The Cost-Benefit of Social Gatherings

Once you have the cost per event—your infections—you can calculate the benefit per event, and finally, compare everything apples to apples.

Once you have a version of this that reflects reality, you can reach many conclusions:

1. Are events worth allowing, based on what we know about costs and benefits? For example, in this model, the opera has a value of $33k per infection. That is the highest value per person for any event (again, surely wrong. This is illustrative.) But what’s the cost per infection for society? If we establish based on our healthcare system that the cost is only $10,000 per infection, then we should allow the opera, theaters, cinemas and big conferences and congresses, but we shouldn’t allow events like big fairs or music concerts since their value is below $10,000 per infection.
2. How can we account for value that goes beyond strict monetary value, such as psychological, ethical, or legal value?
3. How does that change with changes in prevalence? What is the prevalence at which I can start opening events? How does that change per region? Can I open up events in areas where there are very few cases? At what point in the prevalence can I open up what types of events?
4. How can I influence the risk of every type of event? Can I enforce mask-wearing? Can I force people to only interact with a few other people?
5. How do these values per infection compare to those from tourists coming to your country?

Allowing these events might be more worthwhile if intelligent measures are taken.

For example, if scanning a QR code is mandatory to enter an event, and people need to have Bluetooth enabled at all times to register who is close to whom, if we later discover one person was infected, we can trace all the other people at the event that were close by, contact them, test them, and isolate or quarantine them. If there are temperature checks at the entrance, this can reduce the number of potential infections entering (but probably less than half). If you can succeed at making people wear masks, your event might become acceptable.

Perfect is the Enemy of Good: Why an Imprecise Framework Is Needed

This might sound awfully hard and imprecise, so it’s worth pausing for a moment, take a step back, and realize why we’re doing this.

Most decision-makers are guesstimating all of this. Even if they don’t do the math formally, they are doing this calculation in their heads. The only thing we’re doing is extracting it from their heads and allowing people to debate it through a common language.

When a group of scientists and politicians gathers to decide what size of crowd they will allow, what conversation do you think is happening? It’s a cost-benefit, but they might not realize it. 

“If we ban events above 1,000 people, we’re banning lots of sports, fairs, and music events. That’s hard.”

“Yeah, but these are the events that cause the most infections.”

“But what about all the jobs that we’re going to lose?”

“Think about all the deaths you’re going to prevent!”

The value of formalizing into a cost-benefit is not to be precise. Precision is impossible with the data we have. The value is to put all of our biases and pieces of data and knowledge and insight and goals and problems and solutions in one single place, in front of everybody, with one common language, so we can all discuss it and reach the best guess on what’s most valuable to allow for society. 

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