Taking the Value of a Statistical Life Calculation Seriously

It’s often said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Well, here goes anyway.

Assume OSHA estimates of 6500 lives saved (over 6 months) from implementing a test-or-vaccination mandate for large employers is correct. Then the implied loss of value to the US is 6500 x $11 million = $71.5 billion.  Since annualized US GDP in Q3 was about $23 trillion, that’s equivalent to a 0.6 percentage point hit (applying to half a year’s GDP).

I’ve ignored demographic aspects ($11 million VSL is an average figure). Also, we know that those who are unvaccinated are (conditionally) at higher risk of death, and I don’t have any intuition on whether the unvaxxed are likely to have a higher or lower actual VSL.

This calculation of costs does not include the estimated 250,000 hospitalizations. Nor am I accounting for long covid issues, as would be implied in hits to quality adjusted life years (QALY‘s).

75 thoughts on “Taking the Value of a Statistical Life Calculation Seriously

  1. Steven Kopits

    If you took it seriously, youʻd take a much lower value for lost life.

    From the World Bank: “In high-income countries, COVID-19 deaths are indeed highly concentrated among older people: on average, only 11% of both official deaths and excess deaths are among those under age 65.”

    If I extrapolate from Figure 2 in ADJUSTING THE VALUE OF A STATISTICAL LIFE FOR AGE AND COHORT EFFECTS, p. 579, it would appear that the statistical value of a year of life after the age of 65 approaches zero. But maybe I am reading the graph wrong.

    https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/too-young-die-age-and-death-covid-19-around-globe
    https://law.vanderbilt.edu/files/archive/279_Adjusting-VSL-for-Age-and-Cohort-Effects.pdf

    1. Barkley Rosser

      Um, Steven, not if you look at the age=adjusted VSL. It is declining, sure, but still quite high at age 62, with no data shown for higher than that. I think you are misrepresenting this in your comment. Of course, these estimates are controversial for many reasons, although used in public policy estimates.

      1. Steven Kopits

        That’s true, Barkley. But most covid deaths are of those above the age of 65, so it’s that age cohort that matters. The authors stop calculating the value of life over the age 62, but once a person is retired, their economic value to society is arguably negative. Put another way, the economic value of a life should be the net present value of the difference between an individual’s value created (wages, typically) and their own consumption.

        It is important to distinguish between economic value and social value. An older person can be of infinite value to their family, and of course, none of us own anything more precious than our own lives. That is our personal, emotional perspective. From a policy perspective, however, economics matters, and least in a negative sense. We don’t want to waste colossal amounts of money for minimal benefits.

        In such an event, a program should be discontinued. For example, NJ decided to end most automobile inspections, as these did not appear to have a material impact on crashes or mortality. By my estimate, the program cost upwards of $0.5 bn per year, when the car owner’s time is taken into consideration. Surely, these inspections must have saved a life here and there, but at an implied cost of $10-50 million per year.

        So, economics is not the only thing that matters, but it is one thing that matters.

        1. Barkley Rosser

          Steven,

          You are wrong about what is behind the estimates of VSL. While this is part of it, it is not based on future earnings. It is not that VSL goes to zero or becomes negative for those above 62 or whenever. It is based on willingness-to-pay estimates. It does continue to decline with age beyond age 62 for both cross section and cohort-adjusted, but does not go to zero ever.

          As I noted, Kip Vicsusi is the ultimate authority on this. He provides a full discussion of this as well as estimates of the lost value due to earlier deaths resulting from the pandemic in the following paper:

          W. Kip Viscusi, ‘Pricing the global health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Nov. 2020, pp. 1-28, doi: 10.1007/s11166-020-09337-2 . Also available at ncv.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7604649 .

      1. Anonymous

        ‘the problem with herd animals is that you do not even need to make sense to lead them. you do not need reason or righteousness, you just have to offer them a sense of belonging, a sense of status, and a sense of safety.’

        ‘do this, and the entire structure is payload agnostic. they really do not care if you change your narrative and keep altering the facts and ideology. this becomes easy.’

        a cat too smart for twitter

        1. Barkley Rosser

          A.,

          You may have written something truly deep and profound and truthful. But, frankly, I do not understand what this is about beyond perhsps some vague snipe at people for being thoughtless and willing to follow whomever when more or less complacently satisfied. But if that is it, why is that even remotely relevant to this topic of discussion.

