Moderate social distancing yields $8 trillion in economic benefits, study finds – Washington Post

A new working paper from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics includes calculations to put a dollar value on all those saved lives. “$8 trillion is over one-third of US GDP and larger than the entire annual federal budget. Whether in regular times or during a pandemic, it is difficult to think of any intervention with such large potential benefits to American citizens.”