1. Really angry about this and, frankly, you should be, too.
Apart from the glaringly obvious fact that lives cannot and should not be reduced to a monetary value, how the eff do they KNOW how many lives were saved. The short answer is they don't!

2. They also don't know the value of those lives as they cannot predict what those people will go on to do. Perhaps without lockdown a person who would otherwise have eradicated world hunger or solved the climate crisis would've died.

3. We're more than a few numbers. The idea that the lockdown wasn't worth it is eugenics. It's a slippery and steep slope and we need to make sure we never go down it.

P.S. if the "leading economist" is Minford, disregard this thread - the man's an walking insult to economists