Numbers

No, I'm not jumping ahead on the Bible reading. We're still going to slog through Leviticus. This post is about the only subject we're allowed to discuss nowadays, the coronavirus.

Every year, about 57 million people die worldwide. That is the normal background rate of death. It comes to more than 156,000 deaths every day. So far, worldwide, there have been a total of 3,884 deaths ascribed to the novel coronavirus. That is about 2.5% of all the deaths that normally occur in a single day.

In the United States, in a normal year, there are more than 2.8 million deaths. That comes to 7,708 deaths every day. So far, in the U.S., there have been 22 deaths ascribed to coronavirus. That is about 3/1,000 of the deaths that normally occur in the U.S. every day.

Furthermore, the vast majority of these deaths are of people who already have a limited life expectancy. That means that the annual death rate will scarcely be increased at all by this epidemic because most of those people would have died anyway, maybe in the next annual time frame if not this one.

Of course the number of cases and deaths will increase, likely at an accelerating rate. Many people fear there could ultimately be tens of millions of cases and that will certainly be a noteworthy and tragic event. Nevertheless the question must be asked: does the harm done by measures to try to contain transmission exceed the possible benefits? There can be no doubt at this point that the epidemic will cause a global recession. The travel and tourism industries are essentially shut down, global supply chains are disrupted, equity markets are crashing like it's 1929. China has a major debt overhang, the U.S. has no room to engage in the massive spending needed to shore up its health care system and step in to replace the demand shortfall, and in any case the incompetent political leadership won't do so. As Kenneth Rogoff notes:

[U]nlike the two previous global recessions this century, the new coronavirus, COVID-19, implies a supply shock as well as a demand shock. Indeed, one has to go back to the oil-supply shocks of the mid-1970s to find one as large. Yes, fear of contagion will hit demand for airlines and global tourism, and precautionary savings will rise. But when tens of millions of people can’t go to work (either because of a lockdown or out of fear), global value chains break down, borders are blocked, and world trade shrinks because countries distrust of one another’s health statistics, the supply side suffers at least as much. . . .

It might seem strange that the new coronavirus could cause so much economic damage even to countries that seemingly have the resources and technology to fight back. A key reason is that earlier generations were much poorer than today, so many more people had to risk going to work. Unlike today, radical economic pullbacks in response to epidemics that did not kill most people were not an option.

Now we're talking about shutting down sporting events, theaters, workplaces, schools; forbidding travel from and to huge regions; advising people not to take mass transit; and more. These measures will absolutely, inevitably, produce an economic contraction. What will be the public health consequences of a global recession, even a depression? I submit that they will likely vastly exceed the direct effects of the coronavirus epidemic. So the question must be asked: are these measures worth it?