatened by the mitigation measures and the lives that are threatened by the virus and claimed that the tradeoff was between the lives that are threatened by the virus vs. the money that some will lose and the fewer chances for entertainment and social activity. The money lost and the restricted socialization were considered as innocuous outcomes, and they could have been so if they were not linked to reduced lifespan. There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons in support of the proposition that the mitigation measures that were in place, especially the economic shutdown as well as the school closures, reduced the longevity of people that would have hardly died from the virus. The years of life lost (YLL) and the hazard ratios (HRs) help us estimate the consequences of this policy.

Keywords: Theory and tradeoffs; Years of life lost; Hazard ratios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:stpchp:978-3-031-24967-9_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031249679

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-24967-9_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Studies in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().