Operation Warp Speed What A Deal Opinion
The total loss inflicted by a disease is made up of the costs of preventing it, as well as the health losses inflicted by patients diagnosed with it. Typically, the larger the health harm caused by a disease, the larger the costs undertaken to prevent it. For example, the cost imposed by polio is largely through the cost of vaccinations, not the disease itself. Likewise, for COVID-19, the largest share of the overall cost has been prevention, in terms of foregone economic activity through mitigation, rather than losses in lives if measured by standard government metrics valuing health in dollars....