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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revenue from air travel, dining at restaurants and attending large in-person events fell by more than 50 percent during the first two and a half years of the Covid pandemic. The decline was due to changes in public behavior prompted by regulations and health concerns

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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