          Again, if you are the Anonymous doing a lot of comment here recently, maybe you should stick to discussing oil market rather than trying to be deep. You seem to be getting yourself in danger of drowning.

    2. pgl

      This Vanderbilt Law paper never said the value of life was near zero for people aged 65. It does present a lot of ways of slicing and dicing the data so maybe you missed this paragraph:

      Recognition of cohort effects substantially influences the VSL trajectory for older age groups. The cross-section analysis implies that workers in their early 60s have a VSL of about $1.7–$2.0 million, which is between one-fifth and one-fourth the size of the VSLs for prime-aged workers. The cohort-adjusted VSL levels for older workers are much higher than in the cross-section analysis, with a VSL of about $5 million for workers in their early 60s. While this value is below the peak VSL over the life cycle, these older workers’ VSLs are above the VSLs for very young workers.

      I would say $2 million is considerably higher than zero even if one goes all rsm with confidence intervals.

    3. Anonymous

      and the 99% coincidence of co morbidity among the with covid decedents.

      and no one is tracking injury from the no safety data jabs, nor collateral damage from non pharma experiments run by the covid religious zealots.

      the zeal is strong here!

      1. Barkley Rosser

        A.,

        Want to provide a link on that 99% claim. There is no doubt that having comorbidities massively increases the risk of death from Covid, but that much. And even if that is the case, so what? My wife has comorbities, and I am glad she was fully vaxxed and boosted. She was nearly hiospitalized. I am sure she would have been hospitalized and possibly worse if she had not been vaxxed and boosted. Do you wish to question that, Anonymous?

        You are becoming less and less credible here. Maybe you should get a real fake name, given that you are going to pollute all any others coming here as “Anonymous” with this sort of drecky nonsense.

    4. Willie

      Well, if they go politely and quickly, then they aren’t expensive. Dying slowly and painfully after a month or two in an ICU is pretty expensive. Maybe calculating the cost of death would be more to your liking?

    1. Moses Herzog

      Do you feel better during the workday wearing shoes or not wearing shoes?? Do you feel better with an insulated coat in winter time or just with the skin on your back, shirtless?? If YES, shoes and a winter coat in January are important to you, then is it a religious thing??

        1. Moses Herzog

          You’re not even following the conversation apparently, The “comparison” I’m making is between coats, shoes, and GDP. No, you’re right, last time I checked, GDP is not “mandated”. I’ll forever be damned to Hell if I can figure out how guy as sharp as Menzie attracts so many dingbats to his blog.

    2. Barkley Rosser

      rsm,

      The methodology of these widely used estimates is well known, albeit quite controversial still among economists.

      Looks like you are the one trying to turn the discussion into one involving religious faith. Do you think that should be used in public policy given the huge disagreements about religious faith among the public?

  2. Moses Herzog

    I have mixed feelings about this post. But if my reading of it is correct, the blog host is trying to message that human life is precious and valuable. And so if human life is precious and valuable we should take all necessary steps to protect and show with our actions that we treasure that life. Our own life, and others’ lives.

    If that is the underlying message of the post, it is a great post.

    1. Anonymous

      human dignity is precious, some of us including Martin Luther King served for it.

      liberty before covid mandates.

      1. Moses Herzog

        One way (of many ways) to tell when a conservative Republican is handing you a very large dose of cow crap, is when they inject MLK into the conversation, when if the man was alive today, the best they would have treated MLK was walk to the other side of the street if they saw him coming their way.

      2. pgl

        Do you seriously think MLK would join the anti-mandate yoohoos? If so – you are an idiot. Could we give this man his day without such insulting comments as the one you just wrote?

      3. baffling

        liberty does not include the right to spread a deadly virus throughout society. you are not entitled to do that. you are expected to help protect your fellow citizens.

        1. Barkley Rosser

          The morality of those resisting getting vaxxes is the morality of those who drive drunk, and the morality of those who defend “liberty against covid mandates” is the morality of those opposed to laws against driving drunk.

