Department of Economics, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr, Anchorage, AK, 99508, USA.
Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Ecohealth. 2022 Mar;19(1):114-123. doi: 10.1007/s10393-022-01576-w. Epub 2022 Mar 12.
One cause of the high rate of COVID-19 cases in the USA is thought to be insufficient prior capital investment in national health programs to preemptively reduce the likelihood of an outbreak and in national capacity to reduce the severity of any outbreak that does occur. We analyze the choice of capital investments (e.g. testing capacity, stockpiles of PPE, and information sharing capacity) and find the economically efficient capital stock associated with mitigating pandemic risk should be dramatically expanded. Policymakers who fail to invest in public health forgo significant expected cost savings from being prepared.
美国 COVID-19 病例高发的一个原因被认为是国家卫生计划的前期资本投资不足，无法预先降低疫情爆发的可能性，也无法降低任何已发生疫情的严重程度。我们分析了资本投资的选择（例如检测能力、个人防护设备的储备和信息共享能力），并发现与减轻大流行风险相关的经济有效资本存量应该大幅扩大。未能投资公共卫生的政策制定者将错失做好准备带来的巨大预期成本节约。
