Somebody poke holes in this argument for me:
Suppose US lockdown will last one year before a vaccine or something else solves coronavirus.
And suppose US lockdown will save 1,000,000 Americans who would have died without lockdown. And each death costs 10 DALYs, because they’re mostly old people with only 10 years left to live. And there’s an equal amount of non-death disability, so total 20 million DALYs lost. I’m not 100% sure of any of these numbers but I think they’re the right order of magnitude and if anything skewed towards being overestimates.
Lockdown affects 300 million Americans. So it’s net negative if it costs them more than 1/15th DALY each, ie if one year of lockdown is less than ~94% as good as a year not on lockdown.
But it seems like a year on lockdown is less than 94% as good as a year not on lockdown. Therefore lockdown is net negative.
yeah I think this is basically right