          Hey, Anonymous, do you oppose laws against drunk driving? Want to get into an argument with one of those moms from MADD? You would say what to one of them who had a child killed by a drunk driver?

    2. w d w

      hate to say it, but we in the US dont seem to value life all that much. unless its the unborn, everyone else doesnt matter

      1. Moses Herzog

        I wouldn’t go that far, but there’s no denying the American culture sends mixed signals. But I tend to be cynical on this stuff as well, so I don’t necessarily disagree with you all that much. I guess the cliche I might use to express it is, many Americans still treasure life, they just “have a funny way of showing it”.

        I don’t know, the more I think about it the more I think if my Dad was still alive now he’d agree with you w d w. And that’s a pretty good barometer.

  3. Barkley Rosser

    For what it is worth, Kip Viscusi widely viewed in the economics profession as the leading expert on these estimates, although there has long been a lot of debate about this topic. When you see public estimates of the benefits of environmental protection, these kinds of estimates underly such measrurements, for better or for worse.

  4. ltr

    Taking the Value of a Statistical Life Calculation Seriously

    [ Really excellent post. I am grateful. ]

    1. Moses Herzog

      Some countries wish that years ago that they had treasured life a little bit more.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/world/asia/china-births-demographic-crisis.html

      My Ex-GF’s younger brother was almost murdered by the Chinese government. He was lucky to be alive, and I certainly think his sister was sharp enough to know it. Whether her idiot mother ever knew how lucky she was they didn’t, I have my doubts. He took after his mother in the smarts department (kinda dumb), but he was a nice kid, I’m glad he made it.

  5. ltr

    https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1246123.shtml

    January 17, 2021

    China’s GDP grows 8.1% in 2021, fastest in 10 years, spurring confidence despite challenges ahead
    Stellar performance boost confidence, but challenges emerge
    By Chu Daye and Li Xuanmin

    China on Monday posted an 8.1 percent GDP growth in 2021, defying market expectations and further cementing the world’s second-largest economy’s leading position in the global economy’s recovery from the still raging COVID-19 pandemic, as major growth drivers, particularly exports, saw remarkable improvements in the face of mounting global challenges.

    However, a significantly slower GDP growth of 4 percent in the last quarter of 2021, the weakest since the second quarter of 2020, also offered sobering reminders of the growing downward pressure on the Chinese economy, including from shrinking demand, supply chain disruptions and weakening expectations, in addition to risks of the spread of the Omicron variant.

    Chinese economists noted that China is still positioned to tackle those challenges, given the solid foundation of the Chinese economy and sufficient fiscal and monetary tools at the disposal of policymakers, who are already moving to boost consumption, liquidity and other issues. Despite risks, some economists are expecting 5.5 percent growth in 2022.

    China’s GDP expanded 8.1 percent in 2021, growing the fastest in nearly a decade and landing well above the government’s annual target of achieving a growth rate above 6 percent.

    The robust expansion, which beats market expectations and eclipses most of the other major economies in the past two years, spells out a steady economic recovery path – building upon the country’s zero-tolerance epidemic strategy that Beijing has been relying on despite criticism from the West and headwinds throughout the year, which ranged from sporadic coronavirus outbreaks, woes in the property sector, bulk commodity price hikes, to a power crunch.

    The country’s total GDP in 2021 reached 114.37 trillion yuan ($18 trillion), according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

    This represents an increase of $2 trillion compared to 2020, or roughly the equivalent of Italy’s GDP in 2020 based on Global Times calculations.

    https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2022/2022-01-17/262a15da-4846-4b39-afac-e67bd8262ecc.jpeg

    Rising trend

    In the fourth quarter of 2021, China’s GDP grew at 4 percent, beating estimates that growth in the quarter, marred by epidemic flare-ups, rising commodity prices and electricity shortages, would fall below that mark.

    Despite being the slowest growing quarter for the year, there was quarter-to-quarter growth and the growth was achieved on top of a 6.5 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2020, analysts said….

