The Economic Impact of COVID-19 -- Trillions could have been saved
It’s April 6, 2020 and I can already write the economic impact and return on investment study on COVID-19.
If the United States government would have marshaled its collective forces from the top down, like other countries, instead of a patchwork of delayed responses from the bottom up, the economic loss would be measured in a few billion instead of trillions and trillions. Lack of short-term action in Washington DC to protect public health by turning off the economic engine will end up costing as much the interstate highway system, space program, public education, and Obamacare combined. This doesn’t include the future economic and societal value of 220,000 lives lost, valued at another trillion.
Our national leaders, and to be honest most of the rest of us, cared more about the economy, the very economy that is already damaged at a level which will surpass the carnage of the Great Depression. “We can't have hotels shut down”, “airplanes must still fly”, “conferences and meetings must go on”, “this will kill consumer confidence”, as if the stock market is the only measure of our national might.
Sadly, the things we feared the most happened anyway, and instead of being proactive, our national leaders as well as voices on social media described the imminent pandemic as the mild flu, a political and media hoax, or something that will only impact China. Instead of being proactive, we were fed meaningless data on how many people die each year from seasonal flu, car accidents, mass shootings, bee stings, and lighting strikes. Random data and science are not the same thing.
We debated away about six weeks of time at the cost of trillions of dollars. Sadly, the $2.2 trillion in Federal stimulus will barely ignite the pilot light on our $20 trillion economic engine. While the economic pill is hard to swallow, the hardest challenge involves a reversal of our national short-term mentality culture. This is how we collectively arrived in the position of dead last in the world in health status, healthcare disparities, and the cost of healthcare. Placing health as our highest priority will start at the local level, the same place where the best responses to this crisis began. City mayors and a few brave Governors put the health of their voters above the economy. I find some hope in recent surveys that show that 70% of Americans would pick their physical health over their economic health.
A better national understanding of the economic design of health and wealth will be valuable – if only we remember. So, what will the rejoinder be at the end of this mess? In the words of the late Paul Harvey, (“And now you know the rest of the story,”) let’s hope that it will be something like this: Future health and environment disasters will be approached swiftly, boldly and decisively and the results will be worth every penny.