Staggering stat: The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates every day the vaccine can be accelerated is worth ~$10 billion to society.

Chart from the President's economic report yesterday suggesting Operation Warp Speed may have $2.4T in additional benefit vs. traditional vaccine timeline if it accelerated vaccine by 8 months — just about 240 days.

2.4T/243 = ~$10B/day.

The converse would also be true. Every day of delay in rolling out the vaccine and getting the shots into arms would cost society $10 billion.

Like, you could throw in a free premium laptop or something like that with every shot and the vaccine would still pay for itself, at least using the White House CEA analysis.

Here are assumptions WH CEA used, which you might want to take with the proverbial grain of salt. Maybe a spoonful of Old Bay given this line:
"The CEA assumes that as soon as the vaccine becomes available, it will immediately eliminate the health costs of COVID-19. HOWEVER..."

But the WH CEA also argues its analysis likely undervalues the vaccine, because it doesn't include non-COVID health effects, loss of human capital or the value of the vaccines to other countries.

Taking all that, you can easily see this stat as an *undercount* of the value of a vaccine, say, *RIGHT NOW* when we have 4,000 or more people dying some days, the federal government spending trillions on fiscal relief and so on. Every day matters a lot right now.

You could also say, well, what is the benefit if you were able to crush the virus in the days before the vaccine gets into every arm? Probably a similar amount. $10B a day.