  6. ltr

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-17/China-to-provide-another-1b-COVID-19-vaccines-to-Africa-Xi-Jinping-16TLIoxCq0U/index.html

    January 17, 2022

    China to provide another 1b COVID-19 vaccines to Africa: Xi Jinping

    China will provide another one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to African countries, said Chinese President Xi Jinping during his speech at a virtual session of the 2022 World Economic Forum.

    Xi said China will also donate 150 million doses to members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

    [ Along with over 2.93 billion doses of Chinese vaccines administered domestically, more than 2 billion doses have already been distributed to more than 120 countries internationally. Nineteen countries are now producing Chinese vaccines from delivered raw materials. ]

    1. Barkley Rosser

      ltr,

      This is not a critcism of China donating vaccines or whatever, but a comment you will probably not like all that much about Xi Jinping.

      in yesterday’s Washington Post there was an article in the first section on “Japan and China” that focused on views of Japanes diplomats andd foreign policy scholars about the future of Japan-China relations. They expressed concern about the concentration of power in the hands of Xi Jinping. In particular they saw this as a threat to world peace due to his lack of experience and knowledge about the outside world and how people think there, leading him to make false assumptions that could lead to an unnecessary and undesirable war. Curiously they compared him in this regard unfavorably to Kim Jong Un of North Korea of all psople, noting that the latter actually went to school when young in Switzerland, and so does have more knowledge of foreigners and the outside world than Xi Jinping, even if the latter is a former”princleing” of The CCP.

      1. ltr

        This is not a criticism of China donating vaccines….

        [ Of course, that is precisely what the criticism is about so I immediately stopped reading since I find no reason to subject myself to personal or especially personalized-ethnicity abuse.

        Thank you so much for always being thoughtful. ]

      2. ltr

        This is not a criticism of China donating vaccines….

        [ Clarifying why I appreciate the thoughtful writing:

        Of course this is a criticism of China donating vaccines, and I am appreciative of the warning so that I could immediately turn away. ]

        1. Barkley Rosser

          ltr,

          You should have read further. I said nothing about vaccines.

          It was about Xi Jinping not having experience outside of China and thus not knowing much about the outside world. The context was Japanese experts worrying he might start a war due to his ignorance of the outside world.

          I am back because I gave the wrong source. It was The Economist, Jan. 1 issue. Person who made the comparison with Kim Jong Un was one Kanehara Nobukatsu, a former Japanese deputy national security adviser, on, after noting the Swiss eduction of Kim, p. 29:

          “Xi doesn’t know the free world at all – I’m sure that Kim knows our world better.”

    1. Moses Herzog

      Wow, you can read some of the better books now?!?!?!?!~~or did you get this “deep” “abstract” Bible knowledge from Joel Osteen when he was explaining to you how you’d get a luxury yacht and fur coats in next week’s post mail for donating to the prosperity gospel team??

      1. T. Shaw

        You’re absolutely correct.

        One should not cite Gospels around hypocrites who only turn them around to attack one; or trample them under their hooves.

        Won’t happen again.

        1. Barkley Rosser

          T. Shaw,

          Actually, the real problem with this particular quote is that it is totally unclear to whom or even what it is referring to besides Judas Iscariot. Somehow I doubt that it is a reference to hypocritical Fox News anchors who are all fully vaccinated but rail against vaxxing and masking mandates to increase their viewership among pathetically ignorant viewers, thus increasing their own pay and attention. Is Tucker Carlson the modern Judas Iscariot? Or maybe you had somebody else in mind, probably somebody falsely smeared by Carlson and his Fox News associates?

        2. Moses Herzog

          @ T. Shaw
          Don’t you hate hypocrites conveniently using the Bible for their own selfish purposes?? It’s almost like some national “leader” attacking his own citizens with violent military force, so he can hold up a Bible he admits himself he never reads:
          https://images.app.goo.gl/hES7xhvTJn6qZWUw7

          The site of that, had it ever happened. would be enough to “turn your stomach, would it T. Shaw???

  7. JohnH

    I can’t help wondering about commenters’ reaction to the likelihood that the lives saved were predominantly Republican, since they were the ones less likely to have been vaccinated before the mandate.

    And maybe Republicans should give Biden credit for having saved a few of their voters! And yet it wasn’t important enough to them to keep the mandate.

