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What have the cost benefit analyses shown about the COVID-19 virus containment strategies? Do the methods outweigh the huge impact on the economy and peoples' lives?
This is a very intriguing question. My straightforward short answer is that every major published cost/ benefit analysis I have seen has shown that the health benefits of various health containment strategies far outweigh the economic burdens on society. That is so, because these analyses are done by independent--nongovernmental-- expert institutions. These institutions uniformly place a very high mathematical value on the saving of a human life by preventing the spread of Covid. If you would like links to these studies, please let me know.
One of the very controversial aspects of weighing the benefits of containing a deadly pandemic is trying to mathematically quantifying the unquantifiable: what is the value to be attributed to saving a human life? I think it fair to say that the average person when judging life saving measures uses a moral-- and not a mathematical--compass to determine the importance of saving lives. When governmental institutions are required by law to do a cost/benefit analysis of this kind, there is widespread complaint that the mathematical calculus used undervalues the saving of a life. The independent studies mentioned above bend over backwards to assign great mathematical weight to saving lives.
But, in containing the pandemic, there are virtually no government requirements for cost/benefit analysis. To be sure, almost every cost/benefit action of the federal government normally required by legislation, rule or budgetary requirement mandates a highly evolved mathematical cost/benefit analysis. It is likely in this deadly pandemic an lawful exception would be found to using cost/benefit requirements to allow the expeditious action meeting the pandemic requires. A proper cost/benefit analysis often takes months under federal law and then results are often challenged in court. Responding to a pandemic cannot await that kind of bureaucracy.
But the federal government's response role here is very limited here and even if cost/benefit rules applied, this is not principally a federal activity. This is so because the U.S. Constitution, under the so-called "police powers," makes the health and welfare of citizens a state function. This is shown most prominently in the "tug of war" between President Trump and the states over Covid response. Trump has asserted one day that the pandemic response is his administration's job alone and that he can bypass the states only to back away from that assertion a day later. As a matter of constitutional law, except in the most exigent circumstances only rarely exercised, this is a state role.
The last "federal takeover" of the state role was in 1991 at the invitation of the California governor, when federal law enforcement control was turned over to federal institutions to quell the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, where the very ability of state government to function was paralyzed by the intensity of rioting. Before that, federal institutions were last brought to bear over the objection of Southern governors in Arkansas and Alabama, who using state forces to actively violently prevent enforcement of fought federal school desegregation orders.
So it is the states that are, under the U.S. constitution's police powers. the primary actors in meeting challenges affecting the health and safety of the citizens of the states. And, that is the manner in which the primary government response has been handled during the Covid pandemic.
Cost/benefit requirements vary from state to state. But those variable are irrelevant when fighting a pandemic or any other major disaster requiring the governors to declare under state law "emergency" powers within a state. While the nature of an emergency declaration varies in detail from state to state, it is nevertheless uniformly true that once an emergency declaration is declared, the governor by state law is relieved of obstacles to respond to the emergency, and that relief would certainly apply to state cost/benefit requirements.
In end, there is a de facto cost/benefit analysis at work here in each state. We are seeing this every day. Every governor must create a calculus to decide whether and how much to "shut down" and when and how much to lift shut down requirements. This varies from state to state. For example, New York has weighted its pandemic policies in deference to the saving of lives and using medical expertise to do so. Texas has weighed its reopening of its lock downs in favor of financial considerations.
The results are telling. New York has very cautiously "reopened" in a very staged basis based self evidently putting a high medical scientific premium on quelling the pandemic. In result, even though New York was the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, the New York lock down and reopening process has been heavily influenced by medial science. The pandemic exposure there is on a definite and seemingly permanent down slope - at least insofar as the "first wave" of the pandemic is concerned.
It is conventional wisdom that the Texas re-opening is based on a very heavy premium given to the economic benefits of re-opening quickly and broadly. It is self evident that in reality very little weight has been given to medical scientific expertise. The results show this. The Covid outbreaks in Texas are rising quickly and available medical resources are dwindling. For example, Texas is reported to be quickly running out of hospital beds for Covid patients.
This may very well create a new de facto cost benefit analysis in Texas where rapid and arbitrary re-opening may have to be reconsidered by the Texas Governor to avoid chaos.
