Fully reopening the economy now would cost more than 230,000 more lives — but would save perhaps 18 million jobs that will be lost if the country remains shut down through June 30, according to new calculations from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.
A bad economy and more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths are already inevitable, given the current state of spread of the coronavirus and the shutdown orders previously in place to deal with it.
But just how bad it will get, and the tradeoff in lives saved, depends on whether and how fast states start to reopen, and how closely Americans adhere to social distancing, said the PWBM, a nonpartisan economic analysis outfit at the University of Pennsylvania.
See the model HERE.
If the economy reopens entirely and people relax their own social distancing practices as well, the additional deaths could top 800,000 — but the economy would add 4 million jobs over the next two months, the model predicts.
States like New York face huge decisions.
Keep the shutdown in place and the state’s Gross Domestic Product will plummet 11.2% on a year-to-year basis, and it will shed more than 200,000 jobs.
Open up, and those job losses will be limited to fewer than 45,000, and GDP will be 1.5% better — though still severely negative, at 9.7% lower on a year-to-year basis. If, in addition to reopening, New Yorkers ditched social distancing, the state would actually gain more than 200,000 jobs through June.
But an additional 130,000 people would die from COVID-19 in that full reopening and relaxed distancing scenario, the model says.
PWBM tested six different possibilities: The baseline of current shutdowns, a partial reopening and a full reopening, and each of those combined with either current social distancing guidelines or relaxed guidelines.
In each scenario the economy will be far worse than last year — though in one, the full reopening and relaxed social distancing, the job market comes roaring back. If the country is fully reopened but social distancing is maintained, job losses will still occur, but be limited to about half a million between now and the end of June.
But maintaining any shutdowns means severe job pain, and the more the shutdown the worse it is.