  8. Anonymous

    “Portfolio managers purchased oil last week at the fastest rate for 14 months amid growing confidence that the latest wave of coronavirus infections will not have a significant effect on international aviation and oil consumption.”

    https://www.reuters.com/article/global-oil-kemp/column-looking-beyond-omicron-oil-investors-focus-on-tight-supply-kemp-idINL8N2TX2TF

    So much for the Omicron selloff. What we need to reduce prices is more supply (drill, baby, drill). Covid-driven demand worries ain’t cutting it.

    1. macroduck

      The higher the price of hydrocarbon fuels, the slower the pace of global warming. High prices are our best friend.

      1. JohnH

        Question is, what government has the power to significantly raise gas prices without being overthrown?

        What is the plan to make voters buy into high gas prices? As far as I can see there is none.

  9. ltr

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-17/Chinese-mainland-records-223-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16T8HIm6Dgk/index.html

    January 17, 2022

    Chinese mainland reports 119 new COVID-19 cases

    The Chinese mainland recorded 223 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, with 163 linked to local transmissions and 60 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Monday.

    A total of 28 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 742 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.

    Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 105,087, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.

    Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-17/Chinese-mainland-records-223-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16T8HIm6Dgk/img/407d6e9875704c8fab4a24b8825c6a3b/407d6e9875704c8fab4a24b8825c6a3b.jpeg

    Chinese mainland new imported cases

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-17/Chinese-mainland-records-223-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16T8HIm6Dgk/img/8d2b51bc13614b1daaa615fb6bdb00ca/8d2b51bc13614b1daaa615fb6bdb00ca.jpeg

    Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-17/Chinese-mainland-records-223-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16T8HIm6Dgk/img/e08215d11f804a32b1e803d7242b7afe/e08215d11f804a32b1e803d7242b7afe.jpeg

  10. ltr

    January 16, 2022

    Coronavirus

    United States

    Cases ( 66,995,533)
    Deaths ( 873,564)

    Deaths per million ( 2,616)

    China

    Cases ( 104,864)
    Deaths ( 4,636)

    Deaths per million ( 3)

  11. Rick Stryker

    Menzie,

    You are using the wrong concept. It shouldn’t be value of a statistical life (VSL) but rather VSV, value of a statistical vaccine.

    A VSL is calculated by noting that people must be paid on average about $400 to bear an additional risk of a 1 in 25,000 risk of death in the workplace, so that the VSL is about $10 million. That’s a workplace risk that people don’t want to bear and must be paid to bear. In contrast, people who don’t get vaccinated want to bear the risk of dying from Covid because they get more disutility from taking the vaccine. The question we should be asking is how much we have to pay people to take the vaccine. Your mistake is to think the Biden mandate is a welfare gain when it’s in fact a welfare loss. If we knew how much we need to pay people to take the vaccine, we’d get some kind of evidence of the magnitude of the welfare loss.

    It’s difficult to estimate the VSV since we don’t know how much we’d need to pay to induce people to get the vaccine, but it’s reasonable to think it would be more than $400. People must be paid $400 to avoid a risk of 1 in 25,000 chance of death and yet the chance of death from covid is much higher than that. Many vaccine skeptics believe Alex Berenson when he claims that vaccinated people in England are dying at twice the rate of unvaccinated people. If the people covered by Biden’s mandate are largely in the 25-55 category, then the infection fatality rate (IFR) is on the order of 0.5%. So Berenson is saying that the vaccine imposes an additional risk of dying of 0.5% relative to not being vaccinated, implying a price of 0.5% X $10 million of $50K to take the vaccine, if you take the “value of a statistical life seriously.” People who are influenced by Berenson might indeed demand such a price. I don’t think the price on average is nearly that high of course since there are lots of reasons people won’t take the vaccine, but you get the idea.

    To get some numbers, let’s suppose conservatively that we’d need to pay $500 a piece to get most unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. OSHA says that 6500 lives would be saved. Assuming an IFR of 0.5% for the demographic targeted by Biden’s mandate, that means that 1.5 million people would need to be vaccinated. However, that assumes that everyone gets covid, which we know is not true. So, let’s add 50% to that number to account for people not getting covid, which means we need to vaccinate 2.25 million people. So, we are assuming that 2/3 of the 2.25 million would have contracted Covid and 0.5% would have died, resulting in 6500 deaths. Paying each of the 2.25 million $500 a piece would cost $1.125 trillion.

