Your assumption is that there is a tradeoff to be made.
This is a common assumption, but I believe it's incorrect. As I showed by analyzing the pandemic as a classical feedback system [1], the long-term policy curve isn't just a simple tradeoff (i.e. "optimizing for reducing deaths of that one thing"), but is actually like an inverted parabola [2] with three regions.
But you are correct that our current public policy (by which I mean aggregate US public behavior, not just official policy) is currently targeting one of the worst long-term outcomes, which includes both higher-than-necessary COVID-19 deaths, AND higher-than-necessary collateral economic and other damage.
I believe that with a different strategy we can probably reduce Covid19Exception and simultaneously reduce HeartException and CancerException.
I've also read that in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the cities with the most stringent lockdowns were the ones whose economies recovered the fastest -- so your model has some empirical support.
This is a common assumption, but I believe it's incorrect. As I showed by analyzing the pandemic as a classical feedback system [1], the long-term policy curve isn't just a simple tradeoff (i.e. "optimizing for reducing deaths of that one thing"), but is actually like an inverted parabola [2] with three regions.
But you are correct that our current public policy (by which I mean aggregate US public behavior, not just official policy) is currently targeting one of the worst long-term outcomes, which includes both higher-than-necessary COVID-19 deaths, AND higher-than-necessary collateral economic and other damage.
I believe that with a different strategy we can probably reduce Covid19Exception and simultaneously reduce HeartException and CancerException.
[1] https://www.circuitlab.com/blog/2020/05/28/surprising-covid-...
[2] https://cdn.circuitlab.com/misc/20200526_SurprisingCOVID19St...