Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University has a working paper that builds on “Life-Years Lost: The Quantity and the Quality,” one of my blog posts from last year. Most of his paper critiques other researchers’ cost-benefit analyses of COVID policy, but Allen spends a whole section applying my method to Canada:
As of March 2021 the pandemic has lasted one year, which means that the average Canadian has lost two months of normal life. The population of Canada is about 37.7 million people, which means that 6.3 million years of life have been lost due to lockdown. The average age of reported Covid-19 deaths in Canada is about 80.42. In Canada an average 80 year old has a life expectancy of 9.79 years. This means that the 6.3 million years of lost life is equivalent to the deaths of 643,513 80 year olds. As of March 22, 2021 Canada has had a total of 22,716 deaths due to Covid-19. That amounts to 222,389 lost years of life.
The question is, however, how many lost years of life would have resulted from Covid-19 deaths if there had been no lockdown? Consider two extremes:
a. Assume that the number of Covid-19 deaths would have been 10% higher had there been no lockdown. Then Canada would have experienced an additional 2,271 deaths, which means there would have been additional 22,333 years of lost life due to Covid-19 deaths. The benefit of lockdown, therefore, was the avoidance of this extra 22,333 years of lost life. However, the cost of lockdown, as noted, was 6,300,000 years of lost life. The cost/benefit ratio of lockdown is 282 = 6,300,000/22,333.
b. Assume that the initial ICL model forecasts were correct and without a lockdown Canada would have experienced 200,000 deaths. This would mean that Canada’s lockdown policies prevented 177,281 (200,000-22,716) deaths. Under the same age and life expectancy assumptions lockdown prevented the loss of 1,735,580 life years. The cost/benefit ratio of lockdown is 3.6 = 6,300,000/1,735,580.
Case (b) is highly unrealistic and nothing close to this rate of death happened anywhere in the world. However, even in this extreme case, lockdown is a failure as a policy by cost/benefit standards. The review of the literature suggests that Case (a) is closer to reality. If lockdown only had a marginal effect on deaths, then by cost/benefit standards, lockdown has been a public policy disaster.
Allen also reviews the basic empirics of COVID restrictions and COVID fatalities, and finds little connection. Internationally, the correlation actually goes the wrong way. His preferred explanation:
Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness of lockdown stems from voluntary changes in behavior. Lockdown jurisdictions were not able to prevent non-compliance, and non-lockdown jurisdictions benefited from voluntary changes in behavior that mimicked lockdowns. The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why, after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million, and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries.
Theoretically plausible, but this implies that if we separately measured official COVID restrictions and unofficial COVID precaution, they would be negatively correlated. As someone who spent about three months in Florida and Texas during the last year, this is hard to believe. My observation is that the places with the least official restrictions were also the places with the least unofficial caution.
Eventually, I suspect we’ll have excellent measures of all the relevant variables. Researchers will be able to figure out what happened. And neither the public, the media, nor policymakers will care. Santayana squared.
P.S. As I explained in the original post that inspired this section, my appeal to cost-benefit analysis is entirely in character with my Huemerian libertarianism:
At this point, you could protest, “Hey Bryan, I thought you weren’t a utilitarian.” So what if the cost of COVID prevention greatly exceeds the value of life saved? My answer, to repeat, is that I have a strong moral presumption in favor of human liberty. So while I respect individuals’ rights to overreact to moderate risks, I oppose any act of government that does not pass a cost-benefit test with flying colors.
And no, I don’t think that an asymptomatic person who walks down the street unmasked is “aggressing” against passersby in any meaningful way.
READER COMMENTS
Andrew_FL
May 9 2021 at 9:43am
As of March 2021 the pandemic has lasted one year, which means that the average Canadian has lost two months of normal life.
Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness of lockdown stems from voluntary changes in behavior.
Bit of an attempt to have you cake and eat it, too, here. If most of “loss of normal life”-which this analysis treats as fully equivalent to being dead for two months-is mostly due to voluntary changes in behavior, then you can’t count those losses of normal life as costs of the lockdown.
