Corona Virus Math-Insanity but with Extra 000s

In my lifetime government luminaries and the talking head class switched from talking about millions to billions and now to trillions. In the recent COVID bailout, the federal government committed to spend $2.4 trillion to, basically, reimburse Americans for their sacrifice of shutting down the economy to ‘flatten the curve’ and thus save lives.

Though, in truth, flattening the curve theory really only meant putting off the deaths from corona virus until later, when hospitals could better deal with the high numbers of cases. So, technically, the only lives really saved would be those who might have died if they had been denied access to ICU care and might be expected to live otherwise, likely a much lower number. One study showed that 88% of those that got the ventilator died anyway; so really we’re talking about 12% of people who might not have died if they were provided a ventilator but were not. An even smaller number.

We are all familiar with the numbers by now. The original guesstimate was that 2.2 million people might die. That number has dropped precipitously, to 240,000, to now under 70,000 (4/23/20). For the sake of argument let’s use them as given.

For the math:

$2.4 trillion, which excludes all ancillary economic damage caused by the lock down (and any additional appropriations, sure to be coming soon), divided by the original 2.2 million deaths (assuming they all could be saved, which no one assumed) gives an only semi-sane $1,090,909. Over a million dollars.

$2.4 trillion divided by the ‘high’ later estimate of 240,000 deaths comes to $10,000,000. Ten million dollars per life ‘saved’. That’s steep.

$2.4 trillion divided by the current estimate of roughly 65,000 deaths comes to $36,923,077. If we could save every life!!

As we speak, there have already been 40,000 deaths, so we can’t save them, can we? Taking out those already lost souls, and assuming we save the rest, gives us $2.4 trillion divided by 25,000 – wait for it – $96,000,000. Per person.

I am trying to imagine a world where this, conservative, estimate of cost-benefit makes sense. I am having a hard time.