The check for Covid’s in: Pandemic cost the US economy $14TRILLION dollars (and counting)

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The Covid pandemic comes with a hefty $14 trillion price tag.

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A team of economists, public policy researchers and other experts from the University of Southern California used economic modeling to estimate the financial toll of the pandemic on the nation.

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The pandemic, which triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns and rocked the global economy, has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and hospitalized many more.

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The researchers said the economic effects of the pandemic were “unprecedented” for the US.

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Using data from the first two and a half years of the pandemic, the researchers predicted the magnitude of financial losses from Covid from January 2020 to December 2023.

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They approached the lost revenue due to forced business closures and also considered the economic burden of behavioral changes, including avoidance of restaurants, theaters and other crowded places.

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Absence from work and loss of turnover due to stopping shopping on foot, flights abroad and public gatherings had the most impact.

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The industries most affected were airlines, which fell 58 percent, restaurants, which fell 27 percent, and health and social services, which fell 30 percent.

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Fortunately, an explosion in online purchases, government financial aid packages and the transition to working from home spurred some economic activity.

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Between 2020 and 2023, the cumulative net economic output of the US will be approximately $103 trillion.

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Had Covid not happened, total GDP over those four years would have been $117 trillion.

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The toll on US GDP is twice the impact of the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009.

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It is 20 times the financial cost of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 40 times more than any other disaster to hit the US in the 21st century.

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The researchers estimate Covid-related health spending at $214 billion, representing about eight percent of the total annual gross output of health care and social services.

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They also estimate that the total number of working days lost due to Covid was over 600 million.

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While the federal government has now announced it will end the Covid public health emergency, the pandemic will have lasting effects on the US economy.

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The percentage of the population participating in the labor force decreased from 63.3 in February 2020 to 60.1 in April 2020.

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It only started to recover last month and stood at 62.6 percent.

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The researchers noted that there were economic effects of Covid that they did not include, such as lost years of work after an early death or severe cases of long-term Covid.

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It also failed to take into account students’ learning loss and costs related to how Covid affected people’s mental health.

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In October 2022, researchers at the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank, estimated the economic costs of closed businesses and lost jobs due to each state’s lockdown measures from January to March in 2021.

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They then estimated the cost for each resident of those states — a Massachusetts family of four lost $11,448, while a comparable Mississippi household lost just $4,016, according to the 42-page document.

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Another study in November 2020 estimated the cost of government shutdowns in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic in America, finding that $6 million in damage was done for every life saved.

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Researchers from HEC Paris business school and Bocconi University in Milan concluded that U.S. closures saved 29,000 lives from March through May — but at a cost of $169 billion, or about $6 million per person.

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The study examined the costs of declining corporate market values ??and job losses during the closures, which left about 40 million people unemployed.

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