The health-wealth tradeoff of lockdowns is still hotly debated. Here are some thoughts that may help untangle the issues. 1/17 #EconTwitter #EpiTwitter
Figure courtesy of @luismbcabral

Let's start with concept of tradeoffs. With aggregate societal wealth and health on the axes, we can show all combinations that we can achieve though different policies. All points in purple region are feasible, those outside it are not. Which point should we choose? 2/17

Since society values both health and wealth, from any starting point, we want to move in North-East direction. When making a move, we say that there is a tradeoff if gaining more health necessarily means giving up some wealth. 3/17

It can never be optimal to stay at an interior point like E, because we can get both more wealth AND more health by moving to points like G or F on the frontier. So at an interior point like E, there may be no tradeoffs at all. We can find policies to improve BOTH. 4/17

At extremes with 100% or 0% lockdown (like points A and C or nearby points), we're on frontier but again may be able to get both richer and healthier. But in intermediate cases, like G and F, there is necessarily a tradeoff. 5/17