    That’s a massive welfare loss from the mandate. We don’t know what the true number is because we don’t know the VSV. But we have every reason to believe the Biden mandate welfare loss would have been very big. Thankfully, the Trump Supreme Court stepped up to prevent the madness.

    This calculation also explains why Biden and some states dropped the idea of paying $100 per vaccination. They know the price is too low and aren’t prepared to pay what they would actually need to. Why not though? Biden and the Dems throw around trillion dollar figures all the time. What’s another trillion dollars to save 6500 lives? If it’s really so important to them, they can take the money out of the climate change budget.

    1. Rick Stryker

      Sorry, didn’t proof read before I posted–was experimenting with different numbers and didn’t change parts of the text as needed. I meant a payment of $5000 per vaccination, not $500, implying a total cost of $11.25 billion. Biden can afford that I would think, since he throws around trillion dollar figures all the time. If not, take it out of the climate change budget.

      1. Moses Herzog

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/stopping-border-wall-save-billions/2020/12/16/fa096958-3fd1-11eb-a402-fba110db3b42_story.html

        https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-donald-trump-joe-biden-business-f12ef1a641bc326761656d4001054361

        “Biden is instead seeking money for increased technology at the ports of entry and elsewhere, saying there are more efficient ways to stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling at the border.

        The administration said it would return $2 billion taken from the Pentagon and use it for the construction projects for which the money was originally intended. That includes $79 million for an elementary school for the children of American service members in Germany; $25 million for a fire and rescue station at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida; and $10 million to expand defenses against North Korean ballistic missiles at Fort Greely in Alaska.

        It plans to use the approximately $1.9 million remaining appropriated by Congress for the wall for drainage and erosion control or other environmental problems caused by wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and elsewhere.”

        Isn’t it “strange” that President Biden thinks ballistic missile defense against North Korea is more important than constructing an ineffective and useless cheap fence to stop Juan and Miguel from hopping over the border to mow Rick’s lawn and hand Rick a burger and fries at Carl’s Jr.

        If it makes you feel better Rick, no one here cares if you board up your bathroom and hide in there for the next 20 years, safe from the Mexicans with your Alex jones InfoWars T-shirt and Alex Jones food rations. Please, by all means, knock yourself out.

      2. Barkley Rosser

        Rick,

        Although now one can get vaxxed for free, at the beginning people were paying to get vaxxed. Sorry, but there is no evidence of people dying in any noticeable numbers from getting vaxxed.

        Even if Berenson’s data is correct (I have not double checked), there is an obvious ecplanation why one might get this result, especially in UK where the vaxx rate is much higher than in the US. It is not that the people getting vaxxed are dying of the vaxx, which there is zero evidence of. It is that especially in UK with more rational people than the delusioonals we have here watching too much Fox News, almost anybody with a comorbitiy is getting vaxxed. So who is not getting vaxxed? Mostly young and healthy people with much lower likelihood or dying from anything than those who do.

        So, it is completely consistent that getting vaxxed lowers the death rate from Covid relative to those who do not get vaxxed. But if those who get vaxxed are older and sicker and have all sorts of ailments that can lead to death compared to those who do not, then one may easily see the unvaxxed having a lower death rate than those who are vaxxed, even if the death rate of those who are unvaxxed would be lower still if they were to get vaxxed.

        Come on, I thought you were more intelligent than pushing this dumb argument. Show us the evidence of people dying from getting vaxxed. I am sure there are some, but their numbers are miniscule compared to all those dying from covid without getting vaxxed, with the vast majority of those currently dying (and dying over the last year as well) being people who are not vaxxed.

