Barry Brill, lawyer, former cabinet minister, captain of industry, formidable student of public policy and chairman of the NZCSC, thought back in March the impact of the Level-4 lock-down cure would be about 30 times worse than the disease itself. Real data now shows it was 190 times worse. It prevented perhaps 1000 deaths at a cost of $NZ8.5m for each year of life saved, which was a startling increase in the usually accepted value of $NZ45,000 for a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY).
The Australian BUSINESS REVIEW reports:
New Zealand’s hard lockdown policy is thought to have prevented the deaths of 1000 people at a cost of $NZ8.5m ($7.8m) for each year of life saved, according to a new analysis casting doubt on the effectiveness of Victoria’s extended shutdown.
Dr [Martin] Lally’s analysis put the cost of the coronavirus pandemic to New Zealand in terms of GDP at $NZ87bn, to which the decision to have a hard lockdown contributed $NZ22bn.
Main points from Lally’s analysis
- Eradication strategy may have saved 1,000 lives
- Due to advanced age and existing conditions the likely number of QALYs is only 2,445
- GDP loss is $87 billion
- GDP loss due to lock-downs rather than mitigation is perhaps $22b
- Our GDP loss values these QALYs at $8.5 million each (190 times the pre-COVID-19 value)
- The current value of a QALY is $45,000
His conclusion
He concludes that the cost of our suppression rather than a milder mitigation policy was vastly in excess of and dramatically inconsistent with long-established views about the value of a QALY.
I agree with Kiwiblog that a Royal Commission into our COVID-19 response is urgently needed. Let experts evaluate, together with a public consultation, whether our response could be improved so next time our leaders are better informed.
Next Friday Dr Lally, of Capital Financial Consultants, will speak at a Victoria University seminar on New Zealand’s lockdown using his revised paper on the costs and benefits of a COVID-19 lockdown.
Views: 7
Barry Brill. Ha ha ha.
The city of Manaus, Brazil, might help to reveal what the terrible toll of coronavirus looks like when the virus rages almost unchecked. A preprint study, not yet peer reviewed, shows that between one in 500 and one in 800 people in the city died of the disease. Manaus is fairly young, with just 6% of its population over the age of 60 (in the United States, it’s around 20%). Researchers tested samples from blood banks and estimated that up to 66% of the city’s people have been infected, which they say helped to finally bring down the death rate despite conditions, such as overcrowding, that allow the virus to spread easily.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/22/1008709/brazil-manaus-covid-coronavirus-herd-immunity-pandemic/
Ball park figure for NZ, with many old people, would be 10,000 deaths.
Go for it Brill.
Ah, Cambridgedon,
So how are you expecting people to be concerned about letting a virus kill people pretty much at random? Especially when in NZ the juvenile death-by medical-intervention rate is close to 13,000 per year.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/abortion-statistics-year-ended-december-2019
Yes, I would much rather risk a 1 in 500 chance of random death than the 1 in 6 rate of medical killing of these children.
“18 percent of known pregnancies (live births, stillbirths, and abortions) ended in an abortion.”
These ones, also, had no defence against an imposed death sentence.
It was also known at the start that prophylaxis with HCQ and Azithromycin is the answer, or one of them. Fauci et al are known seekers of wealth from sharing in expensive new medications. The Left once again have much to answer for….. Brett Keane, Trained Pathologist etc,, as well as Farmer, rtd