Which if you look at the economic damage of a lockdown, either price is laughably cheap. Like this is a multi-trillion dollar economic event, spending even 10x that much would still likely be a "deal".
Agree. I think a fair approach rather than targeting price would have been to pre-allocate a percent of the economic impact of the lockdown.
If pandemic lockdowns cost about 10% of annual GDP, then pre-allocating 1% of GDP to vaccines seems pretty conservative if anything. That means something like $100-200 billion for the US or EU.
The EU should have just pre-allocated $100 billion on vaccines. That would have been enough to secure every adult a vaccine from the big four manufacturers, plus leave a big pot of money leftover for contingencies.
Note you don't even need the "lockdown" for the economic damage, it will happen anyway. People don't want to go to restaurants if it's going to kill their grandma.
The lockdown is actually merciful for many businesses; it's cheaper to close a restaurant entirely than run it at 50% capacity, and it's the only way conventions and other events can get out of their contracts with their venues.
> By comparing counties with and without restrictions, the researchers conclude that only 7 percentage points of the 60 percentage point overall decline in business activity can be attributed to legal restrictions. Most of the decline resulted from consumers voluntarily choosing to avoid stores and restaurants.
Even if this lockdown fan favorite is correct it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is that one country is done vaccinating earlier than another and being done earlier is cheaper than being done later.
