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Loss of life is one cost. So is reduced quality of life while ill, and over longer periods for those drawing that unlucky straw. Looking more and more like Covid does long-term harm to the immune system, increasing the cost of other illnesses. And also worth noting that places that never undertook NZ's lockdowns had their own impediments to economic activity when illness rates were very high.

And there remains a categorical difference between protecting people from non-communicable illness, where no real externality argument applies (recall that fiscal externalities are largely pecuniary rather than technological), and infectious disease.

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