GOING THE DISTANCE UW team studies the effects of social distancing on the economy.
Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, government and policymakers were faced with a number of difficult decisions. At the pandemic’s start, one of the most central questions was whether or not the United States should enter a full lockdown. While staying home and shutting down businesses would save lives, it would also cause great damage to the economy. Would the cost of the lockdown outweigh the benefits? The question was addressed by a group of researchers at the University of Wyoming’s Department of Economics, including Linda Thunstrom, Stephen Newbold, David Finnoff and Jason Shogren, as well as Ph.D. student Madison Ashworth. “This study was essential because it was clear that the social distancing policies that were implemented or being considered by policy makers, such as physical distancing and shutting businesses and schools down, had severe consequences for the economy, and it wasn’t clear those consequences were justified, even if they would clearly have public health benefits,” Thunstrom said. While the question of social distancing measures raised much debate across political party lines, epidemiologists and businesses, the researchers really had no idea what their research would indicate. “We didn’t know what the answer was going to be,” said Newbold. “We wanted to let the result fall where it would fall and report it in the most straightforward way possible. We thought that was the most useful service we could do at the time, because there were so many questions. Different people had different ideas about where the answer would fall.” The research team utilized computer modeling and simulations to estimate the costs and benefits of social distancing measures that considered variables such as the value of statistical life, complexities of the modern economy, how the gross domestic product changes over time, human behavior as well as epidemiological information about the virus. “Our model focused on the economic costs and benefits. For the costs, the model considered how much employment and income would be lost. For the benefits, the model considered what would happen under a completely uncontrolled scenario, as if we would have reacted to the novel coronavirus like the seasonal flu with no extra control measures. How many people would we expect to fall ill or die under such an uncontrolled scenario versus an alternative scenario involving widespread social distancing?” Newbold said. After the model was run, the research team compared the dollar amount the impact of a lockdown would have on the economy to the dollar value assigned to the estimated number of lives that would be saved through a lockdown. While they considered a range of possible scenarios, their most plausible estimate suggested that social distancing measures would
6 FEET APART
Innovations • 7