WHAT WAS THE ECONOMIC COST OF THE COVID PANDEMIC?

  Some weekly Worldometer info on COVID-19:

• Deaths over the past 7 days.
• World  1913
• #1    Brazil  243
• #2    Germany 223
• #3    USA  209
• #4    Russia  183
• #5    France  155
• Deaths in the past 7 days per million population.
• World  0.24
• #1    New Zealand  11
• #2    Hong Kong  11
• #3    Martinique  5
• #4    Greece  4
• #5    Denmark  4
• #11  S. Korea  2
• #17  Brazil  1
• #23  USA  0.9

Worried about long covid?  At one time as high as one-third of people who got infected were suspected of suffering this symptomatic fallout.  However, a recent study seems to show that only 10% now suffer from this ailment.  Part of the reason is that the subvariants from Omicron to the present are not as troublesome. 

Now that the pandemic has been declared over, what was the cost of covid?  Seems like an uncalculable task, but Jakub Hlávaka (top photo) and Adam Rose of CREATE (University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergency) made an attempt.

• First, they only analyzed the effect on the USA.
• They said the cost will reach $14 trillion by the end of the year.  

• 
  From 2020 to what it will be at the end of this year, the net economic output of our country will be $103 trillion.  
• However, without the pandemic, it would have been around $117 trillion.
• Thus, simple subtraction gives you $14 trillion.

• 

  The greatest loss stemmed from workplace absences and lost sales.
• Take direct health care expenses.
• During the pandemic, hospitalization amounted to $214 billion.
• Normally, 65,000 Americans would have died from January 2020 to June 2022.  This cost should have been only $20 billion.
• 
  At the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020:
• Air travel had fallen by nearly 60%.
• Indoor dining by 65%.
• In-store shopping by 29%.
• Of course, these losses were offset by online purchases, government stimulus and working from home.

• 
  This pandemic period was unprecedented.
• The toll was twice that of the Great Recession of 2008 (December 2007 to June 2009).
• 20 times that of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.
• 40 times that of any other disaster since this century began.
• The analysis was limited to the pandemic's standard economic effects.  If they had included the vast array of indirect costs, such as lost years of work because of premature deaths and long COVID, mental health effects and student learning loss, the cost would have been much higher.

Look's like this debt crisis is entering a dangerous stage because the House of Representatives has gone home for the Memorial Day weekend, and June 1 is the supposedly the doom day.  Something from Mike Lukovich that well explains what might be happening.

If you've been keeping up with Super Typhoon Mawar, it yesterday only brushed Guam as a Category 4, creating considerable havoc.  In the open ocean, it is back to being a Super Typhoon, strengthening at this writing to 175 MPH!  This makes Mawar the strongest typhoon in this region since Typhoon Damrey in 2000.  Guam is home to 168,000 people, including more than 20,000 U.S. military personnel and dependents.

Looks like there will be some weakening as Mawar heads for Taiwan, and further good news, the latest projection has a turn to the north, then slightly northeast, away from Okinawa.  Then what?  We'll see.

-