        1. Rick Stryker

          Barkley,

          Sorry, I was in no way endorsing Berenson’s views. Berenson spreads statistical falsehoods. Of course, we know that the objective truth is that vaccines reduce significantly the chance of hospitalization and deaths and are very safe. What I was trying to do is to get into the anti-vaxxer’s head to see what it would cost to pay him to take the vaccine voluntarily. I’ve talked with lots of anti-vaxxers and almost all don’t want to take the vaccine because they think it’s more dangerous to take it rather than do nothing. My sense is that it would take large payments to convince them otherwise. Anti-vaxxers, for example, get their ideas from people like Berenson. I was pointing out that if someone took Berenson literally on the U.K. data and believed him, we’d need to pay him $50K to take the vaccine voluntarily if his life really is worth $10 million.

      3. pgl

        “I meant a payment of $5000 per vaccination, not $500, implying a total cost of $11.25 billion.”

        The cost of a vaccine is closer to $50 per dose not $5000. But while we are just making up numbers, someone tell the Tennessee Titans that I am 6’8″ weigh 260 pound of all muscle and can run 40 yard dash in 4.1 seconds. Hire me as tight end and it is Super Bowl bound!

        1. Rick Stryker

          pgl,

          I wasn’t saying that the cost of the vaccine is $5000. Of course, the cost is actually very small. Rather, I was asking what would we need to pay an anti-vaxxer to take the vaccine voluntarily. I would think that payment is much larger than the cost of the vaccine, given that almost all anti-vaxxers believe the vaccine is actually pretty dangerous. Just to avoid any further misunderstanding, I don’t believe the vaccine is dangerous. But I’m talking about what anti-vaxxers believe.

          1. Barkley Rosser

            Maybe we should get Fox News to cough up the money to pay all the non-vaxxers they deluded so hypocritically to get vaxxed.

    2. 2slugbaits

      Rick Stryker Part of the problem is that people who refuse to be vaccinated probably don’t know the true risk associated with not being vaccinated. There’s a big difference between how someone assesses risk before contracting COVID and how that same person assesses risk afterwards. Looking at the cost of regret is another way to think about the statistical value of a life. We all know people who, on their deathbeds, would have paid any amount of money to get the vaccine but only realized their miscalculation when it was too late. But more to the point most people don’t factor in the cost to others if they don’t get vaccinated, and that’s what the Biden mandate was all about. The SCOTUS completely botched the case and the Court’s reasoning was incoherent. First, the government was not mandating individuals to get vaccinated or undergo weekly tests; the mandate was that employers had to mandate vaccines or regular testing in order to provide workers with a safe working environment. In other words, the government was simply extending the same mandate that the nine Justices required for anyone working for the Court. Apparently it’s important to protect conservatives on the Court, but to hell with minorities working in meatpacking plants. The Court’s bizarre reasoning was that it didn’t see anything inherently dangerous about COVID except in a hospital setting (and left unsaid was the exception the Court cut out for itself). And even in the hospital setting the Court was thinking in terms of the risk to patients when the OSHA rule was about the risk to hospital staff. Finally, how would any of those conservative justices know whether COVID presents an inherent danger to workers or not? It’s not like any of those clowns ever worked a day in their lives.

      1. Rick Stryker

        2slugs,

        Yes, I agree that anti-vaxxers misunderstand the risks and benefits of vaccines. I’ve talked with enough of them to be convinced of that. Unfortunately, there are quite of few charlatans out there (Berenson is one of them, but not the only one) who misrepresent studies and data and who commit statistical fallacies. Most anti-vaxxers think vaccines are very dangerous for them to take, which is why they refuse to take them.

        That being said, I believe SCOTUS decided the mandate case correctly. OSHA regs and laws simply don’t give the President the power to impose a vaccine mandate on employers.

    3. pgl

      “let’s suppose conservatively that we’d need to pay $500 a piece to get most unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. ”

      You updated this to $5000. Come on dude – the cost of producing a vaccine is very small. Yea the price charged by Moderna may be a lot higher but geesh – anyone with a brain could check their 10-K filing and notice how high their profit margins are. Now yea there is the cost of getting shots in the arm but $5000 per dose is a massive overestimate. And $500 is still way too high.

      The total lack of credibility of this totally made up number makes me not to bother with the rest of your rather poorly thought out “welfare analysis”.

    4. Steven Kopits

      The question is not average fee, but rather the fee at the level of targeted vaccination. Thus, about 2/3 of the population got vaccinated with material economic inducements. If you want to target, say, 90% vaccination, then the financial incentive has to be targeted to that margin consumer. It could be well above $400.

