Powerline 2/6/2023
Governments’ responses to the covid epidemic represent the worst public policy disaster of our time. They were an economic, social, health and educational fiasco. It may have been possible to devise worse policies than the shutdowns that upended America, but it wouldn’t have been easy.
Now, researchers at USC have tried to put a price tag on covid shutdowns:
U.S. GDP fell during the pandemic due to COVID-19 lockdowns and resulted in trillions of dollars in losses in these past years, a consequence mainly driven by mandatory business closure policies, according to a study by researchers from the University of Southern California (USC).
By the end of 2022, the pandemic had cut $12.2 trillion from U.S. GDP, the study published in Economic Modelling journal estimates. Researchers expect total losses to hit $14 trillion by the end of 2023. The study blamed involuntary business closures as the “leading cause” for the massive decline in America’s GDP during this period.
More:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/the-disaster-of-covid-shutdowns.php
