Opinion | The cold, hard maths of whether a coronavirus shutdown is worth everyone’s loss of quality of life

If we go into lockdown every year, we can prevent many deaths from flu. But why don’t societies do this? In the case of the Covid-19 shutdown, there are not just jobs at stake but also quality-of-life costs being borne by everyone

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A worker wearing a face mask walks past closed check-in counters at Hong Kong International Airport. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:30am, 11 Apr 2020Updated: 7:51pm, 11 Apr 2020

Do the benefits of the Covid-19 economic shutdown justify the costs? This is a fundamental question that governments need to address, and they should address it explicitly, regardless of how uncomfortable it may make people feel.

The Post reported that in 2019 the annual influenza outbreak caused 601 intensive care unit admissions and 356 deaths in Hong Kong. But, this year, the flu season was stopped in its tracks by the Covid-19 containment measures; when the annual outbreak ended in February, there had been only 182 ICU admissions and 113 deaths.

If we had gone into lockdown at the beginning of 2019, we could have probably prevented around 300 deaths from influenza alone.

So the question is: why don’t we go into lockdown for the first three months of every year to save 300 lives? The answer must be that society has implicitly decided that those 300 lives simply aren’t worth the costs of shutting down much of the economy for a quarter of every year.

Governments make similar decisions all the time. Take an accident black spot, for example. In most cases, the risk could be reduced by realigning the road or building a footbridge. But it is often deemed not worth the cost.

In 2018, Britain put the value of a human life saved at just under £2 million (HK$19.3 million today). All other things being equal, if an accident black spot can be eliminated at a cost of less than the value of those lives saved, then the project is justified, otherwise not.

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