{"title":"Pricing the global health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic.","authors":"W Kip Viscusi","doi":"10.1007/s11166-020-09337-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Policies to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) require a balancing of the health risk reductions and the costs of economic dislocations. Application of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize COVID-19 deaths produces a U.S. mortality cost estimate of $1.4 trillion for deaths in the first half of 2020. This article presents worldwide COVID-19 costs for over 100 countries. The total global mortality cost through July 2, 2020 is $3.5 trillion. The United States accounts for 25% of the deaths, but 41% of the mortality cost. Adjustments for the shorter life expectancy and lower income of the victims substantially reduces the estimated monetized losses, but may raise fundamental equity concerns. Morbidity effects of COVID-19 affect many more patients than do the disease's mortality risks. Consideration of the morbidity effects increase the expected health losses associated with COVID-19 illnesses by 10% to 40%.</p>","PeriodicalId":48066,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Risk and Uncertainty","volume":"61 2","pages":"101-128"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7604649/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Risk and Uncertainty","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-020-09337-2","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2020/11/2 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Policies to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) require a balancing of the health risk reductions and the costs of economic dislocations. Application of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize COVID-19 deaths produces a U.S. mortality cost estimate of $1.4 trillion for deaths in the first half of 2020. This article presents worldwide COVID-19 costs for over 100 countries. The total global mortality cost through July 2, 2020 is $3.5 trillion. The United States accounts for 25% of the deaths, but 41% of the mortality cost. Adjustments for the shorter life expectancy and lower income of the victims substantially reduces the estimated monetized losses, but may raise fundamental equity concerns. Morbidity effects of COVID-19 affect many more patients than do the disease's mortality risks. Consideration of the morbidity effects increase the expected health losses associated with COVID-19 illnesses by 10% to 40%.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (JRU) welcomes original empirical, experimental, and theoretical manuscripts dealing with the analysis of risk-bearing behavior and decision making under uncertainty. The topics covered in the journal include, but are not limited to, decision theory and the economics of uncertainty, experimental investigations of behavior under uncertainty, empirical studies of real world risk-taking behavior, behavioral models of choice under uncertainty, and risk and public policy. Review papers are welcome.
The JRU does not publish finance or behavioral finance research, game theory, note length work, or papers that treat Likert-type scales as having cardinal significance.
An important aim of the JRU is to encourage interdisciplinary communication and interaction between researchers in the area of risk and uncertainty. Authors are expected to provide introductory discussions which set forth the nature of their research and the interpretation and implications of their findings in a manner accessible to knowledgeable researchers in other disciplines.
Officially cited as: J Risk Uncertain