It’s rather notable that the zealous defenders of brutal lockdowns so often resort to sanctimony in lieu of evidence.
Which is understandable, really – because all the evidence is showing that lockdowns are destructive and useless. Cue pious sanctimony, stage left.
“You can’t put a cost on human life!” is the oleaginous response from the WuFlu Pharisees.
Except that you can – and they did.
New Zealand government agencies have variously set the value of a human life at $4.14 million (NZTA) and $3.85 million (Treasury). Let’s split the difference and say that the New Zealand government values a human life at around $4 million. Divided by the average Kiwi life expectancy, that works out to about $45 grand for each year of life.
That’s all gone out the window in the Wuhan pandemic panic. Apparently, in a pandemic, the value of a Kiwi life soars faster than the Zimbabwe dollar sinks.
New Zealand’s hard lockdown policy is thought to have prevented the deaths of 1000 people at a cost of $NZ8.5m ($7.8m) for each year of life saved, according to a new analysis[…]
The $NZ8.5m figure is 190 times greater than a $NZ45,000 value public health experts had ascribed to a year of life before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the analysis.
So, in the Wuhan pandemic, a single Kiwi has skyrocketed in value from $4 to $760 million. Congratulations, BFD readers! You’re worth nearly ten times your weight in gold, all thanks to the Wuhan virus!
The only downside is that this means you’re paying through your solid-gold arses for Jacinda Ardern’s pandemic panic.
Martin Lally, an economist who advises Australian and New Zealand government price regulators, said Victoria’s tough lockdown, like New Zealand’s, would save lives only at an “extraordinary” cost that fell disproportionately on private businesses and the unemployed[…]
Dr Lally’s analysis put the cost of the coronavirus pandemic to New Zealand in terms of GDP at $NZ87bn, to which the decision to have a hard lockdown contributed $NZ22bn. “Some of these GDP losses would have arisen without government-imposed restrictions because some people would have reduced their interactions with others anyway,” he said.
$87 billion. Think about that: that’s nearly a quarter of New Zealand’s total GDP.
Dr Lally estimated about 1,000 New Zealanders would have died from or with COVID-19 rather than the 24 that have perished in the pandemic so far if the New Zealand government had followed a Swedish-style lighter touch response.
He assumed they had an average of five years of life remaining: “Consistency would require spending $NZ22bn to extend the lives of 1000 people suffering from heart disease, cancer or diabetes, which is more than the entire annual spending on healthcare in New Zealand.”
Dr Lally’s analysis confirms what we’ve been saying for months: Ardern’s hysterical panic is smashing New Zealand’s economy to rubble “in order to moderately extend the lives of 1000 largely old and sick people”.
Well, you’ll have many, many years of economic pain to reflect on whether it was all worth it.
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