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Analysis of Hybrid Epidemiological-Economic Models of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies

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Abstract

Some studies have examined the tension between public health benefits and economic costs of interventions in the United States for the COVID-19 pandemic by merging epidemiological and economic models. We extract from these studies a data set consisting of lives saved and the associated costs for each intervention. Our analysis calculates cost–benefit ratios that allow the effectiveness of intervention types to be compared against each other and against the value of the statistical life and the value of the statistical life year. This work identifies patterns in the cost–benefit ratios that illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of different intervention strategies and thereby enhances the practical application of complex theoretical analyses.

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Notes

  1. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic many epidemiological models modeled a single variant and assumed the end of the pandemic would come through reaching herd immunity. However, there are significant challenges to reaching herd immunity in the case of COVID-19 because of vaccine hesitancy, the lack of widespread global access to COVID-19 vaccines, breakthrough infections, short-term immunity, and new variants (Aschwanden 2021; D’Souza and Dowdy 2021). More recently, it has become clear that COVID-19 will be endemic, but perhaps less virulent, and the challenge will be learning how to live with it, rather than eradicating it.

  2. “All ages shelter at home for an extra 75% of the time for 35 weeks” is a longer duration with lesser restrictions on mobility outside home compared to "all ages shelter at home for an extra 90% of the time for 26 weeks" which is a shorter duration but with greater restrictions on mobility outside home (Brotherhood et al. 2021).

  3. We restricted ourselves to these two models for the following reasons. First, the models found little effectiveness of just testing the old as they make up a small percentage of the population. Second, testing plus quarantine was more effective than solely testing, and it is commonsense that quarantines would be imposed on those testing positive. Third age-based testing and quarantine that only targeted the young had very similar outcomes in terms of deaths and costs to those targeting all ages.

  4. For instance, Lyu and Wehby (2020) suggest that early implementation of mask mandates would have averted more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases by May 22, 2021. Chernozhukov, Kasahara, and Schrimpf (2021) argue that nationally mandating face masks for employees early in the pandemic could have reduced the weekly growth rate of cases and deaths by more than 10 percentage points in late April and between 19 and 47 thousand saved lives by the end of May.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Michael Ash, João Paulo de Souza, Lisi Krall, Dan Moyer and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Any errors are our own.

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  1. SUNY Cortland, P.O. Box 2000, Cortland, NY, 13045, USA

    Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Eric Edlund & Avanti Mukherjee

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Appendix

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Table 4 lists the papers used in this analysis.

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Carrick-Hagenbarth, J., Edlund, E. & Mukherjee, A. Analysis of Hybrid Epidemiological-Economic Models of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies. Eastern Econ J 49, 585–612 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41302-023-00256-z

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