The past year’s battle against a novel coronavirus put politicians, business owners and workers in a no-win situation — the health vs. wealth debate.
Choosing between safety protocols and economic losses is a daunting task. The government set a framework. Industry acted accordingly. Employees had to deal with the consequences.
California’s death total of more than 50,000 lives lost represents 1-in-10 of the nation’s tally, which topped a half-million in February. All this came after virus-fighting business limitations throttled economies, especially in California where 1-in-13 workers lost their jobs.
There’s no scorecard for what’s an acceptable result when a stubborn and unpredictable killer virus plays the leading role. In fact, just pondering the math is stomach-churning.
I learned just how tricky juggling priorities can be when I filled my trusty spreadsheet with data tracking pandemic deaths (Center for Disease Control) and employment (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Let me make the heath vs. wealth puzzle extremely succinct: Was saving nearly 10,000 Californian lives worth almost half a million jobs lost?
Health concerns
The CDC attributes 51,821 California deaths to the virus as of February. That’s the largest loss of life among the states.
When crunching such numbers, ugly or not, one must always consider California’s 39 million residents — the nation’s top population. The state’s pandemic toll, so far, equals 131 deaths per 100,000 — better than 28 states and well below the 153-per-100,000 rate seen in all other states.
Now, if that doesn’t convince you that California did OK, health-wise, even after recent surges of COVID-related deaths, look at the numbers this way: California has 12.1% of the U.S. population but was hit by only 10.3% of the 502,400 U.S. coronavirus deaths.
Still, a huge question remains: What would have happened if California’s response had been less strict?
The data suggests 61,785 Californians might have died if the state suffered an average death rate equal to what occurred in all other states.
That translates to 9,964 Californian lives saved, the largest improvement nationwide. Even adjusted for population, my California estimate for lives saved was roughly 25 per 100,000 residents — topping 30 other states.
Wealth effect
Those better-than-average COVID-19 numbers came at a steep economic cost: California lost 1.4 million jobs in 2020, the largest decline nationally.
Plummeting employment does not look much better even when you consider California has the nation’s largest job market at 16.3 million as of December. The state lost 8% of all workers in 2020. Only nine states did worse on this percentage yardstick.
Or look at the worker’s plight with percentages: Starting 2020, California had 11.6% of all U.S. jobs. But it suffered 16% of the pandemic era’s employment losses.
Now, imagine that California’s 2020 firings and hirings were at a pace found in all other states. Job losses might have been only 975,000 in the year if restrictions had been kinder to businesses.
So, looser business restrictions might have saved 440,000 jobs. Those lost positions equal 2.5% of California’s workers. Only eight states did worse.
Bottom line
Quibble if you must with the stats or my math, but I’ll note that when Chapman University researchers tackled this health vs. wealth topic in December, they came up with similar results: 6,600 California lives saved vs. 500,000 jobs lost.
These statistical exercises, if nothing else, highlight the mammoth medical and financial challenges faced by society in the past year. With little precedent to handling a global pandemic, it’s guaranteed mistakes were made. But as you can see, it’s tricky to figure out the bottom line in terms of scale or direction of those errors.
Equally unquantifiable is the pandemic’s added mental strain.
Increased chances of dying are unnerving — and 15% more Californians died of all causes last year than expected, state stats show. Nationally, “excess deaths” rose 18%.
Plus, worrying about paying bills — even with various government relief — is certainly stressful. However, drastic job losses would have occurred regardless of government policies as many consumers and corporations changed their spending habits to lower perceived virus risks.
And while we’re discussing macabre statistics, I found this number intriguing: California suicides fell 15% in 2020 vs. the previous three-year average. One suicide is too many, and I only mention the trend — 688 fewer suicides in California — because sometimes life has a silver lining.
Perhaps spending too much time at home — and in some cases with great financial harm — was curiously beneficial to some households.
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