It’s unclear whether history will remember the 2020s more for an outbreak of a deadly virus or of mass psychosis. In the early days, when estimates were that COVID could be 100 times deadlier than the common flu, a shortage of tests meant physicians only tested the very sick. That skewed the data, making COVID appear deadlier than it actually was.
And this initiated a perfect storm of incentives.
The media had an incentive to repeat the worst fatality projections because bad news attracts viewers, and viewers attract advertising dollars. Heavy media coverage of the worst COVID projections alarmed voters, and that forced politicians to “do something.”
But politicians faced a choice. They could have not imposed lockdowns when lockdowns were needed. That error would have become obvious in mounting body counts, and it would have been clear the politicians were to blame. Alternatively, politicians could have imposed lockdowns when lockdowns were not needed. That error would have remained mostly hidden because politicians could point to the millions of hypothetical deaths that might have occurred were it not for the lockdowns.
Politicians had an incentive to act with a heavy hand. Heavy-handed policies confirmed the public’s fears, and that gave the media more material to spotlight and more advertising to sell.
The storm of incentives resulted in a mass psychosis in which people’s behaviors toward the real threat of COVID became inconsistent with their behaviors toward other real threats.
And what was the real threat of COVID?
The Imperial College of London’s ICL model was the early standard for predicting COVID deaths. For 2020, the ICL model overestimated Swedish COVID deaths (Sweden was the only developed country that didn’t impose lockdowns) by a factor of nearly 15, and overestimated world COVID deaths by a factor of 10.
For 2020, the ICL model predicted up to 2.2 million direct deaths from COVID in the U.S. and another 550,000 in the UK if those countries took no action. The actual numbers were around 360,000 in the U.S. and 77,000 in the UK. Either the U.S. and UK lockdowns were wildly successful – preventing around 85 percent of COVID deaths – or, once again, the ICL model overestimated COVID deaths.
Getting public perception and predictions right matters because lockdowns come with tradeoffs. Because of an outsized fear of COVID, people died from non-COVID causes who might not have died otherwise. To focus on treating COVID, Canada suspended cancer screening, and early estimates show up to a 10 percent increase in cancer deaths as a consequence. In the U.S. in the early days of COVID, there was a 30 percent decline in the number of people seeking initial treatment for kidney disease. At the start of the pandemic, calls to suicide hotlines spiked across the country, as did instances of domestic violence.
The lockdowns also consumed massive resources in the forms of unemployment, business and supply chain failures, and stimulus spending. In late 2020, economists estimated that the pandemic will cost the United States around $16 trillion over the next decade.
How many more lives might we have saved had we used those resources differently?
Around 660,000 people die each year of heart disease in the US. The National Institutes of Health spends around $5 billion each year researching cures for cardiovascular diseases. Americans spend another $330 billion each year for hospitalization, home health care, medication, and lost productivity associated with cardiovascular diseases.
Ignoring the ICL model’s record of massively overestimating COVID deaths, let’s suppose the U.S. lockdown saved 2 million lives at a cost of $16 trillion. Over the next decade, we can expect 7 million people to die of cardiovascular diseases, for which we will spend around $3 trillion. We are dedicating one-fifth of the resources to fighting a disease that kills over three times the people. That makes no sense.
Of course, heart disease isn’t contagious. But that means we won’t develop herd immunity, and heart disease will remain with us for generations whereas COVID will not.
We got here because politicians’ incentive is to do whatever it takes to secure votes, and the media’s incentive is to say whatever it takes to secure viewers. As Omicron looms, and as surely as Pi, Rho, and Sigma will follow, people should meet their fears with reason, view the media skeptically, and demand that politicians discuss tradeoffs openly and honestly.
