Is there any way to predict how much this coronavirus outbreak will cost the economy overall

The Quarantine Zone
1

There are a wide range of things that are going to reduce economic activity and increase costs.

  1. Increased welfare (UBI, unemployment, corporate bailouts)
  2. Increased health care spending (tons of people in the hospital)
  3. Stock market collapses all over the world
  4. The collapse of lots of businesses, landlords, etc
  5. Possible increased long term health care costs for some people who survive the virus.
  6. Reduced wages due to higher unemployment.

I’m guessing in the US alone, its probably going to be 20+ trillion. I mean the stock market collapse alone wiped out something like 11 trillion in wealth.

I hope this leads to the permanent abolition of wet markets in China, or at least a total restructuring of how they work.

2

I hope it leads to more support for preventive measures, like the pandemic readiness team cancelled by the Trump administration and the WHO. Certainly in terms of cost, it’s exceeding a trillion dollars (given that’s how much the White House wants to spend on relief).

3

Health costs inclusive of death from the economic impacts, which the modeling people can convert into economic value (as distasteful as it is).

You can prevent evictions and mortgage foreclosures for three months maybe, but operating under the models that this level of action is the degree necessary to effectively flatten the curve, then the same model states they need to be maintained for an estimated 18 months (with possibly “drug holidays” from some of them for a total of a third of the time as rates drop below determined levels). Homelessness and hunger increases and there will not resources to call upon to address it. Deaths among the otherwise young and healthy, in addition to the otherwise vulnerable, increase dramatically. The impact by the way does not spare those in the upper middle class, many of who will minimally need to raid the inadequate amounts they have saved for retirement, which is then a fraction of what it had been worth, in order to make mortgage payments and basic living expenses - their best hope left being to die before they retire.

Yes there are ways to do this, academics who specialize in this sort of analysis. If any are published though I cannot find them. Any better users of google scholar want to try?

4

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