The economist Garett Jones recently opined that Trump’s scuttled hopes to release a COVID-19 vaccine a few weeks earlier “likely would have saved at least 100,000 American lives.”
Why the fuck are ECONOMISTS commenting on drug viability and safety testing?
Are they having such a hard time finding a virologist who wants to publicly admit that they want less safety testing that they have turned to trusting economists on issues they have zero education and knowledge about?
Economics has a lot of math in a good program so there’s a chance he could’ve been involved in some kind of like disease modeling. There’s probably zero chance they wouldn’t have worked it into the article of that was the case though
Former college econ major here. Can confirm. At its core, economics is a study of human interactions, with the emphasis on trade. As long as there is decent data, economists could theorize a model for all kinds of things and try to find relationships (or in this case, extrapolate a bit). Of course, since we're still under the narrative that 5 trillion people actually died OF COVID, the "lives saved" projection is going to be a touch high.
Why the fuck are ECONOMISTS commenting on drug viability and safety testing?
Are they having such a hard time finding a virologist who wants to publicly admit that they want less safety testing that they have turned to trusting economists on issues they have zero education and knowledge about?
Economics has a lot of math in a good program so there’s a chance he could’ve been involved in some kind of like disease modeling. There’s probably zero chance they wouldn’t have worked it into the article of that was the case though
Former college econ major here. Can confirm. At its core, economics is a study of human interactions, with the emphasis on trade. As long as there is decent data, economists could theorize a model for all kinds of things and try to find relationships (or in this case, extrapolate a bit). Of course, since we're still under the narrative that 5 trillion people actually died OF COVID, the "lives saved" projection is going to be a touch high.