How much has the pandemic cost?

As the COVID-19 pandemic entered its third year, the United States was enjoying a protracted stock market boom, and China's global trade surplus had reached a record high. There is reason to believe these trends will not last: notably because the US Federal Reserve is set to tighten monetary policy in the face of rising inflation, and the US stock market has tumbled.

But even if market ebullience or strong exports in the world's biggest economies were to persist, most people are experiencing hardship and angst. We must not lose sight of that, let alone of the imperative of systemic change.

In responding to the pandemic, policymakers have faced an awful dilemma: keeping the economy open and risking more COVID-19 infections and deaths, or imposing lockdowns and destroying livelihoods. As the Vanderbilt University economist W. Kip Viscusi said, one way to simplify the tradeoff between the benefits of reducing health risks and the costs of economic dislocations is to "monetize" COVID-19 deaths.