For those who have studied economics, we know that there not only cost of doing something (taking action), but also a cost of not doing something (inaction). Many times, the cost of inaction can be greater than taking action, but they are usually not readily evident until after the fact. If asked, most people will usually say that saving lives is worth almost any cost of taking action to do so, but that is not actually the case.

For instance, if we wanted to save 25,000 lives a year of people who die in auto accidents, we could easily prevent almost all those deaths by reducing speed limits and strictly enforcing them down to say 25 mph or so. Yet we choose not to do so. Why? It appears that inconvenience of increased travel times and the direct costs of strict highway law enforcement are just not worth saving those lives. That sounds so harsh. Yet our culture makes significant risk and cost benefit decisions like this all the time. In the U.S. alone, more than 34,000 people died from influenza during the 2018-19 flu season. Yet there were no draconian measures imposed to reduce those deaths. Ask yourselves why.

So far in the U.S., there have been 787 deaths attributed to COVID-19. I agree that saving as many live as possible is a desirable goal. I question why our society largely ignores the risk or cause of many other illnesses or activities that cause vast numbers of deaths. I would suggest that the answer lies in economic reasons.

I fear getting sick from COVID-19. My wife is at very high risk of death if she gets it because she suffers from a chronic auto immune disorder and takes medication that severely compromises her immune system. I am going to try to protect her no matter what it takes fro me to do. But when all of this is over and behind us, I fear the economic costs of our response to this threat will be many times greater than the medical results. Many thousands may die. Tens of millions of people are going to lose their jobs and livelihood, although they will survive. I am not suggesting that we should not respond to the COVID-19 threat. But there is a reason that we as a culture/society don't react this way to the massive loss of life due to other reasons. Something to think about.