  12. 2slugbaits

    US life expectancy in 2020 (i.e., a year without a vaccine) fell 1.8 years. If the vaccine had been available in 2020 and if this drop in life expectancy due to COVID had been known at the time, then how much would you have to pay someone to NOT get the vaccine? I’m guessing it’s a lot more than Rick Stryker’s $400.

    1. pgl

      “’m guessing it’s a lot more than Rick Stryker’s $400.” He started with $500 and then upped it to $5000. Of course he is just making up numbers as he goes. A better estimate would be closer to $50 but Rick is too stupid to check the financials of Moderna.

    2. Rick Stryker

      2slugs,

      Yes, I’m sure you are right. Most rational people were desperate to get the vaccine when it came out. I would have paid much more than $400 to get it, many tens of thousands actually, given an unconditional IFR of probably 0.5 – 1 percent for me. But anti-vaxxers are a different crowd. You have to pay them to take it and many of them won’t take it at any price (or so they’ve claimed to me)

  13. ltr

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31october2021

    December 20, 2021

    Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England: deaths occurring between 1 January and 31 October 2021

    Age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates for deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status; deaths occurring between 1 January and 31 October 2021 in England.

    Main points

    The monthly age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) for deaths involving COVID-19 have been consistently lower for people who had received a second dose at least 21 days ago, compared with unvaccinated people. This is the case for all age groups.

    The age-adjusted risk of deaths involving COVID-19 for people who had received a second dose at least 21 days ago compared with unvaccinated individuals varied from 99% lower (in February) to 78% lower (in October); this could be caused by various factors, such as changes in the composition of the group, changes in background COVID-19 infection rates, changing levels of immunity from prior infection, changing dominant variants, seasonal changes in mortality rates and vaccine waning….

    Over the whole period (1 January to 31 October 2021), the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving COVID-19 was 96% lower in people who had received a second dose at least 21 days ago compared with unvaccinated people.

    1. ltr

      ——– is saying that the vaccine imposes an additional risk of dying of 0.5% relative to not being vaccinated…

      [ This is, of course, an incorrect and abusive assertion. A range of coronavirus vaccines from Germany, Cuba, China, America have been remarkably safe and effective. ]

      1. Rick

        Of course it’s an incorrect assertion. You missed the point entirely. I wasn’t defending Berenson. I was saying that many anti-vaxxers get their views from Berenson ( and people like him) and therefore believe incorrectly that vaccines increase the chance of death by 0.5%.

  14. joseph

    Stryker: “That’s a massive welfare loss from the mandate.”

    Or else you could do what Ontario is doing and ban non-vaccinated people from planes, trains, buses, restaurants, nightclubs, casinos, concerts and sporting events. Just the hockey fanatics alone caused a massive spike in voluntary vaccinations.

    Or else do what Quebec is doing and charging non-vaccinated people a tax to cover their excessive healthcare costs. Instead of a welfare loss it becomes a profit center.

    Or even simpler, in the U.S. Biden could simply ban non-vaccinated people from any federally regulated facility or property. No planes, trains, buses federal buildings, national forests and parks or BLM land. It wouldn’t cost anything.

    1. pgl

      Rick’s “welfare analysis” was based on totally made up and incredible incorrect estimates of the cost of getting someone vaccinated and likely bogus assumptions on the benefit side too. But hey – this is standard for THE RICK.

    2. Rick Stryker

      Joseph,

      I remember in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis that some people were advocating banning gay people from restaurants, jobs, etc, because there was a fear they might spread AIDS. Thankfully, nobody did that. But given your comments, I wonder where you would have stood on that question at that time.

    3. joseph

      Are you that dumb, Stryker, or just pretending to be?

      HIV is not spread by casual public contact or breathing aerosols, as was well known at the time. And there is no vaccine for HIV. There is a vaccine for Covid and all it takes is a jab and you are free to move about in public without risking other’s lives.

      The more apt analogy is to drunk driving. “Hey, I’m okay to drive. What’s it to you?”

      You sociopaths are shameless. Comparing the Covid to HIV.

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