Joshua Graff Zivin and Nicholas Sanders

PNAS December 29, 2020 117 (52) 32842-32844

Figure: COVID-19 infection rates as a function of the number of visits to businesses and public places in the city of Chicago based on a simulation approach using mobile phone tracking data as described in Chang et al. (9). The model predicts that infections rise nonlinearly with the number of visits to businesses and public places. This highlights the trade-offs between infections and activity restrictions. For example, reducing visits by 50% prevents ∼1 million infections. Shading indicates the 95% confidence interval. Image credit: Serina Chang (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), Emma Pierson (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), Pang Wei Koh (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), Jaline Gerardin (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL), Beth Redbird (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL), David Grusky (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), and Jure Leskovec (Stanford University, Stanford, CA).

The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced communities to confront what sacrifices they are willing to make to quickly address threats to public health. The pandemic shock is unusual in its rapid appearance, but the question of trade-offs is nothing new. Environmental regulations, safety mandates, and the battles against other infectious diseases all impose both pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs on society in exchange for improved population health. Yet, even if we were to set aside, for a moment, the nonquantitative value of human life, the economic value attributed to the absence of activity limitations designed to protect public health can impose great costs on society through increased disease burdens. Such burdens can accumulate by retarding human capital accumulation and diminishing productivity (1), serving as a long-term drag on economic growth. Whether the full suite of benefits outweigh the costs in any particular case depends on a host of context-specific factors, including the nature of the health threat and the costs and effectiveness of the measures designed to curtail it. A recent article by Taylor et al. (2) reveals one such example: the significant costs incurred from continued operation of meatpacking facilities deemed “essential businesses” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their evidence suggests maintaining operations amid the pandemic can contribute to the spread of COVID-19 both within the workforce and across local communities.

See: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/52/32842