Cross-Country Comparisons of Covid-19: Policy, Politics and the Price of Life
Cross-Country Comparisons of Covid-19: Policy, Politics and the Price of Life
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DOI：
10.1007/s10640-020-00466-5
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发表时间：
2020-08-04
影响因子：
5.9
通讯作者：
Bateman, Ian J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Balmford, Ben;Annan, James D.;Bateman, Ian J.
冠状病毒已在全球范围内夺走了50多万人的生命，死亡人数每天都在迅速上升。在没有疫苗的情况下，实施了非临床预防措施，作为限制死亡的主要手段。然而，这些措施对日常生活和经济活动造成了前所未有的破坏。鉴于这一不断发展的危机、第二波感染的可能性以及未来大流行病几乎肯定会发生，需要从现有数据中迅速收集经验教训。我们通过允许报告的差异和国家之间基本社会经济条件的变化来解决跨国比较的挑战。我们的分析表明，到目前为止，政策干预的差异在解释数据中观察到的死亡率范围方面超过了社会经济变化。我们的流行病学模型显示，在8个国家中，如果再延迟一周实施封锁，可能会造成50多万人死亡。此外，那些行动迅速的国家比那些拖延的国家挽救了更多的生命。通过将封锁时间和随之而来的死亡人数与经济数据联系起来，我们揭示了各国政府为保护其公民而隐含准备支付的成本，这些成本反映在为挽救生命而放弃的经济活动中。这些“生命价格”的估计在不同国家之间差异很大，从低至10万美元左右（如英国、美国和意大利）到超过100万美元（如丹麦、德国、新西兰和韩国）不等。一旦我们对新冠肺炎死亡人数的低报进行纠正，最低估计数将进一步降低。
Coronavirus has claimed the lives of over half a million people world-wide and this death toll continues to rise rapidly each day. In the absence of a vaccine, non-clinical preventative measures have been implemented as the principal means of limiting deaths. However, these measures have caused unprecedented disruption to daily lives and economic activity. Given this developing crisis, the potential for a second wave of infections and the near certainty of future pandemics, lessons need to be rapidly gleaned from the available data. We address the challenges of cross-country comparisons by allowing for differences in reporting and variation in underlying socio-economic conditions between countries. Our analyses show that, to date, differences in policy interventions have out-weighed socio-economic variation in explaining the range of death rates observed in the data. Our epidemiological models show that across 8 countries a further week long delay in imposing lockdown would likely have cost more than half a million lives. Furthermore, those countries which acted more promptly saved substantially more lives than those that delayed. Linking decisions over the timing of lockdown and consequent deaths to economic data, we reveal the costs that national governments were implicitly prepared to pay to protect their citizens as reflected in the economic activity foregone to save lives. These 'price of life' estimates vary enormously between countries, ranging from as low as around $100,000 (e.g. the UK, US and Italy) to in excess of $1million (e.g. Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and Korea). The lowest estimates are further reduced once we correct for under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths.