Jay Pacharia: We could have done glorious things to reduce the risk to people who were at most at risk. He says we spent billions, hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars in response to SARS-CoV-2. "I'm quite confident that excess fatalities over the next few years will run lower than average for the next year or two"
Economist Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talks about the pandemic with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Boudreaux argues that a perfect storm of factors created a huge overreaction, including unnecessary lockdowns that accomplished little at a very high cost in physical and emotional health. Instead, Boudreaux argues, we should have focused attention on the population most at risk of dying from COVID--the elderly and especially the elderly with co-morbidities. The conversation includes a discussion of externalities and the insights of Ronald Coase applied to the policies during the pandemic.