We have a well accepted value range of the spending required to save a life when evaluating public safety infrastructure projects, which is about $2-5m. It& #39;s noticeable that the Downer "restart now" types never try and run the BCA on that basis - because it ain& #39;t on their side.

Doing some very quick and dirty work, if you take the Diamond Princess mortality rate of 2% and assume the disease reaches 100% of the population in a "herd immunity" style, then the approximate economic damage is about 100% of GDP. Which is generally considered "quite a lot".

If we& #39;re being a lot more charitable, we can take the lowest mainstream estimates of about 0.5% mortality, and assume herd immunity involves a 70% infection rate. Then the economic damage *solely due to the immediate cost in lives lost* for Australia is 20% of GDP.

So if you& #39;re a right-wing pseudo-economist trying to benchmark partial shutdowns against the full-steam-ahead plan that some of the UK& #39;s crazier advisers wanted, then you need to factor a 20% GDP hit from deaths alone into your model, even before treatment and knock-on costs.

(and even after you& #39;ve factored healthcare costs and lost production from sick people in: if you think a society where all that& #39;s going on is going to be otherwise productive-as-normal, then you& #39;re running on some extremely strange Stakhanovite-but-for-capitalism assumptions)