Andrew_FL
May 9 2021 at 9:44am
For some reason my attempt to use block quotes didn’t work
Dylan
May 9 2021 at 2:49pm
Made a similar comment on a post David wrote a few days ago. I’m not that surprised when you get those kinds of double-counting in more casual discussions but am surprised at how often I see this in academic work.
AMT
May 9 2021 at 2:40pm
It is incomplete to attempt a cost-benefit analysis that ignores the effects of being sick with the virus, even if you don’t die. I know of someone who had covid and said they felt like they were hit by a truck for two weeks (a very healthy person in their 20s). On top of that, six months later, they still cannot taste or smell anything, and have to avoid many foods because they make them vomit. I’m not sure how prevalent long-lasting side effects like that are, but we at least have to factor in how many people avoided significant illness. I would certainly be willing to avoid restaurants and concerts for a year if it means I avoid 2 weeks of intense sickness and some non-negligible probability of not being able to enjoy any food at all for many months.
Dylan
May 9 2021 at 3:10pm
This is one of the other factors that is frustrating to see continually ignored. The only paper I’ve seen on long-covid estimated up to a third of those that get covid still had symptoms 9 months later. There were a bunch of issues with the paper, small sample and based on self-reported survey data. I suspect the real number is much smaller than that, but it’s still likely to be a large number over all. In my social circle there are several formerly healthy people that have really struggled to have a full recovery.
On the other side, does the paper look at the other benefits of lockdowns outside of reduced death? I’d guess that lockdowns have on net been positive for some not insignificant portion of the population. Being able to work from home, saving money from not going out and reduced transportation. Getting out of all of those social engagements that you don’t really enjoy, but do because of the obligation. I currently have 3 paying jobs, something I wouldn’t have been able to get away with pre-pandemic.
There are of course large personal downsides, I miss seeing family and travel more broadly. But on net, the year of lockdown has almost certainly been positive for me and many of my friends and family.
We’re in a lucky position, and the downsides for many people are large and painful and I do not want to minimize them. However, if you’re trying to do a cost-benefit analysis, but systematically omit large classes of benefits, your analysis deserves to be called into question.
Phil H
May 10 2021 at 5:37am
Benefits of lockdown: Last year (during & after China’s super-strict 2020 lockdown) we had almost zero flu.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
May 10 2021 at 7:43am
“My observation is that the places with the least official restrictions were also the places with the least unofficial caution.” Which way does the causation flow?
I applaud your opposition to policies that do not pass cost benefit analyses. Does that extend to supporting polies that DO? If so, why isn’t the best way to oppose policies that do not pass cost benefit analyses to proposes ones that do?
Dylan
May 10 2021 at 9:26am
I was worried that I was reacting only to the quotes from Prof Allen’s report, and being unfair without reading the whole thing.
This morning I reviewed the working paper and, unless I overlooked something, my complaints still stand.
One) He makes a big distinction between voluntary changes in behavior vs. mandated lockdowns in terms of benefits, but does not acknowledge the symmetry that this applies to the costs as well. The key question, whether voluntary behavior is better or worse at saving lives/illness per $ at the margin, compared to government mandated lockdowns is ignored
Two) No acknowledgement of health costs outside of death, no discussion of long-covid
Three) The closest he comes to thinking lockdowns could have been a net benefit to some people is that there could be some people for whom it was indifferent. Definitely no discussion of the profound speed-up of trends like working from home, which will be a massive improvement in lifestyle for many. (Granted, some of that is the result of voluntary action that predates government mandates)
Four) Summarizing the literature that finds little correlation between the strictness of lockdowns and deaths per capita is important and worth looking at more. However, I didn’t see a mention of the fact that there is often large discrepancies between how strict an official policy is and how well it is followed.
Patrick Tehan
May 12 2021 at 2:25pm
Covid lockdowns took away 1/6 of a year of life value
and
Non-locked down areas voluntary changes mimicked locked down areas mandates
seem to be incompatible beliefs.
It’s hard for me to believe that the non-voluntary changes that wouldn’t have happened voluntarily matter that much.
Comments are closed.