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Benefit of controlling COVID-19 may be much larger than we think. There’s of course a huge direct short-run benefit (preventing deaths, returning to normal life).
But much remains unknown about the disease: Maybe there's a long-run indirect health burden for survivors?
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But much remains unknown about the disease: Maybe there's a long-run indirect health burden for survivors?
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Indirect effects from historical reductions in infectious diseases in 19th and 20th century seem to have had meaningful population level effects in the past
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An example: Women live longer than men but advantage used to be smaller. Reductions in infectious diseases in 20th century played a role: Survivors from these diseases (eg rheumatic fever) often carried burden that made them vulnerable later in life
https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men
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https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men
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COVID might very well be different. But we do have millions of infections already. If there are long-run health consequences even for a small fraction of people, the population level burden can still be large.
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PS. This blog post I wrote about historical trends in life expectancy gaps between men and women, based largely on the work of Adriana Lleras-Muney and Claudia Goldin in 2018, seems very relevant for this question today
https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men
https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men
