£4.8m per coronavirus death

[hamstersarse]

The cost of ‘managing’ the virus so far has been £213bn. This is just actual spend, not the losses from the economy and future unemployment costs etc.

There have been 44500 deaths in the UK

That means, we’ve spent £4.8m per cv death.

This is pretty extraordinary. NICE who have been around for many years, do the financial assessments on cost / benefits of new treatments and drugs and regularly ‘turn down’ new treatments based on a cost/benefit calculation.

I wonder how coronavirus would fare in their financial assessments? Would we really be able to justify this spend when considering all the other ways in which people are dying and perhaps not receiving similar amounts of spend?

it also needs to be taken into account allowing the virus to spread considerably will also effect the economy

I think the consensus view among economists is that lockdowns are more damaging to the economy. Especially continued lockdowns.

@hamstersarse

The cost of ‘managing’ the virus so far has been £213bn. This is just actual spend, not the losses from the economy and future unemployment costs etc.

There have been 44500 deaths in the UK

That means, we’ve spent £4.8m per cv death.

This is pretty extraordinary. NICE who have been around for many years, do the financial assessments on cost / benefits of new treatments and drugs and regularly ‘turn down’ new treatments based on a cost/benefit calculation.

I wonder how coronavirus would fare in their financial assessments? Would we really be able to justify this spend when considering all the other ways in which people are dying and perhaps not receiving similar amounts of spend?

Oh dear.

The consensus view is that lockdowns are damaging, especially repeated ones, but an uncontrolled virus is even worse for the economy

The consensus view is that lockdowns are damaging, especially repeated ones, but an uncontrolled virus is even worse for the economy

My understanding is that an uncontrolled virus is worse for deaths but better for the economy, compared to lockdowns.

Talking about a ‘consensus view’ on this topic, at this time, is ridiculous.

There were studies done in America in the 1920's...lockdown ==better economic recovery
Then people have been chatting economic performance and death rates ...controlled virus == better economy

And why do you think our penny pinching, can't feed a kid, government , are actually perusing a policy involving lockdowns of various strength if there is no agreement that its likely to be the best action?

@MereDintofPandiculation
Not quite. In usual circumstances NICE actually looks at the cost per QALY (or quality adjusted life year where one QALY means the equivalent of one year in perfect health) gained from an intervention compared to the current treatment rather than simply the numbers of years gained. For the majority of elderly people especially those in care homes, one year of life will equate to a relatively small fraction of a QALY (in some cases it may even be a negative number of QALYs as some health states have been judged to be worse than death in some datasets) so the average survival time will be significantly larger than the QALY multiple used by NICE to determine what level of cost would be acceptable.

And why do you think our penny pinching, can't feed a kid, government , are actually perusing a policy involving lockdowns of various strength if there is no agreement that its likely to be the best action?

Because no government would be re-elected if they prioritised the economy over deaths!

@sonnenscheins

it also needs to be taken into account allowing the virus to spread considerably will also effect the economy

I think the consensus view among economists is that lockdowns are more damaging to the economy. Especially continued lockdowns.

Any citation for that?

Probably easiest if you google the effect of lockdowns, especially repeatedly, on the economy. There is a lot of information on the economic consequences of shutting businesses.