Economist.om article Headline:
"It will take time for China’s consumers to recover from lockdown"
Subline:
"Some lost consumption will be lost forever"
https://www.economist.com/china/2022/06/09/it-will-take-time-for-chinas-consumers-to-recover-from-lockdown
The Economist article meant to calculate China's economic lost due to its dynamic zero Covid policy.
Actually, the simplest method is using the method of "year of life lost" adjusted by an economic activity factor.
According to the following Nature.com article using global data as of Jan 26 2021, total year of life lost based on 1,279,866 excessive deaths amount to 20.5 million years. Or 16 years of life for every death. That is 20.5 million years of personal
consumption was lost forever.
What if a city such as Shanghai has a population of 16 million was locked down for three months?
Applying the same year of life lost to people killed: IF all the residents were temporarily dead for 3 months, the total year of life lost would be about 64 million years. (16*16/4=64)
Of course, the people were not dead and they had to consume to remain alive. Consumption of food, fluid including alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage, energy, as well as regulate health maintenance either provided to them freely or at a price is still
ongoing. In contrast, traveling and eating out and impulse purchase would be zero. But they could still order whatever they want through the internet.
IF I were a Shanghai resident during the lock down, lost consumption would be less than 3% of normal consumption. Others could be higher.
IF we assume 10% on the average, total lost consumption was equivalent to 6.4 million years of life. On the positive side, of course, is the number of lives not killed and/or degraded by COVID virus in Shanghai as well as other parts of China.
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* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)