It matters. If we had done more, and more effective things early on, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. With the corresponding economic benefits. Very early in the pandemic:
Saving lives doesn't equate to a de facto economic improvement as the measures you speak of would've further disrupted the economy in ways that we have no way of knowing the extent of.
In order to save those lives, it would've had to have been a lockdown protocol that matched that of the countries that did save the most lives, and those countries experience a greater economic impact.
Per the department of the Treasury.
the United States performed better than other G7 economies (and the Euro area) in terms of real GDP recovery. The fast recovery in the United States reflects a more complete recovery in domestic consumption.
It's going to sound harsh, but it's because large portions of the US opted to weigh countervailing interests and make the decision that "it doesn't make sense to entirely cripple our economy in the interest of making sure that an 81 year old makes it to 85"
As I said, it sounds harsh, but any policymaker worth their salt has to be willing to make those kinds of pros/cons tradeoffs.
May, 2020
Study finds earlier coronavirus restrictions in US could have saved 36,000 lives.
After researchers at Columbia University this week estimated about 36,000 lives in the United States could have been saved from the novel coronavirus had social distancing and other restrictions been put in place a week earlier in March, the White House on Thursday pointed a finger at China
That's not a compelling number.
There's more than 40,000 auto related deaths involving speeds over 25mph each year in the US. One could just as easily say "if we heavily restricted cars and driving over 25mph, we could save 40,000 lives each year"...it would be a true statement. Feasible or in the best interest of the other aspects of the economy? Not so much...
Me, too. All those deaths and hospitalizations were a huge hit on the economy. We did a lot worse than the rest of the developed world, because the administration had no effective response at the critical early phases of the pandemic. Ironically, there was a Pandemic Response Team for such things; Trump removed it.
And as even guys like Mitch McConnell admitted, the infrastructure bill was a very effective way to rebuild America while boosting the economy. It wasn't just doing a better job of handling COVID-19.
You'll have to show your work on that one.
Explain to me, in practical terms, how fewer people collecting benefits and less people competing for jobs creates a worse economic outcome.
Again, I know it sounds harsh, and my goal isn't to minimize the death and suffering covid caused. But in practical terms...explain to me how if there were 20,000 software developers before covid, and 5,000 of them died off from it (which is an inflated example), how my life as a software developer (or my market negotiating advantage against the corporate fat-cats) would've been made worse by that outcome?
To clarify, I'm not suggesting any of it was a good thing...I'm simply saying in terms of raw numbers in an actuarial sense, fewer elderly people collecting benefits, and fewer people competing in the job market certainly doesn't hurt the situation in terms of employee leverage over corporations and certainly doesn't hurt the unemployment numbers.
